CALL it the first swallow of summer. Last week I met a lawyer who said while she opposed a charter of rights, all the barristers on her floor supported it, and for the obvious reason: the intoxicating whiff of litigation.
A bill of rights, or a charter, will lay out abstractions like the right to life, or privacy, or property, and thus enable judges to determine - after deliciously drawn-out litigation - what these mean.
A shift in power from elected parliaments to unelected judges, by a process of “judicial creep”, is part of the bill of rights package. Canada has had its Charter of Rights and Freedoms since 1982, planted in the constitution. Before that there was only a legislative version.
Clearly this is something the zealots want to see happen here: the first step only a law, but followed by constitutional entrenchment..........
Miranda is not allowed to believe that anything a Labor bloke does can be worthwhile.
It makes a change from the bulk of the rest of the commentators who aren’t allowed to believe that anything a Liberal bloke does can be worthwhile ...
And Luke, yes, that’s why I do read Miranda Devine - she is a refreshing antidote to the Liberal-bashers and Labor boot-lickers that populate our newspaper opinion pages, especiially the SMH (which I love, but does have a distinct leftwards lean ...).
(That ought to set a cat among a few feisty pigeons ...)
Today’s smh letters has 3 writers saying variations of ‘For the first time in my life I agree with Miranda Devine’.
And although it is strictly irrelevant to anything, I noticed this letter in today’s Age:
SORRY Catherine Deveny (Opinion, 23/4), but I’m afraid things are only going to get much worse for the lefties. In a few short months, George W. Bush will also be gone. In the good old days, Howard and Bush could be blamed for all our woes, whether it was a flat tyre, burnt toast, or global warming. Today, with wall-to-wall Labor governments at home, and perhaps a Democrat soon in the White House, the left will really have to come up with some new scapegoats.
Indeed, you really have to feel for those on the left. Interest rates keep rising. Share trading companies go bust. Petrol prices are rising. And not one Liberal government in the country to blame. It’s gotta hurt.
Also, thanks for the link to the SMH letters. This one stood out :
For the first time ever, I agree with Miranda Devine. Having facilitators and consultants involved in the summit must have been frustrating. Have they not heard the joke: how many consultants does it take to change a light bulb? None. They will write a 360-page report convincing management that darkness is world’s best practice.
Heh, I love the idea that people are so caught up in ‘us vs them’ politics that they are left clinging to the argument that, because their opponents vanquished their own side, their opponents will have no one to blame anymore… so there!!! Cue faux-sympathy. Classic.
Miranda Devine is good at stirring up this kind of stuff, I think in one of her last columns she blamed international terrorism and Al Qaeda on “the left”. Funny stuff - she’s the print equivalent of an internet troll, just baiting people with outrageous claims half the time, while trying to maintain some semblance of credibility for the rest. I think she’s probably the most chronically wrong writer in the SMH (like most pundits), but it seems to get people fired up, which sells papers and therefore serves a purpose I guess.
Who is ‘the left’ these days any way? The majority of the country that voted the coalition out here, or the vast majority of Americans who disapprove of George Dubya now? It’s a strange, strange world some people inhabit…
It is easy to be cynical, and Luke is correct that journalists like Miranda help to foster this.
I’m not yet completely cynical, but I do like the joke about those conference sessions with butcher’s paper: why not save time by coming along with the butcher’s paper already written on?
You know, like a cooking show: this is one we prepared earlier.
You know, like a cooking show: this is one we prepared earlier.
Except some appeared only half-baked. Or ( like the wooden birthday cake that came out each week in the old Sunday School days - dear old Mr McKeown was Scots after all ) some old recycled ideas were suddenly new again.
Anyway, it was good to see good old butcher’s paper charging to the fore of our new digital education revolution - obviously referring to the analogue use of the digits on our writing hands.
I was also interested to read this item in the Age :
A PUBLIC relations company run by a Rudd Government staffer’s wife was awarded a $60,000 contract to manage the media at the 2020 Summit. The contract was awarded without going to open tender......
I think the main purpose of the 20/20 talkfest was PR. I would say the Labor Party has not stopped campaigning for future votes, despite the election being over for a while now. The main aim of Labor is to be popular, and keep power. I think the welfare of Australia comes after that.
Isn’t that the main point of any action by any party? We are supposed to be electing “leaders” but instead vote for the more easily manipulated followers. I’m so disgusted by the lack of real political discussion and options in this country, and lack of genuine discussion about the real issues, that I almost felt like donkey voting: but for the fact that Howard was an appalling denier of climate change.
I predict an early election by Rudd, to ensure a longer term for them. This is insurance, in case they become unpopular, if they don’t deliver, or cause the country to spiral downwards due to their policies. This 20/20 Conference is a lead up to that happening.
Hmmmm, nothing else could take down the world economy hey? We HAVE to blame this on a government that just inherited this mess, don’t we, especially when we disagree with anything “greenie lefty”. How’s that oil price doing? ;-) Don’t look now, but Russia looks like they’ve peaked. Just Saudi Arabia to go. Good luck with blaming our government on this when they inherited 12 years of climate and peak oil denial.
If just half what I’ve read and written about peak oil comes about, then we’ll be in a completely different economic and resource paradigm and many of the old political divides will be meaningless. We’ll be in a completely different societal discussion within the next 5 to 10 years.
Dave Lankshear, I think it is the main point of any party to be popular and win elections; but I would like them to gain popularity by good management decisions rather than just talking about what are possiblle good ideas.
That is really just giving us SPIN, and not doing anything concrete. If political parties become popular by SPIN, that popularity will eventually run out.
The high prices of oil, as well as other overseas pressures continue to cause inflation in the economy. The recession in the USA is causing headaches to our stockmarket.
These lead to higher interest rates unfortunately to those with mortgages.
We don’t have inflation caused by higher wages for middle income earners.
I think the housing crisis has been caused by the soaring price of investment properties with negative gearing, for the wealthy and greedy. It might come back and bite them on the bum, though.
I think people should only own a couple of properties before much higher taxes fall on them.
Houses should not be such an attractive investment. If people were induced to invest in businesses which produce things and employ people, the country would be better off in the long run, I think.
That is really just giving us SPIN, and not doing anything concrete. If political parties become popular by SPIN, that popularity will eventually run out.
Ken, is this the sort of spin you mean :
Kevin Rudd’s FuelWatch plan to cut petrol prices was based on one already working in Western Australia. I wonder if that’s a good idea, when WA’s prices under this you-beaut scheme are now the highest of any state.
I’m quite sure negative gearing has helped deliver cheap rent in the past, but now appears to be hitting us in the ownership side of things. Supply and demand of course means that extra demand for housing may, in part, be due to negative gearing making home ownership a slightly more attractive option.
Another thing economists talk about is that some property price increases have led people to believe housing is now an investment strategy, like playing the stockmarket, rather than a commodity we buy for it’s own value: a roof over our heads. And so we have a mega inflated housing bubble, brought up by the expectation of it going up forever and forever amen.
Yet I propose that supply and demand is affected far more strongly by this: extra demand. As in more real demand. As in people.
How does an extra thousand people a week affect Sydney’s house prices? How does the highest immigration program in Australia’s history affect the demand for housing? More people = more need for housing.
So what’s the answer? GROWTH of course! Let’s bulldoze more forests, more potential agricultural land (cause all the really good local soil has already been paved over), and grow suburbia from Cape York all the way to Melbourne and anywhere else it will fit. GROWTH is the only answer to address the supply and demand imbalance. We can’t reduce supply (stop artificially high immigration). We just can’t. Some economist somewhere said so. it would be wrong. Developers might not earn as much.
And we wonder how 100 thousand km2 of good farmland can vanish each year.
So what’s the answer? GROWTH of course! Let’s bulldoze more forests, more potential agricultural land (cause all the really good local soil has already been paved over), and grow suburbia from Cape York all the way to Melbourne and anywhere else it will fit. GROWTH is the only answer to address the supply and demand imbalance. We can’t reduce supply (stop artificially high immigration). We just can’t. Some economist somewhere said so. it would be wrong. Developers might not earn as much.
Confessing my ignorance of all things economic, isn’t growth central to the functioning of capitalism? Capitalism doesn’t function when growth and concuming stops. Is our economic structure reliant on greed?
So if people stop buying things, people lose jobs, yadda yadda yadda. Same with houses isn;t it? Stop building huses, people lose jobs, people therefore stop spending money.
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