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The entire tradition of thought around natural law and limits on the legitimate scope of the state have simply disappeared in Australia so far as I can tell. Ev

• throwawaylinux 4y ago
  The state exists to perpetuate itself and its power, unless an outside force acts on it. That used to be the people, but increasingly the "machine" of bureaucracy has overtaken or subsumed democratic politics. It is not only in Australia. Chuck Schumer's grave warning sums it up well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nXGt6Jnabc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nXGt6Jnabc An elected president who is head of the executive and armed forces which include these intelligence agencies, would be foolish to "take them on", because they would "get back at him". The people no longer have the power to determine the way in which they are governed by democratic means (maybe they never did, but I'm lead to believe that elected politicians used to hold a bit more power a century or two ago). I expect it is a similar situation in Australia, it's not really the PM's office the holds the real power.
  • shydwoo 4y ago
    The swamp cannot be drained. Get over it.
• defrost 4y ago
  > Commonwealth nations have largely devolved into illiberal elective autocracies with immense power concentrated in the PM's offices, Not especially applicable to border lockdowns within Australia. The biggest case that hit the Federal Court was the border closure by the State of Western Australia (population ~ 2 million, land area 3x Texas) which was in effect the local citizens of W.Australia being damn near 100% in lockstep with their elected local representatives in saying we have no desire to see free movement of people across our State border during the time of the pandemic. They were in opposition to the Federal Government and the PM's office and held their ground .. .. despite the alleged "immense power concentrated in the PM's offices". Free trade of goods continued via rail, road, and shipping so their was no issue with that part of the Consttitution, and the lockdown was in keeping with earlier (2005 etc) biosecurity ammendments in both State and Federal law.
  • baazaa 4y ago
    I originally had written premiers and PM's offices, not sure why I edited it. It wasn't a statement about federalism but about where power was located within each level of government. Obviously the judiciary is much less powerful here than the US, but my point was how power has been stripped away from party members, legislatures, the civil service, and most of the political executive. Even senior ministers have effectively no political power whatsoever, they're just sent out with their lines to read. All the power is concentrated within the PMO (or Number 10 in UK parlance), which nowadays solely dictates party strategy and policy. As for the WA border closure, if you read the judgement it did not say that the constitution only applies to the trade of goods. In Australia constitutional rights can simply be overridden by necessity. You saw the same with the implied right to political communication which has been routinely ignored, as in the Bolt case. If you want to read up on this, look up the doctrine of structured proportionality especially as it's been applied since McCloy. Basically governments can flagrantly breach the constitution and then it's up to the courts to decide whether the transgression was justified based off their own value-judgements. The court was satisfied there was a public health justification for the closure, so s92 goes into the bin. Realistically until Kiefel and Keane retire, Australians don't have any genuine constitutional rights because they'll just extend the doctrine of structured proportionality to whatever constitutional right is in question. "Non-absolute" rights are simply not rights in any sense of the word.
    • defrost 4y ago
      > As for the WA border closure, if you read the judgement it did not say that the constitution only applies to the trade of goods. In Australia constitutional rights can simply be overridden by necessity. I have read both the judgement re: WA which upheld the State's Right to enact quarantine during a biosecurity emergancy "while that situation lasted" and I've read the Australian Constitution, in particular the passage that supposedly allows free unencumbered travel between States even during a pandemic (which, I'm afraid, it doesn't). These specifics aside, I agree that various Federal Governments have pushed past the bounds of what most citizens find acceptable and it's right and correct that they push back and mount challenges. In the specific case of these environmental protestors I feel the former Government did go to excess in surveillance and stalking them in a manner befitting terrorists plotting malfeasance. No soup for them. In the same manner of fair view to both sides, this particular protest group had in the past and did intend in the future to go beyond public and visible protest and fully into the realm of trespass and disruption of ongoing business activity. Personally I applaud the ascent and hanging from a coal port stack loader - it was a ballsy move and good publicity and reminds me of things I did on several occassions in my 20s - but it was also trespass and beyond mere protest. None of which justifies the excess bail conditions outlined in the OP article.
• Aerroon 4y ago
  I'm surprised that this is surprising to many people. Australia is a country that has had active media censorship going on for a long time. Eg games work based on a whitelist. You need to get the government's permission to be able to publish your game in Australia. Australians accept this. It's no wonder to me that they will accept even further concessions on their freedoms.
  • josephg 4y ago
    > You need to get the government's permission to be able to publish your game in Australia. That sounds weird. I'm Australian and I've never heard of that. Can you share some links so I can learn more about that?
    • Aerroon 4y ago
      Sure! https://www.classification.gov.au/classification-ratings/what-we-classify https://www.classification.gov.au/classification-ratings/wha... >Every film and computer game has to be classified before it can be legally made available to the Australian public, unless it is exempt or is being shown at a registered event. If they refuse classification then it is banned.
      • Varqu 4y ago
        It looks like Australia is close to China not only geographically but also by the censorship practices.
        • catmanjan 4y ago
          It’s more that Australians don’t care about things that don’t actually mean anything, it’s accepted that the politburo will pass laws that are irrelevant and the general population ignores the ones that don’t matter This has worked so far because we don’t have extremist police who apply the law to the letter- they themselves see laws as mostly suggestions
        • vosper 4y ago
• Barrin92 4y ago
  >The entire tradition of thought around natural law and limits on the legitimate scope of the state have simply disappeared in Australia so far as I can tell Natural rights and an absolute sovereign aren't contradictory in the Anglo school of thought, see one of its most famous representatives, Thomas Hobbes. (There's no such thing as natural law, which is always a contractual human affair between the governor and the governed). The particular American, Lockean version of liberalism you're talking about never had much sway in the Commonwealth, and Australia derives its traditions if anything from Britain, not the US.
  • baazaa 4y ago
    Locke had more influence than Hobbes in GB and the other British exponents of Liberalism like Mill (who was very influential among Australia's founders) also clearly advocated for limits on state power.
• beAbU 4y ago
  >Commonwealth nations have largely devolved into illiberal elective autocracies Not all commonwealth nations. Some have devolved into banana republic failed state kleptocracies. Spend a day reading up on what's happening in South Africa's politics and see for yourself. We are either so ahead of the times that SA is a model for what's coming for countries like CAD/AUS/NZ, or we skipped the functional-but-overstepping government phase completely and just went straight to the gutter.
  • thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > Spend a day reading up on what's happening in South Africa's politics and see for yourself. South Africa is less analogous to an internal devolution and more analogous to one country being conquered by another country.
    • dotancohen 4y ago
      In what possible way? To which change of power are you referring to here, I can think of at least two but neither match your description so far I understand.
      • jimmydorry 4y ago
        I'm not GP but SA essentially has a single party that took control, with the opposition and minor parties not even able to hold a candle to the power the primary party wields. This primary party with control installed well-connected, but completely useless party members as heads of all government departments and state owned entities. And since coming into power, most of its members have stolen as much as possible. The only way such a government could come to power and remain in power anywhere else in the world would be in a conquered state. I can see the parallels that the GP has drawn by calling SA such.
• piokoch 4y ago
  "The entire tradition of thought around natural law and limits on the legitimate scope of the state have simply disappeared in Australia". The problem is that natural law needs some source, this source has to come from somewhere and majority has to agree that they like the source. For ages the source was obvious in "the West" - it was God all mighty armed with the Bible. Now God is gone, replaced with the believe that rational people will do much better job than some possibly made up person living in the clouds. And it turned out that the source of the natural law is the government. In theory government is democratically elected, unfortunately democratic process degraded because of the modern manipulation techniques, social media that caused even further move from making election choices by using reasoning to emotions. Those who has money, they win, as all that political marketing costs a lot. We live in the times of emodecmocracy, who can stir the emotions, attract in this way people wins, even if underneath they have ideas like censorship - obviously with the noble cause, to remove from discussion bad people, ale those anti-vax, anti-gay, anti-renewables, anti-reduce-meet-consumption, etc. people. Bad, bad people, but the law is the same for everyone and good people can suddenly become bad people if this suits someone's interest. Now people are waking up since they have to give away the content of their mailbox on request of some corporations who happens to own a few MPs, judges and prosecutors.
  • andrekandre 4y ago
    > For ages the source was obvious in "the West" - it was God all mighty armed with the Bible. which inalienable rights come from the bible?
    • sbaiddn 4y ago
      Read the Talmud. Then proceed to read the Church Fathers through to the scholastics. Add Justinian for good measure. The roots of (real) liberalism are all there in these largely theological treatises including the inalienable right of the people to revolt against the state when it becomes tyrannical (see Juan de Mariana).
      • andrekandre 4y ago
• cletus 4y ago
  > The entire tradition of thought around natural law and limits on the legitimate scope of the state have simply disappeared in Australia so far as I can tell Counterpoint: this is usually code for "the government did something I didn't like". I don't know where you're from but this reads like a very American slippery slope fallacy type way of thinking. You may not be Americans but this line of thinking is popular among Americans. Canada maybe (ie America's hat)? There's a lot you can criticize the Australian government for. Top of mind for me would be the treatment of boat people. The anti-eryption stuff is really just laughable because it's performative with very little actual impact. It's old people who don't understand technology trying to regulate technology in the most ignorant way possible. Ties to the two old media empires of Murdoch and Packer are more problematic. But the Australian government still has done a lot of good things (eg the assault weapons ban following the Port Arthur massacre). > ... immense power concentrated in the PM's offices This... shows a lot of ignorance about how the government works, at least in Australia's case. First, PM isn't actually a constitutional position with any explicit authority in Australia. The government has been dissolved by the Governor-General (ie Gough Whitlam). PMs have been frequently ousted by their party (eg Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott). There was a period where in 10 years not a single PM had survived their entire 3 year term. As a counterexample to the "autocracy", Tony Abbott as PM was largely undone by giving an Australian knighthood to Prince Philip. This was deeply unpopular and at the same time completely irrelevant. Calling this level of accountability to the voters (even though the party-room coup against Abbott had nothing directly to do with voters) an "autocracy" betrays a gross ignorance of how the Australian government works.
  • trinsic2 4y ago
    The country is it's people and the government represents the interests of its people, not the other way around. So you have some belief about what you think the government is that doesn't line up with reality. The government is its people, when it stops working for the interests of the common good, it's no longer legitimate.