Why Australia Must Withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement

Why Australia Must Withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

• The Paris Agreement (the Agreement) is an international climate agreement which 195 nations have signed up to.
• The aim of the Agreement is to keep the increase in global temperature this century to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
• To achieve this, the Agreement requires nations to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
• Under the Agreement, Australia is required to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030.
• There are three key reasons why Australia should exit the Agreement.
• Firstly, the economic cost of Australia meeting its emissions reduction requirement under the agreement is estimated to be $52 billion in net present value terms, over the period 2018-2030.  This equates to $8,566 per family in Australia.
  • This cost reflects the additional cost of generating electricity in Australia as a result of the Agreement emissions reduction requirements.
  • There will also be a series of flow-on consequences which are not empirically estimated in this paper, but include:  lower business investment;  lower employment and lower wages growth;  and a reduction to real incomes due to increased cost of consumption.
• For the nation as a whole, $52 billion could have provided funding for 22 new hospitals, two decades' worth of the Gonski 2.0 education funding, or over four years' worth of funding for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).
• For families, $8,566 would provide funding for five years' worth of schooling at a local government school, paying down entire credit card debt, or four years' worth of electricity bills.
• The cost of the Agreement more than twice eliminates the income tax relief provided in the 2018-19 Budget to individual middle income earners.
• Secondly, the Agreement is not operating as intended.
• US President Donald Trump has provided formal notice that the world's second largest emitter, the United States, will withdraw from the Agreement.  And the world's largest emitter, China, is unconstrained by the Agreement.
• The Climate Action Tracker, a consortium of three research organisations, tracks national progress of 32 nations, which account 80 per cent of global emissions, in meeting their Paris emissions reduction targets.
• The tracker finds that just seven nations out of the sampled 32 are on track to meet their national emissions reductions contributions to keep warming below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.
• Those nations — Morocco, the Gambia, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Costa Rica, the Philippines, and India — collectively account for just 6.6 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
• Thirdly, the Agreement will make no noticeable difference to the global temperature, even if all nations meet their national emissions reduction requirements.
• Dr Bjorn Lomborg, President of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre and visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School, estimates that adopting all promises under the Agreement from 2016-2030 will reduce the temperature increase in 2100 by just 0.05°C.
• Australia accounts for just 1.5 per cent of global emissions from human activity.  And human activity accounts for just three per cent of total emissions.  Even the complete de-industrialisation of the Australian economy would make no noticeable difference to the global climate.
• The government should withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement and end all subsidies to weather-dependant energy generation such as wind and solar.

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INTRODUCTION

The Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the Agreement) is an international climate agreement involving 195 nations.  The central goal of the Agreement is for signatory nations to hold average global temperature increase to below 2°C and pursue efforts to keep warming below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. ⁽¹⁾  The reduction in the growth in temperature is to be achieved through reducing, or limiting the growth to, greenhouse gas emissions.  Under the Agreement, each nation sets its own greenhouse gas emissions targets and policies to meet those targets.  Australia's target is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26-28 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030. ⁽²⁾

The National Energy Guarantee (NEG) is the Commonwealth government's proposed policy for achieving the emissions reductions required under the Agreement.  To do this, the NEG would place obligations on energy retailers to reduce the emissions intensity of their energy acquisition portfolio. ⁽³⁾  This will result in a higher penetration of wind and solar energy generation, and a lower penetration of coal-fired energy generation than what would prevail under the status quo.

There are three central reasons why Australia should withdraw from the Agreement.  Firstly, implementing policies to meet the emissions reduction requirements will impose significant and irreparable damage to the Australian economy.  Drawing on data and analysis undertaken by the consulting firm Jacobs Group, this paper estimates that the cost to Australia of meeting the Paris Agreement emissions reduction requirements to be $52 billion from 2018-2030, in net present value terms, which equates to $8,566 per family in Australia.  This cost reflects the additional cost of generating electricity in Australia compared with the counter-factual of exiting the Agreement and removing emissions reduction policies (proxied by the prices which prevailed under pre-2007 energy and climate policies).

For the nation as a whole, $52 billion could provide funding for 22 new hospitals, ⁽⁴⁾ two decades' worth of the Gonski 2.0 education funding, ⁽⁵⁾ or over four years' worth of funding for the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). ⁽⁶⁾  For families, $8,566 would provide funding for five years' worth of schooling at a local government school, ⁽⁷⁾ paying down entire credit card debt, ⁽⁸⁾ or four years' worth of electricity bills. ⁽⁹⁾

The cost of Paris more than twice eliminates the income tax relief provided in the 2018-19 Budget to an individual middle income earner.  An income earners of $80,000 is expected to receive cumulative tax relief of $3,740 over the period 2018-19 to 2024-25, under the government's Income Tax Plan. ⁽¹⁰⁾

Secondly, the Paris Agreement is not functioning as intended.  Under the Agreement, all signatory nations are to implement policies to meet national targets.  However, the United States, which is the world's second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has provided formal notice that it will be withdrawing from the Agreement.  None of the European Union (EU) nations are on track to meet their obligations.  And China, the world's largest emitter, is unconstrained by the Paris Agreement.  China can continue to increase its emission, unabated, to 2030.

Thirdly, the best available evidence suggests that the Agreement will deliver little environmental benefit.  Dr Bjorn Lomborg, President of the Copenhagen Consensus Centre and visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School, estimated that even if every nation reached its emissions reductions obligations, the global temperature would warm by just 0.05 degrees less than under the status quo.  Moreover, Australia accounts for just 1.5 per cent of global emissions from human sources.  And humans activity accounts for just 3 per cent of all emissions.  This means that even the complete de-industrialisation of the Australian economy would make no noticeable difference to the global climate or temperature.

There are many environmental challenges aside from climate change or global warming (which are of questionable significance in any event).  These include litter, air and water quality, ocean pollution, and conservation matters.  These issues are more relevant to the lived experience of Australians, and can be resolved, or at least managed, through voluntary engagement (such as private conservation efforts) rather than through coercion, taxes, and regulations.

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STAYING IN THE AGREEMENT WILL RESULT IN SIGNIFICANT ECONOMIC COSTS

This paper estimates the cost to Australia of meeting its Agreement emissions reduction requirements.  To calculate this cost, this paper estimates the additional cost of generating electricity under the parameters of the Agreement compared with the counter-factual of exiting the Agreement and removing all emissions reduction policies at the Commonwealth level (proxied by pre-2007 Commonwealth energy and climate change policies).  This section uses the data provided by Jacobs Group in its Report to the Independent Review into the Future Security of the National Electricity Market. ⁽¹¹⁾

The National Energy Guarantee (NEG) is the Commonwealth government's proposed policy for Australia to meet its Agreement requirements.  The NEG (and, hence the Agreement) only directly applies to the electricity generation sector.  The electricity sector accounts for 35 per cent of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. ⁽¹²⁾  For comparison, stationary energy excluding electricity generation accounts for 18 per cent of national emissions, the transport sector accounts for 19 per cent, and the agricultural sector accounts for 13 per cent. ⁽¹³⁾  According to Jacobs, in 2017 there were 160 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO₂e) emitted from the national energy market (NEM).  In 2005, there were approximately 177 of Mt CO₂e emitted from the NEM.  The Paris Agreement required reduction of 28 per cent means the required level of emissions in 2030 from the NEM is 127 Mt CO₂e. ⁽¹⁴⁾

In their paper, Jacobs Group provide analysis of a BAU scenario.  Under the BAU, Jacobs analyses what would occur in the absence of further policies to encourage a reduction to emissions of 28 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030.  In other words, the BAU scenario can be thought of as a scenario where Australia doesn't meet its Paris targets, and therefore doesn't implement the NEG, but maintains the existing range of policies that are in place to support renewable energy generation, such as the RET.  The estimates of NEM generation, wholesale prices, and emissions under this scenario are outlined in Table 1 below.  Importantly, under the BAU scenario, emissions will drop to just 140 Mt CO₂e, a shortfall of 13 Mt CO₂e needed to meet the Paris targets.

Table 1:  BAU Estimates from the National Energy Market ⁽¹⁵⁾

These results indicate that under the BAU scenario NEM wholesale prices are estimated to increase by 14.6 per cent and NEM emissions are estimated to decrease by 12.5 per cent.  This gives an emissions price elasticity (EPE) of -0.85.  The EPE is used to estimate the additional increase in NEM wholesale prices between 2018 and 2030 required to reduce projected NEM emissions in the electricity sector to 127 Mt CO₂-e by 2030.  As shown in table 2, wholesale prices are estimated to increase by 24.1 per cent in order to achieve the required 20.6 per cent reduction to emissions from the electricity sector by 2030.

Table 2:  Estimated increase to wholesale prices needed to meet Paris

In order to estimate the NPV cost of meeting the Paris Agreement, the rise in wholesale prices needs to be compared to a counter-factual.  Ideally, the counter-factual would be the Jacobs estimate of price changes under the BAU.  The deficiency of this approach is that the BAU includes a series of policies designed to reduce emissions.  However, exiting the Paris Climate Agreement would make the rationale for emissions reductions policies obsolete.  It is therefore necessary for the counter-factual to include a policy scenario that does not include emissions reductions polices.  To our knowledge, there is no existing analysis to that effect. ⁽¹⁶⁾

In order to develop a proxy for this counter-factual, this paper estimates the average NEM wholesale price for a period within which there was limited policy support for renewable energy generation.  A logical point for this is 2007, when the Rudd government was elected on a platform that included a substantial expansion of the Renewable Energy Target (RET) to increase renewable energy generation to 20 per cent of total electricity generation by 2020. ⁽¹⁷⁾  The expanded RET was eventually passed in 2009.

The NEM was established in 1998. ⁽¹⁸⁾  From 1998 to 2007 there were relatively few policies in place to support renewable energy generation.  While the RET had been in place since 2001, its impact was modest.  The original goal of the first incarnation of the RET was to increase renewable energy by two per cent by 2010 from 2001 levels. ⁽¹⁹⁾  This increase was largely going to be realised under the BAU, and so had an immaterial effect on investment in renewables.

Hence, this paper takes the wholesale price which prevailed in the NEM from 1998-2007 as the counter-factual.  The average weighted NEM wholesale over the period 1998-2007 was 2017$/MWh 60. ⁽²⁰⁾  This is taken to be the average price that would prevail in the absence of aggressive emissions reductions policies.

Therefore, in order to estimate the additional cost of meeting Agreement targets, the average price from 1998-2007 is subtracted from the estimated wholesale prices required to achieve a 20.6 per cent reduction to emissions by 2030.  This additional cost is the multiplied by the amount of expected electricity generation for 2018-2030 as forecast in the Jacobs report.  This is done on an annual pro-rata basis.  Applying a discount rate of four per cent gives an estimated NPV cost of $52 billion of meeting the Paris Agreement emissions reductions requirement. ⁽²¹⁾  This equates to $8,566 per family in Australia. ⁽²²⁾  Table 3 below outlines the different assumptions, estimates, and costs derived from the approach outlined above. ⁽²³⁾

Table 3:  Annual Additional Cost of Paris Agreement

The cost estimate of $52 billion represents the additional cost of generating electricity in Australia under the Agreement emission reduction targets.  It is a conservative estimate as it does not attempt to measure the broader economic costs associated with higher electricity prices.  These costs include lower productivity growth due to a higher than optimal penetration of wind and solar energy;  increased business operation costs and hence lower after-tax profits and lower business investment;  lower employment growth;  lower wages growth;  and reduction to real incomes associated with higher cost of consumption.

A key assumption of these estimates is the increase in electricity generation costs can be entirely attributed to emissions reductions policies, which are in turn implemented though the addition of intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar.  This is a reasonable assumption.  As Graph 1 shows, the addition of intermittent energy generation has been associated with rapidly rising electricity prices.  While correlation is not causation, there are two key reasons why the addition of intermittent energy generation has been the cause of high and rising prices, rather than high and rising prices causing more intermittent energy generation.

First, there is the direct cost of government programs designed to promote renewable energy generation.  The Renewable Energy Target (RET), for example, creates an artificial market for renewable energy generation by forcing energy retailers to acquire a certain amount of their energy from renewable sources via the acquisition of generation certificates.  One certificate can be created for each megawatt-hour of eligible renewable electricity produced by an accredited renewable power station.  The additional cost of the acquisition of these certificates is then passed on to households as higher electricity costs.

Secondly, and more importantly, is the indirect cost of renewables programs.  Government policies such as the RET, solar subsidies, and the proposed NEG have the effect of promoting renewable energy generation at the expense of coal-fired generation.  A consequence is for coal-fired power stations to shut down, and fewer new ones to be built.  However, because renewable energy generation is less reliable, ⁽²⁴⁾ extra pressure has been placed on gas to generate electricity.  But gas is highly regulated and hence supply is limited.  This has placed structural upward pressure on prices.

Another way of conceptualising the approach taken in this paper is as follows.  The hypothetical considered is the complete removal of emissions reductions policies.  This would be somewhat similar to the pre-2007 set of policies, where there was little policy favouritism of renewable energy generation.  As chart 1 shows, prior to 2007 there was virtually no solar or wind energy generation on the NEM.  The prices which prevailed during that period are taken to be the prices that would prevail if we returned to those policies.  It is acknowledged that there are a range of other factors contributing to price changes in the NEM, including network and transmission charges.  Partly offsetting this is that network and transmissions charges have always played a role in changing electricity prices, including in the pre-2007 set of policies.

Graph 1:  Real Consumer Electricity Prices, Indexed, (1990=100)

Original:  Dr Michael Crawford

Adapted from Jo Nova

Source:  Prices 1955-1980:  Electricity in Australia, prepared for CIGRE by Frank Brady AM (former CEO, Electricity Commission of NSW), 1996 1980-2016:  ABS 6401.0 Consumer Price Index 2017-2018:  Adjustment (15% nominal increase) to take account of price increases announced by major elect distributors in June 2016 Intermittent power generation (Terra Watt hours, TWh) from Figure 4.2 in Independent Review into the Future of the National Electricity Market

For the purposes of comparison, we also consider what the additional cost of the Paris Climate Agreement is compared with the BAU scenario analysed in the Jacobs Group paper.  The BAU scenario in the Jacobs paper does not include the Paris Agreement but it does include the existing set of policies in place to support renewable generation, such as the RET.  Using the same method as described above, but substituting column seven for column four of table 3, we estimate a NPV cost of $10 billion. ⁽²⁵⁾  This means that if the government were to exit the Paris Agreement (and, hence, not proceed with the NEG), but maintain all other policies which subsidise renewables under the guise of a different emissions reduction policy, the economic cost from 2018-2030 is estimated to be $10 billion.

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THE AGREEMENT IS NOT FUNCTIONING PROPERLY

The Agreement is not functioning as intended.  U.S. President Donald Trump has given formal notice that the United States, which is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, will withdraw from the Agreement.  Few nations are on track to meet their target.  And China, which is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is effectively unbound by the Agreement.

Most Nations are Not Meeting their Obligations

This section uses data from the Climate Action Tracker (CAT). ⁽²⁶⁾  CAT is a consortium of three research organisations, Climate Analytics, NewClimate Institute, and Ecofys, which "track[s] progress towards the globally agreed aim of holding warming well below 2°C, and pursuing efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C."  CAT covers 32 nations which collectively account for 80 per cent of global emissions.

According to data provided by the CAT, the Paris Agreement is disintegrating.  As of writing, just seven nations out of the sampled 32 are on track to meet their national emissions reductions contributions to keeping warming below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. ⁽²⁷⁾  Those nations are Morocco, the Gambia, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Costa Rica, the Philippines, and India.  Collectively, these nations account for just 6.6 per cent global greenhouse gas emissions. ⁽²⁸⁾

However, India's emissions reduction target is largely superfluous.  India's target is to reduce emissions intensity by 33-35 per cent by 2030, compared to 2005 levels. ⁽²⁹⁾  However, Oren Cass, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, argues that India's commitment will have no effect on its emissions trajectory compared to the status quo. ⁽³⁰⁾  Cass cites a number of studies which suggest India would meet its Paris Climate Agreement reduction targets without any policy change.  Cass argues "India reports that its energy efficiency has already improved more than 17 per cent between 2005 and 2012.  Assuming no change in its carbon intensity of energy, India could improve only half as fast going forward and still achieve its 'goal'."

Cass cites several other studies corroborating this view.  This includes the Indian-based Centre for Policy Research which estimates that emissions reductions absent further policy change would see India meeting its emissions reductions targets. ⁽³¹⁾

The European Union is Off Track

The European Union holds itself to be a leader in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  For example, in 2017 the EU won an Ozone Award by the United Nations Environmental Program for its role in negotiating the The Kigali Amendment to the United Nations' Montreal Protocol. ⁽³²⁾

However, the CAT finds the EU's climate policy to be "insufficient".  Specifically, according to the CAT:

"The EU's climate policy has not yet effectively responded to the 1.5°C limit enshrined in the Paris Agreement ... Its 2050 goal of decreasing total GHG emissions by 80-95% below 1990 levels is also not consistent with the Paris Agreement long term warming goal ... neither the historical, nor the projected, rate of emissions reduction will allow the EU to meet its 2030 goal, at least not with currently implemented measures." ⁽³³⁾

These findings are supported by a 2018 publication from the Climate Action Network, a proemissions reductions non-government organisation based in Europe.  The report, Off Target:  Ranking of EU countries' ambition and progress in fighting climate change, analyses the progress made by EU countries in implementing domestic policies designed to meet the Paris Agreement emission reduction targets.  The report finds that "all EU countries are off target:  they are failing to increase their climate action in line with the Paris Agreement goal", and that "no single EU country is performing sufficiently in both ambition and progress in reducing carbon emissions." ⁽³⁴⁾

Even France, where the Paris Agreement was drafted, scores just 17 out of 100 for its "progress on implementation of 2020 targets".

Interestingly, the report also shows that there is a large gap between the extent to which countries promote the climate change agenda and implement tangible policy.  For example, whereas France scores just 17/100 for its progress on reaching 2020 targets, it scores 83/100 for its "promotion of more ambitious EU targets and strategies".  Similarly, the Netherlands scores just 25/100 for its progress on implementation of 2020 targets, but scores 75/100 for its promotion of more ambitious EU targets and strategies.

For Western European nations, there is a wide divergence between how much they talk about climate change policy and what they actually implement in practice.  This gives rise to the "talk-towalk" ratio which captures the divergence between talk of action and actual action.  To estimate this the value for "promotion of more ambitious EU targets and strategies" (talk) is divided by the value for "progress on implementation of 2020 targets" (walk).  Western European nations are twice as likely to promote the benefits of climate action as they are to implement policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  France is the worst offender, with a ratio of 4.9, meaning its policy makers are close to five times as likely to talk than walk. ⁽³⁵⁾

The United States has Withdrawn

On 1 June 2017, US President Donald Trump announced that the United States would be withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement. ⁽³⁶⁾  In announcing the withdrawal, President Trump argued:

"Thus, as of today, the United States will cease all implementation of the non-binding Paris Accord and the draconian financial and economic burdens the agreement imposes on our country.  This includes ending the implementation of the nationally determined contribution and, very importantly, the Green Climate Fund which is costing the United States a vast fortune."

In absolute terms, the United States is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for 12.1 per cent of global emissions. ⁽³⁷⁾

China's Target is effectively non-binding

China is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases, accounting for 23.75 per cent of global emissions.  China's commitment requires its emissions to peak by 2030.  This means the Paris Agreement has no binding effect on China.  Provided emissions come down after 2030, China will be meeting its requirements.  But the Paris Agreement ends in 2030, so it is superfluous. ⁽³⁸⁾  As Graph 2 shows, under the Paris Agreement, China is expected to increase its emissions by 150 per cent by 2030 on 2005 levels. ⁽³⁹⁾

Graph 2:  Change in emissions under Paris

Source:  Department of Energy and Environment

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THE AGREEMENT MAKES NO NOTICEABLE DIFFERENCE TO THE ENVIRONMENT

Dr Bjorn Lomborg, President of the Copenhagen Consensus Center and visiting professor at Copenhagen Business School, is far from a global warming or climate change "skeptic".  Lomborg is an advocate of the view that human activity is a leading cause of global warming, and that global warming is a net negative.  As stated in his chapter to Climate Change the Facts:  2017 "Global warming is a real phenomenon, it is mostly man-made, and it will have a long-run overall negative impact." ⁽⁴⁰⁾  However, Lomborg argues that simply believing those assertions doesn't automatically imply that any policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is beneficial.

To assess the effect that the policy promises under the Paris Agreement could have on the global temperature, Lomborg uses the climate model MAGICC 6, which is the latest version of a simple climate model used in all the five Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports from 1990 to 2014.  He finds that adopting all promises under the Paris Agreement from 2016-2030 will reduce the temperature increase in 2100 by just 0.05°C. ⁽⁴¹⁾  And this is assuming that all commitments are met.  As discussed in the previous section, few nations are on track to meet the emissions reduction commitments.

Australia is a very minor subset of the totality of the Paris Agreement.  Australia accounts for just 1.5 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. ⁽⁴²⁾  Even the complete de-industrialisation of the Australian economy would not make a noticeable difference to the global climate.

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WHAT SHOULD GOVERNMENT POLICY BE INSTEAD?

Energy Policy

Energy policy should be completely technologically neutral.  This means removing emissions reductions as an objective of energy policy.  Emissions reductions necessarily favour less carbon intensive forms of energy generation, such as wind and solar, at the expense of coal.  Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement would mean the emission reductions component of energy policy would be removed.  This should not be replaced with an alternative emission reduction policy.

Rather, all subsidies and non-subsidy regulatory interventions which favour one form of energy generation over another should be removed.  This would mean electricity retailers and large energy users would purchase energy generation in a combination that is consistent with the preferences of businesses and consumers.  Most likely this would mean the focus would be primarily on affordability and reliability, rather than emissions reductions.

Environmental Policy

There is no shortage of environmental problems that need to be managed or resolved.  Many of these problems are local and tangible in nature, rather than global and abstract.  People can improve their local environment without imposing draconian taxes and regulations on others in their own country and in other nations.  Such local environmental problems include:  littering, the build-up of refuse in waterways and the ocean, waste disposal, and air and noise pollution in built-up urban areas.

Instead of seeking to impose government regulation on others, those who are concerned about environmental outcomes could instead seek to resolve those issues voluntarily.  Examples include the voluntary acquisition of land by conservation groups in order to use that land for conservation, rather than developmental, purposes;  local community organisations that clean-up litter and raise awareness of local environmental issues;  and larger not-for-profit groups and non-government organisations that enlist help to address broader problems, such as the build-up of pollution in the ocean.

An example of the latter is being undertaken is by a group called the Ocean Cleanup.  The Ocean Cleanup is a not-for-profit organisation that is developing technologies with the aim of ridding the world's oceans of plastics.  The organisation was founded by Boyan Slat in 2013 at the age of 18 with his own income.  The venture was subsequently built-up by a team of volunteers who developed a feasibility study, and then by a crowdfunding campaign which attracted the support of over 38,000 funders from 160 countries, and raised over 2 million USD in 100 days. ⁽⁴³⁾

The Ocean Cleanup was the result of voluntary initiative.  One young man identified a problem and went about solving it through enlisting the help of others and raising funds from those willing to provide it voluntarily.  No compulsion, regulation, taxes, or imposition of the lives of others was considered necessary.

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CONCLUSION

Australia should withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement.  Reducing emissions under the Agreement will result in significant and irreparable economic damage.  Based on data and analysis undertaken by the consulting firm Jacobs, this paper estimates the cost of meeting the Paris Agreement to be $52 billion in NPV terms over 2018-2030.

Further, the Agreement is not functioning as originally intended.  The United States, which is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases, has given formal notice that it will be withdrawing from the Agreement.  None of the EU nations are on track to meet their commitments.  And China, the world's largest emitter, is unconstrained by the Agreement.

Even if every nation met their obligations, there would be little discernible effect on the environment.  The best available evidence suggests that a fully function Paris Agreement would result in just 0.05 degree less warming than under the status quo.

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ENDNOTES

1. Department of Environment and Energy, "Paris Agreement", Canberra, Australia

2. Department of Environment and Energy, "Australia's 2030 Emissions Reduction Target", Canberra, Australia

3. Energy Security Board, "Draft Detailed Design Consultation Paper", (15 June 2018)

4. The new Royal Adelaide Hospital in Adelaide cost $2.4 billion. Report of the Auditor General, "New Royal Adelaide Hospital: March 2018", Government of South Australia, (3 May 2018)

5. One decade of Gonski 2.0 funding is $24.5 billion (the "Quality Schools" package). Commonwealth government, "Budget 2018-19: Budget overview", Canberra, Australia, (2018)

6. Funding for the NDIS from 2018-19 to 2021-22 is $43 billion. Commonwealth government, "Budget 2018-19: Budget paper no.1", Canberra, Australia, (2018)

7. Taking into account levy payments, and costs of textbooks, uniforms, and other ancillary costs.

8. Average credit card debt is $4,268

9. Average annual household electricity bills are around $1,700.

10. Commonwealth government, "Budget 2018-19: Stronger growth to create more jobs", Canberra, Australia, (2018)

11. Jacobs Group, "Report to the Independent Review into the Future Security of the National Electricity Market", Melbourne, Australia, (21 June 2017). The author would also like the acknowledge the considerable assistance provided by Dr. David Carland in the preparation of these estimates, as well as assistance provided by Kyle Wightman.

12. Department of Environment and Energy, "Quarterly Update of Australia's National Greenhouse Gas Inventory: December 2017", Canberra, Australia, (May 2018)

13. Ibid.

14. The Jacobs report assumes a 28 per cent reduction to greenhouse gas emissions on 2005 levels, rather than 26 per cent. The two percentage point difference is immaterial to the final analysis.

15. Adapted from Jacobs, "Report to the Independent Review" (2017)

16. This itself is an indictment of the cost-benefit analysis underpinning government decisions in this area. To this end, I have initiated freedom of information (FOI) request with the relevant Commonwealth government departments to determine if such analyses has been undertaken. As of writing the FOI requests remain ongoing.

17. The Labor Party, "Labor's 2020 target for a renewable energy future", Policy Document, (October 2007)

18. About the National Electricity Market (NEM) - AEMO

19. Parliament of Australia, "The Renewable Energy Target: a quick guide", Canberra, Australia, (2014)

20. NEM wholesale prices from the Australia Energy Regulator. Prices adjusted using CPI data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Note: Tasmania was added to the NEM in 2006. Data from 1998 to 2005 includes NSW, Vic, QLD, and SA. Data for 2006 and 2007 includes Tasmania.

21. A four per cent discount rate is used rather than, say, seven per cent, because firstly a portion of the revenue stream of renewable energy generators is effectively guaranteed by the obligation placed on retailers to acquire more renewable energy than they would under the status quo. This reduces commercial risk. Secondly, this paper is estimating the social cost, rather than just the commercial costs, of the Paris Agreement. It is generally recognised that the social discount rate is lower than the commercial discount rate. For a discussion of the effects of a partially government-backed revenue stream see Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development, "National Public Private Partnership Guidelines: Volume 5 Discount Rate Methodology Guidance", Canberra, Australia, (2013). For a discussion of the social discount rate see Department of Finance, "Handbook of Cost-Benefit Analysis", Canberra, Australia, (2006)

22. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, there were 6,070,316 families in Australia at the time of the 2016 census. Australia Bureau of Statistics, "2016 Census", Canberra, Australia, (2016)

23. Note: if "households" is used rather than "family" the estimated per household cost is $5,200. This is based on an estimated 10 million "dwellings" in Australia in 2016. However, "dwellings", as defined by the ABS, did not need to be inhabited on census night but just need to be "habitable". As one individual or one family can own multiple dwellings, this is not considered an appropriate measure.

24. Wind operates at a maximum of 37 per cent capacity, whereas coal can operate up to 81 per cent capacity. See Australian Energy Council.

25. Again, a discount rate of 4 per cent is used.

26. Climate Action Tracker

27. Climate Action Tracker

28. Carbon Brief

29. United Nations, "India's Intended Nationally Determined Contributions", (2017).

30. Cass, Oren, "Testimony of Oren M. Cass before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology", (1 December 2015)

31. Navroz K. Dubash et al, "Informing India's Energy and Climate Debate: Policy Lessons from Modelling Studies," Centre for Policy Research, April 2015

32. European Commission

33. Climate Action Tracker

34. Climate Action Network Europe, "Off Target: Ranking of EU countries' ambition and progress in fighting climate change", Brussels, Belgium, (June 2018)

35. Nations included are Sweden, Portugal, France, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Denmark, France, Belgium, Germany, Finland, and Austria.

36. The White House, "Statement by President Trump on the Paris Climate Accord", (1 June 2017).

37. Carbon Brief

38. United Nations, "Enhanced Actions on Climate Change: China's Intended Nationally Determined Contributions", (2017).

39. Data for chart is sourced from Department of Environment and Energy, "Australia's 2030 climate change target", Canberra, Australia.

40. Lomborg, Bjorn, "The impact and cost of the 2015 Paris Climate Summit, with a Focus on US policies", Chapter 15 from Marohasy, Jennifer (ed.), "Climate change the facts: 2017", Connor Court publishing, Melbourne, Australia, (2017)

41. Ibid

42. Marohasy, Jennifer (ed), "Climate Change: The Facts 2017", Connor Court Publishing, Melbourne, Australia, (2018)

43. See The Ocean Cleanup

Government Snooping Will Not Stop At The Banks

Here's an idea.  In order to improve the confidence of the public in democracy, the federal government should embed "Taxpayer Compliance Officers" in cabinet and the Expenditure Review Committee.  The role of such officers would be three-fold.  They would have a general responsibility for ensuring taxpayers' money was spent efficiently and not wasted, they would ensure compliance with all the processes and procedures appropriate to good government, and finally the officers would be proactive and would be charged with stopping bad policies before they were implemented.

Taxpayer Compliance Officers would sit in on cabinet meetings, pop in to the Prime Minister's office to ask question the PM and the PM's staff, and would read and vet all cabinet submissions.  Officers would be embedded for up to three months at a time and would be regularly rotated to avoid them getting too close to ministers and public servants.  Once a year, Taxpayer Compliance Officers would issue a public report detailing how the government was complying with its responsibilities to taxpayers.

Without doubt such a scheme would be immensely popular.  Taxpayer Compliance Officers would help satisfy the public's demand that government be more accountable and transparent, and the scheme would go a long way to demonstrating to the community that governments were complying with the social licence to operate.  The involvement of Taxpayer Compliance Officers in every aspect and at every level of government decision-making would ensure that government acted in the best interests of the community and not simply for the benefit of whichever political party happened to be in power at the time.

If Taxpayer Compliance Officers were already in place, they'd be able to explain to the public the process for the decision of the federal government to give nearly half a billion dollars of taxpayers' funds to an organisation with six full-time staff, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, without a tender process and without the Foundation even asking for the money.

Such a scheme would overturn most of the principles of representative and parliamentary democracy, but many would argue that the public's trust in politicians is now so low that drastic times call for drastic measures.

Taxpayer Compliance Officers sounds like a radical idea — but it isn't.  On Tuesday, the Turnbull government announced such a scheme to apply to the private sector, whereby staff from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission will be embedded in banks.  At his press conference when the Treasurer, Scott Morrison, was questioned about the scheme — "Treasurer, can I ask, if it will work, can it be extended to other sectors, like mining companies, insurance companies, super funds you heard are problematic too?" — the Treasurer replied:  "We have an open mind on all of these things.  Take the Banking Executive Accountability Regime.  I've flagged very clearly that we're keen to extend that into other sectors once we've stood up the model and it's working ..."

The Banking Executive Accountability Regime gives the government the power to decide who financial institutions can employ in executive positions and how much those executives can be paid.

What will be left of the free enterprise system in Australia after the Coalition government is finished with it is anyone's guess.

If the Coalition is going to start embedding government officials to monitor and control non-government organisations, there's no reason why the Coalition should stop at the banks.  Before Labor rushes to embrace the government's plan for the banks, it might stop to consider its reaction to the Office of the Australian Building and Construction Commissioner embedding its staff in the headquarters of the Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union or the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority embedding its staff in the offices of industry superannuation funds.

In these pages yesterday, Professor Rodney Maddock of the Monash Business School outlined in convincing and persuasive detail why the federal government is so bad.  As he wrote in relation to the government's regulation of the finance sector — "There are fundamental issues of privacy, of private ownership, of the freedom to run a business, and of responsibility for the outcomes, which need to be discussed."

Unfortunately that's a discussion the Turnbull government at the moment either doesn't understand, or doesn't want to have — or both.

Free Speech Now Comes With Security Costs?

La Trobe University is encouraging censorious behaviour by charging special security fees for an event with commentator Bettina Arndt hosted by the campus Liberal club.

Security fees create a heckler's veto:  the charge empowers the people who disagree to organise the biggest, most aggressive and therefore costliest protest they can muster.  The Liberal club could ultimately be forced to cancel the event if security fees become too high.  In the end, the censors win, free speech loses.

The charging of security fees to the Liberal club is a form of victim blaming.  The disturbance is not expected to come from within event, it could only come from outside.  It makes no sense to punish Liberal students for the danger imposed by others.

There is also a serious inconsistency issue which reveals a university closed to opposing perspectives.  If La Trobe does not charge left-wing groups for speakers then why are they charging Liberal students for a speaker?  Is it because they are seeking to discourage and punish certain speech?

This inconsistency would be unconstitutional in the United States, where the Supreme Court has declared that the content of speech is not justification for additional costs.

This is why the University of California at Berkeley paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to secure events with provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos and conservative Ben Shapiro.  The university may not have liked their speech, but they declared themselves open to free debate and put money behind their principles.

La Trobe appears to be taking a very different approach to free debate.  Revealingly, the security bill came after La Trobe withdrew their initial ban of Arndt.

Arndt has become a controversial figure.  She is a sex therapist who writes and speaks about gender relations and domestic violence.  These are difficult topics — particularly when you question the dominant narrative about campus sexual harassment and assault, as Arndt does.

In an era of intellectual monoculture on campus, Arndt is precisely the type of person that our universities should be welcoming.  She helps provide the missing counterpoint to the left wing perspective, the missing debate that is necessary for effective teaching and research.

John Stuart Mill wrote that "He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that".  You have no reason to prefer your own ideas if you do not understand the opposing perspective.  Nor is it good enough to "hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers," Mill says, "He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them ... he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form".

The near ban and disgraceful security fees are not the first sign that something is wrong at La Trobe.  My free speech on campus research has revealed La Trobe's serious lack of viewpoint diversity.

My Free Speech on Campus Audit awarded La Trobe a "Red" ranking for policies that forbid "unintentional ... offence" and language that causes "emotional injury".  It is impossible to freely explore controversial ideas without potentially causing unintentional offence or perhaps even emotional distress.  It is difficult to hear ideas that are different from your own — but being intellectually challenged is the entire purpose of a university.

The on-campus experience reflects these policies.  Students have told me about lecturers encouraging them "to pursue social justice causes" — instead of teaching all ideas and letting students reach their own conclusions.  They have also reported that academics mock conservatives in class and give them lower marks.

In response classical liberal and conservative students are pretending to hold a left-wing perspective or say nothing.  "Generally, I don't talk in class on political issues," one student, who has seen their conservative classmates harassed by tutors, said.

In the past, La Trobe was well known for their radicalism, protests, and differing ideas.  Today, the university is suffering from the left wing monoculture disease.  La Trobe has a responsibility to not shy away from debate and encourage the voicing of a range of perspectives.

The Kids Aren't All Left

Last week Elin Ersson, a 21-year-old Swedish student, halted the deportation of an Afghan asylum seeker from Sweden by refusing to sit down on a plane.

Not shy of the publicity, Ersson broadcast the affair live on Facebook and subsequently received substantial international media attention.  The usual suspects have held Ersson up as a hero and a welcome sign of growing activism.

Emma Taylor-Collins, a PhD candidate at the University of Birmingham, wrote an article in The Conversation with the headline "Nearly 60 per cent of young children are social justice activists — a future full of Elin Erssons".

Let's unpack this claim.  Are 60 per cent of young people really "social justice activists"?

The answer is a resounding no.

Taylor-Collins cites a 2017 survey by Ipsos MORI, commissioned by the British government, which found that 58 per cent of 10-20-year-olds have taken part in "practical action in the service of others to create positive change".  What Taylor-Collins does not mention is that this included a range of activities including "fundraising, campaigning, tutoring/mentoring and giving time to charity".

Taylor-Collins gives the example of the "children [who] participated in the recent protests during Trump's visit to London".  But the survey does not capture the ideological tinge of their social action, nor does it exclusively relate to political change.  They could have been campaigning for the Conservative Party or fundraising to help a pro-Brexit campaign.  They could have been volunteering for a homeless charity or mentoring a disadvantaged kid.  None of this makes them a social justice warrior.

There are broader problems in claiming that all young people are like Elin Erssons.

Youth activism tends to be confined to the higher socioeconomic social strata.  Ipsos MORI found that the most affluent young Brits are 60 per cent more likely to participate in regular social action.  Youth activism is, therefore, most representative of elite social justice values, not broader views held by young people.

When people like Ersson speak out — which they, of course, are welcome to do — they are only speaking for the views of a segment of their generation.  They are not speaking for the thousands of young people attending Jordan Peterson events across the world, quietly listening to David Rubin podcasts between their lectures, or coming to Generation Liberty events across Australia.  Although it is true that young people tend to veer to the left, they are not exclusively of one mindset and are more open to different ideas than usually claimed.

The Growing Freedom survey found that 60 per cent of young Australians are interested in starting their own business one day — indicating less of a social justice tinge and more of an aspirational self-starter generation.  The survey also found that the majority of young Australians (52 per cent) who have entered the workforce support smaller government, fewer services and lower taxes.  This finding shows that once young people have skin in the game, that is, they are paying taxes themselves, their social justice views diminish.

The Conversation, which is Melbourne based and primarily funded by the Victorian government and universities, uses the tagline "Academic rigour, journalistic flair".  Taylor-Collins's article certainly shows a lot of flair (read:  nonsense);  it doesn't show much academic rigour.

Fairfax Finally Learning How The Free Market Works

Yesterday Fairfax Media and Nine Entertainment announced that they will merge, forming a media organisation worth $4.2 billion.

The new organisation will be known as Nine.

This merger has only been able to occur due to the recent media market liberalisation by the Coalition Government in abolishing the two-out-of-three rule.  Which prevented a media organisation from owning local newspapers, television stations and radio stations in a single city.

This reform was strongly opposed by many on the left, as well as Labor and the Greens.

When the rule came into place, then Treasurer Paul Keating famously said media organisations could be princes of print and queens of the screen, but not both.

Without long advocated media reform.  Fairfax would have been left languishing, unable to expand its business into other areas of the media.

With the explosion of Google, Facebook, Netflix and other globally competitive organisations that have given consumers a digestible way to consume their media, to argue anything other than market liberalisation of the media now looks petulant and backward.

Fairfax's news arm is clearly in need of a restructure.  Domain contributes over a third of Fairfax's total earnings.  Nine CEO Hugh Marks has admitted that Stan and Domain, not the news section, was the primary motivator for the merger.

Fairfax mastheads have been subject to what seems like yearly cuts and staff restructure, resulting in strikes by the media union, and the inevitable complaints about a lack of media diversity.

News of the merger triggered the same tired argument by many on the left about the lack of political "media diversity".  The Canberra Press Gallery already leans to the left.  Many journalists and writers at the NewsCorp daily's and The Australian lean to the left, even though its political offerings tend to be centre right.  Have you ever seen a conservative or classical liberal opinion piece at The Guardian recently?  Of course not.

The merger also triggered claims about the merger being a threat to democracy.  Last time I checked democracy was about an individual's choice and freedom.  If declining revenues are anything to go by, Australians are voting with their feet.

There has never been more media proliferation and diversity as there is today, to argue anything otherwise is rubbish.  If you are in the market for a one-sided clickbait site that openly leans left, there are multiple news outlets for you.

There was no better example of media introspection after the recent passing of a motion to privatise the ABC at Liberal Party Federal Council, it became one of the most talked about national political issues.  To its credit, the Sydney Morning Herald published an opinion piece by NSW Young Liberal President Harry Stutchbury about why the ABC should be privatised.  It should be assumed that the majority of SMH readers would not agree, but Guardian journalist Amanda Meade was quick to point out that Mr Stutchbury's piece was somehow a sign of a lurch to the right for the masthead.

How ridiculous, that a newspaper would publish an opposing view of a policy debate of national significance is criticised, it is not a sign of a lurch to the right, but the right thing to do.  The Guardian is a private media organisation;  it is within its right to have a singular green left wing view on all public policy issues.  However, speculating and lecturing other media organisations for having viewpoint diversity shows how far from balanced they are.

The elephant in the room on the declining news revenues of Fairfax, that none of its writers want to talk about is the ABC.  It is a $1.1 billion behemoth that provides exactly the same viewpoint and opinion as Fairfax, subsidised by the taxpayer.

With the exception of the Australian Financial Review, they have never quite got their head around it.  Why would a left-wing consumer of news pay for a leaning of journalism they can quite easily get for free over at the ABC?

Ultimately, enabling media organisations to scale to meet the needs of consumers is the right thing to do.  Noise over at the media union calling for the ACCC to block this merger has direct equivalence to the taxi industry calling for Uber to be banned.  The future is here, consumers are digesting all sorts of products, including media, in a way that is most accessible to them.  Learn to deal with it to adapt.

Fairfax, Nine Merger A Win For Media And Consumers

The merger of Fairfax Media and Nine Entertainment is good for media diversity, good for journalists, good for the Australian public, and demonstrates the benefits of the Turnbull government's media reforms.

An unemployed journalist who once worked for a newspaper that's gone out of business isn't doing much to add to media diversity.  That's the reality that those who harken back to the days before the internet, Instagram, and mobile phones fail to grasp.

The journalists' union is wrong.  The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance yesterday announced it opposed the merger because supposedly "it harms the ability of an independent media to scrutinise the powerful, threatens the functioning of a healthy democracy [and] undermines ... quality journalism."  The merger is the best opportunity any journalist currently working at Fairfax Media has of keeping their job.  True, it will now be a job at "Nine" not "Fairfax" — but good reportage and good writing will always be read and will always have a market regardless of who's publishing it.  Certainly it's sad to lose the history of a name, but the end of the name "Fairfax Media" is no less sad then when David Syme and Co became a subsidiary of John Fairfax and Sons Ltd in the 1980s.

It was Fairfax Media as a stand-alone company that announced last year it was cutting 115 newsroom staff from The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Brisbane Times and WA Today.  A media company's "independence" doesn't guarantee anything, and it definitely doesn't guarantee its survival.  The only media company in Australia guaranteed to survive (for the time being) is the ABC.  The ABC survives because the political retribution it threatens against any political party contemplating reducing its taxpayer funding.  The way that today the ABC board talks of the need for the ABC to continue to exist is reminiscent of how Sir Frank Packer talked in the 1940s of the "birthright" of his magazines to receive access to government-rationed newsprint in preference to his competitors.

If the ABC truly is the much-beloved national institution that its supporters claim it to be, presumably the consumers of the products the ABC provides would happily and voluntarily choose to pay for those products.

The biggest threats to the functioning of democracy in Australia come from what governments do, not from what commercial media companies decide to do.  Defamation laws, legislative restrictions on reporting put in place under the guise of "national security", judge-ordered suppression orders on court proceedings, and provisions such as Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act are all the product of government decisions.

The Fairfax/Nine merger is also a win for taxpayers.  It should put to rest, for the time being, the suggestion contemplated last year during the Senate inquiry into the future of public interest journalism that taxpayers should provide financial assistance to bail out ailing newspaper companies.  It's ironic that it is often suggested that one way of ensuring the existence of an "independent" media is to have the government fund it.

The point of the merger is that it will allow the new entity to get new customers, viewers, readers, and listeners in a way that by themselves neither Fairfax or Nine could do.  Of course the merger might not work, and most mergers don't — but a merger is better than the alternative.

The combined Fairfax/Nine with a market capitalisation of around $4 billion will also be of a size better able to compete with the overseas media behemoths.  However to put this into perspective, the market capitalisation of, for example, Netflix is in equivalent terms $216 billion.  Reed Hastings the CEO and co-founder of Netflix owns around 2.5 per cent of the company.  Hastings' net worth is more than the market capitalisation of both Fairfax Media and Nine Entertainment combined.  Apple, Alphabet (the parent company of Google), and Microsoft each have a market capitalisation in Australian dollars of more than $1000 billion ($1 trillion).

Whether any Australian media company will ever be able to compete with the might of such organisations is an open question, but almost certainly the new "Nine" media company will stand a better chance of doing so than Nine and Fairfax standing alone.

Finally, Parliament Can Act On Restoring The Right To Free Speech

There is no right not to be ­offended.  Yet dozens of provisions on the commonwealth statute books make it unlawful or illegal to ­offend.

There is a right to freedom of speech, and each of these laws is an attack on that right.

The existence of these laws is an embarrassment to Australia as a country that holds itself out as a liberal democracy.  As a minimum, from the perspective of the restoration of free speech, every one of these laws should be repealed.

And as luck would have it, a bill that does just that was introduced by NSW Liberal Democratic Party senator David Leyonhjelm just last month.

It's a revealing read.  No doubt readers of this paper will be familiar with perhaps the most famous legislative use of the word "offend" — section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 makes it ­unlawful to "offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate" another person on the basis of their "race, colour or national or ethnic origin".

But the Leyonhjelm bill demonstrates that section 18C is not alone.  Far from it.  The bill catalogues more than a dozen provisions that make it unlawful or illegal to offend.

Most people would have no problem removing some of the provisions included in the bill.  Did you know it's unlawful to register a name in respect of a plant variety if the government deems it to be offensive?  Better yet, did you know about the Plant Breeder's Act 1994?  It's not clear how society functioned before 1994.

Under the present Criminal Code Act 1995 you could also find yourself in jail if you use the postal service to "cause offence".

Cause offence?  Until recently I lived in a local government area where the council used the postal service to send me a five-times-a-year magazine called Divercity, which helpfully recorded all the left-wing, virtue-signalling garbage the council was engaged in.

That was pretty offensive.  And why five times a year?  Surely that's enough to make it an aggravated offence.

The removal of other provisions — despite the logic of the argument — is a bit harder to swallow.

But the great thing about the Leyonhjelm bill is that it is con­sistent.  And it progresses a debate that has been raging for some years now.  The argument for ­repealing section 18C is clear ­because the practical consequences of the provision are so well known.

The Australian public has been made aware of the existence of this law through a number of high-profile cases.  And through those examples, Australians have made up their minds about the malevolence at the heart of this provision.

We don't want to see university students such as Alex Wood and Calum Thwaites dragged through secret legal proceedings for sensible commentary about race-based university programs;  we don't want cartoonists such as the late, great Bill Leak hauled ­before a government bureaucrat for making funny cultural observations;  we don't want journalists censored for writing about ­important matters of public policy, which is what happened to ­Andrew Bolt in 2011.

And if it's wrong to make it ­unlawful to offend in the context of the RDA, then it's also wrong elsewhere.  So the challenge is now before federal parliamentarians.

Because the concept of freedom of speech still holds significant rhetorical power and cultural significance, everyone says they are in favour of it.  But in so many cases this is just not true.

If every time you say the words "I'm in favour of freedom of speech" and then follow it up with the word "but", you might be better off admitting you are not in fact in favour of freedom of speech.

It's not yet the most socially ­acceptable thing to admit, but if it's true and you are willing to say it, you might just be in for a much more honest and interesting ­discussion.  So much modern political debate is hamstrung by ­dishonesty.

Evidently, a majority of federal politicians over the years have paid lip service to the principles of free speech while voting for legislation that places restrictions on it.  Parliamentarians have allowed these restrictions to accumulate and, despite appearing in some cases small and innocuous, they should not be ignored.

Our liberties are often put at risk incrementally.  Overnight ­authoritarianism is rare.  Creeping authoritarianism is much more commonplace.  Every one of these provisions is an attack on our ­freedoms.

The parliament ought to use this opportunity to start making inroads into the hundreds of laws that restrict free speech.  As James Spigelman, a former chairman of the ABC, said in his 2012 Human Rights Day Oration, "there is no right not to be offended".

Sorry Scott, But The GST Fight Isn't Over

It is a safe rule of thumb to assume that whenever a minister or a bureaucrat says "no one will be worse off", that means everyone will be worse off.

For proof of this, consider the so-called GST "reform" proposed by Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison earlier this month.  Morrison's proposal followed the recommendations made by the Productivity Commission to tinker with the formula that underlies the distribution of GST revenue, the already complex process known as "horizontal fiscal equalisation".

The Productivity Commission's recommendations, limited as they were, would have resulted in states like Tasmania and South Australia receiving slightly less than they may have expected to receive in future years under the current system.  Cue the outrage.

South Australian Liberal Treasurer Rob Lucas branded the PC's proposal as "disastrous", while the Tasmanian economist Saul Eslake predicted American style inequalities between the states would develop.  Dismally, the Federal Treasurer considered the PC's option would "move too far away from the 'fair go' principle of HFE, and risk leaving smaller states behind".

In other words, the Productivity Commission's reform, insubstantial as they were, were a bridge too far.  Too many states would be "worse off".

At the core of the federal government's GST proposal is to ensure that no state would be "worse off".  This involves marginal changes to the HFE formula and the introduction of a "relativity floor" to ensure that Western Australia's share of the GST pool does not drop below a certain level again.

In other words, instead of losing $4bn in GST revenue to the other states and territories each year, WA would in the future only lose one or two billion dollars each year.  This has been reported as a big "win" for the West.

But even so, WA's increased share will not come from other states — the federal government will provide a series of funding top ups to ensure that no state's share is lower because of the change.

So in a way, no state will be worse off.  In another, more correct way, every single taxpayer in the country will be worse off, as they are asked to front up the billions of dollars to support this massive increase in federal spending.

Since the states aren't in the position of levying the tax or incurring the debt to support this spending increase, it is unsurprising that the states have generally welcomed this proposal.  This is vertical fiscal imbalance at work — the states depend on the GST to fund their spending activities, but do not answer for how that money is collected in the first place.

The states only incentive is to maximise the amount they collect.  These incentives are enhanced by very real and persistent effects of the equalisation process.  Under fiscal equalisation, over $104 billion has been transferred from New South Wales, Western Australia, and Victoria to the other states and territories since the introduction of the GST in 2000.

Under this neo-Marxist model of distributing GST revenue "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" there is a substantial amount of money up for grabs if a state can ensure they remain in the need column, not the ability column.

Actual reform of the GST would see the premises of fiscal equalisation challenged at its foundations.  As long as the current system remains in place, in any form, states will be discouraged from pursuing pro-growth policy reform.  States that bear the cost of promoting contentious reforms will not necessarily receive all the benefits in terms of state government revenue, but will certainly bear the political costs.

In the same way that people can be induced to remain in joblessness by way of financial dependence on the government, state governments can also fall into similar poverty traps.  By effectively rewarding smaller jurisdictions to forego revenue from their own state, equalisation perversely makes those states more reliant on other jurisdictions.  A state like Tasmania, which receives over 40 per cent of its state revenue from GST payments, is particularly sensitive to this.

There are numerous practical flaws with the GST, but the core of the problem is the larger institutional problem of the loss of state fiscal autonomy.

One of the common justifications for fiscal equalisation is that it compensates states for having lost the ability to levy taxes of their own, through a series of pro-Canberra High Court decisions.  Indeed, the extent of Australia's vertical fiscal imbalance is among the worst in the world.

Following two High Court decisions in 1997 that deemed a range of state franchise and licence fees constitutionally invalid, a centrally administered GST was offered as a replacement for the loss of state revenue.

But the centralised system merely compounds the problem of lost autonomy.  When a federation has institutionalised state autonomy, a state is able to levy its own taxes and determine which rate applies in that jurisdiction (and whether there needs to be a tax at all).  This enables jurisdictional competition, where different states compete with one another to introduce the best range of policies to attract business and individuals to operate in their jurisdiction.

The states now have little control over a major source of their own revenue.  The confusion from having one level of government collecting taxes and another responsible for service delivery fosters the endless blame game where governments fall short of their governmental responsibilities.  This diminishes democratic accountability.

The Productivity Commission's recommendations may have led to slight technical improvements in the GST process.  But as long as the principle of fiscal equalisation remains in place we will continue to see fundamentally inequitable results of states generating most of the revenue but receiving considerably less.

At the very least, we should acknowledge that central-imposed equalisation is an undesirable goal.  The only winners of this system are the bureaucrats that run it and the state and federal politicians that play with the money.

Aiming instead for neutrality by letting the states keep the revenue they generate themselves is the only "fair go" option.

How Pessimism Helps The Bureaucrats

Why we so often believe things are getting worse when in fact they're getting better, why bureaucracies always get bigger not smaller, and why governments ban plastic bags is explained in an academic paper published last month in Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

"Prevalence-induced concept change in human judgment" could turn out to be one of the most significant pieces of social science research published in recent years.  It's six authors include Daniel Gilbert, professor of psychology at Harvard University, whose book Stumbling on Happiness has sold more than a million copies.

The paper can be summarised as:  "In a series of experiments, we show that people often respond to decreases in the prevalence of a stimulus by expanding their concept of it.  When blue dots become rare, participants began to see purple dots as blue;  when threatening faces became rare, participants began to see neutral faces as threatening ... this "prevalence-induced concept change" occurred even when participants were forewarned about it and even when they were instructed and paid to resist it.  Social problems may seem intractable in part because reductions in their prevalence lead people to see more of them."

One of the experiments the researchers conducted was to show participants a series of 1000 coloured dots shaded on a continuum from very purple to very blue.  Participants were asked to designate whether a dot was blue.  Participants were split into two groups, one group shown the same number of blue dots (the "stable prevalence condition") and another group shown a lesser number of blue dots (the "decreasing prevalence condition").  The researchers found, "participants in the decreasing prevalence condition were more likely to identify dots as blue when those dots appeared in a final trial than when those dots appeared in an initial trial.  In other words, when the prevalence of blue dots decreased, participants' concept of blue expanded to include dots that it had previously excluded."

What's interesting is that the participants' perception of what was a blue dot changed, even after they were told the prevalence of blue dots would decrease, and even after they were offered monetary incentives to be consistent in their judgment of what was and wasn't a blue dot.

THE SCIENCE OF "CREEP"

The paper cites two other experiments.  Participants were shown a series of images of computer-generated human faces ranked on a continuum of "very threatening" to "not very threatening".  As the prevalence of "very threatening" faces was reduced, "participants' concept of threat expanded to include targets that it had previously excluded".

The researchers then expanded their experiments to consider whether abstract concepts could expand.  Participants were shown 240 proposals for scientific experiments ranked on a continuum from "very ethical" to "very unethical".  Again, when the prevalence of unethical research proposals decreased, participants' concept of what was unethical expanded to include what had previously been excluded.

The researchers are correct to say, "These results have sobering implications", and they were careful to acknowledge they "took no position" on whether expanding a concept is necessarily good or bad.  They reference the fact that "creep" is a well-known phenomenon, as in "feature creep" (the unintended expansion of a product's features over time), "scope creep" (the unintended expansion of a team's mandate over time), and "mission creep" (the unintended expansion of a campaign's objectives over time).

Few bureaucracies will ever admit their job is done, either because of their own self-interest or because as the paper says, "even well-meaning agents may sometimes fail to recognise the success of their own efforts".  And sometimes bureaucracies and governments are not well-meaning — they just want more power over people's lives.

"Prevalence-induced concept change" has fascinating consequences for how we understand modern-day politics.

The paper notes:  "As it turns out, abstract concepts can creep, too.  For example, in 1960, Webster's dictionary defined 'aggression' as 'an unprovoked attack or invasion', but today that concept can include behaviours such as making insufficient eye contact or asking people where they are from.  Many other concepts, such as abuse, bullying, mental disorder, trauma, addiction and prejudice, have expanded of late as well.  Some take these expansions as signs of political correctness and others as signs of social awakening."

Time To Axe Destructive Anti-Discrimination Laws

The recent case of a Sydney barber demonstrates the pressing need to dismantle the growing anti-discrimination regime that threatens our livelihood and our freedom.

The barber at the heart of this latest controversy is a young man by the name of Sam Rahim.  Sam is married to Ronda, and he has two very cute little boys named Kiyan and Boston.  He owns and operates the Hunters Hill Barbershop.

According to Sam, last year a woman walked into his barbershop with her daughter.  She requested that Sam cut her daughter's hair.  Sam refused, and says he cited the fact that he was only trained to cut men's hair.  He recommended a hairdresser across the road.  Apparently not satisfied with Sam's explanation, the woman stormed out of his shop and subsequently made a complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission under the Sex Discrimination Act.

I met Sam in April this year.  I had read reports about his case, and I was visiting Sydney to attend the 2018 Friedman Conference.  I decided to use the opportunity to visit his barbershop and talk with him about the complaint that had been made against him and how he was coping with it all.

The thing that struck me about him is how kind he is.  Sam is an unassuming, softly spoken, young man who obviously cares about his clients and his business.  There is a caricature that appears in your mind when you think of someone who has been accused of sex discrimination.  Sam is about as far from that as you can imagine.  I was left with the impression that he's just a normal bloke, working hard to run his business, provide for his family, and get on with his life.

But following his encounter with Australia's anti-discrimination laws, Sam is lucky his life hasn't been ruined.

Think about that statement for a second.

Once the anti-discrimination machine was in operation the expectation was disaster.

Sam was lucky that the matter didn't proceed to a full trial, and was instead resolved in a private settlement.  He was lucky that he had the good sense to raise money using the crowd-funding website GoFundMe.  And he was lucky that hundreds of people from around the country saw fit to donate their hard-earned money in order to help pay his legal fees.

But without these crucial elements he told me he could have lost everything.

The destruction caused by anti-discrimination laws is too often ignored because of the professed good intentions behind them.  We're told that laws such as the Sex Discrimination Act are required to ensure harmony and equality.  But it's hard to see how those ends have been achieved in this case.

And perhaps more concerning is that the way these so-called good intentions are used to justify laws in a case like this.  In fact, anti-discrimination laws are wrong in principle because they force people to provide services against their will.  This is a form of involuntary servitude.

Not only is this regime wrong in principle, it also detracts from the chaotic but ultimately fulfilling role that inestimably complex human relationships can have on human welfare.

What social malaise has gripped Australia that we seem incapable of meaningfully engaging with one another?  Testing boundaries, resolving conflicts and forgiving one another are vital components of human existence.  But a legal system that governs ever larger portions of our lives threatens to cause the underdevelopment of the skills that are required for human interface.  Too often the modern default is to turn to the state for a sterile and simplistic resolution to the difficult problems thrown up by social interaction.

Despite the existence of the Human Rights Commission and the mountains of oppressive anti-discrimination law that body administers, there is so much cause for hope.

While this case has had an extraordinary impact on Sam and his family, it has also opened the eyes of thousands of people who may never have known that this country was home to such authoritarian laws.  And those people are part of a growing discussion about the kind of place they want to live.

Just this week, a post went up on the Hunters Hill Barbershop Facebook page:

"As we are all on the topic, let's have an open discussion.  Should a barber be allowed to say no to females wanting a cut at any barber shop?  (I'm not specifically talking about my barber shop, this is just a general question) also should barber shops be considered for an exemption from the anti-discrimination act (law) as positive discrimination (e.g like female only gyms) What are your thoughts?"

The responses exemplify the Australia I love.  They are sensible, well-reasoned, supportive, funny, and warm.  And they're overwhelmingly in favour of freedom.

Labor Is Setting A New Gold Standard For Changing The Rules

Sometimes you have to wonder how politicians can be so utterly shameless when it comes to their own self-interest.  The Andrews government's changes to the Victorian Electoral Act, currently before Parliament, are the perfect example.  If passed, the bill would allow for the brazen manipulation of the democratic process, at great expense for us, the Victorian taxpayers.

Of course, politicians gaming the system in their favour is nothing new.  But with its Electoral Legislation Amendment Bill, Labor is setting a new gold standard for changing the rules for their own advantage.

One of the bill's most egregious features is limiting the amount of money that individuals can privately donate to political parties and candidates, which will be capped at just $1000 a year.  Such a stringent donations cap would be a grievous attack on freedom of speech and political communication.

It is self-evident that genuine democracy requires that all citizens are free to speak on political issues.  But free speech is more than just the right to literally speak.  Thousands of Australians exercise their right to participate not by speaking themselves, but by supporting other organisations — including political parties — which espouse values and policies with which they agree.  This includes financial support.

Limiting Victorians' ability to donate money to candidates and parties is an unjustified restriction on participation in the democratic process.  It is no different from limiting how many how-to-vote cards a party volunteer can hand out, how much door-knocking they can do, or how many petitions a citizen can sign.

So if there are restrictions on private donation, how will parties fund their election campaigns?  Well, under the government's bill, "public" (that is, taxpayer) funding for political campaigns is going to go through the roof, jumping from $9.6 million in actual payments at the last state election to a staggering $27.6 million under the proposed system.  Currently, the Victorian Electoral Commission forks out about $1.65 per primary vote.  Under the Andrews government's bill, parties will receive $6 per vote in the lower house and $3 per vote in the upper house.

Almost all of this money would flow to the two major parties and the Greens.  This is because Labor's bill retains the requirement that candidates receive a primary vote of more than 4 per cent to qualify.  So minor parties will miss out on almost all of this taxpayer largesse.  (To the Coalition's credit, it opposes the bill, despite the hefty windfall it will receive under the proposed system.)

On top of that, political parties will also receive a new quarterly payment of $10,000 per elected MP to assist with "administrative costs" — such as staff, rent, stationery and the like — slugging Victorians another $5.12 million a year.

The government is quick to point out that it will be unlawful to use these payments on campaign expenses, which is technically right.  But obviously there is an "opportunity cost" factor at play here.  If political parties have the cost of running their offices taken care of, then more of their own money will be freed up for political campaigning.  And once again, the payment will heavily favour the major parties, as it is calculated on the basis of how many elected MPs each party has in Parliament.

Finally, to add insult to injury, the government has snuck in a few loopholes that will mean business as usual for the Labor Party.  For example, the new donations cap does not apply to what the bill calls "affiliation fees", the kind of fees Labor rakes in from its constituent trade unions.  So while private individuals freely donating their money to causes they support is now verboten, unions can continue to give millions in members' money by "affiliating" with the Labor Party.  There is no good reason for this double standard.

The bottom line is that if this stink bomb of a bill passes, Spring Street will be even further removed from the people it is supposed to represent.  Once upon a time, pollies had to rely on the generosity of free individuals to fund their campaigns, largely by reflecting supporters' values and policies.  With this bill, Labor is cutting out the middle man, seizing campaign funds from ordinary Victorians with the force of law.

And so state politics will look less like a reflection of Western democracy, and more like some kind of gigantic boxing match to which every Victorian will be forced to buy a ticket.  Give a few million to the guy in the red corner, a few million to the guy in the blue corner, and watch as they duke it out.  And unlike a real boxing match, the real losers will be the ordinary Victorians who are funding the whole grotesque spectacle.

Cultural pronunciation

SBS presenters are confused about their role

When I lived in Sweden, I would watch football with my Swedish mate Rob and struggle with some of the Swedish players' names.  Even now, I cannot roll an "r", let alone roll one into the Swedish "g", as in the common name "Berg" — which sounds more like our word "berry" than something into which you might crash a ship.  Once, Rob asked, perhaps redundantly, why English commentators never try to say Swedish names properly.  I could only tell him that most people don't know they are saying the names incorrectly, and even if they did know, they would likely pronounce them about as well as me.  Being Swedish, Rob found this reasonable.  Others, apparently, do not.

Last week, a minor controversy broke out over the way that SBS World Cup presenter Lucy Zelic pronounces players' names.  Following the example of the iconic Les Murray, Zelic often says the names as would native speakers.  For this she has been subjected, shamefully, to abuse on social media.  Zelic is an excellent professional, who clearly studies the players and the game very closely.  Her decision to pronounce the players' names as she does is not inherently objectionable.  However, in response to the criticism, Zelic and her co-host, former Socceroo Craig Foster, moved from the reasonable view that a commentator should know the players' names to implying the country as a whole needs a multicultural education and everyone should aspire to know all the names of the world.  Foster said that Zelic's pronunciation is "what SBS is about ... respecting every culture".  He went on, "If you can't get someone's name right, you've got no regard [for him or her]".  Zelic added that the criticism means it is time for SBS to "re-educate a different audience".  But this suggestion that respect for others demands native, rather than anglicised, pronunciation is far too high a standard.

The purpose of language is to enable interaction, and this requires a shared understanding of signifiers and referents.  People must recognise the words spoken and which objects they pick out.  In Australia, this context of meaning is provided by the English language.  Though we are blessed with a grammar that allows us to incorporate non-English words into our idiom, it is unavoidable that our communication is mostly governed by English-language norms.  It is fair enough, then, for Australians not to know how some names are pronounced, and even to expect that their pronunciation will be, if not anglicised entirely, softened so as to be intelligible to non-native ears.  Indeed, many immigrants anticipate English speakers will struggle with non-English names and choose to make their lives easier by choosing English names.  Being too clever or dismissive about this choice can lead the pedant into error.  For example, the great Australian footballer Mark Bresciano was often incorrectly assumed by commentators to be named "Marco" because of his Italian heritage and success in that country's top league.

It is not merely that the standard propounded by Zelic and Foster is impractical, but also that it imposes a moral duty that cannot readily be discharged.  Just as I cannot roll an "r", many Australians, including most immigrants, are unable to pronounce foreign names precisely.  In the video of her response to the criticism, Zelic herself pronounces "Peru" as an Australian would.  In Spanish, there is an accent on the "u" and the "r" is rolled — a particular problem for me, as my wife is Peruvian.  Or should that be peruana?  Why not use other native words of identification?  But as with Peru, we don't even use most countries' real names.  The proper pronunciation of "Sverige" never arises, since we call the country "Sweden".  And whether or not people can learn all this, we cannot expect that everyone invest the time and effort to do so.  When even Zelic drops in and out of "proper" pronunciation, the rest of us have little hope.  Yet we are told that if we do not try, we are bigots, individually responsible for the broader sociological phenomenon of "exclusion".  Against this charge, we can say that familiarity with other languages and cultures might be praiseworthy, but is not obligatory.  There are many reasons why someone might not be multiculturally literate.  Moreover, issues like this are a low priority for many people from non-English-speaking backgrounds;  they may even be actively trying to adapt.  Affecting an accent with them might be considered rude.  So despite what multiculturalists demand, people are permitted to rely on common sense in their practical reasoning, even where it is not entirely accurate.  Around the world, this is the prevailing standard.  Living in Peru, I gave up on using my name with all but my wife and friends as most people could not say it.  On the other hand, I don't think I have ever managed to say Rob's name properly.  This is the messy reality of communication between cultures.  It is foolish to make of it a moral offence.  In truth, relying on received wisdom and ingrained patterns of speech and behaviour is what it means to have a culture.

The irony of the SBS approach is that in paying respect to other cultures, it discounts the practical knowledge and institutions of our own culture.  Rather than assisting immigrants to better understand the context within which they have chosen to live, SBS conceives its mission as revolutionising Australian culture.  This little dispute over the pronunciation of footballers' names is part of a broader campaign against the established norms of our society, which, being largely (though not exclusively) founded on our British inheritance, are deemed insufficiently democratic.  The words and rules of our language are each institutions, and the logic that sees them as problematic is the same logic that is applied to our other institutions that are now so disfavoured by progressives, like equality before the law and freedom of speech.  They too stand accused of encoding not wisdom but ignorance, not utility but harm.  The question SBS-style multiculturalism poses, then, is not whether you should make an effort to say a few names properly, but what else you might be called upon to do to disestablish our traditional norms in the name of respect for other cultures.

Current Australian Tax Cut Debate A Tale Of Two Populisms

Since 2007-8 — the last time Australia enjoyed a budget surplus and zero net public debt — government spending has increased by 78 per cent.  Spending now makes up 25.4 per cent of GDP.  By contrast, government revenue has increased by 61 per cent and makes up 24.9 per cent of GDP.  For those of us who thought John Howard ran a big-taxing, big-spending-government things have got much worse.

Over the same period the consumer price index is up 30 per cent, gross domestic product by 69 per cent, and GDP per capita just 41 per cent.  So it isn't clear all that spending has added much value to the community.

On a positive note, the Turnbull government has legislated personal tax cuts that phase in over several years.  Better than nothing;  but the perverse incentive effects associated with the slow phase-in suggest that the benefits of those cuts may be obscured.  That brings us the on-again, off-again and currently off-again company tax cuts.

Unlike most other OECD economies, Australia collects a lot of company tax and public spending is reliant on that revenue.  That suggests that debates around company tax should be focused on the economic and fiscal impact of tax changes.  Unfortunately that debate is somewhat lacking at the moment.

The debate surrounding company tax rates can be thought of as being a tale of two populisms.  One form of populism, following Donald Trump, is to cut company tax rates despite budgetary impacts.  While the other, following Jeremy Corbyn, is to punish business and not cut tax rates despite economic consequences.

As we saw late last week, there is less appetite for the Corbyn position than Labor Leader Bill Shorten had thought.  Shorten had to back-flip on a promise — passed by the ALP expenditure review committee but not discussed by the shadow cabinet, although presumably the same people — to repeal existing company tax cuts that had already been legislated.

WEAK AND IRRESPONSIBLE

The Corbyn form of populism is weak and irresponsible.  Business is not a conscious monolith with its own agenda.  Rather "business" is an institutional mechanism whereby people pursue their economic interests.  To argue that "business" has lost its social licence to operate is to attack the economic interests of people.  To refuse a business tax cut is to refuse people the opportunity to better themselves and earn a living.

While the Turnbull government hasn't quite fallen for Trump-style populism it has got itself into a muddle.  It understands the need to lower taxes, yet has introduced new taxes under the guise of "integrity measures" in order to raise revenue.  Those new taxes explicitly target the beneficiaries of a company tax cut.  It is not clear how random attacks on banks, multinationals and technology companies will benefit the Australian economy.

In 2010 the Rudd government proposed cutting the company tax rate from 30 per cent to 28 per cent in two steps.  The rationale was to grow the economy, attract investment and increase after-tax real wages.  It is difficult to understand why Wayne Swan now argues against the very policy he championed in office.  That was after the Henry Tax Review had proposed lowering the rate to 25 per cent.  Lowering the rate to 25 per cent — again over a long time-frame — is the current government policy.  Again the perverse timing incentive effects are likely to obscure any economic benefits.

The logic for cutting company tax is much the same now as it was then.  As Bill Clinton said, "It's the economy, stupid".  Or as Warren Mundine wrote in these pages, business tax cuts will either result in more plant and equipment being bought or wages being paid.

The current distinction between taxing large and small businesses at different rates seems to be very arbitrary.  This is especially the case when income is taxed at personal marginal tax rates as it is under the dividend imputation system.  Australian resident taxpayers should be indifferent to the company tax rate.  To argue that tax cuts reward the top end of town is to misunderstand how the tax system works.

What high company tax does do, however, is provide disincentives to investment that ultimately reduce the level of employment and wages within an economy.

In addition to the economy stupid, we should always keep it simple stupid.  At the same time as the government has simplified the personal tax system by eliminating an entire tax bracket, we may end up with a tiered company system where large and small companies pay different rates.  This creates disincentives to expansion and adds complexity to the tax system.  The Turnbull government certainly didn't help its case when it introduced the ill-conceived bank levy.  The "logic" of that tax is now being thrown back in its face.

The purpose of the tax system is to raise finance for the provision of public goods while inflicting as little economic cost on the community as possible.  Unfortunately the debate so far has been about either rewarding political friends or punishing political enemies.  A strong, vibrant economy is the one thing that we should be able to agree on — that means a comprehensive and honest debate about company tax is something we should welcome.

We Deserve The Chance To Save Our Own Lives

This week marks the end of a turbulent time of my life.  For the past three years I've been travelling to the other side of the world for lifesaving treatment at a huge personal cost.  This week, I will walk into the Peter MaCallum Hospital in Melbourne to collect my lifesaving drugs from the pharmacy.

In 2015 I was set to die.  I had an incurable form of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia from which I'd relapsed after chemotherapy failed.  But for a 46-year-old with three children, death was not an option.

Following online research I discovered there were novel drugs in development that might just save my life.

The problem was I couldn't access them in Australia.  Only 3 per cent of terminally ill patients can get onto trials of such drugs.

After a trip to the US, and a lucky meeting with a British doctor, I moved to London to join a clinical trial of an experimental drug at Bart's Hospital.

Ironically my wonder drug, venetoclax, was invented in Australia but I had to travel to London to take it.

I was lucky enough to become patient 49 on a "phase 1" trial.  This combination therapy followed a first in human safety trial of 80 brave patients, but came before the drug was listed by the Food and Drug Administration in the US.

I was one of just 75 people worldwide who received the treatment.  Within three months I was in complete remission and within seven months I had no detectable cancer — it just melted away.

I had to fly to London for monthly appointments for a year, then three monthly appointments up until now.  I have had no traceable disease for 29 months and take my drug daily with no side effects.

I work full-time and my children have their father.  But I am one of the very few lucky ones.  Red tape is preventing dying patients from accessing lifesaving drugs.

I am now campaigning for all terminally ill patients to have access to the latest drugs.

Right to Try, letting patients legally access these, is an important part of that.  As it stands, dying patients have to wait for phase 1, 2 and 3 clinical trials to be completed before drugs are made available.

My CLL drug has taken 30 years to reach that stage.

It has since received Therapeutic Goods Administration approval for use in Australia — but is still not available on pharmacy shelves.

Right to Try laws in the US were created to enable terminally ill patients — with advice from their treating doctors — to try experimental therapies which have completed phase 1 testing but have not yet been approved for use by the FDA.

The legislation has its roots in the HIV epidemic.  The Dallas Buyers Club movie shows how people with HIV sought access to experimental drugs through illicit means.

Legislation in the US began in 2014, thanks to the work of the Goldwater Institute, a libertarian think tank objecting to government interference between patients, doctors and pharmaceutical companies.

"This is really a law for people who are very sick, who have exhausted all treatment options and who cannot enrol in a clinical trial," Goldwater's Starlee Coleman explains.

If a doctor believes an investigational drug is your best hope, they can initiate contact with that drug manufacturer's compassionate use program to discuss options for access.

"It's only for people who say, "I understand the risk.  I know this drug is not fully approved," Coleman says.

The TGA's Special Access Scheme allows doctors to prescribe a drug listed anywhere in the world to dying patients.

Australia should extend this to the US model of allowing access to all drugs which have passed phase 1 testing.

Doctors knew my drug was working years ago.  Signing the consent form to take part in the clinical trial was terrifying but it was more terrifying knowing the alternative.  All patients, with informed consent, should have the opportunity to save their own lives.