Court Papers

My neighbour got served up court appearance papers by the local Sheriff. I have been mowing the neighbours lawn as well as throwing out the advertising and the like that litters his front door step. So I noticed the bright yellow plastic bag today. I mow his lawn and pick up the litter as he is dead. He has been for six months or so now. His house is not occupied either. Apparently the summons was because he hasn't been paying his homeowner bills. I am no Einstein, but I suspect this is probably because he is dead.

I rang the lawyers that were listed as acting for the plaintiff on the document. I had great fun telling them that the defendant they were after was dead as a dodo and has been for a long time. The court summons comes in a bright yellow sheriff plastic bag that has the words inscribed across it, "Use as a litter bin in your car afterwards". If I got summonsed, I would be more likely to urinate in it while singing a shouting song about where the local sheriff can stick their summons, before I would use it in my car.

On the topic of sheriffs, this is the best western ever. James Garner and Jack Elam are great.

iTunes Music Store

My wife is purchasing from iTunes now. Her purchases last night were;

• Don't Pay The Ferryman - Chris De Burgh
• Drive - The Cars
• Private Dancer - Elton John
• Mr Jones - Counting Crows
• Losing My Religion - REM

Each to their own, especially with the first and third ones. She has also bought a double album of Creedance Clearwater Revival's as well as some roots music. With those five purchases were she spent $5 it saved her about $60. She didn't have to buy the CD's with all the garbage songs on it. Even thed Cars who have strong albums still have weak songs not worth two stars in iTunes.

The verdict from my wife for the iTunes store is "thumbs up". Looks like Apple gets her money for music from now on.

Hicks and Habib in Guantanamo Bay

It appears that the two Australians in Guantanamo Bay have been abused at the hands of US guards. Apparently Hicks (who is white) was singled out for more abuse and attention than others. According to the article Habib used to bleed from his mouth, nose and eyes while asleep. Habib got a double dose, first torture from Egypt and then denial of medical care by the US. So when will the Australian Government stand up for the rights of its citizens when they are being detained indefinitely without being charged, without trial and without representation being present. The Australian Government is no better than a third world tin-pot dictators government. Australian liberties, hah, long may they enjoy the grave they were buried in long ago. Along with whatever Australian cultural awakening and enlightenment which was going on in the late 1980's/90's that the Howard government has managed to also bury.

Free Trade Agreement

So Labor is going to agree to it, on the proviso of two amendment/provisions. One of the PBS, the other is the cultural quota's. Incidentally things which Canada did not give up for NAFTA. Once again Australian politicians prove how weak and spineless they are. Slashdot has a story on it, and it is all through the online Au newspapers. I came across this humdinger from Abbott;

Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott says the Government is also prepared to campaign on the issue in the lead up to the federal election. "We will gladly campaign on the free trade agreement and on the American alliance which the Labor Party seems to have so many problems with," he said.

I am so sick of the Australian politicians and the Australian system. They are basically going to fight over who can be America's friend more. An election will be based on who Bush likes best, on who has America's best interests at heart. It is only through sheer restraint that this diary hasn't ended up in The Hole. It is pathetic, how is Australian ever going to act like a forthright nation with an autonomous, independent and vibrant political system when this bunch of underfoot garbage are the two major parties. What scum. What a hole Australian has been led into.

I have written so many critical diaries of the Australian system that I am beyond doubt that it is broken. It is an aged system with politicians not fit to run the country. I feel such a long way away in America. Maybe time to see what the Australian Democrats have to offer, though I doubt many of my opinions fit with their platform. Especially strong defence as a way out of the "great and powerful friends" doctrine trap. They are opposing the Au-US FTA.

Their policy on the constitution includes adding the flag and national anthem to it, I am vehemently opposed to that. Constitutions get polluted by feel good rubbish. They are for a republic, for increased direct democracy, they support the addition of a bill of rights to the Constitution, but they want a bill of responsibilities as well. Feel good legislation never works. Feel good rubbish should be socially leveraged and implemented not legislatively coerced or proclaimed. The responsibilities include;

(d) The Bill will also detail responsibilities such as a duty to vote, pay taxes, defend the nation, respect intrinsic environmental values, protect the natural environment and promote justice, particularly by serving on juries

Much of their constitutional reform is extremely reasonable and well thought out. They plan to strengthen the separation of powers between executive, legislative and judicial;

Currently, the Executive enjoys far too much power. It exercises an inappropriate amount of control over the Parliament and controls judicial appointments.

This is drastically needed in the Australian system. The democrats want judicial appointments to be made by a "Judicial Appointments Committee". They also want the Executive Cabinet to be only drawn from the House of Representatives, not the Senate. Again a reasonable and needed reform. They want the electoral term in the House of Representatives to be four years and eight years for the Senate. I don't agree with this. Three and six is enough as long as there are fixed terms. The Democrats want fixed terms, no incumbent calling the election when they feel like it. The Democrats also want proportional representation in both the Senate and Representatives. Since party discipline has co-opted the Senate as a house of review for the States, this a good decision.

I would go further. I would set the maximum anyone can serve in either house as 25 years. This is a generations worth of service, if a representative hasn't achieved anything in this time period, then they aren't worthy of their place. This will stop the careerist sucking the life out of the parliament.

The Democrats though do not understand Federalism, they have a similar view of the States as John Howard does;

(e) We strongly hold that the current three tiers of Government in Australia should be replaced by a more representative framework, where the States are replaced by Regional Governments and Local Councils are replaced by Community Councils that carry out the work of that regional framework

As I wrote in my previous diary, it is the Federal Government that is the problem, it has duplicated the duties and constitutional responsibilities of the State Governments in a never-ending coveting of power. Centrism is not good.

Westminster System and Federalism Incompatible

Sien made the comment in my previous diary on the incredibly centrist nature of the British system. That made me think that the Westminster system is incapable of maintaining a diffuse system. Maybe the Westminster system is only capable of ongoing centrism and any attempts to maintain a separation of responsibilities fail due to the lack of protections inherent in the Westminster system. If that is the case the "bearded men" totally and completely screwed up in 1901. They did anyway, but that only deepens their failure.

What of the other Westminster Systems. Canada has an ad-hoc system of legislation that ultimately creates a series of documents that can be construed as a constitution until 1982 when the process was formalised. From my discussions with some crazy Canadians it seems the provinces are maintaining their own against the federal government in Ottawa. There is also the recalcitrant Quebec province, which has made moves to secede in the recent past. That is always a good thing for keeping rampant centrism in check at the federal level. Interestingly the Canadian provinces have unicameral (one house) parliaments with a Lieutenant Governor Executive. The Canadian federal government is a bicameral system with an appointed Senate and Governor-General as the executive. The federal government does also fund the Canadian provinces through grants (equalization payments).

New Zealand has unicameral parliament with a Governor General. There are representatives for electorates as well as several seats put aside for Maori candidates. The NZ voting system is also slight different as well, with voters getting to choose a party and candidate. New Zealand has provincial and municipal levels of government under the federal level. The provincial governments are also unicameral. Apparently some funding of the provinces occurs and the federal government will override a province when a project or issue becomes of popular concern.

So the Australian, Canadian and New Zealand federal governments all find ways to get control of money to the States/Provinces. The US did this with the No Child Left Behind Act as well. Only Utah thought about refusing the money, but decided the money was more important than state sovereignty in education. Consequently all the States in the US now have to abide by the testing procedures set out in the NCLB legislation. If there is one group of people who know about education it is a couple of hundred or so legislators and their supporting special interests [sarcasm].

So why is the Australian model so centrist and Canada's not? Canada rejuvenated their constitution in 1982, while Australia has a centuries worth of entropy toward Canberra in the federal system. The last recalcitrant State in Australia was NSW and that was in the 1930's. Quebec Province has been a constant thorn in the side of the federal politicians in Ottawa. The other major difference is that the Australian Federal Government taxes for the States through the GST (and before that in grants), so the States are nearly entirely dependent on federal revenue. Federal money always comes with strings, but government never say no to more money to fund their bureaucracies. The answer it seems is to do what Canada did twenty years ago, rejuvenate the Constitution and flush out a centuries worth of entropy to the centre.

More of the Australian Democrats

Their information and censorship policy is imminently reasonable as would be expected. Government needs to be more open. I like Scrymarch's idea of citizen auditors, spontaneous groups of citizens (or taxpayers) that audit government. This would be a great innovation in government transparency and would require an open government.

The Democrats have an "e" agriculture policy of sustainable development. Agriculture is one of the most powerful special interest lobby groups in Australia. The Democrats are basically protectionist in the agricultural policy. Not sure why, though they want to protect Australian producers from external subsidized exports. There is other feel-good clauses in there as well, such as lowering the age of Australia's primary producers through a retirement program. I don't think agriculture should get any special exceptions.

Their Animal Welfare policy wants a federal law on animal cruelty. There is no constitutional mandate for this, consequently it is an issue for the states, not federal government. I disagree with this. I would support it at the State level, but not in Federal Government. The Democrats recognize the high level of youth unemployment in Australia and seek to implement initiatives to alleviate this. As part of this plan to invest more in research, presumably seeing value in new technologies (hopefully disruptive ones), also to protect micro/small businesses from unfair business practices (presumably from predatory larger businesses). They plan to expand environmental industries, they also plan on free tertiary and diploma education. Not sure if that is only for unemployed. But in their schools policy the Democrats want the federal government to fund education. Again I see this as a state responsibility.

All quite reasonable, but largely industrial era solutions to information era problems. It is the abundance model vs the scarcity model again. Information and capital are in abundance now, it is the access to them that is still scarce. I believe that my idea for speeding education will have more effect than their Employment policies. I also believe that making access to public capital more homogenous will allow more entrepreneurs access to capital in smaller amounts which will also revitalise the small/medium businesses. Federal legislation would be required here, legislation that is similar to the Australian Property Trusts and the US Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs).

Energy

The Democrats Energy policy contains the opening blurb;

To ensure the transition to an ecologically sustainable, diverse, equitable and decentralised energy economy based on clean, renewable sources, sustainable employment growth, democratic control and genuine community needs; as well as being tailored to Australia's natural conditions and developed in the context of sustainable global development.

They have policies to reduce emissions, fossil fuels etc which they appear to plan on doing through legislation and tax policy. They also plan on a temporary process of tradeable greenhouse emission credits. They oppose nuclear power as an energy solution. They also plan privitisation of the main energy supply. One that jumped out at me;

The removal of market barriers to the research and development of a strong, commercially viable, diverse and Australian owned renewable energy industry;

I like this. Most scarcity is maintained through barriers of entry into markets, either by legislation, patents, or the intense capitalization required in an industry. I like the thought, but do not know how they will achieve it. Unless the Australian energy companies get all their Research and Development money from the government.

Immigration

The Democrats want immigration to be non-discriminatory with refugees getting preference. They do not want the immigration quota's to push the Australian population to the point where the population on the continent is unsustainable. I personally think that one million a year should be let in. Watch the Australian economy explode then. Current immigration levels are 100,000 a year. The refugees will not become an issue if Australia increases its population so quickly, especially if the sustainable level of population on the continent is somewhere between 40 million and 60 million.

One other issue I would like to see is genuine universal suffrage. Anyone under the jurisdiction of the Australian government at the time of an election should be allowed to vote. Citizens, taxpayers and immigrants all, no matter what their citizenship status.

Health, Iraq and Reconciliation

The question with health is should it be a federal or state responsibility. The PBS is obviously a federal issue as the federal government is in a better bargaining position with 20 million consumers than the states are. The implementation of health should be state level. The Democrats believe health should be based on need, not the ability to pay. The Australian system is pretty good as it is.

The Democrats did not support the Iraq invasion. I agree with them. Pre-emption is a dumb, stupid and illegitimate way to handle recalcitrant nation-states. The Democrats list a series of requirements before they will agree to any military action. They should add that the Prime Minister needs to get permission from the Senate as well. This is a necessary curb on executive power.

The Democrats also oppose conscription. This is a good thing. It is immoral for a government to coerce an individual into the service, especially when being in the military can entail the extremely immoral act of taking another human beings life. For this reason only volunteers should be allowed to service outside of Australia. Since Vietnam the size of the deployments overseas have been tiny and this has not been an issue. But, Australia should revert to the legislation of the Defence Act in the 1880's. Where only volunteers can serve outside of Australia. This is a very moral piece of legislation.

As to reconciliation, the Democrats recognize the need for legitimate negotiations but their policy is low on details. The devil will be in the implementation of that policy. They also recognize that, "That Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People will be able to exercise and enjoy the human rights and fundamental freedoms enjoyed by all peoples and protected by the conventions and proclamations of the United Nations". This is a massive duh and is a shame that in modern Australian politics that this has to even be enunciated. Any principle of equity requires that their is no discrimination between people. It is a sad reflection on the Australian governments that equity is a forgotten and ignored human principle.

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