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The Libertarian Solution To Offshoring’s Inevitable Dilemma

By
Nicholas Samios
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2

Libertarian principles support free labour markets, highlighting the benefits of voluntary transactions and flexible negotiations for driving economic growth. However, excessive government intervention can restrict labour market freedom and limit economic opportunities, leading businesses to resort to offshoring as a cost-saving measure.

This article does not criticise offshoring itself; instead, it explores the unintended consequences of government policies that result in a highly leveraged workforce. Similar to the risks and benefits of high levels of debt to a household, leveraging the domestic labour force with an offshore workforce can have parallel effects on an economy.

When a family home carries a high mortgage, it brings prosperity when interest rates are low, employment is abundant, and house prices rise. In such conditions, debt can contribute to personal wealth. However, if one or both parents lose their jobs, they may be forced to sell their home in a depressed market, erasing their financial wealth.

Similarly, excessive financial leverage within businesses can be perilous during a recession. As economic conditions worsen, companies burdened with high debt may struggle to meet their financial obligations, leading to layoffs and business failures.

Could an economy’s reliance on offshoring be as dangerous during a recession as high financial leverage for households or businesses? Are there parallels? Before delving into these questions, it’s important to note that no study or discourse has compared offshoring as workforce leverage to financial leverage, nor quantified the extent of workforce leverage in Australia.

Offshoring often results in job losses within the domestic labour market as companies move operations abroad to reduce costs. This leads to higher unemployment rates, reduced consumer spending, and a contraction in the local economy. Moreover, heavy reliance on offshoring creates a dependency on foreign labour markets, making the domestic workforce more vulnerable during a recession.

Offshoring can contribute to economic imbalances within a country. When a significant portion of a nation’s industries or sectors are offshored, the domestic economy becomes overly reliant on a narrow range of activities. During a recession, a downturn in these offshored industries can have knock-on effects and cause an economic downturn that affects the broader population.

Drawing a parallel, when leverage against an asset is high, it is the equity that is most at risk. In the case of the family home, if parents have borrowed $800,000 against a $1,000,000 property and the market experiences a 20% decline, the asset loses only 10%, but the equity of the parents is halved (10%/20%).

In the event of a recession, the “equity” in the workforce equation is our domestic workforce. Cost-cutting measures are likely to begin with expensive Australian workers rather than cheaper offshore workers, especially when the offshore workers are not subject to the same regulations as the domestic workforce. As a result, a small percentage drop in the combined workforce (onshore and offshore) could lead to a much larger decline in the local workforce, similar to how a downturn in the property market disproportionately destroys a homeowner’s equity.

Libertarian Solution: Free Labour Markets:

Libertarians propose that free labour markets, unrestricted by excessive regulations, provide a more sustainable solution to reduce the need for offshoring. Here’s how free labour markets can positively impact the economy and reduce the risks inherent in a highly leveraged domestic workforce:

1. Optimised Operations and Increased Productivity:

A free labour market encourages domestic businesses to focus on optimising their operations and improving productivity. By reducing regulations and bureaucratic barriers, companies can compete more effectively, leading to increased domestic production, job creation, and economic growth.

2. Incentives for Investment and Innovation:

Free labour markets foster an environment that incentivises investment and innovation – domestically. When businesses can freely negotiate wages and working conditions with locally domiciled workers, they are more likely to invest in research and development, adopt new technologies, and enhance productivity. This promotes economic resilience and reduces the need to offshore operations to access lower-cost labour.

Humility At The End of The Rainbow

By
Lionel Orellana
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0

Since the middle of 2020, while everyone was busy with pandemic matters, the ACT, Queensland, and Victorian governments passed laws to ban the practice of “conversion therapy”. Victoria’s Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act 2021[1] is the most comprehensive of these. These laws have been lauded as important steps in protecting the freedom of LGBTQI+ Australians. Other states will inevitably follow suit and national legislation is already on the agenda.

In the Orwellian dystopia in which we find ourselves, it’s important to clarify what “conversion therapy” means. “Conversion therapy” is anything that goes against the affirmation of someone’s sexual orientation or, crucially, their subjective gender identity. It can include – we are told – forms of abuse like beatings, electrocution, forced medication, castration, lobotomy and clitoridectomy.

Freedom from torture, inhumane or degrading treatment is protected in human rights legislation across Australia. So why was new legislation really needed? On the website dedicated to the CSPP Act, the Victorian government has kindly provided a section “For families and friends”. It informs us that “it is against the law to try to change or suppress someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity”. There is a handy list of examples of prohibited practices, of which the first two are:

  • a parent denying their child access to any health care services that would affirm their child’s gender identity.
  • a parent refusing to support their child’s request for medical treatment that will prevent physical changes from puberty.

In another section we are informed that criminalised conversion practices also include “people receiving subtle and repeated messages, that with faith and effort, they can change or hide their sexual orientation or gender identity.”

It goes as far as listing what can be said in prayer and what cannot.

Until very recently “psychotherapy involved helping the child to feel more comfortable in their own body with the belief that gender is quite malleable at a young age and gender dysphoria will likely resolve itself over time” [2].  This has now become a criminal offence.

More disturbingly, the same people that condemn prayer, psychotherapy, and genuine parental concern, are more than happy to promote radically dangerous practices when they are performed on children in the name of gender affirmation.

So-called affirmation treatments include:

  1. Puberty suppression drugs, administered by intramuscular injection every 3 months, even though no drugs have been approved by the TGA for treatment of gender dysphoria.
  2. A lifetime of dependence on cross-sex hormones to develop secondary characteristics of the opposite sex (e.g., testosterone to cause a girl’s voice to deepen).
  3. Surgery. Options for males include facial feminization (nose reshaping, tracheal shave, cheek implants, etc), body feminization (trunk liposuction, buttocks augmentation), breast implants and “penile inversion”, where the penis is turned inside out to form the inner walls of a “neo vagina”.  Options for females include double mastectomies and phalloplasty, a procedure that involves taking skin, fat, nerves and arteries from an arm or leg to create a penis.

Like many other issues of our time, we are supposed to believe the science is settled: gender affirmative interventions are always, unquestionably, in the best interest of the child.

Nothing is further from the truth. A 2023 study from The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, NSW, concluded that “the evidence-base pertaining to the gender-affirming medical pathway is sparse and, for the young people who may regret their choice of pathway at a future point in time, the risks for potential harm are significant.”[3]

Osteoporosis is a known risk of puberty suppression, but very little is known about the long-term effects of stopping the natural process of growth. Cross-sex hormones are associated with cardiovascular disease and blood clots. Their impact on fertility and sexual function is still not well understood. Not surprisingly, there can be significant complications with major surgical interventions offered as gender-affirming “care”. Finland, Sweden, Norway, France, and the UK have placed severe restrictions or banned these practices on minors altogether.

It’s hard to image how anyone could support such barbarism. Yet the perversely misleading “conversion ban” laws promote these discredited radical interventions. Such laws are not based on the best available science but reflect the influence of Queer Theory[4] ideologues, convinced beyond any doubt that children can (and should) bypass the perils of puberty and mould their bodies into whatever shape they want, in an impossible quest to become something that they are not. Like all irrational crusaders, they use state coercion to impose their views.

As the hubristic celebrations of Pride Month come to an end, we can only pray for our political leaders to find the humility to change course.

[1] https://www.humanrights.vic.gov.au/change-or-suppression-practices/about-the-csp-act/

[2] Gender questioning children and family law: an evolving landscape. Paper for the Australian Family Law profession. Belle Lane.

[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9955757/

[4] https://guides.library.illinois.edu/queertheory/background

Cut Taxes To 20%

By
Bob Day
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0

It goes without saying that rules and sanctions should be clearly specified in advance so people know how they are supposed to behave and what will happen to them if they don’t.  Also, importantly, rules must apply equally to everybody.

But the rules governing tax liabilities have become so tangled and complex that nobody can be sure any longer what they are or how they will apply in any given case. And behind the vast volume of laws – the actual legislation – looms an equally massive array of ATO public determinations, public rulings, bulletins, interpretative decisions, policy papers, circulars, administrative guidelines and practice statements. Some of these are supposed to be binding on ATO officers, and in general ATO staff rely on them rather than on the legislation. In practice that gives them something close to the force of law.

But the ATO no longer simply implements a known set of rules; it develops and amends the rules case by case. In effect, the ATO makes its own rules. As a consequence, we have tax laws which have lost their intelligibility, certainty and predictability. It is not real law as we’ve come to understand that term.

The resulting attitude of many taxpayers is to treat the law and the courts as irrelevant. “Forget legal advice, just give me an ATO ruling that will protect me from penalties or prosecution,” they say. Many taxpayers, of course, just surrender and pay up.

Systems which are complex in their application, debilitating in the sense that the more you earn the less of each dollar you keep, and unfair and unreasonable in the sense that people feel penalized for working, are destined to fail in the long term.

Take Australia’s cash economy, estimated at 15 percent of GDP, one of the largest in the developed world. An underground economy of that magnitude requires the involvement not only of a lot of businesses, but also of millions of consumers. As we know, laws only work when people believe in them; clearly a lot of Australians have no respect for our tax laws.

Despite what many advocating increases in tax would have us believe, the total tax take in Australia is quite high. Some say that compared with other developed economies, Australia is a ‘low tax’ country, and that workers and companies could comfortably pay more. This is ridiculous. When it comes to taxing incomes, Australia is right up there with the Europeans and way ahead of most of our neighbours in the Asia-Pacific region.

High tax rates undermine enterprise and destroy the will to work.

You don’t have to be a Laffer Curve true believer to accept that behavioural response is a reality. When you add to this the corrosive effect on the moral relationship between the state and its citizens, the case for fundamental tax reform becomes even more compelling.

There comes a point when the prospect of giving up half or more of any additional earnings leads people to decide that it is simply not worth it.

Taxation then starts to produce gross inefficiencies as people stop working as much or as hard as they used to, and governments find their taxes are not producing the revenue they expected. Politicians and bureaucrats who lack real world experience and an understanding of how an economy and markets work are drawn into a vicious spiral, jacking up tax rates to try to compensate for the falling revenues that their high tax demands have created.

Similarly, many on welfare reject opportunities to work because of the punitive effect that small earnings and high tax rates have on the security of their benefits and the value of extra work.

And people on very low incomes fare worst of all, for as they increase their earnings, higher rates of income tax combine with the loss of means-tested benefits deprive them of up to 80 cents of every extra dollar they earn.

If we are to extricate ourselves from this dysfunctional system, the goodwill of the public needs to be restored by getting tax levels back to something which most people would see as reasonable. To achieve this, we need to remove one of the most significant tax avoidance avenues and align personal tax rates with company tax rates.

There is certainly a pressing need to reduce the current company tax rate (25% for companies with turnover below $50m, 30% above that). I accept it can’t be done overnight, but the Government would do well to start cutting the rate by one percentage point in this Budget, and then announce its intention to make a similar reduction every year while in office. That would hold out the prospect of a 20 per cent company tax rate and, if it is really serious about an internationally competitive tax system, a 20% personal tax rate.

Nobody enjoys paying taxes but in the 1950s and 1960s, relatively low taxation and a comparatively simple set of tax rules meant that most people paid what was due without too much complaint. Today, however, the Government and the ATO find themselves locked into a destructive relationship of repression and resistance with ordinary taxpayers. Where people can avoid tax by exploiting loopholes, they will do so; where they can’t eg PAYG taxpayers, they become resentful at the unfairness of it all.

Moira Deeming And The Shrinking Church

By
Jordan Dittloff
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0

As former Senator David Leyonhjelm adroitly explained in his recent article Libertarians And Conservatives: Similar But Different, there are both shared interests and fundamental differences between libertarians (or classical liberals) and conservatives.

For decades, the Liberal Party sought to balance these tensions, referring to itself internally as a “broad church”. As a libertarian who was once a Young Liberal and enthusiastically involved in the Liberal Party at all levels, I took pride in feeling that (while often at the margins) there was a place for libertarian ideas alongside conservative ones.

So why is it that party members from both sides of the Liberal Party’s twin political heritage are looking at it with increasing dismay,
and abandoning it in greater numbers than ever before?

Over the past month I have heard two descriptions of the Liberal Party that were remarkably similar, from people who had not had an opportunity to compare notes.

Libertarian Party MLC John Ruddick described the modern Liberal Party as “a once great manor house, that still looks good from the outside, but has fallen into disrepair, with the carpets and curtains decaying inside”.

Less than a day later, twenty-year Liberal Party member and now a Libertarian Party member, Gideon Rozner said, “The Liberal Party today… it’s like when you go to a tennis or sports club, and the club rooms are a mess and the facilities in disrepair”.

Simply put, the Party is rapidly ceasing to exist as an entity made up of grassroots members that exist outside of parliaments.

The Moira Deeming saga epitomises the identity crisis the parliamentary Liberal Party faces.

Having lost the compass points of both libertarian and conservative values,
the modern Liberal leadership finds itself adrift in a sea of woke intersectional tides.

Pesutto, like the dying days of the Napthine government in 2014, is desperately trying to appease a vocal section of the electorate which will never vote for him no matter how much he virtue signals to win their favour.

In 2014, Denis Napthine led the Victorian Liberal Party into what was meant to be an unlosable re-election for a second term after 14 years in opposition following the defeat of Jeff Kennet in 1996.

His campaign slogan was ‘Jobs and growth’. Victorian voters were faced with a choice between Pepsi or Pepsi-Max, and perhaps unsurprisingly they chose Pepsi.

By turning a disagreement between himself and a first term backbencher into an existential challenge to his leadership, Pesutto has made it clear that the modern Liberal Party is not in the business of ideas.

Party members, libertarians and conservatives alike, rightly see Moira Deeming’s exile as a proxy for the treatment they could expect if they expressed the wrong kind of ideas, or any at all. 

As a libertarian in the Liberal Party, I used to rationalise my continued participation as “helping to make the party better” and “changing from within”. Looking back on that time honestly, I wanted to have good ideas, but wasn’t prepared to sacrifice political power or a future political career to defend them.

Several first term MLCs who were in my graduating class of Young Liberal aspiring politicians voted to expel Moira Deeming, likely not because they thought it was right but because they felt dissent would have killed their political future.

In the current state of the Liberal Party in Victoria, they were probably correct, and the lesson for grassroots members should be to seek political homes that welcome their ideas, rather than silence them. 

A secondary lesson for those outside of major party politics, is that while there is much to be gained from co-operation between those with different ideas but shared interests, there is just as much to lose by believing in nothing except winning elections.

VIDEO: Great Moments In Unexpected Consequences

By
Kenelm Tonkin
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0

[insert video]

14 Reasons To VOTE NO In The Voice To Parliament Referendum

By
Kenelm Tonkin
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0

On Monday 19 June 2023, the Australian Senate passed a bill for a referendum to occur later in the year to establish a constitutionally-enshrined Voice to Parliament.

In short, and especially for our subscribers outside Australia, the Voice proposal is for a consultative body – let’s be blunter and say it’s a representative body – to which all federal government policies and legislation impacting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders will be referred for consideration.

The battle for and against is now formally engaged.

Here are 14 reasons Australians should vote against the proposal.

1. Systemic Racism

Libertarians are Australia’s leaders against racism. We reject collectivism of any kind and judge individuals on the content of their character, not the colour of their skin or any other group attribute. Labor and the Greens are seeking to introduce a procedural body into the legislative process based on race, hints of Caucasian rule in Rhodesia or South Africa. The Left’s much hackneyed phrase of ‘systemic racism’ applies. If it’s part of the system and it’s based on race, guess what? It’s systemic racism.

Libertarians say Vote No.

And frankly, that’s sufficient reason.

But I have 13 more reasons …

2. Fractious Treaties

Supporters of the proposal have said the next step after a Voice are formal treaties. It’s a slippery slope. Freedom House says there are only 17 genuinely free nations in a world of 197 countries and that Australia is one of them. As a libertarian, I’d like to keep it as free as possible. That’s not compatible with negotiating treaties with 500 ethno-state ‘First Nations’, as woke activists now strategically call this part of our citizenry.

3. Communist Mastermind

The author of the Voice To Parliament is Thomas Mayo. He is a communist, a supporter of an ideology which has thus far killed 100 million people.

Don’t believe that he’s a communist?

Here he is in his own words …

4. Preferential Rents

Ethno-nationalists Senator Lidia Thorpe and Mr Mayo are openly calling for freehold title holders to pay rent to indigenous leadership groups. Will Australian mortgagees and tenants be required to add an indigenous rent?

5. Economic Drag

With the ambiguity on not knowing what the Voice To Parliament will recommend to the Government, will there be new permits required for economic activity.? What grifting black tape will be placed on a business sector already constrained by green and red tape?

6. Impossible Reversal

If the Voice To Parliament, enshrined in the Constitution, became a corrupt rabble like ATSIC, we would not be able to remove it from the Constitution except through another referendum. We’d be stuck with the constitutional vandalism.

7. Ambiguous Scope

As much as we’ve asked, we still have no understanding of the scope of the Voice To Parliament. Will its recommendations be binding on Parliament? What are matters affecting indigenous people? Remote communities? Native title property portfolios? Aboriginal-only businesses? United Nations treaty implications? Australians need to know the scope of this body before voting. We ask. We get no answers.

8. Undefined Structure

How many people will sit on the Voice To Parliament? 5? 18? Will there be one per tribe, so 500 of them? None of us know. Who will be eligible to serve on the Voice? Certainly not all Australians. Again, this is systemic racism in action. How is aboriginality defined? DNA? Statutory declaration? Tribal declaration? Still, no answers.

9. Uncosted

From a standing start, the NDIS now spends more of our hard-earned tax dollars than Medicare and Defence! With form like this and the same people pushing this new proposal, can you imagine the cost of the Voice To Parliament? We’ve asked for a budget. No dice!

10. Ignored Communities

It’s not as if most aboriginal communities on the ground were consulted or were yearning for a Voice To Parliament. Videos are emerging of everyday indigenous citizens explaining that they’ve never heard of a Voice To Parliament.

11. Elitist Gravy Train

The proposal is being pushed by Canberra-based, virtue-signalling, snouts-in-the-trough, activists. Decades of collectivist molly-coddling by Labor has created a gravy-train of the most bloated kind. Woke identitarian activists trying to create an indigenous industry, with all the non-productivity of the old-world European aristocracies.

12. Partisan

This is a Labor and Green project. A weepy-eyed, spend-what-may socialist wet dream. A one-sided wank job.

13. Referendum Funding

To drive home the point, Government is funding the yes campaign while struggling citizens under cost-of-living pressure are expected to fund the no campaign. Equity? Shhhhhh.

14. Ends Reconciliation

The Reconciliation Movement had noble ideals when started. After 20 years, we now see clearly where it is heading. An elite land grab, the fracturing of Australia into ethno-microstates and the distribution of a lot of money for a non-productive industry.

But as I say, none of this matters. It is sufficient reason to Vote No that they are proposing a race-based system.

The moment freedom lovers regain power, a priority must be to repeal s51(xxvi) of the Constitution to end this race-baiting once and for all.

Let The People Set The Limits

By
David Leyonhjelm
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0

Speeding fines are a significant source of revenue for state governments. In 2017, they amounted to more than $1.1 billion Australia wide and are probably higher now.

Speed cameras are a major contributor, particularly the mobile ones. In NSW, between July 2019 and February 2020, less than 18,900 fines worth $3.9 million were issued as a result of mobile speed cameras. Between July 2020 and February 2021, they were nearly 4.5 times that amount. Speeding ticket revenue for offences less than 10km/h over the limit increased from $2.3 million in 2019-2020 to $23.3 million in 2020-2021, coinciding with the government’s decision to remove speed camera warning signs.

This camera took $3 million from Queensland taxpayers on first deployment

Whereas speed limits were once advisory, with drivers expected to drive to the conditions, they now have the status of one of the ten commandments, with fines the price for sinning.

We are repeatedly told by ignorant police and bimbo journalists that road accidents are invariably due to excess speed. There are gory advertisements warning of lifelong injuries, with enforcement via fixed and hidden cameras, double demerits, average speed cameras, aerial monitoring, and highway patrols.

The underlying assumption never varies – below the speed limit is safe, above the limit is not.

Although the degree of correlation is disputed, there is a link between speed and the risk of accidents and injuries. Most people, libertarians included, accept that the roads are shared, and that individual freedom does not extend to harming others. The question is whether that means obeying speed limits.

The public does not necessarily think so. In the absence of visible enforcement or perceived hazards, voluntary compliance with speed limits is low. A 2009 survey found less than 20% of drivers claim to always drive at or under the speed limit. In NSW, of the 1.3 million speeding fines issued by cameras in 2021, 76 per cent were for exceeding the limit by under 10km/h. Outside narrow suburban streets, modestly exceeding the speed limit is rarely seen as a problem.  

Australia has a National Road Safety Strategy, intended to provide a framework for prioritising the road safety activities of federal, state, territory and local governments. It is written by a small group of bureaucrats from each jurisdiction. Relevant ministers sign off on it but have minimal personal input.

For decades, the strategy has had a strong emphasis on speed accompanied by a coercive approach to enforcement. The 2010-2021 strategy, for example, argued for lower speed limits, increased penalties and enforcement that included in-car speed monitoring.

That changed somewhat in the 2021-2030 version. Although it has an objective of zero road deaths by 2050, there is less worshipping at the altar of speed limits. It also concedes that its past objectives have not been achieved. I suspect one of the key bureaucrats has retired.

If the aim is zero road deaths, and speed is the main causation, the obvious solution is to adopt very low speed limits. The problem is, that would be unacceptable to the community. There is an implicit assumption in current speed limits that a certain level of deaths and serious injuries is the price paid for convenient travel. The vision of zero road deaths is not only unobtainable, but irrational.

That raises an interesting question.

When the law says one thing and most people have a different view, which should prevail? And perhaps more to the point, should we have speed limits and,
if yes, who should set them?

Speed limits are currently set by anonymous, unaccountable bureaucrats. Perhaps the most powerful people in Australia, they have substantial influence over how many people should die on our roads. Governments and ministers come and go, but they and their speed limits are always there.

This is massive bureaucratic overreach. It is the public, not bureaucrats, who should determine the trade-off between travel convenience and the road toll. There is even an internationally recognised method of achieving this, known as the 85th percentile formula. Briefly, it involves the temporary removal of speed limits while speeds are monitored. At the conclusion of the period a limit is reimposed at or slightly above the speed at which 85 per cent of drivers travel.

The method is based on the assumption that the large majority of drivers are reasonable and prudent, do not want to crash, and wish to reach their destination in the shortest possible time.

Evidence shows that those who drive above or substantially below speed limits based on the 85th percentile are far more likely to cause accidents. Enforcement directed at those drivers has a positive impact on road safety and enjoys a high level of driver support.

If the public was to become concerned about any increase in road deaths or injuries, this can be expressed through periodic retesting of the 85th percentile.

If the government serves the people rather than vice versa, speed limits should have the approval of most drivers. And instead of being treated like sinful children and a source of revenue, motorists ought to decide what the limits are.

INFOGRAPHIC: The Coercion Wheels

By
Kenelm Tonkin
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0

When consuming the day’s news, I bet you first respond by gut feel.

Everyone does. Human are instinctive beings. Shoot first, ask questions later.

The problem with that was illustrated by the Great Pandemic Overreach of 2020-2022. Fear was weaponised and the world community fell for it.

Some people try to think. As a subscriber of Liberty Itch, you are most likely a disciplined, libertarian thinker. We fight against our natural urges to ‘let rip’ in our political response. We are principled. This sets us apart.

For libertarians to believe in a life free from coercion; to live and let live, and to respond with our minds rather than a gut-based thought-bubble, we need a tool that:

  • identifies all the sources of  power operating in our society;
  • clarifies the methods they use to erode our liberties;
  • shows how our freedoms can be protected when a power centre is neutralised by another centre; and
  • exposes how our liberties are lost when the power centres collude or are weakened.

I have that tool. It’s an infographic. I call it The Coercion Wheels.

Wheel 1 identifies the culprits: the power centres which will coerce you if given half a chance. There are ten culprits operating under two categories.

The first category is government, under which there are five sub-categories:

  1. International;
  2. Legislature;
  3. Executive;
  4. Judiciary; and
  5. Forces.

The second category is non-government, also with five sub-categories:

  1. Business;
  2. Media;
  3. Community;
  4. Crime; and
  5. Individuals.

You will see that the ten sub-categories are further divided into forty coercion culprits. These are the people or groups of people who seek to impose their will on our life and limit our freedoms. They range from the United Nations to our siblings.

To examine the detail, I recommend you print the infographic. It is written from an Australian perspective but subscribers from other countries can substitute their local equivalent for what is represented.

Forty power centres in a liberal democracy like Australia! Forty coercion culprits, each pressuring you with differing amounts of control over your life. Any one or combination of them can curtail your freedoms.

Wheel 2 shows the same sub-categories but with the coercion method used against you and your family. There are a surprising number of them, from Appropriation Increases to Denial of Child Custody, from Wire Taps to Asset Seizure, from Ostracism to Trolling. I’ve listed 103 methods used to impinge upon our rights and freedoms.

Liberal democracies like Australia work best when each power centre is subject to checks and balances by others. This neutralising effect leaves you and me less likely to be subject to coercion.

Here are examples of the checks and balances working:

  • Various churches were plagued by reports of child sexual abuse but could not reform themselves. The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the investigations and final report resulted in criminal proceedings and conviction of priests, and led to structural changes in the Church. On Wheel 1, this is shown as Old Media (24), Federal Ministers (6) and State Judges (14) checking the abuse of power by the Church & Religious Organisations (26).
  • When former CEO of James Hardie Limited was banned from acting as a director for 15 years for failing to provide a duty of care with respect to asbestos diseases, this is State Judges (14) holding Large Corporations (22) accountable on Wheel 1. Another check and balance success.
  • When Political Parties (28) vie for election to the legislature as Federal MHRs and Senators (3) or State MLAs and MLCs (4), each party acts as a check on the others and helps ensure there is a balance of opinion. There are no one party states in a liberal democracy.

Sometimes though, a segment of society may be weak or unwilling to act as a check and balance. At times, a number of power centres collude. This was evident during the Great Pandemic Overreach of 2020-2022:

  • When State Agency Officers (11) and State Police (18) forced the Church and Religious Organisation (26) to shut. Australian churches simply rolled over, such was the force against them. No check or balance, with freedom to worship crushed;
  • When Old Media (24) acted as propagandist for Federal MHRs and Senators (3), State MLAs and MLCs (4), Federal Bureaucrats (8), Federal Agency Officers (9), State Bureaucrats (10), State Agency Officers (11) and State Police (18), and with no power centres in support of our rights, we lost the right to assemble, protest and earn a living. Checks and balances failed.   

These are just some examples.

If liberal democracy feels like it’s on the slide, it is because there is a blurring of interests and collusion between these traditionally separate power centres.

But there is hope.

What is Liberty Itch if not New Media (25) holding the other 39 power centres to account in a freedom-oriented, intelligent way?

Next time you consume the news, rather than rely on gut feel, use The Coercion Wheels to think and analyse. Which power centre is doing the coercing? On whom? How are they doing this? Which power centre needs to balance the coercion so you and your family are not vulnerable?

If libertarians are about freedom from coercion, The Coercion Wheels are a great tool for identifying the power centres which can act against us, the tactics they use, and why we must have them focus on each other and not us.

Maintaining The Rule Of Law During Times Of Crisis

By
Jaimie Stevenson
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0

One of the main safeguards to the rule of law is an independent judiciary. Courts should have the authority to decide cases related to the exercise of emergency powers and remove measures that violate laws or fundamental rights. Judicial review acts as a check of executive power and helps maintain the rule of law.

This point was established long ago during World War II. Liversidge v. Anderson was a case that related to the involuntary detainment of a man at the discretion of the Home Secretary, without trial. The majority judgement upheld the detainment. However, Lord Atkin’s dissenting judgement went on to be regarded as a landmark contribution to the jurisprudence surrounding the tension between executive powers and individual rights in times of crisis. Lord Atkin’s commitment to upholding fundamental legal principles, despite the political climate, has been widely respected and influenced subsequent legal thinking.

Lord Atkin. Leading Australian-born British judge.

In more recent times in Australia, Deputy President of the Fair Work Commission, Lyndall Dean, delivered a powerful, well-reasoned, rational, and factual dissenting judgement that also went against the prevailing political climate. The judgement related to the case of Jennifer Kimber v Sapphire Coast Community Aged Care Ltd [2021] FWCFB 6015. Ms. Kimber, a receptionist at an aged care facility, was dismissed by her employer for refusing to take an influenza vaccine. A majority 2-1 full bench of the Commission affirmed the dismissal, emphasising the significance of Public Health Orders and the obligation of employers to comply.

Ms Dean believed that the majority decision in Ms Kimber’s case was unjust, as it denied her workplace law protections based on a suspicion of anti-vaccination views. Ms Dean argued that even those with anti-vaccination views should be afforded legal protections and highlighted the importance of consent in medical treatments. She criticised coercion, stating that threatening dismissal and the withdrawal of societal participation for refusing a vaccine is incompatible with consent and a breach of fundamental human rights. She opposed the censorship of differing opinions, condemned vaccine mandates as coercive, undemocratic, and unethical, and urged Australians to question current policies and preserve the freedom to engage in scientific inquiry.

Lyndall Dean. Deputy President. Fair Work Commission.

Nothing about Ms Dean’s judgement was inaccurate, sensational, or controversial. Her judgement was sound, rational, and well-reasoned. Where Ms Dean fell foul was that she exercised her judicial independence instead of going along with the narrative. Her voice, just like many others, would have to be silenced; and that is indeed what happened.

Lyndall Dean was ordered to undertake professional conduct training and “disqualified herself” from workplace vaccination cases on the grounds of bias.

Removing Ms Dean from hearing vaccine workplace cases because she did not hold the majority view sends a message that only certain perspectives are acceptable, potentially compromising the fairness and integrity of the judicial process

In a law based, democratic society it is essential that judges must be able to render their decisions based on their interpretation of the law and their assessment of the facts, free from external pressure or political considerations. By removing Ms Dean for her dissenting opinions, judicial independence was compromised, eroding public trust in the judiciary and the rule of law.

In Liversidge v. Anderson, the majority of the House of Lords upheld the detention powers granted to the Home Secretary under the Defence Regulations, even if the Secretary’s decision was based on subjective and unreviewable grounds. This decision was seen as a departure from the rule of law, which emphasises the critical importance of legal certainty and due process.

Lord Atkin’s judgement, like Lyndall Dean’s, underscored the importance of upholding fundamental rights and the rule of law even in times of crisis. It emphasised that the executive’s exercise of emergency powers must be subject to legal constraints and judicial review. It reinforced the notion that even in times of crisis, governments must respect fundamental rights and ensure that emergency measures are proportionate, necessary, subject to meaningful oversight, safeguard the rule of law and protect individual liberties.

Both Lyndall Dean’s and Lord Atkin’s dissenting judgements were viewed as controversial during their respective times, given the prevailing political climate. Lord Atkin’s judgement has since gained significant recognition and praise for its principled stance on the rule of law.

One would hope that, just like Lord Atkin’s, Lyndall Dean’s dissenting judgement will be viewed in the future as a potent reminder of the importance of upholding the rule of law and protecting individual rights during a time of crisis.

Lord Atkin famously stated …

“In this country, amid the clash of arms, the laws are not silent.
They may be changed, but they speak the same language in war as in peace.”

Why Productivity Is Like The Weather

By
David Leyonhjelm
-
0

In some ways, the debate about productivity is like discussing the weather: everyone agrees it’s a problem, but nobody does anything about it.

In theory, productivity is simple: it is a measure of the rate at which goods and services are produced per unit of input (labour, capital, raw materials, etc.)

Growth in productivity is important; it’s what drives long-term improvement in living standards. As productivity improves, working hours fall, leisure time increases and goods become cheaper and better quality.

The Productivity Commission says the average Australian worker produces about as much in one hour today as it took a full day’s work to produce at Federation in 1901.

It gives the example of a bicycle which, in 1901, would have required several months of work to afford but now requires less than a day of work (for a basic model). Moreover, even the lowest quality new bicycles are much safer and easier to use than those produced then.

Early bicycle factory, derivative of agricultural works (left). Modern bicycle assembly line (right).

The problem is, productivity needs to constantly increase, yet growth in productivity in Australia has been low for at least two decades and may even have been zero in the last few years.

Both sides of politics know this and periodically declare they intend to do something about it. But when they discover what that means in practice, they find it a lot easier to just talk. 

There are various factors that affect productivity growth: technological improvements, economies of scale and scope, workforce skills, management practices, changes in other inputs (such as capital), competitive pressures and the stage of the business cycle.

The two big ones are technology and labour. Personal computers, for example, gave productivity a boost because it transformed office work. The productivity of the wharves was raised when Patricks was able to implement labour reforms in 1998.

Changes like these are few and far between. Far more often, governments adopt policies that stifle productivity. There are many examples.

When the ACCC blocks the takeover of one firm by another on the grounds that it might lessen competition, this usually also prevents a productivity boost. If the takeover occurred, the firm would shed surplus staff and assets; those staff would be redeployed (ie hired by someone else), and the assets would have a new owner and be used more productively.

It is the same when the government props-up firms through tariffs, import restrictions, subsidies, soft loans, extended tax payment terms, and the like. Firms that would otherwise go out of business or change what they are doing are kept going, soaking-up capital and labour while blocking the growth of more innovative and nimble firms.

Governments also constantly raise the cost of doing business. A good example – the increasing cost of electricity. From dairy farms to tattoo parlours, prices must increase or profitability fall.  Higher interest rates have the same effect. And reporting to the government on workplace gender pay, anti-slavery and emissions reductions does nothing for the business. Indeed, the whole ESG charade is a net cost.

Productivity would increase considerably
if businesses could adjust their workforce to suit variations in conditions.

But with complex awards and enterprise agreements, unfair dismissal laws, bogus harassment claims and go away money, it is anything but efficient. Many use contractors and labour hire to meet variable needs, but the Government’s attack on contractors and ‘gig’ workers, the so-called “same job same pay” legislation, will severely restrict that. Then there are restrictions on workforce participation due to barriers to work, which also inhibit productivity.

The growth of credentialism, with qualifications required for almost everything, is yet another factor. A certificate is needed even for serving alcohol in a bar. All of this contributes to a decline in business dynamism (as evidenced by a decline in firm entry and exit rates), which slows the rate of innovation and technology adoption by firms and inhibits the reallocation of resources to the most productive firms.

When it comes to the public sector, productivity is rarely considered. The growth in public servant numbers diverts resources from the private sector, which has a negative impact. And although service delivery is increasingly online, which might slightly help, this is rarely accompanied by a reduction in public servant numbers or an overall reduction in red tape.

Once understood, it is easy to see why governments prefer to talk about productivity than act. It is not easy to fix within the constraints of existing policies, particularly on labour. That explains why they periodically decide the solution lies in technology and will throw taxpayers’ money at a new idea that takes their fancy. Of course, that rarely ends well.

But despite their similarities, the weather and productivity are quite different. So far, the Government has not found a way to make the weather worse. 

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