The seduction of the chance of a good night's sleep - Australian ...

AustralianFabian News 

Quarterly newsletter of the Australian Fabians Inc. Vol 49, No 2, November 2009 

The seduction of the 

chance of a good 

night’s sleep 

Chris Evans 

Asylum seekers: 

A global challenge 

RICHARD DENNISS 

Can markets really save the planet? 

www.fabian.org.au 

ISSN 1448-210X 

ANDREW HUNTER, MARK DREYFUS 

BEN SPIES-BUTCHER, ADAM STEBBING 

GEORGE WILLIAMS, MAXINE MCKEW 

JOFF LELLIOTT, TONY MOORE 

First Dog On The Moon 

SHANN TURNBULL, MARYA MCDONALD 

VIV FULLAGER, Victorian Fabians – 2009 events 

YOUNG WRITERS COMPETITION 

CLARE RAWLINSON, STEPHEN LAWRENCE

In this edition 

In Decisions, Senator The Hon. Chris Evans reviews the complexities and global challenges presented by 

the recent increase in asylum seekers. 

Andrew Hunter and Professor George Williams outline actions that can be taken to address the issues faced 

by refugees in their countries of origin and Australia in Showing the way. 

Dr Joff Lelliott reviews Anthony Giddens’ The Politics of Climate Change in Abstracts, and Dr Ben Spies- 

Butcher and Adam Stebbing ask who is subsiding welfare for Australia’s rich in Advantage receiver. 

In Questions on notice, Dr Richard Denniss asks can markets really save the planet? 

We present extracts from: Mark Dreyfus QC MP’s speech on building a stronger and more resilient Labor 

Party; and Dr Tony Moore’s paper on libertarian social democracy and alternatives to big government; and 

Jan Merriman introduces The Hon. Maxine McKew MP’s address on gender and political power to the Fabian 

Fringe seminar, held during the ALP National Conference in Sydney this year – all in Synopsis. 

Dr Shann Turnbull explores Internet alternatives to the role of the central banks in Out of left field. 

In Fabian news Marya McDonald reviews the history of the Queensland Fabians and the Trade Union 

Choir’s upcoming historic tour of Cuba; Viv Fullager reports fresh approaches in South Australia to Ideas, 

policy and action; and the Victorian Fabians provide a snapshot of their 2009 events. 

We bring you the ‘stand out’ articles from the last Young Writer’s Competition and remember, 2009 competition 

entries close on 14 December 2009. 

We welcome First Dog on the Moon to our pages, courtesy of cartoonist Andrew Marlton and www.crikey. 

com.au; the poetry of Stephen Lawrence, and in 1000 words, Clare Rawlinson. 

We farewell Xavier Williams as editor of the Australian Fabian News and thank him for his work, contribution 

and research for the Australian Fabians. We wish him well in future endeavours. 

Thank you, to the contributors of articles and images, our design and printing team, and to the editorial 

committee for ideas, advice and support for this issue of the Australian Fabian News. 

We hope you enjoy this edition and welcome your feedback. 

Pauline Gambley 

Editor 

Australian Fabian News GPO Box 2707, Melbourne, Vic, 3001, www.fabian.org.au 

Editor Pauline Gambley, editor@fabian.org.au Editorial/media enquiries 0400 253 752 

Contributions and Letters to the Editor are welcomed and may be sent to editor@fabian.org.au 

National Secretary Evan Thornley, (03) 9662 2596, secretary@fabian.org.au 

Publication information This edition Vol 49, No 2, November 2009. ISSN 1448-210X 

Design Céline Lawrence Printing Dotprint, Victoria. 

Disclaimer Views expressed by individual contributors to the Australian Fabian News are not necessarily endorsed 

by the Australian Fabians Inc. 

Australian Fabians Inc. 2009 President Hon Edward Gough Whitlam AC QC 

Executive Officers Chair Rodney Cavalier AO, Deputy Chair Simon O’Hara, Secretary Evan Thornley, 

Assistant Secretary Max Dumais, Treasurer Mounir Kirwan, Director Communications Pauline Gambley, 

Director Youth Mike Griffith. 

Executive members Victoria Jack Halliday, vic@fabian.org.au Tasmania Ben McKay, tas@fabian.org.au 

Australian Capital Territory Anna-Maria Arabia, act@fabian.org.au Queensland Terry Hampson, qld@fabian.org.au 

New South Wales Jan Merriman, nsw@fabian.org.au South Australia Viv Fullager, sa@fabian.org.au 

Membership enquiries/applications Apply or renew online: www.fabian.org.au 

Further enquires 0438 213 532, membership@fabian.org.au 

2 www.fabian.org.au

Contents 

Decisions 

Asylum seekers: A global challenge, Senator The Hon. Chris Evans 5 

Haiku Stephen Lawrence 6 

Showing the way 

Make no excuses: The need for an holistic approach, Andrew Hunter 7 

Bringing human rights home, Professor George Williams 9 

Synopsis 

Building a stronger and more resilient Labor Party, Mark Dreyfus QC MP 11 

Advantage receiver 

Revealing Australia’s welfare for the rich, Dr Ben Spies-Butcher and Adam Stebbing 14 

Questions on notice 

Can markets really save the planet?, Dr Richard Denniss 16 

First Dog on the Moon 17 

Synopsis 

Political Power: Does gender matter any more?, The Hon. Maxine McKew MP 18 

Abstracts 

Australia, “The Politics of Climate Change” and Anthony Giddens, Dr Joff Lelliott 21 

Synopsis 

What’s left: Libertarian social democracy and alternatives to big government, Dr Tony Moore 22 

Out of left field 

Inflation resisting money, Dr Shann Turnbull 26 

Wartime Refugees Stephen Lawrence 27 

Fabian news 

Australian Union Singers Cuba Tour 2009, Mayra MacDonald 28 

South Australia: Ideas, policy, action, Viv Fullager 29 

Victorian Fabians – 2009 events 30 

Young Writers 2008 

Winner: Fairness the key to unlocking health, Shafqat Inam 33 

Runner up: Leave the lights on: Your emissions reduction efforts are pointless, Jeremy Burke 35 

For special mention: Democratisation of democracy, Ben Barnett 37 

Housing affordability in Australia, Gerard Kelly 38 

The One Nation vote: Up for grabs, Douglas McDonald 40 

Environmental education and resource sustainability, Cameron Parsons 42 

An end to governing in uncertain times, Simon Tolstrup 43 

The return of the radical press: “New” media goes back to the future, Tim Watts 45 

1000 words Clare Rawlinson 48 

www.fabian.org.au 3

Editorial 

What we know 

We know ... it’s the silly season now. The Melbourne Cup has been run; eyes have turned to the state of the 

wicket; budgets are under pressure; and bags come home filled with wet swimmers, and precious artwork. 

Ahead is the inevitability of long school concerts, the Christmas Day run-around; and the seduction of the 

chance of a good night’s sleep. 

We know ... out there, somewhere, like a bump in the night, things are not really right; that most of the 

world’s population can’t say they have it as good as us; and that the lot of many, many Australians could 

be vastly improved. 

We know ... we can write as many well meaning articles about righting the world’s wrongs as we wish; 

we can posture with the best of them; we can put our self-interest ahead of everyone else, we can turn a 

blind eye. 

We know ... we need to take decisive action about critical global challenges because there are real 

people and fragile ecosystems relying on us. 

We know ... words are not enough. 

What Beatrice knew 

2009 marks the centenary of the Minority Report to the Royal Commission on 

the Poor Laws and the Relief of Distress (1909). 

Famous for Beatrice Webb’s pre-eminent role in bringing the report to 

fruition, the ground breaking document rocked the British establishment of the 

day. 

It detailed the plight of the indigent poor, it challenged Parliament to take 

action to remedy the impoverished lives and harsh working conditions of so 

many of the country’s citizens. It called to account those who would blame the 

poor entirely for their own predicament. 

The report revealed in minutiae, the underlying social and structural causes of poverty in post- 

19th century Britain. It also served as a clarion call to those who would stand up for individuals, families 

and communities caught in the despair of involuntary poverty; and the vision of a fair and just, 

civil society. 

Beatrice also knew ... words are not enough. 

Want to know more?: Visit the UK Fabians website at www.fabians.org.au and/or the Webb Memorial 

Trust at www.webbmemorialtrust.org.uk 

4 www.fabian.org.au

Decisions 

Asylum seekers: A global challenge 

Senator The Hon. Chris Evans 

The recent increase in asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat 

is part of a global phenomenon as desperate people flee war and 

persecution to seek a better life in a safe country. 

As Australia and other industrialised countries 

grapple with the complexity of the problem, there 

are those that wrongly claim it is the “pull” factors – 

Australia’s domestic immigration policies – that are 

driving people to our shores. 

We, as a Government, will defend the changes 

we have made in immigration policy. 

Labor has maintained the key border protection 

policies of the previous Government – a system 

of excision and the mandatory detention and 

offshore processing on Christmas Island of irregular 

maritime arrivals. 

The Rudd Government has also implemented 

a $654 million strategy to strengthen Australia’s 

borders by increasing maritime and aerial surveillance, 

and boosting the AFP’s resources to investigate 

people smuggling syndicates. 

What we have done differently is to discard 

some of the punitive and shameful policies of the 

Howard years and implemented a more humane 

system of treating asylum seekers who arrive in 

Australia seeking our protection. That is why the 

Rudd Government ended the internationally condemned 

Pacific solution and abolished the punitive 

Temporary Protection Visa regime. We make 

no apologies for that. 

We are not a Government that supports open 

borders as some advocates do. We have a responsibility 

to control our borders and manage 

those seeking entry to our country. Australians 

rightly expect that their government only allows 

authorised entry and orderly migration to Australia. 

Strong border security and management is 

not inconsistent with a strong commitment to refugee 

resolution and resettlement and the humane 

treatment of those who have come seeking our 

protection. We think this a better reflection of Australia’s 

values. 

I don’t think anyone is arguing, even the Liberal 

Party, we go back to locking up children behind 

barbed wire, separating them from their families. 

No-one wants to see people languishing in detention 

for years on end, becoming so desperate that 

they sew up their lips, commit self-harm and suffer 

mental breakdowns. That is how the Howard Government 

treated refugees and it is a sad blight on 

Australia’s history. 

The reality is, however, that we will continue to 

see boat arrivals in Australia while people continue 

to flee war and persecution. It is not a challenge 

that we face in isolation. It is a massive global challenge 

and one in which Australia plays its part in a 

humane and comprehensive way. 

The UNHCR 2008 Global Trends Report released 

last month stated there were 42 million forcibly 

displaced people worldwide – driven from their 

homelands by insecurity, persecution and conflict. 

In particular, the worsening situations in places 

like Afghanistan and Sri Lanka have forced many 

thousands of people to flee those countries and 

seek refuge elsewhere around the world. 

The UN Secretary-General recently reported 

to the Security Council that “2008 ended as the 

most violent year in Afghanistan since 2001”. 

The head of the US Central Command, General 

David Petraeus, said in September that violent 

unrest in Afghanistan had risen by 60 per cent 

compared with last year and Taliban insurgents 

had “expanded their strength and influence”. 

Little wonder that the number of Afghan asylum-seekers 

claiming protection in industrialised 

countries worldwide rose by 85 per cent in 2008. 

So far this year, more than 14 000 Afghans have 

claimed asylum in Western Europe. This compares 

with the 752 Afghans who have arrived by boat in 

Australian waters this year. 

In the case of Sri Lanka, violence in the longrunning 

civil war escalated in 2008 before the 

bloody conflict ended earlier this year. 

There are now some 250 000 Tamils from 

the north of Sri Lanka in camps for internally displaced 

people and there are significant numbers 

www.fabian.org.au 5

of people fleeing Sri Lanka to seek refuge in industrialised 

countries and Australia, as a secure and 

stable democracy, is one of these destinations. 

In 2008, there was a 24 per cent increase in 

the number Sri Lankan asylum-seekers claiming 

protection in industrialised countries worldwide. 

While some 700 Sri Lankan asylum seekers have 

been intercepted on boats in Australian waters this 

year, more than 4000 headed to Europe, principally 

France and Switzerland. This represented an 

increase of nearly 20 per cent on the same period 

last year. 

In Australia, there have been boat arrivals in 25 

of the last 33 years. From 1976 to 1981 under the 

Fraser Government, there were 2059 boat arrivals 

sparked by the fall of South Vietnam in 1975. 

From 1999 to 2001 under the Howard Government 

12 176 people arrived by boat, including 

5516 arrivals in 2001 alone. 

The Liberal Party didn’t claim then that pull 

factors caused that movement of people – and indeed 

pull factors were not to blame. The asylum 

seekers were mainly Afghans and Iraqis fleeing the 

brutal regimes of the Taliban in Afghanistan and 

Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. 

The Taliban regime fell at the end of 2001, and 

in 2002 a large scale voluntary return program of 

Afghans began – the single largest repatriation operation 

in the UNHCR’s 59-year history. By 2004, 

more than 3.1 million people had returned home 

to Afghanistan. 

Coalition forces invaded Iraq in 2003 and the 

Saddam Hussein regime ended. The fall of these 

two brutal regimes saw boat arrivals to Australia 

decline dramatically and a dramatic decline globally 

in the numbers of asylum seekers from those 

countries. 

In 2008 and 2009, we have seen a resurgence 

of mainly Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum seekers 

fleeing their countries due to worsening circumstances. 

The overwhelming majority of asylum seekers 

seek safety in Western Europe. Last year, 13 000 

asylum seekers arrived by boat in Spain; 36 000 

arrived in Italy; 2700 in Malta; 15 000 in Greece. 

And in Yemen, 50 000 people arrived by boat from 

Somalia. 

Preventing people from embarking on dangerous 

journeys in leaky boats is the priority along with 

capturing and prosecuting the people smugglers. 

But punishing refugees is not something that 

this Government will engage in and Australian’s 

won’t tolerate. 

The Rudd Government firmly believes that 

regional engagement and cooperation with Indonesia 

and other South East Asian neighbours is a 

vital component of a successful policy to combat 

people smuggling. 

It is morally right that we should treat people 

who seek our protection humanely, and it is right 

that we meet our international obligations under 

the UN Refugee Convention. People found to be 

owed protection will be allowed to apply for a protection 

visa. If they are found not to be owed Australia’s 

protection, they will be removed. 

The challenge for Australia and our regional 

neighbours is to prevent the people smugglers 

from exploiting these vulnerable people in the first 

place. A more humane system for detaining and 

assessing asylum seekers does not undermine 

border security, nor is it the principle driver in people 

smuggling. 

Chris Evans is Senator for Western Australia in the 

Australian Parliament, the Minister for Immigration and 

Citizenship and the Leader of the Government in the 

Senate. www.minister.immi.gov.au 

Haiku 

As sea levels rise 

refugees in slow motion 

will fill news reports. 

Stephen Lawrence 

6 www.fabian.org.au

Showing the way 

Make no excuses: The need for an holistic approach 

Andrew Hunter, Secretary ACT Fabians 

Images of overcrowded boats heading towards Australian waters 

capture people’s attention. These images invoke emotive responses 

and sentiments that can easily be manipulated. 

The reality of course is that the overwhelming majority 

of applicants for refugee status processed in 

Australia arrive not on a boat, but by plane. 

An objective portrayal of this complex policy issue 

to an increasingly aware electorate, which actively 

seeks to connect the problem to its causes, 

and shows appreciation of the tribulations faced by 

recently arrived refugees, would equate to policy 

which we would need not make excuses for. 

2001 to 2009: A full circle? 

We recall the feeling of angst within the Labor 

Party when it was decided that there was no alternative 

but to take a strong moral stand on the 

Tampa incident. We knew that it was the only morally 

defensible stance to take but also understood 

that adopting this position in the face of Howard’s 

inward-looking, populist approach, would lose Labor 

the 2001 election. 

Regrettably for many, much of the rhetoric 

used in the past few weeks seems very similar to 

that used by the Liberal Party in 2001. This is despite 

the electorate now having a far more sophisticated 

understanding of why the planet is awash 

with people seeking refuge from the dislocation 

of war, persecution and, increasingly, of climate 

change. This fuels a real sense of frustration, even 

disenchantment, in those who hold progressive 

values close to their heart. 

To some, the belief that the country is best 

served by achieving a multiple-term Labor Government 

will justify the current political positioning. It 

would be preferable however, that the current policy: 

• engaged the electorate in an unemotional portrayal 

of this situation, in all its complexity, 

• emphasised the strategic and humane necessity 

to address the root causes of increased 

refugee outflows, and 

• ensured that refugees are received in a way that 

is conducive to their long-term participation in 

an inclusive Australian community. 

Evidence base 

In April this year, the ACT Fabians convened a panel 

to explore foreign policy alternatives for Afghanistan. 

Professor William Maley of the Australian 

National University, considered to be Australia’s 

foremost authority on Afghanistan, shared the 

stage with journalist Nicholas Stuart and Ataulla 

Naseri, an ethnic Hazara and formerly one of Howard’s 

infamous Temporary Protection Visa holders. 

The majority of Afghans who seek asylum in 

Australia are Hazara, the largest ethnic minority in 

Afghanistan. Historic adversaries of the dominant 

Pathan and Pashtun groups (as are the other significant 

minority ethnic groups, the Tadzhik and 

Uzbek), the Hazara reside in an area of central 

Afghanistan afforded little protection by international 

forces. 

Addressing the problem at the source 

Providing the Hazara with increased security 

in their own country would significantly reduce 

the number of Afghans seeking refugee status 

in Australia. Development assistance providing 

basic infrastructure and improved health and education 

for the Hazara would further erode the desire 

to risk their lives coming to Australia in search 

of a future free of constant fear and immediate 

danger. 

Due to the level of volatility that blankets Afghanistan, 

Australia’s development assistance is 

concentrated in the Oruzgan Province, where the 

Australian Defence Force is based. Consequently, 

the central highlands region, largely populated by 

Hazara, does not benefit from Australia’s generous 

military or aid commitment to Afghanistan. 

Not all asylum seekers are Hazara, but nor is 

military protection the only instrument of foreign 

policy available. Foreign aid, diplomacy and trade 

policy aimed at releasing communities or countries 

from a cycle of dependency are valuable investments. 

www.fabian.org.au 7

Australian aid to Sri Lanka does little to address 

conditions experienced by another large 

source of asylum seekers coming to Australia: ethnic 

Tamils. Whilst the level of Australian aid going to 

Sri Lanka in the 2009-10 budget was estimated at 

$35 million, for much of this period the Sri Lankan 

Government has blocked most aid agencies from 

accessing the north of the country, where Tamils 

have been herded into overcrowded camps where 

there is an ongoing food shortage, poor sanitation, 

and a desperate medical situation. 

Addressing the root cause of increased refugee 

outflows would in this situation, require a 

level of diplomacy that could only be met through 

statesmanship of the highest calibre. Devoting 

diplomatic energies to this effort, rather than negotiating 

a complex set of arrangements with the 

Indonesian Government, would bring a greater return 

on our investment. 

Whilst the successful implementation of a 

broad-base policy that incorporates many of these 

instruments may limit the number asylum seekers 

from Afghanistan, Africa and Sri Lanka – it is unlikely 

that we will ever see a perfect world, completely 

devoid of war, persecution or famine. 

Vilification of those who profit from delivering 

asylum seekers to Australia through nonconventional 

means diverts attention from an 

increasingly progressive constituency. It also redirects 

the public’s attention away from issues of 

far greater import. When one considers the abhorrent 

situation of a Hazara living in a refugee 

camp in Quetta and the circumstances they must 

endure daily, the issue of people smuggling is a 

drop in the ocean of an equitable and humanitarian 

approach. 

Ataulla’s story 

Ataulla arrived in Australia in 2001 and has since 

spent time as an active refugee advocate, principally 

for the Hazara community. He now lives in 

Queensland but his immediate family, including his 

wife, live in a refugee camp in Quetta, Pakistan. For 

over two decades, sectarian violence has made 

Quetta a dangerous place for Hazara, and dozens 

of Hazara have been murdered this year alone, in 

further escalation of violence. 

A large proportion of Afghans who seek to 

come to Australia have immediate family here. 

Most Hazara asylum seekers who arrive in Australia 

had first fled to Pakistan, only to suffer further 

ongoing persecution. For nearly a decade, Ataulla 

has lived with the uncertainty of when and if he will 

be reunited with his wife. This situation is born of 

either inefficient process or unsuccessful policy. 

The transition to citizenship: 

Fostering a sense of belonging 

Another fundamental element of an holistic policy 

approach to asylum seekers is a level of engagement 

and support that result in a sense of security 

and self-respect. Such an approach will enhance 

the prospect of those seeking asylum positively 

participating in a functional and prosperous society 

whether they gain permanent residency, and 

ultimately citizenship, or not. 

We can be serious about having a benevolent 

approach to refugees, policy formation but also be 

motivated by the desire to ensure that refugees are 

given opportunities to be comfortable in their new 

surroundings. 

As well as appropriate visa application processes 

for the immediate family members of residents 

who arrived in Australia as asylum seekers, 

the Government can and does play a strong role in 

facilitating positive social inclusion. 

In South Australia, the Norwood Volleyball 

Club embraced the local Afghan community with 

open arms. A team consisting entirely of Afghan 

Australians represented the club in the first division 

of the local state league and made it to the grand 

final. Two years after the club approached this 

community, and with the assistance of Centacare, 

they received funding under the Diverse Australia 

Program, a relabelling of the Living in Harmony Program 

– a Howard government initiative. Of the 290 

small grants applications received, only 64 projects 

received funding in 2009 (just over $300 000). 

Such community-driven initiatives, with strong 

Governmental backing, are positive stories that 

8 www.fabian.org.au

should be publicised. Education is an integral part 

of leadership, and sets the tone for future generations’ 

acceptance of progressive policy. 

What is ‘good politics’? 

After two weeks of intense debate over this issue, 

Newspoll confirmed the rapidly evolving community 

attitudes to asylum seekers. There seems 

little doubt that the 14 point swing in the two-party 

preferred poll was directly associated with this 

debate. What the polls don’t tell is the source of 

dissatisfaction: whether it is because they see the 

policy as too soft or too hard, or even if they are 

repelled by the proclivity of playing both sides. 

Paul Keating often said that good policy is 

good politics. Populist sentiments formulated to 

achieve a product ‘slightly better than our opponents’ 

should never be seen as a viable alternative 

to good policy from a progressive party. 

Our current Government was elected because 

it was able to neutralise the debate on the economy 

and offer a point of difference on social policy. 

Maintaining this point of difference is this Government’s 

mandate and it should make no excuses 

for fulfilling it. 

Bringing human rights home 

Professor George Williams 

The impasse over the Oceanic Viking raises large questions about 

Australia’s approach to human rights, especially to those of asylum 

seekers. What has been lost in much of the public debate are the key 

humanitarian concerns. 

After all, more than just border protection is at 

stake, with the lives and futures of 78 people desperate 

enough to flee their own country, lying in 

the balance. Unfortunately, Australia’s treatment of 

asylum seekers over many years reveals how our 

collective commitment to human rights, as well our 

sense of compassion, can quickly go astray. When 

human rights matter most, they can be too easily 

forgotten. 

On paper, Australia has a long and proud 

record of international engagement with human 

rights protection. Australia is a signatory to the 

most important international human rights conventions, 

such as the International Covenant on Civil 

and Political Rights as well as others on racism 

and the rights of people with disabilities. Australia 

has also had its own global champions for human 

rights, most especially H.V. Evatt who in the late 

1940s played a pivotal role in the creation of the 

United Nations and in the drafting of the Universal 

Declaration of Human Rights. 

While Australia has rightly been regarded as a 

leader in the cause of international human rights, 

this is not always reflected in our actions at home. 

Adverse findings against Australia by international 

bodies dealing with matters such as racism and 

refugees have been ignored. This has contributed 

to the notion sometimes adopted in Australia 

that human rights are important, but that they only 

need to be asserted overseas. 

There is much to be proud of in our political 

freedoms and democratic institutions. The problem 

is that while our system of government generally 

works well for most Australians there are 

too many examples of it failing to protect the 

rights of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged 

www.fabian.org.au 9

in the community. We possess problems of law 

and accountability that range from restrictions on 

freedom of speech under sedition law to the removal 

of Aboriginal people as part of the Stolen 

Generations to the treatment of people with mental 

illness. Despite the many good things about our 

democracy, Australian law still routinely permits the 

mistreatment of people in ways that are unjust and 

infringe the dignity, respect and freedom to which 

all human beings are entitled. We should aspire to 

do better. 

It is long past time that Australia matched its 

international advocacy for human rights with domestic 

recognition of their importance and more 

effective protection of the rights of those in need. 

Other countries have done this by incorporating international 

human rights standards into their legal 

system. In fact, Australia is now the only democratic 

nation in the world that has not adopted a 

national law such as a bill of rights, charter of rights 

or human rights act. 

Every federal Labor government since World 

War II has sought to bring about new national protection 

for human rights. The governments of Chifley, 

Whitlam and Hawke/Keating all sought major 

reform, but all failed. Their attempts were consistent 

with the long standing policy of the Australian 

Labor Party to introduce a national human rights 

law. It is a policy that remains unfulfilled after several 

decades. 

The Rudd Government’s 2007 election platform 

included a commitment to ‘initiate a public 

inquiry about how best to recognise and protect 

the human rights and freedoms enjoyed by all 

Australians’. This promise was honoured on 10 

December 2008, the 60th anniversary of the Universal 

Declaration of Human Rights, with the appointment 

by federal Attorney General Robert 

McClelland of an independent committee chaired 

by Father Frank Brennan. 

The results of the consultation are now in, with 

the committee’s report released in early October. It 

recommends a national human rights act for Australia, 

an ordinary law that could be changed and 

improved over time. This should have come as no 

surprise. It has been apparent for many years that 

there are major problems with human rights protection 

in Australia. The report catalogues this from 

the ground up. It is a remarkable initiative in being 

built upon the stories of thousands of Australians 

from across the nation. 

While human rights problems come to light periodically 

in the media, the report shows how many 

Australians live with their rights being breached on 

a daily basis. Despite often being avoidable, these 

problems continue to cause grave distress and 

harm to those involved. Remedial action is often 

absent, and may only occur if the story reaches the 

media and so comes with the possibility of political 

embarrassment. 

I saw this first hand in chairing the committee 

that helped bring about Australia’s first State human 

rights act, the Victorian Charter of Human Rights 

and Responsibilities of 2006. There is a remarkable 

consistency between what the community told us, 

the Brennan committee and recent like inquires in 

the ACT, Tasmania and Western Australia. All found 

that Australians want better protection through improvements 

in education and government practice 

and by having a new human rights law. 

The Brennan committee found that a clear 

majority of Australians want to see their basic 

rights, such as freedom of speech and the right to 

equality, protected by the law. People responded 

in droves to the opportunity to have a say about 

human rights. Over 40 000 people put in a written 

submission to the Brennan committee or came 

to a community roundtable at any of 52 locations 

around Australia. The public response, the largest 

to any government consultation in Australia’s history 

by a factor of thousands of people. 

87% supported a human rights act, with 

equally strong support from peak community organisations 

such as ACOSS and many religious 

bodies including the Uniting Church. This mirrors 

opinion polls taken over many years. In 1997, a 

survey of 1505 citizens found that 72% supported 

a bill of rights. Similarly, in 2006 a Roy Morgan poll 

of 1001 voters found that 69% would be very likely 

or likely to support a bill of rights. Most recently, 

10 www.fabian.org.au

a March 2009 Nielsen poll of 1,000 people found 

that 80% supported a law to protect human rights 

in Australia. 

The Brennan committee recommended a human 

rights act after exhaustive consultation and 

careful and expert analysis of the evidence. Even 

then, it was only prepared to recommend change 

that would not give rise to a significant increase in 

litigation, nor undermine the sovereignty of parliament. 

Now is our best chance in over half a century 

to bring about change to the law to better protect 

human rights in Australia. Now is also the time for 

the supporters of stronger human rights protection 

to act. The Rudd government has yet to respond to 

the Brennan report, and should be encouraged to 

fully implement its findings. The government must 

not miss this once in a generation opportunity to 

achieve a key reform that has escaped its Labor 

predecessors. 

George Williams is the Anthony Mason Professor of 

Law and Foundation Director of the Gilbert + Tobin 

Centre of Public Law at the University of New South 

Wales. He is also an Australian Research Council Laureate 

Fellow. www.law.unsw.edu.au/staff/WilliamsG 

Synopsis 

Building a stronger and more resilient Labor Party 

Mark Dreyfus, QC, MP 

The Australian Labor Party is the great party of Australian politics. We 

have a proud history of more than a century of progressive reform 

that has helped to shape the modern Australian nation. 

The Labor Party has worked consistently and tirelessly 

to protect and improve the rights of working 

people. We have built an open economy that is engaged 

with the world and in which there is an active 

role for government. We have created real opportunities 

for all Australians through the school, technical 

and tertiary education systems. Universal access to 

health care is a reality because of our commitment to 

public hospitals, to Medicare and to the Pharmaceutical 

Benefits Scheme. And we have built an open 

and tolerant society through a non-discriminatory 

migration policy, through working towards equality 

for women, and through the long battle for the recognition 

of the rights of indigenous Australians. 

Our ability to advance a progressive agenda is 

founded on our effectiveness as a political organisation 

which wins elections. We must be therefore 

be constantly receptive to new ideas about how we 

operate as a political party – how we attract mem- 

bers, how we retain members and make full use of 

their talents and energies, how we engage with the 

communities in which we live, how we campaign – 

at elections and between elections. 

Organisationally, the Labor Party has some 

clear strengths. We have a stronger, younger 

and more active membership base than the Liberal 

Party. We continue to have reasonably strong 

membership among the generation who joined in 

the 1960s and 1970s, among ethnic communities 

and in the inner city. 

Reforms to party administration, including 

the principle of proportionality in internal elections 

and affirmative action for party positions and preselections 

for public office, have resulted in more 

representative internal processes and better preselection 

outcomes. And we do have innovative 

branches which are engaging with both ALP members 

and their local communities. 

www.fabian.org.au 11

We have also been highly effective at campaigning 

and winning elections. Since 1980, the 

Victorian ALP has beaten the Victorian Liberals in 

15 out of 19 State and Federal elections. I want to 

see that continue next year as we work to re-elect 

the Rudd and Brumby Governments. 

But politics goes through cycles and we will 

no doubt face challenging times in years ahead. 

And in that context, there are also some very clear 

challenges that the Party continues to face. 

We do not have an active membership program, 

either to recruit members or to retain existing 

members. Many members feel disconnected 

from the decision making processes of the Party. 

There are large areas of Melbourne and Victoria 

where we hold seats but which lack a strong party 

organisation. The current structures don’t properly 

engage young people in the political process and 

relatively few members of affiliated trade unions 

are actually members of the Party. 

In 1998, I was asked to conduct a review of the 

Victorian ALP, resulting in a report that I delivered 

to a Special State Conference of the Party in December 

of that year. In the report, I suggested the 

following five objectives for the Party: 

• a Party which is re-engaged with the community 

and with its own membership 

• a Party with a larger membership 

• a Party which operates democratically 

• a Party which fully uses the talent and energy of 

its volunteer members 

• a Party, focussed on winning government. 

I received over 200 written submissions from 

a wide range of Party members, branches, parliamentarians 

and affiliated unions, many of which 

reflected serious concerns about party administration, 

membership procedures and branch stacking. 

Eleven of the 27 recommendations in the 1998 

report concerned membership and membership 

procedures. Some were reasonably straightforward 

and simple measures for membership, including: 

• The principle that the membership fees of every 

member be paid by that member, except in 

cases of real financial hardship or temporary 

absence; 

• That members be required to sign annual renewal 

forms; and 

• That membership of affiliated unions for affiliation 

purposes be determined by reference to 

the membership figure stated in that union’s 

last return lodged with the Industrial Relations 

Commission. 

These measures were taken up and I think 

have played an important role in stamping out 

some of the more egregious examples of branch 

stacking and undermining of the Party’s principles. 

By contrast, the recommendation that the Party 

establish a recruitment unit, staffed by people with 

recruitment expertise was not implemented. Nor 

does it appear that the detailed recruitment strategy 

designed to substantially increase Party membership 

has ever been prepared or implemented. 

It is indicative of the Party’s approach on these 

matters. We have been able to deal in a technical 

way with the worst examples of rorting and branch 

stacking, but we have been unable to make the 

necessary cultural changes for a truly engaged 

party membership. 

My key suggestion for the future health and 

electoral success of the Party would be a larger 

membership base, one that is involved in the central 

decision making processes of the Party and 

involved in Party bodies that are connected to the 

communities around them. 

To achieve this, we need a new culture centred 

on greater openness. One of the most striking developments 

over the last decade, at least in English 

speaking countries, has been new forms of engagement 

in the political process driven by technological 

and cultural change. This has included less formally 

organised, but no less passionate, engagement in 

politics. Our party has to open its processes to meet 

these new forms of engagement. 

We should throw the doors of the Party wide 

open to all of our supporters. The best way to 

stamp out branch stacking is to expand the membership 

base. We need to encourage as many Labor 

supporters to join the Party as possible. 

Many people in our Party actively recruit new 

members to the ALP. There is nothing wrong with 


this – in fact, it should be supported. But, as with 

other party activities, this must be done with integrity. 

My conclusions in the 1998 Report are worth 

repeating: 

“The Party needs to encourage recruitment of new 

members, and welcome new members into the 

Party and its activities. It is an indication of an overintensification 

of factional activity that the recruitment 

of new members into particular branches is 

viewed with suspicion: in a fully functioning Party, 

recruitment should always be welcomed.” 

The concept of “membership” must also undergo 

a shift within the party. Some suggestions: 

• A single flat membership rate of $10 or $20. 

• A removal of the requirement to attend branch 

meetings. 

• Members should be able to form groups which 

they could register with the State party. 

• Head Office should establish a Party intranet 

– perhaps based on the principles of social 

networking sites such as Facebook – through 

which party members could easily engage and 

communicate with one another and through 

which they can organise on-line. 

• Members should be able to join as many branches 

or groups within the party as they see fit. 

We need the party administration to be developing 

tools for members that are not prescriptive 

but that are supportive. We need a recruitment 

strategy which trains local members to be activists 

for our party. We need materials that can be adapted 

for local circumstances through the simple use 

of desktop publishing programs and that could be 

produced out of the party administration. 

Instead of holding up membership applications 

at Membership Committee, or preventing the 

creation of new branches, the party administration 

should be providing party members with the tools 

to attract more members and establish more party 

groups. 

While we should retain the formal structures of 

the Party around election of delegates to Conference, 

pre-selections for public office and the election 

of policy committees, we should otherwise allow 

members to organise in the best way they see fit. 

Some people will want to organise locally. For 

others, they may want to organise around issues 

or interests or organise on-line. They might only be 

interested in campaigning or solely stimulated by 

policy development. And some people may want 

to do a combination of the all of these. 

A new member might join a local group, perhaps 

one organised by the local state MP, but might 

also join a state-wide Labor environmental group or 

a regional women’s network. Some people won’t 

be interested in joining a local branch at all. 

There needs to be an incentive for affiliated 

unions to be pro-active in encouraging union 

members to join the party. One idea would be for 

union representation to be based not on the number 

of members of the union, but the number of 

union members who are members of the Party. 

To encourage this, members of the party who are 

also union members could pay a much lower ALP 

membership fee. 

Another possible reform would be to have 

union delegations to State Conference directly 

elected by union members, while retaining the requirement 

that such delegates be party members. 

Adjusting union representation in these ways might 

lead to more party members feeling that they have 

a say in the running of our party. 

The Labor Party must be more than simply 

easy to join. It must also be good to belong to. Any 

or all of these suggestions would help to pave the 

way for a broader-based party membership that is 

more active and better reflective of the communities 

in which we live and work. 

The danger exists that when electoral fortunes 

turn, we will not have the capacity to recover as 

quickly as we should be able to. I hope this point 

is many years away but we can only ensure this 

by renewal and by avoiding stagnation. We need 

to keep our focus on the Party’s main resource, 

which is the energy, the dedication and the skills of 

Party members. 

Mark Dreyfus is the Federal Member for the electorate 

of Isaacs in the Australian Parliament. 

www.markdreyfus.com 


Advantage receiver 

Revealing Australia’s welfare for the rich 

Dr Ben Spies-Butcher and Adam Stebbing 

Imagine a welfare scheme that gave minimum wage earners nothing, 

but paid those earning over $180 000 a year $11 000. 

Surely if anyone ever entertained such a scheme 

they would be run out of parliament and be the 

butt of endless horror stories on commercial current 

affairs. Yet, such a scheme already exists, and 

almost nobody says anything about it. 

Debates about welfare often focus on the 

most disadvantaged. Critics claim that the meagre 

payments to protect citizens from unemployment 

may cause dependency. Or payments to 

families with children create bureaucracies to simply 

give people back their own money. Yet Peter 

Whiteford has recently shown that by international 

standards, these payments are very tightly targeted 

to those in need and, outside family support, 

relatively modest. 

The debate about those on low incomes obscures 

attention from the most inequitable aspects 

of Australia’s welfare state. These exist not in the 

more obvious form of cash payments, but in complex 

and difficult to understand aspects of the tax 

code. Here payments can be made to multimillionaires 

and most Australians will never be the wiser. 

A prime example is the rules that govern superannuation. 

Superannuation receives considerable 

financial support from government in the form 

of concessionary tax treatment. Contributions to 

super funds and fund earnings are subject to a 

concessional tax rate of 15 per cent, which means 

that individuals pay a maximum tax rate of 15 per 

cent regardless of the income they earn. Super 

benefits collected at retirement receive even greater 

tax treatment and are totally deductible from tax 

if individuals are over 60 years old. 

Tax concessions act much the same way 

as cash payments (such as the $900 tax bonus 

most of us received). Both have a cost on the 

budget, redistribute income and usually involve 

some change in behaviour in order to access 

the benefit. But as the Auditor-General recently 

reported, tax expenditures avoid many routine 

forms of budget accountability – and so receive 

less press. 

Recently the Australian Treasury released its 

report on tax expenditures for the 2007-08 financial 

year. In total, the Treasury estimates that the 

Federal government handed out $73 billion in tax 

expenditures during 2007-08. Of this, $39 billion of 

the funds allocated through tax expenditures were 

directed towards social security, health, housing, 

and community services. 

Super receives significant funds through tax 

expenditures. Government support for superannuation 

reached $29 billion in 2007-08. This is more 

than the $25 billion that the government spent in 

the same year on the Aged pension. 

Tax expenditures are essentially forms of tax 

concessions, allowing tax payers to reduce their 

tax bill by undertaking particular forms of activity 

– like investing in superannuation. But unlike a tax 

cut, governments continue to direct how the money 

is spent, usually encouraging people to spend 

it on private welfare companies, like ABC Learning 

or private health insurance. 

Many might think this appropriate – after all if 

people look after themselves, shouldn’t the government 

help out? The problem is, tax expenditures are 

far less equitable than government spending, and 

far less accountable. Most tax expenditures allow 

people to avoid paying income tax. Because Australia’s 

income tax system is progressive, meaning 

the rich pay more, tax expenditures do the opposite, 

giving the most support to those least in need. 

One of the most striking examples is superannuation. 

If we just look at the 9 per cent compulsory 

super paid by employers as part of the 

Superannuation Guarantee, we find that the tax 

expenditures for super contributions gives all the 

benefits to the top income earners. Those in the 

top tax bracket earn over $200 000 and receive 

more than $11 000 on average every year. While 

those earning up to $34 000 a year – which is well 

above the minimum wage – get nothing. 

An analysis we did for the Centre for Policy 

Development showed that if we redirected that as- 


sistance so that all tax payers got the same proportional 

benefit, a minimum wage earner would 

finish $24 000 better off. By restricting the full benefit 

to low and middle income earners, those earning 

up to $80 000 a year, we could increase the 

retirement savings of 85 per cent of wage earners 

– at no cost to the Budget. 

Such a change would also support self-reliance 

by helping those that actually need it – low 

and middle income earners, rather than supporting 

those that can most easily help themselves. 

And by converting tax expenditures into rebates, 

we could shine a light onto the billions in welfare 

spending that currently goes under the radar, increasing 

accountability. 

The truth is Australia spends much more on 

social support than we realise, but much of that 

is hidden in complex schemes that only really 

benefit the rich. The recent changes in the Budget, 

which reduced the limits to salary sacrificing 

arrangements for super, only amounted to baby 

steps and did nothing to redress the underlying 

inequities of the scheme. The current Tax Review 

being undertaken by Ken Henry provides the perfect 

opportunity to address the more fundamental 

design flaws of the tax arrangements for super, 

and create a more inclusive and equitable welfare 

state for all Australians. 

Dr Ben Spies-Butcher is a Lecturer in Economy and Society 

in the Sociology Department at Macquarie University 

and a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development. 

www.soc.mq.edu.au/staff/staff_Spies-Butcher.html 

Adam Stebbing is a PhD candidate in the Department 

of Sociology at Macquarie University, Sydney. His research 

is focused on tax expenditures and their implications 

for the Australian welfare state. 

Adam.Stebbing@scmp.mq.edu.au 

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Questions on notice 

Can markets really save the planet? 

Dr Richard Denniss 

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said that tackling climate change was a 

‘great moral challenge’. If the proposed emissions trading scheme, 

the so-called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) is anything 

to go by then it looks like either we will fail that challenge or the PM’s 

morals are not what I hoped they would be. 

Put simply, if other countries are as unambitious 

as Australia when it comes to timid emission reduction 

targets then we will be responsible for the 

misery of countless humans in the coming centuries, 

and of course, not to mention the destruction 

of our natural environment. Can that be described 

as the moral thing to do in any meaningful sense 

of the word? 

The CPRS has a number of fundamental 

flaws. First, the targets are so low that they are 

irrelevant in the context of the actual problem. If 

someone was exposed to a toxic dose of radiation 

would moving the source of emissions a metre further 

away from them be seen as a step in the right 

direction? If you believe the science we need to 

cut emissions a lot and we need to cut them soon. 

The targets in the CPRS ignore this science. Telling 

ourselves that we plan to make bigger cuts on a 

‘per capita’ basis might work in the media, but it 

means nothing to the atmosphere. 

The second big problem with the scheme is 

that rather than following the ‘polluter pays’ principle 

and auctioning the pollution permits to polluters 

the Rudd Government is proposing to give 

away up to 94 per cent of the permits needed by 

our biggest polluters. Even polluters such as our 

brown coal power stations will be given billions of 

dollars in compensation because the CPRS will reduce 

their profits! Imagine if we proposed a compensation 

scheme for tobacco companies who 

were adversely affected by tobacco excise. 

The third big problem is that there will be so 

many pollution permits that Treasury’s modelling 

makes clear that the CPRS will not lead to the closure 

of a single black or brown coal fired power 

station until at least 2033! If you listen carefully to 

what the Climate Change Minister Penny Wong is 

saying she is spending billions of taxpayers’ dollars 

to compensate power stations not for closure, 

but for the inconvenience and slightly lower profits 

they might earn. 

The fourth problem is that while the Rudd 

Government is proposing to give generous compensation 

to the big polluters and to individual 

households they are not offering a cent to state 

and local governments. While it might not be obvious, 

the fact is that hospitals, schools and trains 

use a lot of electricity. Higher electricity prices 

mean increased costs in the provision of state 

and local government services. Unless the Rudd 

Government provides compensation to their state 

government counterparts the only option for state 

treasurers will be to increase taxes or sack teachers 

and nurses. 

And finally, the CPRS is so badly designed 

that if individuals, community groups, or even 

state governments try to reduce their emissions 

by changing their behaviour or investing in low 

emission technologies, they will simply free up additional 

pollution permits for other polluters. That 

is, if households save one million tonnes of emissions 

by turning off their appliances this will not 

result in one million fewer pollution permits being 

issued, it will simply result in a million permits that 

the steel or aluminium industry can use to expand 

their emissions. 

The CPRS is a deeply flawed scheme, but the 

design flaws are only part of the problem. What 

should be of even greater concern is that the Prime 

Minister’s response to a so-called ‘moral challenge’ 

is to rely primarily on market forces to fix it. 

Bizarrely, the benefits of any altruistic attempts to 

tackle climate change will accrue to polluters, not 

to the atmosphere. 

If we are to take the task of reducing greenhouse 

gas emissions seriously we need to trans- 


form our energy and transport systems. The Rudd 

Government is determined to rely on ‘market 

forces’ to achieve this task, but what have markets 

achieved in the past. 

Was it the market that built our road system? 

Our water supply? Our sewers? Our phone lines? 

The market didn’t even build our existing electricity 

system. The public sector has built all of the large 

and integrated infrastructure networks in Australia. 

Sure the private sector builds the odd tollway, but 

when it comes to big picture infrastructure it’s the 

government that has always lead the way. 

Lets be clear about this, the Rudd Government 

isn’t even leaving it to the market to build the 

national broadband network! 

It’s often said that markets make a good servant 

and a poor master. Climate change is an 

enormous economic, environmental, social and 

national security problem. A well designed market 

instrument might play some role in tackling climate 

change, but the dog’s breakfast that is the CPRS 

will simply lock us into failure. 

Dr Richard Denniss is Executive Director of The Australia 

Institute. www.tai.org.au 

First Dog on the Moon 

Reprinted with the permission of firstdogonthemoon from crikey.com.au 


Synopsis 

Political power: Does gender matter anymore? 

The Hon. Maxine McKew MP 

Maxine McKew, MP for Bennelong and Julie Owens, MP for Parramatta 

were the guest speakers at the NSW Fabians ALP National Conference 

Fringe event in July this year. 

As at previous conferences, we held our forum 

during the Friday lunch break on board the South 

Steyne Floating Restaurant at Darling Harbour. 

With the advent of Anna Bligh as the first 

elected female state premier and Julia Gillard as 

the first female deputy prime minister, could advocates 

of increased representation of women in positions 

of political power in Australia relax and take 

some pleasure in their successes? This seemed a 

good time to pose the question: ‘Political power: 

Does gender matter anymore?’ 

Maxine McKew spoke first and has made her 

speech available for publication in the Fabians 

newsletter. 

“Jan (Merriman) thank you very much. It’s a pleasure 

to be on the same platform as Julie (Owens) 

because we are in adjoining electorates, and I do 

remember going back to my previous life as anchor 

for Lateline, in fact I think it was the night after the 

‘04 election, I had Julie on as a new Labor member 

and Malcolm Turnbull as a new Liberal member. It 

was a joint discussion about ‘the rookies.’ 

But I remember Julie and I lingered afterwards 

in the lobby of the ABC, and perhaps I had an ulterior 

motive and I remember saying, ‘Come on – 

how did you really do it?’ And I do remember Julie 

your response then, and you were dead right. You 

said at the time no seat is unwinnable. 

I never forgot that. 

Jan, it’s also interesting you make reference to 

Jesse Street – one of my heroes. I don’t have many 

but Jesse’s one of mine. And I think I’m right... If I’m 

wrong I know Bob Ellis will correct me. That Jesse 

actually had to run in Wentworth because the Labor 

Party denied her pre-selection in Eden-Monaro. 

First of all I would like to acknowledge that 

gender studies is a recognised field of academic 

expertise, and I’ll put in a disclaimer. I am no expert. 

I’m also aware that gender roles in Labor politics 

is a galvanising topic. 

So where to start? 

I think we can say that during the 20 months 

of the Rudd Government – Australians appear that 

much more comfortable than ever with women 

wielding political power. We have certainly come a 

long way since 1975 when as a young cadet journalist 

in Queensland I practically risked a night in 

the watch house because I aired a couple of stories 

about the need for anti discrimination legislation. 

Those were the days…when a Rockhampton 

mayor called Rex Pilbeam – I was back up there 

recently – Rex Pilbeam was famous for sacking 

any woman who worked for the council the moment 

she went to the altar. Those were also the 

days when a young University of Queensland law 

lecturer called Quentin Bryce advocated a heretical 

troika…affordable childcare, paid maternity 

leave and fairness in the workplace. 

Thirty five years on, the Australian Government 

requests Quentin’s assent to every piece of 

legislation that passes through the federal Parliament. 

That Queensland of the 1970s has now become 

the first state in Australia to elect a woman 

as premier. 

So clearly the landscape we survey today is 

very different. Thankfully preconceptions about 

gender and gender roles aren’t set in stone. They 

are constantly changing and evolving. So when 

I’m asked the question – does gender matter any 

more in relation to political power – I guess the 

short answer is yes, it will always matter. 

But right now I think gender matters a little 

less. 

There’s been widespread acknowledgement 

of the strong performance in government by the 

Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard, of Nicola Roxon, 

of Jenny Macklin in Labor’s most important 

portfolios of Education, of Health and Families. 

The election of Anna Bligh and the appointment 

of Quentin Bryce as the first female Governor- 

General were – to me at any rate – unsurprising. 


Anna was clearly the best candidate, Quentin an 

excellent choice. Every time an articulate successful 

woman stands up to represent the Australian 

public, another bubble bursts for those remaining 

‘gender skeptics’ out there... the people who believe 

that because a candidate is a woman it might 

be a negative in some voters’ minds. 

It’s a little bit like the issue of race at the last 

US election – when some American commentators 

murmured about “the Bradley Effect”– the idea 

that white voters, no matter how good the candidate 

and in spite of what they told pollsters, just 

couldn’t bring themselves to vote for a black candidate. 

But, as the writer Kate Jennings has said, 

Obama wasn’t elected for the colour of his skin – 

‘he was elected because he offered the hope of a 

wise, steady and healing leadership to a country 

bullied and battered in the name of patriotism, 

plundered and pillaged in the name of free markets, 

neglected and abandoned in the name of 

small government.’ 

I think every time we see off these shibboleths, 

it seems like everyone blinks, opens their eyes a bit 

wider and says – ‘What were we worried about?’ 

I know that many feminists are disappointed 

that a woman is still to be elected as commander 

in chief in the United States…. and that 2008 represents 

for them something of a missed opportunity. 

I have a slightly different view. I think the girl 

won and her name is Obama. 

If we look at this in Jungian terms Barack 

Obama has an exceptionally well developed anima….that 

is, his feminine side sits easily alongside 

his male persona. Obama prevailed I think because 

he had a conversation with America. He talked in a 

different way. His campaign was expansive, empathetic, 

and full of promise. People felt that he was 

on their side, and it wasn’t all about him. 

Obama to me is a symbol of how gender 

roles, both male and female are shifting, and how 

showing traits that are considered ‘female’ are no 

longer a negative for a male politician. 

I’m not so sure the reverse works. 

The search for gender equality shouldn’t 

mean that women in politics slavishly adopt traits 

considered ‘male.’ The aim should be that women 

are afforded all the same opportunities as men to 

develop as politicians with whichever voice works 

for them. 

That said, the old stereotypes still rear their 

heads from time to time. I don’t see much reporting 

on what male politicians wear, or what their hair 

looks like. 

On balance though, it’s still women who cop 

maximum attention for what they’re wearing – consider 

the forest of literature on Hillary Clinton’s 

many-hued, ubiquitous trouser suits. It’s fair to say 

some other countries are further down the gender 

equality path in politics than we are. The Spanish 

cabinet, for one, has more women than men, and 

when Spain’s 38 year-old Defence Minister Carmen 

Chacon took over the portfolio last year she 

was seven months pregnant. 

The fact that we are where we are today is the 

culmination of many years of hard work. It’s the advocacy 

of groups like the National Foundation for 

Australian Women, the Women’s Electoral Lobby, 

Emily’s List and many others who’ve helped to recast 

gender roles in politics in a more equal and 

unbiased way. And I know Julie and I will always 

say we stand on the shoulders of others. When 

I think of the Hawke ministry, for example, I think 

in particular of Susan Ryan, and the extraordinary 

hard yards that Susan put in ensuring that we have 

national legislation on affirmative action and antidiscrimination 

laws. 

Susan and women of the women of her generation 

dared to imagine a different future and they 

copped a lot of pain for it. But they were true to 

their ideal, and they kept those ideas circulating 

in the public sphere even when it was very difficult 

to do so. They remain an inspiration for all of us. 

For that we all owe them and many of you – an unending 

debt. So thank you. While we celebrate our 

victories – I still think there are hurdles for women 

in politics. 

The New South Wales ALP is having another 

crack at branch reform, so more power to your 

Rosie the Riveter arms for doing so. But we certainly 

won’t attract the best and brightest to our 


party unless we make it easier 

for women to get involved and 

stay engaged. Many women lose 

touch with the party when they 

have children, or have other caring 

responsibilities. 

Many women though do 

have strong connections to their 

local community, often through 

their children, through schools 

and sporting clubs. Women are 

often involved in local politics and 

smaller forms of political organisation. 

The potential is there for 

the ALP to tap into this resource 

of female community leadership. 

Not only is it about making branch 

meetings more accessible it is also about shifting 

the message to appeal to women and changing 

the way the party views and treats women. 

Back in 2000 in her contribution to the book 

Party Girls Julia Gillard noted that the Party’s National 

Secretary and state secretaries at the time 

were all male: Julia observed how inherently inaccessible 

such positions were to women: She said: 

‘The work-till-you-drop ethos which pervades the 

political class means there has been no real attempt 

to facilitate part-time work or working patterns 

which recognise family needs.’ 

‘In addition, these jobs tend to become a lifestyle 

in which being at the right pub or the right 

dinner at the right time can be as important as performing 

professional duties during the day.’ Well, 

roll on the day when state secretaries can horse 

trade outside the school playground. 

Getting back to the original question about 

does gender still matter, I think the short answer is 

‘less than it ever has, but still more than it should.’ 

We’ve come a long way. Our task now is to consolidate 

the gains and keep building for the future. 

Recently News Limited journalist Glenn Milne 

coined a phrase to ‘do a Maxine McKew.’ He was 

talking about the need to run, as he said, a high 

profile Labor candidate against Malcolm Turnbull 

in Wentworth. A catchy slogan, but I think it misses 

the point. I want to reassure Glenn that victory in 

Bennelong had to do with many things. 

One of the most important things was that it 

was a great grassroots disciplined campaign. I 

think my name and whatever recognition factor attached 

to it was somewhat down the list.In fact I 

find the whole business of a ‘celebrity candidate’ 

is laughable because there’s nothing glamorous 

about campaigning. It’s relentless and I knew that 

when I took on the job. 

But having done so I now find my present job 

about as rewarding as it gets. I’ve had some extraordinary 

days and some spectacular days since 

I became the Member for Bennelong. I’ve also had 

some very, very ordinary days. 

They will never make the front page of any 

newspaper, but the wheelchair-adapted house that 

you find for the mother with two disabled children 

will never be forgotten. Nor will the small community 

grants that you find for the scouts hall or 

the netball team. Nor will the things that cost you 

nothing – your attendance at a combined schools 

concert, or a seniors’ afternoon tea. That’s what 

I’m out there doing every day in Bennelong. If I get 

any say in the matter that’s what I’d prefer “doing a 

McKew” to actually mean. 

Thank you very much. 

Maxine McKew is the Federal Member for the electorate 

of Bennelong in the Australian Parliament and the 

Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Transport, 

Regional Development and Local Government. 

www.ministers.infrastructure.gov.au/mm 


Abstracts 

Australia, The Politics of Climate Change 

and Anthony Giddens 

Dr Joff Lelliott 

Worldwide, 2009 will be remembered for the Global Financial Crisis. 

Many hope it will also be remembered as the year the world came 

together at the Copenhagen Conference and set out on the post- 

Kyoto path to tackling climate change. 

In Australia, it will also be remembered for the ongoing 

shenanigans over passing or not passing 

the Emissions Trading Scheme legislation by federal 

parliament. 

In this context, Anthony Giddens’ new book, 

The Politics of Climate Change, could not be better 

timed. 

Giddens is well-placed to write this book. He 

was one of the leading sociologists of the late- 

20th century and head of the London School of 

Economics. He wrote groundbreaking books on 

globalisation and put the ideological flesh on Tony 

Blair’s media-friendly Third Way, ultimately being 

rewarded with a seat in the House of Lords. 

In his new book, one of Giddens’ main arguments 

is particularly pertinent to Australia – climate 

change needs to be lifted above conventional 

party politics, so that long-term solutions can be 

agreed which are not then vulnerable to a change 

of government. 

Giddens might be disappointed the issue has 

become one of Australia’s most politically treacherous 

for many years, with the Liberal Party actually 

moving away from the consensus position 

that a cap-and-trade Emissions Trading Scheme 

(ETS) is the way forward. It seems likely, however, 

that the Coalition’s current wranglings are actually 

the death throes of climate change scepticism in 

mainstream politics. 

Climate change needs to be lifted above 

conventional party politics. 

This wrangling has led to the paradoxical situation 

where the ALP is proposing a market-based 

mechanism and the supposedly pro-market Liberals 

want to simply tax people more (which will not 

control the level of emissions, only the price that 

people have to pay to pollute). 

While any party enjoys watching its opponent 

rip itself and its credibility apart, this debate 

is stopping Australia dealing with climate change 

and giving business the certainty it needs to make 

investments in capital and R&D. 

One of Giddens’ strongest points is that Green 

parties cannot offer the answer. Being rooted in 

anti-capitalist, anti-industrial ideologies means the 

Greens do not offer credible ways to tackle climate 

change – partly demonstrated by their effectively 

being dealt out of discussions on the ETS and Renewable 

Energy Targets. Hence the answers need 

to be resolved by the traditional left and conservative 

parties. 

Unlike many writers on climate change, Giddens 

offers us hope. He discusses at length countries 

that are making significant changes. Sweden 

has halved its oil consumption at the same time as 

it is phasing out nuclear power. It also has a stated 

aim of being oil-free by 2020. Iceland is turning to 

hydro-electric power and (along with Norway, New 

Zealand and Costa Rica) aims to be carbon neutral 

within two decades. 

In part countries are being motivated by energy 

security issues – witness Israel’s strong support 

for electric cars, over oil from its Arab neighbours, 

with a nationwide programme of installing plug-in 

points and other infrastructure. Giddens stresses 

repeatedly that for many countries there will frequently 

be a coincidence of climate change mitigation 

work with energy security interests. 

By discussing such strong examples, Giddens 

undermines his claim that people will not 

deal with climate change until its effects are being 

felt directly, when it will already be too late. Vainly, 

he refers to this as “Giddens’ Paradox”. 

As to the current haggling about the post- 

Kyoto world, Giddens argues that a tight, detailed 

agreement is not what is required. Instead, the 

world needs a broad, relatively loose agreement, 

which allows each country to determine its own 


path to a lower-carbon future, based on local political 

realities, the existing policy mix and the technological 

possibilities for that country. 

This is in part the argument of developing 

countries like China and India. They may not simply 

follow Western prescriptions on climate change, 

but the vital point is that there is the same understanding 

of the core issues and their magnitude. 

China sees more clearly than many people realise 

that it has a direct interest in tackling climate 

change due to the profound changes in weather 

patterns in its heavily populated south. Earlier this 

year China announced plans for the biggest solar 

plant in the world – big enough to power three 

million homes. The Economist has given optimistic 

reports about serious, high-level, pre-Copenhagen 

talks between China and the USA – the two most 

important countries in any global agreement. 

Giddens is good at identifying issues and analysing 

them. Unfortunately, despite his claims, he 

is not able to translate his analysis into clear policy 

proposals – especially around raising the issue 

above party politics. That is where those involved in 

political parties need to pick up his ideas and analysis 

– and hopefully come to a long-term bi-partisan 

and international consensus on climate change. 

Anthony Giddens’ The Politics of Climate Change 

is published by Polity Press. 

Dr Joff Lelliott was recently part of a panel discussion 

on climate change for the Queensland Fabians. He has 

been a member of the Queensland Labor Party’s Economic 

Management state policy committee and the 

Environment and Heritage state policy committee. He 

works on climate change issues in the private sector. 

Synopsis 

What’s left: Libertarian social democracy and 

alternatives to big government 

Dr Tony Moore 

I call myself a libertarian social democrat but many of my left wing 

mates condemn such a position as a contradiction. They forget that 

the potency of the French Revolution lay in its marriage of Liberty with 

Equality and Fraternity, and that left libertarianism has a fine pedigree. 

Social democracy ensures collective intervention 

in the market place to enhance structural equality 

and advance the full development of our potential 

as human beings. Libertarianism cultivates a 

skeptical attitude to the self-serving claims of state 

bureaucracies and rent seeking businesses alike, 

and ensures vigilance against the encroachment 

of our governments on individual and community 

freedoms. 

Taken together social democracy and libertarianism 

can promote alternative ways for us re- 

imagine the old Westminster public service as a 

democratic commons more accountable to grassroots 

communities. Many Australians, especially 

in traditional Labor areas, have lost faith in the 

capacity of government to deliver even the most 

basic services, and restoring faith in the public is 

one of the key challenges for progressives today. 

I am not arguing for less public intervention. 

Rather I challenge the left to think beyond the frequently 

illiberal bureaucratic state as the only way 

to achieve social goals. 


The United States extols liberty above all else, 

but without the balancing commitment to equality it 

can be a land of the strong rather than of the free. 

Communist countries that relied on an authoritarian 

state to force through equality not only produced 

societies damaging to human life and the 

human spirit but also created a class of bureaucratic 

overlords who were manifestly more equal 

than the masses they claimed to elevate. 

Political libertarianism often suffers in Australia 

where our utilitarian roots have cultivated a winner 

takes all approach, where the minority can be subject 

to the majority. The Labor Party’s birth in the 

unions means it values solidarity in defence of majority 

decisions –– essential for industrial disputes 

but impatient of individual liberty. ALP governance 

itself is in practice illiberal, where the losing faction 

or sub-faction must abide by the majority vote. 

While the ideas-orientated Fabian society has always 

been a bastion of the small ‘l’ liberal in Australian 

political debate, the dominant ALP culture 

has little respect for dissent or pluralistic models 

of governance despite warm fuzzy slogans about 

multiculturalism. Still, Labor has thrown up finer liberals 

–– in the democratic reform/civil libertarian/ 

human rights/cultural diversity sense than the Liberal 

Party, including Evatt, Whitlam, Wran, Hawke, 

Keating and possibly Rudd. Yet all of them share 

Labor’s fondness for the state. 

“Death or liberty” was a call to arms for a host 

of revolutionaries, rebels and reformers transported 

as political prisoners to Australia who had no 

reason to idealise the British state that had exiled 

them to our fatal shore. Late 19th-century English 

socialist William Morris was appalled by the Marxist 

and Fabian obsession with the state as the 

agent of reform or revolution, believing it would 

extinguish the rights of freeborn Englishmen as 

surely as industrial capitalism. 

In the US and also Australia, the Industrial 

Workers of the World were influenced by the anarchist 

critique of the state and advocated a syndicalist 

socialism based on unionism: an idea that 

had currency among radical unionists in Australia 

until the new Communist Party succumbed to a 

Marxist-Leninist recasting of the state as the dictatorship 

of the proletariat. 

Many stalwarts of the Sydney intellectual Left 

cut their radical teeth in the bohemian Push, at the 

philosophical core of which was the prickly Libertarian 

Society. Inspired by free-thinking professor 

John Anderson, the Libertarians were critical 

of communist claims that authoritarianism could 

deliver a utopia and Labor’s faith that state power 

was neutral. They styled themselves as pessimistic 

anarchists, cautioning that even the most idealistic 

reformers become a new elite. 

Armed with a healthy scepticism of the state 

we on the left can deepen democratic accountability 

of collective institutions that deliver social goods 

and consider alternatives to the traditional public 

sector. In doing so we can draw on older ideas like 

cooperatives and mutual’s to devise new types of 

partnerships between the communities and markets. 

But the Australian Labor party is obstinately 

romantic about the state and uncritical about the 

exercise of ministerial power over ordinary people 

by often heavy-handed government departments 

like Centrelink, the Department of Immigration or 

the Classification Board. Newly elected Labor Ministers 

certainly might impose new policies on their 

minions and change the officers at the top of the 

public service pecking order, but the actual form of 

the state remains unchanged: centralized, secretive 

top down bureaucracies with little avenue for 

citizen participation. 

I grew up in working class Port Kembla and 

Dapto, from a blue-collar family. I owe my education, 

good health and much of my working life 

to the remaking of the state that occurred under 

Gough Whitlam and Neville Wran. But somewhere 

in the 1990s the quality of government services declined 

in the wake of corporatisation, so that these 

days it is with trepidation that I enter a public hospital, 

jump on a train or commit to a comprehensive 

high school. Perhaps this is because of my experience 

living under the NSW Labor Government? 

It is traditional Labor voters in communities 

like the Illawarra who have been let down by the 

infestation of government services by manage- 


ment consultants and cronies. Privatisation gained 

traction because the unreconstructed monopoly 

public corporations like Telstra or the CES were so 

unresponsive to citizens, rebadged as ‘customers’. 

To make matters worse, party discipline, complexity, 

secrecy, the preselection of staffers and a 

presidential style of leadership have weakened the 

public’s capacity to scrutinise or control the acts of 

government through MPs. 

Merely having as Minister a pollie hailing 

from the Socialist Left does nothing to change the 

power relation between the state and its citizens. 

Back in the 1970s New Left British political scientist 

Ralph Miliband warned Labour Party reformers 

that The State in Capitalist Society is never neutral, 

and even the most determined socialist is seduced 

by the pomp and circumstance of Her Majesty’s 

Government and ends up identifying the sectional 

interests of business with the national interest. To 

prove his father’s point David Miliband became a 

Blairite Minister and is now Foreign Secretary. 

Notable revisionists of Labor’s state fetish 

in the last decade were Mark Latham and Peter 

Botsman who joined with Noel Pearson in a the 

book The Enabling State, to criticize the initiative 

–sapping effects of welfare dependency and 

over-regulation of private life on communities. They 

asked how social support might be better provided 

so that governments empower, rather than lord it 

over, poorer people. At some point many on the 

left abandoned their 1970s critique of the welfare 

state as at best a necessary half-measure on the 

way to the good society, to a defensive position 

that merely defends the status quo, defending 

people’s right to be a passive welfare client of the 

state as if this was the last word on progressive 

social policy. 

The ALP does have a counter-tradition. During 

the period of Labor’s birth there was great debate 

internationally and in Australia about the most appropriate 

way to civilise capitalism, deliver public 

services and for the more radical, create a socialist 

society. Many working and middle class people 

were more practical in the face of the private sectors’ 

indifference to their needs, and set up mutual 

building societies so they could borrow for a 

home, or set up cooperatives for the provision of 

groceries or other necessities. Such institutions of 

social service were controlled by members living 

locally rather than unseen bureaucrats or arrogant 

ministers in far-flung capitals. Unions and early Labor 

leaders embraced this grassroots experimentation, 

and extended mutualisation to the provision 

of funerals for the poor and roadside motor service 

(this championed by like PM John Christian Watson). 

Yet in recent years the mutuals and coops 

such as the NRMA have rushed lemming like to the 

stock exchange and become private companies. 

Meanwhile in Europe cooperatives like Mondragon 

have grown to become giants of the economy – 

Fabian stalwart Race Mathews has been a tireless 

advocate for this alternative to the state. 

But in contemporary Australia the only choice 

presented is between the state or neo-liberal solutions. 

Since the 1990s State Labor Governments 

have remained obsessed with all-out privatisation 

or delivering public goods through the Third 

Way orthodoxy of Public Private Partnerships, with 

mixed results and negligible participation by the 

public. Now the Rudd government unthinkingly 

reaches for old style PPPs to realise its worthy infrastructure 

vision, but NSW shows that this model 

has pitfalls for the service user and tax payer alike. 

An alternative is to reimagine ‘the public’. 

If Australian governance alienates most of us 

perhaps it is because its form retains many colonial 

features designed to do just that. Whereas government 

services such as schools and police in the 

United States and Britain are often accountable 

to local communities through direct or municipal 

election, here they remain trapped in the colonial 

model where the centrally located representative 

of the Crown dispatched its officers to administer 

HMG’s laws to a people who could not be trusted. 

Though self-government was introduced early, 

the people’s participation was limited to parliamentary 

election and juries, rather than an ongoing 

say over the operation of schools, hospitals 

or the constabulary. Where boards exist they are 

too frequently stacked with political mates rather 


than meritocratic or reflective of the community or 

stakeholders. The post 1990s triumph of managerialism 

and PR has only served to further distance 

ordinary people from the institutions that govern 

their lives, and all but extinguished the principle of 

ministerial responsibility. For evidence look no further 

than the Howard government’s AWB and immigration 

debacles or the ongoing tragic-comedy 

that is the NSW Government. 

It may be difficult for a PM who is the very 

model of a managerial mandarin to see that bureaucracy 

itself is the enemy of Labor’s goals. But 

just as Labor has come to appreciate the value of 

markets to economic prosperity and infrastructure 

investment so too can it enlarge its concept of 

the commons beyond the old colonial idea of the 

Crown, ministers and public service. Here a shift 

to a republic is important as a means of enhancing 

democratic accountability and citizenship. But 

Labor needs to move on from the Keating/Turnbull 

obsession with merely changing the head of state. 

The Rudd Government should build on the 

governance work of Carmen Lawrence and Senator 

John Faulkner and accompany the campaign 

for a republic with democratic reforms to the operation 

of our parliaments and quangos. Meanwhile 

the broader left should debate the creation of new 

public institutions, both centrally and especially at 

the local level where municipal government is moribund, 

that will enhance our say over the services 

that most impact on our lives. 

I have long argued for the election of public 

boards and local officials. Why? It is now impossible 

to control public utilities through MPs 

and Ministers. Traditionally Labor has prioritized 

people as producers rather than consumers of 

services. In a land of oligopolies, both public 

and private service providers have long got away 

with looking after their management and workers 

ahead of consumers, and consumer power has 

never had an advocate of the stature of Ralph 

Nader. I prefer to think of the users of public services 

as citizens rather than the voguish ‘customer’, 

and call for a new politics that empowers 

citizens to have a say over how area health services, 

local schools or police meet the needs of 

communities. 

The broader left protests when ministers and 

officials favour business mates or cruelly lock up 

refugees, but many of us have a vested interest 

in the status quo. As compensation for its authoritarian 

streak, the state has become a generous 

benefactor to progressives, either employing us to 

manage its utilities and programs for the marginalised 

or making everyone from artists to community 

groups to scholars jump through hoops of red 

tape in a scramble for the next grant. But the state 

is more tar baby than magic pudding, leaving a 

residue of compromise and passivity on those too 

dependent on its patronage. 

In conclusion, social democracy must look 

beyond the old version of the state to empower the 

social. 

Dr Tony Moore is a lecturer at Monash University’s National 

Centre for Australian Studies, a Fellow of the Centre 

for Policy Development and former president of the 

NSW Fabian Society. His book, Death or Liberty: Rebel 

Exiles in Australia will be published next year. Tony is 

also commissioning editor of the Cambridge University 

Press issues-based book series, Australian Encounters. 

arts.monash.edu.au/ncas/staff/tmoore.php 


Out of left field 

Inflation resisting money 

Dr Shann Turnbull 

Technology has made inflation resistant money feasible. There is 

now no need to use the blunt instrument of interest rates to knock 

the economy on its head to control inflation. Thumping headaches 

from monetary policy can be avoided with electronic money that also 

removes the need for central banks. 

This possibility was recognised by the Governor of 

the Bank of England, Mervyn King. In a 1999 paper 

to the US based Cato Institute King stated “Societies 

have managed without central banks in the 

past. They may well do so again in the future.” In 

considering e-money, King said: “There is no reason, 

in principle, why final settlements could not be 

carried out by the private sector without the need 

for clearing through the central bank.” This is now 

occurring. In many developing countries mobile 

phones are used to transfer value without involving 

a bank. 

Multiple currencies 

Since 2004 technology has developed to allow the 

Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) in mobile phones 

to be used like a debit card. The ability to introduce 

inflation resistant money was created as SIM cards 

could store and transmit value in various units of 

account. Transit authorities issue debit cards with 

a unit of account based on the amount of travel 

in a specified area and/or time. Internet cafes sell 

vouchers with a log-in key to provide access to the 

world-wide-web for a specified time. 

In many developing countries the village store 

sells vouchers for mobile phone owners to obtain 

a specified amount of airtime. The airtime stored in 

one phone can be transmitted to mobile phones of 

family members or service providers. Another village 

store can redeem airtime into cash. This is a 

huge advantage for rural city workers wanting to 

send money home. 

Poor countries lead 

There are now 4 billion mobile phones operating in 

the world populated by 6 billion people. Only 25% 

of mobile phones are in advanced economies. 

Chinese manufacturers sell mobile phones for under 

AUD$15. Even in poor communities the revenues 

generated from instant communications to 

sell produce, transfer money or co-ordinate social 

activities can payback the cost of a mobile phone 

and its airtime in just a few months. Various studies 

have reported that increase use of mobile phones 

in developing countries is directly responsible for 

increases in GDP. 

Instead of using airtime as the unit of account, 

a number of Central Banks in developing countries 

have approved the use of mobile phones to store 

and transmit legal tender domestically and internationally. 

The World Bank reports that hundreds 

of billions of dollars are being remitted in this way 

by guest workers in one country to their families in 

another. 

Liberation from banksters 

E-money becomes a disruptive technology in advanced 

economies. The 3% or so credit card fee 

paid by merchants could be avoided with e-money 

to yield substantial cost savings. The cost of noncash 

transactions in Australia is between 1 to 2 per 

cent of GDP. (Refer to “What a gig! Making money 

out of money”, page 28, AFR August 15-16, 2009). 

If the government does not facilitate the use 

of legal tender in SIM cards then an irresistible incentive 

will be created for e-money entrepreneurs 

to introduce an alternative unit of account. An inflation 

resistant unit would provide an additional 

incentive for merchants, investors and firms to establish 

contracts in e-money. 

Constant global value 

Technology is also providing new options for establishing 

an inflation resistant unit of value. The 

cost of internet usage is defined in terms of units 

of data measured in bytes and megabytes. The 


value of each megabyte is not altered by it carrying 

voice or video, transmitted near or far, or 

shared with one or many around the world. The 

value of internet access measured in megabytes 

per unit of time would provide a global unit of account 

highly stable over both the short and long 

run at any place. 

a basis for resources to be allocated by market 

forces in the most efficacious manner to sustain 

humanity on the planet. Carbon trading and taxing 

could be minimised with renewable energy 

becoming the new “gold standard”. It would also 

remove the need for central banks and thumping 

economic headaches. 

Carbon trading alternative 

Technology is also making renewable energy another 

highly stable unit of account measured in 

Kilo-watt-hours of electricity. However, the value 

of each kWh in each region would vary according 

to its endowment of renewable energy. But rather 

than being a disadvantage this would provide 

Dr Shann Turnbull has been a serial entrepreneur 

founding a number of enterprises, three of which became 

publicly traded. Since writing Democratising the 

Wealth of Nations in 1975 he has been a prolific author 

on reforming the theory and practice of capitalism with 

his books and academic articles posted at 

ssrn.com/author=26239 

Wartime Refugees 

Stephen Lawrence 

“You’re not in a prison camp now”—Bonegilla. 

Unloaded from trains, buses, the first 12,000 welcomed: 

“Australians and migrants are treated equally!” 

Black winter greatcoats clog camp bins—hides of extinct 

European beasts. “You’ll learn the Australian way of life.” 

Magazine correspondents stroll the corrugated carapace 

Of the barracks—lavender and rock rose seedlings 

Displace stones dusted white and orange, popping 

Like distant gunfire then crumbling underfoot— 

Seeking copy from inmates with refugee English. 

To sternly coquettish girls: “What pretty faces— 

Are there camp romances? You were a gymnast? 

In Hitler’s Games? Will you care to Anglicise your name?” 

“Our democratic ideal is A Fair Go for All.” 

One journalist goes to ground for his story, 

Returns in country-dark to tup a snaggle-toothed girl, 

Standard-issue pinafore tucked beneath against 

Rough, exotic scrub. Dry insects in her head, 

Redgum veins the sky, she wrestles this hemisphere’s 

Inverted moon through branches, face no longer aghast 

But with a full-cheeked grin. He will remember rolling 

In her body’s rich smell. Her baby will be born feet-first. 

Stephen Lawrence has four published collections of poetry, and is working towards a PhD 

in Creative Writing. He has been a judge for the Adelaide Festival Literary Awards since 2001. 


Fabian news 

Fabians Newsletter article 

October 2009 

Australian Union Singers Cuba Tour 2009: 

Australian Union Singers Cuba Tour 2009: 

The Queensland Fabian connection 

Marya McDonald, Queensland Fabians 

The popular acceptance of this message found its 

expression in emotionally satisfying forms, such as 

singing. Hence an application made to the government 

for “Arts in Working Life” funding was successful 

and the rest, as they say, is history! 

The BCUC grows and thrives to this day and 

the immediate past Queensland Fabian Secretary 

is now also the BCUC’s Secretary and an enthusiastic 

soprano, yet another strong link with the 

Queensland Fabians. Fabians would never hold 

their Christmas celebrations in Brisbane without 

song provided by the BCUC! 

The Choir is a not-for-profit, incorporated 

organisation with significant support from the 

union movement and progressive community organisations. 

Our excellent musical director Marina 

Aboody Thacker follows in a line of illustrious 

The Brisbane Queensland Combined Fabian Connection Unions Choir Inc (BCUC) 

predecessors. She is significantly beloved by the 

Brisbane have Combined been Unions writing Choir and Inc (BCUC) performing have been writing songs and performing about songs 

Choir who have worked with her for 13 years now, 

about rights and social justice for the past twenty years and, as the Chair of 

workers’ rights and social justice for the past 

the Queensland Branch of the Fabians Society, Senator Claire Moore is also their 

which is quite an extraordinarily productive collaboration 

in community choral contexts. 

Patron. twenty The BCUC years represents and, the as oldest the collaborations Chair of the between Queensland 

arts funding and 

working life that exists in the trade union choirs of Australia, as the original “Arts in The Brisbane choir has a record of achievement 

not only in performance but also in collab- 

Branch of the Fabians Society, Senator Claire 

Working Life” grant which established this dedicated little band was made all of 21 

years Moore ago. is also their Patron. 

oratively writing original workers’ songs which 

The other Fabian connection is that the original group who proposed the notion that reflect evidence for the need for progressive social 

the voice of workers and their The experiences BCUC represents could be heard the oldest via a cultural collaborations avenue and reform. For example in 2006, they created Fair Play 

that was via song, came from 

between 

a gathering 

arts 

on 

funding 

Fraser 

and 

Island 

working 

with 

life 

Fabian 

that exists 

co‐ordinator 

in Cabaret, a live show of original songs, skits and 

Terry Hampson, Sue Yarrow and Wendy Turner and others, particularly women, 

the trade union choirs of Australia, as the original satire about the Work Choices legislation. Fair Play 

Members of the Miscellaneous Workers Unions and active musicians and Trade 

Unionists like Flo and Stan Irvine “Arts who in Working were deeply Life” grant socialist which leaning. established They aspired this to Cabaret played to enthusiastic audiences in South 

the Fabian tradition that spreading dedicated the little message band of was progressive, made all of socially 21 years just ago. East Queensland, and was completed with a CD 

movements was not only grounded The on other empirical Fabian connection evidence of is that struggle the original 

songs) group but who that proposed popular acceptance the notion that of this the message voice The Choir has recently been funded to pro- 

(so recording of songs. 

commonly found in worker’s 

ought to be conveyed in appealing and emotionally satisfying forms, such as 

of workers and their experiences could be heard duce a CD with four songs about occupational 

via a cultural avenue and that was via song, came health and safety based on research of OH and 

from a gathering on Fraser Island. The group included 

Fabian co-ordinator Terry Hampson, Sue will be available not just for entertainment but for 

S in Queensland by the Choir members. The CD 

Yarrow and Wendy Turner and many others, particularly 

Members of the Miscellaneous Workers the health and well-being of Australian workers 

public education in this area which is so vital to 

Unions, women activists, musicians, and Trade and their families. 

Unionists like Flo and Stan Irvine, who were deeply The Brisbane Choral motto “A movement that 

socialist leaning. 

sings will never die” is being adopted as the legend 

on the Australian Union Singers performance 

The gathering aspired to the Fabian tradition of 

spreading the message of progressive, socially just shirts. The motto is reflected in the longevity of this 

movements, grounded on the empirical evidence Choir but it has as much to do with shared values 

of struggle (so commonly found in worker’s songs). and ideals of working people in their struggles for 


a fairer deal and for Fabians ideals of peace, prosperity 

and justice as it has to do with the sheer joy 

of raising your voice in song with your fellow man. 

The Brisbane Choir’s latest and most ambitious 

project is to act as the co-ordinating and lead 

agency in a massed Choir of Trade Unionists from 

around Australia and represent our country and its 

workers at an international Choral Festival to be 

held in Cuba in late 2009. In order to get there, the 

BCUC had to submit to an audition process all on 

its own, something to which members of that choir 

are not subjected. It was a big ask by anyone’s 

definition, so the BCUC was thrilled on behalf of 

all the other keen Australian Union singers to have 

prevailed through the audition phase and won their 

way through to Cuba. 

This is quite a historic achievement since to 

all the choir members’ knowledge, this will be the 

very first time any Australian choir of any description 

will have been able to perform in Cuba at this 

prestigious International Festival, which was established 

in the 1960’s and went international in 

1991. Singers en masse from the Sydney Trade 

Union and Victorian Trade Unions Choir, the Western 

Australian Trade Unions Choir and Canberra 

Union Voices will practice in their separate states, 

learning a big repertoire in four part a cappella harmonies 

from sound CD’s and some visits from the 

Choir director, never coming together completely 

before going to Cuba to hone the craft and sound 

of the Australian Union Singers. 

This is a very ambitious undertaking but one 

which is being managed with members, Unions, 

Fabian and community support. The combined 

choir will perform competitively but also will sing 

and bring gifts for exchange at the hospitals, 

schools and factories at which the choir will be expected 

to perform. 

South Australia: Ideas, policy, action 

Viv Fullager, South Australian Fabians 

The Australian Fabians in South Australia have reformed 

during the last 12 months and have made 

steady progress revitalising Fabian activities especially 

amongst young people in the state. We have 

held three major events under the banner of Ideas, 

Policy, Action. The Fabians association with the 

Don Dunstan Foundation was also revisited and 

we are pleased to advise that a new partnership 

is underway. 

National speaker series 

A timely suggestion from Assistant National Secretary, 

Max Dumais, that a National Speakers Series 

be introduced, resulted in our first two events 

which were organised around the visits to South 

Australia of Dr Richard Denniss, and Dr Ben Spies- 

Butcher and Adam Stebbing. 

Meeting the cost of climate change 

The Australia Institute’s Executive Director, economist 

Dr Richard Denniss, shared his views on the 

strengths and weaknesses of the current climate 

change proposals including the Carbon Pollution 

Reduction Scheme, in two forums in June 2009. 

The first was a lunch time seminar held at the 

University of Adelaide and attended by academics, 

students, Fabians and guests – a challenging, 

thought provoking discussion. Dr Denniss then addressed 

the Fabian Friday Forum during lunch, at 

the ASU offices Kent Town. 

Welfare for the rich? How tax breaks 

are transforming Australia’s welfare 

state 

Flinders University was the August venue for the 

second event in our speaker series. Dr Ben Spies- 

Butcher and Adam Stebbing from the Depart- 


Change Institute at the Australian National University 

(ANU), Canberra, and is also Science Adviser, 

Department of Climate Change, Australian Government. 

Dr John Finnigan, Director, CSIRO Centre 

for Complex System Science CSIRO Marine 

and Atmospheric Research. Dr Graham Turner, 

senior scientist at CSIRO sustainable Ecosystems. 

Dr Damon Honnery, Associate Professor at the 

Laboratory for Turbulence Research in Aerospace 

& Combustion Department of Mechanical and 

Aerospace Engineering, Monash University. Dr 

Peter Brain, one of Australia’s best known economists 

in the development and application of macment 

of Sociology at Macquarie University, both 

addressed over 80 students and staff at Flinders 

University at a morning seminar. Organised in 

conjunction with Associate Professor Fiona Verity, 

the address was well received. Later that day, our 

guests joined the Fabian Friday Forum, again at 

the ASU over lunch, with the ensuing discussion 

moving quickly from topic to topic, including refugees, 

education, taxation and welfare. 

Community conversations 

In late August, Fabians were offered the opportunity 

to take part in the Marion Learning Festival: a 

week-long festival of ideas, discussions and workshops. 

Two of our members facilitated workshops, 

one on “Education in SA” and the second on “Middle 

Class Welfare”. The latter, with permission, expanded 

on the views of Dr Ben Spies-Butcher and 

Adam Stebbing, and was well attended by members 

of the public. Both events involved the lively 

exchange of ideas and were excellent for raising 

the profile of the Fabians in South Australia. 

2010 program 

These events have demonstrated that there is a 

place in South Australia for the Fabians and will underpin 

the development of our 2010 program. We 

will continue to focus on promoting – the healthy 

discussion of ideas, the formulation of new policy, 

and action for positive outcomes. 

Wonderful support 

A special thank you to: 

• The Don Dunstan Foundation for their help with 

the organisation of the University of Adelaide 

seminar. In particular to Chair of the Don Dunstan 

Foundation Trust, The Hon Greg Crafter, 

and Executive Director Claire Bossley and her 

team; and to Dr John Spoehr, Executive Director 

of the Australian Institute for Social Research 

and the Centre for Labour Research at the University 

of Adelaide. 

• Associate Professor Fiona Verity from the 

School of Social Work and Social Planning at 

Flinders University for facilitating with fellow 

academics, the Flinders University seminar. 

• The Australian Services Union whose premises 

we have visited for our Friday Forums, and 

• The Australian Fabians Inc. for providing financial 

assistance and support to enable us to 

bring speakers to Adelaide, and to reinvigorate 

the organisation in South Australia. 

2009 Victorian Branch events 

March: Sustainable Cities Sustainable Transport 

Seminar convened by Roger Taylor, the seminar 

aimed to address the extent to which global 

change will shape our cities and to consider what 

future we should be planning for. It was attended 

by over 118 participants and led to a submission 

being made to the Federal Senate inquiry into Climate 

Change. 

Dr Ian McPhail, the inaugural Commissioner 

for Environmental Sustainability for Victoria opened 

the seminar which was moderated by Norman 

Swan of the ABC. Speakers included: Professor 

Will Steffen, Executive Director of the ANU Climate 


oeconomic models. Dr Peter Newton, a Research 

Professor in the Cities, Housing and Environment 

Program within the Institute for Social Research 

at Swinburne University. Professor Currie, holder 

of Australia’s first professorship in public transport 

based at the Institute of Transport Studies, 

Monash University. Professor Nicholas Low, the 

co-Director of GAMUT, the Australasian Centre for 

the Governance and Management of Urban Transport. 

John Stanley, Adjunct Professor at the Institute 

of Transport and Logistics Studies, University 

of Sydney. 

April: Urban Planning for Sustainable Living with 

panellists Jenny Donovan, (Walkable Cities), Max 

Walton (UK – Eco cities), and Roger Taylor (Member 

of Australian Institute of Traffic Planning and 

Management Inc.) and moderated by Roger Byrne 

(GHD and Victorian Fabian Executive). 

May: Meeting the cost of Climate Change was 

run in conjunction with The Australia Institute and 

addressed by their Executive Director, Dr Richard 

Denniss with respondents, Kenneth Davidson 

(Arena) and Julia Thornton.* 

July: Welfare for the rich – How tax breaks are 

transforming Australia’s Welfare State was run 

in conjunction with the Centre for Policy Development 

and addressed by Dr Ben Spies-Butcher 

Co-author with Adam Stebbing of the CPD study 

‘Reforming Australia’s Hidden Welfare State.’* 

August: The Victorian Annual dinner was held at 

Ormond College with 165 members in attendance. 

The Hon. Jenny Macklin – Minister, Families, 

Housing, Community Services and Indigenous 

Affairs and Fabian, shared her experiences from 

traveling and listening to indigenous Australians 

and brought us up to date on Labor’s focus on indigenous 

policy and the results so far. 

October: Dying – the last rights in conjunction 

with Dying with Dignity, Victoria was addressed by 

Dr Rodney Syme, author of A Good Death, and 

Vice-President of Dying with Dignity Victoria, and 

Iola Mathews OAM, author of My Mother, My Writing 

and Me: A Memoir. 

November: Next Left? Libertarian social democracy 

and alternatives to big government introduced 

the first in a Fabian series of talks on new 

directions for left of centre politics and policy and 

presented by Dr Tony Moore, lecturer at Monash 

University’s National Centre for Australian Studies 

and Commissioning Editor of Australian Encounters, 

a new issues-based book series by Cambridge 

University Press. Tony was former President 

of the NSW Fabians and publisher of Pluto Press. 

December: Innovation in the 3rd sector – how 

the not-for-profits are leading governments and 

corporate Australia in policy and partnerships 

for community benefit. The panellists were Harold 

Mitchell AO, founder of the HM Foundation, Dr 

Rhonda Galbally AO, CEO Our Community, and 

Sarah Davies CEO Melbourne Community Foundation 

with Mary Delahunty as Chair/facilitator and 

member of the Victorian Fabian Executive. 

* Fabian National Speaker Series 

Lapel badges 

An Australian Fabian lapel badge would make 

a great present for Christmas or any occasion. 

Made in pewter and individually hand-finished, 

they are designed by jewellery artist Marylyn 

Verstraeten based on the Australian Fabian 

logo by graphic designer Simon Kwok. They 

come in two sizes, the small around a five 

cent piece and the large a ten cent and come 

beautifully presented in a small black box. 

The cost is $27.50 each, plus $5 postage and 

packaging. 

Enquiries to Pamela McLure (03) 9481 1289 or 

pdmclure@ozemail.com.au. 


A return airfare to LONDON. 

A living allowance and 

month-long internship at 

DEMOS, one of the UK's 

leading think tanks. Your 

article published in THE 

AUSTRALIAN newspaper. 

The competition is open to all young 

political thinkers and activists in 

Australia aged 18 - 28. Opinion pieces 

can be on any policy issue facing 

Australian progressive politics today. 

Entries should be no longer than 1,000 

words, with no footnotes. Entries will be 

judged for their originality, fluency of 

style and their practical solutions to 

current issues. 

A month-long internship at 

Australian think tank Per Capita 

(Melbourne or Sydney). 

LINDSAY TANNER Author, Federal 

Minister for Finance & Deregulation 

CHERYL KERNOT Author, Director of 

Teaching & Learning [Centre for Social 

Impact, UNSW] 

JOHN QUIGGIN Author, Economist and 

Professor at the University of Queensland 

REBECCA WEISSER Journalist, Opinion 

Editor of The Australian 

AUSTRALIAN 

FABIANS 


Young Writers 2008 

Winner: 

Fairness the key to unlocking health 

Shafqat Inam 

The draft report from the National Health and Hospitals Reform 

Commission (NHHRC) has certainly sparked debate about proposals 

ranging from a universal dental scheme to regional management of 

hospitals. 

While the final report is eagerly awaited, the diverse 

opinions on the draft are indicative of the 

challenges presented by the myriad of competing 

demands from an immensely complex system. It 

feels necessary to focus these fragmented discussions 

and articulate an overarching vision for reform 

that considers “health” in its broadest sense. 

In 1948 the World Health Organization presciently 

defined health as “a state of complete 

physical, mental and social well-being and not 

merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” Yet it 

is only recently that attempts have been made to 

widen the focus of our “illness system” from symptomatic 

treatment of disease to a more holistic approach. 

Certainly the adequate provision of acute 

care services is a pressing concern: the shortage 

of beds and rates of post-surgical infections are 

emblematic of the strain on our public hospitals. 

Ongoing reform must address the chronic underfunding 

and poor management, and focus on improving 

the quality of patient care. 

Nevertheless it is in the community and not 

the hospital where additional resources can make 

the greatest difference. General practitioners are 

the lynchpins of our primary care system, and are 

best placed to combat the tide of chronic disease 

that threatens to impose an enormous burden on 

future generations. A disease such as diabetes 

can cause devastating blindness and kidney damage, 

and yet can be prevented if we employ proper 

nutrition and daily exercise to reduce our bulging 

waistlines. Unfortunately the current remuneration 

structure rewards the quantity rather than quality 

of patient consultations. The NHHRC draft report 

proposes a pay for performance system, and a 

scheme that rewards GPs for achievements such 

as immunisation coverage, reduction in smoking 

rates and patient education has already been successfully 

implemented in the United Kingdom. Our 

approach must balance flexibility for doctors and 

patients with aspirational benchmarks that should 

encourage healthier lifestyles. 

Of course GPs are not the only players in the 

primary care landscape, and indeed people in rural 

and remote communities may have trouble accessing 

their services. In the context of such severe 

workforce shortages we must utilise the range of 

skills possessed by nurse practitioners and allied 

health workers to provide comprehensive and accessible 

care. The NHHRC has already signalled 

the broadening of the Medicare benefits scheme, 

although some medical practitioner groups have 

voiced fears about the threat of task substitution 

and compromised quality. The key to overcoming 

these professional turf wars is cooperation: there 

should be a specific Medicare item to reward multidisciplinary 

meetings to discuss and coordinate 

the care of patients. 

A testament to this professional fragmentation 

is the ludicrous exclusion of dental care from 

the Medicare system. The lack of readily available 

public dental services is such that the state of teeth 

and gum health in some communities can only be 

described as third-world. Further the artificial barrier 

that has separated the management of teeth 

from the rest of the body is increasingly being 

challenged by new scientific evidence, with poor 

oral hygiene linked with the risk of heart disease. 

The Denticare model proposed by the NHHRC 

is based on a levy that funds a mixture of public 

and private services. Regardless of the funding 

arrangement any new system must ensure equity 

and access for all that has been so sorely lacking 

from previous dental care schemes. 

We should not limit policy initiatives to the restrictive 

medical paradigm, as systems researchers 

are increasingly realising the power of the 

social determinants of health. Disease burden and 


life expectancy correlate astonishingly well with social 

circumstance, income and the level of educational 

achievement. The World Health Organisation 

recently released a landmark report that declared 

that social inequality as much as any single disease 

was the root cause of millions of avoidable 

deaths in the last 10 years. Tackling entrenched 

poverty, the lack of affordable housing and youth 

employment tangibly improves the well-being of 

our population, and the formulation of government 

policy must be integrated across domains of 

health, welfare and social services. 

Amongst the most critical of these broader 

health domains is education. Convincing evidence 

shows that quality early childhood learning has 

multiplicative benefits that last well into the future. 

It is a travesty that government funded preschool 

places, are not provided for all children in 

Australia. Although various state governments are 

inching towards this goal, the federal government 

must coordinate these efforts to ensure coverage 

for all, including disadvantaged minorities and Indigenous 

children. For later years of schooling we 

must develop a robust health education strategy 

beyond the traditional message of “practice safe 

sex” and “say no to drugs”. The democratisation 

of health delivery, including ready access to hospital 

statistics and the myriad of resources on the 

web, has the potential to revolutionise the patientdoctor 

relationship. Tutorials on the biology of 

disease, the roles of health professionals, and reliable 

sources of medical information would verse 

students in health literacy and empower our future 

health consumers. 

In addition to these social determinants, the 

environment can remarkably shape the health of 

communities and individuals. Flawed urban design 

in our outer suburbs encourages residents 

to drive to nearby destinations rather than walk or 

cycle, and contributes to inactivity and obesity. The 

blight of pollution has been curtailed by stronger 

environmental protection laws, but the spectre of 

climate change looms large. The consequences of 

rising temperatures range from higher rates of vector 

born diseases such as dengue fever to more 

kidney stones from dehydration. We must ensure 

that major planning proposals require environmental 

impact assessments that explicitly consider 

the health of the community. And we must all endeavour 

to combat the great challenge of climate 

change. 

The media’s fixation on waiting lists and 

emergency rooms has distorted our perceptions 

of what we need from an integrated and efficient 

health system. My proposals may seem a disparate 

collection of ideas, but are not intended to be 

a comprehensive reform program – I’ll leave that 

to the NHHRC. They simply illustrate a holistic 

concept of health that encompasses acute and 

chronic disease, social factors such as education, 

and the environment. Our community and political 

leaders must embrace this broader definition 

if we are to achieve the aspiration to become the 

healthiest nation by 2020. 

About ... DEMOS “is a London-based think tank. We generate ideas to improve politics 

and policy, and give people more power over their lives. Our vision is a society of free and powerful 

citizens. “ www.demos.co.uk 

The winner of the Young Writers Competition receives a return economy class airfare to London 

to undertake an internship at Demos. A small living allowance is also provided and the winning article is published 

in The Australian newspaper, as well as the Australian Fabian News, and at www.fabian.org.au 


Runner up: 

Leave the lights on: 

Your emissions reduction efforts are pointless 

Jeremy Burke 

Following the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (‘CPRS’) White 

Paper release, comment and discussion has concentrated on the 

targets announced. While these targets fail a scientific research test, 

the actual CPRS will fail any fairness test. 

A Research Paper by Dr Richard Denniss, of The 

Australia Institute, has put the Scheme design under 

the spotlight. The particularly concerning aspect 

is that the CPRS will set a cap and a floor 

to Australian emissions. This implication can be 

seen from a seemingly innocuous statement in 

the CPRS Green Paper (subsequently altered in 

the White Paper): “As long as the cap remains 

unchanged, the total abatement outcomes will remain 

the same”. 

In these 15 words the Government kicks sand 

into the faces of the millions of Australians taking 

action to mitigate emissions every day. 

The message is clear; no matter what you do, 

it will not matter. Emissions will be fixed and any 

action to decrease household or business demand 

will not decrease them. Not by one tonne. 

Individual actions like replacing globes, installing 

insulation and solar water heaters and collective 

actions like Earth Hour, will be to no avail. Succinctly 

described by Dr Denniss, the CPRS only 

varies “who pollutes and what price they pay to 

do so”. 

Sure your action will decrease your personal 

demand for emissions credits. But this will only 

lead to a decrease in the market price of permits. 

Other (dirtier) market participants will purchase 

permits rather than undertake abatement opportunities 

that the market price should dictate 

as economically attractive. A light switched off in 

Melbourne will lead to extra emissions at a cement 

factory or power station. 

Surely this is not the true intention of the 

Scheme? 

Yet the Green Paper acknowledged the reality 

when discussing complementary Schemes: “within 

a fixed cap, reductions in emissions in one part 

of the economy simply result in more emissions 

elsewhere”. 

So without appropriate complementary measures 

we say goodbye to GreenPower reducing 

emissions. Will the Department of Climate Change 

inform the 800,000 voluntary GreenPower customers 

that they no longer have the ‘power to make a 

real difference’? That they will just be passive end 

users of a carbon price, not active emission reduction 

agents. 

Despite these issues opportunity remains for 

positive community based emissions abatements. 

The Government should introduce a number of 

mechanisms to allow individuals to mitigate their 

emissions in a positive manner, fulfilling their desire 

to reduce overall Australian emissions and rewarding 

them for their impact on decreasing the 

emissions price in the market. 

Firstly, the Government should move from focusing 

on maintaining standards of living to focussing 

on moving rapidly to a low-carbon economy 

that will ultimately save our standard of living and 

decrease ongoing living expenses. Rather than 

cash assistance and tax offsets the Government 

should provide direct incentives to households to 

lead emissions abatement, while acknowledging 

and rewarding efforts already undertaken. 

By expanding the Climate Change Action 

Fund to include individuals, and creating and distributing 

Emission Reductions Credits (‘ERC’s’), 

we can enable further low cost abatement opportunities 

to be rapidly realised. Having no redeemable 

monetary value (and not being tradeable) the 

ERC’s would enable individuals, households or 

collective groups to choose how they want to pursue 

individual abatement opportunities. 

Individuals could decrease the cost of purchasing 

efficient light bulbs, installing insulation 

and/or solar heating, purchasing a bike or catching 

public transport. The ERC’s could be created 

with an appropriate multiplier to determine their 


edemption value. The greater the expected benefit 

to the community the greater the multiplier. For 

example installing insulation may be valued at a 

$200 redemption value and efficient light bulbs at 

$50. ERC’s could also bridge the incentive gap 

between tenants and landlords, preventing direct 

Government intervention being required. 

ERC’s will enable individuals to indicate how 

they want to respond to climate change. No more 

focus groups or market research, individual ERC 

redemption would speak for itself. Using this information 

the Government could better direct further 

resources to areas where the lowest abatement 

cost opportunities are being neglected. 

People will engage in discussing how to respond 

to climate change, rather than being concerned 

about inaction. Households, sporting 

groups, community organisations and workplaces 

will be abuzz with discussions on abatement opportunities 

that will kick start the transition to a lowcarbon 

economy. No more negativity about what 

to do or guilt at a collective lack of action. We will 

be incentivised and empowered to respond and 

engage at all levels of the community. 

Secondly, the annual emissions abatement 

GreenPower generates should be specifically excluded 

from the following year’s pool of auction 

credits, and not count towards any Renewable Energy 

Targets. 

Thirdly, to further encourage voluntary abatement 

a portion of the CPRS credits should be set 

aside for larger voluntary abatement activities. This 

‘top-slicing’, as it is referred in North America, can 

then be claimed by individuals or groups undertaking 

abatement actions exceeding those covered 

by the ERC’s. As Dr Denniss notes payments for 

emissions abatement will be received by the emission 

reducing party, enabling the gains to accrue 

to the party that deserves them. 

Climate change and the environment are 

key concerns across the world. Thousands have 

marched across Australia to demand action and 

the Alternative Technology Association is experiencing 

25% annual growth in members and has 

readership of nearly 70,000 for its quarterly publication 

on sustainable living. The signs for positive 

action exist; collective interest and goodwill now 

just have to be harnessed. 

So to Prime Minister Rudd and Minister Wong 

the challenge is clear. The people of Australia 

have spoken with their actions, voices and votes 

already. The Rudd Government can create an 

emission trading scheme that engages and incentivises 

communities to meet the climate change 

challenge and leads the world on positive individual 

actions. Or we can all fail in the greatest challenges 

of our times. 

Let’s move on from discussing emissions reductions 

to actually achieving them. And let’s do it 

quickly and together! 

About ... per capita “is an independent progressive think tank. We are dedicated to building a new vision 

for Australia with original ideas backed by hard evidence.” www.percapita.org.au 

The runner-up in the Young Writers Competition receives a one month internship at Per Capita in either their Sydney 

or Melbourne offices. The runner-up article is published in the Australian Fabian News and at www.fabian.org.au 


For special mention: 

The democratisation of democracy 

Ben Barnett 

Former British parliamentarian, Baron Douglas Jay, 

once argued that “the gentleman in Whitehall” – 

the administrative heart of the British state – “really 

does know better what is good for the people than 

the people know themselves”. Though Baron Jay 

eventually shifted his position after (one suspects) 

a merciless hammering from the British Tories, his 

comments are a potent reminder of a pre-War period 

when many in the political class viewed the 

state as necessarily paternalistic and all-knowing 

of citizenry needs and wants. 

Of course, if we fast-forward about a halfcentury 

later, we would expect Baron Jay’s comments 

to sit even more uncomfortably with most, if 

not all, Australian folk. Rising levels of educational 

attainment, greater prosperity across the western 

world and steep changes in the flow of people, 

ideas and culture have made it near impossible for 

the state to be across all our needs. It would seem 

the archetypal bureaucratic approach – that any 

complex problem can be broken into manageable 

segments and dealt with through centralised, functional 

departments of expert administrators – has 

reached the end of its use. 

But, notwithstanding this emerging complexity 

to our lives, the Australian state is still curiously 

organised in a way that is all too similar to when 

Baron Jay was banging the benches as a politician 

himself. Functional structures, strict lines of 

management and siloed, disconnected policy responses 

still, quite perversely, dominate the landscape 

of public policy delivery. 

And so, the obvious question that follows is 

what can we do to improve, just a little, the way 

our state delivers democracy in the 21st century? 

Beginning with structure, the obvious development 

since the golden days of the bureaucratic 

welfare state model has been the realisation 

that social and economic problems do not occur 

in isolation. We now know, for example, that 

outcomes in primary school drive our capacity to 

gain a decent job later in life, and that preventing 

criminals from reoffending is more about counselling 

than putting extra police on the beat. Our 

own lives have become more interconnected, 

meaning that government solutions must do the 

same. 

With this in mind, the state must take an unambiguously 

holistic, whole-of-government perspective 

to all policy matters, and its respective 

structures must represent this approach. Early on, 

Tony Blair’s British Government created a Strategy 

Unit to tackle interrelated and long-term policy problems 

like entrenched disadvantage, and a similar 

body is required here in Australia. While the transition 

to a whole-of-government approach is given 

occasional lip service by senior bureaucrats, there 

is certainly further scope to mandate structural linkages 

between each of the federal departments. 

Over time, a Strategy Unit would also play a 

critical role in shaping each of the federal departments 

to ensure government resources better 

align with the life journey of a citizen ‘from cradle to 

grave’. These changes would replace our current 

organising structure, which is best described as an 

accidental medley of age-, geographical-, lifestyleand 

policy-based departmental categories. Each 

federal department would have a citizen-facing 

office – co-located with the other departments – 

in the major metropolitan and regional hubs of 

Australia. This would facilitate a greater personalisation 

of services and the seamless interaction 

between state and citizen. 

Of course, taking a more citizen-focused approach 

to organising federal departments alone 

doesn’t break the state free of its ‘government 

knows best’ shackles. However, it does create 

the necessary conditions for more effective policy 

implementation, namely through a genuine commitment 

to policy co-production. 

Co-production, where both the state and citizens 

are actively involved in the production and 

achievement of policy outcomes, starts from the 

premise that government services are less effective 

if they do not engage the people they are 

trying to help. Rather than separating out the production 

and consumption of government services, 

co-production promotes the sharing of policy risks 

and outcomes to enhance the overall public value 

derived from the service provision. One example to 


highlight the strength of policy co-production is in 

public housing, and how the state might go about 

improving accommodation facilities and tackling 

mounting incidences of crime on an estate. 

The ‘traditional’ method for solving this policy 

problem goes something like this: bureaucrats sit 

in their departmental ivory tower, develop a list of 

urgent repairs based on limited advice, allocate 

budget for outsourced security, and then (passively) 

hand out enough dollars for the changes to 

be implemented 

Yet, a genuine commitment to co-production 

yields a radically different way of solving this policy 

problem. A new approach would be to work handin-glove 

with the residents’ association on the estate, 

who could serve as a trusted intermediary 

between the state and individual residents. Working 

with the government, residents could decide 

the most effective way of spending the allocated 

resources to upgrade their housing facilities. They 

might also find ways of being able to lend a hand 

in the repairs, developing a sense of pride in their 

surroundings. The residents’ association could 

also facilitate a number of community forums to 

discuss the causes of crime on the estate (such 

as limited civic activities), and to then develop a 

series of estate-based programs funded by the 

government but implemented by the residents 

themselves. 

The point being that co-production is not 

merely to consult more, but to actually involve users 

in the ongoing implementation of the policy. By 

involving the users themselves, we don’t just understand 

their problems and solutions but we allow 

them to contribute to the policy goals through their 

everyday behaviours and choices. And when we 

blend this approach with a whole-of-government 

commitment that brings the right departments into 

the tent, we see that co-production can be a powerful 

way to achieve policy outcomes. 

Of course, if we return to the paternalistic views 

of Baron Jay, it is clear that times have changed. 

While making the state more citizen-centric is far 

from the silver bullet, we see that we can improve 

the way we deliver democracy by allowing form to 

follow function when we think about government. 

And, in doing so, we may just realise that democracy 

is far too important to outsource along the way. 

Housing affordability in Australia 

Gerard Kelly 

Australia in the Twenty-first Century faces no shortage 

of serious challenges, but for many Australians 

today it is housing affordability that presents the 

most immediate concern. Until relatively recently, 

the fact that most working Australians could realistically 

aspire to home ownership has been a hallmark 

of the nation’s reputation as a decent, fair-go 

society for all. From the 1950s until the early 1980s, 

average house prices in the capital cities were 

steady at around three times average yearly earnings, 

increasing to about four times yearly earnings 

by the mid-nineties. Under the last Coalition 

government however, housing prices exploded to 

between seven and eight times annual earnings, 

making Australia’s housing affordability the lowest 

in the developed world. 

Month by month, these dizzying prices are imposing 

an effective tax on millions of Australians 

in the form of inflated rents and mortgage repayments, 

recently reaching an all-time high as a per 

centage of household income. For many who grew 

up during the Howard years the prospect of homeownership 

has become a remote fantasy. Worse 

is the growing number of Australians who cannot 

even afford the basic necessity of a roof over 

their head. Along with the previous government’s 

wholesale neglect of public housing, rental costs 

are a direct cause of the “national obscenity” (in 


Prime Minister Rudd’s words) that 100,000 Australians 

go homeless every night. 

Some may argue that the housing market, 

given time, will correct itself – that the current 

downturn will restore prices to a more reasonable 

equilibrium. Sydney prices have already fallen 

from their peak, and the coming year is likely to 

be a cold one for markets across the country. But 

unfortunately the issue is not that simple. As the 

recent (belated) Senate Committee Report on the 

matter described, many of the causes of sky-rocketing 

prices have been “structural, not cyclical”. 

They include strong population growth, a reduction 

in average household size, and shortfalls in 

the supply of well-located housing resulting from 

(amongst other causes) high developer costs and 

zoning regulations. Without addressing supply 

shortages, an economic downturn is likely to affect 

incomes more than housing costs. 

However, some of the central causes of the 

current crisis were excluded from the Senate Committee’s 

terms of reference (although they were 

touched on in the final report); the market-warping 

taxation policies of the Howard government, and 

the debt-promoting monetary policies that have 

been the dominant economic paradigm in the 

West for decades. Seen in this light, the housing 

affordability situation is actually part of a broader 

global problem; the ballooning of private debt to 

historically unprecedented levels, and the shift in 

investment from productive capital to the type of 

speculative practices that led to this year’s worldwide 

crash. 

Western public policy since the 1970s, and 

especially under the surplus-fetishing Howard government, 

has emphasised the use of central bank 

interest rates, rather than government investment, 

to stimulate growth during economic downturns. 

Rates have usually been set in reference to a 2-3 

per cent consumer price inflation target, excluding 

inflation in land prices and ignoring private debt 

levels. In the low-inflation environment of the late 

1990s and early 2000s, rates in Australia and other 

developed countries were seldom above 6%, and 

were especially low between 2001 and 2006. It is 

now widely recognized that the maintenance of 

such historically low rates during a period of economic 

expansion, along with the loosening of credit 

standards by banks and the relaxed attitude of consumers 

toward excessive borrowing, were key factors 

in inflating property bubbles in many countries. 

In Australia the situation was exacerbated 

by a combination of negative gearing and the 50 

per cent capital gains tax discount introduced in 

1999, both regressive taxation policies that disproportionally 

benefit those with multiple properties. 

These policies, combined with the easy credit of 

the time, hugely increased the speculative demand 

for housing, with residential property viewed 

by many as a riskless investment. While the resulting 

boom in property prices certainly increased 

the net worth of many home-owning Australians, 

it was prosperity built on sand; an exponential increase 

in private debt from around 80 per cent of 

GDP in 1995 to a recent peak of 165 per cent. It 

is this huge debt burden that makes the housing 

issue such an intractable dilemma for the new government; 

were the housing market to collapse to 

historically ‘affordable’ levels, it would leave many 

Australians paying off mortgages well above the 

value of their houses, placing deflationary pressure 

on the whole economy. 

Recent policies such as the increased firsthomebuyers 

grant seem aimed more at propping 

up the market than seriously addressing affordability, 

and stem from the political need to prevent 

prices falling in nominal terms. This need dictates 

that a reduction in real market prices will have to 

be a gradual process, meaning that in the short 

term quality public housing on a large scale must 

be made a priority. Beyond that, several policy options 

are immediately obvious. Capital gains tax 

cuts and negative gearing ought to be phased out 

via a grandfathering process, or at least limited to 

new properties. Zoning regulations and land taxes 

should be reformed to encourage greater density, 

rather than the type of urban sprawl that transfers 

housing costs to transport costs. The government 

must initiate a major public investment in ecologically 

friendly, higher-density housing, both increas- 


ing supply and stimulating the economy during 

the current downturn. Growth in regional centres 

should be encouraged through a combination of 

tax incentives, subsidies and State government 

decentralization to relieve pressure on the capital 

cities. Finally, bank lending practices need to be 

subject to greater oversight, and the overlooked 

matter of financial literacy absolutely must become 

part of school curricula. 

None of these suggestions are radical, but 

they do involve a necessary re-examination of basic 

attitudes toward the relative merits of private 

verses public debt, and the dubious wisdom of 

entrusting basic necessities to the invisible hands 

of a manic market. Housing affordability represents 

a crucial test for Australia’s new government. 

Blaming Howard is easy, but can only work 

for so long. 

The One Nation vote: Up for grabs? 

Douglas McDonald 

In June 1998, the One Nation Party won 22.68% 

of the vote in the Queensland state election, the 

second largest total of any single party. In a de 

facto two-party system, such a result was an 

unprecedented triumph for a third party. Since 

1910, Australian politics have been a contest of 

‘Labor’ against ‘non-Labor’; even in Queensland, 

no party had so disturbed the two-party equilibrium. 

The party had no ‘name’ candidates, beyond 

Pauline Hanson (who did not stand); its policies 

were amorphous; its finances were limited; its 

advertising was largely restricted to the ‘free’ 

media. The scale of its vote was never hinted at 

in any poll. 

Despite these disadvantages, a party opposed 

to economic rationalism, opposed to tariff 

reduction, supporting greater government intervention 

in the economy and whose leader praised 

Labor leader Arthur Calwell as ‘a great Australian’ 

enjoyed astonishing support. The consequences 

of this movement for conservative politics have become 

articles of faith, with John Howard’s socially 

conservative rhetoric and refugee policies attributed 

to his desire to attract the ‘Hanson vote’. However, 

the consequences of the Hanson movement 

for progressive politics have been little discussed. 

In many ways, Hanson’s party may be characterised 

in terms of the social-democratic tradition. 

There exists a substantial cohort of voters who 

agree with traditional Labor economic policies, yet 

are not represented by any major party. 

Hanson’s supporters were disproportionately 

former supporters of the National Party, drawing 

greatest support in Queensland country seats. The 

Nationals, deriving their policies not from ideology 

but from the immediate practical needs of its constituency, 

cannot merely be characterised as an 

identical twin to the Liberal Party. Barnaby Joyce, 

who despite his ‘maverick’ image is more characteristic 

of Nationals tradition than Warren Truss or 

Mark Vaile, describes the party’s ideals as ‘agrarian, 

socialist principles’, that the market, ‘unguided...will 

walk over you’, and that ‘market power 

ultimately destroys market theory.’ His self-application 

of the term ‘agrarian socialism’, devised as 

a pejorative epithet, indicates a peculiar fusion of 

very conservative social policies with progressive 

economics, such as Joyce’s total or partial opposition 

to voluntary student unionism, workplace reform, 

and the sale of Telstra, which enjoys support 

from a significant constituency. This ideology derives 

from John McEwen’s decades-long support 

for tariff protection, industrial development and a 

regulated economy, and the National Party tradition 

of government subsidies for regional industries 

and the promotion of employment. 

This Queensland political tradition was inherited 

by One Nation. Prior to the Queensland state 


election, the party released a paltry list of policies. 

Their primary industries policy is nearly 3000 words 

long, while their budget proposals comprise 666 

words – evidence, if more were needed, of the 

party’s strong rural focus. Even if insubstantial, 

the rhetoric of these policies is premised in more 

explicitly anti-market terms than any major party. 

One Nation’s ‘budget savings’ are focused on the 

peculiar bugbears of the party – multiculturalism, 

Aboriginal affairs, political perks – but does not indicate 

any intent to abolish the expansion of state 

spending since 1989. The party declares that ‘economic 

rationalism has no place in the formation of 

an education policy’, plans for a $48 million wage 

subsidy scheme for training apprentices, criticises 

Rob Borbidge for ‘under-funding disability services, 

child care and child protection agencies’, and 

states that it will maintain ‘constant pressure on the 

federal government to resist economic rationalism 

and globalisation.’ 

Admittedly, these do not derive from a deep 

ideological attachment to social democracy; they 

are populist measures responding to problems of 

the moment. However, Hanson’s economic policies 

are inextricable from her social policies. Her 

attack upon ‘financial markets...world bankers... 

investment companies and big business people’ 

reflect genuine concern regarding income inequality, 

the effects of globalisation and an unregulated 

free market. The 1998 Queensland state election 

was not merely a right-wing revolt against bipartisan 

support for multiculturalism, reconciliation and 

the secular society, but a left-wing revolt against 

deregulation, privatisation and globalisation. 

The political influence of this constituency – 

socially conservative yet supporting economic 

policies well to the left of Liberal or Labor – may 

already have been manifested in the election of 

Kevin Rudd. The greatest swings against the Coalition 

– in Dawson, Leichhardt, Forde, Flynn and 

Blair– were in regional Queensland, areas where 

One Nation enjoyed its strongest support. The 

magnitude of these swings far outweighed the 

over-stated effect of the Sydney suburban vote, 

home of the ‘Howard battlers’. John Howard, who 

won the support of much of Hanson’s disparate 

movement through his policies on refugees and 

multiculturalism, alienated this ‘agrarian socialist’ 

constituency through neoliberal economic 

policies. This suggests that there is far greater 

potential support for an economically progressive 

government in Australia than previously realised: 

that a significant portion of Coalition voters may be 

captured by Labor through populism on trade, corporations 

and service provision. 

In light of this, Labor should make an aggressive 

play to capture country seats at the next 

election. There is precedent in the United States 

for this ‘150-electorate strategy’, with conservative 

Democrats such as Jim Webb, Heath Shuler, and 

Mark Warner winning ‘deep-red’ states through 

emphasis on a populist economic agenda, and 

distancing themselves from ‘liberal’ social policies. 

While the potential for ‘product differentiation’ in 

the United States is greater (due to less restrictive 

party discipline), this may suggest that Labor’s expansion 

into previously hostile regions of the country 

would be well-served by reforms to party-line 

voting and the operation of the House of Representatives. 

Bob Carr’s abortive idea to establish a 

Potemkin ‘Country Labor’ party reflects the same 

ideal: that country voters may be severed from the 

Coalition base through appeals to economic uncertainty, 

much as John Howard used social policies 

to divide the Labor base. 

In conclusion, Labor cannot be restricted 

merely to competing in marginal suburban seats 

through a small-target strategy to minimise differences. 

Millions of Australians, who saw in Hanson 

a populist tribune against bipartisan consensus, 

are unrepresented and hostile to ‘politics as usual.’ 

Labor, a party with a long tradition of anti-establishment, 

redistributive policies, is best placed to 

capture this constituency. 


Environmental education and 

resource sustainability 

Cameron Parsons 

In 1732, Thomas Fuller prophetically wrote that 

“We never know the worth of water ‘till the well is 

dry”. For decades, scientists have been warning 

us of the dangers of climate change and the finite 

nature of resources. Today, in a global culture that 

values short term gains over both long term economic 

stability and resource sustainability, it must 

be asked what will be the catalyst to promote a 

culture of change? Politicians have tenure of less 

than ten years whilst making decisions about the 

world’s resources which are formed on a geological 

time-scale. As a result, the well appears to be 

drying before our very eyes and the need to find 

solutions is critical. This is acknowledged by experts 

worldwide. So why has the message been 

slow to filter through to individuals so their behaviour 

and consumption patterns can be changed? 

The most important issue facing Australia is 

resource sustainability. How can we be assured 

that our country will enjoy continued economic 

growth and stability whilst preserving our unique 

natural environment and its resources for future 

generations? Generation Z, who will graduate in 

2020 – the time at which we will be questioning the 

planning of our current government as established 

at the 2020 Summit – will be charged with the responsibility 

of administrating a country, possibly 

facing weather patterns forecasted to be erratic 

and destructive. Access to water, food and even 

energy could also be unstable. 

So who are our future leaders? Members of 

Generation Z are being raised in the first truly global 

society, connecting instantly to friends from around 

the world. They are growing up with an awareness 

of the problems facing the world, yet it appears 

there is a distinct disinclination to become sustainable 

citizens. Young adults today, members of Generation 

Y, are growing up in a society where they 

believe that they can have what ever they want, 

whenever they want, presented to them on a platter 

with twenty months interest free. Being “green”? 

To them that means going without... and wearing 

hemp. Will our current and future generations be 

reluctant to make sustainable life style choices because 

they believe that their quality of life will be 

adversely affected? Do they think that they will have 

to give up material possessions? How can they be 

convinced that sustainability is not only necessary; 

it can also enhance their quality of life? 

In my opinion, a possible solution can be 

found in the creation of a national framework for 

environmental education. A curriculum which gives 

children and young adults the knowledge to understand 

that sustainable living is necessary, has 

the potential to break down negative stereotypes 

and misconceptions which surround environmentalism. 

This in turn will promote the development 

of sustainable and resilient communities through 

empowering individuals. 

Resource efficiency programs have already 

been successfully implemented in select schools 

and colleges across Australia, most receiving 

Commonwealth assistance in their endeavours. 

From the installation of photovoltaic cells, storm 

and rain water collection systems, recycling and 

re-vegetation programs, schools can provide a 

learning environment where students can directly 

observe the monetary and resource savings possible 

through effective resource management. 

The creation of the Australian Sustainable 

Schools Initiative (AuSSI) has allowed schools to 

develop cultures committed to the principles of 

sustainable development. This moves students 

beyond being aware of the issues we face as consumers 

of finite resources and creates an “action 

learning environment” where sustainable practices 

are linked with school curricula. This whole school 

development allows for measurable social, environmental, 

educational and financial outcomes to 

be recorded and observed by students. 

A pilot school in Southern Tasmania has reduced 

its use of paper by twenty per cent in the 

first year, and now saves 1.2 mega-litres of water 

per annum, with a capacity to store 165 000 litres. 

Additional photovoltaic cells were installed with assistance 

from the Federal Government, significantly 

reducing out-goings in rates and electricity. On average, 

participants in the AuSSI program have observed 

reductions in waste of up to 80%, reductions 

in water consumption by up to 60% and reduction 


of energy usage by a further 20%. These reductions 

in resource usage translate to direct savings for the 

schools, who can utilise these savings to enhance 

the learning environment for the children. Accordingly, 

being a sustainable school has advantages 

on many direct and indirect levels. 

Currently grants such as the Federal Communities 

Water Grants have assisted schools in implementing 

resource efficiency programs. These 

programs have been highly successful, and have 

provided quantitative, factual data which supports 

the many benefits of creating sustainable schools. 

These benefits of being a sustainable entity reach 

far beyond fiscal savings. By promoting concepts 

of resource efficiency in the schools context, students 

can then apply this knowledge to not only 

their own lives as consumers and home owners, 

but also within their workplaces. As waves of 

graduates begin their lives as adults, empowered 

with this new information, a shift in our practices 

as consumers and users will be witnessed. Designing, 

building and living green will become the 

“norm”. Yet currently, only a select few schools are 

benefiting from being developed or remodelled as 

a sustainable learning environment. 

Our children are in grave danger of having 

to grow up amid a struggle for the acquisition 

of wealth and yet these resource efficiency programs, 

which are beneficial to students, schools, 

the community and indeed our national future, 

are not adequately publicised or accessible. By 

implementing school based solutions to creating 

sustainable campuses we are empowering Generation 

Z to make informed decisions as consumers, 

citizens, employees and leaders. Resource 

efficiency programs implemented through curriculum 

create a more engaging learning environment 

for students, reduce resource consumption 

and accordingly reward the school financially from 

the savings from greater efficiency. Our continued 

prosperity is now dependant upon the education 

our children receive. To realise the mass re-education 

which is required to change the habits of mind 

for an entire population, these programs need to 

be implemented in every school through a national 

framework for environmental education. 

An end to governing on uncertain terms 

Simon Tolstrup 

It’s time that Australia’s governmental model was 

amended to include fixed four year parliamentary 

terms at all levels. Flexible, short parliamentary 

terms are an outdated concept that engender unfair 

elections and short-sighted political decisions, 

and are a fixable flaw in the Australian governmental 

system. Currently, the federal system allows a 

maximum term of four years, with leaders able to 

call elections at their discretion at any time after 

three years. This system was originally replicated 

at state level, though the states are starting to see 

the light of change. 

The Westminster system, on which Australia’s 

political model is founded, gives incumbent leaders 

the prerogative to call elections within a loose 

timeframe to accommodate national emergencies 

or affairs of state. In theory, the executive is assumed 

to ignore the obvious potential to exploit 

this power for political gain. 

The reality is that allowing this rule to continue 

remains just another confusing and unpredictable 

aspect of a system that already discourages and 

alienates voters. Fixed terms would allow voters a 

greater degree of certainty around when they will 

actually be required to vote. 

It is accepted that the modern political 

player will press any available advantage to win 

elections. The ability to choose the timing of an 

election hands a clear and unfair benefit to the 

incumbent government, who already have the 


luxury of billions of dollars to spend on electionyear 

sweeteners. 

The practical result is that governments often, 

if not always, call elections at politically opportune 

times. This kind of opportunity can take many 

forms, be it instability in opposition ranks, positive 

economic indicators, or an international event that 

might scare voters into avoiding change. 

Of course, the tactic doesn’t always work. In 

late 2008 WA Premier Alan Carpenter, sensing vulnerability 

in the opposition, called an election less 

than a day after the WA Liberals had elected a new 

leader. The move was variously called cynical, unfair 

and opportunistic. It may also have been called 

‘tactically astute’ had Carpenter not been summarily 

thrown out of office. 

Probably the most damaging aspect of allowing 

early elections to be called is a serious loss of 

productivity to government. There are two reasons 

for this. 

First, the practice of calling early elections limits 

the productive window of each government. It’s 

been said before that the first year of a government’s 

tenure is spent fulfilling campaign promises 

to backers, and the last year spent preparing for 

elections. Within the current three year Federal 

system this leaves a scant twelve months in which 

our most powerful citizens can try to effect real and 

lasting change. 

Shorter terms mean that policy decisions, 

regardless of their long-term merit, need to bear 

fruit, or at least demonstrate progress, within a 

three year election cycle. A commitment to a longer 

window of policy debate and development allows 

a greater chance of due process and of long 

term strategy rather than easy, quick wins with the 

electorate. 

John Howard’s 1996 campaign for the National 

Firearms Agreement, coming in the wake of 

the Port Arthur massacre, was not a popular one by 

any stretch; in fact Howard took to wearing a bulletproof 

vest in traditional pro-gun areas. 

The decision was a sound one, but had the 

Prime Minister not been mere months into his term 

(and therefore years from the next election), the 

virtual shunning of the rural vote may have been 

too risky for the Liberal political machine to contemplate. 

Contrast this with the 2001 election, where 

polling and media analysis highlighted the Australian 

public’s concern for the hundreds of asylumseekers 

washing up on our shores. John Howard 

announced what became known as ‘the Pacific 

solution’, moving the problem offshore. The policy 

was later panned by critics as a piece of shortsighted 

scheming designed with votes rather than 

constituents in mind. 

Notwithstanding this cynicism, as an election 

tactic, it worked. Most commentators acknowledge 

that the Liberal Party won the 2001 election 

based significantly on issues of border security 

and immigration. 

The point isn’t that lengthening parliamentary 

terms will stop this kind of decision making, but 

that a longer term gives our leaders more scope 

to make tougher calls that might not be as aesthetically 

pleasing as the ‘out of sight, out of mind’ 

practicality of the Pacific Solution. 

The second, less obvious, reason politically 

flexible and inevitably shorter parliamentary terms 

result in less productive government is that without 

knowing the timing of an election, an opposition is 

forced to prioritise politics over policy much earlier, 

leaving one side of parliamentary debate virtually 

vacant. 

Without putting too fine a point on it, an opposition 

focussed entirely on politics incites unaccountable 

governing which the nation can ill afford. 

Australian government is predicated on the 

idea that those elected to represent us should be 

able to act in our best interests at all times. As customers 

in the monopolised business model of government, 

Australians should be concerned about 

gaining value for money from their politicians. Australians 

are entitled to more; from both sides of the 

parliamentary floor. 

From a purely economic perspective, elections 

are expensive. The 2004 Federal election 

cost the taxpayer $120 million; surely then, less of 

them would be a good thing. 


The process to shift Government to fixed 

terms on all levels has already begun. New South 

Wales, South Australia, Victoria, and the ACT all 

operate on fixed four year terms, with legislation to 

be tabled in Tasmania early in 2009. 

To implement this change at a Federal level, 

a change in the constitution is necessary. This 

would require a referendum, which was promised 

by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd during his election 

campaign. Whether his intention to hold that referendum 

at the next Federal election is demoted to a 

non-core promise remains to be seen. 

For productive government, long-term decision 

making, and fairer elections, a commitment 

to fixed four year parliamentary terms is a logical 

and achievable change to our system of government. 

Far from being reform for reform’s sake, 

fixed terms would be a real and lasting legacy to 

the fairness and democracy of our system. 

The return of the radical press: 

“New” media goes back to the future 

Tim Watts 

The media in 19th Century pre-Victorian England 

looked very different than it does today. According 

to media historians, the highest circulation 

newspapers in this period were; the delightfully 

titled Cobbett’s Twopenny Trash, The Weekly Police 

Gazette and the infamous Northern Star. While 

all of these publications have long since ceased 

production, there is something beyond their unfamiliar 

titles that truly sets these media outlets apart 

from those that we know today. These publications 

were representatives of a partisan ‘radical press’ 

that was funded by a combination of sales and 

subsidies from social movements rather than the 

combination of sales and advertising revenues 

that support the ‘independent press’ we are familiar 

with today. 

The combination of their large circulation and 

explicitly activist approach made these radical 

publications extremely influential. They played a 

key role in progressive movements like the Chartists 

and causes like extending the franchise in Britain. 

However, as technological change pushed up 

the capital costs of publication, by the end of the 

19th Century the radical press had been reduced 

to a fringe medium. Importantly for progressives 

today, at the start of the 21st Century, international 

experience suggests that the wheel of technological 

change is once again turning. Thanks to the 

proliferation of Web 2.0 enabled ‘social media’, 

today’s media environment could once again include 

an influential place for the radical press. 

It is strange to consider in light of the past 

hundred years experience, but history shows that 

the independence of the media from political patrons 

is far from an immutable law. In pre-Victorian 

England, the circulation of the radical press far 

exceeded that of the independent press and the 

direct ownership or subsidisation of publications 

by partisans was still common through the subsequent 

Victorian and Edwardian periods. Given their 

popularity, why, by the end of the 19th Century, had 

these ‘radical’ media outlets been marginalised by 

the independent press? 

In a word, technology. Technological advances 

in the media production process dramatically 

increased the fixed capital costs of media outlets 

in the late 19th century. In fact, between 1855 and 

1870, the upfront cost of establishing a daily newspaper 

in London increased from around £20 000 to 

around £150 000. These increasing costs favoured 

business models that rewarded scale and the commoditisation 

of news content. This advertising re- 


liant model employed by the independent press 

gave the medium a major competitive advantage. 

It wasn’t long before the radical press, unable 

to compete on the basis of sales and subsidies 

alone, was reduced to a shadow of its previous 

influence. However, as changing technologies produced 

changing business models in the late 19th 

century, so too is it changing business models in 

the early 21st century. This change presents an opportunity 

for progressive politics to reclaim a direct 

voice in the media. 

In recent times, technological change has broken 

the historical nexus between advertising and 

content in the media sector. As Rupert Murdoch 

noted in this year’s Boyer Lecture the ‘rivers of 

gold’ that newspapers historically reaped from their 

classifieds pages are now being diverted by new, 

stand alone online competitors. Someone looking 

for a house, a car or a job is now just as likely to 

go to realestate.com, carsales.com or seek.com 

as they are a newspaper. Similarly, the collapse in 

content and distribution costs caused by the emergence 

of extremely low cost online publication 

tools has allowed a flood of new entrants into the 

new media environment. As a consequence, people 

looking for political news are increasingly likely 

to go to the fragmented online media environment 

rather than newspapers. In fact, the Pew Internet 

and American Life Project recently found that the 

Internet is now the primary or secondary source 

of political news for 46% of Americans. To be sure, 

traditional media outlets will be dominant in this 

new media ecology for some time yet, but the pincer 

movement of falling media costs and revenues 

has created room for new players. As Murdoch 

has presciently observed: ‘Once upon a time, the 

media and entertainment companies could count 

on the huge, up-front investments that discouraged 

competitors from entering the business. But 

in many sectors the barriers to entry have never 

been lower, and the opportunities for the energetic 

and the creative have never been greater.’ 

Importantly for the progressive movement, in 

the US and the UK, where these trends are already 

well advanced, ‘the energetic and the creative’ that 

Murdoch has heralded are overwhelmingly partisan. 

The largest and most influential new entrants 

in the US and UK online media environments make 

no claims to either independence or objectivity. 

There’s no doubt about where sites like the Daily 

Kos, Talking Points Memo, Instapundit, Guido 

Fawkes and ConservativeHome stand. While the 

polemical nature of these outlets has raised eyebrows 

recently amongst journalists and politicians, 

from a historical perspective the partisan nature of 

these outlets is really nothing new. In many ways, 

the new media is going back to the future. 

The opportunity for progressive politics in 

this context is obvious. If talented exponents of 

the medium are given structure and support, the 

progressive movement could once again have a 

direct and influential media voice. With a small investment 

in coordinating infrastructure, the membership 

base of the progressive movement could 

be extremely influential in the new media environment. 

It is true that we are still some way from seeing 

these media trends take hold in Australia. The 

Australian blogosphere in particular is still in its 

infancy when measured by per capita readership. 

However, media need not be ubiquitous to be influential. 

It’s worth remembering that when FDR 

gave his highly influential ‘fireside chats’, only 62% 

of US households owned radios. Given that according 

to AC Nielsen, 2007 was the first year that 

Australians spent more time online than watching 

television, the tipping point for the influence of the 

new media cannot be far away. If the Australian 

progressive movement acts now, the progressive 

media in the early 21st Century could once again 

be as influential as it was in the early 19th Century. 


Who needs it? 

Each year, Australians work more than 2 billion hours of unpaid overtime. 

Around half of all employees work more hours than they are paid for. On average, a 

typical employee works 49 minutes of unpaid overtime per day. For full-time workers, the 

average daily amount of unpaid work takes more than one hour. International 

comparisons show that Australians work the longest hours in the developed world. 

What is it? 

The Australia Institute (www.tai.org.au) has decided that November 25 will be National 

Go Home On Time Day. 

It’s a fun, inclusive and guilt-free way of raising awareness of the nature and extent of 

unpaid overtime in Australia and the important industrial, health and social 

consequences it often has. 

There is a Go Home On Time Day website - www.gohomeontimeday.org.au - which 

allows people to register their intention to participate. 

In the weeks leading up to GHOTD we will be releasing the full results of our national 

poll and research into the economic impacts of unpaid overtime. 

What can you do? 

Sign-up at www.gohomeontimeday.org.au and we’ll send you a ‘leave pass’ which 

entitles you to Go Home On Time on November 25. 

You can also invite your friends, family and colleagues to participate. 

And most importantly – on November 25, Go Home On Time!

1000 words 

Clare Rawlinson ©2009 

These girls live in Bangladesh’s largest brothel village: Daulatdia. 

Inside, 1500 women service 3000 men, daily. With virtually no alternative 

source of employment in the Ganges ferry port town, daughters like 

these, born and raised inside, look towards to same fate. These girls 

are three of a fortunate few who have hope at a Save the Children 

Australia-run school which has boldly placed itself on the fringes of 

Daulatdia. 

Clare Rawlinson

The seduction of the chance of a good night's sleep - Australian ...

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