Universities Of The Closed Mind

A series of leaked emails reveal the depths of prejudice and groupthink at Australia's universities.  In late May, Macquarie University academics were invited to a presentation by an Israeli.  The first to respond, to the entire Faculty of Arts, was John Hunter, holder of the "Fellowship for Indigenous Researchers".  Hunter declared he would not attend because of "the Human Rights abuses currently occurring in Gaza".  Hunter was joined by other academics who proudly announced their support for the Boycott Divestment Sanctions against Israel, asserting Israel's responsibility for "gross human rights abuses".

Avi Shavit was invited to speak at Macquarie University about cybersecurity.  He has 25 years of experience in the field, including in the military, software industry, investment banking, entrepreneurship, and consulting for the Israeli government and the European Commission.  Shavit's experience was irrelevant to Macquarie academics who put his religious and national background foremost in their mind.

The boycott of Shavit is bigotry, pure and simple.  It is judging someone based on their nationality and religion, not as an individual.  Shavit, who identifies as left-wing, was speaking about a technology issue, cybersecurity, not about Israel or Gaza.

The treatment of Shavit is just another case of the closed minds at Australia's universities.  The Ramsay Centre was rejected by ANU because students and academics complained its premises are too conservative.  Professor Peter Ridd was sacked by James Cook University after criticising science about the Great Barrier Reef by his colleagues.

Australian universities are ostracising individuals and rejecting ideas that do not fit the dominant progressive monoculture.  This weakens the entire academic process — how can you claim to be a "university" when you are no longer open to debate in the pursuit of truth?

The rejection of Shavit shows how groupthink develops in practice.  Across the emails multiple academics announced their joining of the boycott, signalling their virtuous behaviour, and then congratulating each other for the self-righteous non-attendance.  "Thank you John, Jeanette and other (sic) for raising this.  I will not attend the talk and will sign the pledge," a later reply-all email stated.

One of the boycott supporters was Noah Bassil, the Associate Dean of Higher Degree Research in the Faculty of Arts.  Bassil is the gateway to people's future.  He is supposed to be the impartial decider of what research projects get funded and which PhD students are accepted.  And yet he has shown clear bias that raises red flags.  What if an Israeli or Zionist Jew proposes a research project?  Are they less likely to get funding because of their background or their views?

Bassil's rapid willingness to boycott a speaker, despite his administrative position, shows the depths of the problems that our universities face.  It is not simply that a majority of academics are of the Left — this has been the case for a long time.  The lack of conservative, classical liberal, or libertarian voices has reached crisis levels.  Less than 10 per cent of US academics are conservative, and there is no reason to think it's any different here.  The monoculture has reached such heights that an administrator is willing to boycott a speaker without any shame, second thoughts, or repercussions.

A Macquarie academic told me how the collective naming and shaming has a chilling effect on free intellectual inquiry.  "Could you imagine merely being interested in Cyber Security and having your career destroyed because you turned up in a room to listen to a man speak?" the academic says.  "He's not even necessarily endorsing any recent actions by the Israeli government, for fuck's sake.  He's just a man trying to do his job."  The academic said that the display "made me think twice about attending".

The boycott was not completely unanimous.  Gil Davis, a senior lecturer in ancient Greek history, courageously declared his opposition.  "I don't agree that this call for a boycott is showing ethical leadership at all.  I think it is self-indulgent moral posturing which diminishes our University's reputation.  I plan to attend," Davis wrote.

In a moment of breath-taking self-aggrandisement, the first boycotter, John Hunter, claimed to be following in the footsteps of William Cooper.  Cooper was an Aboriginal political activist who delivered a petition to the Nazi German Consulate in Melbourne in 1938 as the Jewish people's darkest hour approached.  Cooper objected to the Kristallnacht, the violent anti-Jewish pogroms in Germany and Austria that foreshadowed the Holocaust.  Cooper's demonstration is the only known private protest against Kristallnacht.  Last week the Australian Electoral Commission announced a new seat in Victoria in Cooper's name.

Davis responded to Hunter by saying that the Jewish community celebrates Cooper, and that "it is almost certain that [Cooper] would not have had a bar of any boycott of Jews or the Jewish State, and would have immediately spotted the ugly demonisation underpinning it."

The unthinking dismissal of a speaker without hearing their views exposes a culture of intolerance emerging at our universities.  As a law faculty academic pointed out, "Whatever their personal or ideological views, this has nothing at all to do with the subject on which Mr Shavit is speaking.  How can one oppose what one does not know?  How can you argue against his views if you have not heard them?"  She signed off:  "Yours in freedom of thought".

The essence of prejudice is pre-judgement.  Prejudice is not bothering to make the effort to engage with a person or their ideas because you have made a lazy ideological judgement.  University academics are free to associate and not associate, to attend and not attend whatever lectures for whatever reasons.  Nevertheless, the Shavit case shows how closed minded our academics have become;  it shows their willingness to put their bigoted ideological tropes before a debate of ideas.

Plastic Bags And The Nuisance State

The lives of ordinary people have been made worse by the elimination of plastic bags in supermarkets — achieved by legislation in most states and by the corporate virtue-signalling led by the ever-diminishing duopoly of Coles and Woolworth.  This impact, you must understand, is not a side-effect or something taken into consideration during the pursuit of a broader policy objective;  the harm and confusion it causes to the mass of the people is actually the real objective.

Elite decision-makers live with the existential guilt associated with their good fortune to live remarkably free and prosperous lives.  They cannot abide that so many further down the social hierarchy do not share that guilt, being as they are concerned with such quotidian matters as scraping together a living, trying to keep the government's hands off what they do earn while keeping a family fed and housed.

The elites, though guardians of the social order, realise they cannot convince the masses to experience a guilt similar to their own, and so develop new ways to humiliate and confuse.  They might even say publicly that a change in attitude will eventually follow from an enforced change in behaviour, but to do so would be disingenuous.

To make somebody live a certain way, especially when that mode of life is against that person's interests and beliefs, is surely the most satisfying intervention a power seeking guardian of the social order can undertake.  It was Orwell who pointed out that a totalitarian state would make someone say that black is white or 2+2=5 not in order to change their mind but to break their spirit and prove that they can be made to say or do anything.

The desire to control others people's lives lies deep within human nature.  Homo sapiens evolved in clans and tribes, with evolution rewarding behaviours appropriate to self-preservation but also behaviours associated with group preservation.  It is no use being able to dominate everybody around me if my group is attacked and massacred by the neighbouring groups.  If you have any doubts on this, read Napoleon A. Chagnon's account of the Yanomamo people of the Orinoco basin in South America, along with Matt Ridley's excellent account of the evolution of humans and their societies in The Origins of Virtue.

Evolution within groups relies on reciprocity and the gradual building of intra-group trust.  To encourage trade and exchange of gifts, I must be confident that you will reciprocate in the approved way, so I receive something, and that you will be punished if you don't.  Thus, norms, rules and culture are developed, and the leaders of law and culture enforce those norms and rules.

Mostly this is by social pressure, and sometimes by physical punishment.  In traditional societies, the enforcers emerge organically and become the "big men", or even the "uncles" and "aunties", whose word is law even if the law is verbal and partly mutable.  In modern societies, law is more abstract and impersonal, but around it exists a stratum of society which derives deep satisfaction from policing the viewpoints and behaviours of the society.  Even though western society has, uniquely, shed clan and tribal affiliations in favour of individualism, it has not and cannot shed the habits of mind attributable to the evolution of a moral sense.

Jonathan Haidt, in The Righteous Mind, neatly demolishes the conceit that with the decline of religion and the crisis in conservativism the forces of morality are in retreat.  Rather, it might be true that a stern form of Christianity ever-watchful for fornication, adultery, intemperance and impiety is in retreat, but a different yet no less stern morality has taken its place at the centre of most liberal democracies.

Obsessed with fairness, it believes that all sacrifices must be borne equally.  Better that all live equally in mediocrity or misery than that some may aspire and flourish.  God (or Gaia) forbid, literally, that someone might get some enjoyment out of life.  But how to instantiate that equality of sacrifice?  Answer:  by creating sacrifices so that they can then can be endured equally.

I can well imagine that our social guardians may well lie awake tormented not by the prospect of the fires of damnation — as someone of their personality type most certainly would have been five centuries ago — but rather by the sight of dolphins swimming through plastic bags.  In either case, the fear of purgatory requires penance, a sign of self-abnegation through surrender and sacrifice.

But it is not enough that they take a righteous course by carrying hemp bags in their bicycle baskets for when they might need to buy some groceries.  No, it is vital and extremely satisfying to make sure that everybody else also has to.  That other people may not be cycling home through Fitzroy and Ultimo and dropping into the vegan grocer on the way home from a hard day at the university, but rather slipping into the supermarket (quelle horreur) after a long shift to make sure they have milk to put on the kids' breakfast cereal the next morning, is irrelevant.  All must pay, all must sacrifice.

The pleasure taken and the smugness displayed by politicians and self-appointed defenders of "the environment" reminds me of the famous quip of Macaulay's, that "the Puritan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators."

What we have now is not the Nanny State, it is the Nuisance State.  The phrase Nanny State implies a degree of maternalism, a care for the subject.  Rather, the state is now in the business of creating nuisances.  Ironically, the common law of England evolved to protect people from nuisance, usually from a neighbour.  The tests for a case of nuisance applied by judges and juries are:

• unreasonableness on the part of a defendant;
• continuance of acts constituting nuisance for an unreasonable period;
• causal connection between defendant and nuisance complained of;  and
• existence of injury or damage threat.

In cases of deliberate nuisance, which we see in the case of disputes between neighbours turned toxic and vindictive, courts could award exemplary damages beyond the mere harm suffered.

The state increasingly, through measures like bans on plastic bags, is creating a deliberate nuisance, which in the absence of access to common law remedies has the happy accompaniment of creating a class of supplicants.  We must either keep a slew of reusable bags secreted in various locations and vehicles for when we might need to shop, or we pay out our penance through the 15 cent charge on a plastic bag.  The latter option is exactly equivalent — in psychological terms — to the sale of indulgences as practised by the mediaeval Catholic Church, with the State standing in for the Vatican.

Confession is too time-consuming, and has in any event been anathematised, so better to pay the almoner.  Perhaps Coles will ask its long-suffering checkout staff to recite the words of the most notorious quaestiarii (pardoner) of the fifteenth century, Johann Tetzel, who would say as money was exchanged for absolution:  "as soon as the coin rings in the bowl, the soul for whom it is paid will fly out of purgatory and straight to heaven."

In the ban on plastic bags and in a thousand petty ways every day, ordinary people are forcibly reminded of their lowly position in the social hierarchy, and the determination of their betters to police the boundaries of social behaviour.  The nuisance it creates for all of us is not a bug, it's a feature.

A Class Divide That's Too Wide

Sometimes political parties create their own narratives, and sometimes those narratives are created for them.  Right at the moment Bill Shorten's Labor Party is doing a good job at creating the Coalition government's narrative.

This week's announcement by the Labor Party that if it wins government the reductions in the corporate tax rate for companies with a turnover of more than $10 million will be repealed, hands to Malcolm Turnbull not just one powerful narrative, but two.

The first narrative is of course that Labor is attacking "aspiration".  That's true and it's a line the Prime Minister and his ministers are using.

Big business has few friends these days on either side of politics.  In any case big business doesn't do much to help itself.  The fact that big business accounts for 65 per cent of jobs growth in the private sector since 2010 isn't often talked about.  So Labor's opposition to tax cuts for large companies is misconceived, but at least the politics Labor's playing is understandable.  The effects of corporate tax cuts are contested and they don't have the immediate impact on individuals of cuts to personal tax rates.  Indeed in economic and political terms there's a good argument that the Coalition should have made personal income tax reductions, not cuts to corporate tax, the centrepiece of the government's economic strategy.

Opposing tax cuts for small and medium-size businesses is an altogether different proposition.  Not many Australians can in all honestly see themselves running and owning a big business.  But unless they want to be a public servant, many Australians can see themselves as one day owning a small business.

A survey of 1000 Australians between the ages of 16 and 25 commissioned in 2016 found that 60 per cent of young Australians were interested in starting their own business, 23 were not interested, and 17 per cent didn't know.

SYMBOLISM COUNTS

Most voters would be hard-pressed to say what is the current tax rate on small and medium-sized businesses and what the Turnbull government has cut it to.  But unless the Coalition is completely inept, it can be assumed that by the time of the federal election most voters will at least have an inkling that Labor will increase taxes on small business.

What counts is the symbolism of Labor "going after" small business and everyone who has ever aspired to a small business of their own.

Potentially even more powerful for the Coalition is the second narrative Labor has given birth to — namely the narrative of division.  By saying it will increase taxes on businesses in the way it has, Labor is going one step beyond the traditional "class war" rhetoric.  Class wars are traditionally between the rich and powerful and the poor and downtrodden, with Labor usually claiming to be on the side of the latter.  On the scale of poor and downtrodden of popular perception in Australia, small business ranks just behind farmers.

The ALP isn't only dividing up Australia between big business and small business, it's dividing the people of the country up into two groups — those who work in a business (either big or small) and those who don't.  The aspirant for Shorten's job, Anthony Albanese isn't a fool.  Albanese knew exactly what he was doing when in a speech a week ago he said Australians should reject community "discord" and "division".

The irony of Labor's position is that it says it wants to spend the money it will get from increases taxes on business on health and education.  And opinion polls show the public want more money spent on health and education.  But part of the reason the public like health and education spending is because such spending is perceived at its core as building a stronger community and sense of social cohesion, which puts Labor at risk of trying to communicate two messages that contradict each other.

The ideal of "mateship", however it's precisely defined, is part of the national psyche.  If mateship is anything it's about sticking together and sharing some common values.  Labor's current rhetoric of division and difference strikes at the core of the notion of Australian mateship.

University Regulator TEQSA Has Lost Its Way On Political Matters

Australia's university regulator, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency, is not only failing to protect free intellectual inquiry but its ideologically driven interventions are part of the problem.

Australia's universities are facing a serious reputational crisis.  The more universities become aligned with a single line of political thought, the more the community will wonder, rightly, why billions of taxpayer dollars fund these institutions.

Senator James Paterson wrote on this page last week that universities that did not uphold free intellectual inquiry should be fined.  Radio broadcaster Alan Jones has discussed freezing funding to James Cook University following the sacking of Peter Ridd.  Malcolm Turnbull has said he will be speaking to the Australian National University following its rejection of the Ramsay Centre.

A competent regulator would be on top of this issue by now.

But TEQSA has been captured by the same progressive monoculture that is afflicting our universities.  This is concerning because it is the agency that decides which institutions can call themselves a university, award degrees and receive generous taxpayer funds.

Its website mentions progressive concepts such as "diversity" 119 times and "equity" a further 57 times.  "Free intellectual inquiry" is mentioned six times and "freedom of expression" just twice.  TEQSA has issued guidance notes on diversity and equity and wellbeing and safety but it has yet to issue a note about free speech on campus.

In 2011 the Gillard Labor government amended the Higher Education Support Act to require universities, as a condition of receiving federal funding, to have "a policy that upholds free intellectual inquiry in relation to learning, teaching and research".  TEQSA has made no effort to enforce this requirement.

My Free Speech on Campus Audit 2017 found that only eight out of Australia's 42 universities have a stand-alone intellectual freedom policy.  Charles Sturt University has 403 policies including a 1600-word document on when, where and how flags should be flown.  But it does not have a policy dedicated to free intellectual inquiry.

The audit also found that Australia's universities maintain speech codes that prevent "insulting" and "unwelcome" comments, "offensive" language and, in some cases, "sarcasm" and hurt feelings.  These policies encourage academics and students to remain silent for fear of repercussions.  They are not compatible with a university's role to facilitate debate in the pursuit of truth.  Offence and hurt feelings are a normal by-product of hearing ideas with which you disagree.

TEQSA has not held universities to account for policies that threaten intellectual freedom, the sacking of professors for expressing their scholarly views and complaints by academics across the political spectrum about the dangerous ideological monoculture in higher education.  The agency's internal thinking was revealed by its draft diversity and equity guidance note quietly released late in 2016.

The guidance note discusses all types of diversity — including racial, ethnic, religious, national and sexual — except the diversity necessary for a functioning university:  viewpoint diversity.  The draft note listed identity politics victim groups.  It included censorious "inclusive language" requirements.  It asserted that creating "equivalent opportunities for academic success" could mean "creating the conditions for equity of outcomes" — undermining the competitive nature of a university and the reality that not everybody can or should get first-class honours.  It also redefined "social responsibility" to include the progressive political idea of "social justice".  These elements ultimately were removed from the final note following my submission;  however, its existence in the first place is concerning.

TEQSA's latest focus is the questionable demand that universities become responsible for mediating sexual harassment allegations.  TEQSA is de facto encouraging the creation of inquisitive, low-evidence kangaroo courts.  This follows the footsteps of the problematic "Dear Colleague" letter that lowered the evidential standards for campus sexual assault allegations in the US.  The letter recently was withdrawn by US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.  Universities lack the expertise to facilitate natural justice.  These complex matters should be the responsibility of the police and the legal system.

One way to improve education quality is the creation of more universities.  All our universities teach every subject in a similar way.  There are no specialist science or economics and politics universities — such as Imperial College London and the London School of Economics — or a wide array of liberal arts colleges as in the US.

TEQSA benefits existing players by creating barriers to entry that prevent competition.  The agency has created so much red tape that it is almost impossible to create new or specialist universities.  The abolition of TEQSA — or the cutting of red tape — could generate a much-needed university boom.  Australia's university cartel finally would be challenged on quality and price by new institutions.  These new universities also could provide students with the choice to study at a university that has not been afflicted by a debilitating ideological monoculture.

Power Policy Prioritises Expensive Green Goals

The key lesson of recent wrangling over energy policy is this:  if it sounds like a tax and looks like a tax, then it probably is a tax.

The National Energy Guarantee (NEG) is the government's energy policy centrepiece.

It promises to manage the so-called policy "trilemma" of affordability, reliability and emissions reductions in the energy sector.  It will do so by mandating both a reliability and emissions reductions guarantee.

The emissions reduction component is driven by Australia's commitment to the Paris Climate agreement which requires Australia to reduce its emissions by 26-28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030.

However, the only way emissions reductions on the scale mandated by the Paris Agreement can be achieved is through heavy government intervention which favours less carbon intensive forms of energy generation.

And just like the Gillard government's full-blown carbon tax, the complex web of regulations and fines which form the basis of the NEG will amount of an effective tax on carbon-intensive forms of energy generation.

Translation:  coal will be taxed and renewables will be subsidised.

The de facto carbon tax stems from two areas.

The first is the mere existence of an emissions guarantee, which would force energy retailers to acquire a certain amount of energy which is generated from greener sources.  This makes the NEG indistinguishable from the Renewable Energy Target, a Clean Energy Target, an Emissions Intensity Scheme, or a carbon tax.  The outcome is policy favouritism of renewables at the expense of coal.

The second component is an explicit tax.

A $100 million tax (the government refers to it as a fine) will be placed on energy retailers who do not meet their emissions reductions obligations.

Yet just a $10 million tax will be placed on those who do not meet their reliability requirements.  This means the government is voting 10-to-one in favour of emissions reductions over reliable energy supply.

The extent of government command and control of Australia's energy policy would have made even Commissars in the Soviet Union blush.

The government is imposing a set of make-believe objectives onto the energy market.

It is then sabotaging the natural operation of the market by imposing a web of regulations and taxes, strong-arming energy retailers, running a nationalised electricity generator (Snowy Hydro), handing out billions to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and Australian Renewable Energy Agency, and allowing the whole show to be directed by unelected bureaucrats.

That the Department of the Environment and Energy's website refers to the NEG as a "market-based solution" is surely a joke.  But this joke is on us.

The energy crisis in Australia is the latest sign of a deep sickness in our political system.

Australia is blessed with a bounty of onshore and offshore gas, 1000 years' worth of coal, and 30 per cent of the world's uranium supplies.

Yet the Canberra political class has taken Australia from having among the lowest energy costs in the world to having among the highest.

Rather than a bona fide public policy, emissions reductions are best understood as a vanity project of the political elite.

Human emissions account for around 3 per cent of total carbon dioxide emissions.  Australia accounts for 1.5 per cent of that.

And according to data from the International Energy Agency and the Climate Council of Australia, the Commonwealth Renewable Energy Target — which favours renewables over coal — reduced emissions from fuel combustion exercises by just 1 per cent over a 15-year period.

You don't need a calculator to figure out that 1 per cent of 1.5 per cent of 3 per cent is mathematically zero.

The cost, though, is immense.  The working and middle classes of Australia are being bludgeoned with higher electricity prices which is trashing their standing of living.  And businesses are avoiding Australia like the plague.

That is why new private business investment is just 11.7 per cent of GDP, which is lower than the rate which prevailed during the economically hostile Whitlam years.  Worse than Whitlam, indeed.

This is the price we must all pay so the political class can continue with their vanity project.  Now that is a true expression of "class privilege".

The last time Australians were consulted on energy policy they voted for affordability and reliability over emissions reductions.  That is the key reason the Coalition won a thumping majority at the 2013 election and the carbon tax was abolished.

There is now talk that some on the right flank in the government will cross the floor to vote against the government's own energy policy.

Don't hold your breath.  Talk is cheap.  But they should.

Any government that cannot deliver affordable and reliable energy doesn't deserve to govern any longer.

That is the lesson of the Gillard years, and they are being repeated again today.

Tax Cuts? What Tax Cuts?

The government has pulled a switfy.  They've got everyone thinking they are going to cut taxes.  They aren't.  Taxes are going up under the government's income tax plan which passed the Senate yesterday

The government's own budget figures show that revenue from personal income tax will rise six per cent in 2018-19, five per cent in 2019-20, and seven per cent in both 2020-21 and 2021-22.  The annual rise is well above the rate of inflation growth, or growth to nominal GDP.

Yes, some — many, perhaps — workers will be better off under the income tax changes.  The elimination of the 37 per cent threshold is a good policy that will see millions of workers have a top marginal rate of just 32.5 per cent.  It also means that 2024-25 around 94 per cent of taxpayers are projected to face a marginal tax rate of 32.5 per cent or less compared with 63 per cent if we leave the system unchanged.

And, yes, the changes to the tax schedule means Australian workers will be paying less tax than under the status quo and, almost certainly, far less tax than under a Labor government.

However, to call the changes tax "reform" is stretching it.

True tax reform would involve substantial alteration to the income tax schedule, such as through moving toward a single flat income tax, and heftier reductions to the corporate tax rate.  It would also involve alternations to the broken GST system, such as by allowing state governments to set their own GST rate and keeping what they raise, rather than the complicated and inefficient redistribution system we currently have.

More to the point, tax reform and substantial tax cuts can only occur where there are spending cuts.  This is because the true cause of higher taxes is higher spending.  Every dollar of spending must be funded through higher taxes either now, or in the future.  Taxes can be deferred into the future through the accumulation of debt to pay for unfunded spending.  This is why there is currently more than half a trillion dollars in gross debt that will be paid back by future generations.

The reality is that insofar as spending grows, so too will taxes.  This is the key issue that the political class will not reckon with.  And perhaps with good reason.  Voters have shown utter reluctance to face the financial abyss the nation faces without reductions to spending.  And the Labor opposition has no interest whatsoever in working in a bipartisan fashion to help make the case for reform.

One needs to only recall the reaction to the modest $5.00 co-payment to see a general practitioner proposed by the Coalition in its first budget under Abbott to see how near impossible spending reform is.

Moreover, the draconian top marginal tax rate of 45 per cent, which is really 47 per cent including the Medicare levy, will remain.  And the value at which that kicks in under the government's plan of $200,000 remains incredibly low by international standards.  As Judith Sloan noted in an article for The Australian last month the proportion of taxpayers who face this top marginal tax rate is expected to rise from the current figure of about four per cent to six per cent.

Such is the state of politics in Australia that a government which raises taxes at a slower rate than under the status quo is lauded as implementing reform that will cut taxes.  And therein lies the reason why the Coalition will probably win the next election.  The terrible performance by Labor makes the government look better every day.  It will be a long time before true reform to spending and taxes is forthcoming.

The Ramsay Centre And How Our Academic Appeasers Censor Students' Right To Learn

The University of Sydney's jellyback Vice-Chancellor Michael Spence has given many excuses for why he may not accept the money from the Ramsay Centre.  He has explained that he "rejects the narrative" of the institution, which claims current universities are dominated by far left thinking and lack diversity of thought.  There is no doubt that he has been influenced by an open letter from Sydney university staff containing 140 signatures and that the final decision will fall to the Senate.

We watched as he nodded his head and did not express any disagreement with the extreme posturing and slander of a student from the socialist alternative in the Q&A audience on Monday night.  This same student has participated in multiple intimidating protests on campus targeting Christian and conservative groups and was recently filmed yelling into the face of black medical student that she was "racist, sexist and anti-gay", since she was part of the life choice group on campus.

But Spence became very defensive when a mild-mannered young man stated in his question the truth that all students are aware of "I have found a lot more lectures turn that way (the left) than towards right-wing beliefs".

However, what is most concerning is that at no point does it appear that Spence, or the University Senate, have consulted, or are planning on consulting with average students about how they feel about the prospect of learning more about western civilisation.

Most students within the arts and humanities will know that despite the best efforts of the most radical professors, more traditional and direct subjects are generally the classes that fill up fastest.  Roman history, the study of Ancient Greece and subjects that cover the First and Second World Wars are always popular with students.

Though they may find themselves disappointed as even some of these islands of traditional history have been tainted by the toxicity of cultural Marxism and post-modernist thought.

It is not surprising that these and other foundational humanities subjects are still sought out by students.  We live in a western nation and it is natural for those students who have grown up here to want to know how this civilisation came to be.  Even international students must find some interest in learning about the political and cultural development of the country they have come to.

Unfortunately, the natural inclinations of the silent majority of students, that pay the University of Sydney for their education, are of little interest to those who pushing the university to say no to the opportunity being offered by the Ramsay Centre.

Having a new course that focused on western civilisation and enlightenment values, a program similar to the great books courses from the liberal-arts colleges in the United States, would not simply provide another choice to incoming students.  It would be a threat to the institutional indoctrination that post-modernist academics and bureaucrats have been cultivating on campus since the mid-nineteen-sixties.  In the words of the academic staff in their letter to Spence accepting the Centre's offer would be "a violation of our crucial role in promoting a society of diversity, inclusiveness, and mutual respect".

This either-or game that the academic staff are playing is symptomatic of post-modernist thought, which only deals with the world in terms of power.  Men's issues cannot be spoken about because they directly threaten the narrative of women's issues.  Atrocities committed by certain minorities cannot be attributed to that group while all the past sins of western culture can be weaponised to silence students who suffer from "white privilege".  And the study of great civilisations of the past and enlightenment values can definitely not be taught within a university, as that would be a direct threat to "delicate" minorities and to the postmodernist idea that there is "no such thing as truth".

It's a zero-sum game in the minds of the radical left, if you have something that must be because others have less.  If you think differently you must be silenced so their ideas can dominate.  Intellectual diversity is the only diversity they not only do not care about but are legitimately frightened of.

It is mind-boggling that Spence can say that he does not agree with the narrative that universities are dominated by the dogmatic left when the mere mention of just a touch of diversity of thought has resulted in such outrage and hostility from the staff at his institution.  The question that must be asked is "If you truly believe that universities are not dominated by the left and aim to teach students critical thinking skills instead of brainwashing them, then why would your staff be so hostile to an institution willing to supply a different view of the world accompanied by the funds to provide it?"

But I do not expect an answer from Dr Spence.  His previous actions have shown that he has little time for the concerns of students that are not of the radical left persuasion.  Last year I wrote the Chancellor multiple emails requesting a meeting to discuss the new "unlearn" program.  I was informed that his diary was full for the entire semester and he would be unable to spare any time to speak with me regarding my concerns.

Students need to have more say in the way universities are run and the subjects that are provided.  Fee deregulation seems like the only feasible way of doing this.  As universities that continue to charge high fees while not providing a service that the students actually want, will either fail or have to adapt to a new system that thrives on market forces driven by student choice.

For now, it seems better that the university declines the money from the Ramsay Centre.  As those in power and the academic staff who complained have proven they are unworthy of the funds that are meant to extend and diversify the humanities department at the University of Sydney.  The Ramsay Centre's goal, although noble, does not look like it will be achievable within the walls of once great, but now crumbling higher education institutions that have become infected and overgrown with left-wing group think and dogmatic academics that care more about protecting their narrative then student choice.  But it is most unfortunate that it is not them but the students that will suffer.

Where Have All Our Entrepreneurs Gone?

Australia is has experienced a gigantic fall in entrepreneurship.  Between 2003-05 and 2012-14, small business start-ups — as a percentage of all small businesses — declined by 40 per cent.  This decline is substantially larger decline than in comparable countries, including the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany.

This is a key finding from my new book, which explores the importance of mitigating the effects of an ageing population on entrepreneurial activity.

Entrepreneurship is the backbone of a successful, growing, and innovative economy.  New firms challenge existing practices and ensure jobs and investment are allocated to their most worthwhile ventures.  This raises living standards by delivering new products, creating jobs, and boosting wages.

This is what Joseph A. Schumpeter called creative destruction:  the "process of industrial mutation ... that incessantly revolutionizes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old one, incessantly creating a new one".

Australia, along with other Western developed nations, has experienced a downturn in entrepreneurship that will only worsen over time as the population ages.  The percentage of Australians in the key entrepreneurial age group, those aged 25-to-49, has declined from 38 per cent to 35 per cent and will reach 30 per cent by 2065.

While government cannot do much to prevent an ageing population, it is becoming increasingly essential that policymakers take steps to reinvigorate entrepreneurial activity.  I have found that there would be 250,000 more businesses in Australia today if business growth had continued pace with pre-Global Financial Crisis levels.

A key barrier to entrepreneurship is a nation's level of taxation.  Australia now has the third highest company tax rate in the OECD, following substantial reductions years of reductions in the United Kingdom and the United States.  High taxes reduce available savings for entrepreneurial state-ups and reduces the potential rewards of starting a business.

Australia's businesses face some of the highest corporate taxes in the world.  The World Economic Forum ranks Australia at 102nd out of 138 countries for total tax burden, including corporate, labour and profit taxes.  The United States has reduced their corporate tax from 35 per cent to 21 per cent, Britain is already at 19 per cent, and, in our region, Singapore's rate is 17 per cent, and Hong Kong is 16.5 per cent.

Capital investment is extremely mobile.  Australia's relatively high corporate tax rate reduces potential returns, meaning fewer businesses and fewer jobs.  Business investment has already shrunk to 12 per cent of GDP and is projected by Macquarie Wealth Management to fall to 9 per cent.

Red tape is holding back Australia's entrepreneurial spirit.  I have calculated that red tape costs $176 billion a year in lost economic opportunity, an average of $19,300 for each Australian household.

According to the World Economic Forum, Australia is ranked 80 out of 137 countries for the burden of regulation.  The OECD ranks Australia at 20 out of 47 countries for barriers to entrepreneurship, which considers the regulatory burdens such as licences and protection of incumbents.  We have more barriers than similar liberal market economies such as New Zealand, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Red tape prevents entrepreneurs from experimenting with new ideas, technologies and starting new businesses.  Existing firms are often sympathetic to red tape, as they have adjusted to the cost and it prevents competitors from entering the market.

We should adopt the principle of "permissionless innovation", as described by George Mason University's Adam Thierer.  That is, removing the regulatory barriers for those who are willing to take risk and innovate, and only stepping in if a new product will bring serious harm or when it causes problems.

Australia's inflexible labour market regulation is also damaging entrepreneurship by making it difficult to hire additional staff.  The World Economic Forum ranks Australia at 110th out of 137 countries for hiring and firing practices, and 109th out of 137 countries for flexibility of wage determination.

If we are to maintain our prosperity, Australia must unshackle our entrepreneurs by cutting red tape, reforming industrial relations, and lowering taxes.

The ABC, ''Independent'' To A Fault

It is appalling that a sitting government should have to complain that the ABC is repeating Labor lies as facts.  The ABC itself should be ashamed to have received such a complaint.  Yet that is precisely why the Labor Party supported the establishment of the ABC — to provide a forum for pro-ALP news and opinion.  This points to questioning the precise meaning of what is meant by the ABC being "independent".

The Charter describes the ABC as an "independent national broadcasting service", and it is that independence which forms many arguments in favour of public broadcasting.  But this notion of independence needs deeper examination.  The ABC is a state-owned broadcaster, which is dependent on triennial funding arrangements drawn from the Commonwealth budget, which is set by the political discretion of the government of the day.

ABC supporters refer to the ABC's independence in two senses.  First, it has editorial independence from the government, insofar as it is a statutory agency that is self-managing and separated from the normal chains of political accountability.  Second, it is independent of the interests of advertisers and private sector media moguls, providing the "independent information" that the commercial media might not.

Public broadcasting has always been defined against the evils of private broadcasting, and the theme of an independent bulwark against the commercial media (the moguls and monopolists) has been integral right from the start.  In the early years it was claimed that a purely private media market would be simultaneously disorderly and monopolistic.  In the debate over the 1932 bill, the Labor member for Kalgoorlie, Albert Green, warned of the "chains of newspapers ... obtaining such a stranglehold over the eastern part of the Victoria, and disseminating its propaganda through the stations that it controls".  The private monopolisation of radio — "one of the most revolutionary additions to the pool of human resources" — was constantly invoked by Labor members throughout the early debates.  This concern, they felt, was more than just theoretical.  The 1931 election loss showed, they felt, that the private media was systematically biased against the Labor Party, and a public broadcaster would be able to right that wrong.

Control of the wireless was the high ground of the political contest.  In New South Wales a few years earlier the Lang government had sought to establish a state government radio that would resist what Labor saw as the Nationalist Party-dominated private media.  As Albert Green, the most forthright of the Labor members on this point in the 1932 debate, put it:

Some B class stations are controlled by newspaper combines, which use them to broadcast only one political opinion.  I had hoped that the air would be free to all, and that at election time every party would be given an opportunity to express its opinions over the air.  Unfortunately that has not been our experience.  Certain newspaper combines are endeavouring to obtain a monopoly of B class stations, and I sound the note of warning that sooner or later some government will have to tackle the very difficult, but necessary task of dealing with the problem of metropolitan B class stations.  Nothing short of a complete national scheme will do.

In this sense, independence was understood by the Labor Party as being pro-Labor — or, at least, not anti-Labor.  The 1942 inquiry into wireless reiterated this concern, arguing that public broadcasting was needed "to prevent the service from being used for improper purposes".

Similar concerns drove the introduction of television.  The overwrought claims about the social and psychological power of television only intensified the concerns about the new technology's political importance.  The public position of the Labor Party and the ACTU emphasised the cultural good that public broadcasting television could bring, rather than its role countering political bias.  But there is no doubt that politics was front of mind when the labour movement considered the significance of television.

A public disagreement between Arthur Calwell and H.V. Evatt as to whether Labor would nationalise the commercial television stations if they were returned to government pivoted on their different impressions of how sympathetic the ABC was to the Labor Party.  Calwell, who had been Minister for Information during the Second World War, had a hostile relationship to the commercial press.  He believed that Keith Murdoch, who controlled the Melbourne Herald and several other papers across the country, was "a fifth columnist", "megalomanic", and his network of papers "a law unto itself" and "Public Enemy No. 1 of the liberties of the Australian people".  Murdoch's pernicious influence could not be let onto television.  Evatt felt that if the hybrid system was maintained, at least the Labor Party would be able to buy a commercial station to air its views.  For its part, the conservative parties were just as aware of the political significance of television, arguing in response to the Chifley government's proposal to establish a monopoly broadcaster that Labor was "merely another milestone on the socialised road to serfdom".

The modern ABC's independence is often declared but in practice is hard to pin down.  Unlike the BBC, the ABC was not established under a royal charter, and the 1948 move away from licence fees to funding through budget appropriations brought it more into the political window.

Yet how independent could the ABC be?  Compared to private and non-government organisations, the fortune of any state authority is going to be closely tied to the government of the day.  Public broadcasters have their budgets set by the same governments which they purport to keep a check on.  Commercial broadcasters might be dependent on the goodwill of advertisers, but the fact that there are many potential advertisers is a protection against excessive advertiser influence.  A public broadcaster has only one funder, and it is a funder whose interests are driven by political rather than commercial incentives.

Nor are commercial broadcasters required to constantly justify their activities to professional politicians.  Public broadcasters are regularly brought in front of parliamentary committees to answer for editorial decisions, from the trivial to the significant.  The Senate estimates committee procedure requires statutory agencies to present themselves in front of a committee of Senators three times a year.  At her first Senate estimates hearing in May 2016, Michelle Guthrie was interrogated about the cancellation of livestock market reports on ABC regional stations, the ABC Fact Check program, how unionised the ABC's workforce was, whether the ABC was too Sydney-centric, how many people it sent to the Cannes film festival and how long they were out of the office, and how much the ABC spent on a custom typeface to use across its brands.  This sort of scrutiny is, of course, entirely appropriate for a state instrumentality.  But the notion that independence is the ABC's unique value as a media outlet is difficult to sustain.

It is not obvious that independence from a democratically elected government is desirable.  The ABC is a state-owned organisation, and like any state-owned organisation it derives its legitimacy from its relationship to the democratic expression of voter preferences.  Public broadcasters join a large number of other regulatory and bureaucratic agencies that have been deliberately separated from the normal lines of democratic accountability:  rather than being the "arm of the minister", in the classical Westminster bureaucracy formulation, they are protected from political interference and given independence.  In an open market, private media organisations are subordinate to consumers and advertisers.  In government, politicians and bureaucracies are subordinate to voters.  Independent statutory agencies are, by intention, subordinate to neither.  Even at their most benign, they are highly susceptible to capture by their employees and management.

Indeed, staff capture has been a longstanding concern of critics of public broadcasters.  As Michael Warby writes, "'Independence' from government interference ... comes to mean effective independence from whatever tenuous public controls over the ABC exist in practice — it amounts to independence from the direct legal owner".  One of the consequences of staff capture, of course, is political bias.  The historical context shows that this political slant is a deliberate feature of public broadcasting, not a bug.

Comfortable and Relaxed with Conservative Populism

The last time identity played such an outsized role in Australian politics, then opposition leader John Howard famously stated his ambition for a country in which people should feel "comfortable and relaxed" about the past, present and future.  Howard's phrase has been remembered because, for detractors and supporters, it captures something deep and resonant in the conservative idea of government.  It is an idea worth revisiting now, more than 20 years later, as our politics again breaks down over claims of institutional and historic unfairness, and a conservative response that is, depending on how you look at it, either wilful complacency and disregard or an entirely understandable desire to be left in peace.

The purpose of this essay is not to rehash the meaning of Trump and Brexit, to muse about the collapse of the conservative establishment, or to declaim against any specific issue on today's activist agenda.  Instead, I propose to examine the philosophical debate that underlies the political back-and-forth.  I will explore the struggle for recognition that animates identity politics.  In the concept of recognition, progressives have found a cause to rally behind:  differential institutional treatment of members of historically oppressed groups that enables those individuals to participate fully in society, thereby securing their dignity as truly equal citizens.  Its absence is held to cause real harm.  This is a strong claim that, if correct, implies a justification for the coercion, both state and cultural, of those who contribute, by act or omission, to the continued marginalisation of others.

The question, then, is whether anyone can in good conscience believe that the existing political and cultural institutions of our liberal democracy (which together I refer to as the social order) are preferable to a politics that prioritises the recognition of difference.  Or, alternatively, whether such conservatism, indulging in comfort and relaxation not available to all, is an ongoing threat to equal citizenship and individual dignity, and must therefore be excluded from our politics and our society.

THE POLITICS OF RECOGNITION

There are a number of related ideas in political philosophy that attempt to capture similar phenomena:  the politics of recognition, the politics of difference, identity politics and multiculturalism are all concerned with how the institutions of the liberal democratic social order are prejudiced against those who were excluded from their formation, including racial minorities, women, immigrants and LGBTIQ persons.  Members of disadvantaged groups, no matter what they do or achieve in life, are subject to unequal treatment by institutions that judge them by the standards and expectations of others.  This institutional disrespect causes real psychological harm;  it is even sometimes characterised as violence.  Removing this bias is the highest goal of social justice, described as the maximum freedom that each person can enjoy equally.

This claim about justice should not be confused with formal equality, meaning a relationship between individuals and institutions that is always the same, no matter the attributes of the individual.  The appearance of any institution as neutral in this way is illusory or deceptive.  Neutrality perpetuates the bias encoded in the institution.  Participation in society is vital to the formation of the self, and institutions, whether state or cultural, that do not recognise difference create homogeneity, preventing individuals from expressing their authentic selves.  It is only differential treatment that can enable free identity formation and equal social standing. ⁽¹⁾

Moreover, because institutions can only be legitimate if they accord with each person's authentic self-expression, they can only be legitimated by consent.  The politics of recognition, then, turns on a particular conception of the value and practice of democracy.

Recognition rests on an ontological claim that descends to us from Rousseau via Hegel, Marx, the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School and communitarianism. ⁽²⁾  The claim is that the self is constituted in society.  The individual self is not a pre-political fact but, always and everywhere, an artefact of the culture in which it emerges.  The autonomy of each self in society is dependent on all the others.

The freedom of this socially constructed self depends on there being a consonance between its preferences and those options that are present in society, brought about by the democratisation of the social order.  On this account, structural oppression harms people by impeding their authentic self-expression.  This is the self's highest end, and enabling this expression is the goal of society.  Radical democracy, then, is purposive, and rests on a normative claim about what is good for people.

Crucially, autonomy in this sense is not limited by the social order, but enabled by it.  The distinction between negative liberty and positive liberty is eliminated.  This distinction holds that we can conceive liberty negatively in the sense of freedom from the obstruction of our individual wills, or in the positive sense of being able to act in ways we choose. ⁽³⁾  On the radical view, this distinction is untenable, since negative liberty is pointless, even impossible, without the conditioning and information contained in a culture.  To make use of our ability to choose, we must have some means of exercising our will, some options among which to choose, and some reasons for choosing among them.  Where it exists, negative liberty is a product of the social order, and constrained by it. ⁽⁴⁾

It follows from this that there is no inherent distinction between private and public.  The negative conception of liberty implies a space in individuals' lives in which they are sovereign.  But if freedom is a cultural artefact then that sovereignty is constrained by the general will from which it emerges and with which it must align.  The private is a concession of the public.  Autonomy comes not from having some space in which to act unimpeded, but from participation in the creation of the structures within which the will is exercised.  The interplay between self and social order is dialogical, as is the relationship between the empirical reality of society and the norms by which it should live.  This is why citizenship is the highest good:  individuals necessarily live in society, and participation in the polity is the only way to secure justice, meaning autonomous individuals living in a society of their own choosing.

The objection might emerge that it is too strong a claim to link, via these steps, the politics of recognition with an essentially radical departure from liberalism as practised in Australia and other Western democracies.  It might be proposed in the alternative that recognition does not depend on this account and can be reconciled with the less ambitious democracy that we have.  Remember though that recognition is a response to the faults of that structure, and so naturally does not cohere with it.  Even if we retain a pre-political liberal account of the self, as soon as we allow that the state has a role to play in enabling the dignity of each person — that is, we shift from negative to positive liberty — it follows that we must abandon a theoretically neutral state and adopt a more comprehensive idea of liberalism.  After all, a liberal society requires liberals, so liberalism cannot be neutral towards itself. ⁽⁵⁾  For recognition to do the work that activists want it to do, which is to convince people that it secures a vital interest, dignity, and therefore requires radical change to our social order, then it must be supported by a claim about the good that it secures.

This means that social justice is a prescription for how we are to interact with the state and with one another in everyday life.  When activists say "The personal is political", they really mean it.  There is no distinction between law, custom and even rhetoric, and all parts of the social order, from the family to religion, to business and the state, must be remade in the image of justice, continually checked against the general will as manifest in activist democracy.  Since the harm of misrecognition is conceived as violence, and since every action is political, the law should be used wherever possible to impose the desired outcomes upon people, but also norms and customs must change too.  So, above all else, the politics of recognition requires omnipresent politics.  Every act of every person is part of some grand discourse overseen by the state, the point of which is the realisation of social justice.  History becomes a project of the bureaucracy. ⁽⁶⁾

There is something dispiriting in this.  Hegel's children have abandoned the dream of transcendence;  though words such as emancipation, liberation and justice redound down the centuries and into the politics of today, they are but husks.  There is no eschaton, much less one that is immanent.  We are all engaged in a never-ending remaking of the social order, with the only rules not subject to democratic revision being the rules of radical democracy.  A rolling revolution, but one always contained in the same closed system of justice, like soft drink being shaken in a bottle.

THE CONSERVATIVE RESPONSE

The democratic vision is of a society with purpose:  the realisation of social justice.  Political reform (or revolution) can be justified rationally by deduction from the normative assumption that social justice is desirable, and progress against its attainment can be measured.

For as long as this rationalist agenda has existed, an anti-rationalist alternative has — with less and less success, it must be said — argued for an organic understanding of the social order as emerging from trial and error over several centuries.  Rationalism is an intervention in this process, and substitutes the value of social justice for the preferences of individuals.  Just as central economic planning fails for lack of information — market prices convey information about what people value — central social planning likewise suffers a knowledge problem:  justice is revealed by the choices people make as they negotiate life with one another, and is therefore something known from observation, not from reason alone.  The empiricist tradition holds that the social order contains valuable information about how people can cooperate with one another and the choices individuals should make to have good lives.  Institutions that survive over a long period of time, such as the distinction between public and private and the corresponding right to exercise negative liberty, have been revealed to meet real human needs. ⁽⁷⁾

On this traditional conception of the origin of the autonomous self, meaningful autonomy depends on access to a stable and unchosen social order ⁽⁸⁾ every institution and every possible choice is an arbitrary product of the general will, then it is not possible for an individual to discern a difference between his own will and that of others.  The concept of tradition, which imposes authority upon the existing arrangements, makes society an end in itself, not simply the means by which individuals achieve mutual liberation.  This in turn enables the individual to separate him or herself from others and act autonomously.  And it is this distinctive autonomy that engenders the empathy upon which moral equality is founded.

Radical democracy, with its goal of a consensual social order designed to support individual authenticity, makes each person of functional value to the others.  It is only by mutual recognition that we each can live authentically.  Moreover, we are called upon to recognise one another as we say we are.  The politics of recognition, then, is not about empathic engagement with one another but merely about sympathy, the commiseration of our common struggle for authenticity.  This should not surprise, as the words "consent" and "sympathy" have similar derivation, the one from Latin, the other from Greek:  "feel with", the preposition implying a separateness between subject and object.  The divisiveness of identity politics, as conservatives see it, comes from the reification of identities through recognition of difference:  the act of recognition creates estrangement, not unity.

By contrast, empathy requires each of us to take the perspective of the other, and that requires us to abstract from our experiences, past our differences, to that which we share.  It is for this reason that the national identity is important — it represents a heuristic of what we have in common. ⁽⁹⁾  We can imagine ourselves in each other's places, and we can project that imagination into the past, to understand where our social order comes from (consider, for example, originalist jurisprudence), and into the future to address the needs of our children.  This is the key idea of conservatism, that politics is, or should be, about unifying our identities as individuals and as communities, across the full temporal spectrum. ⁽¹⁰⁾  In this way, tradition forms the background conditions against which we can live our own lives, coming together to help one another as we see fit.  Democracy and its expansion of the idea of "public" is damaging to social cooperation.  It is precisely the private nature of people's preferences, not presuming to choose for another, that enables a meaningful social order.

POPULISM AND RECOGNITION

The conservative populism of recent years is a particular manifestation of conservatism.  The populists' concern is with maintaining the background conditions of their lives, meaning their ability to rely on their culture and values being shared by enough people across society to make day-to-day interactions more efficient and pleasant — in short, to be comfortable and relaxed.  This is the content of their nationalism:  to the extent that as individuals they benefit from the partiality of the social order to the historical national identity, this is fair enough so long as that is an identity anyone can adopt and share.  Conservative populism defends the traditional social order, separating support for liberal institutions from any broader normative theory and its logical commitments.  This explains why, for example, populists have rallied to the cause of free speech (a liberal institution) but have been suspicious at best about free trade (liberal economics).

Progressives have confused this idea of nationalism and common culture with racism and other forms of oppression, sometimes labelling it just "right-wing identity politics".  This misses a fundamental difference.  Conservative populism is a claim about what we all share, or can share.  Identity politics is about what we do not and cannot share.

Seen properly, conservative populism is the opposite of the politics of recognition.  The normative claim underlying recognition is that it is necessary for equal participation in society and the good of individual dignity.  But empirically, it seems that this is not true.  Everyone who is not actively pursuing social justice, conservative or otherwise, has revealed other preferences, their own conceptions of the good.  If participation in the formation of just institutions is not a social good that people prefer, it is not essential to their dignity.

This refusal of social justice is visible in the backlash against political correctness.  In response to the deconstruction of old taboos and the creation of new ones, conservatives say, if we do not want to say the words, or "wear the ribbon", you cannot make us.  Defiant anti-PC reveals two important factors in conservative populism:  that there are limits to people's willingness to be implicated in enabling the positive liberty of others and a growing awareness that, in the age of easily coordinated activism, we always have minority rule in effect, a tyranny of the motivated. ⁽¹¹⁾

It does not follow, however, that all struggles for recognition can be rejected out of hand, just that differential treatment is not the proper remedy.  Consider, for example, the extraordinary rate of incarceration of Indigenous Australians.  One way to address this problem is to treat Indigenous Australians differently, through the use of specialist courts and requiring agencies to consider offenders' cultural backgrounds.  Alternatively, universal reforms can be implemented that nonetheless benefit Indigenous offenders to the same extent that existing policy settings disproportionately affect them.  Similarly, focusing on access to justice rather than differential justice can likewise improve results without compromising on universal principle.  The latter kind of reform reinforces our relationship to one another as expressed in the criminal law and its norms, and in turn does not disturb the background conditions of our shared social life. ⁽¹²⁾

The conflation of conservative populism with racism, sexism and other forms of structural oppression is therefore misleading.  It rests on the assertion that populists deny any problem of representation peremptorily, when really they may simply not like the proposed remedy, differential treatment.

Here the populists have the stronger argument.  Structural oppression is demonstrated through statistical disparities.  But the averages that these statistics produce may be meaningless.  Someone can share the superficial characteristics of the supposedly privileged class but none of their advantages in reality.  To attribute blame to those individuals for a statistical spread that is defined a priori as evil is, rightly, received by them as an insult.  Contrary to the demands of social justice, it is more likely that, absent evidence of specific malice, disparate impact is not morally important at the individual level.

The combination of a normative claim about the positive social good of radical democracy combined with the empirical claim that revolution is the only solution to social disadvantage makes the social justice agenda dangerous.  It relies on a notion of dignity that is wrong in principle and promotes coercion, justified by an association fallacy.  Add to this that progressive rationalism is a form of central planning, such that our society is increasingly governed by anonymous bureaucrats whose purported expertise makes their preferences irreproachable, and conservative resentment is not just understandable but utterly vindicated.

The lesson from all of this is that conservative populism is not a vehicle for the perpetuation of privilege and oppression, but rather an expression of a basic human need, which is a stable social order that secures meaningful individual autonomy.  This is what Howard was driving at all those years ago.  The progressive, rationalist social justice agenda conflicts with this need by requiring positive participation by everyone in the remaking of all state and cultural institutions.  This is not to say, however, that recognition, in the sense that individuals should be sensitive to one another, is worthless, only that it is not sufficient grounds for the radical agenda of which it is part.  Put another way, it is not recognition that is the problem;  the problem is, as always, rationalist coercion.  No-one can force anyone else to feel a particular way.  This is, both empirically and normatively, undeniable.

---

1. See Charles Taylor, "The politics of recognition", in Taylor et al., Multiculturalism and "The Politics of Recognition", edit. Amy Gutmann, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1994, pp. 25-73, especially §II;  and Iris Marion Young, "Polity and Group Difference:  A Critique of the Idea of Universal Citizenship", Ethics, vol. 99, no. 2 (January 1989), pp. 250-74.

2. There are meaningful distinctions to be drawn between the liberals, republicans, democrats and others who emphasise the importance of consent to the justification of the social order, but what is important for present purposes is the connection between recognition and a consensual social order.

3. Isaiah Berlin, "Two concepts of liberty", in Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty, rev. edn, Oxford University Press, London, 2002.

4. See Axel Honneth, "Negative Freedom and Cultural Belonging:  An Unhealthy Tension in the Political Philosophy of Isaiah Berlin", Social Research, vol. 66 no. 4 (Winter 1999), pp. 1063-77;  and Jürgen Habermas, "Constitutional Democracy:  A Paradoxical Union of Contradictory Principles?", Political Theory, vol. 29, no. 6 (December 2001), pp. 766-81.

5. See for example Brian Barry, "How not to Defend Liberal Institutions", British Journal of Political Science, vol. 20, no. 1 (January 1990), pp. 1-14. We might want to temper the effect that a self-enabling liberalism has on non-liberals, in which case we need to grant them differential rights:  see Will Kymlicka, "Liberal Individualism and Liberal Neutrality", Ethics, vol. 99 no 4 (July 1989), pp. 883-905.

6. In a recent discussion with Jordan Peterson, Camille Paglia bemoaned that following the radicalism of the 1960s, the activist left had become captured by those of a bureaucratic mindset, whose interest was in capturing and running public institutions such as universities, and not liberation. (accessed 20 November 2017).

7. For a good recent discussion of the empiricist tradition, see Ofir Haivry and Yoram Hazony, "What is conservatism?", American Affairs Journal, vol. 1, no. 2, 2017. Friedrich Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty claims empiricism in the name of liberalism, not conservatism, but his description of tradition (pp. 107-32) will be familiar to conservatives, and is referenced in Scruton:  F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty:  The Definitive Edition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2011;  Roger Scruton, The Meaning of Conservatism:  Third Edition, St Augustine's Press, South Bend, 2014, p. 32.

8. The radical democrat view still implies that at any given moment people will be living in a social order not entirely of their choosing, since the coordination between institutions and changing individual preferences cannot be instantaneous. The consolation presumably is the knowledge that one is engaged in the collective pursuit of a more perfect union. On the conservative view, you would do better just to get on with your own life. See Habermas (2001), where he discusses "constitutional discourse across the centuries", p. 768.

9. In economic terms, identity is an efficient way of facilitating exchange:  if I can trust in who you are, then it is easier for us to trade.

10. This is the meaning of Burke's famous formulation of society as a partnership between the living, the dead and the yet to be born. One philosopher whose project is to develop a similar idea is Patrick Deneen, Conserving America?  Essays on Present Discontents, St Augustine's Press, South Bend, 2016, chapters 6 and 7.

11. Nassim Nicholas Taleb argues that asymmetry is ever present in our society, and a motivated minority can impose its preferences on everyone else if the cost of that preference is lower to others than would be the cost of opposing the change. Since the cost of activism is highly dependent on one's subjective tolerance for political effort, those for whom community organising is enjoyable or even tolerable have a distinct advantage:  Nassim Nicholas Taleb, "The Most Intolerant Wins:  The Dictatorship of the Small Minority", medium.com, 14 August 2016 (accessed 20 November 2017).

12. I discussed this issue in greater length in my paper Indigenous Australians and the Criminal Justice System, August 2017.

Australian Unis Deliver Cookie Cutter Degrees

Everything you need to know about about the condition of humanities teaching in Australia's universities is summed up in what happened last week at the University of Sydney.

A hundred academics at the university signed a petition protesting against the possibility that the institution accept a philanthropic donation from the Ramsay Foundation to teach a course in Western civilisation.  What's noteworthy is that there was no alternative petition with even a handful of signatures on it urging the university to accept the donation to teach, what up until a few years ago, was taken for granted as the essence of our intellectual heritage.

That's because the university staffrooms of humanities departments in this country contain about as much diversity of philosophical and political opinion as does the cafeteria at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

University staff are often quick to call upon notions of "academic independence", but in practice "academic independence" in Australian public universities only means thinking the same thing as your colleagues.

"Academic independence" is interpreted as meaning universities can spend their more than annual $9 billion of taxpayer funding in whatever way they like.

What's happened in humanities faculties — and particularly in history departments — is that a generation of academic staff brought up in the theories of postmodernism and identity politics now teach subjects framed almost entirely from that perspective.  The Australian public universities that offer undergraduate history all teach basically the same content and topics, from a nearly identical ideological framework.

When humanities teaching becomes merely a political vehicle, the result is entirely predictable.  As Dirk Moses, professor of modern history at the University of Sydney recently acknowledged, enrolments in bachelor of arts courses are declining.

For all its faults, the American higher education system is intellectually curious, diverse, and vibrant in a way Australia's is not.  In the US, a student can choose to attend a university such as Evergreen State College in Washington state where for one day of the year some students are told not to attend because of their skin colour (white).  A student in Australia can do the same thing.  They could choose to attend the Victorian College of the Arts, a faculty of the University of Melbourne, where their admittance at a dance performance is segregated according to their skin colour (i.e. there are white and dark coloured skin queues) and where, during the performance, they will be lectured on how they should "process their positionality in a colonial state and in a world where whiteness is privileged".

But in the US, a student could also attend somewhere like the University of Chicago or Boston College and immerse themselves in the study of what is unashamedly called "The Great Books".  No such opportunity exists in the insular and parochial world that is humanities teaching in Australia's universities.  In this country, only Campion College, a private college in Sydney comes close to approximating the liberal arts tradition in the US.

Part of the problem is that Australian universities are too big.  Being big perpetuates bureaucracy and uniformity.  Our universities are designed to deliver mass higher education and the outcomes of our universities have all the hallmarks of something mass produced.  Australian universities have more people who administer than teach.  The University of Sydney has 60,000 students.  Harvard University has 22,000 students.  Princeton University has 8000 students.  The three top-ranked liberal arts colleges in the US each have only about 2000 students.

Australian universities have become too big to fail.

They should be broken up and the Labor government's amalgamations of the 1980s should be undone.  Australia shouldn't have 40 universities, we should have 140 universities.  And in tandem with this process, if higher education is to continue to receive public resources, funding should be provided direct to students, not to the institutions.  Universities must have incentive to be different and compete for enrolments in a way they currently do not.

It would be troubling if staff at Sydney University didn't have the ability to complain about what they disparage as "European supremacism".  But it's no less troubling that an equal number of Sydney University staff have not taken an opposing viewpoint and pointed out that students should learn about how "European supremacism" created the right of their lecturers to complain about "European supremacism" in the first place.

World Cup Winning Aid Scamming

In many circumstances, poor people in the developing world would actually be better off if their dictators gave their foreign aid money to rich English football clubs.

Seriously.

Earlier this month it emerged that the Rwandan government has entered into a 30 million pound sponsorship deal with major English football club Arsenal, the team President Paul Kagame just happens to support.  Unsurprisingly, this has attracted the ire of many given the British government currently transfers Rwanda £62 million in foreign aid annually and the heartbreaking conditions in the country where 63 per cent of people live in extreme poverty.

While this reaction is understandable, it would be better for many countries if their governments simply gave their foreign aid transfers away to eye-wateringly rich football clubs in England.  Firstly, because foreign aid so regularly serves to consolidate the power base of the authoritarian regimes that have made their countries poor in the first place.  And secondly, because it often harms the long-term economic health of recipient nations.

Authoritarian regimes use foreign aid to shore up their support in a number of ways:  by rewarding political allies through corrupt contracting, directing programs towards favoured ethnic or tribal groups, spending the money on the state security apparatus or simply through theft, bribery and patronage.  For example, in Ethiopia in 2010, Human Rights Watch reported how autocrat Meles Zenawi withheld famine relief from all except ruling party members to bolster his support.

Whilst foreign aid proponents will rightly point out that Britain's contribution to Rwanda is earmarked for poverty relief, it is tragically naïve to think that the money always ends up where it is meant to.  Indeed, development economist William Easterly estimated in 2008 that 76 per cent of United States foreign aid went to countries judged by private consulting group PRS to be most corrupt.  Government accountability mechanisms in authoritarian regimes aren't what they are in liberal democracies.

When money is lost to corruption it's not a waste — it's actually much worse.  It can consolidate the power of the very governments that are at best keeping their nations poor, and at worst brutally repressing their people.

While it's true that corruption would happen in authoritarian regimes anyway, foreign aid often exacerbates the situation by strengthening the government's hand.  The extra funding means they have to make even less of a concession to those that might curb their power, like opposition political parties, civil society and trade unions.

Apart from raising the stakes in the corruption game, foreign aid very often harms the long-term economic wellbeing of recipient nations through ill-conceived economic plans.  For example, foreign aid has been used by the Pakistani government to sustain price controls in agriculture, entrenching inefficiency and slowing the emergence of other industries.  Furthermore, there is increasing evidence that foreign aid crowds out entrepreneurship in developing countries.

This is not to say that all foreign aid is bad.  There have been some genuine successes over the years and aid is certainly beneficial in emergency situations such as natural disasters and war.  Furthermore, there are opportunities to reform foreign aid to make it serve poor people better.  But this will require a radical re-think of how foreign aid operates.

And this is not a criticism of charity in itself.  A great number of NGOs do hugely beneficial work.  Although it should be noted that local grassroots organisations that focus on one or two things are generally more effective than big organisations that try and fix everything all at once.

But the real path out of poverty is free markets, strong and clear property rights, a fair and transparent legal system, democracy and civil society.  Foreign aid is a deeply flawed system that often puts this further out of reach by reinforcing the powerbase of fundamentally bad governments.  Paul Kagame buying himself an executive suite at the Emirates is the least of its problems.

ABC Is About Partisanship Not Diversity

The difference between the ABC and Fairfax and News Ltd is that the ABC is a $1 billion government program that provides media services to Australians.  Fairfax and News Ltd are private entities that do so at their own expense and hope to earn a profit.  Those small details were missing from Laura Tingle's defence of the ABC published in Weekend AFR.

As such we can expect somewhat different behaviour from the national broadcaster than from the private sector.  Indeed, holding the public sector to a different standard is commonplace in our society.  The ABC, very often, wants to have it both ways.  For example, paying its employees market rates of pay when they don't have to compete in marketplace for income.

But some criticism of the ABC is unfair.  Of course the ABC would send journalists to cover the recent royal wedding.  As every other serious media organisation did.  That, however, should not detract from the mounting criticism that is being levelled at the ABC.

For all its protestations of "independence" the ABC as a large and generously funded government program can and should be scrutinised by government, the Opposition, and ultimately the taxpayers who pay for it.  Having embedded itself into the Australian psyche and culture the ABC has managed to avoid serious scrutiny for a long time.  The ABC — like all government programs — should be an election issue at every election.

OVERLAPPING RATIONALES

To justify its existence the ABC and its supporters posit a range of mostly overlapping rationales.  We hear a lot about independence, quality and diversity.  Less about being a market-failure broadcaster.  Rural subsidy also appears to play a role in justifying the ABC's existence — although it seems to be very Sydney-centric for a rural audience.  It was the diversity argument that Laura Tingle emphasised at the weekend.

But it isn't quite clear what is meant by the term "diversity".  The idea that media markets might lack diversity has its origins in a famous spatial economic model by the mathematical economist Harold Hotelling.  In his model, firms, in a market with a small number of firms and not competing on price, would offer near identical products.  Hotelling believed this explained the "excessive sameness" in capitalist markets.  That is an interesting model but it does not explain the creation of public broadcasters in Australia and the UK.

To the contrary, public broadcasting in the UK was introduced explicitly to reduce diversity — the perceived cacophony and anarchy of radio broadcasting seen in the United States.  The ABC was designed to follow the BBC model (albeit with a small commercial sector alongside).  To argue that the ABC provides diversity where the private sector does not is entirely incorrect.  What the ABC does is provide those very same services without having to attract an audience.

A generous interpretation of that feature is that there are some media services that should be provided that the private sector won't provide.  But it is difficult to imagine what those services might be.  In any event, the ABC explicitly denies that it is a market-failure provider.

REPORTING POLITICAL FALSEHOODS

What the ABC does provide in excess, however, is partisanship.  Any media organisation should be ashamed to be told that it is reporting political falsehoods as facts.  Yet Mitch Fifield — the Minister for Communication and (very) nominally responsible for the ABC, did just that.  No doubt he'll be told something about consistency with "editorial standards".

Those would be the same editorial standards that saw Emma Alberici publish Labor talking points on company tax cuts as if they were uncontroversial facts.  The same editorial standards that saw two News Ltd journalists compared to a mass murderer just last week.  Yet we are supposed to be fed up with News Ltd antics.

Let's be blunt here:  the ABC burns through $1 billion of taxpayers' money every year.  Not shareholder money, not a mogul's money.  Taxpayer money.  The ABC is a not a blog run on a shoestring, or out of someone's basement.  To argue that being left-partisan is simply to compensate for right-partisanship in the commercial sector is to disfranchise all those coalition voters who pay for the ABC.  Australians do not expect their government agencies — even nominally independent agencies — to exclude other Australians without excellent reason.

What Version of Western Civilization are Universities Offering Students?

The study of Western civilization in Australia is in crisis.  This has come to light in the last few weeks following the Australian National University's decision to pull out from the partnership with the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation.

University of Sydney historian Dirk Moses raises an interesting point when he declares that the problem is declining enrolments in the Bachelor of Arts in Australian universities, and that the reason Western civilization is being undermined in this country is because not enough students are choosing to study it.

Professor Moses is absolutely right in this respect.  Numbers of students enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts are dwindling as young people are increasingly opting to do commerce or accounting degrees rather than those related to the humanities.

But Western civilization is not being undermined due to a lack of students, but rather because of the particular version of Western civilization that they are being offered in the humanities by such academics as Professor Moses.

Since the 1960s, there has been a gradual homogenisation of academic life, where humanities subjects have become increasingly monochrome, repetitive and boring.  This has come about because academics in this field have, with few exceptions, adopted a cultural theory which has now dominates research and teaching.

The cultural theory in question is Karl Marx's analysis of class.  Academic positions have been filled by individuals who have based their entire careers on propagating the theory which sees society as a zero-sum contest for power between the privileged and the oppressed.  As a result, the subjects they teach, and the extremely limited range of fields in which they specialise, are almost entirely confined to themes which fit Marx's model.

As such, every subject is approached through the lens of identity politics, where class, race and gender.  These left-wing leitmotifs have replaced the essential core subjects which explain the political, intellectual, social and material basis of the history of Western civilization.  The concepts that should be transmitted to university students, such as respect for the individual, equality of men and women under the law, the abolition of slavery, freedom of speech and religious toleration which are simply not part of the narrative and are not being taught.

In his 7:30 interview with ANU's Vice Chancellor Brian Schmidt, Stan Grant rightly pointed out both the complete lack of diversity insofar as humanities subjects at ANU are concerned, as well as the fact that Western civilization at the university is being taught from a hostile and adversarial point of view.  There might well be 150 courses and 18 years-worth of content about the West, as the Professor Schmidt mentioned in the interview, but these subjects will invariably be approached through the same prism of identity politics.

Like the majority of their counterparts around Australia, undergraduates enrolled in the Bachelor of Arts at ANU are being taught to hold Western civilization responsible for all evils in the world, past, present and future.

Those who are majoring in History are getting a particularly skewed, simplistic version of the world based on Marx's judgment that, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles."  You only need to look at ANU's own description of the type of history course it is offering to undergraduates in 2018.  The course, it boasts, is replete with subjects which "trace themes such as empire, terrorism, revolution, war, gender, race, technology and environment".  The titles are self-explanatory.  Students can take "Sexuality in Australian History" or "Human Variations and Racism in Western Culture, c. 1450-1950".  Undergraduates can also spend much of the year studying "Real Men:  Masculinities in Western History".  The stunning complexity of the past is reduced to an analysis of class, race and gender.

It is a similar story at the University of Sydney where Dirk Moses lectures in modern European history, German history, the Holocaust and comparative genocide.  A survey of his colleagues' research interests reveals that 20 of the 32 staff have variously identified gender and sexuality, racial thought, women's history and power as their current historical fixations.

It is no wonder that the subject offered to undergraduates at the University of Sydney reflect their preoccupation with identity politics.  For example, the themes covered in "Imperialism, 1815-2000" are the "ideologies of empire and culture, gender, race, the environment, and imperialism and nationalism".  In a subject entitled "What Do We Want?  Protest in Australia", students will:

"examine struggles over labour rights and working conditions in the 1900s, women's suffrage, Aboriginal land rights, race relations and the White Australia Policy, homelessness during the Great Depression, freedom of speech during the Cold War, the Vietnam Moratorium and sexual liberation in the 1970s, the environmental movement, refugees and asylum seekers, and LGBT rights today."

Meanwhile, in "Civility and Squalor:  18 C. British Isles", students will not study the Age of Enlightenment but rather how "conspicuous consumption jostled with abject poverty, humanitarian campaigns co-existed with capital punishment, and major treatises on political liberty were published alongside drinking manuals."

The question, then, is why would you want to enrol in a Bachelor of Arts if class if all you were going to hear was class, gender and race?  This problem was raised in an interview with Mark Bauerlein, Professor of English at Emory University, who remarked:

"the number of kids taking humanities courses and majoring in the humanities is going down.  And one reason is identity politics.  Because identity politics is a downer.  "Wait, wait.  You're going to sit and talk about Emerson and how racist he is?  I don't want to take this class!  I don't want to hear so much negativity".  And identity politics is a negative.  It's not a positive formation."

Students in Australia are not being given a "positive formation".  Instead, they are being taught a narrow, one-dimensional view of the world seen through the prism of class, gender and race, over a curious and inquiring three-dimensional view of the world which opens the mind.  They are being led down the path of un-enlightenment and un-education.  They are not being offered new approaches or new ways of looking at the world.  There is no diversity in what is being offered to them.  It is unadventurous and is failing to inspire future generations of Australians.

It is monotony and the sameness which is undermining Western civilization in Australian universities, not the dearth of students.

Rather than offering undergraduates a narrow range of subjects which have become a pastiche of identity politics and which appear time and again, across all disciplines of the humanities, it is time to offer them a different perspective.  We need to give young people the credit for wanting to know more than just a Marxian cultural theory of identity politics.  Tony Abbott is right.  What is wrong with offering them something that is for Western civilization rather than against it?

At the moment, the only place that young Australians can go to be truly challenged with different ideas is Campion College.  If the programs on offer in Australia were more dynamic, diverse, interesting and challenging, students would return in droves to the humanities departments of the other 34 universities in this country which offer a Bachelor of Arts.