Hello Triggs-Lite, Goodbye Free Speech

It's clear now that the Coalition government is not only uninterested in the idea of restructuring the bureaucracy, but it also is not even interested in making decent appointments.

The Commonwealth government has an almost untrammelled ability to appoint anyone it likes to powerful bureaucratic positions such as the AHRC presidency.  The choice was for the government was to pick someone that would defend fundamental human freedoms like freedom of speech, or to pick someone who represents the status quo who would oversee the continued erosion of our freedoms.

With the appointment of Rosalind Croucher to the presidency of the Australian Human Rights Commission, the government has chosen the latter.

Croucher, who is the outgoing head of the Australian Law Reform Commission, is Triggs-lite.  One need only read this 3 March 2016 article in The Australian authored by Croucher herself to see why.  In the article — littered with references to international law — Croucher identifies the constitutional vulnerability of section 18C's prohibition of speech or acts that "offend" because of a person's race.  Accompanying this observation is the note that not only are racial vilification laws are needed, and that "there might be a need for new criminal laws to target the most serious types of racial vilification."  Croucher concludes the article by contemplating extending 18C to other areas by noting how the ALRC's work can "complement work that considers other ways to protect rights — such as by creating new causes of action or new offences, or by enacting a bill of rights."

Is this really significantly different to Triggs?  Triggs even said once of the call to repeal section 18C that "Of course it is possible to tweak it, to amend it, to take language out and to put new language in that strengthens it — all of that we of course fully support as a matter of law."  Even the shadow attorney-general sees Croucher as a continuation of Triggs:

This episode can be contrasted with how conservative governments approach in the United States.  There, appointing solid conservatives to key positions is seen as a fundamental duty of the Republicans when they get into power.  President Trump's promise to appoint a legal conservative was a key election promise.

This is sadly not the case in Australia.  This is why an originalist judge in Neil Gorsuch is about to officially join the US Supreme Court, but the Coalition, ever fearing the response from the ABC and the Canberra press gallery, makes Labor's appointments for them.

What Will They Finkel Next?

The greatest contribution the Finkel Review makes to Australian public policy may, in fact, be a new verb.

From June 2017, to "finkel" will be a term to describe how a government sets up an independent review that quickly gets hijacked by vested interests, rewrites its own terms of reference and delivers a report with skewed modelling and a patchwork of contradictory recommendations burning its political masters.

It has all been too clever by half.

The Finkel Review was set up in the wake of the September 2016 blackout in South Australia which many at the time thought would be the beginning of the end of renewables' stranglehold on Australian policy makers — state and federal, Labor and Liberal.

In the twenty-first century, an established state in a modern, industrialised economy went black.  Finally, the chickens would come home to roost and a road map put together charting a way back to affordable and reliable electricity in a country that should be spoilt for choice.

Yet the preliminary report published barely two months later gave some clues that the empire was quickly striking back.

It was arranged in accordance with seven North Korean-inspired themes including "Consumers are Driving Change", "The Transition to a Low-Emissions Economy is Underway", and "Technology is Transforming the Electricity Sector".

Its limited case study of the South Australian blackout all but ignored that state's post-renewables reliance on brown coal electricity generated over 600 kilometres away in eastern Victoria.

It also included a reference to a mind-boggling 21 separate reviews currently underway or recently completed into the Australian energy market, a fact that says much about the handballing epidemic currently prevalent in our political culture.

So it shouldn't have been a surprise when the final report, released on 9 June, offered more of the same.  The difference was this time it had clearly over-stretched.

It was revealed as a report that purported to be concerned with electricity affordability and security but floated a generator emissions limit at a level (600kg per megawatt hour) that would conveniently exclude almost all coal.

This is despite the fact that Australia's wholesale electricity price, largely provided by baseload coal supplemented by gas happily bounced along between $30 to $40 per megawatt hour between 2000 and 2006 before starting its rapid rise to a new benchmark of over $100 in 2017 as subsidized solar and wind power started pushing gas and coal out of the market.

It was revealed as a report that purported to be concerned with emissions reduction but studiously avoided all but a passing reference to the one source that could provide reliable baseload power with zero emissions, namely nuclear power, despite Dr Finkel's previous support.

Others highlighted that the so-called $90 per household saving of the Clean Energy Target scheme was actually achieved by comparing it with the current, unsustainable, price-inflated mess of national and state renewable energy targets, agencies and funding mechanisms, rather than a genuine Business As Usual (i.e. no government interference) benchmark.

The Review's ham-fisted attempt to construct an edifice of rules, regulation, new reports and more powers for regulators to justify its acceptance of the inevitability of renewables came unstuck when it was revealed that the so-called $90 annual saving didn't actually include the new target's cost to retailers or the cost of back-up generators to balance the system and that the modelling firm had previously under-estimates renewables' impact on wholesale prices.

Most significantly perhaps, its call on federal and state governments to agree on an "emissions reduction trajectory" and support for a zero emissions target in the second half of the century revealed its true priorities.

The problem for the Finkel Review and for the many renewable energy advocates is that the rest of us have to live in the real world.

And it is in this real world that last week, three major electricity retailers announced double-digit price increases to take effect from 1 July, with at least one of the companies openly sheeting the blame home to the increase in wholesale electricity prices.

BP last week released its respected annual Statistical Review of World Energy, which found that non-hydro renewables provided only 3.2 per cent of the world's energy in 2016, or a little over 11 days' worth.

And renewables advocacy group Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported that the global push for renewables would cost $7.4 trillion between 2016 and 2040, though an additional $5.3 trillion would be needed to hold the planet to a two-degree warming trajectory.

Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg got it right in 2015 when he said that "When the wind is not blowing, wind-generated electricity is the most expensive electricity of all because it cannot be bought at any price," a point equally applicable to other weather-dependent renewables like solar and hydro.

Time is fast running out for Australia to renew its ageing energy infrastructure before major pieces of its industrial base move offshore and even more households succumb to skyrocketing power bills.

The Turnbull Government should politely thank the Finkel Review members for their work and politely put their report into the cupboard alongside the cardigans, frisbees and cassette tape recorders whose existence is acknowledged but whose absence from active use is unlamented.

Hardly On The Hunt For Facts

The ABC and the Australian Human Rights Commission have teamed up with far-left student activists for a blatant propaganda campaign about campus sexual assault and harassment.

Tomorrow the ABC is broadcasting a "documentary" called The Hunting Ground which, the ABC website says, "takes audiences to the heart of a shocking epidemic of violence and institutional cover-ups across college campuses in America".

In reality, The Hunting Ground is an activist piece replete with factual inaccuracies and exaggerated claims.

The film highlights two long since debunked cases.

The first is about Harvard Law School student Brandon Winston, who in the film is alleged to have drugged the drinks of two women, and taken them back to his apartment where he sexually assaulted them.

As Slate magazine's Emily Yoffe discovered in a groundbreaking investigation back in 2015, they were not drugged by Winston.  The cocaine was supplied by one of the women.  A DNA test found that a bloody condom, claimed to be further evidence of rape, had no connection to Winston.  He was ultimately cleared of all felony charges and reinstated by Harvard, after almost four years of suspension.  Nineteen Harvard Law School professors have slammed the "unfair and misleading portrayal" of Winston in The Hunting Ground, which they describe as "propaganda".

The second is about Florida State University star quarterback Jameis Winston (no relation to Brandon).  It is alleged that he drugged a woman, forced her back to his apartment and raped her on a bathroom floor.

However, two toxicology reports established that there were no date-rape drugs in the woman's system that evening.  The woman's claims changed over time, and did not match the physical evidence or other witnesses.  The case did not go to court.  Winston was cleared of sexual assault claims at a university hearing headed by a retired Florida Supreme Court justice.

Nevertheless, two young African-American men, with no previous criminal history, had their reputations dragged through the mud for years.

The ABC should be ashamed of itself for spreading these false claims.

The Hunting Ground also uses refuted statistics about rape and sexual assault on US campuses.  The documentary cites the extraordinary claim that 20 per cent of university women are sexually assaulted.  The US Bureau of Justice found that the number is closer to 2.5 to 3 per cent — a disgrace, but substantially less than asserted.  In fact, the rate for students is lower than for those who do not attend college.

The creators of the film have themselves admitted that its purpose is propaganda, not truth.  When soliciting interviews for the film, producer Amy Herdy stated that the film is about "advocacy for victims" and that they see no "need to get the perpetrator's side".

If the screening proceeds tomorrow night the ABC should at the very least accompany it with a reasoned analysis of the subsequent history of the cases at the heart of the film.

The Australian Human Rights Commission, not to be outdone by the ABC, is in on this mess as well.  Last year it launched a national survey on sexual assault at universities with help from The Hunting Ground Project Australia — which organised screenings of the debunked film — and the National Union of Students.

The results are yet to be published, however the survey is profoundly loaded.  Before asking about experiences, the commission provides a lengthy 14-point definition of sexual harassment which includes "staring", "jokes" and "gifts".  This goes far beyond community expectations and the legal definition — which includes a reasonable person test.  It demonises all sorts of courteous interaction between men and women.

Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs has called the collaboration "unique".  It is uniquely improper.  The commission is teaming up with a bunch of far-left propagandists, and legitimising, developing and spreading their dishonest claims.  The first act of the new president of the Human Rights Commission should be to shut down this farcical inquiry.

Triggs has said the survey builds on the "the important work of the National Union of Students in their 'Talk About It' survey".  The NUS claims there is "war on women", and cites the self-selecting survey that would make their American counterparts gush.  They claim 72 per cent of female Australian university students are victims of sexual assault or harassment.  This number is not believable.  The Australian Bureau of Statistics victimisation survey, albeit not including harassment, has found 0.4 per cent of adult Australians have experienced a sexual assault in the past year.

Every single case of sexual assault and harassment, on and off campus, should be handled with the full force of the law.  However, it is important that our response to this serious issue is based on analysis of the facts — not propaganda and fiction.

Taxpayer funds through our public broadcaster and Human Rights Commission should not be spent promoting a debunked documentary and a campaign premised on falsehoods.

Taxpayers Notes: Wasting Millions On Humanities Grants

This month, a number of university departments across Australia will be filled with the sound of popping corks and clinking glasses, as 91 jubilant Future Fellows and their colleagues celebrate the announcement by the Hon. Simon Birmingham that they are each to receive a slice of the Australian Research Council's considerable pie.

In this latest round of funding from the ARC, a total of $77 million of taxpayers' money is being distributed to a variety of academics from several disciplines whose research has been deemed to be both of "national priority" and "critical importance".  This of course implies that their output will benefit society at large and will make a positive and indelible impact on Australia, improving citizens' lives and ensuring its continued success as a prosperous, peaceful and stable nation.

There is no doubt that the majority of projects fall into this category.  The detection and treatment of abnormal foetal heart growth, the improvement of productivity in the mining and energy sectors, or the improvement of productivity and efficiency of Australian hospitals are undeniably worthy of financial support.

However, there are a number of projects attached to Humanities departments which have not only received very generous support from this recent round of founding, but also from other ARC schemes such as the Discovery Early Career Research Award which was awarded at the end of last year.

Their failure as projects is not because they are humanities subjects, but because they fail as humanities subjects.  They are narrow in scope, often incomprehensible and reflect the current penchant for cultural studies, critical theory and radical feminism.  These are the sorts of projects which give the Arts and Humanities a very bad name.

Take for example, the $952,843 allocated to the University of Sydney to effectively study the history of the department store in the early twentieth century.  Over the next four years, researchers will investigate the shopping habits of Sydneysiders as they peruse the cornucopia on sale in David Jones.  According to the proposal, the exercise will deepen understanding of "how the department store enhances the public's engagement with modernism".

In the meantime, researchers working on a similar theme at the University of New South Wales have been given $160,000 to document the "history of women as consumers" using "Filipino elite and migrant women between 1902-2010" as case studies.  I'd hazard a guess they excelled in the shoe department.  Apparently this could "enhance Australia's reputation in the field of women in Asia".

A further $253,000 has been allocated to the University of Sydney for "Document loss in pre-modern Europe". This particular project appears to be based on primary sources which no longer physically exist because they were either deliberately or accidently destroyed during the Middle Ages.  Rather than being an impediment to the research project however, this absence will apparently "uncover how obliteration led to both open repression and blank-slate reinvention, a powerful form of cultural creativity".  I'm not one hundred percent sure what this means, but I suspect that it is certainly easier to make claims if there is no documentation upon which to refute those claims.

Speaking of things which don't exist, the University of New South Wales has received $116,000 for a project entitled "Modern women and poetry of Complaint, 1540-1660". This venture "expects to uncover how the imagined voices of the disempowered shaped the literary and political cultures of early modern England".  Never mind that this period of English history witnessed momentous events such as the Reformation, an act of regicide and a bloody Civil War.  Instead, the ARC saw fit to fund the study of "imagined voices" of "disempowered" women during the English Renaissance.

In contrast, the University of Sydney has been given a total of $148,298 to examine a voice which is about as far away from imagined as one can possibly get;  that of Germaine Greer.  According to the project description, the venture will examine how the Australian "second wave" feminist has helped to explain how "feminist ideas circulate in the public domain".

Even if one were to possess an imagination of exceptional elasticity, could these projects, totalling $1.63 million of taxpayers' money, be considered even vaguely critical to the nation?  Unfortunately, this is not a new phenomenon.

There have been various attempts by the government to intervene over the years.  Back in 2004, the then Liberal education minister, Brendan Nelson, vetoed several projects, and appointed outsiders to vet grant applications.  In 2013, the Coalition government announced that it would audit and redirect funds which had been allocated under the Labor government from the ARC in an attempt to curb "waste".  The ARC needs to become more rigorous in its evaluation of projects and introduce an element of accountability at the end of each project.

Not only are these humanities projects a colossal waste of taxpayers' money, but they also reflect the fact that Australia's universities are no longer teaching the history of British institutions and Western Civilisation that are essential to understanding our present and to shaping our future.  Unfortunately, this is exactly the type of thing that we have come to expect from the current intellectual environment of Australian universities.

Perhaps a solution to this problem could come in the form of self-funded research such as exists in Britain and Canada.

If academics were forced to make a salary sacrifice or take a loan to pay for their research, then this would certainly focus their minds on what is critical to the nation and what is not.

High Tax: The Pillar Of What Civilisation?

"Progressive" think tank Per Capita recently released the results of their annual tax survey.  It turns out that 51.5 per cent of Australians think they pay about the right amount of tax.  39.6 per cent reckon they pay too much and a mere 1.9 per cent think they pay too little tax.  It turns out that both young and old people think they pay about the right amount of tax.  So much for the age-wars — it seems that young and old can agree on something.  People of lower levels of income also tended to think they paid the right amount of tax.

Now this survey has been widely reported — especially in the Fairfax press.  We've been reminded of Oliver Wendell Holmes' Jr. statement that he liked paying tax as "the price we pay for a civilized society".  He is quite correct — tax is the price we pay for a civilised society.  Yet nobody ever stops to ask what sort of civilised society Holmes had in mind.  How much tax did he pay?  In 1904, when he made that statement, the United States did not have an income tax.  The income tax was introduced in 1913 after a constitutional amendment.

There are two issues that this sort of argument overlooks.  Who actually pays the tax and what sort of civilisation are we buying?

It is not surprising that over half of Australians think they are paying the right amount of tax.  The fact is, that according to Australian Tax Office data, less than half of all Australians actually pay income tax.  In 2014-15 there were some 9.95 million taxpayers.  With only some 43 per cent of the population actually paying tax it is surprising that as many as 51.5 per cent think they are the right amount of tax.

Then there is the distribution of tax.  Australia has a highly progressive graduated income tax.  The top one per cent of income earners earn 9.45 per cent of all taxable income and pay 16.8 per cent of all net income tax.  By contrast, the bottom 25 per cent of all income earners earn 9.95 per cent of taxable income but only pay 2.83 per cent of net income tax.  Talk about unfair — the top one per cent of income earners make up less than half of one per cent of the total population and pay the lion's share of the tax that finances the commonwealth government.  The top five per cent of income earners (a mere 2.16 per cent of the population) pay 33.1 per cent of net income tax.

So the idea that 39.6 per cent think they pay too much tax is well in excess of the people who pay the lion's share of net income tax.

We also hear much about the fact that tax cuts in the naughties tended to favour high-income earners.  That is true — that is obvious.  Only people who pay tax can benefit, in the first instance, from a tax cut.  People who don't pay tax will get little obvious and immediate benefit.  It's not rocket science.

Those people who consume government services but pay little in tax are living off charity.  The single largest budget item in the federal budget is welfare — government sponsored charity.  Now there may be good reason why some people need welfare.  Yet is a large and growing welfare dependent population the kind of civilisation Oliver Wendell Holmes had in mind?

Values Matter In Politics

One statistic is essential to understanding the shock British election result:  the turnout by people aged 18 to 24.  Since 1992 only around four-in-10 young people have shown up to vote.  In 2017, that number surged to six-in-10.  This turnout was crucial to Labour's high vote and why many polls, which try to predict turnout from past experience, were off.

It's easy to point to Jeremy Corbyn's magic money tree to explain why young people voted — particularly the costly plan to scrap university fees.  However, to find the answer we must dig a little deeper.

Young people were genuinely attracted to the fact that Corbyn stood for something.  Not just against something .  They liked that he had values.  He played down his dark past, which includes describing terrorists as his "friends", and proposed an unashamedly socialist policy platform — substantially increasing the size of the state through more debt, spending, and nationalisation.

In response, one million young people registered to vote for the first time.  And, according to pollster Lord Ashcroft, Labour won an extraordinary 67 per cent of those aged 18 to 24, compared to 23 per cent of the vote for those aged 65 and over.

How did Corbyn pull the youth vote and not only ruin May's landslide but her majority altogether?

Firstly, the right have long since lost the battle of ideas in education.  Corbyn provided the same socialist message that young people already hear at schools and universities.  The left-wing perspective is the only acceptable viewpoint in social cirucmstances — and if you don't hold it you either silenced or are ostracised.

Secondly, May did not stand up for an alternative set of values or present a positive vision.  She refused to make a case for opportunity, prosperity and markets that have driven Britain's economy since the 1980s, the values that have catapulted over a billion people out of poverty in the last twenty five years, and contributed to the lowest level of global inequality since the industrial revolution.

While older Brits remember the economic basket case and mass inflation before Margaret Thatcher's reforms, today's young do not have firsthand experience of the failures of socialism.  However,  May's rhetoric, and many of her policies, accepted the socialist premise.

The Conservatives electoral lead evaporated following the announcement of their now infamous manifesto. The manifesto declared that "we believe in the good that government can do" and went on to list a wide array of interventionist policies.  May proposed an energy price cap, a policy labelled by Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron as "Marxist" just two years ago.  The document also called for worker representation on boards, an "industrial strategy" and a delay in the return to surplus to at least 2025.  It read like a typical Labour document.

May's ineptitude was highlighted by the embarrassing 'U-turn' on social care policy — making a mockery of her "strong and stable" slogan.  Her campaign appearances were wooden:  the Maybot contrasted strongly with Corbyn's passion.  With little vision, and avoiding a serious policy debate, all that remained was attacks on Corbyn that came to wear off.

The abandonment of conservative principles proved electorally toxic.  Lynton Crosby, the legendary campaign strategist who won Cameron a majority in 2015 but advised rather than led this time, expressed his disquiet with the policy agenda.  In response to the manifesto he's reported to have said:  "A Conservative Party ought to have some conservative policies".

May was successful before the campaign when she focused on British values and her plans for a global Brexit.  During the campaign May failed to make a conservative or liberal case, and is now facing a terminal leadership crisis and minority government propped up by Northern Irish unionists.  What should have been an easy campaign to defeat a madman has turned into an unmitigated disaster, and her leadership is now terminal.

The parallels between May and Malcom Turnbull are vast.  To appeal to the so-called pragmatic centre, Turnbull has adopted policies of the left.  He's asked the ACCC to investigate an energy price cap.  He has abandoned plans to reduce government spending.  He has gone after the banks.  For all this, Turnbull did not receive any boost in the post-budget Newspoll.

In the end, trying to be left-lite gives no reason for people to not vote for the real thing.  To win, you have to stand by your values.

Saying What We're All Thinking

The cosy Canberra consensus on issues from terrorism to immigration erodes the public's trust in politicians.

It took someone who's been in the federal Parliament for just over a year to say what was obvious and what everyone was thinking, but which his colleagues, some of whom have been politicians for decades, were afraid to admit.

James Paterson, the Liberal senator for Victoria, said last week that following Indigenous representatives calling for "substantive" not merely "symbolic" constitutional changes, a referendum to symbolically acknowledge Indigenous Australians in the constitution would now probably never be held.

Indeed, in the words of Paterson, "the loose Canberra consensus" that some form of constitutional recognition was inevitable, turned out to be wrong.  In truth, this reality had become apparent some time ago, but no politician wanted to puncture the convenient groupthink on the issue.  Further, no one wanted to question why taxpayers were providing $30 million for a government-sponsored "Recognise" campaign, when clearly "recognition" had been over-taken by more far-reaching claims.

There's a loose Canberra consensus on many issues.  A feature of such a consensus is that the major political parties and the political class agree between themselves, while the public doesn't get a look in.  It's not a consensus between the elected and those who elected them.

Often the things on which there's a Canberra consensus are things politicians don't want to talk about with the public.

Opinion polls show only 37 per cent of Australians trust politicians.  The feeling is mutual.  Politicians don't trust Australians.

When trust between the ruled and the rulers breaks down, democracy corrodes.

The maintenance of trust between the politician and the public is essential if Australia is going to overcome the challenge of Islamist terrorism.

There's no surer way for the community to lose trust in the government and in the authorities charged with fighting Islamist terrorism than for officials to treat appropriate and legitimate questions about things like the relationship between terrorism and our refugee program with contempt and disdain.

Which is exactly what ASIO director Duncan Lewis did when replying to a question from Pauline Hanson.  He said:  "I have absolutely no evidence to suggest there is a connection between refugees and terrorism."  One suspects if Lewis has been answering a question from someone other than Hanson, he would have given a different answer.  The loose Canberra consensus on Islamist terrorism is that it's best if politicians don't talk about the issue with the public.  In this newspaper on Wednesday it was reported that Tony Abbott's comments about "Islamophobia" had "annoyed security officials, who believe such comments only make it harder to thwart domestic terrorist attacks".  The piece de resistance from the security agencies was the quote, Abbott "should know better".

The implication being that Abbott "should know better" than to say what everyone was thinking.

In 2014 one of the reasons Abbott gave for reneging on his promise to repeal section 18c of the Racial Discrimination Act was that he'd received advice from the security agencies that if he did repeal the section, he'd upset the Muslim community.

Section 18c remains unchanged, and meanwhile the Islamic Council of Victoria is urging the creation of government-funded "safe spaces" where Muslim youth "could be radical".  To his credit, the Victorian Premier said yesterday:  "There is no safe way to rail against the West".  The Canberra consensus on immigration is in favour of a substantial immigration program.  On the rare occasions when the consensus has been challenged, such as Julia Gillard did as PM in 2010, the Canberra consensus quickly prevailed.

Gillard declared she didn't necessarily support a "big Australia", and Tony Burke who under Kevin Rudd had been the "minister for population" had his title changed by Gillard to the "minister for sustainable population".  Burke held this second title for just a few months.

The Canberra consensus on immigration has always been that politicians should only talk about its positives, not its potential negatives.  Maintaining that consensus now risks damaging community support for this country's immigration program.

When politicians are unwilling or unable to engage in an honest discussion with the public about immigration then the public's trust in politicians is eroded even further.

We Are The Boiling Frog

The growing influence of the state throughout the western world, buttressed by technological development and a crisis of confidence in the capitalist system is shaping up as a major threat to personal freedom.

The genius of capitalism is that through the system of risk and reward, within a framework of secure borders, an independent legal system, and respect for personal property rights, it has provided the means for the genuine needs of billions of individuals to be met.

It is consumer demand and capitalist initiative that has driven the creation of new markets worldwide and led to the unprecedented reduction in poverty and improvements in living standards over the last 200 years.

However, while there is a natural role for government in this framework as the guardian of the legal system, guarantor of competition and the method by which the people can change the law through democratic elections, modern bureaucracy, crony capitalism, and producer capture of government is busily removing choices and putting liberty in peril.

Some examples illustrate the extent of the problem.

In the primary and secondary education system, schools are increasingly funded and run for the benefit of teachers, unions and sectoral interests rather than responding to the needs of students.

Resource decisions in the health system are made for the benefit of medical administrators, bureaucrats and doctors rather than to address the needs of patients.

In child care, billions of dollars each year are paid directly to identikit child care centre operators artificially inflating prices and reducing parent choice.

Unfortunately, this is not getting better any time soon.

On energy, both sides of politics are increasingly in the business of selecting what type of producers are allowed to compete in the market, and grid operators are increasingly in the business of controlling demand and supply including in Australia and the UK.

It doesn't take too much imagination to know where the "successful" 2012-15 trial by an English electricity distributor which at the press of a central button could remotely reduce each household's power usage, or Dark Green activist mutterings of a human "carbon budget" or "carbon quotas" are headed.

The next "big thing" will be National Disability Insurance Scheme where, as Vern Hughes wrote in April 2017, instead of consumers being encouraged to purchase the services they need as originally envisaged, the system is being geared up for providers to determine the range and price of services.

Human rights and environmental legislation as well as international treaties are increasingly being used by NGOs and bureaucracies in Australia and overseas to resist moves to influence the "centre-knows best" policy agenda

Uber and Airbnb are two companies at the forefront of regulatory moves to restrict whose car people can get into and in whose home people can stay, the Fair Work Commission polices who people are allowed to work for, and of course hardly a week goes by without a publicly-funded activist calling for sugar, fat or cigarette taxes to restrict what legal products you can put into your mouth.

Economics Professor Tyler Cowen recently claimed that the West is being killed by comfort and the desire of baby boomers to build a harm-free world, under the guiding hand of government.

Of course, the most extreme manifestation of this trend is becoming evident in China with the evolution of the Communist Government's "social credit scheme" which will rank a citizen's "place in society" according to their social, moral and financial history.  No points for guessing what may happen in China when a person's social credit expires!

Whether China, the US, UK or Australia, the rationing of goods, limiting of supply or demand or direct funding or favouring of producers by governments, are cut from the same cloth — i.e. the increasing tendency of the state to be the sole arbiter of what is permitted.

The fault however lies not with capitalism as some claim, but what we as individuals have allowed to be done in capitalism's name.

Fortunately, the solution is simple.  We need a new, people-centred approach to government, where personal choice is taken back from the state and from producers, and put firmly into the hands of consumers.

A new agenda would see government spending limited to a fixed proportion of GDP, ideally around 20 per cent as it was in Australia prior to the election of the Whitlam Government.

The vast bureaucracies that regulate non-criminal personal behaviour between individuals and between governments should be dismantled.

Governments should get out of the business of picking winners in energy, telecommunications, workplace relations and other social policy contracts.

Education vouchers should be the primary means of funding the education system, with providers required to tailor their offering to parental demand.

Child care vouchers that allow parents to choose whether to stay home, pay a relative or put their child into the formal system would save money and acknowledge the different situation in each household.

Market operators in all industries should simply provide a meeting place for buyers and sellers and not try to restrict producers or curtail demand.

Unless we rapidly re-imagine the role of the state in the twenty-first century, our future will be increasingly governed by the space we are allowed to occupy, and may very well resemble this recent dystopian glimpse of a "small footprint approach" to domestic housing.

While there is still time for the boiling frog to escape, it is getting awfully warm.

Filling Triggs' Shoes

The Human Rights Commission's selective agenda does not include the protection of fundamental human rights like freedom of speech.  For that reason alone, it must be abolished.  But while the Commission does exist, it is entirely reasonable to expect that a Coalition government should appoint to the Commission individuals who do believe in individual liberties.  With the government considering who to appoint president of the HRC this month, there is an opportunity for the Coalition to live up to the expectations of how a centre-right government should act.  Until now, one of the significant failures of the Abbott and Turnbull governments has been the refusal to make reliably conservative appointments to key positions in the bureaucracy.

Until now, their High Court appointments could just as easily have been made by a Labor government — which isn't a problem unless you consider the progressive interpretation of the Australian Constitution that has made centralised government the norm a disaster.  It's a similar story at the AHRC:  Ed Santow, who was appointed the Human Rights Commissioner in May 2016, has said nothing of the QUT case or the Commission's pursuit of Bill Leak last year.  The very least the government could do is to save the country from another Gillian Triggs.  Instead, the government has the opportunity to appoint a president who actually believes in human rights;  and make an important symbolic choice by appointing someone who prioritises mainstream values like freedom of speech and of religion.

The very least the government can do is to assist the government, we've compiled a brief list of candidates (in no particular order) it might consider to be the next HRC president.  If it doesn't pick one of these outstanding individuals, or someone of a similar calibre, it will have revealed what a joke the bureaucratic appointment process has become.

James Allan is Australia's leading natural rights philosopher, and is the Garrick Professor in Law at the TC Bierne School of Law at the University of Queensland.  Allan is the perfect choice to begin the process of dismantling the HRC:  not only is there no risk that Prof. Allan would "go native", there is perhaps no other candidate who would cause more headaches for the other commissioners.

Augusto Zimmermann is the senior lecturer in law at Murdoch University, a commissioner with the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia and president of the Western Australian Legal Theory Association.  He was the co-author of No Offence Intended, an important book published in 2016 that explains how section 18C is incompatible with the Australian Constitution on several grounds.

Lorraine Finlay is a lecturer in law at Murdoch University whose expertise covers constitutional law, freedom of speech and property rights.  Finlay was a co-author of No Offence Intended.

Suri Ratnapala, former law professor at the University of Queensland and expert in the rule of law, constitutional law and legal theory, joined the Law Reform Commission in 2015 part-time to help conduct its inquiry into traditional rights, freedoms and privileges.

Bob Day is a former Family First SA senator and a leader in the fight to reform 18C.  Day was previously the secretary of the Samuel Griffith Society.  As secretary of the H.R. Nicholls Society, he argued for the rights of the unemployed to get a job.

Ramesh Thakur is the director of the Centre for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament in the Crawford School at the Australian National University.  His criticisms of Triggs' tenure indicate he would rein in the excesses of the Commission, and have a clearer view of what kinds of complaints are clearly trivial, vexatious or frivolous.

Neil Brown was the deputy leader of the federal Liberal Party from 1985 to 1987, is a distinguished barrister in the relevant field of mediation and arbitration, and writes a regular column in these pages.

Ian Callinan is a barrister and was a Justice of the High Court.  In 2012, Callinan spoke out strongly against the Gillard Government's attempted press censorship laws, saying "The struggle for free speech has been long and painfully achieved and I wouldn't want to go back on it".

Louise Clegg is an accomplished barrister, author and lecturer.  Since being called to the Bar in 2001, Clegg has conducted more than 100 Federal Court appeals, mostly in the areas of public law and workplace relations.  Clegg has criticised the Commission in the past for for going rogue and seeing itself as the "vanguard of identity politics".

Graeme Watson, a former vice president of the Fair Work Commission, recently spoke to the Centre for Independent Studies on the threat to democracy posed by quasi-judicial government agencies.  Of the HRC, Watson said:  "Overreach, looseness with the truth, low commitment to accountability and excessive zeal are not appropriate attributes."

There is another reason the government must make a solid appointment to the HRC;  it completely failed to enforce accountability following a series of recent Commission missteps.  Buried in the budget was a sad statistic.  Despite giving every reason for its abolition, the HRC's allocated budget is unchanged from last year.

The lesson is obscene:  if you're a government agency, you can completely fail to live up to community expectations and face no consequences.  For the HRC specifically, the lesson is it can deprive respondents to complaints of natural justice or procedural fairness (as in the QUT case, which turned into a three-and-a-half-year legal drama) or pursue obviously vexatious complaints against cartoonists (as happened with the late Bill Leak) without even the consequence of budget cuts.  A failure to rein in the organisation, let alone abolish it entirely, is a serious failure to enforce accountability on an agency that has a track record of over-reach and stifling debate.  But there is an easy way for the government to begin to make up for its failure.  It is time to appoint to the Commission someone that is committed to the ideas of freedom and to the rule of law.

Our political system gives the government of the day an untrammelled power to appoint anyone it likes to positions in the bureaucracy.  Why not use it?

No Place For Race In Our Constitution

RACE has no place in the Australian constitution.  Proposals to grant special legal rights to any group of Australians based on their race will be rejected.  Australians are egalitarian.  Fairness is a concept that runs deep in the Australian psyche.

This is why the two proposals contained in the Uluru Statement released last week — a treaty between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians and a new constitutional body to represent the interests of indigenous Australians — will not be accepted by the public.  Both proposals would divide Australians by race.  And Australians will not have a bar of that.

Indigenous Australians have made a significant contribution to the success of modern Australia.

The first British settlers of the 18th century, and the waves of migrants that have followed from all corners of the globe, have also helped to make Australia what it is today.

Australia's story is a tale of diversity.  Australians are right to be proud of the fact we are a successful, peaceful, prosperous country built on a respect for ethnic and religious plurality.  But just as we recognise the contribution that has been made by individuals from so many ethnic backgrounds, we also recognise that race itself is an outdated concept.

We are all members of the human race.  Civilised people know that differences between races are skin deep.

For that reason, race should never be used as a motivation for passing new laws, and it certainly shouldn't be used to grant or to take away rights in our constitution.

The Australian constitution should be colour blind.  It should treat every citizen equally, and it should not give the government the power to make laws that treat different groups differently because of their race.

This is why — if we are to make any changes to the constitution — we should ensure that any references to race are removed, not added.

Currently there are two sections of the constitution that refer to race.  The first is section 25, which was designed to discourage state governments from banning people of any particular race from taking part in elections.

The second is section 51 (xxvi), which grants the Commonwealth the power to pass race-based laws.

If Australians are to be asked to change the constitution it is this change that should be supported — the deletion of the two provisions that make reference to race.

But anything that seeks to insert race back into the constitution is dangerous and divisive.

Leaving aside the principle that the constitution should be completely free of references to race are a series of practical problems.

The biggest of those problems is that indigenous Australians are individuals who don't all necessarily think the same way about matters of public policy.  The suggestion that Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders can be represented by a single voice is condescending and paternalistic.

Every adult indigenous Australian has the vote and their ability to be heard at an election is the same as all other Australians.  Treating indigenous Australians differently because of their race is wrong.

The proposal for a treaty makes even less sense.  Treaties are legal agreements between two or more sovereign countries.  But indigenous Australians are Australians.  How can a country make a treaty with its own citizens?  Some members of the indigenous community are open about the need for indigenous sovereignty to come before the negotiation of a treaty.

These members of the indigenous community do not accept the legitimacy of the constitution itself.  This was why a group of delegates walked out of the Uluru summit last week, when a Victorian delegate said of her delegation:  "We as sovereign First Nations people reject constitutional recognition.  We do not recognise occupying power or their sovereignty, because it serves to disempower, and takes away our voice".

This form of radical race politics sits at the heart of the constitutional change put forward in the Uluru Statement.  It is a divisive ideology.

Our constitution is a rule book.  It clearly sets out the way the Australian government should be organised.  It is not an exciting document.  But it treats all Australians equally.

Killing The University

In March, the University of Melbourne Student Union ran an "intersectional and student-led workshop around the ways in which privilege and unconscious bias permeate tutorials and seminars ..."  According to the official report following the workshop, there is a colossal amount of unconscious bias floating around Melbourne University, and which by all accounts appears to be emanating from one particular privileged group;  white men.

Workshop attendees reported that the behaviour of such individuals in tutorials and seminars made them feel bad about themselves and to doubt their own abilities.  They even employed the term "gaslighting" in order to describe how they felt about the way in which white men interacted with women and non-white fellow students.  "Gaslighting" is a psychological technique used by sociopaths and narcissists to manipulate their victims.

The upshot of the discussion was that henceforward men should endeavour to be less like men and workshop attendees came up a helpful list to facilitate the process of emasculation.  Before they voice their opinions, for example, men should conduct the type of examination of conscience usually reserved for the Confessional.  They need to ask themselves the following question:  "Is it to self-aggrandise or to learn and contribute?"  Once satisfied that it is the latter, men should then endeavour to speak more like women, in that they should not speak with "absolute confidence" but qualify their statements with "I'm sure that this is a good idea but ..."  Finally, men should also refrain from partaking in "Australian banter".

These measures are worrying on a number of levels.  They are basically perpetuating the "white male privilege" myth of identity politics which claims that biology, race and gender determine our destinies.  Does this mean that if you are born a non-white male, then there is no point in trying to succeed in life because you are set up for a future of failure?  Conversely, there is no need to try if you are a white male because your future success is already guaranteed.

This dangerous form of racial determinism is totally at odds with the notion of individual responsibility and the idea that as human beings, we instigate our own actions and are thus morally accountable.  It is a long way from Martin Luther King when he said that people should be judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.  This seems to have been completely forgotten by the current practitioners of identity politics.

These workshops are also a direct assault on "masculinity" and are designed to make men ashamed of being men.  By asking men to tone down their "Australian banter" and to "speak more like women", the University of Melbourne Student Union is simultaneously discriminating against men and patronising women.  It is illiberal and totally sexist.  The next logical step is that white men will be prohibited from attending particular tutorials and seminars on the grounds that their very presence will cause too much discomfort.

The demand that a certain group self-censors is creating a highly censorious and politically correct culture which is detrimental to the university's core mission of education.  There are already reports that academics are being policed by students and are deliberately refraining from discussing ideas which might offend members of the student body.

In September, Monash University will be the first Australian institution of higher learning to implement a policy of "trigger warnings", by asking academics to review course content before teaching it.  This will ultimately result in fearful tutors deciding that none of their material is suitable on the basis that it could potentially offend everyone in the classroom.

The fact that Melbourne University, one of Australia's oldest and most respected institutions of higher learning, has not only allowed the student union to conduct this workshop but has also taken it seriously, shows just how politically correct the culture of our universities has become.  This is part of a growing movement in Australian universities, largely driven by students, to scrub the campuses clean of words, ideas and subjects which might cause discomfort or give offence, and it raises serious questions about the future of free speech on our campuses.

Indigenous Treaty Would Divide Australia Into Two Nations According To Race

All Australians are equal.  This principle is the basis of our freedoms and a cornerstone of the Australian constitution.

Our nation's founding document should unify us — not divide us.

Any proposal that seeks to enshrine division between Australians on the basis of race should therefore be rejected.  And it is why any suggestion of a treaty between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians should also be rejected.

Rarely has such a powerful defence of equality and the value of the individual been expressed as on a hot afternoon in Washington DC on 28 August 1963.

At 3pm that afternoon in front of the Lincoln Memorial, Martin Luther King jnr created history when he uttered the words:  "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character."

These words are as real and as relevant in 2017 as they were 53 years ago.

It is this sentiment of equality that Australians should bear in mind when considering proposals to change the Australian constitution.

The most recent proposal for constitutional change is contained in the Uluru Statement, released last week.

The Uluru Statement is the culmination of three days of discussions amongst Indigenous leaders at Uluru last week.  The meeting in Uluru follows six months of community consultations with Indigenous leaders held by the government-appointed Referendum Council.

The Uluru Statement is a response to the key issue these deliberations were established to address:  whether Indigenous leaders support the proposal to "recognise" Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in the Australian constitution, and if so what form the change should take.

The Statement calls for a treaty between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and also proposes the establishment of a new constitutional body to represent Indigenous Australians:  "We call for the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the constitution."

These are radical proposals that will divide Australians on the grounds of their racial identity.  These proposals are the manifestation of radical identity politics.

Formally dividing Australians by law is a dangerous idea, doubly so when that division is done on the basis of race, skin colour, ethnicity or indigeneity.

The Commonwealth parliament represents all Australians.  This is why an advisory body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples enshrined in the constitution cannot be accepted.

A separate body, whether it is called an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples advisory body, a new chamber of the Commonwealth parliament, an Indigenous parliament, or a First Nations Voice undermines the idea that all Australians are equal under our democratic system.  All policy decisions are Indigenous policy decisions, because Indigenous Australians are Australians.

Treaty, which is sometimes referred to by the Yolgnu word for treaty, "Makarrata", would divide Australia into separate nations.  Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are Australian.  The idea that they are separate from Australia is dangerous, and a treaty between Indigenous and non-Indigenous would divide Australians according to race.

Australia is one of the oldest and most successful democracies because our constitution is based on the idea of the equality of all Australians.

If any constitutional changes are to be contemplated they should make the constitution truly colour-blind and remove all references to race in the document.

There are two current sections in the Australian constitution that refer to race — sections 25 and 51 (xxvi).  Section 25 was intended to prevent state governments from restricting the right to vote according to a person's race.  Section 51(26) gives the Commonwealth government the power to pass race-based laws.

Section 25 is unnecessary because equal voting rights are already guaranteed under the constitution.  Section 51(xxvi) is discriminatory and illiberal.  Race-based laws are incompatible with the equality of all people.

Taking out these sections removes the Commonwealth government's constitutional power to divide Australians.

If these two sections are removed, no new references to race, or skin colour, or ethnicity, or indigeneity should be added.

I believe there should be no references to race in the constitution.  The constitution should not divide Australians according to race.

Australia's success as a free and prosperous country is founded on the idea that all humans are of equal worth.  Regardless of race or ethnic background, all Australians must be treated equally by the government and by the law.

In the constitution, all Australians should have the same rights and should share the same responsibilities.

Race has no place in the Australian constitution.

Fairfax Media And Liberal Party Face Same Survival Dilemma In A Changing World

Two great and venerable Australian institutions are facing profound challenges.

Each is suffering from a combination of circumstances beyond their control as well as from their own mistakes.

Each is confronted by a range of competitors eager to erode their once-assured market dominance.  Each has a long and proud history embellished with significant achievement.  Yet each has lived for too long off its past glories.

Finally, each will eventually have to answer a fundamental question about its future.  Whether the interests of their shareholders in one case, and members in the other are best served by them continuing to exist as the single entities or whether they should be broken up.

Those two institutions are of course Fairfax Media Limited and the Liberal Party of Australia.

The internet has decimated print journalism, but for decades Fairfax directors have acted as if there's nothing they can do about it, and their only role is to manage the graceful decline and fall of the company.

Similar thinking prevails in the Liberal Party.  Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison claim that their high-spending, high-taxing budget of a fortnight ago is their second best option and they're powerless to act any other way in the face of a hostile senate and an electorate that seemingly wants ever-bigger government.  But the make-up of the senate is the result of the Liberals' own decision to call a double dissolution election.

In any case, the Liberals spend little time these days trying to change or lead public opinion.  After all, the Liberals have held the federal government treasury benches for 14 of the past 20 years.  The only people to blame for the Liberal Party coming to more and more resemble the Labor Party are the Liberals themselves.

POOR DECISIONS

The predicament of Fairfax and the Liberal Party has been made worse by some poor management decisions made over the years.

Fred Hilmer, the Fairfax CEO from 1998 to 2005 ran the company precisely the way you'd expect from a management consultant.  In his book The Fairfax Experience — which contains four pages of the organisation charts — he revealed his frustration at not being able to accurately calculate the minimum production cost of each story in a newspaper.  It's easy to understand why so many observers believed Hilmer's commitment to quality journalism was limited.

Scott Morrison is acting as treasurer in the manner expected of a former immigration minister.  Given his claim that freedom of speech is unimportant, and his aggressive campaigns for retrospective superannuation laws, higher income taxes, and a "levy" — read tax — on banks paid for the banks' customers and shareholders, it's easy to understand why it could be argued Morrison's affinity with the principles of liberalism is limited.

Fairfax believed its print classified advertising, the "rivers of gold", would last forever.  The Liberal Party leadership acts as if it believes the party's "base" can be treated with contempt, but somehow that same "base" will continue indefinitely to donate to the party and vote Liberal.  In the years to come we'll see whether the Australian Conservatives Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, and even One Nation are to the Liberals, what REA Group, Carsales.com, and Seek have been to Fairfax.

In this regard the Liberals do have one advantage over Fairfax.  The government forces people to vote.  As yet the government doesn't force anyone to buy a newspaper.  (Although, of course, the government does force people to pay taxes to fund the ABC.)

It's as hopeless for Fairfax to wish for the rivers of gold to return as it is for the Liberals to yearn for John Howard to come back.  The truth is that Fairfax and the Liberals have to face the future on their own.

The future is for both organisations is uncertain.

Regardless of whether the current takeover proposals for Fairfax succeed, hopefully the company's major mastheads — in whatever form they continue — will be more than merely a placard for real estate advertising.  Some of the best bits of Fairfax, such as this newspaper, might have a more secure future as a standalone entity owned by a proprietor committed to the crafts of reporting, analysis and explanation.

For the Liberal Party the question is whether its progressive liberal, conservative, and libertarian wings have anything in common with each other anymore.

You Don't Argue With Ms 61 Per Cent

Malcolm Turnbull must be staring at UK Prime Minister Theresa May's poll numbers with vaulting envy.  The Britain Elects polling average puts the Conservatives at 47 per cent primary vote at the time of writing, giving her a potential majority of up to 130 seats — up from David Cameron's working majority of just 12.  In stark contrast, Turnbull's latest Newspoll places the Coalition at an election-losing 36 per cent primary vote.

It is easy to attribute this to circumstance.  May is the preferred Prime Minister by 61 per cent of voters;  just 23 per cent want UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, the incompetent babbling unreconstructed Marxist.

May's success, however, is not pure luck or inevitable.  She came to power facing extraordinarily challenging times — a deeply divided party and country over the Brexit vote, (false) predictions of an immediate economic downturn and needed to define her leadership and manage leaving the European Union.  She has proven an adept, steadfast political operator.  But more than anything else, May understands that, now more than ever, values matter in politics.

May's first speech as Prime Minister made clear who she represents:  the "just about managing", known as the JAMs.  These are her Howard's Battlers or Menzies' Forgotten People.  Not the top, able to guide their own way, or the bottom, supported by a generous welfare state, but the in between.  May's approach revolves around connecting to this group, the hardworking, dedicated, and traditional, too often ignored by London-elites.

She talks about values.  As a Christian, and daughter of a vicar, she expressed her opposition to Cadbury removing the word Easter from their annual egg hunt events.  As a supporter of the "fundamental British value" of freedom of speech, she has deplored university "safe spaces" and shutting off debate.  As someone from a modest background who went to a grammar school — a selective school for the educationally gifted — she supports their expansion against strong opposition.

May's values are striking in her most difficult task:  defining and negotiating Brexit.  She has notably declared "I want us to be a truly Global Britain".  This sentiment shows comparisons between Brexit and the nativist rhetoric of Trump in the United States, or Le Pen in France, are misleading.  May has committed Britain to free trade with the EU and new deals with the rest of the world including Australia.  Importantly, she has rejected calls for Britain to stay in the EU common market, which would have made a mockery of the Brexit decision to "take back control" by leaving rules, regulations, and immigration in the EU's hands.

May is returning Britain to its position of global leadership on trade.  These are the same liberal principles that, after the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846, led to Britain's immense prosperity and global success in the second half of the nineteenth century.  Britain's leadership is good news for Australia, which stands to benefit in the shorter term from a trade agreement, as well as in the longer term from a new independent free trading voice at the World Trade Organisation.

Her steadfast leadership on Brexit has transformed the country from deeply divided — 52 per cent in favour, 48 per cent against — to form a new general consensus that accepts the referendum result.  A recent poll from YouGov found that 68 per cent want Britain to just get on with leaving the European Union — 45 per cent "Hard Leavers" who originally supported Brexit and 23 per cent who supported Remain but accept the national vote.  Just 22 per cent of Britons are "Hard Remainers", who believe the government should ignore the referendum result.

Sadly, on domestic economic policy, her liberal instincts are dramatically lacking.  She is no Margaret Thatcher.  Last year at party conference May declared that the government "should be prepared to intervene", supposedly in the name of the JAMs.  The Conservatives' election manifesto includes capping energy prices, increasing the minimum wage, abandoning Cameron's pledge to not increase income tax, and requiring workers representation on boards.  This agenda will not only face internal opposition after the election, it will make Britain poorer.

The act of Brexit itself has distracted from other important tasks.  The government cited Brexit to justify abandoning plans for a budget surplus by 2020 — now stretched out to 2025.  May has not expressed any interest in reducing the size or scope of Britain's bloated government (42 per cent of GDP, we're at 36 per cent in Australia).  In addition, there is a lack of commitment to dismantle burdensome EU regulations, which are to be transferred into domestic law for continuity.

May's leadership style is boring and unflashy.  She exudes stability in uncertain times, presenting a timid yet firm projection of strength.  May has, for example, refused to do live televised election debates, a relatively new feature of British politics that began in just 2010.  The display of macho is not for her — and would likely elevate Corbyn.

Notably, May also understands the importance of listening to the backbench and base of her party.  Despite supporting Remain in the Brexit vote, she appointed of prominent Leave supporters to Cabinet, including Boris Johnson to the foreign ministry.  She has been responsive to the base's concerns.  Earlier this year the exchequer announced an increase in income tax on the self-employed, in clear contradiction to 2015 election commitments.  The announcement faced immediate backbench and public backlash and was dropped within a week.  This contrasts starkly with Turnbull's broken promise on superannuation changes last year — which were damagingly left on the table because the base was assumed to not matter.

May's plentiful success should be closely watched by the right side of politics in Australia.  Although imperfect, she has charted a values-driven course, responds to her public's concerns and successfully united a divided party and country.  There is much more work to be done but, politically, it's difficult to argue against Ms 61 per cent.

At Least The British Have A Choice

There has already been much debate about British Labour's election manifesto commitment to re-nationalise the UK's energy, rail, water and postage networks as well as Conservative promises to increase the minimum wage, introduce new protections for workers in the "gig economy" and support the domestic shale gas industry.

Are Labor's plans a retreat to the 1970's or a preview of the developed world's future?  Is Theresa May a "Red Tory" excising Thatcherism or a politician determined to claim the sensible centre?  Is there a role for the state in setting wages or running trains, and should the voting age stay at 18 or be cut to 16?

While opinions on the left and right differ about the merit of different proposals, Brexit means that decisions on the big issues around the economy, energy, transport and employment will continue to be made by British citizens and that the considered policy positions put by parties in their manifestos have real consequences.

British taxpayers will no longer need to worry about the Franco-German axis or the north-south divide.  Or having to comply with the edicts of the European Commission, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights or the decisions of the token European Parliament.

Laws passed at Westminster will apply to the whole land, and if people don't like them they can lobby their government to change them.  If they won't change them then they can change the government.

This deepening of distinctions between the two major UK political parties in part reflects the repatriation of political powers back home post-Brexit.  It is a hallmark of accountability and responsible government and the sign of a healthy democracy.

The contrast with Australia, where centralisation and accountability are headed in the opposite direction, is particularly acute.

The ability of a duly-elected Australian Government to implement its election promises and be judged at the following election is increasingly being thwarted by vested interest in the Senate, from the Opposition, to the Greens and populist independents.

The ability of state governments to run their own economies, education, health, and transport systems is compromised by the over $100 billion a year of tied and untied federal grants, competing federal ministries and bureaucracies and the politically distorted repatriation of GST revenue.

However, it is the lack of real difference between the Coalition and ALP on economic and social policy and the role of government, that is most responsible for increasing disillusionment in domestic politics.

In 2010 the Labor Government attempted to plug a hole in the budget deficit by singling out a small number of companies in one industry to pay a newly invented tax.  In 2017, the Coalition is trying to plug a hole in the budget deficit by singling out a small number of companies in one industry to pay a newly invented tax.

Both parties appear committed to the Human Rights Commission, Fair Work Act, National Broadband Network, and increasing federal involvement in health, education, transport, energy, planning and the environment.

The Rudd Labor Government's main foreign policy priority was to pursue a temporary seat on the UN Security Council.  Even though that target was achieved and the two year term successfully completed, the Turnbull Government's main foreign policy priority is to again pursue a temporary seat on the UN Security Council.

Even Labor's 2015 commitment to use the superannuation system to raise billions in extra revenue was matched and exceeded by the Coalition in its 2016 budget.

That the difference between the two parties on education is Gonski I vs Gonski II, on banking governance a royal commission vs a tribunal, and on energy policy a 23 per cent vs 50 per cent renewables target is just not good enough.  Only on immigration are the Coalition and ALP poles apart.

Whether or not on 8 June British Labour is given the opportunity to transform people's lives or the Tories are chosen to provide what they describe as true conservatism, Brexit ensures that the British people will own their decision and hold their politicians accountable for their policies.

Given that the growth of bureaucracy and lack of political accountability go hand in hand, the Turnbull Government should pursue its own form of Brexit, Bexit, in the form of a "bureaucracy exit".

Acknowledging that it is OK, even desirable, for the major parties to differ on policy would be a good start.

But setting a limit to the size of government, clearly defining stand-alone federal, state and local responsibilities, and leaving the rest to the private sector would do so much more.

No Commonwealth Grants Commission, no handballing between different levels of government, and accepting that it isn't the role of Canberra to impose social and economic uniformity on different individuals, businesses and communities would be an Australian Bexit well worth voting for.

Drone Regulations Stifle Business And Innovation With New Technology

The Senate committee examining Australian drone regulations has had just one public hearing and is months away from its December reporting date.

Nevertheless, last week they wrote to the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Darren Chester, strongly encouraging immediate action and "strengthened regulation" for drone technology.

Calls for more red tape and restrictions on drones is not only premature, but represents a disturbing precautionary shift in Australia's drone debate.

The $100 billion global drone market holds remarkable opportunity to boost productivity for our key primary industries.  Farmers can better manage their land in difficult or cumbersome roles by collecting data to improve yields.  Miners use drones for exploration and to assist with environmental management over long distances.

But Australia risks passing up these opportunities if we over-regulate today.

Regulatory tensions for drones have existed in Australia for more than a decade.  But in September last year, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority updated the rules to reflect the growth of the industry.

The most contentious change was the scrapping of licences and expensive training for flying low-risk drones under 2kg.  Farmers working on their own private land were also given more freedom to use drones under 25kg.

Despite the disastrous picture being painted, these new regulations won't realise the dystopian images of blackened out skies.

Hobbyists and small commercial operations still face strict rules.  There are prohibitions on flight within 5km of airports, higher than 120m in controlled airspace, and within 30m of people.  Breaching these rules incurs fines of $9000.

CASA clearly recognises the trade-off between safety and flexibility.  It also understands that regulation should be risk-based, and that it's simply unviable to heavily regulate all uses.

Encouraging drone deregulation is particularly important because businesses looking to adopt drones are keenly observing the regulatory environment globally.  For instance, when Domino's chose to fly its first pizza last year in New Zealand, it said the country had "the most forward-thinking aviation regulations".

Good drone regulations give freedom to entrepreneurs to experiment and test.

Poor policy, in contrast, emerges when safety is considered inherently more important than growth.  This is known as the precautionary principle:  where regulations underweigh the potential benefits to human lives that new technology brings.

The precautionary principle has existed for centuries.  The 19th century "red flag laws" for cars in Britain are a prime example.  The laws instituted a speed limit of 2mph in the city, and required a person to walk in front of all self-propelled vehicles waving flags.  Of course this meant pedestrians were safe, but the enormous potential of cars was clearly delayed.

There's a threat that Australia is heading down this same precautionary path for drones.

On Page 9 of the only public hearing in Brisbane, a temporary ban on the sale of drones is discussed.  Such an extreme outcome is unlikely.

But we are seeing the precautionary principle in action:  regulation based on potential harm, not demonstrated harm.  It is telling that the committee has called for immediate action because of "mounting fears of the real prospect of a serious accident".

According to the Australian Transport Safety Bureau there have been no collisions between drones and manned aircraft.

Drone incidents are inevitable, as is inherent in all transport options.  But policymakers must weigh up trying to prevent these accidents with leaving room for entrepreneurs and hobbyists to realise opportunities.

Viewing the regulation debate from this optimistic perspective suggests regulators should consider further deregulation.

Maybe we should allow entrepreneurs to fly more than one drone at a time.

What about autonomous flight?  Or even the prospect of enabling drones to be flown beyond visual line of sight.  Companies such as Australia Post and Telstra have sought exclusions from regulations so they can test and trial new uses drones.

Regulatory challenges for drones will keep arising, but where possible the private sector should take a lead role.

The deregulation of the drone industry should not just be defended, but encouraged.  Further, relaxed rules certainly shouldn't be reversed based solely on hypothetical fears and prospects.

Integration, Not Segregation Is Best. There's No Need For Privacy Curtains

THE decision by Auburn Council in NSW to install "privacy" curtains at a new public swimming pool in Auburn is a disgrace and completely at odds with Australian values.

Belgravia Leisure, which operates the Council run Auburn Ruth Everuss Aquatic Centre, has said that it decided to erect the curtain to "overcome cultural barriers and encourage Muslim women to use the pool".

After decades of struggle to achieve gender-equality between men and women, the Auburn Council's decision to divide the sexes in the pool with a giant curtain is an immensely backward move.  It is a giant step in the wrong direction.

By installing the curtain in the aquatic centre, Auburn Council is basically introducing gender apartheid in NSW at the expense of unwitting rate payers.

The segregation of men and women in public spaces is totally unacceptable.  One hundred years ago Governments in this country would require men and women to bathe at separate times or compel women to use bathing machines at the beach.

We should have now moved on.

It is the local rate payers of Auburn who have been effectively compelled to subsidise an initiative that segregates people and divides the community.

In 2011, Monash City Council in Victoria extricated $45,000 from local rate payers in order to build a screen at the Clayton public pool so that Muslim women could have female only swim sessions.

Multiculturalism is about integration not segregation.  Segregation is not only offensive but it promotes unnecessary divisions among the community and can hold some citizens back.

Auburn Council's actions are contrary to the very views that the Australian Government is seeking to promote and instil in our citizens, particularly through the Turnbull Government's revamped citizenship test which poses questions about expected norms of behaviour between men and women in Australia.

A curtain does not just divide men and women in a public pool, it divides communities and it divides Australia.  Men and women are equal and segregation is wrong.  These are not controversial ideas.  Public spaces should be free from discrimination and this includes public swimming pools paid for by local ratepayers.

As Australians, we want to encourage people to come to this country to enjoy the freedoms which have been hard fought and won.  People come to Australia because they know that it's a free country.  This type of regressive scheme undermines the fabric of our society.

Why Canberra Will Ignore Trump's Gaffes

It's every intelligence chief's nightmare — a phone call announcing the unexpected disclosure of highly sensitive secrets.

The stakes are high:  intelligence methods potentially compromised;  future access to vital intelligence on terrorist plots and other threats jeopardised;  diplomatic relations with allies and partners strained;  and, in some cases, the lives of agents put at risk.

Alarm bells clearly rang at the highest levels of the US national security apparatus following President Donald Trump's ill-advised Oval Office meeting with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov.  Based initially on well sourced leaks and then confirmed in his own tweets, the President told Lavrov the United States had highly sensitive intelligence about a terrorist plot to attack airliners using explosives concealed in laptop computers (which in March led the US and Britain to ban laptops from carry-on luggage on certain routes from the Middle East).

According to media reports, senior White House officials contacted the CIA and the National Security Agency, the US eavesdropping organisation, after the meeting.  They must have been difficult conversations, particularly given the highly charged relationship between the Trump White House and the American intelligence community.

Of course intelligence disclosures, while damaging and unfortunate, are a fact of life.  After this one occurred the relevant US agencies would have swung immediately into damage control.  They would have conducted a rapid assessment of the harm done, including to the intelligence-sharing relationship with the country that provided the material — in this case reportedly Israel.

The Israeli government is relieved to see the back of the Obama administration, which it saw as hopelessly naive about the threat posed by Iran;  but presumably this incident will create at least a little awkwardness during Trump's visit next week.

Losing access to further information on a major terrorist threat such as this one could obviously be immensely costly, but national security adviser HR McMaster — widely regarded as a man of integrity — has said no details of intelligence sources or methods were disclosed.

US agency chiefs would also have had the unwelcome task of telling their Israeli counterparts what had happened and reassuring them that the United States can still be trusted to protect their secrets.

President Trump is correct when he says that he has the authority to share intelligence with other leaders.  But this episode is disturbing, for three reasons.

The first is that Trump seems to have disclosed the intelligence not as part of a deliberate decision-making process after consultation with his senior officials but impulsively on the spur of the moment — reportedly as a boast about US capabilities.  That can only feed concerns about his judgment, temperament, and fitness to be commander-in-chief.

The second reason is that it is pretty clear the President passed on the intelligence without first consulting the government that provided it.  This is a grave breach of intelligence-sharing practice.  If it is repeated and becomes a pattern, it will make other partners, including the other "Five Eyes" countries, nervous about sharing their secrets.  Ultimately it can only undermine the mutual trust that lies at the heart of effective intelligence co-operation.  The consequences for efforts to combat global terrorism and other threats such as North Korea would be severe.

The third reason to be disturbed is that Trump shared the intelligence with Russia, of all countries.  At a minimum the fact he did so the day after he fired the director of the FBI and himself linked that decision to his unhappiness with the Bureau's investigation into his administration's Russia links demonstrates poor political judgment.  But the more fundamental concern is Trump's failure to appreciate that, far from being a dependable partner, Russia is working aggressively to undermine American interests and the liberal international order more broadly, whether in Europe or the Middle East or by interfering in the US election.

For all this, however, the responses of Australia and other key US intelligence partners will be measured.

Our intelligence relationship with the United States is simply too important to be put at risk.  Australia's intelligence agencies are highly regarded and we make a valuable contribution.  But we get far more out of the intelligence partnership than we put in, including information affecting Australian interests from all around the world and access to sophisticated US collection systems we could never afford to replicate on our own.

Australian law enforcement and security services depend on intelligence from the United States and other partners to disrupt terrorist attacks here and abroad.  Intelligence informs our diplomacy.  The Australian Defence Force simply could not operate the way it does in the era of networked warfare without our deep and longstanding intelligence links with the US.

More than 70 years ago Australians and Americans worked together to crack Japan's codes and helped win the Pacific War.  In a world facing so many new threats those ties are as important as ever.

Changes Could Reduce Reoffending For Low-Risk Criminals

The NSW government continues to lead the way on innovative criminal justice policy.  Having last year committed $3.8 billion to new and improved prisons, the government is now pivoting to reforms designed to reduce the need for further prison spending over the longer-term, by lowering reoffending and improving community safety.

The government last week announced a package of reforms, including the abolition of suspended sentences and a new procedure for managing offenders released on parole.  While prison is absolutely necessary for violent criminals, these reforms acknowledge that for those criminals we do release into the community, we need more options for managing their behaviour.

These reforms correctly identify reducing reoffending as a top priority.  Fifty-two per cent of NSW prisoners have been imprisoned before.  Twenty-nine per cent of convicted adults commit another crime within two years of their conviction.  More effectively correcting offenders' behaviour will make a significant dent in the crime rate.

The parole changes are a clever way of addressing this problem.  Under the current system, parole breaches are reviewed by the State Parole Authority, a time-consuming process.  The reformed system will empower Community Corrections Officers to punish minor parole breaches quickly by imposing new conditions or taking away privileges.  A series of breaches will lead to escalating punishments.

This change is informed by evidence from overseas.  In the US, many states have adopted "swift, certain, and fair" punishments for parole and probation breaches.  The idea is a response to the reluctance of some case officers to punish breaches if the only available punishment is imprisonment.  Many case officers were looking the other way at minor breaches, like missed appointments, rather than sending offenders to prison.  Without consequences, or with only the vague threat of revocation hanging over them, offenders had no incentive to change their behaviour.

The main benefit of this change is that it increases the certainty of punishment for parole breaches.  By drawing a clear connection between the breach and the punishment, Community Corrections Officers will be able to better correct the behaviour of parolees.

This program has achieved significant results in Hawaii, especially with reducing drug use among program participants.  Missed and positive tests fell 80 per cent in the first five years of the program.  This in turn reduced participants' likelihood of reoffending.  Other states have copied the idea and have also seen some positive results.  In Texas, for example, program participants were up to 50 per cent less likely to be convicted of new crimes.

However, the program cannot guarantee success.  A 2016 study of four jurisdictions found mixed results, especially for higher-risk offenders.  What this suggests is that habitual offenders and those convicted of serious crimes should not be on parole in the first place.  The NSW government has acknowledged this in its reforms by making community safety the foremost consideration in the decision to grant parole and by making supervision mandatory for all parolees.

Overall, managed properly, this system can reduce reoffending for lower-risk parolees.  The increased level of supervision required is paid for by reducing reoffending, slowing the growth of incarceration and by handling of parole breaches more efficiently.

These parole reforms are part of a broader rationalisation of the corrections system towards community safety.  This agenda can also be seen in the decision to replace suspended sentences with the expanded use of community-based corrections.  Currently, convicted criminals are either imprisoned or released into the community.  This change will give judges more options for punishing nonviolent, low-risk criminals, who may now be subject to home detention, curfews, and movement restrictions.  These punishments are associated with better results in terms of reoffending.  Breaches of corrections orders will also be subject to swift and escalating punishments.  Again, the focus is on managing the transition of offenders back into society by filling in the spectrum of available punishments.

Crucially, the government is not reinventing the wheel.  Its actions are consistent with community expectations of personal responsibility and fair punishment.  This is good policy and good politics.  The state government is showing that it is possible to both be tough on violent criminals and to pursue targeted, safety-driven punishment reform for nonviolent offenders.