Darkness at Noon

(via Dog Fight At Bankstown)

It went largely unnoticed but the federal government passed laws yesterday that allow innocent “third-parties” to have their phone, email and text messages tapped.

Civil liberties are a protection against the above of power by authority. When legislation like this is passed a window for this sort of abuse is opened. Moreover, governments don’t just remove every civil liberty over night. They chip away at them until next thing you know you can’t meet in the street with your friends, your house is being tapped and you can’t speak out against the government.

This is a grave concern indeed, and even more of a concern that it goes largely unreported and with little or no debate.

More over at the Bartlett Diaries

Apologies for the lack of blogging lately. Unfortunately things have been absolutely flat out.

Our campaign launch went fairly well. The Lobbyocracy site now has have 650 entries and is growing regularly. I’ve got a few new resources to read through and add the relevant details to the site as well. Please feel free to use the resource and put what you know up there as well – that’s what it’s there for.

In addition, I’ve got to start developing our lobbying policy. My talk at the campaign launch gave be a good opportunity to sit down and nut out a few of the ideas that have been floating around my head of a little while which was helpful.

The Electoral Reform Bill is still before the senate for the moment. Andrew Bartlett has a piece on it over here (sorry – not a direct link as his site appears to be down). There’s some talk around the traps that Howard wouldn’t be so bold as to put the legislation though but I’m not of this opinion myself.

If you’ve any ideas about actions we could do around this issue, I’d love to hear them. I’d love it even more if you wanted to get involved. You can email me at hammyg@democracyandjustice.org or just leave a comment.

We’re also looking into some scripting to get a considerably larger amount of data up on the site but I suspect this may be a little way off (if it even happens).

In other news there is a bit of movement on the Intellectual Property front which is really exciting. Again, it could be some time before we see some public stuff but it’s nice to see it under way.

I completely agree with Antony Loewenstein:

The Australian government should be congratulated for giving temporary protection visas to a group of West Papuan refugees escaping Indonesian repression.

It’s important to acknowledge when the government gets it right, even if you hate them the rest of the time.

But while were on this, does anyone else find it hilarious that all these athletes have gone missing considering our attitudes to refugees?

Well, the launch went well last night. The campaign is now in full swing and will hopefully gather some momentum.

So I just thought I’d point to a couple of things going on in the world of Lobbyocracy.

Ali Sharp has a related article on the UK situation here and my co-presenter last night, Joo-Cheong Tham has released this report on Political finance in Australia.

We put out the following press release last night:

The Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice today launched their latest campaign targeting the influence that donations to political parties have on Australian politics.

“The research we’ve done is showing a direct correlation between donations to political parties and policy outcomes,” Centre director Hammy Goonan said today. “There are undue levels of influence being used by those that can afford it while the rest of the community’s needs continue to go unmet.”

“We’re calling for more accountability and more transparency,” said Hammy Goonan. “Australia’s donation system is a free-for-all with very few limits on what can and can’t be donated. Our system is far behind the rest of the world in this regard.”

The campaign is a collaborative project using a website with over 650 pages to track who donated to which party and attempts to unravel the web of political dealing that is associated with these donations. Anyone can edit the web site and the hope is that they will develop a community of editors to continue to expand the content.

This impetus for this campaign comes in light of the proposed legislation that is currently before the Senate which will increase the limits imposed on disclosed donations from $1,500 to $10,000.

The Website can be found at: www.lobbyocracy.org.

Hammy Goonan is available for comment on 0402 072 653.

It is essential in a democratic society that the laws governing us are not discriminatory in any way shape or form and that justice prevails for all. Whilst we as a society have managed to understand that, to an extent, with regard to race and gender, sexual orientation is still in the dark ages. In no way shape or form is the government’s inability to recognize homosexual relationships just, fair or truly democratic. This failure is creating undue emotional, physical, mental and financial pressure unjustly on a minority within our society that should be stamped out.

Currently there is no recognition of homosexual relationships under the Marriage Act 1961 (Commonwealth), the De Facto Relationships Act 1984 (NSW), the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (NSW) and the Anti Discrimination At 1977 (NSW). The resulting treatment of homosexuals in many aspects of life then becomes far more difficult and unjust unnecessarily. This results in failure to recognize partners equally with regard to things such as Superannuation entitlements, workers compensation, adoption, health insurance for families/couples, migrating with your partner, taxation with regard to dependant spouse and will and testament laws to mention a few. It is ludicrous to think social security recognizes heterosexual couples as an economic unit, however it wont recognize a homosexual relationship even if they have been together for twenty years.

Homophobic behavior in society will always be prevalent whilst unjust laws against homosexuals are institutionalized in legislation. Failure to recognize homosexual relations will result in further abuse towards the gay community, result in continually higher suicide rates and contribute to unnecessary mental and emotional stress. For Australia to be true democracy it must be just, therefore this discrimination through law against homosexuals must end.

Well Andy replied to this post over here and as my response was quite detailed I thought I’d post it here:

Andy,

Firstly I completely agree with you regarding the anti-globalisation movement (I prefer Global Justice Movement of Alter-Globalisation movement). In fact this is also my area of study.

I also agree with you about my political evolution being far from atypical. I hope it shows a growing maturity too.

Re Marxism. I don’t think we really have any points of disagreement here. As I say, class analysis is vital. Class divisions are very real and a major part of the issues facing the modern world (and our understanding of history for that matter).

Re the enlightenment, with all due respect, of course you’ve got no problems with the enlightenment, you’re an anarchist. Anarchy also came out of the enlightenment. An important clarification though, the enlightenment gave us rationality. Rationality, I think, it a particularly important and useful concept. It is often how we know truth and, contrary to post-modern thought, there are truths (that’s not to say that post modernism hasn’t also given us some important tools). The problem is that enlightenment thinking reduces everything to this rationality, it creates a ‘rationalist culture’ which is problematic as it is too dualistic and reductionist. These things play important roles but are dangerous when they are taken in isolation.

Re Anarchism. The quote you use of Chomsky also mirrors my opinion. However quite obviously we use it to get to different end points. I think that state power is legitimate but it needs to constantly prove that – an idea that is closely linked in with democracy. I also don’t think it’s good enough to say ‘too bad for economies of scale’. It’s a really important criticism that needs to be addressed for anarchism to be taken more seriously (which I think it should be). Economies of scale provide for the marginalised with very specialised needs. I think its naive to think otherwise. Think people with rare health problems, without large economies these will never be addressed leaving people to die painful deaths (sorry, probably a little too emotive there).

I completely agree with your comment that “I reckon that this — in essence, the inapplicability of anarchist theories of social organisation to (post-)industrial society — is not an insurmountable problem, either theoretically or practically.” In fact this is one of the things I love about anarchism, and I more or less made this point in my response. This was my point when I said “to some extent an anarchist organising model is quite inspirational.” I’m a libertarian and strongly advocate the rights of the individual to do as they will, providing that does not impose on the liberty of others. I also love the organising principles of Anarchy and would love to see them used as models for government bureaucracy (I’m sure there’s a PhD in that comment).

As for the final quote you use, I must say that I disagree. I think I have a good understanding of the theoretical and historical achievements of Anarchism and I judge it on its own merits, not the problems in modern day society. In fact I think that to some extent this is what Meltzer is doing.

His comment that “the most a functioning Government can do is not prevention but punishment” is wrong. A good government in a deeply democratic society prevents crime by ensuring that communities are in control of their own destiny which has been show to significantly lower negative social indicators (smoking, high school retention rates, violent crime etc). Someone once said “under socialism [and it seems to be what your saying about anarchism] there will be no crime”. EVERY society in EVERY structure will have crime. People will do bad things even in the most nurturing environment imaginable. When this happens people need to be punished and to say that under anarchism there would be no punishment is a farce. The community would ostracise a murderer or rapist and I should hope that it would.
In conclusion I’m quite the fan of Anarchism and I think it’s worthwhile having a utopian vision to aim for. However I do think that it has a number of key flaws that I judge on their own merit. “There’s no government like no government” is quite the catch cry, but I think it’s necessary and, if done right, quite the emancipatory tool.

Andy has asked (in the comments):

And while I (think I) wouldn’t want you to “descend into ideological warfare”, I’m curious to know in what way you were “loosely associated” with anarchism and Marxism.

I also wonder how you think “democracy” and justice” are conceptualised from within these two frameworks, and what, crucially, you think distinguishes the nature of the Centre’s work from the work engaged in by anarchists and Marxists.

I thought it might be a good idea to explore this a little, mainly because it is a particular area of interest for me.

However I must start by reiterating that, just as ACDJ is non-partisan, it’s also not aligned with a political ideology such as these. The following are my thoughts and reflections.

By “loosely associated with Marxism and Anarchism” I mean that I have identified as both at some point in my life. In my teens I was very much the punk rocker (and like to still think that I am at heart) so identified with anarchism although I must admit with a fair degree of ignorance.

Then, in the early years of my undergrad (BA) I identified as a Marxist. I even briefly joined up with some Socialist group but was never active.

So the influence of both of these are still felt in my thinking on a lot of issues and I must confess to have had a bit of a resurgence in anarchism and there are certainly some relationship there towards the Centre’s ideas of “Democracy” and “Justice”.

Marxism
Marxism has given us many things, but most importantly historical determinism and a class-based analysis. Both of these are important aspects of ACDJ’s principles (which can be found at http://democracyandjustice.org/believe.

However Marxism has two significant problems and this is where I’d differentiate the Centre’s principles from Marxist principles. It understates the role of culture* and is inherently dualistic. I’d suggest that one of the downfalls of Socialist states around the world is their need to divide them into Bourgeois and Proletarians. In reality nobody strictly falls into either class so you need to rule with an iron fist and force this class division creating an overly regimented and authoritarian state.

Moreover, it is steeped in the ideas of the enlightenment and fails to understand the environment. I understand that there are eco-Marxist off shoots but they fail to have a real understanding of the environment. It tends to manifest itself as pollution being class related, which isn’t wrong per se, but it overlooks a range of other issues.**

Anarchism
ACDJ, I’d suggest (and the other directors would probably disagree) borrows heavily from a (left-wing) Anarchist# understanding of democracy and community control. To some extent an anarchist organising model is quite inspirational, as is its complete distrust of authority.

I think Chomsky mentioned in the article I posted that the onus of proof is always on power. This is something that I think is vital. I’m also a big fan of the highly decentalised power structures of Anarchism.

Anarchy’s failure is that it is anti-state. In essence it fails the economies of scale test. This throws an interesting light on communitarian ideologies and in many ways Marxism fails the test in the opposite direction. Small, localised communities are fantastic but they necessitate a duplication at the biggest, often infrastructural level. Would we have ever been able to have the scientific break throughs that have happened in universities? The scale of the research needed for stem cell research could never even be considered in the decentralised anarchist vision. Moreover, the needs of the minorities would never be able to be met. Disability is always the example I think of. There’s no way at the effort that is put into making the lives of the disabled easier could be achieved without the centralised, governmental, model. What about public transport and roads?

In addition all these things have environmental repercussions. One of the most significant ecological issues at the moment is that we are too individualised. This leads to a high level of duplication which is an ecological disaster. While an Anarchist model would overcome this to some extent in some areas there are other areas where is simply wouldn’t have the capacity to do so.

So I don’t oppose governments. However they need to be a powerless, and transparent as possible. Anarchist ideas of decentralisation, transparency and accountability are excellent but it just can’t provide on the level it needs to.

*I’m quite the fan of Gramsci and his understanding of the role of culture however I’m not talking about Hegemony as such here. I’m talking about culture in the broader sense.
**Just by-the-by, I also think a lot of the environment movement could do with a better understanding of class.
#I also realise that Anarchy is a really diverse ideology and that I’m massively simplifying here.

The long awaited shake up of the media ownership laws was finally announced today by Senator Coonan.

The announcement certainly didn’t come as any surprise – it’s been on the cards for some time now. The proposed changes aren’t much of a surprise anyway.

Needless to say the Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice opposes these changes and considers them undemocratic.

Diverse media, means that there are more voices. Economic interest does influence the editorial policies of media outlets. Would you publicly criticise your boss? I wouldn’t either because I like being employed. Therefore a concentrated media means fewer voices, which means fewer opinions and less debate which leads to a less informed public and democracy dies a slow and painful death. In fact surely a diverse media is one of the most significant factors in a robust democracy.

It is hard to underestimate the power of the media.

Moreover, Coonan’s justification, with an emphasis on digital technologies is flawed. As Mayne points out over at Crikey:

Secondly, the blushing enthusiasm expressed for the wide variety of voices on the internet always overlooks a substantial problem: opinion is free and everywhere, but obtaining facts costs money.

The world can blog itself silly, but you need committed media companies making a dollar out of it or funded by the taxpayer to shoulder the burden of paying journalists to go get the news. The example I use here is Paul McGeough’s reporting for the Smage – it’s very costly and the amateur bloggers can’t do it. The Smage is having trouble making money out of it as well, which is a different worry again.

Finally, Coonan’s “snack TV” is a joke. She’s going to allow the same sort of hugely unwatched material that pads out Foxtel subscriptions to go out as digital TV over 30 channels. Gee, that’ll really worry Seven, Nine and Ten.

The financial strength of free-to-air television is its ability to package up a large audience and deliver them to advertisers. Narrow casting doesn’t make money and therefore it can’t spend money.

If this passes parliament, we’ll be left with a more concentrated and powerful media industry. And that will suit the existing players just fine.

Of course the other issue here is foreign ownership. Providing Australian TV content levels are maintained (which they probably won’t be), from a consumer perspective, it will not mean much. I suspect this is an opinion we will be hearing a lot of shortly. However excessive overseas ownership is a problem because at least with Australian TV moguls, the money stays in Australia.

The final thing that strikes me is there seems to be a push towards pay-TV. The review of anti-siphoning laws means a “use it or lose it” set up which will mean pay-TV picking up more sporting events.

I’m not sure if ACDJ has the resources to tackle this issue at the moment in the form of a campaign but we will be keeping a close eye on it and doing what we can with what we’ve got.

The news that a bunch of international students at a Melbourne campus of Central Queensland University told the media that they were planning to start a hunger strike after being treated like Cash Cows.

Moreover, it is concerning that the students withdrew their protest after they were wrongly informed that it could threaten their visas. Who told them this and why?

International students are treated as “cash cows”. This is reflected in the attitudes of the universities who provide virtually no support, the government and, in general, the broader community. The they are treated as funding sources and that’s it.

International students are propping up our university system. Despite our dependence on them they are taken for granted. Consequentially they are left very isolated and have high levels of depression and suicide. The assumption is always that they are rich and have it easy. Not only is this often untrue it doesn’t meant that they can’t be treated with the respect they deserve.

I heard about one university department that just didn’t show up to the international student’s enrolment day. Could you get any ruder?

Moreover, these students are recognised for the other things that they bring to Australia and our universities. They provide a cultural, intellectual perspective that is steeped in a history and tradition that can provide valuable insights.