Sugar tax leaves a bitter taste

The Grattan Institute's report demanding a new sugar tax on soft drinks is a blatant insult to the Australian people.

Grattan, founded by the Rudd government, prides itself on "evidence-based" policy.  Its latest work, which follows Greens policy, smacks of anything but.

Sugar taxes do not work.  Research has found they fail to reduce obesity and have a regressive impact on the poor.  They change the behaviour of very few and reduce consumption of unhealthy food so little that they have almost no impact on obesity.

A study published in Contemporary Economic Policy, which analysed American states that had introduced soft drink taxes, found they had practically no impact on body mass index (BMI) and obesity.  These findings were confirmed by Denmark's "fat tax", which proved economically damaging but did not change the habits of 80 per cent of Danes.  The tax led to a tiny 0.4 per cent reduction in fat consumption in seven months, while food prices increased by 14 per cent.  It was repealed after 15 months.

Mexico's sugar tax has reduced soft drink consumption by just 5 per cent.  Emilio Gutierrez, a professor at Mexico's ITAM University, described it as "useless".

Soft drinks are a relatively small part of our energy intake and can be easily substituted.  Other unhealthy products, such as flavoured milk, will be immune from a fizzy drink tax, thus having no effect on the consumption of other unhealthy drinks.

A study in the Journal of Public Economics in 2010 found that statebased soft drink taxation in the US between 1989 and 2006 had been offset by consumption of other highcalorie drinks.  A Cornell University study in 2012 found it even increased purchases of beer — perhaps not the intended consequence! The tax would also affect the poor far more than the wealthy.  Those on lower incomes tend to consume more sugary products and are less able to pay for alternatives.

Grattan's report is also chasing a declining problem.  According to the ABS, the percentage of Australians who consume sweetened beverages has declined from 49 per cent in 1995 to 42 per cent in 2011-12.  Australians may be getting more obese, but soft drinks are not the primary cause.

Ironically, the measure could also be quite costly.  The UK's Office of Budget Responsibility has predicted an increase in inflation due to their upcoming sugar tax, pushing up the cost of servicing index-linked government bonds by 1 billion in 2018-19.

Not only is taxing people for their consumption choices illiberal, asserting an excessive role for government in personal dietary choices, it also lacks evidential justification.  Obesity is a complex issue.  Taxation has proven to fail as a solution.

Why I joined — and quit — the Australian Republican Movement

As a long-time republican, I made the decision last year to join the Australian Republican Movement.

Having spent the better part of the past decade involved in Liberal politics.  It's safe to say that I hold a minority view in my own party.

I have consistently argued for a republic because I value the ideas of sovereignty and independence.  I don't want a republic because I hate Australia, I want a republic because I love Australia — its history and its traditions, and believe it would be a pathway to strengthen them.

I knew signing up that the Chairman of the ARM, Peter FitzSimons was no right winger.  But what I found was that the opinions and views espoused on behalf of the entire movement show a complete lack of diversity and a complete lack attempt to reach out and speak to anyone with political opinions other than their own.

Their events exclusively offer up guests on the left of politics, from Louise Adler to Australian of the Year David Morrison AO (Sorry David, I'm going to keep calling all of my friends "guys" no matter how much you dislike it).

On the day of the American election, the ARM posted a meme to its Facebook page with a picture of President-elect Donald Trump said "Not *that* kind of republican".  This kind of dismissal of those who don't share their views is something they have in common with the unsuccessful Democratic campaign.

In March the Republican Movement trumpeted a Newspoll showing that support for an Australian Republic had risen above 50 per cent.  As the movement well knows, this doesn't mean they're in a winning position — they still need four out of six states to vote in favour as well.

They should be realising that their support has peaked and be looking for ways to improve on the current set of numbers.  The Gillard Government's proposed local government referendum had bipartisan support and 75 percent community approval, prior to public scrutiny of the proposal, in which support collapsed and it was dropped.  How do they think they're going to go with 50 percent?  They're kidding themselves.

After the Brexit vote in June, FitzSimons published an article in the Fairfax and NewsCorp papers on whether the historic vote would give rise to an Australian Republic.  He oddly claimed that an Australian Republic would boost trade with absolutely no evidence, our Asia-Pacific partners would treat us no differently, (in fact, the Asia-Pacific region treat us more generously in trade terms than most independent states!) and he barely mentioned Brexit, or the reasons for it, only used it as a pitch for an Australian Republic.

The Brexit movement was about reclaiming the culture and sovereignty of Britain, which the people felt had been taken away from them by a bloated European Union.  Brexit had a hopeful, optimistic, forward-looking message of opening itself up to the world, and taking back control of their sovereignty and their country.  Australians actually do cherish the traditions of our history and foundations of western civilisation that have served us well for centuries.

Here in lies the ARM's problem.  Just like the modern left in Australia, it views Australia's past, its history and its culture as something to be ashamed of.  It views a change to a Republic as a way to wipe the slate clean of our "sins".  This is not where public sentiment is.  According to polling, more than 90 per cent of people are proud to be an Australian and more importantly, almost 80 percent of people agree that our country has a history, about which we can be proud.

The ARM's number one campaign it is plugging at the moment is little more than a whinge, calling on Queen Elizabeth II to release all the correspondence in relation to the dismissal of the Whitlam Government in 1975 in her past dealings with the Australian Government and Parliamentarians.  I don't think your average punter is discussing the release of the Queen's letters at a Sunday afternoon BBQ.  This kind of petty introspection is pathetic and is only appealing to their own flock.  The ARM is supposedly a bipartisan organisation.  But it has the character of an obsessed Labor baby-boomer.

While it was still running the campaign to try to get some letters from the Queen, the most grievance sin occurred that should have been a no-brainer for the ARM to speak out on.  In October Tasmanian Governor Kate Warner publically challenged Pauline Hanson's views on Muslim immigration.

Surely a Vice-Regal representative criticising an elected Senator should be on the ARM's radar.  Constitutional law expert Professor George Williams labelled Governor Warner's comments concerning and unwise as the role of a governor is one that is meant to be above politics.  The ARM stayed silent.

One can only imagine the ARM's response if an unelected Governor was to enter the political fray on an issue like lower taxes or government spending?  There would be cries of outrage.

Well, you can save your crocodile tears because the current rabble that is the Australian Republican Movement is not one I want to be associated with.

Donald Trump vote was all about voters having a different choice

Last Wednesday afternoon, just as it was becoming clear Donald Trump would win the US presidential election Aaron Patrick, senior writer at this paper reported on an insight he had gained from an unnamed minister in the Turnbull government.

When asked about whether there were any lessons for Australia from what had just happened in the United States the minister "denied there were any significant implications for the Coalition from Trump's popularity".

Coalition MPs who hope to keep their seats at the next federal election should start to get worried if that unnamed minister is advising Malcolm Turnbull on political strategy.

Yes, Donald Trump himself won't be on the ballot in Australia.  But variations of what he represents will be.  Trump's position on trade bears the most resemblance to the Greens.  Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young issued a media release the day after the US election endorsing Trump's policy against the Trans Pacific-Partnership Agreement.  And of course Trump's stance on immigration has similarities to Pauline Hanson's One Nation party.

Outside the consensus

Trump's campaign was run firmly outside of the prevailing consensus of both the Republican and Democratic parties — and yet he won.  Whether or not the Greens are outside the consensus of the Australian political class is debatable.  They're probably not.  But One Nation certainly is.

If anyone thinks Donald Trump can't happen in Australia they're wrong.  They're forgetting the Palmer United Party in 2014 had three senators in the commonwealth Parliament, and MPs in both the Northern Territory and Queensland Parliaments.  To compare Trump to Palmer is unfair to Trump.  For one thing Palmer never had a policy of cutting the top rate of personal income tax to 33 per cent.

The minister Patrick was talking to went on to say:  "There is a larger anti-Trump vote.  It was a Republican base that reacted against their establishment.  Then in a fractured country it split along racial and educational lines.  Australia is simply a better country."

A simple reading of the electoral math proves this statement wrong.  It was traditional Democrats, not Republicans that got Trump elected in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.  The one point of the minister's analysis that's correct is that no party's "establishment" can afford to take their "base" for granted.  Clinton took her presumed working-class "base" for granted and the result was large proportions of that base either voting for Trump or not bothering to turn up.

Here in Australia, Liberals have to understand that their "base" doesn't like higher taxes.  The ALP have a different problem.  It has to work out who its base is — which explains why Labor's primary vote sits at historical lows.

The idea that Australia is now somehow a "better country" than the US because Donald Trump won the election is simply a left wing trope.  As more than one commentator has pointed out — the country that last week elected Donald Trump president also elected, not once but twice — a black man whose middle name is Hussein.

Ludicrous suggestion

The suggestion from both Labor and the Greens that because someone they don't like is now president Australia should reconsider its alliance with the US is ludicrous.  That something like this could be suggested before Trump is even sworn in reveals just how tenuous the commitment of Labor and the Greens is to our most important alliance.

Maybe the minister who Patrick spoke to also thinks there's no lessons for Australia from the Brexit decision, or the weekend's Orange byelection in New South Wales.

Despite what the minister believes, or chooses to believe, the implications of the Trump phenomenon for Australia and indeed for all democracies, are massive.

Obviously there are many differences between the US and Australia, but the American presidential election revealed, in stark terms, the sort of economic and cultural fault lines in both countries.

Donald Trump becoming president is what happens when people are given a choice that is different from the choice they're normally offered at elections.

Before the election it was said that Trump was the only Republican candidate who could lose to Clinton.  Now, following the result, there's an argument that actually the opposite is true — Trump was the only Republican who could have won.

Public service perks don't pass the pub test

Enterprise bargaining is a two-way street.  Public sector unions cannot continue to argue that well-paid public servants deserve additional entitlements without considering the trade-offs that could be made.  Public servants already enjoy generous conditions and entitlements that would not pass the pub test.

The Commonwealth public services' enterprise bargaining agreements notionally expired in 2014.  To date, 65 agreements have been finalised — despite union opposition to every single agreement — but many of the larger departments' agreements remain unresolved.

Whether in the private sector or the public sector, bargaining takes negotiation from both the employer and the employees.  The Turnbull government's workplace bargaining policy provides the flexibility for this to occur on the employer side.  It puts a cap on remuneration increases at 2 per cent a year, with scope to increase salary beyond this point through the packaging of other benefits or productivity increases.  The government's policy is currently subject to an inquiry by the Senate Education and Employment Committee, chaired by a Labor senator.

The idea that public servants are underpaid is completely unsubstantiated.  Over the past decade, federal public servants' pay has risen by 50.7 per cent, far more than the increase in CPI of 31.8 per cent.  According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in May 2016, public sector full-time adult average yearly earnings were $87,942.40, compared with the private sector average yearly earnings of $80,204.80.

If public sector unions want to continue with their campaign for pay increases beyond 2 per cent then they need to come to the bargaining table.  I have conducted research into the top 10 Australian Public Service enterprise agreements by agency size — covering 72.4 per cent of public servants — which identified three broad areas where trade-offs could be made.

The first area is the generous allowances that have the effect of increasing salaries by thousands of dollars each year.  For example, a Wellbeing Site Representative at the Australian Taxation Office comes with an allowance of $613 a year.  The Department of Health agreement provides staff with subsidised eyewear, at $165 for each prescription.  The Department of Agriculture agreement allows staff to claim $300 a year for health and fitness activities like gym memberships — whether or not they actually go to the gym is a different matter.  These examples are the tip of the iceberg.

The second area is the generous leave provisions that go well beyond the standard entitlements in the private sector.  The Department of Social Services Agreement has up to four days' paid leave a year to conduct volunteer work with a community organisation.  The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade allows paid leave where employees are participating at an international sporting event.  Several agencies provide one day of paid leave a year for employees to move house.  Most private sector employees would be expected to take annual or unpaid leave for these activities.  The Department of Defence has what's called DECA day.  As I explained when I appeared before the Senate committee last week, "it's not part of your annual leave, it's not part of your sick leave, and it's not part of your personal leave.  You just take a day off when you feel like it."

The third area is the exclusive perks that are given to public sector unions.  The agreements provide unionists with access to workplace facilities, infrastructure, technology and resources — and paid time.  For example, union delegates have the right to paid time to represent the interests of members to the employer and in industrial tribunals, and also get paid leave to attend union training and events.  It is unacceptable that taxpayers are subsidising unions' industrial and political activities.

The current inquiry into the government's workplace bargaining policy is, of course, simply part of a wider political campaign.  Public sector unions are increasingly using the enterprise bargaining system to advance their own political agendas, rather than representing the best interests of their members.  There is a weight of evidence to show that potential trade-offs could be made to boost pay for public servants.  The government's policy is flexible;  whether the public sector unions' policy will become flexible remains to be seen.

18C repeal the only solution on freedom of speech

Here's a simple idea all lawmakers should adopt:  when a law is fundamentally broken, it should be repealed.  Not replaced.  Repealed.

So it is with section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.  Removing the words "offend" and "insult" from a provision that has been used as a weapon against newspaper cartoonists and university students is an incredibly modest proposal.

Any attempts to water down this inarguably sensible legislative change — by, for instance, replacing these words with a synonym of the removed words — should be recognised for what they are:  an effort by those who have contempt for freedom of speech to kill off an amendment that seeks to restore this fundamental human right in Australia.

You don't horse-trade on freedom of speech.  Freedom of speech is an inalienable human right.  It's vital for democracy.  Speech is the method by which our conscience manifests;  an attack on freedom of speech is an attack on freedom of thought.

These are the principles that we need to constantly remind ourselves of in the context of the current debate in Australia around freedom of speech.

The modest reform bill currently before the Senate proposing change to section 18C is co-­sponsored by 20 senators.

Part of the reason why the bill has garnered so much support among members of the upper house is that it presents such a sensible response to a clear policy failure.

The legal saga involving several QUT students — which took more than three years to be resolved at significant financial, professional, and emotional cost to the students and their families — and now the complaint against cartoonist and member of the fourth estate Bill Leak have sounded the alarm on a provision that has been a ticking time bomb since the law was first passed by federal parliament in 1995.

Australian Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs has disgraced herself in recent months, particularly in her oversight of the handling of these recent complaints brought under section 18C.  Her intervention in the ensuing policy debate may yet be her biggest mistake.

Triggs has admitted that the status quo is unacceptable.  Rather than adopting the elegant potential resolution on the table, she has proposed the replacement of the words "offend" and "insult" with the word "vilify".

The Triggs proposal makes a mockery of the genuine attempt to reform section 18C.  The word ­"vilify" is used in several state hate speech laws around the country, and it has been used as the basis for several cases that restrict freedom of speech in the same way that ­section 18C has.

Given this experience at the state level it's clear that Triggs is ­either ignorant of the existing ­jurisprudence, or she is deliber­ately attempting to derail the reform process.

Fixing section 18C is as simple as repealing the provision, or parts of it.

There are countless laws that deal with threats, incitement and violence.  All 18C adds to the body of law is a way to silence political opponents.

I'm writing this piece in the US, where a cultural reverence for free speech, underpinned by explicit constitutional protection, is ingrained in the American psyche.  Free speech is not a partisan issue in the US.

Perhaps the most poignant recent illustration of this political consensus came in 2014 during an incident involving Donald Sterling, then owner of the NBA's LA Clippers.

In August of that year, ­record­ings of telephone conversations Sterling had had with his former girlfriend were released to the public.

Some of the comments made by Sterling in the course of those conversations were unambiguously bigoted, including telling his ex-girlfriend, "don't bring black people to my games".

Following NBA-imposed penalties on Sterling, US President Barack Obama, the nation's first black head of state, was subsequently asked by a journalist about the incident and he declined to call for state intervention:  "When ignorant folks want to ­advertise their ignorance, you don't really have to do anything;  you just let them talk.  And that's what happened here".

Sadly, on this front Australia differs remarkably from our Anglo­spheric cousin across the Pacific.  It is incredibly rare to find even small pockets of support for freedom of speech among members of Australia's political Left.

The language employed by the Australian political Left on free speech gives the game away.  ­Rather than engaging honestly in a debate about the reasonable ­limits of free speech, many on the Left accuse those who wish to ­expand the scope of debate ­unrestricted by state sanction of racism and hatefulness.

Attempts to expand free speech should be applauded.  Getting on with the repeal, not merely the substitution, of the worst parts of section 18C is a level-headed step forward.

Donald Trump will lead the US in the right direction. We should take note

Donald Trump's historic victory represents a huge opportunity for middle America.  It is a rejection of liberal internationalism, political correctness and the progressive politics of urban elites in favour of traditional American values — love of country, family and, for many, faith.  Like Brexit, it heralds a return to the pre-eminence of the nation state, of national sovereignty and democracy.

Many working-class Americans, who had traditionally put their faith in the Democratic Party to deliver for them, voted Republican for the first time.  In contrast, the Democrats, filled with the false confidence of urban progressives, condescended to call the working-class voter base uneducated and deplorable.

As is customary in presidential elections, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called to congratulate US President-elect Donald Trump, remarking that he's a deal maker and pragmatist.

So, what did Americans vote for?  How will Donald Trump "Make America Great Again"?

Trump's first priority will be to boost the US economy and create jobs.  He aims to reshape US tax policy, dramatically cutting income and company taxes, deregulating the economy and cutting government spending.  Trump's aim is to boost US GDP growth to 4 per cent and create 25 million new jobs.  In a nod to his daughter Ivanka's efforts to support working women, Trump also wants to see greater female labour force participation and will offer tax deductions for child-care expenses for working parents.  Obamacare will go, and with it an unaffordable and inflexible system.  Trump will replace it with something more workable.

If you have visited the US in recent times, you will appreciate the urgent need for investment in its ageing infrastructure.  Many highways, railroads and bridges are in a state of disrepair.  Trump has promised big infrastructure investment.  How he pays for infrastructure projects will be a considerable challenge as tax revenues are likely to fall in the short term with his tax reform package.  Trump's solution will be to attract private sector investment in infrastructure through a system of tax credits.

Trump's election is a big rejection of the international environmental movement and its fatwa against carbon.  In the US where the basic wage is $7.25 an hour, the closure of coal mines and regulatory hurdles to shale gas are blamed for blowing out the cost of electricity for ordinary Americans.  Trump has tapped into this angst and has vowed to dramatically change US energy and climate policies, including overhauling the Environmental Protection Agency and scrapping Obama's Clean Power Plan.  Trump wants America to be energy self-sufficient and will encourage the development of US shale gas reserves as a source of low-emission, cheap energy.  South Australia should take heed.

Like Australia, America's success story is the story of migration.  Trump recognises this and is supportive of legal, regulated migration.  But, like Australia, average Americans want strong and safe borders and want people to play by the rules.  Trump has tapped into this by promising to build a wall along the US-Mexico border.  Expect him to ensure the letter of US immigration law is enforced, with the deportation of illegal migrants and a crackdown on employment of illegal migrants.

Finally, on foreign policy, a Trump administration will mark the end of internationalism and US adventurism.  Trump has little interest in intervening in the affairs of foreign countries.  However, he will take a hardline approach to defeating radical Islam which he views as a threat to American values and way of life as Communism was during the Cold War.

US allies have expressed concern that the Trump administration may not take existing relationships such as NATO and ANZUS as seriously as his predecessors.  He may reset some relationships and is likely to favour countries like Australia and Britain, who share American values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberties and personal responsibility.  But he's not going to accept free riding off US military power, so expect him to demand European and Asian alliance partners start taking more responsibility for their own security and paying their way.

From Australia's perspective, we must monitor steps by Trump to implement a protectionist agenda.  This was a feature of both his and Clinton's campaign.  Starting a trade war with China and putting up tariffs on Chinese imports will just result in economic harm to everyday Americans who would have to pay more for everyday consumables.  The reason US manufacturing jobs have disappeared is more down to technology and automation than offshoring.  Reducing the tax and regulatory burden on businesses as well as decreasing energy prices will help USA Inc much more than erecting trade barriers.

Further, it is imperative that Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop and her team remind the putative Trump administration in the next few weeks that abandoning the Trans Pacific Partnership would boost Chinese prestige in the Asian region at the expense of the US.  It would also be an enormous missed opportunity to expand US growth and jobs.  And that's not in anyone's interest.

Brexit means Brexit — and democracy, too

The stench of elite hatred for democracy is sifting through the streets of London.

The courts have ruled against the Government's ability to implement the clear democratic will of the people.  Meanwhile, Remainers disparage those who voted for Brexit as uneducated and uninformed, tricked by a campaign of deceit, and voting against their supposed best interest.  They show an absolute inability to accept that maybe, just maybe, the majority is not on their side.

Of course, this is nothing new.  The idea that the masses are incapable of governing themselves, and must be led by the enlightened few, is one of the oldest diseases.  Plato rejected Athenian democracy, preferring the idealised rule of "philosopher kings" (i.e. himself).  Similar arguments about people being "creatures of impulse and emotion" who lack reason were used against women's suffrage.

Democracy had no lower ebb in the twentieth century than May 1940.  Britain's last major ally on the continent, France, had fallen.  The chances of a successful evacuation of Dunkirk appeared weak.  Nazism, in collaboration with Russian communism, was now dominating the continent.  Meanwhile, much of Asia was falling to Imperial Japan.  America seemed uninterested in helping.

It was left to Britain to defend western civilisation against the onslaught of some of the most extraordinary hatred.  However, even at this time, there were many elites in Britain who, uninterested in democracy, were sympathetic to compromise.  Despite the victory for democracy, it seems the anti-democratic strain of thought remains strong.  It comes out in full flight when a decision is made contrary to their worldview.

Brexit is one part of it.  However, we are more generally seeing a loss of faith in democratic systems.  Surveys across western democracies have found young people are less supportive of democracy than their parents.  Meanwhile, Donald Trump has consistently refused to say whether he would accept an election result against him.

The problem has become self-perpetuating.  The people, sick of a feeling that elites are not listening to them, are increasingly choosing previously fringe parties and politicians on all sides of the spectrum.  This leads the establishment to decry the impact of populism and seek to minimise democratic will — by, for example, attempting to block Brexit.

As former Australian prime minister John Howard reminded a British audience this week — "populism" has always been with us.  It is the role of politicians is to lead, to persuade the people.  They must then respect their collective wisdom.  No, not every person is right.  Nor will everyone make the right decisions for the correct reasons.  But they capability of humanity to choose its own leadership is fundamental to our humanity.

Democracy reflects the fundamental principle that "all people have exactly the same right to participate in the construction of a political community".  It is a fundamental element of our liberty and equal moral worth.  This is not to say that there should not be constraints on democracy — constitutions, rights and norms of accountability and responsibility.  However, ultimately these institutions must be created with a sense of popular support or otherwise they will crumble at the first sign of strain.

Brexit is very difficult for the many whose entire world view it challenges.  However, this is not a reason to make apocalyptic predictions of a new European dark age, nor is it a reason to block the people's will.  Remainers should focus on making a success of Brexit — representing the 48 percent who voted "In" by encouraging cooperation and mutual agreements in their priority areas.

The decision by the courts to block the triggering of Article 50, as well as other attempts to stop or delay Brexit in Parliament, will only do more damage to our democratic foundations.  It expands the "elites versus the people" dichotomy that is endangering the rising of extremists.  If the appeal fails, the British parliament must swiftly respect the people's will and allow the Government to trigger Article 50.  The future of democracy depends on it.

Dreamworld AGM fiasco is the sort of reason people hate corporate Australia

What Ardent Leisure did last week says a lot about Australia's corporate culture.  Two days before its scheduled annual general meeting four people were killed in an accident at Dreamworld, a Gold Coast theme park owned by the company.  The annual general meeting went ahead and shareholders voted to award the chief executive a bonus.

Instead of focusing all of management's attention on helping the victims' families, assisting traumatised staff and co-operating with the authorities, company executives were talking about how much they should pay themselves.

Put simply, it's things like this that make people hate big business.  That's why the public cheer when corporate bosses on $10 million annual salaries are hauled before politicians to be interrogated at parliamentary inquiries.  And that's why when big business gives an opinion, fewer and fewer people listen.

Fairly or not the behaviour of Ardent Leisure tars all of corporate Australia.  What happened last week is just one of the reasons why community confidence in business is declining.  If there is such a such a thing as a "social licence to operate", Ardent Leisure has come perilously close to losing it.

According to a survey by the public relations firm Edelman, less than half of Australians trust business.  Only 33 per cent of Australians regard business chief executives as credible.  It's remarkable to consider that Australians are more likely to trust a government official than a business leader.

Actions speak volumes

Last year Ardent published an exhaustive "Sustainability Report".  In addition to its safety performance the report dealt with issues such as the company's carbon dioxide emissions and the wage differential between its male and female employees.  The company also reported on its "commitment to support and respect the protection and enhancement of internationally proclaimed civil rights".  But actions speak louder than words.

The reason the Ardent chairman gave for not postponing the annual general meeting is revealing.  He said lawyers advised him that according to the corporations law the date of the meeting couldn't be changed.

Whether or not under ASIC's rules the company could have delayed its annual general meeting is beside the point.  The fact is that on legal advice the meeting went ahead.  The law, and the lawyers' interpretation of it, trumped a sense of decency.

It's easy to blame the company for its apparent callousness.  And certainly a different chairman and different chief executive might have conducted the meeting differently or even disregarded their legal advice and not held the meeting.  The penalty for failure to hold an annual general meeting includes a fine and the possibility of imprisonment.

In much of corporate Australia compliance, governance and risk management have become ends in themselves.  The purpose of Ardent Leisure as a business, is the same as it is for any other company — to return a profit to its owners.  And in the course of returning a profit a company must obey the law.  But what's happened in this country, as indeed is happening around the world, is there are so many rules to comply with, and so many "sustainability reports" to produce that those things not written down and not explicitly prescribed by the government and regulators tend to be ignored or downplayed.

The idea that corporate culture can somehow be regulated by the government, as has been suggested by the chairman of ASIC is ridiculous.  Not only is it impossible to regulate "culture", any effort to attempt to do so is dangerous.  A company's corporate culture can be just as big an asset as its plant and equipment — and the government attempting to control a company's corporate culture is in principle not very different from the government taking over a company's physical assets.

In many companies where once the corporate culture might have been to do "the right thing", it has been replaced by a culture that requires the rules to be followed at all costs and without question.  And efforts by government to regulate corporate culture will only have the opposite of the intended effect.  Directors will leave responsibility for their company's corporate culture to the government, rather than take responsibility for it themselves.

The end result will be we'll get more episodes such as Ardent Leisure's annual general meeting, not less.

South Australia's new home detention laws should not be about coddling criminals

Lindsay Bassani, a former Education Department bureaucrat and football coach, was sentenced to home detention after stealing almost $10,000 from the South Australian Aboriginal Sports Training Academy.  Despite being allowed to avoid prison, he is now complaining about his electronic tracking bracelet because of the stigma of being seen with it.

The fact that Mr Bassani is complaining is a good thing.  It means he feels like he is being punished, which is precisely the point of his sentence.

As reported in The Advertiser, Bassani is one of the first beneficiaries of sentencing changes introduced by the Weatherill Government in May.  These reforms gave judges more discretion in allowing certain nonviolent, low-risk offenders to serve their sentences in home detention, and they were introduced for very sound reasons.

The prison population in South Australia has grown by 75 percent in the last 10 years.  There is evidence to suggest that not all of this growth was necessary or desirable.

For example, the most serious offence of almost half of these prisoners was a nonviolent offence.  In many cases, locking them up is doing very little for community safety.  And it is known that prisons often fail to prevent criminals from reoffending.  Nationwide, 59 percent of prisoners have been imprisoned before.

South Australian taxpayers spend about $96,000 for each person in prison each year.  With prisons already at capacity, if this trend were to continue, taxpayers would soon need to pay for a new prison.

Instead of continuing to spend more and more money on locking up people who pose little threat to the community and for whom incarceration is unlikely to be rehabilitative, South Australia has rightly decided to try something different.

Bassani committed a nonviolent, relatively minor property crime, and has a stable job and home.  He is the sort of offender for whom laws like this are designed.

But even though this kind of reform has merit, policymakers and judges must not lose sight of the fundamental purpose of the criminal justice system:  the punishment of individuals who harm others or the community.

It is vital to the operation of the criminal justice system that criminals feel they are being punished for their actions.  And for victims, seeing a punishment imposed is essential to their sense of closure.

This means that offenders like Bassani should not be coddled.  Restrictions like not being able to consume alcohol, a curfew, and being confined to certain locations, are not only entirely reasonable but necessary to give weight to his punishment.  Incredibly, Bassani is suffering none of these hardships.  It is positive that he is employed but being allowed to travel to his workplace should be the limit of his mobility.  He shouldn't be playing footy, let alone worrying about how he looks on the field.

What this case illustrates is that the goal of punishment reform should not be to give criminals an easier time.  Instead, the goal must be to impose punishment more effectively, to reduce crime and recidivism, and more efficiently, to reduce government waste.

There is a common view in criminology that crime is a result of social dysfunction.  Rather than the traditional understanding of crime being a choice made by individuals, on this view crime is a pathology caused by social and economic disadvantage and so criminals are not really responsible for their actions.

In a perverse way, criminologists consider criminals to be victims.  And so they support reforms such as these because they do not believe in punishment at all.

This nonsense should not be allowed to discredit or discourage good faith attempts to rationalise criminal punishment consistent with a traditional emphasis on retribution.  The criminal justice system is not a tool with which to reengineer society or to redress social grievances.  It is the means by which our communities are kept safe and peaceful, and it achieves this end by ensuring that criminals suffer negative consequences for their wrongful acts.

It is possible to get the benefits of punishment reform — lower crime and recidivism, with less spending on prisons — without, in effect, letting criminals like Bassani off lightly.

But this requires policymakers and judges to insist on the need for criminals to experience their sentences as punishments.

Malcolm Turnbull must ignore the luvvies — he leads a centre-right party

Tony Abbott is right.  Australians are sick of the revolving door of prime ministers.  As Abbott said on Wednesday, there's not going to be a change in the Liberal leadership "any time soon".  Liberal MPs are still too bruised by last year's leadership contest and a close-run election to contemplate either going back to Abbott, or moving to the next generation of Liberal leaders like Christian Porter or Josh Frydenberg.

So at the moment, the federal Liberal Party is what it is and Malcolm Turnbull is its leader.  Given that many Australians would be hard-pressed to identify a single achievement of the PM's first year in office, other than breaking an election promise not to increase taxes on superannuation, the fact that according to the latest polling the Coalition is only four points behind Labor is no mean feat.

The question that Turnbull must deal with is the same one he confronted when he took the prime ministership.  What is he prime minister for?  And the question for his ministers is, "What sort of government do they want to be a part of?"

On the rare occasions when cabinet ministers have stood up to the parliamentary leadership group, it's been on the wrong things.  A substantial number were quite willing to play petty politics and prevent the nomination of Kevin Rudd for secretary-general of the United Nations.  Yet the Turnbull cabinet, just like the Abbott cabinet, consistently waves through higher taxes.  And meekly sits on its hands while university students and cartoonists are prosecuted by government officials for insulting and offending people.

The cabinet's refusal to confront the question of freedom of speech in Australia is made all the more galling by the knowledge that three of its members have previously spoken passionately and publicly about the issue.  In April last year, Julie Bishop went to the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris and delivered a moving speech about freedom of speech.

Strategy failure

According to many in the Canberra press gallery, the Labor Party and the Greens, Turnbull should move his party to the "centre", i.e. the Liberal Party should become more left-wing.  The problem with this analysis is twofold.

First, Turnbull tried the "Labor-lite" strategy and it didn't work.  All that Turnbull got for imposing higher taxes and refusing to cut government spending was a one-seat election victory.  The strategy is rarely successful, either at the state or federal level.  If the electorate wants a Labor government they'll vote for the real thing.  This is a point slowly dawning on the federal Liberals, but it's not something yet understood by every state Liberal leader.

Second, because most journalists, the ALP and the Greens have very little real knowledge of the Liberals, they all tend to forget one thing:  the Liberal Party, by it's culture and history, is a political party of the centre-right.  As much as Bill Shorten and Richard Di Natale might wish it otherwise, Malcolm Turnbull can't simply pledge his party to things like a free vote on same-sex marriage or the doubling of renewable energy targets.  Or to be more precise, Turnbull could try something like that, just as he did when he supported Kevin Rudd's emissions trading scheme in 2009.  And if he did he would come unstuck, exactly as he did seven years ago.

The alternative for Turnbull is to act as the centre-right leader of a centre-right political party pursuing centre-right policies.  Such a course has a number of benefits.  It would be good for Australia.  It would also help him win the next election.

The past month has proved such an approach could work.  The subjects of the political victories and the positive coverage the Coalition has enjoyed since the election are on exactly the things a centre-right government should be doing.  Eliminating trade union corruption, reforming the welfare system, and ensuring electricity is cheap and reliable (especially if you live in South Australia) are not favourite topics of Radio National, but they are important.

The best way forward for Turnbull's leadership is different from the path the Australian Broadcasting Commission would like him to take — but it provides him with the best chance of success.

Je suis Bill Leak

The idea that a cartoonist should be answerable to a government body for making a political point is yet another low in the use of Section 18C of Australia's Racial Discrimination Act.  18C makes it unlawful to "offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate" on the basis of race or ethnicity.  It's under 18C that columnist Andrew Bolt has had two articles banned, and a group of Queensland University students is now facing court for questioning the decision to provide a separate computer lab for indigenous students.

Now Bill Leak, an Australian cartoonist, is in the firing line for a cartoon depicting the importance of parental responsibility in indigenous communities.  Leak is being investigated by Australia's so-called Human Rights Commission.  The cartoon in question depicts an indigenous police officer, presenting a child to his father.  He says:  "You'll have to sit down and talk to your son about personal responsibility."  The indigenous parent responds:  "Yeah righto, what's his name then?"  The notion that parents in indigenous communities must take more responsibility for their children is not particularly controversial — it's a point often made by indigenous leaders such as Noel Pearson and Warren Mundine.  Mundine, who is also a former national president in the Australian Labor Party, has defended Leak.  "If the allegations are that [Leak] has incited racial hatred, I don't support that at all," Mundine said.  "[The cartoon] has a black police officer and it's opening up a debate.  Cartoonists have always been in-your-face — and that's definitely in-your-face."

However, extraordinarily, the complaint against Leak was encouraged by the commission's race-discrimination commissioner, Tim Soutphommasane, which will most likely prejudice the commission's investigation.  A government entity has effectively told people to be offended and will accordingly be investigating.  Yes, Leak's cartoons are often offensive.  That's what a good cartoonist does.  They highlight topics of debate through confronting, hard-hitting and pointed imagery.  If you fall foul of their pen, it can be tough.  Leak recently portrayed same-sex-marriage activists as the "WAFFEN-SSM", made light of domestic-violence leave, and poked fun at fat, bald and transgender people to highlight the importance of freedom of speech.  And that's the key thing here:  the freedom of Leak and others to draw and say anything they like.

Leak's cartoons are not for the faint-hearted.  I often find them disagreeable.  But that's no reason to put Leak before a government tribunal.  Even if the case is eventually dismissed — by the commission itself, or later in court — it is still damaging to have gone through the process.  It is costly, and hurtful to the reputations of all involved.  The case also encourages people to stop talking about controversial issues, stifling freedom of expression.  The use of the law against someone you disagree with is always an authoritarian response.  The liberal, and far more powerful, response to encountering ideas you dislike is to use it as an opportunity to write — or draw — opposing ideas.

Australian politicians expressed sympathy when the controversial French magazine Charlie Hebdo was attacked.  However, "Je Suis Charlie" — the notion that while we may disagree with you, we will defend your right to freedom of speech — seems to have been forgotten.  Even Australian attorney-general George Brandis, who originally campaigned to repeal 18C, recently said repealing it is a "fool's errand".  It's a worrying sign that our leaders can't even be bothered to attempt to stand up for the fundamental value of freedom of speech.  However, there is growing cross-bench support, and backbench agitation, for repealing 18C.  Every government backbench senator has expressed support for amending 18C to remove the words "offend" and "insult".

The Leak case is sadly not unique.  A freedom-of-information request I submitted earlier this year found that there are 18 complaints currently under consideration under 18C.  The complaints we hear about in the news are just the tip of the iceberg.  And almost all of the complaints are investigated behind closed doors.  And, as happened in the case of the Queensland students, the investigations can go on for months (or years) without the accused even being told.  Leak's case is just another reason to repeal 18C.

Blue Poles: sell this monument to madness

Jackson Pollock's Blue Poles must be sold.  Not because it's a bad painting or because it fails the Australian test, but because it of what has come to represent to the Left.

Last week, Senator James Paterson suggested that the painting, currently on loan to the Royal Academy of Arts in London, should be sold to the highest bidder in order to help with our national debt.

Given that the painting might fetch somewhere in the region of $350 million, its sale is unlikely to make much of dent in the country's growing $470 billion gross national debt.

Senator Paterson justified his idea by saying that although it was a "great painting", the nation could afford to lose it because it's not Australian enough.

While the canvas is no doubt "great" in terms of scale, Blue Poles is light years from away from being a great painting.  Rather, it is an anarchic assemblage of dribbles, splatters and droplets which leaves the gallery visitor wondering just what it's all about.

And if we were to apply the Senator's logic about the painting's foreign provenance to the entire collection of the National Gallery, then we would be left with very empty rooms indeed.

Blue Poles is the ultimate symbol of Gough Whitlam's progressive and politically modernist government, which the Left continues to praise and defend in equal measure.  What the canvas represents in reality is the financial, political and cultural ineptitude of the disastrous and irresponsible 2 years and 11 months of the Whitlam government.

The vast canvas has been gracing an equally vast wall of the National Gallery of Australia since 1973, when it was purchased for a whopping $1.3 million, which is about $11.5 million today.

James Mollison, the director's gallery at the time, had to apply for a special dispensation from Whitlam because he was only allowed to spend $1 million on any one piece.  Whitlam thus achieved the highly dubious world record of having bought the most expensive piece of contemporary American art work on sale anywhere at that time.

When it arrived in Australia, critics objected to both its appearance and its price.  The outrage and scandal caused by Whitlam's profligate decision was entirely justified.

Entitled either No. 11 or Number 11 (apparently naming the painting after an object such as "poles" was too distracting), the work was criticised as having been painted by "barefoot drunks".  This was not merely hyperbole but based on the story of its creation told by Pollock's close friend Tony Smith, who together with Pollock, proceeded to get drunk, unroll a canvas on the floor, empty tins of paint onto it, get even more drunk, lie on it, then walk around on it in bare feet.

Aesthetic value aside, it was the financial implication of the purchase made in the early 1970s which was as unforgivable then, as it is now.

The painting was acquired by the government during a period of "stagflation", in which the Oil Crisis, Britain's entry into the EEC and rising competition for Australian exports, combined with Labor's appalling economic policies, drove Australia into economic recession.

Australians were suffering from high unemployment on a scale unmatched since the Great Depression of the 1930s.  They lost their jobs, business and savings.  Inflation hit nearly twenty per cent, the highest since the post-war years.  It was by no means a happy or prosperous time for many, nor was it a time to be spending $1.3 million on second-rate American paintings.

The Labor government's coffers had become so depleted that there was simply not enough money to keep the country operating.  Facing defeat in the 1975 election, it attempted to unconstitutionally borrow $500,000 from Iranians connected to Saddam Hussein's regime to help pay for the campaign.

Blue Poles is a shambolic painting, purchased by a shambolic government.  It represents Whitlam's complete and utter failure as Prime Minister as well as the reckless spending of his government.  It is precisely because it has become the Left's monument to this failure, that it must go under the hammer as soon as possible.

Section 18C must go as it curbs freedom of speech

Freedom of speech is meaningless if all it entails is the liberty to express opinions approved by the state.  Freedom of speech is richer than that.

It's a fundamental human right — which is also vital to the proper operation of a functioning liberal democracy — that is breached whenever the state ­places restrictions upon it.

Section 18C is a law that gives individuals an avenue to punish others if they say things that may "offend, insult, humiliate or ­intimidate" a person on the basis of race.  As a clear example of a ­restriction on expression imposed by the state, it therefore breaches the principle of free speech.  Free speech advocates have sensibly called for the repeal of this law.

The debate has now reached a point where senators from a diverse range of parties — including the Coalition parties, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, Family First Party, and the Derryn Hinch Justice Party — have co-sponsored a bill that proposes a modest reform.

All that is proposed by the bill is the removal of the words which set the lowest bar created by section 18C — "offend" and "insult".

Some defenders of the status quo argue that section 18C does not breach free speech because "hate speech is not free speech".

This is the kind of vacuous statement you might hear while wandering around a modern university campus.  It's a peculiar argument because it is so incoherent.

Of course "hate speech" is not "free speech".  Free speech is a normative principle of liberal moral philosophy, and hate speech is a (relatively unhelpful) label for a certain category of speech.

For the sake of the argument, let's set aside pedantic arguments about syntax.  The argument defenders of section 18C are attempting to advance is that the principle of freedom of speech does not protect expressions that might be classified as "hate speech".

But the boundaries of what can reasonably be labelled hate speech are important.  Even leftists who favour restrictions on hate speech, such as law and philosophy professor Jeremy Waldron, recognise that it does not include conduct which merely offends or insults.

Waldron, in his 2012 book, The Harm in Hate Speech, wrote:  "Laws restricting hate speech aim to protect people's dignity against assault ... However, I do not believe that it should be the aim of these laws to prevent people from being offended.  Protecting people's feelings against offence is not an appropriate objective of the law."

In Australia, the list of supporters for change to section 18C is incredibly diverse.  Many on the political Left recognise that section 18C goes too far.  They include barrister Julian Burnside QC, journalists David Marr and Gay Alcorn, Professor Sarah Joseph and ABC chairman Jim Spigelman.

Another argument advanced by those against change is that section 18C does not breach free speech because there are a range of "defences" available to protect defendants against legal sanction.

Section 18D is the provision that outlines these defences.  They appear as a list of exemptions for conduct that might otherwise be found to breach section 18C.  These include artistic work, statements, reports or fair comment made in the public interest.  These exemptions appear, on their face, to be quite broad.  They're not.

In Bolt v Eatock, the Federal Court case against journalist Andrew Bolt, lawyers for the defendant argued that newspaper articles written in the course of public debate should fall under the fair comment exemption.

That argument was not accepted by Justice Mordecai Bromberg, because in his view Bolt had employed "mockery and inflammatory language", a "derisive tone", and "gratuitous asides".

According to Justice Bromberg, Bolt had "failed to honour the values asserted by the RDA".  It's the vibe, your honour.

Sections 18C and 18D have been on the books for 21 years.  In all that time, precisely how many examples can those who champion section 18D as a great protector of free speech point to?  Three.

The exemptions in section 18D have been applied in just three cases ever.  Over that time a total of 65 section 18C cases have been argued before the Federal Circuit Court and the Federal Court.

You can't pretend to believe in freedom of speech by defending section 18C because of the existence of section 18D, and be satisfied that it has "protected" speech in just three out of 65 cases that have come before the courts.

Section 18D doesn't restore the egregious breach of freedom of speech contained in section 18C when a judge is able to rule that exemptions don't apply because your tone is not acceptable.

The argument that state approved speech is the same as free speech is an authoritarian distortion of a bedrock human freedom.  Section 18D doesn't even protect free speech in practice.  Let's not hear of it again.

Union bully busting: FU to the UFU

Voters in the ACT have a stark choice this weekend:  Jeremy Hanson and the Canberra Liberals, or four more years of a government notoriously beholden to trade unions (even by Labor standards).

Canberrans only have to look south to see what a union-dominated government looks like.

Victoria's situation is so dire that Metropolitan Fire Brigade chief Peter Rau resigned recently due to stress, attributed to bullying by the United Firefighters Union.  It is no wonder.

The reason for Rau's resignation came to light when Acting Emergency Services Minister Lisa Neville was caught out shamelessly spinning the sudden departure.  Rau, she wrongly said, was "gravely ill".

Rather, it is our fire services bodies that are "gravely ill", under siege from the United Firefighters Union.

Consider the symptoms.  The bullying of Rau and others.  Alleged threats by UFU boss Peter Marshall to put an axe through the head of a state government minister.  And the extraordinary attack on over 55,000 Country Fire Authority volunteers.

As spectacular and shocking as these symptoms are, the underlying disease is more complex and longstanding.

Australia's industrial relations regime — ushered in by the Rudd Government's Fair Work Act — has put unions in an unprecedented position of privilege and influence.  In a recently released report, I argued that one of the most insidious effects of Fair Work has been the creep of union influence beyond just pay and conditions via favourable enterprise bargaining agreements.

Through increasingly audacious negotiation with state governments, unions are building clauses into EBAs requiring that management "consult" with them on a wide range of operational matters, often completely unrelated to workers' pay and conditions.

These provisions not limited to fire services authorities.  The Ambulance Victoria EBA, for example, requires that management must consult with the relevant union in relation to any proposal to "restructure the workplace, introduce new technology or change existing work practices".  Management must also give "due consideration" to "alternative proposals".  Similar provisions exist in EBAs covering other emergency services bodies, like Victoria Police and the State Emergency Service.

Public sector EBAs also typically include time-consuming "dispute resolution" clauses, which can be invoked where management and the relevant union cannot reach "consensus" on proposed changes.

Evidence given to the Fair Work Commission by the MFB show that consultation has been required on matters as trivial as the migration of the MFB's operating system to Windows 7 and proposed changes to the model of pencils to be used by firefighters.

Unsurprisingly, management are throwing up their hands in frustration.  Prior to his resignation, Rau indicated that the UFU's "power of veto over my statutory responsibilities is unworkable and undermines community safety".

Similarly, Joe Buffone, then-CFA chief, indicated that consultation provisions "undermine my statutory authority as Chief Officer to have and maintain control, at all times, of resources."

The Turnbull Government's changes to the Fair Work Act this week are a positive step.  In effect, they would quarantine decisions about the deployment of volunteers from union veto powers.

But while protecting volunteers is important, the government must go further in limiting the matters that can be governed by EBAs.

Enterprise bargaining should be a mechanism to set pay and conditions, but it has become a proxy tool for joint union-management operational decision-making.  Until this changes, our emergency services bodies will continue to be hamstrung, and we the public will be "gravely ill" for it.

After Brexit, Anglo-Oz relations can flourish

Australia's cultural, social and political history is entwined with Britain's.  We share a language, the Westminster democratic system, the common law and a respect for diversity, individualism and freedom.

Australia's modern incarnation was defined by British colonisation.  As former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott put it last week, during a discussion of Anglo-Australian trade relations at the UK Conservative Party conference, "Once, you exported people to Australia, of course ... chosen by the finest British judges".  Today, Australia and the UK continue to have particularly strong ties in intelligence and international relations, but the UK's decision to join the European Economic Community in 1973 put a strain on our close friendship.

In the 1950s, the UK government assured the Australian government that it would do nothing to diminish trade relations.  Consequently, Australia was genuinely shocked and affronted by the UK's application to join the EEC in 1961.  French president Charles de Gaulle vetoed Britain's entry in 1963, and again in 1967.  In order to join the EEC, Britain was compelled to sever economic ties with the Commonwealth, imposing extensive trade restrictions on Australian exports.  This has had a profound cultural and economic effect on Australia.  As former Australian prime minister Paul Keating put it during the 1990s, the UK had "walked out on us and joined the common market".  This secondary status is writ large at British airports, where, despite sharing a queen with Brits, Australians are shuffled into the slow lane while Europeans are given priority.  (Just a few weeks ago, I waited for 50 minutes in one such line.)

This is why Australia is excited about Brexit.  It is an extraordinary opportunity to right a historic wrong, and rebuild our relations, both economic and cultural.

Many pessimists have pointed out that Australia's trade with the UK is very small — minimising the importance of any trade deals.  Indeed, Britain is only Australia's 8th largest export market.  However, this focus ignores the reason why Australia-UK trade has declined — Australia's lack of access to the common market.  Australian businesses cannot compete on an equal footing with European businesses.

Take one industry:  butter.  Older Britons might remember that until the mid-1970s Australian butter was a significant presence on UK supermarket shelves.  But after Britain joined the EEC, Australian butter exports dropped by more than 90 per cent.  Or take the case of apples:  exports declined from 86,000 tonnes in 1975 to 27,000 tonnes in 1990.  Similarly, before the UK's membership of the EEC, about a third of Australia's sugar exports went to the UK.  This market virtually disappeared overnight.

Australia began negotiating a free-trade agreement with the European Union in 2015.  Sadly, however, talks have stalled due to Italy's protest about Australia's anti-dumping duties on Italian canned tomatoes.  As a consequence of a completely irrelevant delay, Australia and Britain are missing out on the mutual benefits of freer trade.

Our passion to rebuild historic relations with the UK, playing off our complimentary economies, is the reason why we are the first country in line to sign a deal with the UK.  We're pretty good at trade agreements, too, having completed negotiations with China, Japan and Korea in the past few years.

There has also been substantial decline in the number of Australians issued visas by the Home Office in recent years.  This is not because young Aussies are uninterested in coming to the UK, but rather due to new visa regulations and migration caps.  UK foreign secretary Boris Johnson has previously supported a "free-mobility labour zone" between Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Britain.  UK home secretary Amber Rudd has since poured cold water on the idea of increasing the number of Australian migrants.  But, with negotiations yet to begin, there's no reason to dismiss the possibility of it happening.

The consequences of these trade and migration restrictions are bad for both Britain and Australia.  Nevertheless, Australia has flourished since the 1970s, largely thanks to our open economy.  According to the International Monetary Fund, we have the 16th highest per capita income in the world (the UK sits at 25), and, according to the World Health Organisation, the fourth highest life expectancy (the UK sits at 20).  We are proud of our achievements and are ready to re-establish a strong independent relationship with the UK, one that would be beneficial to both our nations.

Diary

I arrive at Melbourne airport for my midnight flight with an unfortunately timed cold.  My lack of sleep after Canberra's ultimate insider event, the Midwinter Ball, is catching up on me at the worst possible time.  There's nothing quite like a night celebrating with journalists, in Parliament House, to wear down one's stamina.

On the long flight over to London I have the opportunity to read Arthur Brooks' masterful Conservative Heart.  Brooks contrasts Europe's lost mojo to aspirational developing countries.  In India people are agile and innovative — moving to shanty towns desperately looking for opportunities to create a better world for themselves and their children.  In Europe, the energy is lacking.  The best days are behind them.  They have accepted their slow slide to mediocrity.

I have a few weeks before I begin studying.  After less than 24 hours in the United Kingdom (just enough time to get my residency card) I board the next budget airline flight across the channel to Spain.  Spain hasn't had a government for nine months — stuck in caretaker mode after elections last December and June failed to produce a conclusive result.

Yet, miraculously, life goes on unencumbered.  The beautiful beaches, the bars and clubs that stay open all night — nobody tell our Puritan premiers Mike Baird or Anastasia Palaszchuk that people are having fun at 2am in the morning!  The tapas is as free flowing as the sangria (which literally comes from taps in some bars).  What a time to be alive!  The hostels are full of young Aussies, seeing the world before being thrust back into the reality of study and work.  We are an intrepid people.

The darker elements, however, are not far below the surface.  Spain was governed by a fascist dictator until 1975.  The signs of the Spanish Civil War, where dictator Francisco Franco ruthlessly took power, are still visible in gun and shrapnel damage to beautiful historic buildings.  Meanwhile, due to failed economic policies, over half the country's young languish unemployed — freed from material need by a welfare state and yet lacking a sense of purpose and hope for the future.

Following a visit to Bilbao and the beautiful resort town of San Sebastian, I arrive in Barcelona on their Catalonia region national day.  There are tens of thousands of people across the city protesting for Catalonian independence.  Spain's most successful region is sick of subsidising the rest of the country with high taxes — sound familiar? — but the central government won't accede to the people's wishes and allow a referendum.  I wonder if an independent Catalonia would join the European Union.  In Madrid my local tour guide — attempting to be funny — repeatedly points out that Spain was "a great empire ... once upon a time" but now "we're a bankrupt country".  The "joke" doesn't get many laughs.

After a quick visit to Portugal, another economically struggling former empire, the jaunt is up.  I'm back on the plane to London.  I'm doing it the wrong way round — Ausexiting, Brentering.  On my train into London from the airport a loud American tourist asks a local what Brexit means.  "Freedom" the Brit swiftly responds, before admitting he didn't actually vote.  "We've had to follow all their laws, now we can do our own thing," he explains.  The comment reminds me of a poll shared a few days earlier on Twitter by the great Dan Hannan which found the number one reason people voted for Brexit was "The principle that decisions about the UK should be taken in the UK."

The London School of Economics' welcome lecture proves an intriguing affair.  The Equity, Diversity and Inclusion speaker, after discussing various services available to students, begins discussing freedom of speech.  She says it is "not absolute" — limited by public order law, terrorism law and the equality act, however that "simply causing offence is not enough to limit freedom of speech, after all a university is about exploring controversial ideas".  It sounds almost perfunctory, however it is unimaginable that an Australian university would make a similar comment to students during their first week.

The head of the student union was next.  She was careful to comfort European students with the comment that "We didn't vote for Brexit".  As a Commonwealth student I already feel discriminated against.  Brexit is on everyone's lips, and yet nobody knows exactly what it will mean in practice.  The civil service, fearful of a potential leak, apparently did no preparation work before the vote.  And now everyone has their own vision.

I attend an event with Syed Kamall, the Leader of the Conservatives in the European Parliament and a Brexiter himself, who says that the UK will not remain part of the common trading and regulation market, or keep current migration targets.  However that doesn't mean the end of trade, or migration.  Meanwhile, Theresa May is being hounded for not outlining specifics, or triggering Article 50 (the leave clause).  The European Union is also in disarray, infighting about who should lead the negotiations, between the Parliament, the Commission and the Council, and lack any offical position.  Well, with all this drama, there's never been a more exciting time to be an Australian in London.

Red tape hampers resources recovery for miners

The future prosperity of resource-rich states such as Western Australia is threatened by unnecessary regulatory roadblocks.

Capitalising on a possible market recovery, and unleashing the potential benefits of a second mining boom, can only begin by cutting the layers of red tape sitting between miners and the resources they seek to extract.

Australia's has a red tape problem.  My recent research, based on the World Bank's "regulatory quality index" and a methodology developed in the US, found that red tape costs $176 billion in foregone economic output every single year.  That's the equivalent of 11 per cent of GDP.

That new estimate is more than double the Abbott government's 2014 estimate of $65 billion for two reasons.  First, my methodology takes into account not just commonwealth law, but the body of state and local government law too.

And second, rather than asking government departments to estimate the burden of the red tape they impose, my top-down approach incorporates some of the unseen burdens of red tape:  fewer jobs, fewer new businesses, and lower productivity.

It is this second point that is most poignant for the resource industry, and therefore for states such as WA.

The cost of red tape isn't just the inconvenience of government approval and filling out additional forms.  The real cost of overbearing government regulation is how it fundamentally changes the structure of our economy — distorting decisions and resources away from their most productive uses.

The resources industry in particular is subject to a byzantine array of by licenses, permits and approvals, that slow or prevent major projects, cost jobs and ultimately undermine Australia's prosperity.

Earlier this year, for instance, recall that plans for Yeelirrie, one of Australia's largest uranium mines in Western Australia, were halted by the Environmental Protection Authority because of a threat to 11 species of tiny "stygofauna", or "desert prawns".

According to the Productivity Commission, the costs of delaying an average sized project by just one year is in the order of $26 million to $59 million.

The Roy Hill project in the Pilbara required over 4,000 permits, licenses and approvals, including 1,057 environmental regulatory approvals, in the pre-construction phase alone.

With this unsustainable level of regulatory resistance it's no wonder money funnelled into exploration is in precipitous decline.

Over the past four years, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the money spent on minerals exploration in WA (excluding petroleum) has plummeted from $574 million to $220 million.

The trend for petroleum looks even worse:  dropping from $955.4 million in December 2012 to $223.6 million in June this year.  That's a fall of over 70 per cent.

Exploration is critical to the long-term future of Australia.

It is of course the case that some of this trend can be attributed to cyclical economic forces outside our control, from commodity prices and changing global currents.

But it is equally clear that the government has a role in encouraging investment, and in particular competing for investment.

To reinvigorate our resources industry, and thereby the West Australian economy more broadly, governments at all levels must begin to wind back roadblocks on business.

Only by doing this can we propel economic growth, get more people into jobs, and pull ourselves back up the international competitiveness rankings.

We should be optimistic about the future of the mining in this country.  A Newport Consulting report in June showed that 43 per cent of miners surveyed were optimistic about the year ahead.  But 24 per cent of miners in that survey also said red tape was an issue, especially for project approvals.

To be sure, the West Australian government last year reinvigorated efforts to streamline project approvals.  But more needs to be done.  If Western Australia is serious about a second leg of the mining boom then the role of the government is to create a regulatory environment conducive to exploration and investment.

Cutting red tape is a real economic plan with tangible economic dividends — and ones that the public can understand.  Cutting red tape promises to help unleash a second wave of prosperity from the West.

High cost of the warm and fuzzies

The bank boss parliamentary inquisition ordered by Malcolm Turnbull has served one useful purpose.  It has got bankers doing something they don't do enough of talking about banking.

If bank CEOs spent more time talking about their actual job and less time pontificating about things such as climate change, Indigenous recognition and diversity, maybe the banks wouldn't be in the position they're in.  Talking about climate change is easy and popular.  Talking about banking is hard.

In large part, the bank bosses have only themselves to blame for the fact that politicians and the public have precious little understanding of how banks operate.

Both Labor and Liberal treasurers have had trouble comprehending that the Reserve Bank does not and should not determine home mortgage interest rates.

Many parliamentarians complain about the lack of competition between the big four banks.  What they don't appreciate is that the more regulations Parliament imposes on banks, the more the supposed monopoly of the larger banks is entrenched.  Big businesses can afford to pay the costs of regulation — their smaller disruptive competitors can't.  Which is why the banks will be not too bothered by the extra regulation that will inevitably emerge from these parliamentary hearings.

The irony of Labor MPs telling bank executives how to do their job is rich.  It was the Labor Party that gave the country the pink batts disaster, the Building the Education Revolution (BER) scandal and the NBN boondoggle.  An earlier version of the Labor Party understood that the government had no rule in owning or operating a bank Banks might be unpopular, but the chances are that more people would choose for their home loan to be provided by a private bank than by a government department.  And it's almost understandable that Coalition MPs won't defend the banks when the banks won't defend themselves.

There was a time not so long ago when a speech from a bank CEO was more likely to be a critique of capitalism rather than an enunciation of the benefits of free markets.

To be fair, the views of bank CEOs are not very different from those of their peers in other industries.

It's almost impossible to imagine the CEO of an ASX100 company arguing in favour of free speech.  Or Brexit.  Or heaven forbid, that Donald Trump would not be a much worse US president than Hillary Clinton.

On the rare occasion when a CEO does step out of line with the consensus of the political class, the reaction is ferocious.  In 2013, the then Myer chief executive Bernie Brookes made the now "infamous", but entirely true, statement that if taxes went up shoppers would have less money to spend in his stores.  The particular tax he was referring to was an increase in the Medicare surcharge to contribute to the costs of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.  A government bureaucrat, the disability commissioner of the Human Rights Commission, launched a public petition against Myer.  Three years ago, Brookes and Myer got no support from the rest of the business community, in the same way the bank bosses are now being left to fend for themselves.

Beyond the issue of what's happening to the banks is a bigger story about the place and perception of business and enterprise in Australia.  A plausible argument could be made for the claim that the influence in the public debate of the business community, and especially of big business, is as weak now as it has been at any time in recent decades.  This is a phenomenon that is not good for the country's future prosperity.  As the voice of the sector that generates wealth grows weaker, the voice of government, and the voice of the handmaiden of government the public sector unions gets louder and stronger.

Successive bank bosses have used their corporate pulpit to promulgate a soft-left progressive ideology that allowed them to explain away the fact that they lent money at a profit.  The anti-bank sentiment that now exists in the Labor, Liberal, and National parties is a direct consequence of bank CEOs spending years apologising for themselves.

The current crop of bank bosses must now clean up the mess their predecessors left behind.

Strip Greens of pointless funding

After years of litigation, environmental activists have been dealt a terrible intellectual and legal blow by the Queensland Supreme Court:  Australian coal mines don't hurt the environment.

Last Wednesday the Queensland Supreme Court rejected a frivolous legal challenge mounted by green group Coast and Country concerning a coal mine near Alpha, in central Queensland.  The green group argued that the burning of coal in export destinations such as India would create carbon emissions, and these emissions needed to be considered by the State Government when granting approvals.

But, in its rejection, the Court noted that stopping the mine would not have made any difference to global carbon emissions:  "Power stations would burn the same amount of thermal coal and produce the same amount of greenhouse gases whether or not the proposed Alpha Mine proceeded."

This is a significant judgment.  It says blocking coal mines in Australia will not benefit the global environment because we are in a globally competitive market place.  If a power station in India does not obtain coal from Australia, it will buy coal from somewhere else.

It also lays bare the motivation behind these legal challenges.  For years green groups have fished for a ruling that says Australian mines are responsible for carbon emission overseas.  This would establish a legal precedent that would destroy the coal industry, which is precisely their aim.

But, just as competition means stopping coal in Australia won't help the environment, it also means business investment is highly sensitive to domestic cost pressures.  Legal challenges that cause delays are a key source of concern for big miners.

As The Sunday Mail (Oct 2) found, more than $34 billion of projects are being targeted by ecoactivists, which could jeopardise employment for 27,000 Queenslanders.

This comes at a time when the same number of people are in full-time work now as they were in 2011 and state debt is forecast to reach $75 billion in 2016-17.

Green groups do not have the solutions.  After the court's decision, Coast and Country's Derec Davies said "it's up to the Queensland Government and the labour force that are traditionally working in mines to look to transition to some sustainable future jobs".  Where are these "sustainable future jobs"?  Davies does not say.  Meanwhile thousands of actual jobs are being squandered.  The Alpha mine is expected to create 5650 jobs.

The State and Federal governments should adopt a pro-Australian energy and jobs policy.  This will involve stripping green legal groups of funding;  abolishing or amending laws that give green groups special legal privileges;  cutting project approval red tape;  and getting the Federal Government out of approvals altogether.  Now that it is clear stopping coal in Australia will not help the environment, why allow green groups to continue with the pretence that it does?

Red tape ready for Malcolm Turnbull to cut

The ridiculous story of Tori Gentle and Bea Cobon and their cafe reveals how red tape threatens Australia's prosperity.  Their cafe is a small business, but what's happening to them is the same thing happening to big business.

Tori and Bea are the owners of Crate Speciality Coffee cafe in Heidelberg Heights, Melbourne.  In response to customer demand they recently applied to their local council, Banyule Council, to increase the cafe's seating from 15 to 30 people and extend its opening hours to 9pm on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays.  If their application had been successful, Tori and Bea would have had to hire more staff.  But it wasn't successful.  The council rejected Tori and Bea's application as a result of a single anonymous objection from a member of the public.  That's right.  Because one person objected, the application was refused.  According to the council, "the proposal needed to balance economic opportunities and amenity impacts".  And apparently, according in Heidelberg Heights, one single anonymous objection can tip the scales against economic opportunity.

In the light of red tape like this it should be no surprise that according to the World Economic Forum, Australia now places 80th out of 140 countries in a ranking of the burden of government regulation on companies.  The country rated as the best place for doing business was, of course, Singapore.

What Banyule Council forgets is that community amenity is a product of economic activity.  If it wasn't for the rates businesses pay Banyule Council wouldn't have the money to fund its Arts Plan as outlined in a glossy 76-page full colour brochure.  As part of the plan the council consulted with five-year-olds about the cultural activities they wanted in their neighbourhood.  Among the things the children said they'd like to have were a chocolate mountain, "a big beautiful castle with steps that go up", a circus and dinosaurs.

We tend to think of red tape as only unnecessary or unproductive rules and regulations imposed by government.  And there's certainly lots of this kind of red tape in Australia.  I have calculated red tape costs the country $176 billion a year in foregone economic output.  Some industries are hit harder than others.  The consulting firm Deloitte estimated that nearly one in 10 employees in the mining sector works in compliance.  The Roy Hill iron ore project in Western Australia required more than 4000 government permits, approvals and licences in its pre-construction phase alone.

Abolish bodies that create red tape

One of the ways to cut such red tape is simply to abolish the bodies that impose and implement red tape.  The Rudd/Gillard/Rudd government established 497 new authorities and organisations.  In the three years since it was elected in 2013, the Coalition has abolished and amalgamated just 53 of those bodies.

Another kind of red tape is the requirement for seemingly endless "stakeholder engagement".  Certainly there's a role for community consultation, and there's nothing wrong with Banyule Council asking residents for their views about a cafe operating in a residential area, but the opinion of one person shouldn't necessarily decide the cafe's opening hours.  In a democracy the voices for and against economic development can be heard, but left-wing activist environmental groups should not be able to use the legal system to delay projects for years.  And those groups shouldn't be funded by state government to run litigation against projects.  Adani has spent $1 billion and six years on community consultation and in court in an effort to build its coal mine in central Queensland.  The Environmental Impact Statement for the project was 22,000 pages long.  The project would create up to 10,000 jobs.

In an interview with this newspaper a few days ago the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, said "top of mind for me are jobs and growth and the critical objective for us is to deliver the economic reform measures, whether it is in the form of savings or whether it is in the form of getting rid of red tape and excessive regulation ..."

If the Prime Minister is serious about cutting red tape, he should start by chatting to Tori and Bea and then he could visit the municipal offices of Banyule Council.