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Showing posts from February, 1997

Meddling in morals But 'irrational' senator not forcing PM's hand

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Edition 1SUN 23 FEB 1997, Page 126 Meddling in morals/But 'irrational' senator not forcing PM's hand By BY RICHARD FARMER   TO blame Brian Harradine for the latest example of the Federal Government's imposition of its own version of political correctness is to miss the point. The Tasmanian senator is not forcing John Howard to make decisions which are against the Prime Minister's better judgment. Australia is now run by a very conservative man who needs no encouragement at all to impose his moral values on the rest of us. There is a startling inconsistency in Mr Howard's intellectual position. When it comes to economic life, he embraces the virtues of a free market in which individuals should be able to make rational decisions which they see as being to their benefit. In that respect, Adam Smith would be proud of him. But when it comes to the actions of individuals in their personal lives, Mr Howard abandons any pretence of libertarianism. It's quite all r

Minister for Irresponsibility

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Edition 1SUN 16 FEB 1997, Page 129 Minister for Irresponsibility By RICHARD FARMER   THERE was a time when ministers of the Crown took [responsibility] for the way government administers things, but that was all long ago when people even believed that the House of Representatives was an important component in running the country. Nowadays, when the relevance of the Lower House has been reduced to determining once every three years which party becomes the government, ministers are prepared to take the credit when things go right but not the criticism when something goes wrong. The very institutional framework has been changed to try to make the people believe that is how things should be. The cover for the new system of ministerial care but no ministerial responsibility is the notion of statutory offices where legislation gives an unelected person a power to make decisions in a supposedly independent fashion. There have long been a few such positions in Australian government where pol

Paying the price of infamy

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Edition 3SUN 09 FEB 1997, Page 126 Paying the price of infamy By RICHARD FARMER   WHEN you choose to take a job where you determine for people what is best for them, it should not surprise you that there is a price to be paid. Being in public life inevitably means that your life becomes far more public than that of an ordinary citizen. Even the politicians last week pretending outrage at the publication of some pictures embarrassing to one of their own would concede that much. Which is why the attack on the newspapers is for their invading the privacy of the wife of Senator Bob Woods rather than that of the resigning senator himself. Yet in truth it ever was, and ever will be, impossible to insulate the families of politicians from the consequences of the actions of the politicians. It is rather like, I suppose, that the families of a convicted murderer end up having to live with the embarrassment of having been close to the killer. It was not their fault that they were thrust in to

Minority poised for victory

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Edition 1SUN 02 FEB 1997, Page 047 Minority poised for victory By RICHARD FARMER   THE moral minority is on the verge of a horrible victory. While the opinion pollsters might tell us an overwhelming majority of Australians favour voluntary euthanasia, the Federal Parliament is about to veto a Northern Territory law that allows it. The House of Representatives has already voted that way and the Senate is almost certainly going to follow suit. Yet again, what the people think is being proved irrelevant. There are two reasons that occur to me in explanation of the willingness of our elected members of parliament to ignore the views of those they are elected to represent. The first is the unfortunate ability of a minority which feels strongly about a question to influence MPs in a way that a sensible majority never can. Very few, if any, of the 75 per cent of ordinary Australians who support euthanasia would switch their vote from one candidate to another on the basis of this issue alone