Your Civil Rights overruled by Police Convenience: Strip-Searching your ‘Designated Areas’ at Will and without Consequence.

posted by Paul Roberton on Thursday, December 17th 2009

Big Brother 2.0 ?

The amendments to the Summary Offences & Control of Weapons Act that enable police to strip-search citizens at will are deeply disturbing.

I share the deep repugnance of YACVIC, the Youth Affairs Council of Victoria, at the Brumby Labor Government’s bill. They are aghast and rightly so.

The legislation empowers police to search at will or ‘move on’ individuals who are likely to breach the peace or endanger the safety of others who haven’t otherwise desisted from an illegal act.

Can any of us take our freedoms so for granted that we let this slip idly by?

It’s one thing to give police proper authority to act and to trust their professionalism and training. They are magnificent at their job, but they remain police – not psychics.

Let’s be fair. We don’t want to impede their essential work, but a millennium of the Common Law is being overturned here:  surely they should form a reasonable suspicion first. This bill would no longer require it.

Should they really be empowered to stop someone, perhaps even a child, before they’ve formed a considered opinion of a person’s intent? The echoes of Police Union boss Greg Davies have scarcely faded on the presumption of guilt.

Before us is a Bill empowering police to search any individual – including children, for the legislation lists no age limit to these search powers.

What’s even more ghastly is that the state government sheepishly concedes the bill flies in the face of its own Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities”.

Well done to YACVIC for bringing our attention to this insidious weakening of our hard-earned civil rights, and shame on the government for its hypocrisy.

The YACVIC position can be viewed here.

Senate Rejects ETS – Would The Democrats Have Improved and Passed this Law?

posted by Scott Kane on Wednesday, December 2nd 2009

The dogs have been barking for some time – the Senate has now rejected the Rudd government ETS legislation.  This sets in place, should the Rudd government choose to take it, a double dissolution trigger.  Rudd can call a general election for the House of Representatives and all the Senate.  Pundits are calling this for early March, others for August.  In reality, it could be just six weeks away.

Liberal senators Sue Boyce and Judith Troeth voted with the government,  but this support was far short of a Senate majority.  The Mad Monk Tony Abbott, practicing as he does the “withdrawal method” when it comes to all things not conservative, forced the rest of the Liberals to vote NO despite minister Wong’s previous efforts to negotiate the bill’s passage.

The Greens voted NO – as is their custom on every piece of legislation before the house and the rest on the cross benches followed suit. Their eternal purity makes them politically irrelevant and a parliamentary menace.  But politics isn’t about holiness, it is about securing the best possible outcomes, something the Democrats never, never forgot.

But what would the Democrats have done?

The ETS is not an ideal piece of legislation.  The Democrats would have negotiated for improvements in line with our own policies.  Fairer more equitable solutions, while not appealing to major polluters,  would reduce the impact any climate change mitigation legislation would have on the overall economy and on the poor.  Our view differs from The Greens’ “Put the oxy torch to all industries emitting a kilogram of CO2, dude!” economic vandalism.

We would have worked, as we always have, with the elected government to secure the best deal possible for the Australian people with a bill that, while limited, is  a step forward.  A step the Rudd government, despite having a fresh and clear mandate for it, will not now take.

That was role of the  Democrat for 30 years in the Senate – negotiating.   Ensuring the elected government functions, keeps its word and doesn’t cave in to sectional interests.  That we are needed to do this line-by-line work is demonstrated by the failure of the ETS.  A serious piece of legislation about a serious subject, one that ensures Australia’s future – from economy to environment –  has been flagrantly reduced to petty party-based squabbling.  John Howard must be laughing behind his hand as he eggs on the newly-anointed High Priest of Climate Denial – Tony Abbott.

Bob Brown is likewise congratulating the troops on a job well screwed with the rest of the cross benches looking for a pat on the head – from somebody or anybody!

Well done all!  You’ve succeeded in reducing our federal Parliament to a circus.  A national joke; a joke on the heads of the Australian people.  Thanks a bunch!

I urge those entitled to vote in the Higgins by-election to send a message to Canberra.  Use your ballot paper and the preferential system to its fullest.  Vote 1 Australian Democrats – David Collyer, and if you’re a Liberal voter and feel so compelled then (and only then) send your second preference to those who have failed you: the Liberal Party of Australia.

Scott Kane

Abbott writes ‘Kick Here’ on the Liberal rump. The ALP and Voters will take him at his word

posted by David Collyer on Tuesday, December 1st 2009

In making Tony Abbott their leader, the Liberal Party have declared themselves unelectable and destroyed their future.

Tony Abbott is an intelligent and articulate man.  But the hard-line Catholic conservative beliefs he articulates are poison to middle Australia – where governments are made and lost.

Were he to become Prime Minister, our country would be a centre of commerce, not a civilization.  He would enact a huge increase in economic inequality:

• Further tax cuts for high earners while ‘bracket creep’ raises taxes on middle incomes
• Major cuts to social security that help the poorest and weakest
• The emasculation of trade unions – a la Work Choices
• A counter-revolution in education where opportunity at all levels must be bought

In the dark days at the end of World War Two, Robert Menzies dusted off the famous essay ‘The Forgotten Man’ by William Graham Sumner (1840-1910)[1] and declared himself the champion of middle Australia.

His rationale was the workers were protected by the union movement and the wealthy could bloody well look after themselves.  His ‘Forgotten Man’ speeches galvanized the country after the suffering of war and put the Liberal Party in power for an entire generation.

By current standards, Menzies sounds like a conservative though he wasn’t – he was a liberal who oversaw the greatest lift in living standards in our history.  He embraced the economics of John Maynard Keynes and the small ‘L’ liberal credo that recognized government must do what individuals and business cannot do themselves, and that some activities, notably education, are too important to be decided solely by market prices.

The Liberal Party’s core constituents are business leaders and blue-collar conservatives, whose tenuous existence makes them fear change. Menzies used his stature to stare down their insistent demands for monopoly rights and social repression and instead provided the measured progress middle Australia requires of government.

The Emissions Trading Scheme that destroyed the Liberal leadership requires both these groups to change by  pricing carbon emissions.  For business this introduces an era of creative destruction as we replace our industrial kit with less damaging alternatives.  And blue-collar conservatives see only hard-to-evade costs, for benefits they cannot see, imagine or touch.

Malcolm Turnbull was leading his party down this path of measured progress.  Instead, they have plotted a different course and consigned themselves to oblivion.

The ALP will delightedly invite voters to kick the Liberal rump.  And we will.

David Collyer is currently contesting the Higgins by election for the Australian Democrats against Clive Hamilton for The Greens and Kelly O’Dwyer for the Liberal Party,

Dont take my word for it: Climate Change Debated in Higgins, Collyer led.

posted by David Collyer on Tuesday, November 24th 2009

“David Collyer is currently contesting the Higgins by election for the Australian Democrats against Clive Hamilton for The Greens and Kelly O’Dwyer for the Liberal Party,”

Media Release – Exempt Left-Handed From Climate Change

posted by David Collyer on Sunday, November 15th 2009

Today’s announcement by Climate Change minister Penny Wong excluding the agricultural sector from the costs of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme under proposed new compromise legislation is ridiculous and mistaken, say the Australian Democrats, and opens the door wider to further lobbying and rent-seeking by major polluters.

“If minister Wong is willing to destroy the effectiveness and universal consequence of the CPRS with this attempt to buy the support of the conservatives, I would advocate also exempting left-handed people,” the Australian Democrats candidate for the Higgins by-election David Collyer said.  “After all, they only produce one twentieth of our pollution, are very nice people and are equally deserving of assistance.

“This proposal is no sillier that minister Wong’s nonsense.

Recent scientific studies suggest farm animals, notably ruminants, are major contributors to climate change through the emission of methane, a potent greenhouse gas with significantly larger impacts than carbon dioxide.

“These studies need to be repeated, refined and enlarged, but without an environmental ‘all clear’, exempting agriculture from the CPRS is a grave error and probably irreversible.

“Many members of the Liberal/National Coalition are Climate Change skeptics, who do not believe in anthropogenic climate change and are unmoved by the now-extensive scientific literature.

“Minister Wong is desperately trying to placate the implacable. The Opposition are laughing behind their hands at her weakness and impotence.

“Australia’s farmers are now well into their second decade of drought.  They know change is needed.  And while shifting adjustment costs to others is an old political game, accurately targeting the source of emissions for actions to change behavior is in the interest of all.

Exempting any polluter – let alone an entire sector – means the cost of adjustment must fall more heavily on the rest.  The Garnaut Report gave this matter great emphasis and sternly warned against permitting ‘business as usual’ anywhere.

“If minister Wong is so willing to riddle this crucial legislation with exemptions and concessions, then by her measure the left-handed are entitled to a free ride too,” Collyer concluded.

Media contact – David Collyer 0413 248 193

“David Collyer is currently contesting the Higgins by election for the Australian Democrats against Clive Hamilton for The Greens and Kelly O’Dwyer for the Liberal Party,”

Greens Surrender Freedom

posted by David Collyer on Monday, November 2nd 2009

David Collyer Australian Democrats Candiate For Higgins

Clive Hamilton, The Greens’ candidate in the Higgins by-election expects us to abandon a wide range of important freedoms by trumping them with the hideous spectre of child sexual abuse.  His position is morally bankrupt, say the Democrats.  It delegates to government a power they plan to misuse before it even exists.

“Hamilton affirmed his support for the Rudd Government’s Internet Filter scheme as recently as a week ago.  His position is breathtakingly naive and means all citizens can be denied access to any content deemed unacceptable by public servants for any reason,” the Democrats’ Higgins by-election candidate David Collyer said today.

“He and the government are taking a legitimate public concern – the need to protect children from inappropriate material – and are using it to push through a wasteful, secretive censorship program riddled with unintended consequences that cannot achieve its policy aims.

“Hamilton is in direct contradiction to The Greens’ position on the issue,” Collyer said. “Even if the issue of internet content and filtering means very little to you, it is important to understand that Clive Hamilton does not support core Greens policies.

“Everyone in public life wants a secure internet experience for children. However, the very structure of the Rudd Government’s Internet Filter means it cannot achieve this objective.

“The secret national blacklist of websites exposes us to government abuse in perpetuity: legitimate, legal businesses have already found themselves on it with no recourse or ability to challenge or appeal the decision. The blacklist works only on complaints made to the Government.  It is subjective, incomplete and draconian.

“If the Australian Government awards itself this capability, it exposes itself to irresistible political pressures.  For example, the Chinese Government could insist all Falun Gong sites be blocked to Australians. The Rudd Government would cooperate, and we would never know.

The Democrats position is reinforced by Civil Liberties Australia’s stinging denouncement in their most recent newsletter: “Dr Hamilton jumped on board the censorship bandwagon early and with a flourish. He endorsed a virtual “anything goes” approach to government censorship. It didn’t matter how slow the internet got, or how the government curtailed people’s freedoms to access information… all would be OK under the dictatorial approach of Dr Hamilton. ”

The Democrats believe it is possible to deliver a safer internet experience for children without compromising the social, economic and political freedoms of others through building on our censorship laws that already classify media – or denies classification – allied with existing and evolving net filtering software.

“The Government is elected to serve the people and secret Government censorship programs work against the people.  Electing a Democrat will send a message to the Government that this is not the path of progress,” Collyer concluded.

Media contact – David Collyer 0413 248 193

“David Collyer is currently contesting the Higgins by election for the Australian Democrats against Clive Hamilton for The Greens and Kelly O’Dwyer for the Liberal Party,”

References: www.cla.asn.au/clarion/0911CLArionNov.pdf