Apologies in advance for not writing more, and sooner; there are about half a dozen threads in various stages of completion, and my health is currently a work in progress as well. But anyway: surely it’s true that such things as national defence, law courts, local roads and sewerage systems are better approached as a collective enterprise. I’m using the word collective here, carefully and deliberately: something to which all members of society must contribute through taxes, even those opposed to them. If there were no dissenting or unwilling contributors, it would be elevated from a collective exercise to a co-operative one.

Now, it’s fairly obvious in any society more populous than the desert-island scenario often used by Libertarians to illustrate its principles, you’re never going get 100% agreement on anything. A truly co-operative government is impossible, which is why most Libertarians—myself included—admit the necessity of at least some degree of collectivism for society to function at all. It’s also why the representative model of democracy has stood the test of time, whereas the truly plebiscite democracies (such as ancient Athens) failed.

Last week Luton Ian pointed us to this excellent article over at the von Mises Institute, on the meaning of political representation; or more accurately, the lack of meaning. If you haven’t read it yet, I encourage you to do so. I countered with the point that there really isn’t a viable alternative system of democracy that has been tried and proven. We elect our representatives, partially on the basis of how they say they will vote, partly because of their party affiliation, and partly on the basis of personality. But once elected, that “representative” does not consult with the electors on specific issues, and has no accountability for his voting record save at the next election. On that basis, our political representatives in parliament are our trustees rather than our delegates. We trust them to use their good judgement as each bill comes before the parliament or congress.

I made the point then, that if you don’t like this, then you should at least be aware of the number and complexity of bills on which your representative votes. They are far more numerous than the few “hot-button” issues that attract virtually all the media attention on politics. To actually think all these issues through is beyond the scope of most individuals, and if out of convenience we have out-sourced our duty to think—to a bunch of politicians, of all people! people whose skill lies in conning the public, rather than in governing justly—then, well, we really have only ourselves to blame.

Of course, if the scope of government was reduced to that of a traditional liberal democracy, rather than that of a modern social democracy, then there would only be a fraction of the bills currently required for consideration. Citizens could then more meaningfully take an active part in a functioning democracy. But realistically, that isn’t going to happen any time soon.

Modern technology, however, opens the way to the possibility of greater participation of the citizenry in the democratic process. Here in Australia, the political party Senator Online has thought this issue right through, and offers an intriguing model of how it could be achieved. Do go take a look at their website, as I predict more movements like this are likely to spring up in other “democratic” nations where the elected leaders so often appear to be acting against the express wishes of those who put them in power. SOL’s model calls for optional voting in the upper house only, with their elected senators abstaining from all bills except those receiving a minimum quota of on-line votes from registered voters under a secure digital ballot box. SOL senators, in effect, become mere ciphers, and do not exercise any judgement or discretion whatsoever. As an interim measure, it’s a brilliant idea, as well as wonderfully subversive of the current “democracy”, but it’s precursory to the abolition of the Upper House as a chamber of parliament; after all, if every senator acted thus, the entire Senate could be replaced with a secure server, with no loss of efficiency—a rather large saving, I daresay! The one thing missing in the model, as far as I can see, is the possibility of citizen-initiated bills or referenda, as occurs in some states in the U.S.A. SOL is concerned primarily with citizen’s oversight and power of veto, rather than direct governance.

That’ll do for the moment. How involved in governance do we want to be? If we don’t like the people in power now, nor their alternatives in the next election, and we aren’t prepared to run for office ourselves, then are we at least prepared to take the time and effort to study the issues and vote on them personally? Because if we aren’t, we really do have little cause to complain about the mob we’ve got as it is.

Election poster from Harold Wilson's 1966 UK election campaign. He may very well do YOU good - but at whose expense?

I’m currently looking at GE’s recent thread at the DT, lamenting the rise of the Welfare State and the normalization of welfare dependency, helplessness, and self-righteous mendicancy; a subject LibertyGibbert has previously visited in detail.

The general tone of the comments at the DT, as well as under the original BBC story concerning a long-term unemployed father of seven, on which James’ thread is based, runs along the lines of doesn’t this bloke have any self pride?; or I started working straight out of school, swept floors to keep myself off the dole; to so demand for his skill set dried up? Why didn’t he retrain, the slacker!

As a matter of declaration, I got my own first paid job delivering newspapers at age nine. I was a member of a trade union at twelve, and have worked more or less continuously since leaving school. My parents told me they wouldn’t object to my pursuing a career in music, provided I completed my education first. Which I did. As it transpired, I spent only a few years in the music industry before drifting, via an alphabet of jobs, into the one I’m in now. But I guess most of you have already read about all that, so I won’t bore you with any more details.

But it got me thinking: as many great authors have pointed out, one of the fundamental flaws of a democracy is that pretty much everyone in it is trying to get more out of the system than they are putting in. What about someone who gets up every day, works hard, pays taxes and obeys the law of the land: should he have no more say in how his taxes are spent than the bloke across the street from him—a bloke who lays in bed till noon, pays no taxes, has never worked, but regards both his dole cheque and his vote as a God-given right, along with his right to join in any violent and destructive “protest” in which he may feel like participating? And what of the bloke across town who, with genius and hard work, built up over many years a large, multi-national business, employs thousands of his countrymen and pays millions a year in taxes?

What if the economy worked like that generally? Imagine a world in which the holder of 10% of a company’s shares had no more influence at shareholder meetings than someone who had bought only a single share? Or—far worse—someone who had no shares at all? In such a case, it’s clear the latter person would see to it that the company provides him with a highly-paid, do-nothing, unaccountable sinecure, complete with corporate credit card, unlimited travel, plus…

Hang on a minute: that is starting to sound awfully familiar.

Clearly, something’s not quite right here.

When a society’s net consumers outnumber its net producers—or at any rate, are handed grossly disproportionate power by the vagaries of the electoral system—and a decline, both in both the pre-eminence of the family as a nation’s core social building block, and in the self-esteem once sought by citizens as providers for themselves and their dependents; when this “perfect storm” of toxic social and economic factors takes hold of a society’s throat, we must ask the question, what is the root cause?

Riots in Birmingham UK, August 2011. Most of those involved were young, unemployed males. What gives them the "right" to vote?

I’m not as well-read as some of you on this issue. But it seems increasingly clear to me that, for one or more reasons, Western society has succumbed to the moral hazard of universal adult suffrage. Now, I’m quite aware that whenever anyone starts raising the question of the franchise, alarm bells start going off in the minds of many people. Images of one form of tyranny or another, be it feudalism, plutocracy, or whatever, get raised, Godwin-like, in an attempt to shut down all debate. But it’s a debate our society is one day going to have to have, or be left in the end with very little to vote for.

There won’t be a single person reading this (at least, I hope not) who would wish to limit the franchise on the basis of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation. In past centuries, the franchise was limited to landholders—not, as many believe, because the nobility wished to confine power to their own class; but rather, since the only form of domestic taxation at the time was land taxes. No representation without taxation. And at the risk of sounding like a broken record, surely the right to vote carries with it a concomitant duty to pay taxes?

And what about government employees? They, even more so than welfare dependants, have a vested interest in increasing the size of government, both its scope of operations and total tax take. The same goes for government-employed consultants and quango-dwellers. The income tax they pay is just recycled taxpayer money anyway, so should any of them be entrusted with the vote?

Back when our societies were liberal democracies, and the scope of government services was far narrower than it is today, this dilemma didn’t really exist. Sure, there was government corruption and cronyism, and only a fool would seriously believe we could eliminate it entirely. But when the “captive constituency” of the Welfare State of today’s social democracies grows to a size where it accrues the sort of electoral clout it enjoys today, the temptation of politicians—typically, but by no means exclusively, from one side of the political fence—to pander to the mob who keep them in power, at the expense of the minority who pay their way, becomes irresistible. It is not merely a moral failure on the part of venal politicians, but a symptom of a broken system that plays on that venality.

So folks, what do you think? When I floated the idea of this thread over at Knotted Prop, Kitler was of the opinion that the rich would simply “game the system” to suit themselves. But aren’t they doing that already? And in the process employing an army of tax lawyers and lobbyists to do so? I’d say that if they thought their taxes were buying them more influence—only this time, openly and honestly—they would be more inclined to pay them. And unless they want to spend up big on a private army to keep beggars off the estate, they would have a vested interest in maintaining a social security system that at a minimum furnished all the needy about them with the basics of food, clothing and shelter, such as I have described in my previous article on the subject. Those who find themselves without any political influence would likewise be encouraged to get themselves into paid employment, contributing taxes to society, and being rewarded with the vote they deserve.

Actually, I had planned to put out an essay last Thursday—Australia Day, commemorating the 224^th anniversary of the arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove. I had planned to tell you how happy I was to live in what I regard as the greatest nation on earth. How, despite all its problems, many of which I have detailed at great length on this site, Australia still affords its citizens a greater chance of liberty, and a degree of control over their own lives and the potential to pursue their own happiness by their own efforts, than just about any other country on the face of the earth. I wanted to express to you my own pride at being a living, working part of Australian society, with our inherent laid-back egalitarianism, our friendly acceptance of each other irrespective of national or racial background, our preference to pursue national rivalries on the sporting field rather than the battlefield, and even our willingness to send our nation’s finest into harm’s way when we believed the peace of the world to be threatened.

Those are the things I feel, the things I believe. I still do. But this year, Australia Day raised an ugly spectre of a past that refuses to die.

Some background first. I assume you’re all aware in a general sense that many advances have been made throughout Australia’s history, particularly over the last half-century, to redress the disposession and subsequent social dislocation of our Aboriginal population. What you may not know is that prior to a referendum in 1967, passed overwhelmingly by the voters of this country, our constitution did not even count Aborigines in the census, accord them citizenship, or give them (until 1962) the vote in Federal elections.

Even following the 1967 amendments to the constitution, many injustices remained. The legal doctrine of terra nullius (the assumption that the Australian continent was sovereign to no people at the time of white settlement) was not overturned until the High Court’s 1992 Mabo decision; prior to this, Aboriginal people who had continuously occupied lands throughout the period of white settlement had no claim of title upon them, and were thus formally dispossessed under the law.

To this day, disparities remain that are an open sore in our society, and perhaps our greatest source of national shame; Aborigines are an order of magnitude more likely to be imprisoned, have life expectancies decades shorter than the rest of our society; I have written previously on this site about the well-intentioned but disastrous social engineering attempts to herd a nomadic people into fixed outback settlements, far from any source of employment, resulting in virtually complete societal breakdown (of which I can’t even bring myself to give you any details, it’s just too terrible; follow the links if you really want to know), resulting in over-late, drastic counter-measures by later governments—yet more state-imposed social engineering, and equally doomed to fail.

State-imposed moral codes to make a Libertarian choke - but what else could they do?

It was in this climate of clear injustice that, in 1972, a small group of activists created the Aboriginal tent embassy on the front lawn of the Old Parliament House in Canberra, where it has remained, on and off, for nearly forty years now. Originally seen as a national focal point for indigenous protest, by 2012 it has decayed into something of an anachronism, or even an embarrassment, peopled as it is today by the more lunar fringe of Aboriginal rights protesters, and facing calls for its dismantling, even by many Aboriginal leaders, including the Ngunnawal people, the traditional owners of the lands about Canberra and the Australian Capital Territory.

Aboriginal Tent Embassy, Canberra, 1972

Last Thursday, Australia Day, both Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott were attending a formal luncheon near Parliament House at which were being presented bravery awards to those who had been involved in the rescue efforts following the 2011 Queensland floods. The event was barely under way when the glass-walled structure in which it was being held was surrounded by a large group of protesters who had made their way over from the tent embassy. Amid shouting, banging of fists and throwing of objects against the walls, Gillard’s personal security team intervened. Gathering Gillard and Abbott, and surrounded by Federal Police officers in full riot gear, they ploughed through the crowd; the images of a terrified Gillard, one shoe missing, man-handled into her car beside Abbott were flashed around the world’s media.

Gillard, being rushed to safety, trips and falls before being physically dragged to her waiting car. In America, the bullets would have started flying long before this.

I have no time for Gillard at all, as I’ve made abundantly clear on this site many times. She came to her office unelected, the result of a sleazy back-room factional deal, an office she retained by means of a blatant lie to the Australian electorate. I believe she is doing everything within her power to drag my country the way of Europe and America, to become the ultimate slaves of the bankster-enviro-nazi nexus.

But the fact remains, she is my democratically elected Prime Minister, and what befell her that day is an absolute disgrace. I’m also enough of a dinosaur to be outraged that our first female Prime Minister, in particular, was subjected to such an indignity. I’m sure that such a thing would never have been allowed to happen to an elected head of government in Britain or the United States.

But even that isn’t what sticks in my gullet the most. No, the truly ugly aspect of this year’s Australia Day débâcle is the way in which it came to occur. Details were sketchy at first, but are becoming clearer with each passing day, and the lines of evidence are pointing ever upward.

Earlier in the day, Tony Abbott was asked by an ABC journalist, out of the blue, a most curiously-worded question: Mr Abbott, today is also the 40th anniversary of the tent embassy in Canberra. Do you think it’s still relevant, or should it move? Abbott’s response was both innocuous and to the point:

Look, I can understand why the tent embassy was established all those years ago. I think a lot has changed for the better since then. We had the historic apology just a few years ago, one of the genuine achievements of Kevin Rudd as prime minister. We had the proposal, which is currently for national consideration, to recognise indigenous people in the constitution. I think the indigenous people of Australia can be very proud of the respect in which they are held by every Australian, and, yes, I think a lot’s changed since then and I think it probably is time to move on from that.

That’s it, word for word. But we now know that a junior staffer from Gillard’s own office, one Tony Hodges, placed a call to Canberra unionist Kim Sattler, who is Aboriginal herself and has functioned for some time as an unofficial go-between, from the government to the tent embassy. Hodges relayed to Sattler, who then passed to the activists, both the fact of the Abbott interview and the details of Abbott’s movements that day. Versions of the story diverge at this point; Hodges (who has now resigned his position) and Sattler both claim they transmitted Abbott’s words verbatim; yet according to this story, it is clear that Sattler told the tent embassy activists that Abbott “wanted the tent embassy torn down”; Sattler is alleged to have urged the activists to go to the official luncheon and “liven things up”. From the Tim Blair story linked,

If someone in this chatter-chain had paused to review Abbott’s gentle comments, perhaps trouble might have been avoided. Well, maybe not in the case of the tent embassy’s more excitable inhabitants, who would probably be provoked to screaming rage by the opposition leader quoting Enid Blyton. But what excuse can be offered by relatively senior political operatives, with their access to the latest devices?

The media have even fewer excuses. A YouTube clip shot by tent embassy supporters last Thursday shows Ten reporter Amanda Hart at the protest being advised by an activist: “Don’t forget to say that Tony Abbott asked for the tent embassy to be shut down.”

Sure enough, on Ten’s 5pm bulletin, Hart’s piece included this line: “The protest was launched by Aborigines from the nearby Aboriginal tent embassy, sparked by Tony Abbott who said the embassy, now in its 40th year, should be shut down.”

There, in one hit, is laid bare both the media’s hypocrisy and blatant political bias, not to mention hints of this whole thing being planned from higher up yet. The Federal Opposition are calling for a full inquiry into the affair, and blogger Andrew Bolt has a list of pertinent questions he would like to see that inquiry ask.

The political implications are wider still. As expected, following the tawdry Slipper affair last December, Labor have gone back on their written agreement with Tasmanian independent MHR Andrew Wilkie, who now says he will henceforth support government legislation on a case-by-case basis only, but will support a no-confidence motion only in the case of severe misconduct. But according to this story in yesterday’s Australian, Wilkie appears to believe that if senior government figures lie behind the events of Australia Day, deliberately provoking a race riot for political purposes, it would in fact constitute such misconduct. Slipper, who would then have the casting vote in a no-confidence motion before the House, would hardly support Labor in such a circumstance (as he has nothing left to gain or lose by doing so), leaving the Gillard government, and probably the entire Australian Labor movement with it, one raised hand away from oblivion, possibly permanently.

Sigh. I’m still proud to be an Australian. I really am. But there are times, like this one, when I just want to close the doors, turn off the internet, and not come out again until I can see at least a glimmer of the antipodean sunshine I believe to be my birthright.

What if a journalist had asked JFK this sort of question in 1960? Or Clinton in 1992?

Of course, none would have. The press pack half a century ago was fully aware of Kennedy’s proclivities; but he allowed them such access to himself, and gave such good interviews that, with a knowing wink, they all went along with it. Then, as now, the overwhelming majority of the fourth estate had long since discovered that its own interests lay very much on one side of the (completely phony) left-right political divide.

How blind the press must believe the American public to be. That they have no idea, none at all, of the magnitude of the hole the United States has dug itself into over the past century. Like Europe, America is careering, with ever-increasing speed, towards its inevitable date with reality. If a leader existed who really could extract the world’s foremost power from this fate, would the voting public really give a damn about his private life? Former House Speaker Newton Gingrich would agree, and his disembowelling of debate moderator John King—an all-too typical product of modern Western journalism—in the clip above, was magisterial.

In any case, I doubt Gingrich has the potential to become that leader. A commensurate Washington insider, he is in essence a business-as-usual guy; while mouthing agreeable platitudes about freeing up business, work ethic and self-reliance, he shows no sign of having a plan to fix the underlying malaise that is dragging America the way of all history’s great empires.

The other two remaining GOP candidates, Romney and Santorum, are no better really. While adopting different focuses (foci?), they are, in my opinion, really just three different brands of the same snake oil. The minor differences between them, while being endlessly pored over by the press, in the end won’t make a tinker’s cuss worth of difference when it counts. A bit like a lot of previous U.S. presidential elections, except this time, the arithmetic is no longer adding up; America in 2011 lost its ability to kick its problems four or more years into the future. The next president, whoever it is, faces a moment of truth that his nation has not had to confront since the American Civil War. Long regarded as mankind’s “last best hope”, the United States may well find some of its most entrenched beliefs challenged well before the 2016 election. So don’t believe any promises you may hear from these three between now and November—they simply won’t be deliverable. And as for the Democratic incumbent…

Ummm… there are only three GOP candidates left, aren’t there? I think my eyesight’s getting blurry.

Well, it seems the world is still here: Europe hasn’t imploded (yet), America is not yet (completely) certain of getting another four years of Obama; North Korea hasn’t deployed nuclear missiles (or Alec Baldwin), and Global Warming, following the coldest start to summer Sydney has seen in 50 years, is feeling decidedly chilly.

I’m still on the mend, and I will be getting back to usual LibertyGibbert business shortly. But I thought I’d start off 2012 by relating a small personal tale. My family spent the festive season up in Sydney, with Mrs Oz’s parents. And while Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere is inevitably different to the sort of celebrations you’re used to in Europe and America (with barbecues, beaches and cricket matches replacing snowflakes, sleds and mulled wine) there really is something universal and magical about Christmas morning, particularly when children and grandparents are involved. Oz Jr, who’s now five, was jumping right out of his skin with excitement, while Ozgirl, at eighteen months, didn’t quite grasp exactly what was going on, but was more than happy to join in all the fun. Later that day, we had all the extended family along to a traditional Aussie Christmas barbie, followed by ritual bombings in the local swimming pool. All good clean fun.

Anyway, the local council area had scheduled its annual clean-up day for December 30. Basically, residents could leave any large items they didn’t want out by the kerbside, where trucks would stop by on the appointed day and remove them. Now, my in-laws live in a reasonably well-off area. Not exessively so; I’d say the estate in which they live is populated mainly by professionals: bankers, doctors, senior management—you get the idea. The houses are large, lawns and gardens impeccably maintained, the cars parked in the driveways are all new and largely European marques, and many have snazzy boats in trailers as well. A pretty healthy Christmas light competition is fostered, so evening walks around the estate with Oz Jr were a spectacular and much-anticipated daily event.

On Boxing Day, after dinner, Mrs Oz asked me if I could accompany her on a walk around the area, to see if there was anything residents had left outside for the cleanup that we could usefully take with us back to Tasmania. Five minutes out, and I was shocked. Right there, within a two-hundred yard radius of my in-laws’ home, was being thrown out enough stuff to set up home for maybe a dozen families. Furniture, appliances, discarded toys, everything. And not just really old or broken items, either: new or near-new, big-brand-name stuff, some of it seriously expensive. We picked up a beautifully upholstered recliner armchair for my father-in-law, which I’d say you couldn’t buy in a major retailer for less than AU$800. I got a bottle drying rack for my home-brewing operation (clearly an unwanted Christmas present, as were, I’d say, much of what we saw). The kids had a Santa double-up with some really great toys.

We didn’t just pick up stuff for ourselves. My wife knows several young mothers down here, in a decidedly less well-off area, and for them we found a treasure trove of baby bottles and teats (all new and perfectly packed up), clothes, children’s furniture and toys. What we can’t give away ourselves we will donate to the local op shop. I was only able to bring back to Tasmania about half of what we picked up, due to space limitations; the rest will have to wait until my next trip to Sydney (probably in about a month).

Of course, we only got there just in time. Word had spread and, within a day or so, the narrow laneways of the estate were filled with the huge trucks of the professional scavengers. These people would blow through like locusts, pick through the piles of items with astonishing speed, then head off to auction their booty on E-bay.

The whole thing made me wonder: how wasteful are we in our own lives? The idea that we can throw out perfectly good and functional possessions, as soon as we acquire new ones, just seems a little unsettling. Is our society really that opulent? Or that we don’t have a reliable mechanism to send our cast-offs to those who need but cannot afford them, and simply toss the old stuff out our front doors instead? I remember watching a news story on TV to the effect that, in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the forclosure of thousands of mortgages, the Salvation Army in the United States would not accept any more flat-screen TV sets—they already had more than they could store or possibly give away in the forseeable future! It would appear that, if you are going to set up home, and you don’t particularly care that everything is straight-out-of-the-box, brand-spanking new, then you really don’t have to spend very much money at all.

And how much food do we throw out? I’ve seen reports to the effect that the average family throws out 20-30% of all the food it buys over the course of a year. With no chickens to feed scraps to (and convert them into brand new eggs), and no garden to compost them in, the typical family simply tips their food waste into the garbage.

Let’s not even talk about clothing. I see the most stupendous waste occurring in the rag trade, in which fashions tend to change almost weekly, and wearing anything much older than a few months is frowned upon. I guess it depends on who and where you are, but as a mere male with a sadly truncated fashion sense, I tend to wear clothes and shoes until they wear out.

You all know my bottom line on this. As a Libertarian, I believe people must be free to make whatever transactions they wish, with whomever they wish, on mutually agreeable terms. If one feels they are so overwhelmingly wealthy that they must throw out any possessions that are not new, and as long as in doing so they are hurting no-one else, well I guess that is their business. I’ve certainly benefited personally as a result in the last week or so.

But I can question the wisdom of such a mindset. It seems to imply that the good times are here to stay; that the Jeremiahs predicting an economic Armegeddon are simply fantasists; and that there will always be more money to burn, just around the corner. I wonder how such people will cope when the music does stop (as it surely will).

Maybe it’s that there is virtually no-one left alive who was an adult during the Great Depression. Or maybe, in such a rapidly changing world, in which a computer or mobile phone more than a year old is obsolete, newness is no longer seen as a luxury, but a neccessity. When compiling a list of desirable characteristics of a well-formed personality, thrift used to be right up there. What’s happened to thrift? Has it, too, become an anachronism? To describe someone as thrifty these days, seems almost to carry with it a faint ring of derision.

I wonder. During the Great Depression, unemployment is said to have hit 33%. I’d say most households could easily save that much on food, clothing, and rarer purchases like furniture and appliances. And park those savings somewhere useful and productive. A thrifty society, by my calculation, could easily laugh off another Great Depression!

It’s hardened my resolve to devote some significant time and space on LibertyGibbert to the whole area of self-sufficiency. Thrift is inevitably going to be a big part of that. The day is coming, and it may not be far off, when our society is going perforce to re-discover thrift in a big way.

Do you have similar stories of waste you see occurring around you? How do you see the situation could be improved? And am I completely out of court on this? Does our modern, wealthy economy actually depend on chronic waste and obsolescence for its survival? I look forward to your views.

I had planned a new post out today. Unfortunately, Santa’s main present for me at Christmas was a recurrence of this damn chest infection that laid me low in 2011. So I’m getting some rest, and I hope to have LibertyGibbert up and running again sometime next week.

That’s it from me this year folks.

LibertyGibbert will be officially closed from Friday, 16^th December till Thursday, 5^th January. You’ll still be able to access all articles in the archive, and comment if you like, but all posts will be held in the moderation queue until I get around to looking at things online; something I’ve resolved to do as little as possible over the festive season. I decided to hold back some of the weightier LG articles in the pipeline until then, to give us all some breathing space. I did promise to get them out this year, but time has beaten me.

My sincerest thanks to all of you for making LibertyGibbert the place it has been in 2011. We’ve managed to cover issues of Libertarianism and rights, economics, science, philosophy, literature and politics, and not a small amount of great music in between. If you have any suggestions as to something you would like to see in 2012 (assuming the internet is still around), or do differently, let me know through the Contact page.

From my family to yours, all the very best wishes for a joyous Christmas and a happy, peaceful, prosperous and free New Year.

It’s all I can think of calling it

Perhaps it’s because of the sadly damp weather in Durban at the moment (in keeping with the record low temperatures experienced during the Cancún Global Warming summit, and the snowblocked Copenhagen Global Warming summit—truly, man proposes, God disposes; it even seems to be snowing a bit on this blog at the moment). Still, there is a chance of a bit of fun in the sun, in the early South African summer.

If this was a privately financed affair, then we really couldn’t care less how many warmists jet in from around the world in order to decry everybody else’s greenhouse gas emissions. But, of course, it isn’t. And when you’re spending other people’s money on yourself, there really is no limit to your generosity towards yourself and your friends. Why, just look at the cavalcade of functionaries and activists who simply had to be there—over fourteen thousand participants, according to the UNFCCC’s own list. Forty-six delegates from the Australian government alone, plus a conga line of government-funded or government-subsidized hangers-on from such disparate groups as the Australian Conservation Foundation, Climate Action Australia, Australian Industry Greenhouse Network, Australian National University, Australian Youth Climate Coalition, among others. One of Andrew Bolt’s readers has distilled a list of some of the more inexplicable attendees; inexplicable, that is, for any reason other than the chance at a free overseas trip at someone else’s expense. One does wonder if all this talk of climate “tipping points” might need to be taken seriously after all: this shindig might just be what pushes the planet over the edge.

Pity then, that the conference is doomed to achieve precisely nothing, before it even started. Brazil, China, South Africa, India, Russia and the United States—collectively responsible for the majority of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions—have all forewarned they will not be party to any binding agreements until at least 2015 (by which time, no doubt, they will have pushed that date back to 2020 or so, i.e., comfortably one or two election cycles into the future). You don’t have to be sceptical of AGW science in order to be sceptical of the pompous, self-serving diplomacy surrounding it.

And before you start getting all cynical, and asking whether the participants would have done the environment and the public purse a favour by conducting this jamboree by video-conference—shame on you for even thinking it!—remember that junkets like these are truly an imposition on these poor folks, and we should not only be grateful for their service, but understand if the evening conference sessions are somewhat more, erm, convivial, than your average business trip.

No doubt all the hard work achieved at such a horrendous cost, both to taxpayers and the environment, will all be worth it. In particular, I am in no doubt whatsoever that at the very least, they will preserve what former Australian parliamentarian Neil Brown nominated as the Golden Rule of international conferences: namely, to fix the date and location of the next get-together.

Well done!

And on it goes.

You might remember back here I referred to the position of Speaker of the House, an office dating back to at least the fourteenth century. Under the Westminster system, the Speaker of the House does not generally vote on bills, being called upon only to cast a tie-breaker. Traditionally in the Australian federal House of Representatives, the Speaker is chosen from among the members of the parliamentary party that forms government. This has been the case since the Second World War, when the UAP’s Walter Nairn served for three years as Speaker over John Curtin’s Labor government.

Not having a vote, a Speaker is expected to set aside party loyalty and uphold his post with fairness and impartiality, according to centuries-old tradition. He wields considerable power. All words spoken by Members within the chamber, irrespective of to whom they are aimed, must be addressed to the Speaker. He rules on points of order, can silence a speaking Member, name or even eject a Member from the House for a specified period. As the “judge of the court”, he is expected to have a near-encyclopædic knowledge of parliamentary procedure, history and tradition; generally, he (and it’s always been a he in Australia to date) has served a considerable time in parliament as a back-bencher before his elevation to the Chair.

The Speaker under the Rudd and Gillard governments has been Labor’s Harry Jenkins (pictured above), Member since 1986 for Scullin, an electorate centred on working-class Epping, in Melbourne’s northern suburbs. He’s an old-school Labor man, who followed in the footsteps of his father, Dr Harry Jenkins Sr, who preceded his son as Member for Scullin, and who served as Speaker of the House during the Hawke government from 1983-1986. His tenure in the chair since 2008 has earned him the respect of the entire parliament for his firm impartiality, integrity, good humour and wit; he is widely regarded as one of the best Speakers to have graced the chair in recent decades. In May this year, he named Liberal MHR Bob Baldwin, yet the ensuing suspension motion (which normally always follows the Speaker’s ruling) failed by one vote. According to Westminster convention, the Speaker in such a circumstance would normally offer his resignation; but a motion of confidence in the Speaker was immediately put to the House, and passed overwhelmingly; a measure of the regard in which he is held, even by his political opponents. Jenkins was expected to continue in the position at least until the next federal election.

And then, on Friday, the last parliamentary sitting day of the year, Labor went and did what it has always done best.

First, let me introduce you to the “Honourable” Peter Slipper, the MHR for Fisher, centred on Landsborough on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. I’m fairly certain that regular readers of LibertyGibbert have in recent months grown weary of me dragging out one tawdry, obscure Australian politician after another. Lord knows, you’ve got enough of them in your own countries. But in the annals of antipodean parliamentary venality, this bloke is something of primus inter pares. Slipper was originally a member of the National Party, and represented the division as such from 1984 to 1987, when he was defeated by Labor’s Michael Lavarch. Switching to the Queensland Liberal Party, he regained the seat in 1993, and has held it ever since (in 2010 the Liberal and National parties in Queensland formally amalgamated into the LNP). A continuing problem child for the Coalition, (I’ll explain why shortly), and following a series of indiscretions, he appeared almost certain to lose LNP preselection at the next federal election. Facing party disciplinary hearings, and what appeared to be the certain end of his political career, he was ripe for the plucking by the Labor machine.

As sitting began in the House of Representatives on Friday morning, the back benches were half-empty. There was no forewarning of the bombshell that was about to be dropped as Jenkins, on the verge of tears and fooling no-one that this was his decision, announced that due to his “desire to participate in policy and parliamentary debate”, he would immediately tender his resignation as Speaker to the Governor-General. Julia Gillard, feigning surprise, then nominated Slipper as new Speaker who, following ancient Westminster tradition, was then physically dragged from the Opposition bench to the chair by two Labor MHRs, past the horrified faces of his erstwhile colleagues on the Coalition front bench.

The ensuing scene in the chamber was as close to pandemonium as our national parliament has seen since the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975. The Coalition filibustered, with Manager of Opposition Business in the House Christopher Pyne nominating one Labor member after another for the Speaker’s post (including my own local member, “Big Dick” Adams—he at least would have looked the part). Tony Abbott, caught off-guard, was blunt in his response: “An honourable man—the Member for Scullin—has been sacrificed, to protect the political life of a failing Prime Minister”.

You can watch it all in the clip above. In particular, and to me the most shocking aspect of this so-called “shock” resignation, was that neither the newsreader nor reporter Mark Simpkins appear to even bother pretending that the ABC was unaware that this was a long-planned conspiracy between Labor and Slipper. Later that day, Harry Jenkins, now seated on the government back benches and having regained his composure, grinned across the chamber to the Opposition and indicated what everyone had guessed had happened to him, but no-one on the government side would ever admit:

And so the deed was done. With Slipper’s Coalition vote now taken out of play (it transpired that he actually got in first and resigned his membership of the LNP, hours before the party were set to expel him anyway) and Jenkins returned to the government benches, Labor’s numbers in the House have gone from 75-74 to 76-73. This means it can survive the likely downfall of Craig Thompson, and can ignore its agreement with Tasmanian gambling law reform advocate Andrew Wilkie, and it is almost certain now that Labor will serve a full term in government. But at what cost to its reputation? To get an idea, let me give you a more detailed picture of the House of Representatives’ 27^th Speaker.

As has long been known down here, Slipper is no stranger to contoversy. Firstly, there is the matter of parliamentary entitlements, now the subject of a formal police investigation. From this recent article on the Honorable gentleman,

Australian Federal Police have widened an investigation into alleged rorting in the parliamentary office of new Speaker Peter Slipper, as scrutiny of his taxpayer-funded entitlements shows he claimed nearly $1100 a day on travel and other expenses during the first half of the year.

Mr Slipper is under pressure over travel and office expenses that have totalled $1.8 million since 2007, including regular $280 taxi trips between Brisbane airport and his home on the Sunshine Coast, north of the city. Between January 1 and June 30 this year, he spent an average of $1073 a day on airfares, taxis, commonwealth cars and office supplies. This compared with $579.40 a day for South Australian independent senator Nick Xenophon, one of parliament’s most frugal members, according to Department of Finance figures.

And this:

Here is a fellow who has long displayed a liking for a night on the town. His impressive taxi chits tell the story, though he has refused to explain to journalists a $315 taxi bill for a single night out in Canberra last year….

Slippery Pete has long been under fire and several times been under investigation for his startling use of what are known as ‘’entitlements’’, particularly his use of taxpayer-funded telephones, taxis, hire cars and planes.

Last year he was forced to repay $14,000 for wrongful use of entitlements, including travel for his family. In 2003, the Finance Department demanded that he repay $7785.67 for breaching the family travel entitlement.

Small beer for a spender like Slipper. His phone bill alone for half of 2009 was $14,764, which was more than that of Kevin Rudd, who was prime minister at the time. Cabs cost $16,000 over just six months, plus $8600 on private-plate cars (it was later revealed his son was spending time driving the taxpayer-funded car).

All up, in the last six months of 2009 Slipper’s upkeep as a humble backbencher, including the running of his electoral office, cost the public $640,562. That was $150,000 more than it cost to maintain the Treasurer, fellow Queenslander Wayne Swan.

Slipper’s expenditure rolled along last year, when he attracted notice for spending $30,000 on family travel, and also when he took a 43-day overseas tour, which he explained was on parliamentary business…

Then there is his well-known predilection for, um, a “good time”:

Peter Slipper is no stranger to alcohol and trouble. Most famously, in 2003 Qantas staff refused to allow him to reboard a Darwin-bound plane at Gove, where it had stopped for refuelling, because of his behaviour towards staff.

The MP blamed a combination of dental drugs, a “couple of drinks” and a flight attendant’s bad day.

“I wasn’t in any way, shape or form, drunk,’’ he said at the time..

In 2004, on the weekend he survived a pre-selection challenge from Alexandra Headland barrister Glen Garrick, he copped a black eye after an unexplained scuffle at a Mooloolaba nightspot.

Then in Canberra on May 9, 2007, police were called to the Holy Grail restaurant and wine bar at 3.30am after a man threw Mr Slipper out onto the street for having a cigarette in breach of new no-smoking rules in restaurants and bars.

In December 2002, Slipper felt the need to visit a lavatory during a parliamentary sitting. Somehow he found himself in the disabled toilet, and when he had completed his business, possibly tired and increasingly emotional, he couldn’t get out. He pushed and pulled at the door before hitting the panic button. Four parliamentary attendants hurried to his aid. Disabled toilets, it was explained to him, have sliding doors. When reporters sought comment, his office responded, apparently straight-faced: “He can’t talk to you because he is in the House on chamber duty.’’

Last year, faced with the ordeal of a lengthy address to the House by visiting Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Slipper apparently felt in need of prior fortification, presumably in the parliamentary Members’ Bar. His subsequent response to Yudhoyono’s speech may have been somewhat less enthusiastic than the visiting head of state had hoped:

Our tax dollars at work

OK, so he likes a drink. That, on its own, didn’t stop the likes of Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt or John Curtin from becoming great leaders of their nations during World War Two (as opposed to the teetotal Hitler). But when you add it to the general attitude held towards him by his own parliamentary colleagues, a picture begins to emerge of a man who represents a genuine problem. Another Queensland Liberal MP, Alex Somlyay (Member for Slipper’s neighbouring electorate of Fairfax), recently wrote to a colleague,

Slipper has a disgraceful reputation, both in his electorate and in the parliament… many of the people I see in my electorate office are his constituents who refuse to deal with Slipper. I have a constant stream of complaints about his behaviour.

While I prefer to spend my spare time in my electorate, he has the highest frequent-flyer points on the backbench. He also has the highest mobile phone usage and oveseas travel of any Queensland MP. Comcar drivers dread the thought of driving him.

I cannot understand how you would support this discredited person. I can only assume that you support his actions and continued bad behaviour…

Who, me?

And now for something completely different: a bit of religious arcania. I’m sure many of you have at least heard of the breakaway Traditional Anglican Communion, an association of Anglican churches in fifteen nations; formed in 1991, it is independent of the mainstream Anglican Communion and the Archbishop of Canterbury. The TAC regard themselves as Anglican, in that they utilize the Book of Common Prayer and uphold the Reformist Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563. Yet unlike the wider Anglican and Episcopal churches, they oppose the ordination of women, hold traditional views on such issues as homosexuality and seek ever-closer union with Rome.

Having made overtures to the Holy See on several occasions, Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 acceded to the TAC’s requests, signing the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus, granting petitioning member TAC churches the status of a personal ordinariate; that is, while being integrated into the Roman Church and accepting the primacy of the pontiff, they would maintain their own ecclesiastical structures independent of the geographically-based Catholic diocesan episcopate. Ordained TAC priests, even if married, would be eligible for re-ordination as Catholic priests, however married priests would be ineligible for consecration as bishops. This is in line with the Vatican’s historical practice in relation to a number of Eastern-rite churches now in full communion with Rome. As a consequence of this latter restriction, the TAC’s American member, the Anglican Church of America, voted to reject communion with Rome, even if offered by the Holy See. So—

Anglican churches, personal ordinariates—Ozboy, what in hell are you going on about??

Oh, sorry, didn’t I mention? The Australian affiliate of the TAC is the Anglican Catholic Church in Australia, whose Ordinary, the controversial former Catholic priest John Hepworth, is also Primate of the worldwide TAC. Based mainly in Queensland, the ACCA maintains churches in all states of Australia. In February last year, the ACCA filed its own formal petition to the Holy See under Anglicanorum Coetibus.

And the current Chancellor of the ACCA, a man who in 2008, at the age of fifty-eight, was ordained by Hepworth in the Traditional Anglican communion, and is thus by extension also a Catholic priest, is one Father Peter Neil Slipper. Not that any of the recent news reports on him have seen fit to mention this fact. Nor does he exactly go out of his way to draw attention to his priestly status—by, say, the wearing of a clerical collar or cassock.

I’m not suggesting anything sinister. But as Speaker in the Australian parliament, under whose constitution Church and State are formally separated, he is likely to prove an embarrassment, not only to the mainstream Catholic and Anglican churches in Australia, but potentially even the monarch, in whose person—the Queen—resides not only the Sovereign of Australia, but also the titular head of the Church of England, from which Slipper’s church has broken away.

What part was played in all this by the scheming Kevin Rudd—who, while raised Catholic, worships with his wife at an Anglican church, and is the only regular Labor Party member of the Parliamentary Prayer Group—is anyone’s guess. Rudd denies any involvement; but if so, then the appearance of this story, just forty-eight hours before Jenkins’ resignation, is an almighty “coincidence”. Exactly what Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, a former seminarian, Rhodes scholar and arch-conservative Catholic, thinks of Slipper, I leave to your imagination.

Rudd: "Nahh, I didn't influence him to defect"... bullshit.

In any case, Slipper’s career as a politician is finished. Former army captain and Howard government minister Mal Brough is now certain to win the Liberal-National Party’s preselection for Fisher at the next federal election. You’d like Brough (rhymes with tough, and well-merited): check out this story about the time in 2003 when, as Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, he commandeered an aircraft, flew to a remote settlement in the Top End and single-handedly quelled a gang war between two rival armed factions. Brough, who is part-aboriginal himself, lives in the Fisher electorate, is respected throughout parliament, and few would argue he is a far more worthy representative of the Sunshine Coast’s electors than their snout-in-the-trough incumbent.

As a clearly relieved Tony Abbott wryly put it, “He’s Julia Gillard’s problem now”.

Basically, the Australian government is actively censoring any opinion which opposes, ridicules or in any way negatively highlights the all-encompassing effects of the Carbon Tax whose 18 legislative bills passed through the federal Senate last week. From the article,

On cue comes the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which this week issued warnings to businesses that they will face whopping fines of up to $1.1m if they blame the carbon tax for price rises.

It says it has been “directed by the Australian government to undertake a compliance and enforcement role in relation to claims made about the impact of a carbon price.”

Businesses are not even allowed to throw special carbon tax sales promotions before the tax arrives on July 1.

“Beat the Carbon Tax – Buy Now” or “Buy now before the carbon tax bites” are sales pitches that are verboten. Or at least, as the ACCC puts it, “you should be very cautious about making these types of claims”.

There will be 23 carbon cops roaming the streets doing snap audits of businesses that “choose to link your price increases to a carbon price”.

Instead, the ACCC suggests you tell customers you’ve raised prices because “the overall cost of running (your) business has increased”.

To be honest, I’m not overly concerned about it, given that, as I’ve been pointing out here repeatedly, the axe is due to fall on the mob responsible for this lot, and will be replaced by a new government that is committed to repealing it. But are there parallels of this in your own country? And how far-reaching into the future to you think they might be?