Club Troppo

Steven Hawking

Richard Pratt

If ‘gravely ill’ is a euphamism for ‘dying’ spare a thought for the two souls pictured.  

Well it was a great success – last time I mentioned that I was after a research assistant I got about twelve applications in the space of a couple of days.  Most of them were very good.  Since then three people have done occasional work for us mostly very well.  In the case of each person whom I asked to help us out, I didn’t take a lot of care in selecting someone who I could be confident would be available for a long time.  I realised trying to make sure people would stick around might be more rational, because one wants to develop relationships that are proving useful.  But I just tried people whose application sounded like I would like dealing with them. And all three are now otherwise up to other things.  I think what I did made sense because, though they’re no longer available for research assistance, they’re still around, and perhaps we might be useful to each other again. Perhaps there are economies of scope as well as scale. 

Be all that as it may, I’m now looking for research assistance again.  If you’re interested, please tell me in an email why you’d like to work with Lateral Economics (flattery will be accepted but subjected to careful scrutiny by my wife – who think’s I’m a sucker for it – if you do go the flattery route, marks will be awarded for apparent sincerity) please send me your CV and why you think it would suit you and why you’d suit us.  You don’t have to be an economist but good research skills and an interest in policy are necessary and access to academic databases and ability to write well and an enjoyment of the same would also be appreciated. Remuneration is negotiable (and usually nothing flash at least while we figure each other out!).

Please drop me an email at ngruen AT lateraleconomics DOT com and after that add a DOT au. Work is occasional and of course you are never expected to be available and hanging around for us to call – if you cant do something we ask, so long as you havent previously agreed to do it, thats fine. If you sent me an application last time but were not successful, please feel free to try again. 

Also, while Troppo was a happy hunting ground for research assistants a later ad I posted for someone to help with media work – media liaison, writing and distributing press releases etc – only attracted only one response from memory.  If you like this kind of work please let me know as per the above arrangements – perhaps doing both research assistance and media relations might suit you.

Occasional visitor “Edward Carson” wrote a somewhat cynical comment on my previous post about asylum seekers:

Does this mean that if they fill out the appropriate forms in duplicate, we are then obliged to accept them all into our country?

Although I strongly suspect “Edward” is a lawyer who well knows the answer to that rhetorical question, others might not.  Accordingly I answered the question at length, then concluded it was worth a post all on its own.

Member states obligations under the Refugee Convention are essentially confined to non refouler to their homeland of refugees who arrive within their borders.

Hence the Howard governments excission of thousands of northern islands and reefs from Australias migration zone in 2001 (which has not been reversed by the Rudd government); then the tactic of naval blockade, interception and towaway zone as the flow of people smuggler vessels continued, and finally the substitution of the Pacific Solution when the people smugglers tactic of scuttling their own vessels rendered the towaway zone tactic unworkable. All these tactics were designed to avoid Australias international legal obligations under the Refugee Convention ever becoming engaged in the first place.

The Refugee Convention does not impose obligations on member states to accept refugee or humanitarian migrants from offshore. Australia has a very large and generous offshore humanitarian migration programme, which is one of the more persuasive bases for maintaining reasonably tough border protection policies. (Continued)

Andrew Norton wonders how the term ‘neoliberalism’ came to Australia. After searching the literature, he thinks it "probably started in Latin America, and came to Australia via US academia".

Andrew’s probably right. There’s some evidence that, during the 1960s, free market supporters in Latin America used the term to describe themselves. Initially influenced by the German neoliberalism of the Freiburg School, some of them came to embrace the ideas of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School. But when Pinochet regime turned to the free market ideas of Friedman and the Chicago Boys, neoliberalism became associated with political repression, authoritarianism and US imperialism. After that, free market supporters probably decided it was a good idea to choose a different label.

As Reason’s Brian Doherty puts it: "Pinochet and Friedman have been assumed by many to be two sides of some evil right-wing coin in which torture, despotism, and unrestricted free markets are all inextricably linked." Friedman’s 1975 meeting with Pinochet reinforced this impression.

Neoliberalism didn’t start out as a pejorative label and there is some evidence that some free market supporters in Latin America referred to themselves as neoliberals. In his 1965 paper ‘Organization and operation of neoliberalism in Latin America’, Norman A Bailey writes:

Within the last four or five years there has been in Latin America a substantial development of organizations dedicated to the maintenance of political and economic liberty and backed by the relatively new business-professional sector of society.

Bailey called these organizations ‘neoliberal’:

The term "neoliberal" has been used because some members of these organizations refer to themselves as such, and also because the groups under discussion bear many similarities to the neoliberal movement in Europe.

(Continued)

Given the grim circumstances the world faced, I’ve always been queasy about being too gung ho in criticising the bombing raids of the allies in World War Two (though the allies circumstances were less and less grim, victory more and more inevitable when some of the worst raids occured).  There’s also the argument that they shortened the war, though it’s hard to see how they did in Europe when bombing industrial and military targets might have. AC Grayling takes up the challenge arguing that the bombing was deeply wrong in a podcast on the marvellous Philosophy Bites. I guess he’s right.

Meanwhile in military circumstances completely different to the dire struggle for life and liberty that was World War Two, in the most frivolously declared war the West has been engaged in, we got into torture with nary a care.  Hilzoy at the Washington Monthly takes up the story (HT Brad Delong). (Continued)

A question that seems obvious once it’s been asked. Find out the answer in this revealing video.

“Jihad” Jack Thomas

I’ve been meaning for ages to write about the High Court’s 2007 decision in Thomas v Mowbray, in fact ever since it was handed down.

Complex constitutional decisions are really difficult to write about in a way that’s accessible and interesting to a general audience.  Thomas v Mowbray, however, is one that’s worth the effort. It’s a key decision on the evolving nature of the High Court’s attitude to judicial power and separation of powers, not to mention the defence power (section 51(vi) of the Commonwealth Constitution, and also says interesting things about the external affairs power (51(xxix) and reference of State powers (51(xxxvii).

Fortunately, rewriting my lecture notes on judicial power for first year undergraduate LLB students over the last few weeks has provided the spur to spin off a blog post that with a bit of luck might be readable.

Judicial power and separation of powers

Thomas v Mowbray illustrates the tensions inherent in drawing a workable dividing line between powers and functions that may be performed judicially and those that are too political or policy-oriented.  The case concerned the constitutional validity of a federal law creating a regime of “control orders” imposing restrictions on the liberties of persons suspected of possible future involvement in international terrorism (but who had not yet committed any offence).  The task of deciding whether to impose a control order on a particular person is performed by federal judges under the new Div 104 of the Criminal Code (Cth) inserted following various terrorist act (e.g. 9/11 and the Bali bombings).  “Jihad” Jack Thomas had received money from Al Qaeda in Afghanistan supposedly to form a terrorist cell in Australia, but had had second thoughts and not in fact done so.  Federal authorities sought and obtained a control order against him after they failed to obtain a conviction for various offences in court (the evidence was tainted through having been extracted while Thomas was under detention in Pakistan and possibly subject to threat of torture).  

One can certainly mount a persuasive argument that someone like Thomas warrants supervision and significant restrictions on his liberty just in case he was only pretending to have changed his mind about starting a terrorist cell in Australia.  However, is this a proper task for a federal judge as an aspect of judicial power? 

First, it involves assessing future risk rather than adjudicating on the legality of past conduct (which is what judicial power normally involves).  

Secondly, the criteria for issue of a control order under the legislation are extraordinarily vague, whereas judicial power normally involves application of rather more determinate, objective criteria (although my old University of Sydney jurispudence lecturer Professor Julius Stone famously referred to such seemingly objective criteria as “categories of illusory reference”). 

(Continued)

If I understand correctly, the $900 stimulus payment won’t be paid to people who earned less than $6000 last year — ie, those who did not pay net tax.

On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is a gale and 10 is cyclone Tracy multiplied by hurricane Katrina, how much of a poostorm is this going to generate when millions of folks discover they’re not going to get any “free” money?

I might be a libertarian, but until I crunched the numbers I was planning to spend the daylights out of the $900 I thought was coming my way.

Of course I might have misunderstood the numbers.

Notes written at 12,000 metres. On various planes between Australia and Europe going hither and yon I had the chance to see most of the film Australia.

Ive just filled in on most bits I missed going hither (from Beijing to Helsinki) going yon (from Helsinki to Honkers). There was an extensive European interlude in between these two flights youll be relieved to hear. I was tempted to go to the cinema to see it, but decided I didnt want to have the feeling of being ripped off and more importantly I thought I would be bored.

I was pretty right to have avoided it I reckon. What films has Baz Lurman done? The things I know of are Strictly Ballroom, Romeo and Juliet, Moulin Rouge and Australia. I presume Im missing something since he made ballroom well over a decade ago; perhaps Im missing several films. Anyway I enjoyed Ballroom, quite a lot really partly because I lived next door to the co-star Tara Maurice in Burgman College and it was fun watching her play a young Spanish girl and seeing how she went. (though its always a problem watching people you know act they necessarily take so much of themselves into any role necessarily so, that its hard to judge how well theyre acting. They just seem like theyre them and going through the motions of being someone else).

Anyway Ballroom was pretty corny which is not really a criticism. It was a formula boy meets girl, quests with her and wins the comp. There was a politically correct touch Taras characters father was a Spanish dancer who teaches the Aussie boyfriend how to really do a paso doble. But it was all a lot of fun as well as being fun to watch.

Ballroom was also hiding behind irony. It was a corny just OK told story but it was full of pop art style irony. This, it turns out, was Baz Lurmans signature. I didnt see Romeo and Juliet but it seemed like a good idea to translate it all into the modern gang idiom.

Then there was Moulin Rouge. MR was a completely extraordinary movie. A kind of cross between the soapiest soap opera and Bertold Brecht, it seemed that Lurman instinctively reached for irony to disguise what seemed to little old me like a complete shambles. (Continued)

As Chris Dillow from Stumbling and Mumbling argues

David Semple thinks the left should join American tea parties, which protest against high taxes. I think I agree. The desire to shrink the state should be a leftist aim. I say so for four reasons.

1. Big government cannot be redistributive government. If the state is raising 40% of GDP in taxes, it must tax the worst off, simply because the rich, even in the UK and US, arent that rich or plentiful. This pdf gives us the numbers. Table 2 shows that the tax system – leaving aside benefits – actually adds to inequality. This is because direct taxes cut the Gini coefficient by 4 percentage points, but indirect taxes add 5 points to it. And table 21 shows that the poorest fifth of households with children pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes than the richest 10%: 37.2% against 33%.

2. A big state hurts the worst off. Right-wing nut jobs might pose as victims of ZaNuLabour.  But whether we look at Purnells welfare plans, repressive anti-immigration laws or the policing of protests, it is ordinary people who are the real victims of an overly powerful state: newspaper sellers, poor foreigners, the unemployed and ill.  The left should be on their side.

3. When the state has lots of power, therell be a big fight to control it. And its the rich and powerful that win such fights. Why do you think banks get big bail-outs whilst ordinary workers are flung onto the dole with little compensation?

4. Belief in big government rests upon the notion that theres an elite of leaders which has the wisdom and know-how to manage our affairs from the top-down; this is why New Labour found common cause with corporate bosses – both share the same ideology. But it is an utterly anti-egalitarian notion. It is also utterly wrong.

(Continued)