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Where does the real threat to Australia arise?
(James Allan , Professor of Law at the University of Queensland in an article published in The Australian Nov 20 2007 says he believes that the Unions are not the biggest threat)
Reviewed by David Hughes-Jones.
Allan feels that much criticism directed at the Labor Party has been wrongly focused on its domination by unions and ex-union leaders. Apart from
the regulation of the workplace, and maybe free trade he suspects that this line of criticism is in error. His concern is not the Trade Unions but the other main wing of the Labor Party, which he describes as the chardonnay-sipping, ultra-PC, anti-traditionalist wing . Among this wing of the Labor-voting supporters are many legal revolutionaries., well represented among lawyers, judges, together with teachers and academics, all wanting power to be taken away from elected MPs and given to unelected judges.They all support the cry for a "Bill of Rights" despite knowing that. whether the British-style statutory ones or Canadian-style entrenched model are adopted the effect will increase the power of judges .
Allan explains that the "Chardonnay-sippers" know that if voters are asked in a referendum to vote for a Bill of Rights the result will almost certainly be "no" which is the reason for the elaborate consultation processes which attempt to give the illusion that a bill of rights is wanted. or needed. This was the procedure followed in Victoria that preceded the enacting of its statutory bill of rights last year.(2006) .
Realising that they could not win a referendum in Victoria a "consultation process" was put in place chaired by a longstanding proponent of bills of rights and lacking even a single opponent of these instruments.. This consultation sham of "like-minded activists talking to like-minded activists" served a useful function for the legal revolutionaries. It helped reinforce the basic selling line that's used.;"We need to protect and uphold fundamental human rights." ignoring the fact that people in Australia simply disagree about what exactly is required to protect and uphold these indeterminately phrased, vague moral guarantees. (Just repeat the Mantra enough and people will come to believe that they really do need a "Bill of Rights"!!)
Smart, reasonable people Allan says, have different opinions about gay marriage, abortion, how to treat refugee claimants, how to balance security concerns about terrorism against individual liberties and so much more. Supporters of the "Bill of Rights" gloss over these true facts. despite the reality that all of these matters would under a bill of rights be removed from the control of Parliament and handed over to the discretion of the judiciary.
Professor Allan claims that these instruments are sold to the public by always talking in moral abstractions.which have great influence in terms of contentious, debatable moral issues.. He sees the problem that the chardonnay-sipping wing of the Labor Party does rather tend to think that its moral antenna is more finely attuned than that of everyone who disagrees with it. They know that the unelected judges are likelier to give them the moral outcomes they seek than are what they see as the grubby politicians.They follow through by supporting the appointment of people who are as much anti-traditionalist, parliamentary sovereignty-loathing activists as they are. One need look no further than Victoria's recent judicial appointments to see what has happened there.
Allan refers to a recent poll in Britain where 61 per cent of people said they wanted to scrap that country's barely seven-year-old bill of rights.
The judicially driven absurdities have mounted over there to such an extent that even some of Britain's Labour ministers who introduced it without any mandate from the people (no referendum there either) have started to have second thoughts.He provided a few instances of judgements made since the introduction of the bill of rights by British judges;-
(1) the bill of rights gives prisoners rights to drugs
(2) foreign hijackers the right to live in Britain
(2) gives gypsies the right to squat,
(3) gives a native-born Italian murderer of a London headmaster the right to a family life and a right not to be deported after serving his sentence.
Needless to say, the chardonnay-sipping wing of Britain's Labour Party, including the whole expansive industry of self-styled human rights lawyers, has blamed the media, not the bill of rights.
Allan claims that all these outcomes are welcomed by the Chardonnay-sipping set;they love the judge-driven legalisation of gay marriage in Canada.
The entitlement to an oral hearing and taxpayer-funded lawyer for all those who simply claim to be a refugee in Canada.
(which costs billions of dollars, much of it going to lawyers)
In the long term it's these sort of anti-traditionalist, ultra-PC people who pose the biggest threat to Australia, not the unionists . It's not the unionists who sneer at patriotism or at Australia's constitutional arrangements. (Allan thinks our arrangements to be the best in the world.) They are not so politically correct that they have little sense of humour, or who genuflect before every passing grievance-industry complaint. They do not implicitly demean the family as the bedrock unit of social life or undermine it by suggesting that all forms of social organisation are as good as each other. ( a claim belied by every collected statistic related to the comparative outcomes of children from single-parent homes and those from traditional two-parent homes). Neither do they see any and all attempts to legislate against potential terrorists as some descent into an authoritarian, police state hell. In short it's not the unionists who indulge in politically correct claptrap or fall victim to postmodernist, deconstructionist fads.
Professor Allan feels that Australia's left-wing party - as opposed to New Zealand's, Canada's, Britain's and, to a lesser extent, the US's - has not fallen wholly under the control of the preening, smug, holier-than-thou PC brigade and while ex-unionists may tend to focus on their members more than on the unemployed. and some of them may not see, or care much about, the wealth-creating effects of free trade he has more respect for the Trade Unionists than the other main wing of the Labor Party.
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James Allan is professor of law at the University of Queensland.
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