There are many theoretical justifications for a congestion tax - I go through a few of them here, and there are others - but it is not theory that makes policy, it is political and fiscal reality. The New South Wales government needs money, so it imposes a tax.

The Federal Government’s grand $6.2 billion industry plan for the automotive sector, A New Car Plan For A Greener Future, is full of important implications for policy and political economy (and quite a few ironies).

But I was more struck by this remarkable example of historical blindness in the Prime Minister’s introduction:

Our first car took to the road as early as 1897, when David Shearer demonstrated his steam-driven horseless carriage in South Australia. Yet it would be two generations before the first 48-215 Holden came off the line in 1948, and motor vehicle production began in earnest.

That’s a measure of how hard it is to establish an automotive industry, and a reminder of why Australian governments have dedicated themselves to ensuring that we remain a car-making country.

This is weird argument because at no time in automotive history was car-making more accessible to entrepreneurs than it was in those first few decades. In the period before the Great Depression, the industry was nothing like it is today. It was characterized instead by many small scale manufacturers, dozens upon dozens of models in countries that are no longer considered car builders. This collection of car catalogues from 1909 gives just a taste of the diversity of firms involved in the industry at that time in the United States alone - Atlas, America, Babcock, Baker, Benz, Buick, C.G.V., Cameron, Corbin, Courier etc etc etc.

It was only in the time of economic downturn that the industry was consolidated and the industry adopted the structure which we are familiar with in the mid-twentieth century. But in the first half of the twentieth century, entry into the automobile industry was easy, not hard. Australia’s lack of a automobile industry in those early decades was more likely because Australia just wasn’t suited - for whatever reason, economic, social, geographic - to be a major car manufacturer.

Of course, this is picking on an extremely minor point. But, in 2008, if it is going to take $6.2 billion before the Australian car industry can be ’self-sufficient’, then we still might not be destined to have a major automotive sector.

My piece in this week’s Sunday Age looked at the state of the Victorian crime rate after Christine Nixon’s resignation on Wednesday: “Politics and the top cop“

Does the financial crisis portend some sort of ideological shift - not in political philosophies adopted by the commentariat, public and political class, but in the practical operation of government and policymaking? I think Foucault’s term ‘governmentality’ - models by which governments relate to individuals, independent of the over-worked philosophical cleavages - is more useful than many on the right are predisposed to admit. Are we seeing a new shift in governmentality as a result of the financial crisis - are governments looking at the relationship between economy and society in a different way?

Frankly, I don’t see it, although many others do. My friend Michael Cooney asks in the Weekend Australian: “is the era of economic conservatism over? It is: what comes next?” And John Quiggin has been talking about the end of the neo-liberal consensus, and, I think rightly - although I suspect for different reasons - is placing the political reaction to the crisis in the framework of risk society government.

Nevertheless, I don’t mean here to whinge about the continued applicability of libertarian policy and ethics. Anyway, I’m with Mark Bahnisch when he says that ‘dichotomies about states v. markets are nonsense’, at least when talking about the contemporary public policy world.

But to return to Michael’s piece in the Oz, that he describes his new governmentality as that of ‘designing markets’ only goes to show just how little ideological change this financial crisis will actually bring about directly.

Obviously the three examples of designed markets that he cites - carbon, water and training - have their origins well before the crisis began. More indicatively, those great ‘neoliberal’ reforms and ‘deregulations’ of the 1980s and 1990s were themselves, more often than not, exercises in market design. The Hilmer Reforms imposed market frameworks on top of monopoly assets - while the markets they designed for gas, telecommunications, electricity and others were less theoretically complex than the governments grand new emissions trading scheme will be, I would argue that third party access requirements nonetheless share the same regulatory ideology. (For more on this, read my book.)

And while the financial crisis will no doubt bring about regulatory expansion in the financial sector, it is hard to see how it would be the catalyst for regulatory expansion outside that sector. What quasi-nationalisations have occurred have occurred reluctantly - there aren’t many mainstream politicians seriously rethinking the possibilities of widespread public ownership.

Nevertheless, there are shifts in liberal democratic governmentality occuring.

The phrase ‘Nanny State’ may sound like a tedious ad hominem, but, as far as it indicates public policy justifications leaning more and more on the concept of ‘risk’ rather than rights, it is a useful shorthand for how the relationship between government and individual is changing. And since the collapse of mid-century liberal socialism, what has replaced it has not been libertarianism, obviously, but a more complex and interesting model which places regulation - and, crucially, independent regulatory institutions - at the centre of government practice.

These are long term trends which I do not see being diverted by the crisis. The debates that occupied our time before September 2008 will be the same debates that occupy our time in 2009. The financial crisis is a big deal, but it is not that big a deal.

My Sunday Age piece, which both abuses and defends local government councillors, is here: “Clamp on conflict of interest may hobble sound judgement“

Weirdly, Henry Thornton, a friend of the Institute of Public Affairs, thinks that the IPA has been reluctant to talk about the financial crisis.

Considering the IPA has been extraordinarily prolific in its analysis since the crisis really hit a few weeks ago, this is a strange claim to make - for an example of some pieces on the crisis, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and my own modest effort here, all of which are available on the front page of our website. The IPA Review, which will hit newsstands and mailboxes sometime early next week, also has some significant commentary on the crisis.

I know for a fact that, as a rule, we will respond to pretty much every request for public commentary - many of the pieces linked above have been deliberately commissioned by print and online editors from across the country. Which is why it is strange to read this morning that we have been reluctant to write for Henry, on whatever topic.

The Institute of Public Affairs is putting on a new essay competition with some pretty lavish prizes: The 2009 Kennard Freedom Prize.

There are typically fewer submissions to most essay competitions than one would expect, so the chance of winning a prize is quite high.

And for the Kennard Freedom Prize, there are lots of things to win. There are two first prizes - one winner will head to Las Vegas for FreedomFest, and another winner will head to the Property and Freedom Society Conference in Bodrum, Turkey.

Furthermore, every entrant will go into the draw to win one of two Apple iPhones. And each entrant will also receive a one year subscription to the IPA Review.

The website contains all the information about the prize, including runner-up prizes, as well as a resource bank of online material on liberty in Australia and overseas. The competition is open to those who were born after 1st January 1981, and are Australian or New Zealand residents.

My Sunday Age column this week was on the financial crisis, and a partial defense of the “greed is good” mantra: “Why greed’s just too small a word to hang a crisis on”

I don’t have a particularly strong view about the Bill Henson photos that were such a bright flash in the political pan a few months ago - remember that more innocent time, when everybody was arguing about child exploitation, and not about how much canned soup we’ll need to stockpile for the financial winter?

The debate was only ever about the margins of art, pornography and consent, and consquently could only be resolved by subjective judgment calls.* Some people thought the line should be drawn one place, others thought it should be drawn another place - not a particularly interesting discussion, but one which managed to consume a lot of newsprint and blog inches. (At the time, I wrote about a much less publicised, but arguably more worrying case for free speech here.)

Nevertheless, this piece by David Marr on the Henson controversy seems to strike entirely the wrong note. One is entitled to be outraged that the police raided an art exhibition. But Marr seems more concerned that there was widespread condemnation and furious national debate over the validity of Henson’s artistic and moral judgment.

Even putting aside whether the public - wherever they are found, from radio talk show studios to the eponymous watercoolers - can deign to have an opinion on high art, Henson courted this controversy in the first place. He made an artistic decision, legitimate or illegitimate, to photograph minors in the nude. Nobody in their right mind would be unaware that such a decision could be controversial in some circles.

You can’t deliberately traverse bourgeois social mores and then claim to be the victim when society condemns you for doing so.

* UPDATE: Although Marr’s report that Henson sometimes browsed schoolyards for potential models makes this whole story take on a very creepy tone. If Marr’s book is supposed to be a defence of Henson, it is a spectacular failure.

My Sunday Age piece this week was on stupid spending by local councils: “Where’s the local goodwill when it comes to rates?“