My housemate is back from his holiday overseas. He and I were talking about Europe last night. We talked a lot about the cost of things over in Europe and the quality. He confirmed for me what I have experienced and what my friends have experienced. The food is usually poor quality because the produce is just not as good. When you get good food it is usually astronomically expensive. Gastronomic enthusiasts rave (quite rightly) about the chefs of Paris and London. However, when those same chefs come to Australia – they can make better dishes because the produce that they have access to is far more varied and better quality. Also they can provide it at a lower cost. Foreign chefs rave about Australia. Our economy is doing better too. We have a higher standard of living that all the nations in Europe with the exception of Norway and Iceland (according to the Human Development Index) – which are possibly the most expensive places on Earth to live. Housing and accommodation is overpriced in Europe. Unemployment is far higher (over nine per cent in France and Germany), incomes are lower, inflation is higher, taxes are higher, services are of lesser quality. Moreover, we actually enjoy some of the best civil liberties in the world and our politicians are generally loathe to do anything which might infringe our civil liberties (like trying to make us carry around ID cards). We are able to say pretty much anything that we want to without the fear of repression, even though this is not explicitly guaranteed by any law. Whereas in other countries you can be flogged for holding somebody else’s hand, or beheaded for having any kind of sexual intercourse outside of marriage (like in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia or Yemen), we Australians are free from such draconian laws, and will always overwhelmingly choose to reject any assertion that we should not be. We can worship any god that we want to or choose not to worship any god whatsoever. There is no established religion in Australia and your religious beliefs can never be a criterion of your suitability for any public office. Moreover, we can tell others about why we believe or do not believe in a god and not fear being executed for it (as would be the case in Iran or Saudi Arabia). We have a stable and open system of government where the people decide our representatives. And that system of government is not strong and stable because of power that it invests in a single individual but rather because of the fact that it denies many powers to those who might misuse them. Accountability is taken seriously by the Australian people in judging governments and as such corruption in government is often detected and judged in a much more timely and effective way than in many less transparent countries. We are more secure than most countries in the world and that security is not gained at the cost of our fundamental liberties. Rather, governments try to be as non-intrusive as possible, while still maintaining vigilance against those who wish us ill will. Whereas Geoffrey Blainey has called our distance from the rest of the world a tyranny, it is in fact a saving grace for our security situation. Our country has some of the most beautiful natural sights in the world. And all sides of politics are determined to ensure the preservation of this natural heritage. Is it any wonder that so many people want to immigrate to Australia every year? When I was a little kid, I once said to my brother “I wish we could win the lottery”. My brother replied – “We already have – we were born in Australia”. Having experienced a little bit of other countries and having spoken to some of the thousands who immigrate to our shores every year, I couldn’t agree with him more.

In previous blogs, I have criticized both sides of the political divide for not choosing candidates who are representative of the Australian people. Representative democracy is important, because if we are to have delegates in Parliament who are to decide our future, it is essential that they are able to do their job reflecting on their experiences, which are similar experiences to that of most Australians. It is imperative that we are not governed by idealogues who are willing to use Australian society as a laboratory for their ideological experiments. Rather, they should be delegates who truly do represent us and are willing to do what it takes to solve complex problems, uninfluenced by fear or favour. It is then a little disconcerting to look at a list of those who will be sitting around the cabinet table if the ALP wins this forthcoming federal election. They are: Prime Minister – Kevin Rudd – Former Chief of the Queensland Cabinet Office to Labor Premier Wayne Goss; Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Industrial Relations – Julia Gillard – former student politician, President of the Australian Union of Students, Partner at Slater and Gordon Lawyers; Treasurer – Former ALP State Secretary Attorney-General – Joe Ludwig – former Australian Workers Union Official – son of union heavyweight Bill Ludwig (no nepotism there I’m sure) Minister for Homeland Security – Arch Bevis Jr – Former Organiser – Queensland Teachers Union son of union heavyweight Arch Bevis Sr (again I’m sure – no nepotism) Minister for Trade – Simon Crean – former President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions Minister for Transport and Tourism – Martin Ferguson – Former President – Australian Council of Trade Unions Minister for Finance – Lindsay Tanner – former State Secretary – Federated Clerk’s Union Minister for Environment and Arts – Peter Garrett – former rock singer and anti-American activist; Minister for Infrastructure and Water – Anthony Albanese – Former Assistant General Secretary of the NSW ALP; Minister for Human Services – Tanya Plibersek – former student union official at UTS Minister for Immigration – Tony Burke – former official – Shop , Distributive and Allied Employees Union Minister for Resources – Chris Evans – former official – Miscellaneous Workers Union Minister for Veterans Affairs – Alan Griffin – former official – Federated Clerk’s Union Minister for Primary Industry – Kerry O’Brien – former official, Miscellaneous Workers Union; Minister for Superannuation – Nick Sherry – Former State Secretary, Federated Liquor and Allied Industries Union Minister for Sport – Kate Lundy – Former official Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union Has anyone reading this established some sort of pattern here? Just in case you haven’t, I might just tell you about a few other candidates who have been selected by the ALP for their safest seats i.e. they are virtually guaranteed seats in Parliament. They are: Greg Combet – Labor candidate for Charlton – former Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions; Doug Cameron – NSW Labor Senate Candidate – Secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union Mark Arbib – NSW Labor Senate candidate – General Secretary of the NSW ALP Bill Shorten – Labor candidate for Maribyrnong – National Secretary – Australian Workers Union Richard Marles – Labor Candidate for Corio – former Assistant Secretary, Transport Workers Union Now since unions now only represent 15% of the working population of Australia, one really has to wonder how the ALP is qualified to govern, when their entire front bench is made up of people who have been employed exclusively in unions, state government jobs or with law firms closely associated with unions. Do you feel represented by a party that takes all of its talent from such a small pool of people within the population? Remember after all, that wherever you are in Australia, your state or territory government is a Labor government. Surely the people who sit at the cabinet table should be people from all walks of life who take different experiences, different talents and different views to that table. It should not merely be composed of people who have worked in the same sort of organization. Perhaps a good cabinet would have a combination of lawyers, doctors, journalists, real-estate agents, company directors, accountants, small business owners, tradesmen, soldiers, farmers, academics, diplomats and perhaps even one or two former high level advisers. When one group of people with only one profession can by hook or by crook take exclusive control over one of Australia’s two main political forces, the rest of us are left wondering – what can we do to take back our democracy?

In my previous blogs, I have spoken about the fact that the New South Wales government is wasting an enormous amount of money on the desalination plant at Kernel. In that blog I mentioned that the desalination plant will do irreparable damage to the local environment, and it will cost more money than installing water tanks in every house across New South Wales. This is really the very nub of the problem of big government – it wastes money in areas where money could be much better spent. But should we really be surprised? This really is the way that New South Wales Labor operates – always totally obsessed with big government. So much so that it seems that every public servant in the state is determined to find new sources of red tape for business to deal with. The model of government that they represent is one where the government are the masters and not the servants. Indeed dealing with the New South Wales public service is more frustrating than dealing with the Indian public service. Your typical day might go like this: Monday – you call up your project officer to speak about the latest development in some project you might be working on for the NSW government. Unfortunately its his rostered day off. You’re told to call back the next day. Tuesday – You call up on Tuesday morning – 9 am bright as a button. Unfortunately, he doesn’t usually turn up until 10am on Tuesdays – you will have to call back. You call back at 11am – just to give him some latitude. He informs you that in fact you now have a new project officer and you should contact her. Can’t you just transfer me through? Well actually – she isn’t available today – it’s a union training day for her. Call back tomorrow. Wednesday – You call back midday because you can never quite be sure when you project officer is going to be in. You are lucky – she is in. Unfortunately, she can’t really advise you at the moment since she has only just been handed the file and she needs to be fully briefed. Call back at the end of the week and she will have answers for you then. Friday you call back – This is your new project officer’s rostered day off – she didn’t mention that – call back Monday Monday – your new project officer is fully briefed and can inform you that there has in fact been a change of policy. Your project must be handed to a more senior public servant, there must be a probity audit and you have to fill in some more forms and provide them with further written reports. Also you should be consulting widely – you should have a few more community consultation meetings. Oh and by the way – this more senior project officer is on annual leave and will be back sometime next month – best to call back then. To my mind the whole system now seems to be set up specifically so that the New South Wales government can spend as much money as possible in as little time as possible. The state’s net debt is increasing – and the government seems to be boasting about it. We have well and truly lost our AAA credit rating and the state’s budget surplus is totally bogus since is based on the assumption that salaries in the public service will only go up by 2.5% a year for the next few years, despite the fact that the average wage increase seems to be more along the lines of 4.5%. The New South Wales government is way too big and far too well resourced for its own good. It needs to start trimming the fat, getting rid of public servants whose only role is to make up policy just for the sake of justifying their jobs. Perhaps then it could spend some of the saved money on fixing trains and buses. Perhaps it could spend some of the saved money on installing water tanks. Perhaps they could even hire a planning consultant who is not in the employ of either Mirvac, Meriton or Delfin? And maybe even a Director General of the Department of Education who isn’t related by marriage to an ALP figure and who (shock, horror) actually knows something about education. Perhaps – but as we all know – it will never happen. The ALP philosophy of government in New South Wales is simple – if its big and it costs a lot – it must be good. If the PSA say we need more public servants on nine day fortnights and seven hour days – then we must do as the PSA says. For those people who want value for money from government and a government that serves them– I’d probably suggest that you move. As the census figures have shown, some are deciding to do just that – New South Wales population growth is significantly lower than that of Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia. People have started voting with their feet. Something is rotten in the State of New South Wales.

Caroline Overington, who wrote the Australian’s book on ten years of John Howard, has described a new generation of Liberal voters “South Park Conservatives”. This follows on from commentators in the US who have been using the phrase “South Park Republicans” since 2001. Andrew Sullivan coined the phrase after hearing that the show’s creators had outed themselves as republicans at an awards ceremony. He described himself as a South Park Republican. The creators of the show however, are not so easily labelled. Matt Stone is a registered Republican but Trey Parker is actually a member of the Libertarian Party of America. Matt Stone, whilst being a member of the Republican Party states that he hates conservatives. As he says “I hate conservatives, but I really fucking hate liberals”. In 2006, Andrew Sullivan, Trey Parker and Matt Stone headlined a conference in Amsterdam hosted by the Libertarian magazine, Reason. At that conference, they described themselves Libertarians. Indeed this makes much more sense and I believe that it makes more sense to describe South Park Conservatives here as South Park Libertarians. After all real conservatives would hate South Park – it mocks authority figures, it mocks ‘traditional values’. It is always critical of organised religion and government establishment – often portraying both as full of hypocrisy, corruption and incompetence. South Park loves making fun of Southern Red Necks – the core vote of the Republican Party in the US and is also very mocking of racism and homophobia. On the left, South Park often mocks those left wing celebrities who have smug, self-righteous, sanctimonious and politically correct views. They are constantly having a go at hippies, feminists, environmentalists and animal rights activists. It makes fun of anti smoking campaigns and anti-drug campaigns as being hysterical. In all, anybody who is interested in intervening in other people’s lives is left nobbled by South Park, with its very caustic take no prisoners humour. Humour that all of my friends, and even my seventy four year old dad, love. Libertarianism is the political philosophy that holds that all persons are the absolute owners of their own lives and should be free to do what ever they wish with their own lives and their own property so long as they afford that same liberty to others. When applied to politics this philosophy generally aims at limiting the rights and responsibilities of government and maximising the rights and responsibilities of the individual. It stands for low taxes and equally low government spending. Small government departments with public servants that are actually needed – rather than fat government full of public servants who spend their time coming up with policy for policy’s sake. It stands for strong civil rights, equality of citizens before the law and a healthy respect for the differences that all of us have. When political commentators speak of South Park Conservatives in the context of Australian politics, they are often talking about a group of people in their twenties who vote Liberal. Apparently, we’re a rare breed. The truth of the matter is, that though we might vote Liberal, many of us are not conservatives. My housemate and myself are a case in point. We sit down to watch South Park (followed by Drawn Together – which I also love) every Monday night. My housemate’s blog ‘nohippieshit’ is full of quotes from Eric Cartman about how much he hates hippies. It’s also full of restaurant reviews and pro-Liberal articles as well as a link to the website of hunky Czech model Jakub Stefano. My blog is on a gay website and has heaps of pro-Liberal articles as well. We both love our personal freedoms. We’re both gay. My housemate drinks, smokes and gambles (probably to excess) and is often seen at a few of the gay bars around town – especially Manacle. He can’t stand anti-smoking campaigns and steadfastly refuses to give us smoking. I drink rather a lot as well – I’m often seen at Stonewall or Palms. We’re both very keen on civil liberties. I am a former member of the NSW Council of Civil Liberties. He is particularly concerned about the treatment of David Hicks – and says so – he thinks that the Military commissions at Guantanamo Bay were a complete sham and a breach of Habeas Corpus. I am even more concerned by some of the conditions meted out to Iraqi civilians in prisons over in Baghdad. We love living the good life. My housemate is often seen in some of the best restaurants in town. Sometimes, I’m seen with him. He goes on holidays frequently – he is on holiday now – sailing around Greece – hoping that one day during his trip Georg Duroy and all the Bel Ami crew will turn up on a beach where he has moored in order to make Greek Holiday Part Three. We both take our personal responsibilities pretty seriously. We both think that we pay too much tax. We both have private medical insurance and resent having to pay the Medicare levy when we are already looking after our own health. He has double the income protection insurance that he actually needs and will never have to rely on a disability pension should he be permanently incapacitated in an accident. I’m a big supporter of several non-profit organizations and charities. Judging by most of our friends, we actually think that we are fairly typical of our generation. Pretty much everybody that we meet down the pub (the pub that our house backs on to) is keen on personal rights and responsibilities. All our friends resent being told what to do by authority figures – whether it be church, unions, general do-gooders or government. All that this really means is that we are not conservative, but by the same token we are not collectivists either. And whilst most of our friends vote Liberal, for most of them this is not a set in stone partisan alignment. Indeed, some of them vote Labor for precisely some of the social liberal reasons that I mentioned above. None of them vote Green. The South Park Conservatives are not conservatives at all – we are libertarians. Caroline Overington is right to identify us as a political force because increasingly we reflect the mainstream.

There has been some controversy in the last year or two about uranium mining. It is a topic that does get some people offside. People associate uranium with nuclear weapons and sometimes only with nuclear weapons. As a result, they always have a total aversion with anything uranium related. The Labor Party, until recently, held the view that despite any of the arguments for uranium mining, they would steadfastly hold to the “three mines” policy. There are a few points to consider when thinking about Australia’s uranium resources: 1. 38% of the world’s uranium ore resources exist under Australian soil – we have the most uranium of any country in the world – the Olympic Dam mine in South Australia is the largest uranium mine in the world; 2. The export of our uranium ore is only done to strict International Atomic Energy Agency Standards – meaning that Australia needs to be totally satisfied that none of the uranium is going to be used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons before we actually sell the uranium; 3. Due to he strict uranium mining policies that Australia has historically had, Australia is (despite its enormous competitive advantage) not the largest exporter of concentrated uranium oxides – Canada is; 4. Nuclear power is the most efficient, least environmentally polluting source of power – it accounts for 80% of electricity generated in France, 30% of Japan’s electricity and 20% of the USA’s – these countries have had nuclear power plants for decades without meltdowns; 5. Because France relies on nuclear power, it has the cleanest air of any European nation and the cheapest electricity; 6. With the world looking for a solution to its green house gas emissions problem, nuclear energy is currently the only viable alternative to coal powered electricity; 7. China, Japan, Russia, India, Pakistan, Brazil, Argentina, Finland, Ukraine, Romania and the United States are all in the process of building new nuclear power plants. South Africa, France, South Korea, Bulgaria, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Canada are considering building new plants. They will all need to get their uranium from somewhere; Our coal exports are increasing in value by up to 20% per year because of the high demand for deep seam black coal in China. Australia is becoming the biggest supplier of the raw materials for energy in the world as well as feeding Asia with our other primary exports. The United States and China are both committed to a nuclear future – and they will be looking towards Australia to supply uranium to sustain that nuclear future. If we do not supply uranium because of the concerns of those who are hysterical when it comes to nuclear power, we will most certainly lose out in key markets to our competitors. Uranium mining is another chance to improve our competitive advantage in energy supply. Whilst, I am of the belief that we ought to be enriching the uranium as well, so that we can sell a higher value product, I am led to believe by a nuclear scientist that I know, that Australia doesn’t have a competitive advantage in the supply of enriched uranium. The current Federal government is clear in its support of uranium mining. The Greens would not only shut down uranium mining altogether – they would shut down the coal industry – based on hysterical whims. Whilst the ALP have now voted against the old three mines uranium policy, they have not actually voted in support of expansion of uranium mining nor in support of the industry in general. It remains to be seen whether the ALP government in WA will allow certain mines over there to go ahead. It’s a competitive world – and the world is massively expanding economically at the moment. Australia can take advantage of that or be left behind.

Since I was born in 1980, my first real knowledge of the cold war was its end. When the Berlin Wall came down and the USA became the world’s only super power. The USSR had collapsed and Russia was contracting at a rate of knots. Nobody could see a time when the USA would not totally dominate the world. Now all I hear about when I watch the news (apart from all the hysterical predictions about global warming) is the rise of China. Indeed, China is still on the rise and has been for over ten years now. Due to recent property law amendments there, China is likely to get even stronger. This is a great thing for Australia since they need a lot of coal to fuel their rise – and we can provide that – at an ever increasing price. What you don’t hear a lot about however, is the rise of Russia. Russia’s economy is booming due to the higher resources prices being experienced globally. Russia has a lot of oil and a lot of natural gas, and indeed it is keeping a lot of it in reserve. Why? Because one day the north sea oil will run out (indeed its yields are lessening every year), and when that happens the world wide price of oil is going to increase again. We will reach the point of “peak oil” where we have produced as much as we ever can produce and stocks of oil will start to decline. Michael Moore writes about this in his book “Stupid White Men”. If at this point Russia has massive reserves of oil still underneath the ground, it will be able to demand a premium price for that oil. However, Russia’s economy is also greatly diversifying, and that in turn is creating other centres of prosperity. Russia is now so confident of its future that it is predicting that by 2020, its GDP per capita will be in the region of US$30,000 and its economy will be the fifth largest in the world. This means that the standard of living in Russia would be about the same as it is in Spain today and only slightly less than the standard of living here in Australia (in today’s prices). This would have been totally unthinkable in the early 90s. India is also growing at a cracking pace due to an expanding service sector. However, that growth is being very unevenly felt. A vast number of Indians still live in unbelievable poverty, whilst others live in luxury. Whilst some people may be considered as middle class – that middle class is slow to develop and the unevenness of the wealth spread will still be an underlying social weakness for India for quite a long time. It is also the most corrupt country in the world. Australia’s relationship with India will also become increasingly close, especially since a lot of second generation Australians will have parents who were born in the subcontinent. The number of immigrants coming from India and China is on the rise (as was shown by the latest census) and those numbers are going to increase as the Howard government takes ever more skilled migrants into the country to cope with our skills shortage and ever tighter labour market. All three of these countries (China, India and Russia) are nuclear powers with enormous military capabilities. The European Union is becoming ever more federalised. However, it probably never will become a fully fledged single state. It will probably never have its own standing army, whilst two of its member states (The UK and France) have nuclear capabilities and when measured as one economy would be counted as the largest economy in the world. So why is any of this particularly significant? Because by 2020, we will be living in a multi-polar world – not a world dominated by one country. The “American Empire” whilst still remaining the richest country in the world and militarily the most powerful is essentially in decline in terms of influence because other countries can now do serious economic damage. For every single action taken by the USA against Iraq and Serbia over the last decade and a half, Russia and China have both protested in fairly strong terms – but to no avail. However, now since China and Russia are holding massive foreign currency reserves (Russia has US$450 billion in foreign reserves) and both hold trade surpluses with the USA, they will be able to essentially play around with the US dollar. This is how the USA halted UK and French action during the Suez crisis – a turning point in history which humiliated both countries and showed them up as being has-beens in terms of international reach. This means that the USA won’t be able to move troops and missiles around the world at the whim and fancy of massive US petrochemical conglomerates like Haliburton anymore. A multi-polar world will therefore require a great deal more international co-operation. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing may be judged on a case by case basis – but if it leads to inertia in the face of crises then obviously its going to be a fairly bad thing. What happened in Rwanda during the early nineties is an example of what can happen when the major powers have to ask for everybody’s permission to do anything. Iraq is what can happen when one country is able to do what ever it wants for its own interests. Both are bad extremes. The problem that will come up again and again in decades to come is that there will be five countries (or blocks of countries I should say in the case of the EU) competing for the worlds resources and markets and it is more likely than not that at some point or another we will enter another cold war.

This year, Queerscreen posted a loss due to a dishonoured advertising arrangement and decreased box office sales. Luckily, last minute donations have rescued Queerscreen from a truly moribund situation – but the light is still not showing at the end of the tunnel. Queerscreen was set up as a way of dealing with a problem that at some time or another all GLBT people experience – a lack of visibility. As a young teenager growing up, seeing gay characters in movies was reassuring, especially going to a school where it seemed as though I really was the only gay in the village (about 11 of the class mates in my year have since come out of the closet). Cultural expression in one form or another has always been a great outlet for minorities, and ours is exactly the same. This does not necessarily mean that we need to go down the road of all gay dramas like Queer As Folk – because the reality is that we all live in a straight community and deal with straight people every single day. Nor should we be seen merely as being gay and nothing else, having no other distinguishing feature apart from our sexuality – the visibility of our minority can be a side issue – just one feature of a character. An example of this kind of visibility would be Torchwood. Whenever a gay story comes up on the news, all we see are pictures of Mardi Gras – one event in a year that some GLBT participate in, but certainly not all. Indeed, a great many of us just don’t feel as though Mardi Gras represents us, or that the scene represents us (as forums on this website have displayed recently). It’s a big gay event – but its not all that there is to being gay. There are so many different types of GLBT people in the world and they have strongly differing stories to tell. But without organizations that are willing to tell those stories – our visibility will not be maintained. Another organization committed to stories that are inclusive of GLBT characters is Gaiety Theatre. I have written a review of their most recent production here in Sydney – Dying City. But this organization, just like Queerscreen, depends upon donations and corporate support for its projects (as well as good box office takings). So far Gaiety has been lucky enough to get support from Golds Gym and From LOTL. I wish them luck in continuing to tell our stories.

If you have seen the Daily Telegraph this week, you will see that despite the massive environmental degradation, despite the lack of necessity and despite most water experts being opposed to it, the State Government of New South Wales have decided to further add to the desalination plant – practically doubling its capacity. Now, I don’t actually know where in Sydney Morris Iemma lives, but where I live in Sydney and where I work, its been raining heavily now (with one or two breaks) for about three weeks. While it is certainly true that not all of this water has fallen in the catchment areas, nevertheless, there is currently no shortage of rain in our city. This is, of course, due to the reversal of the El Nino effect. So why is it that when so much rain is falling on our city, the government’s response is to ignore the rain and behave as though Sydney is in the middle of a desert? Apparently it’s not rain that is falling from the sky. Apparently we are in the middle of a drought and will be now and forever and we must spend billions of dollars of taxpayers money on a massively over priced, environmentally devastating white elephant. What are the alternatives? Has Morris ever thought that we ought to have water tanks on all of the new McMansions being built. Such urban sprawl is exacerbated by his government’s planning policies. Has Morris ever thought that perhaps we ought to collect storm water? For those of us that walk up Foveaux Street every day, we can attest to the fact that there is an awful lot of storm water to collect. No – none of these are adequate for the New South Wales government – they must choose the absolutely most expensive, least efficient course of action. A report has recently shown that storm water collection, grey water recycling and domestic water tanks would be far more effective in addressing Sydney’s water shortage and moreover would be less expensive than the desalination plant. In addition to this we have now heard that more pollution is affecting major catchments for Sydney’s water supply and Giardia has once again been detected. I was recently in Bowral, where the local community are very concerned by State government plans to divert water resources away from the local community to Sydney – exacerbating the problem of water supply for those communities surrounding Bowral. Other states aren’t doing too well on the water supply front either. Toowoomba rejected the idea of recycled water – the only practical way they are going to actually solve their water supply problems and the State Government is building a damn that is so shallow that water probably won’t be able to be harvested properly and the facility will also suffer greatly from seepage. Queenslanders know that this is just a politically motivated half measure – so today the state government have announced that Brisbane’s water problems will be solved with bore water. We can wait to hear about the disaster that this may prove to be. The Victorian government doesn’t seem to want to talk about water except to bring in more restrictions. Considering that the Victorian government simply falls from one self-induced crisis to another, this is hardly surprising. A lovely couple that I know in Melbourne are installing their own water tank so that they can recycle grey water. If only the State Government had as much initiative as they do. As per usual it will probably fall to individual initiative to solve this problem.

This week has seen a very prominent role for Noel Pearson, a leader amoungst Cape York aboriginal communities, Director of the Cape York Institute for Policy and Leadership and long term indigenous activist. I recently saw a documentary about Noel Pearson on Australian Story and so I was not entirely insensible to his view on what the solutions are to the dire problems that face our indigenous peoples. Noel Pearson has advocated for self-determination for Indigenous people and criticised approaches that keep Indigenous people dependent on welfare and disempowered in the name of "progressive" policies. His most recent publication – From Hand Out to Hand Up – is a re-statement of his beliefs that aboriginals should not be encouraged to live on welfare for the rest of their lives. Instead they should be encouraged and empowered to take full advantage of the economic opportunities that the rest of us are now taking for granted. Such views should be applauded. We should have a vision of aboriginal people fully participating in our society. Why can’t they run their own construction companies? Why can’t they be lawyers in the top law firms? Why can’t they be small business owners? Why can’t they be home owners and share holders? There is no intrinsic reason why with the right opportunities and right training, they can’t be. Pearson attacks those who in a patronizing fashion pretend that indigenous communities can simply live in their native state – as though the rest of the world was not moving on. He attacks those who believe in enforcing welfare dependence with no conditions. This new report is about breaking the cycle of dependency, encouraging home ownership and stopping the physical and sexual abuse of children in aboriginal communities. The Prime Minister has today announced that no alcohol or pornography will be allowed into remote aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. That action is about addressing those practical issues that are holding aboriginal communities back. Indeed, practical measures are the most important measures when addressing this issue. Motherhood statements and symbolic gestures are a poor half measure and do nothing to improve the health and welfare of the one group in our society which is still living in third world conditions. Whilst I acknowledge that Pearson can only speak for one of the many aboriginal communities around the country, nevertheless, I believe that his policy prescriptions can be applied to most indigenous Australians. I think that Pearson is a man of vision who has, through bitter experience, found what he believes to be the solution to the social issues facing aboriginals today. Our federal politicians, including the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, Mal Brough, are right to sit up and take notice of his opinions.

Well it has finally been confirmed that Alex Hawke (who unlike some of his more progressive Liberal colleagues is ardently and actively opposed to gay rights) has won preselection for the ultra-safe Liberal seat of Mitchell in Sydney’s north-west. Alex has held various different posts in the electoral offices of disgraced former member for Parramatta, Ross Cameron, Senator The Hon. Helen Coonan and now controversial religious right MLC David Clarke. Alex briefly held a position at Woolworths I believe, and may have done some odd office jobs for a friend of Ross Cameron, but apart from that he has never held any position that did not involve working in and around one or other of our Parliaments. Later this year Alex Hawke will become the next in a long line of staffers to get elected to Parliament. He will be in good company among the many on the opposing side of the House who have come from offices of MPs. When parliaments were first conceived as representative bodies, I’m sure that our founding fathers had in mind a body that was full of people from all walks of life – lawyers and accountants certainly, but also labourers, soldiers and businessmen (it was only men in those days who could get elected). In those days the idea was that democracy would be representative democracy. I don’t believe that it was anybody’s intention that the vast majority of those in Parliament should be people who have only had experience working for other parliamentarians. After all, does anybody want to be governed by a group of people whose only life skill is writing a press release? Nowadays however, safe seats have become the personal fiefdoms of apparatchiks. When Kelly Hoare (a former staffer) was axed from her safe Labor seat of Charlton to make way for Greg Combet (a union official who probably only knew a few weeks ago where Charlton actually is), she said that it was unfair because she was a single mum and needed the job to support herself, as though being in parliament was an entitlement for her and not a privilege given to her by the voters in her electorate. It was as though she was speaking about her right to sit in the House of Lords not the Australian House of Representatives. The arrogance on this topic is the same for many of those who sit in Parliament and know that because of the swing required to unseat them, they will never actually have to do anything for their electorate to be elected. As a result, can we be sure that the people who are elected actually reflect who we are and what we believe in? This lack of representation is in part due to the fact that our democracy is less participatory that perhaps it should be. Apathy is the dominant political and religious force in Australia –as a result the political parties are ripe for stacking, since they are only partially populated with people who actually care. If apathy is so dominant, then the reality is that there is no solution since most people who perhaps started to read this article, have probably stopped reading it. However, for those of you that are still reading – I am going to ask a question. What makes you tick? What annoys you? Are you frustrated that your bus comes late in the morning and when it does come it doesn’t let you on because there are too many passengers? Are you annoyed when you go to the emergency ward of a hospital with a loved one and aren’t even acknowledged for eight hours? Do you feel angry when you realise that as a gay or lesbian professional, you are subsidising the breeding habits of heterosexual couples in this country and yet you can’t even combine your income with your partner’s for tax purposes? Do you feel threatened when you walk the streets of the city at night? These are political issues. If you have gripes or complaints similar to these and you don’t do anything about them, then the reality is, your apathy is only going to encourage neglect and more of the same. Apathy is going to allow people who are not representative of you or your views to get elected. Politics affects our every day lives and those who are elected to represent us are charged with the responsibility of fixing these and other problems, and they have a responsibility also to reflect their constituents’ views on these issues. Too often nowadays however, we have in our Parliaments career politicians. These are people who have only ever wanted to be in politics and have never wanted to do anything else at all. The issues they raise are issues designed to resonate with certain groups that are important in getting them elected. They have not gained their willingness to serve through bitter personal experience of dealing with government – rather – they saw themselves up on the podium from a very early age regardless of any issue that might be important to the people they always assumed would vote them into office. Accountability is at a high level because of journalists and many community activist groups, but clearly that doesn’t seem to be enough. Too often journalists pick on the little things about politicians and fail to see the elephants in the living room. Some people get involved in politics just because one issue or one cause that really gets them fired up. They suddenly find themselves in leadership positions. We can all be like that if we stop suffering in silence on so many issues and actually get up on our feet to be counted. Decisions are made by the people who actually turn up. Activism really is the only way to make our democracy representative of what we want. What are you doing to take back our democracy from the apparatchiks?

Those of you who have read the age today may have come across a particularly unsophisticated article on the subject of an Australian republic from Catherine Deveny called "I want to die in the Independent Republic of Australia." In it Ms Deveny says that she cringes with embarrassment that Australia is part of the commonwealth and has the Queen’s head on its coins. She says she is ashamed when she meets foreigners and tries to explain that the Queen of England is our Queen too. She says that we are still part of the Empire and that we are not independent. I would suggest that she get to work on reading some Australian constitutional law. She might want to start with the case of Sue v Hill 1999 CLR 462. The circumstances of that case were that Heather Hill had been elected to the Australian Senate. Hill was a dual citizen of Australia and the United Kingdom. However, under section 44 of the constitution no person can be elected to either house of Federal Parliament if they are a citizen of a foreign power. Hill argued that the United Kingdom is not a foreign power. The High Court decided otherwise, pointing out the fact that the United Kingdom no longer had any legislative, executive or judicial power over the Commonwealth of Australia. Federation in 1901, the Westminster Statutes and the Australia Acts of 1986 established Australia’s total legal independence. The United Kingdom is a foreign power. Whilst we share the same monarch, the monarch is not to us the Queen of the United Kingdom, instead she is the Queen of Australia. This shared monarchy arrangement has been the case since 1929. Apart from her total ignorance of how the Australian constitution works, I find it more offensive perhaps, that she is so ashamed to be an Australian simply because of the fact that we have a Monarchy. Is she aware of the fact that some of the most economically developed and strongest democracies in the world are Monarchies – Japan, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Spain, The Netherlands and Belgium for instance? Is she aware that whilst we have an arrangement whereby we share a monarch with the United Kingdom, we also share that same monarch with Canada – a country with a similar constitutional history to our own? Ms Deveny says that we cannot pretend to be a player in the world or sit at major international forums if we still have the Queen as our head of state. Does she think the same of Canada – a nation that is part of the G8 and a nation which is at the table at most international forums? If Ms Deveny thinks that is so embarrassing and shameful that we have a monarchy, perhaps she might want to ask the thousands of immigrants who come to our shore every year, whether it phases them. If it is so shameful and embarrassing to be a citizen of a country with a monarch, why are so many people signing up so willingly to take part in that shame and embarrassment? She might want to ask the same question of the thousands that go to Canada as well – after all their population has been massively swollen by immigration. The republic is in fact a total non-issue – a favourite of the café latte brigade. The ALP made it part of their agenda in the late 70’s as a very arrogant over-reaction to the dismissal of Whitlam. Then Paul Keating pushed the issue in the 90s because he wanted to replace the disastrous unemployment figures on the front page of every newspaper with a distraction. People on both sides of politics from that era fell for that one hook line and sinker. People who were in their twenties in the 90s seem always to be republican. However, interestingly enough, those who are in their twenties or teens now don’t actually care. I spoke to a nineteen year old recently about the issue. I asked her if she was ashamed to be an Australian because we had a Queen. She said that to her it didn’t matter. It wasn’t an earth shattering irregularity that had to be corrected at all costs as hysterical republicans like Ms Deveny seem to think. Ms Deveny says that she doesn’t care what sort of process we have to select a president, she doesn’t care what constitution we have – just so long as we don’t have the Queen. So not only does she not know the current constitution, she has given no real thought to how the constitution would work if we got rid of our current constitution. It is no more than a symbolic gesture. To me, as a patriotic Australian, I find this to be an affront. We are not America, we are not China, we are not a tin pot dictatorship in Africa. We are Australia and as a product of our history of peace and democracy we have repeatedly chosen to be a monarchy. The system that we have has evolved over decades from a time when we were a single crown colony to being an independent nation of twenty one million people. We do not need to look to the constitution of any other nation to find our own identity – we are unique. To that extent, the monarchy is in fact a very Australian expression of our independence. It is certainly true that very few countries have this kind of arrangement. It is true that we share a monarch. But does that diminish our nation’s worth? What would diminish our nation is if we decide on the basis of every whim of those who like to make symbolic gestures to change our national symbols, to adopt constitution after constitution, to change our national anthem every few years and base patriotism on mere fashion and how our constitution fares on the catwalks of international constitutional glamour. That really would make us a banana republic.

Last year I had the pleasure of visiting Italy. It was a great experience. I was able to see all the Ancient Roman monuments, the basilicas and historic sites. I got to visit some of the places that I had been reading about since I was a teenager. As my bus crossed La Fuime Tevere, I was exhilarated by seeing the Castello San Angello. It felt like the stuff that dreams are made of. But, I have to say that the trip was to some extent a little spoilt by the fact that no matter where I went food and service were over priced and poor quality. Every basilica I saw had at least a dozen beggars outside it. I was the victim of a pick pocket. Wherever I went everything looked tired, roads had pot holes in them, footpaths were uneven and not properly maintained. Public transport was even worse than in Sydney (I didn’t think that this was possible). In short, I came away with the impression that I was in soviet Russia and not Western Europe. I was speaking to a Greek immigrant last year who had come to Australia in the very week that I was speaking to him. He said that I would have experienced something similar in Greece. He said that he had to come to Australia because there were so few opportunities in Europe at the moment. Italy, France, Germany and Greece all have very high unemployment, their growth is stagnant, inflation still high and general living conditions for most citizens are no where near as good as the living conditions here in Australia. Add to that the fact that they don’t get paid as much as we get paid over here. Indeed, Europe depends upon its tourist industry as never before. It depends on the dividends of its past. Tourists are everywhere – they are the life blood of Italy. We are constantly reminded of how Australia is going. The economy is growing at a rate of around 3.8% (its actually growing at over 10% in WA – which, to put it in context, is a faster rate than China). Unemployment is down to 4.2%. I can remember, when I was ten or eleven thinking that 10% unemployment was normal. When I heard people talk about the possibility of unemployment below 4%, I thought that they were kidding themselves. I thought that it simply wasn’t possible. Australia is booming. Most of Europe is not. Why is that? Could it be perhaps because of the fiscal discipline of this government and the micro economic reforms both of this government and the last government? Most analysts would say yes. The fact of the matter is that business does not thrive in high regulation, high taxing environments. If, as a businessman you find that you cannot do half the things that you need to do to stay in business you will not stay in business. Simple as that. And if you decide to stay in business and most of your profits are taken off you ‘for the greater good’, you will have little incentive to keep a business going. Europeans have started to recognise this. Most recently in France where Nicholas Sarkozy has promised wide ranging economic reforms similar to those implemented by Margaret Thatcher in the UK during the 1980s. He won a landslide election victory a month ago and his party, the UMP, is set to win a crushing victory this Sunday in Parliamentary elections, with some analysts predicting that the opposition Socialist Party will be reduced to a small rump within the National Assembly. The reasons given are always the same – France is fed up of non-stop decline, they want to experience the prosperity that market based reforms can bring. Australia has been implementing these market based reforms now since about 1983. Since 1996 those reforms have been accelerated. The most recent and some would argue perhaps the most successful reform has been WorkChoices. This legislation which amends the Workplace Relations Act 1996, has meant that employers and employees can decide for themselves how they wish to contract (always underpinned by a safety net – the Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard). The result has been a massive boost in the labour market. Indeed, the pace with which jobs are being created is quite startling. Yet, there are those who wish to reverse the progress that Australia has made in terms of freeing up things. They wish to bind businesses and individuals up in red tape again. They cite ‘fairness’ as being their reason. In this context ‘fairness’ is nothing but an abstract concept, since it can hardly be fair to shut thousands out of the labour market. Each and every micro economic reform be it deregulation of the banking industry, floating of the dollar, privatisation, the GST, WorkChoices, competition policy or trade liberalisation has always been opposed on the left. They always argue that the nameless faceless mass of people which they constantly refer to as ‘the poor’ will be worse off. The story that we are told when we go out to eat, when we do our grocery shopping, when we get our phone bill, when we go to work is quite a different one from what we have constantly been told by the left. The social dividend that we have reaped from letting the market decide has been incredible. Most social studies will tell you the same story – poverty is in decline. Europe has started to ask the question – why keep on flogging the same old dead socialist horse? The question for Australia should be – why impishly imitate the failures of others?

The federal government has recently released the latest inter-generational report, which sets out the progress we are making in dealing with the impending crisis likely to occur as a result of the ageing population. In it was a clear indication that there has been an increase in Australia’s fertility rates over the past few years. For any of us that have been to a shopping centre lately, this would not be news. It seems every heterosexual couple in the country is breeding at the moment. This increase in fertility can be partially explained by government policy. From 1996 onwards the Howard government has progressively rewarded couples that have children, to the point that now, if you are a couple that has three children, you pay zero net tax. Why? Because in twenty years time we are going to be in desperate need of tax payers – and a lot of them. By some estimates, two thirds of the population that doesn’t work will be being supported by the one third of the population that does. The effect will be budget deficits of upwards of $40 billion per year if more tax payers aren't found. But where does all this largesse leave the rest of us who are not breeders. Whilst we have had enormous tax cuts – indeed tax cuts that we can actually feel, some of us still don’t like subsidising the lifestyle of those that we will never be able to emulate. Is middle class welfare really the way toward softening the effects of an ageing population? Might I suggest another idea? Skilled migration. Bring back the “ten pound pom” scheme. In my previous column on the immigration debate, I said that I thought that we needed a system of assisted migration to Australia. In that article, I cited as the reason, that there is a massive labour shortage. That remains the case. However, the other reason is because if we were to bring in thousands of workers from across the world into our country, many of whom would be in their 20s and 30s, we could ensure that when the ageing population crisis actually hits, we will have plenty of migrants working and paying taxes at the prime of their working lives. This would have much the same effect budgetarily as increasing our fertility rates without the need for hand outs. I think that those of us who are single, pay large amounts of tax and are never likely to have children don’t feel as though we should have to pay for childcare, tax cuts and un-means tested unrequited transfers for those heterosexual couples who decide to breed.

Contrary to popular perceptions of our country internationally and internally, Australia is in fact a country that is thirsty for immigrants. We need people to come to Australia more than ever because we have desperate labour shortages in key areas, where our export markets live or die. Indeed, we are letting immigrants into the country in record numbers. But it’s not enough. Recently a report found that due to the mining boom in Queensland, there would be a massive shortage of short term plantation labour come harvest time. I can well believe that. I was recently speaking to a friend of mine who said that he had recently sent an employee off to see a contractor about something in a mining town in Queensland. He never came back – he was offered a salary package he could not sanely refuse. So what are we doing about this amazing thirst that we have for labour? There are massive contradictions in our system that seems to be self defeating. On the one hand we have refugee camps full of people who have come to Australia desperately seeking a better life and who are now locked up doing nothing in a forced state of indolence, whilst on the other we have farmers that are worried they won’t be able to harvest their next crop and miners who can’t get precious metals out of the ground fast enough to cope with demand. I was recently struck by a story I heard about a gay couple from Algeria seeking refuge in Australia. One of them was approved for entry into Australia on the basis that he was gay and therefore was at risk of being put to death in his native land, but his partner was refused on the ground that it was not accepted that he was gay and in a relationship with the other man, even though his statement about his relationship with his partner had been the evidence upon which his partner’s case was based. This is a bit of a bureaucratic farce if you ask me. Both of them are skilled and ready to contribute to the Australian workforce and they both have valid reasons for wanting to come to Australia. Moreover, they have done so not by coming here on a boat and over staying a tourist visa, but rather by legitimate means. If we are to solve Australia’s labour shortage these are precisely the sort of people that we have to encourage to come to our country. Surely, what we need is some sort of assisted passage scheme similar to the one we had for over twenty years that brought in all the “ten pound poms” including my own parents. We should be making coming to Australia an attractive deal for people. Indeed, having visited a few other countries, I think it is. I could not imagine living in the conditions that people in these other countries have to. Really, we have the best of it all over here in Oz. Studies have proven that we have the best working conditions here in Australia that we have had in literally decades. Take for instance WA. The first industrial agreement signed after WorkChoices came into effect was for a mine in WA that had a base salary for an unskilled and totally inexperienced workers of $2,500.00 per week. Why? Because people in Australia do not want to work down the mines in the middle of the desert. So there has to be an incentive to make them go out there. Why don’t we go into the detention centres and say to these potential Australians – “We’ll let you out of the detention centres, if you go and work on plantations, farms or mines in rural areas”? Is it just me that has seen this potential source of labour? Surely everyone would be a winner.

I wasn’t going to comment on the latest scandal to engulf the ALP, but I have come to the conclusion that since so many small business people have been victimized by the ALP, it is time to pipe up. The ALP has hunted down any employer that has even a slightly controversial AWA (Australian Workplace Agreement) regime in the workplace. But there is not a single worker under an AWA that has been underpaid. Why? Because in order to get an AWA certified by the Office of the Employment Advocate it has to pass intense scrutiny from a government watchdog. An employer has to be able to demonstrate that the AWA passes the Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard – the basic minimum which all certified employment contracts must satisfy. Common law contracts however are not scrutinized. Indeed, if I wanted to employ someone, I could simply write up a one page contract and I could potentially write any terms into it that I wanted. They might well be below award conditions, or even below the Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard. Yet my employee would work under that contract and may do so without knowing that they are getting screwed. If the employee never asks the Office of Workplace Services to investigate, this could go on for the entire course of his or her employment. However, assuming that the employee did find out. What then? There would be an investigation by the Office of Workplace Services (a fairness watchdog set up by the Howard government). But, the employee could also sue in common law, if that employee had thousands of dollars to spend on legal fees. None of this can happen on an AWA. If an employer tries to register an AWA with the Office of the Employment Advocate which contains prohibited content or conditions which are under the Australian Fair Pay and Conditions Standard, that employer could be liable for fines up to $33,000. The employees at Therese Rein’s company were given common law contracts where the rates under the contract were actually below the rates they were entitled to under the relevant Award for their industry. Now, whenever this is mentioned by the ABC, they keep on using the word ‘inadvertent’ to describe the mistake. I really wish they would stop making that assumption. Whilst, I don’t make any assumption to the contrary – I just prefer to work on evidence. For my own part, if I was an employer and I wanted to employ people on a common law contract, there is no way in Hell that I would offer that contract without the full knowledge of what the relevant rates were equal to or above the Award (if there was one). So my advice to Therese Rein is – before you sell your business – sack your HR staff – they’re obviously not doing their job. The ALP have shown great hypocrisy on this issue for two reasons. The first is that Therese Rein is married to Kevin Rudd. That’s obvious. The second and perhaps to some more subtle, is that the ALP wants to introduce collective agreements including collective common law contracts instead of AWAs as a way of solidifying union dominance in the workplace. Common law contracts have recently been a way for unions to circumvent the prohibited content provisions in the Workplace Relations Act 1996. Thus, in the ALP’s mind, any suggestion that a common law contract could be in any way inferior to an AWA cannot be allowed to stand. Employers who employ people under the heavily scrutinised AWA system are demonised. Yet this one employer who underpaid workers under totally unscrutinised common law contracts, is free from any criticism. Once again we see that the ALP are not friends of the workers – they are only friends to their union buddies.