Author: Chris Berg

Open the Borders

Introduction: It seems a bit odd but when we talk about immigration, we rarely talk about how good it is for immigrants themselves.

Maybe it’s too obvious. After all, people only travel when they perceive benefits from doing so. For the world’s poorest, the simple act of crossing from the developing world to the developed world raises incomes dramatically. A Mexican crossing into the United States can expect to earn more than twice the wages he or she would have earned at home, a Haitian can expect to earn more than six times the wages in Haiti. Combine this with the non-economic advantages of the developed world — stable rule of law, liberal democracies, respect for human rights — and it isn’t hard to see why packing up and shipping off to the First World is so popular.

One could perhaps leave the argument there. A core principle of liberalism is that people should be allowed to do what they want as long as they do not violate the rights of others.

But immigration is good for the developed world, too. It’s good for the economy—immigrants end up being entrepreneurs and shopkeepers; employees and employers; and consumers and producers. More people mean more creativity, more opportunity, and more culture. Migrants bring skills, knowledge and international connections.

Available here.

IPA Review Editorial, March 2010

‘People have been saying for a while now that what we need is a book industry plan’, said the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Kim Carr in a speech in mid-February. ‘No one is going to ghost it for you-the industry will have to tell its own story-but I will do everything in my power to facilitate the process.’

Carr was launching a ‘Book Industry Strategy Group’ to ‘map the way forward’ for the Australia publishing industry in an era of digitisation.

So we can add ‘save books from the internet’ to the long list of ambitions of the federal government.

We talk a lot about how over-regulation is burdening the Australian economy. But more perverse is the way that state and federal governments want to pull entrepreneurs into their loving, bureaucratic arms.

The government offers a bewildering array of subsidies and grant programs to do so. We have the ‘Australian Tourism Development Program’, the ‘Automotive Competitiveness and Investment Scheme’, the ‘Biofuels Capital Grants Program’, ‘Building Entrepreneurship in Small Business’, and the ‘Certain Inputs to Manufacture Program’.

There’s ‘Clean Business Australia’ (that one gets $240 million to work with), the ‘Climate Ready Program’, ‘Commercial Ready’ ($200 million), Commercialising Emerging Technologies (proudly described as ‘merit-based’, implying that the marketplace wouldn’t know merit if it stepped on its head), and the ‘Early Stage Venture Capital Limited Partnership Program’.

And about forty others. Hop on to the government’s AusIndustry website: you might be eligible for a grant.

In her review of Ron Manners’ book, Heroic Misadventures, in this edition, Julie Novak points out that entrepreneurs are still the fuel with which the Australian economy moves forward. The entrepreneurial drive harnesses the potent combination of risk and creativity – without it we would not have an economy, let alone the technology and living standards we enjoy today.

Do we really want Australia’s budding innovators spending their time filling out paperwork for the ‘R&D Start’ program, instead of scrimping for capital and pitching to potential investors?

In fact, the very idea that we have an ‘innovation’ minister is extraordinary. Innovation is at the very centre of a capitalist economy – companies innovate in order to compete with each other. They don’t – or shouldn’t – need the advice and coordination of a Commonwealth minister to do so.

So it is with the book industry. The digital revolution is a potent challenge to Australia’s publishing industry. Amazon’s ebook reader Kindle and Apple’s soon-to-be-released iPad has emphasised the extent of that challenge. But industries meet challenges by experimenting with business models, and developing better products. Not by looking to government for a ‘Book Industry Plan’.

The drive to fully socialise vast swathes of the economy disappeared some years ago. But the drive to control the economy – to direct it, to subsidise it, to coordinate it – is just as strong as ever.

Terror Laid Bare

Flying is awful – and it looks like it’s only going to get worse. The actual “flying” part can be all right if you get one of those exotic personal entertainment systems with a trillion movies and every kind of Tetris rip-off imaginable.

Modern airlines come in two types: those that pride themselves on their hospitality, and those that pride themselves on abusing the goodwill of passengers to keep costs down. Either way, commercial airlines aim to please in some fashion.

But not even George Clooney in Up in the Air was able to make traversing the government’s airport security checkpoints look elegant.

Sociologists of the future will describe this as the “ritual” of travel: lists of what you can and cannot take into the plane; convenient check-in machines complemented by impossibly long baggage lines; the security barriers; making sure you remove your laptop; taking off your belt; and being swabbed for bomb residue.

Hop on a plane to the US and it’s worse. Since the underpants bomber failed to blow up his underpants on Christmas Day last year, airport security frisks passengers so intimately they can not only detect bombs in jocks, but can detonate them by hand.

Kevin Rudd has announced an extra $200 million for airport security. “It may,” said the Prime Minister in his best leadership voice, “mean it takes longer for passengers to pass through security, but the government believes that this inconvenience is a small price to pay for increased security.” (Incidentally, the prime ministerial jet was renovated in 2007, at a cost of $100,000.)

We’ll be paying this “small price” because the Prime Minister has decided to install full body scanners in Australian airports, scanners that can see through clothing to get almost naked images of passengers.

No surprise that some people worry about the privacy implications. In Britain, there is even serious concern that body scanners breach child porn laws. It’s illegal to create indecent images of children, and that’s what happens when children go through body scanners designed to look under clothing.

Privacy issues aside, what’s the point? Body scanners will be just another ceremony added to the elaborate ritual of travel – prime examples of “security theatre”. We might feel safer, but we’re not actually safer.

After all, how much safer could we possibly be? The risk of terrorism is infinitesimally small.

In the United States, there is an average of just one terrorist incident every 16.5 million flights, according to the US Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

In Australia, there are half a million domestic flights per year. Every day more than 100,000 people fly from one Australian city to another; 50,000 more either leave or enter the country.

But when in 2003 a parliamentary committee asked a witness from the Department of Transport whether there had ever been a terrorist incident on an aircraft in Australia, nobody could think of one. (There had been an unsuccessful hijacking attempt of a flight between Melbourne and Launceston in May that year, but the hijacker was suffering from severe paranoid schizophrenia. Hardly a professional jihadist.)

So even if full body scanners in every airport in the country halved the risk of terrorism, half of bugger-all is still bugger-all.

Human beings are terrible at assessing risk. In the past 12 months, there have been more than 1500 deaths on Australian roads. By contrast, over the past decade, 469 airline passengers died from bombings, hijackings or pilot shootings in the entire world. More than half of those fatalities occurred on September 11. The noughties were the second-safest decade for air travel since the 1950s, and there are a lot more passenger flights now.

Perhaps it’s all that security that makes flying so safe. But security specialist Bruce Schneier argues that there are just two truly effective protections against terrorism on airlines. The first is reinforced cockpit doors – without access to the cockpit, it’s hard to turn a plane into a flying missile. Since 2001, pilots do not open that door.

The second is us. Right now, the strongest defence we have against airplane hijackings or bombings isn’t terrorist no-fly lists or body scanners. It’s the passengers who now know they shouldn’t passively comply with the demands of terrorists, and who know the guy doing chemistry in the bathroom should not be left in peace.

The Christmas underpants bomber was scary, but security worked exactly as it should have. He couldn’t get a “good” bomb on board, so he tried to detonate a bomb so awkward it required 20 minutes of preparation in the toilet. And he couldn’t get it to work. He was quickly subdued by passengers when his pants caught on fire.

The Australian attempted hijacking was also defeated by passengers.

Back in 2005, then immigration minister Amanda Vanstone was candid about the absurdity of airline security. With obvious enthusiasm, she posed this hypothetical to a private audience: “If I was able to get on a plane with an HB pencil – which you are able to – and stabbed the HB pencil into your eyeball and wiggled it around down to your brain area, do you think you’d be focusing?”

Most terrorist plots are discovered through quiet investigative work, and foiled long before they are anywhere near ready, although we still haven’t dealt with the “Amanda Vanstone driving an HB pencil into your eyeball” threat. So the risk of airline terrorism will never be zero. But let’s try not to panic.

Take The Politics Out Of Commerce, Not Vice Versa

Last week the Australian Electoral Commission published its latest donation figures for political parties. Donations are down from last year.

Nevertheless, these figures were accompanied by the standard appeals to “clean up” the political process and get corporate influence out of politics.

But it was also the week that the federal government introduced its emissions trading scheme into Parliament for the third time. In the government’s words, if passed, the emissions trading scheme “will change the things we produce, the way we produce them, and the things we buy”. When the government has this sort of ambition, is it really any surprise businesses are trying to influence the political process?

The problem with political donations isn’t that corporations are unduly trying to manipulate laws and regulations to their benefit. It’s that politicians are trying to shape an Australia where businesses have to involve themselves in the political system or they just might go broke.

The government plans to give out billions of dollars worth of free emissions permits as part of its emissions trading scheme. And the Coalition’s policy includes an “emissions reduction fund” of about $1.2 billion per year for some companies that reduce their emissions.

So if you had an aluminium smelter, and you didn’t take any politicians out to dinner in 2009, you’ve neglected your business responsibilities. Your competitors will be wining and dining any backbencher they can grasp.

But some of the biggest donors this year weren’t energy firms. The banks handed over a few lazy hundred thousand dollars to the major parties. Even while smarting from the financial crisis, the banks were self-aware enough to recognise the government’s guaranteeing of their bank deposits at taxpayer expense was a great deal for their shareholders.

And they’ll want a say in what comes next: like the Senate inquiry announced last week into small business access to finance. And whatever the government does with executive pay reform. And the results of Treasury secretary Ken Henry’s tax review. My point isn’t that we should feel sorry for the banks; they’re as protected by the government as they are regulated by the government.

But when Kevin Rudd says Westpac should have a “long hard look at itself”, or when Tony Abbott hints that if he makes it to the Lodge he’ll impose more banking regulation in response to the interest rate rise, what do we expect these firms to do? Just sit back and cop whatever regulation the government deems? Or, worse, whatever regulation their competitors convince the government to impose?

If firms aren’t donating, they’re lobbying. The government’s register records nearly 300 lobbying firms. More than 1800 Australian organisations paid these lobbyists to saunter around the corridors of Parliament. Even The Big Issue apparently feels the need for professional representation in Canberra – the magazine is listed as a client of two of Australia’s biggest lobbyists, Hawker Britton and Enhance Corporate.

It’s strange that we seem to blame the companies who donate money to political parties for the corruption of our democracy, rather than the politicians who take that money and change the law to suit. A US study last year found that for every dollar US companies spent lobbying Congress, they received $220 in tax benefits. What firm wouldn’t want that sort of return on investment?

The solution isn’t to regulate political donations, or crack down on lobbyists. We could try. But the stakes are far too high for any limit on corporate influence to be effective. A company that feels its entire raison d’etre could be eliminated with the stroke of a legislative pen will find a way to influence politicians, whether we like it or not.

We’ve gotten into this situation because of a bipartisan belief that there are no limits to what government should do – there are almost no areas of the economy the government shouldn’t oversee, regulate or direct.

So do we want commerce out of politics? We’ll have to get politics out of commerce first.

What Do Haitians Need Most? To Get Away From Haiti

It will take much more than a global outpouring of grief to fix Haiti. But there is one concrete way rich countries could really help out – immigration. Twelve days after the Haitian earthquake, the choices for the poorest nation in the western hemisphere are stark. Haiti was already an impoverished and virtually ungoverned nation before January 12.
Haiti’s poverty has meant it lacks the basic things that make wealthy nations better able to cope with natural disasters – functioning emergency services, law and order, safe and stable buildings, and supplies that are cheap, abundant and accessible.
So with poverty and the failure of development being at the centre of the Haitian tragedy, it’s easy to be cynical when the usual crowd pipes up. Last week, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown reportedly asked schlocky American Idol judge Simon Cowell to record a charity single to raise money for Haiti. George Clooney has hosted a fund-raising telethon, complete with “all of his famous pals”, as US Magazine succinctly described them. And Linkin Park, Alanis Morissette and Peter Gabriel are all donating “unreleased tracks” for a charity compilation. They’re no doubt trying to help in good faith.
Haiti has been a long-term recipient of foreign aid. Between 1990 and 2005, foreign aid to Haiti came to $US4 billion. Aid provides about 7 per cent of Haiti’s total gross domestic product. And for the past century, economic growth in Haiti has either been stagnant or declined. The reasons for this are many. Extraordinarily bad governments, which in the 20th century seesawed between repressive dictatorship and corrupt plutocracy, have undermined any legal framework for the protection of civil liberties, property rights, or for law and order.
It is for this reason that, when assessing the impact of its aid projects, the World Bank found “in project after project, the reason for delayed implementation or cancellation, is a coup [or] civil unrest”. This has been compounded by the bureaucratic complexity of many aid projects, administrative failures by Haitian governments, and confused priorities on the part of donors. Future assistance programs will have to directly tackle Haiti’s biggest problem – bad governance – if they are to succeed.
But if the developed world really wants to help Haiti, we could let as many Haitians as humanly possible work in the West. We could dramatically expand our guest worker and migration programs.
According to a 2008 study by the Centre for Global Development, Haitian immigrants in the US earn on average six times more than equally educated Haitians who stay home. It would be more effective and efficient to allow Haitians to move to other countries than wait for the international community or aid organisations or the Haitian Government to repair two centuries of institutional failure.
Immigration away from Haiti will actually help Haiti. Foreign aid to the country may be substantial, but it is overwhelmed by what expat Haitians send home. In 2008, foreign governments gave Haiti $US912 million. Haitian expats sent back at least $US1.3 billion, according to the most conservative estimates. Other estimates suggest unreported remittances to Haiti might account for up to a third of Haiti’s total GDP.
And while much foreign aid is delivered directly to the Haitian Government (which doesn’t have a wonderful track record in using it well), these remittances go straight to the Haitian people.
The Obama Administration’s recent announcement that Haitians already living in the US (illegally or not) will be granted temporary visas is an important step. But for domestic politicians in the developed world, increasing foreign aid is less politically complicated than dramatically expanding immigration intakes. And certainly less controversial.
Nevertheless, even a modest expansion of guest worker programs in the US and other developed nations will have a greater long-term effect than any amount of money Simon Cowell’s charity single can raise.

Lost Property: Home In Deed But Not In Fact

Debates over public policy rarely pivot on philosophical questions. But here’s one: what does it actually mean to “own” your property?
NSW farmer Peter Spencer is coming up to the 50th day of his hunger strike. Spencer is arguing that he should be adequately compensated for native vegetation regulations that prevent his chopping down trees on his land.
Fair enough. Compensation for loss of property rights is part of the Commonwealth constitution.
But native vegetation laws are state laws, and state constitutions don’t require state governments to pay just compensation for property they take. Spencer claims these laws were enacted at the behest of the Federal Government, allowing Canberra to meet its Kyoto greenhouse emissions targets without the hassle of paying those who own the native vegetation carbon sinks. (Constitutional limitations on government power must be pretty annoying.)
Certainly, the nuances of regulations governing the clearing of native vegetation sound dull, but they’re actually very important. A mountain of regulation imposed by all three levels of government is eroding one of our basic human rights – the right to own property.
This might seem a bit counter-intuitive. The Government hasn’t literally taken Spencer’s property away. He hasn’t been kicked off: he’s still allowed to wander his land at his leisure. He still holds the title. But his right to use the land has definitely been taken. Put it this way: what if the Government told you that you could keep your house, but couldn’t live in it? Sure, you’d technically still own it, but you bought that house because you thought it would be a nice place to sleep. You don’t really “own” it in any useful sense.
It’s the same with farmland. Spencer may not have been physically deprived of his land, but what’s the point if he’s not allowed to farm it? And if Spencer is not compensated for this regulatory taking, how is it much different from legalised theft? Spencer’s is not an isolated problem. In urban areas, planning regulations and heritage restrictions are increasingly onerous as state and local governments try to micro-manage the “character” of suburbs.
Karl Marx called the right to property “the right of selfishness”, and property rights are believed by many to be a synonym for individualistic greed. Sounds like greed, looks like greed, sure – but it’s not greed. More than anything else, property rights are essential for prosperity and growth. Nowhere is this clearer than in the developing world. Influential Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has found that where property rights are not respected or recognised by governments and bureaucracies, countries are poor. After all, if you can’t demonstrate you have assets to your name, it’s very hard to get a loan to start a business.
Property rights are the foundation of social mobility. Indeed, property is pretty much just another word for accumulated savings. Savings help us up the economic ladder. By contrast, a society that regularly violates property rights is an unstable society, and one where the road to personal advancement is blocked.
The right to property is so important it has long been recognised as one of our basic human rights, like free speech or the right to a fair trial. The 17th century philosopher John Locke said we had three fundamental rights: life, liberty, and “estate” – property.
But in the late 20th century, the right to property became the mistreated stepchild of human rights law. Related, but unloved.
In 1948, property rights got their own article in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights (“No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property”). But when they finally got around to turning the declaration into a legally binding commitment in 1966, property was thought to be passe, like Dean Martin and the patriarchy: neither the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights nor the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights mention property rights.
The European Convention of Human Rights says “no one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest”. The phrase “public interest” is meaningless. What government has ever thought it wasn’t acting in the public interest? The 2006 Victorian Charter of Rights says no one’s property can be taken “except in accordance with law” – not much of a defence from eager legislators.
Peter Spencer’s hunger strike in defence of his human right to property is drastic and dangerous. We can only hope it won’t be tragic. But his desperation must make us rethink our attitude towards this essential, but increasingly neglected, human right.

100 Great Books of Liberty: The Essential Guide to the Greatest Idea of Western Civilisation

Edited with John Roskam and Andrew Kemp, Connor Court Publishing, 2010

100 Great Books of Liberty is a comprehensive and accessible guide to the books which made liberty the most important idea of Western Civilisation. From Plato’s The Republic and The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, to Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, these 100 books have laid the foundation for the modern world.

Covering history, biography, philosophy, politics, and fiction, 100 Great Books of Liberty is the indispensible guide to the foundations of Western Civilisation.

100 Great Books of Liberty is a joint project of the Institute of Public Affairs and Mannkal Economic Education Foundation.

100 Great Books of Liberty is the essential guide to: The Republic, Two Treatises on Government, The Wealth of Nations, The Western Canon Reflections on the Revolution in France, The Rights of Man, On Liberty, Leaves of Grass, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion Democracy in America, The Federalist Papers, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, Animal Farm, Witness, Capitalism and Freedom, The Tyranny of Distance, The End of History, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Darkness at Noon, The Fountainhead … and eighty other great books of liberty.

Available at Amazon.com

Buying Our Love With Our Money Is Just Not Sporting

The Sunday Age 27th December, 2009

Nothing excites state politicians more than having their government host major sporting events. Over the past decade, the Victorian Government has increased its self-imposed “cap” on subsidising major events from $35 million a year to more than $80 million. Why bother calling it a “cap” at all?

This mega event mania is not limited to the states: Australia’s bid for the 2018 or 2022 soccer World Cup is at $45.6 million. The bid now has its own special Commonwealth taskforce.

Roman politicians knew the most effective way to keep their citizens relaxed and quiet: lots of bread, lots of circuses. The Australian wheat industry has been almost completely deregulated over the past few years. So governments have doubled the circus money.

But politicians don’t like to admit they just buy our love. Instead they give lavish economic reasons why we need to subsidise mega events to the hilt: think of the tourism! The “eyes of the world”! The eleventy-thousand jobs!

The Victorian Events Industry Council believes our state’s mega events strategy is the key reason we have avoided the global recession. Just as helpfully, the Australian Grand Prix Corporation claims its event has singlehandedly provided the Victorian economy with $1.5 billion since 1996. (If so, one wonders why we do anything else at all.)

And federal Sports Minister Kate Ellis has argued that a World Cup in Australia would be an “important catalyst” for investment in needed infrastructure, such as roads, rail and ports” perhaps implicitly admitting that even governments need motivation to do their jobs.

Therefore, we are told, the Government must aggressively compete with other governments around the world to secure these guaranteed money-spinners.

Before it hosted the 2002 World Cup, the Government of South Korea claimed its economy would receive an $8.9 billion boost. It was being modest: its 2002 co-host, Japan, determined that the Japanese economy would be suddenly $24.8 billion richer.

As we know, Germany was the host in 2006. This explains why all Germans are trillionaries.

But here’s the shameful secret: the economic benefits of holding mega events are almost entirely fictitious. A broad survey of the economics literature published in Econ Journal Watch in September last year found an overwhelming consensus that these economic benefits are either insignificant or totally non-existent. In fact, there’s stronger agreement among economists about the uselessness of mega events and sports subsidies than there is about the benefits of free trade or the need to eliminate farm subsidies.

Certainly, the Victorian Government believes its mega events strategy has made this state $1 billion richer. They have studies! But these economic impact studies – machine-produced by pliant consulting firms and uncritically accepted by governments looking to justify their actions – rarely take into account the lost revenue from locals who leave when events come to town, or who avoid going out. Or that some money spent on tickets comes at the expense of other local entertainment. Or that there might be better, more productive ways to use the Government’s limited funds. After all, if one of the reasons we host mega events is to spur government investment in infrastructure, why can’t we just skip the events and build the infrastructure anyway? It would be a lot simpler. And much, much cheaper.

When the United States hosted the World Cup in 1994, its supporters maintained the event would boost the US economy by $4 billion. But a 2004 study published in the economics journal Regional Studies found that the event actually cost the US economy between $5.5 billion and $9 billion.

And an analysis by the German Institute of Economic Research concluded that the country’s 2006 World Cup didn’t budge consumer spending at all.

Even the Sydney Olympics dismally failed to boost tourism, its ostensible purpose. We spent all this money “showcasing” Sydney to the world, yet tourism to NSW actually declined, relative to the rest of Australia.

Of course, there is a more obvious benefit we get from hosting mega events, albeit an intangible one. Having the World Cup played in Australia would be a lot of fun, particularly for people who are really into soccer.

So perhaps, after all the taxpayers’ money we spend on it and the burden it will place on our economy, it might still be worth doing. (Well, maybe: we could put it to a vote.) At the very least, we shouldn’t miss an opportunity to stick it to the Brits, who are also bidding for the next World Cup.

Give Or Take A Million, There’s Nothing To Fear

The Australian population might reach 35 million in 2050, according to Treasury’s latest intergenerational report.
Seems like a lot? Relax. That would make us just slightly more populated than Canada. This horrible possibility (As many people as Canada. Canada! Can you imagine it?) has been greeted with some angst.
In a speech in October, the Treasury secretary, Ken Henry, asked what seems like an obvious question: where will these 13 million extra people live? Clearly we haven’t got around to building their houses yet.
Every time we talk about population growth, we seem to have this same fear: Australia doesn’t have the infrastructure. It doesn’t have enough roads, public transport, and council swimming pools to cope.
But from a historical perspective, these concerns are pretty silly. Infrastructure development doesn’t pre-empt population growth, it follows. People build stuff when they need it.
Sydney’s population jumped from about 40,000 in 1850 to having 482,000 inhabitants at Federation.
That’s a growth of more than 1000 per cent in 50 years. But you’d have looked pretty stupid raving about the desperate need to control Sydney’s growth back then.
By contrast, the Treasury secretary asked how Sydney will cope with just a 54 per cent increase in the next 40 years. And deeply serious commentators shook their heads and stroked their beards and pontificated on the “challenges” of the future. Where will the train networks go? What sort of jobs will these new folks want? (I suspect robot repair, flying car maintenance, singularity co-ordination; you know, things like that.)
It must seem hard to imagine how the human race will cope with the growth of the future. But anti-population activists have been preaching doom for two centuries. We’ve always done fine. If you think this time is different, you need to ask yourself one question: why has everybody in the past been wrong?
My point isn’t to play down the tasks which will have to be completed if Australia is going to service the needs of all these new people. Stuff will need to be built, and some of that stuff will need to be built by government.
So it’s good that there will be 13 million new taxpayers around.
But anti-development lobbyists and activists are a big problem. Urban growth boundaries have to be extended and restrictions on development in inner urban areas relaxed.
Population growth requires governments that are willing to build needed infrastructure – governments which are able to stand up to those who don’t want infrastructure built in their backyards, and to those who don’t want people to have backyards at all. Right now, it seems that state governments are leaning on population concerns to avoid taking the blame for failing to do their jobs.
Nevertheless, the anti-population crowd is a pretty diverse bunch. Maybe you shouldn’t be judged by the company you keep, but they’re not all very sensible.
A federal Labor backbencher, Kelvin Thomson, responded to the population projections by saying that growth would lead to “global warming, the food crisis, water shortages, housing [un]affordability, the fisheries collapse, species extinctions, increasing prices, waste and terrorism.”
But we’ve had war, inflation, busy cities and expensive houses for pretty much ever. Dare I say that, even if the global population “stabilises”, they won’t stop.
And Kevin Andrews took the opportunity to urge the Government to slash immigration for the sake of population. Still, Andrews also wants to raise Australia’s birthrate “back to replacement levels”, so his concerns may be less about sustainability, and more about foreigners.
Those who oppose population growth because of environmental concerns are the most radical. Earlier this year the head of Sustainable Population Australia said Australia should adopt a one-child policy – you know, one like they have in the People’s Republic of China.
Anti-population activists believe that we should get rid of things like the baby bonus, but also have the government actively discourage us – even force us – from making too many babies.
This view is anti-human in the most basic sense. One of our most basic instincts is breeding. Declaring you want to regulate this instinct away is declaring you are against the selfish gene: the basic foundation of life.
Should we have a “population policy” at all? The only people asking for one seem to be those who want to cut it back or slow it down. Those who believe that humanity should keep exploring, discovering, creating, inventing and expanding don’t really feel the need.
Kevin Rudd responded to the population projections by saying that he believes in a “big Australia”, and (of course) “makes no apology for that”. The Prime Minister is right. An Australia of 35 million people sounds like a lot. But it’s nothing to fear.

Debunking The Mummy Party Vs Daddy Party Theory Of Politics

It might not seem like it right now, but there’s more to Australian politics than emissions trading schemes and “climate action”.

On the day after Tony Abbott defeated Malcolm Turnbull, one newspaper reported a punter saying the new opposition leader would be “alright, provided he does something about education, health and more police”.

Problem is: none of these are federal government responsibilities.

A cliché of Australian politics is that the Liberal Party is supposed to do better at a federal level than the ALP, because federal policy areas play to its strengths – the economy, defense, and border security. And Labor is supposed to do better in the states, because that’s where the responsibility for social policy lies, most notably health and education.

This is the “Mummy Party, Daddy Party” theory of Australian politics.

But many of the most interesting and innovative potential policy ideas the Coalition could readily adopt aren’t federal issues. They’re state ones.

Education vouchers, for example, would be a genuine education revolution. Vouchers would completely decouple the public funding of education from the public provision of education, giving students and parents the inestimable benefits of choice, efficiency and quality improvement.

Similarly, local community control of hospitals would really mix things up, but again, like education, health is supposed to be a state responsibility.

All this makes it more egregious that the Coalition’s state counterparts are struggling to differentiate themselves from the governments they are trying to oppose.

Federally, the choice for Liberal policymakers is therefore to either abandon one of their fundamental principles – federalism and the respect for Australia’s constitutional system – or leave these policy innovations to the states.

The Howard Government chose the former, culminating in the Commonwealth takeover of Mersey Hospital in 2007. The government’s aim for Mersey was laudable. Once Canberra took control, the hospital would actually be run by a local community trust.

Tony Abbott was of course the Minister who oversaw this, and in his book Battlelines he provides a defense of centralisation while proclaiming he’d like to do a hell of a lot more of it.

But the biggest problem with the Howard/Abbott approach to federalism is that it can backfire, and backfire badly. You might institute the most freedom-focused, liberal policy reform imaginable, but the next mob might have different ideas.

Take WorkChoices. It ended up being a dog of a piece of legislation, but the original intent of WorkChoices was to liberalise Australian workplaces. The only way the federal government could achieve that goal was by having Canberra assume responsibility for industrial relations.

All well and good – until you lose an election. Then you have to the pass the reins of government over to those who have sworn to reregulate the labour market, and now have the power to do so on a national level, all thanks to you.

Few voters know or care about which policy areas are the responsibility of which level of government. Local campaigns for federal seats often deal with comically petty issues.

In the recent federal by-election in Higgins, the Liberal candidate argued that the Ashburton police station was undermanned, and that Chapel Street should have more CCTV cameras.

It’s not their fault. Everyone in the federal parliament has, at one time, campaigned on issues which they have absolutely no control over. Voters seem to demand it – a young politician might want to talk about foreign policy and ballooning government debt, but a lot of people just want to hear about graffiti and street signs.

Nevertheless, the widespread lack of interest in Australian Constitution’s divisions of power does create a problem for the Coalition. At the federal level, it has to decide whether to trade away its commitment to federalism for the opportunity to push liberal reform.

Tony Abbott made this deal with the devil a long time ago.

But, in a strange way, the disregard Abbott has for the niceties of Australian federalism is the fault of his state colleagues. The centre-right has genuinely innovative policy prescriptions ready for advocacy and implementation.

But state Liberal oppositions have been extremely risk averse. State politicians wouldn’t propose a policy anywhere near as radical as Abbott’s local control of hospitals.

Right now, the “small target” strategy adopted by many state oppositions seems a lot better than the “colossal flashing neon target” strategy of the federal opposition.

Election after election has shown that just because a state government is demonstrably incompetent, that’s no guarantee voters will turn to the opposition for relief.

State oppositions are going to have to embrace innovative reform in health and education, at least if they want to present an alternative to ALP governments.

Australia has experienced two decades of federal reform and policy innovation. If the Liberal Party is going to lead the next reform movement, it will probably have to do so in the states.