The impending execution of Van Nguyen has rightly aroused a lot of outrage. While it seems unrealistic to suggest trade sanctions or anything similar, there is one response that is relevant, proportionate and justified. The Singaporean government should be told that, if the execution proceeds, they will never again receive any co-operation from Australia on drug crimes. The same message should be given to Indonesia in relation to the Bali Nine (where, disgracefully, Australian police set up the arrests while leaving their Indonesian counterparts free to seek the death penalty).

The government spent $50 million of our money telling us public holidays were Protected by Law (emphasis in original). So how is it a great victory for Barnaby Joyce to get amendments which mean that we can’t be sacked for working on Christmas Day[1]. Not that I’m bagging Joyce, who’s at least doing something. But it just points up the mendacity of the ad barrage to which we’ve been subjected.

fn1. If we’re lucky we may get Good Friday and Anzac Day protected as well.

My column in yesterday’s Fin was about the desirability of more independence and less party discipline. It’s over the fold
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Having gained unchallenged control of Parliament John Howard is displaying the same kind of arrogance that helped to doom Paul Keating after 1993. The huge expenditure on IR ads is one example, as is the general tendency to ram legislation through with no significant scrutiny or debate.

An even more striking instance was on display in Brisbane over the weekend. Howard has long been under pressure to upgrade the Ipswich Motorway, and has now decided that only a partial upgrade will be offered. Nothing surprising in that, and there may be a defensible rationale, though none was offered.

What is surprising is that Howard decided to make the announcement in Brisbane at the Liberal party state conference, with no advance warning for the local Libs, who are, not surprisingly furious. Then, when the Liberal Lord Mayor of Brisbane protested, he apparently got a threatening dressing down from one of Howard’s minders. These stories dominated the local TV news over the weekend.

I can only assume Howard believed that he could pull the local Libs into line in supporting his views, and ignore the inevitable attacks from the State government. If so, he appears to have miscalculated.

I’m surprised by this. Howard warned his colleagues against this kind of thing after the 2004 election victory, but he doesn’t seem to have learned his own lesson.

Sixteen people have been arrested in Sydney and Melbourne and charged with terrorism offences. While the individuals involved are legally entitled to a presumption of innocence, the police were right to act when faced with evidence suggesting a threat.

What’s important here is that the threat has been dealt with under criminal law, rather than through the use of arbitrary powers of secret detention, as proposed in the new anti-terror laws. Moreover, it appears that the offences created by the 2002 legislation are sufficient to encompass a wide range of terrorist activities. By contrast, it’s hard to imagine how the revival of the notion of sedition in the 1914 Crimes act could have proved useful in this, or any similar case.
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I’m at the annual meeting of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. I’ll be talking in a symposium on Ideas and Influence on the topic “Economic liberalism: Fall, Revival and Resistance”. This evening there’s a public lecture from Paul Kelly on Rethinking Australian Government, at the Shine Dome (Academy of Science).

I had dinner last night with Max Corden, one of the great names in Australian economics, and we had a fascinating discussion about trade and current account deficits and the ways they might come back into balance smoothly (or not).

Then there was a colloquium on the topic of a Bill of Rights, at which Hilary Charlesworth and Larissa Behrendt spoke, which produced a couple of new (to me) developments. First, most people seem to have abandoned the idea of inserting a Bill of Rights into the Constitution, favouring a legislated Bill instead. Rather than being entrenched, this would require courts to interpret laws consistently with human rights as far as possible. If governments wanted to pass laws inconsistent with the Bill of Rights they could do so, but they would have to be explicit about it.

The second point is that the ACT has already passed such a Bill and that other states are considering it. This is part of a more general trend where the old assumption that the only way to achieve desirable progress is to centralise power in the federal government is being overturned.

I’m really getting annoyed by the continued onslaught of ads in support of the Liberal Party’s proposals for IR reform. I think it’s time Labor actually stood up to them over this. I suggest nominating a cutoff date and saying that if the ads aren’t stopped after that, a future Labor government will legislate to recover the money from the Liberal Party (or from members of the Cabinet personally). Of course, the chance that they would actually do something like this, let alone follow through on it, is near zero. More likely, this outrage will be treated as a precedent, and taxpayer-funded ads supporting the government will become routine.

The aptly named Chas Savage in yesterday’s Age.

Like everyone, I’ve been bombarded with government advertising pointing out how marvellous the new world of Industrial Relations is going to be, and in particular how all my existing rights are Protected by Law!. So I thought I’d call the Workchoice hotline number to see what would happen if I was asked to sign an AWA that required me to work on public holidays. I had a few follow-up questions ready but the operator who answered, while trying to be helpful, couldn’t do much more than offer to send me the brochure. Looking around, I see Crikey had much the same experience.

I don’t suppose anything is going to stop this legislation, but the government has certainly chewed up an awful lot of political capital on this one, without any clear idea why it wants it (apart from repealing unfair dismissals laws, which are loathed by the small business base). If the economy ever turns sour, they will be in big trouble.