Like my co-Samizdatista Jonathan Pearce, and like Mark Holland of Blognor Regis, I have also been watching the Winter Olympics. In truth I find the winter Olympics to rather more fun than the summer Olympics, partly because it is genuinely a more lighthearted event with more of a party atmosphere than the summer games, and partly because power in the world is rather turned upside down. (Here is a competitor from Norway - he must be good. Here is someone from the United States of America - he will be mediocre). Mostly though, I think it is the simple insanity of many of the events that I find most enjoyable. Winter sports lead to extremes of human achievement that (a) one is amazed that they are possible, but not so much as (b) one wonders why anyone would actually do this, and how the sport was invented in the first place, for surely the first twelve people to try it must have ended up killing themselves.

Mark wonders just how Britain has a luge team, or as he puts it...

Anyway, I get to wondering how on earth a chap from Pinner decides to take up the sport. I mean, say for instance I'd been so inspired by the top luging at the Calgary Olympics that I'd immediately thought, "That's the event for me!" where am I supposed to go from there? If I'd have gone to my games teacher, Mr "Manly" Stanley, and said, "you know how this football and rugby doesn't interest me at all, well instead I fancy taking up sliding down an icy tube at 130 km/h whilst lying on a glorified tea tray". What's he supposed to do? Phone up the local British Luge Federation affiliated club? That's not going to happen is it.

Of course, in Australia, the answer as to how and why people take these things up, is that there is an official taxpayer funded organisation that encourages them to do it. At the winter olympics, Australia tends to specialise in something called the "Womens aerials". For those who have not watched aerials (one of the events in a wider school of insanity called "freestyle skiing"), it involves skiing down a slope, up a ramp, doing three backwards somersaults and a double twist, and then landing on the snow on your head and breaking your neck.

Actually you are not supposed to land on your head and break your neck. You are supposed to land upright on skis and continue down the mountain. Landing on your head and breaking your neck does appear to happen relatively frequently, however. Again, the question of why anyone would do this does come to mind, and the question of why the Australian taxpayer pays for it comes to mind even more.

And to answer this, we have to go back to the 1976 summer olympics in Montreal. For the first time in a very long time, Australia won no gold medals. This was widely perceived as a national catastrophe. Government ministers descriped it as "disgraceful", and it was generally assumed that the rest of the world was laughing at us with derision. (I am assuming that this is pretty much the first that any of our non-Australian readers have heard of it, but if by any chance you were laughing with derision at Australia in 1976 for this reason, I would like to hear about it). It was decided by the federal government that something had to be done about this, and a state funded organisation named the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) was set up to indentify potential Olympic medal winners and coach them to gold medal winning glory.

And at its stated aim, this seemed to work. Australia won a few gold medals in each of 1980, 1984, and 1988, and we were generally happy.

However, something happened in the world in 1989. The cold war ended. Suddenly, many experienced sports coaches with experience in running state funded success at all costs sports academies were out of work. While the United States and West Germany even did their best to poach the best scientists and engineers from the former communist bloc, Australia poached many fine East German sports coaches, and invited them to do what they had previously done best. Like East Germany and the Soviet Union, Australia was interested mainly in appearing as high up the medal table as possible, and didn't care so much in what sports or events the medals were won. They got down to the old East German trick of identifying sports and events where the competition was weak, an concentrating on those events. (One side effect of this both in East Germany and Australia was a greater concentration on women's events, where there was often less depth in the fields). Plus, they established an incentive scheme in which sports which won Olympic medals received increased (taxpayer) funding and those which did not had their funding cut. (In particular, Australia specialises in weird track cycling events too obscure for anyone capable of winning a stage in the Tour de France from having the slightest interest in. Like most cycling teams, the Australians have had their share of drug scandals as well).

At its stated aim of winning lots of gold medals, this scheme was hugely successful. In the summer games, Australia went from 3 gold medals in 1988 to 7 in 1992 to 9 in 1996 to 16 in 2000 (possibly boosted by home town advantage) to an utterly outrageous 17 in Athens in 2004. (In the last two games, Australia managed to finish higher than all nations other than the United States, Russia, and China). Rather than giving Australians the chance to cheer a few times in a couple of weeks, the AIS had managed to give us an East German like procession of medals. The funding system had grown out of control in terms of total budget, and the incentive sheme had led to a concentration of funding on a smaller number of more successful sports.

And, while Australian does contain mountains with ski resorts, and while substantial numbers of Australians do ski recreationally, winter sports are not something we traditionally devote a great deal of time to. However, the incentive scheme of the AIS applies to winter sports just as it does to summer sports. The same process of identifying sports with weak fields in which we might win medals went on, and one of the events that came up was the women's aerials. This actually requires similar skills to certain gymnastic events, and the required skiing skills are only moderate. As the AIS already had a gymnastic program, retired female gymnasts were encouraged to take up skiing. And it worked, Australia produced a number of fine woman aerial skiers, which culminated in Alisa Camplin winning the gold medal in the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002. (Just as an observation, in her career Camplin has suffered a broken collarbone, broken hand, separated shoulder, torn Achilles tendon and nine concussions). As this was successful under the incentive scheme, funding for women's aerials (and winter sports in general) was of course increased at the AIS, and Australia once again hopes to win medals in the event this year.

Thus a government program expands, even one devoted to encouraging women to do extremely dangerous reverse backflips in freezing conditions. Really.

Update: Someone in the comments has asked me just how much money exactly the Australian government spends on this. Perusal of Treasury documents gives a budget of $111 million Australian dollars (at current exchange rates that is $US82m or £47m - the Australian population is about a third of the British population and about one fifteenth of the US population) for "Excellence in sports performances by Australians" (ie elite athlete development) for the 2005-6 financial year. There is also some money spent by state governments on similar programs, but the federal expenditure makes up the bulk of it. If you (generously) assume that Australia wins 20 Olympic gold medals (winter and summer) every four years, and the budget is $110m a year, then the gold medals are costing the taxpayer $22 million each. To me that seems a lot.

"We've taken the biggest surge in national income in years and squandered it. The punters are spending every cent they can and Canberra is encouraging that by handing back its share of the commodity price loot as tax cuts."

Who would say such a thing? Sounds like the rantings of some bleeding heart welfarist think tank, rather than Australia's leading economics consultancy, as Access Economics likes to describe itself.

Yes, Keynesian wannabes Access Economics released a report fretting about interest rate hikes, and it feels the answer is to remove the financial options of individuals and ensure that the government collects and hoards ever more of the people's income. I suppose one should look at it this way; some day soon you might benefit if you find yourself in a geographic or demographic sweet spot that the government needs to court come election time.

Talking about rum plans, this proposal from Deloitte floats an admirable (though not particularly original) idea - swapping tax deductions on work expenses for across-the-board tax cuts. Liberals will start to choke when they see Deloitte's adjustment of the progressive income tax rates:

The poorest tax payers would see their rate cut from 15 per cent to 4 per cent, with the 42 per cent tax rate paid by people earning $75,001-$125,000 falling to 33 per cent. The top 47 per cent rate paid by those earning more than $125,000 could be cut to 44 per cent.

Deloitte would surely have access to the masses of theoretical and empirical evidence showing the superior economic benefits of shrinking the gap between top marginal rates of income tax and the lower rates, not to mention the moral argument. Why this EC (and I do not mean European Community, though maybe I do...) drivel, then? Why do Deloitte believe they need to field a taxation proposal that is going to win elections?

Thankfully, the political party that prides itself on its fiscal responsibility and economic liberalism holds government in Australia. Yet we have a curmudgeonly treasurer (chancellor of the exchequer) who steadfastly refuses to budge over our absurdly high top marginal tax rate of 47%. He is more than happy to ladle out benefits to politically useful groups, however. Oddly named, the Liberal Party of Australia, when one considers it is run by big government conservatives.

Couple these few good men with the leading economics consultancies, who seem to be trying to outdo each other in the social crusading stakes.

Have these people never heard of the Chicago school? I despair.

I have not commented on the recent riots in Sydney, which have been reported in the global media, for the reason that the scale and size of them are not particularly great. They certainly have been overblown in the media, both in Australia and overseas.

Of course, that is not to detract from the nastiness of them for the victims. People have been beaten, stabbed, and had their property vandalised in a deeply unpleasant way. But compared to what happened in Paris, these disturbances are very small beer.

However they are also very different to the Paris riots because the causes of them are totally different. In Paris, people were rioting because of the perceived heavy handedness of the French state and discrimination issues. There may or may not have been an Islamic element as well.

The Sydney disturbances were nothing of the sort. They were started by outraged 'surfers' and beach bums who were incited by populist media types, and also by some deeply unpleasant racist thugs. They were continued by the people that they were protesting about- the gangs of thugs who have been causing a constant law and order issue for Sydney residents for several years now.

These gangs have been allowed to 'run amok' because, not to put too fine a point on it, they are Lebanese Muslims. The nominally 'centre left' ALP state government has been too terrified of being accused of racism to uphold the rule of law. This leads to massive double standards in the enforcement of justice, which has been a feature of policing in Sydney.

There have been two developments in consequence to these riots, both of which are deeply depressing. The first is that the NSW State government is using the riots to claim for itself massive increases in police powers in order to 'deal' with the situation. Those who have seen the NSW police force in action over a long period are unlikely to have confidence that these powers will not be abused.

Secondly, the Australian media has indulged itself in a veritable orgy of self-flagellation about race relations in Australia and 'multiculturalism'. The few blogs willing to point out the law enforcement issues involved have been ignored.

Equality before the law is supposed to be a core principle of any government that fancies itself to be democratic. Yet in Australia, no one wants to talk about it. Draw your own conclusions.

In the Sydney Morning Herald entertainment blog, Edmund Tadros made this rather extraordinary claim on Wednesday:

Australian blogs will never be as hard-hitting as their overseas counterparts because of our restrictive laws.

Now, I wonder, why would anyone think that? How do you define 'hard-hitting', anyway?

Is a hard-hitting blog one that causes events, especially public events?

Is a hard-hitting blog one that changes public opinions, or stimulates thought?

In the United States, political groups have used the internet to telling effect, and blogs have also exerted a powerful if difficult to define effect on public debate. The rise of Howard Dean, the Trent Lott affair, Rathergate and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were all things that could have happened in the context of the Australian legal environment.

Australia also had an election in 2004, but there was only one major effort to use the Internet to influence the Australian public, that being the 'Webdiary' of Margo Kingston, (which was then hosted by the Sydney Morning Herald). The reasons why 'Webdiary' was so ineffective in the public debate were numerous, but the principle reason must surely be the total intellectual incoherence of the site and the vulnerabilitiy of the main contributors to the most paranoid interpretation of public events. The most famous example of this was probably the famous 'anti-gravity' article in 2003, but it was never easy to take seriously a campaign lead by a senior journalist who could not spell. Margo's spelling errors and flights of fancy deprived her campaign of credibility and provided a rich lode of material for the likes of Tim Blair and "Professor Bunyip" to mock and ridicule her.

The more prosaic truth is that many Australian blogs are not very good, and those that are good tend to either be more interested in talking about policy of interest to a small few, or are devoted to dissecting and satirising Australian culture. The plain fact is that 'the great Australian political blog' is yet to be born. There's plenty of room for an Australian blog with journalistic skills and political savvy to wake up the slumber in Australian politics, and it has nothing to do with the Australian legal climate.

But it certainly will not be a blog that chewed through $44,000 in its first 10 months as an independent entity.

Seventeen people have been arrested in Sydney and Melbourne and charged with various offences with relation to an intention to commit terrorist attacks on Australian targets. Police found chemical stockpiles in their raids which were similar to the sort used in the London bombings in July.

There is no indication as yet as to what the terrorists had in mind as targets, but it does appear as if the groups had reached an advanced stage of planning. As a result, a co-ordinated surveillance effort of 18 months was turned into a massive police operation involving domestic security services, the Australian federal police and state police forces. They swooped in co-ordinated raids to apprehend the suspects.

The suspects all appear to be followers of one Abdul Nacer Benbrika, a radical Muslim cleric based in Melbourne.

This is a major tactical victory against terrorists in Australia, because it demonstrates the ability of police and security agencies to effectively counter bomb-making efforts before they have a chance to succeed. Islamist extremists who wish to strike in Australia now clearly know that they will have to devote greater efforts to security and that in turn means less efforts can go into creating mayhem. This in turn means that international groups are less likely to devote resources like bomb-makers, money and propaganists towards a 'hard' target like Australia.

In the long term, though, it is nevertheless of concern because this affair reveals that even in faraway Australia, Islamic hatemongers can find willing tools that can be manipulated into fulfilling their murderous fantasies. Until the hatemongers are stopped, it seems that the terrorism will continue, with all the loss of life, liberties and humanity that follows.

Australian civil liberties are looking increasingly shaky as the Australian government proposes sweeping new laws that give security services astonishing powers to control 'people of interest'.

UP to 80 Australian Muslims could immediately be placed under effective house arrest under the Government's proposed anti-terror laws.

The laws mean they could each be required to wear tracking devices, or prevented from working, or using the telephone or internet, or communicating with certain people.

Fancy that. The state wants to have the power to rob you of your right to make a living and put an electronic dog collar on you.

The laws will apply to anyone who has trained overseas with any of the 17 banned terror groups, including al-Qa'ida, Jemaah Islamiah, Lashkar-e-Taiba, Abu Sayyaf and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The intent of the law is that authorities leave these people alone if it is considered they no longer pose a security risk.

Oh, so that makes it okay, then?

I must confess to having mixed feelings about this. I do not want people who have been hanging around that sort of outfit running around in Australia without some sort of supervision. I loathe these barbarians and their theological nonsense, and I concede that we do not live in a perfect world.

But to see people who have not actually committed an offence to be deprived of their ordinary right to make a living, and to be dragged hither and yon at the whim of an Australian beaurocrat is almost as grating as an Islamofascist.

There are real threats that Australia have to face. This story outlines how the Australian government sees the situation. But there are some troubling aspects.

For example, there hasn't been any sort of terrorist attack in Australia since 2001 by Islamic extremists. The report claims that they've already disrupted several attacks. Therefore it seems that the onus is definately on the Government to prove the case that it actually needs these new powers. Instead,

The Government insists it should be taken on trust that the new laws will be carefully implemented and used only sparingly.

Only the most casual observer of the Australian political scene will have any trust in the government's ability to do so. The Australian government has been mired in controversy over mis-management of the immigration system, and its competence in security matters is hard to assess. And with the re-introduction of 'sedition' laws, the government's ability to prosecute people for their opinions is wider then ever.

All this is troubling enough, but what is even more alarming is the way democratic governments all over the world seem to be competing with each other to take more powers to control and imprison their citizens. The common thread is that if you are different, you are a threat.

Care to explain to me how that makes dealing with real terrorists any easier?

Australian blogger Tex has an encounter with a former Green Party candidate, and learns a few things. Not least about economics, where Thom Lyons explains that:

Socialism is the syetem of choice is the most prosperous countries.

as well as several choice facts about 9/11, Cuba and the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Tex has more patience with this sort of character then I do. But the sad thing is that Lyons' views are becoming more and more prevalent in Australian society.

The surging interest in cricket in England is having an effect in Australia. The South Australian Cricket Association warned today that the England vs Australia Test due in late 2006 might well be sold out. At least 6,000 English visitors are expected for the match.

And they immediately followed that up with yet another demand for government funding to expand the seating capacity of the Adelaide Oval.

I am confused. Do I laugh now, or do I cry?

The other day I was driving round my local area of Adelaide when I noticed four youths sitting down on the pavement, a gap between each one, as police interrogated them for some reason. I thought it was curious; I thought it doubly curious when I returned ten minutes later and they were still there, still being interrogated by the local police. I would have thought that by then, the police station would have been more appropriate. But then the methods and means of the local police have always baffled me.

I wonder what accents the police officers had. The South Australian police have found it hard going to find suitable local candidates so they are looking to hire British police officers to meet the shortfall.

One thing that the British recruits might be surprised to find is that Australia does have a 'class system' and its most eloquent expression is in the way police treat members of the public. People who are clearly unemployed or blue collar factory workers, such as myself, will generally get a pretty raw deal in any dealings with the police and at the other end of the spectrum, members of the legal fraternity can claim special rights under the 'Mates Act', like this chap did.

On one level, this story is an interesting example of globalisation at work. An organisation with specialist HR needs can now search for people from around the world. On another level, it is a warning, not least to any Brazillians in raincoats in Adelaide, to exercise caution. SA police are armed at all times on duty, and the State is not your friend.

Australia is not famous for higher education. Indeed, "Australia" and "Higher education" would strike most people as an oxymoron in the "French Military Victory" class.

Needless to say, the Australian Government has long tried to nudge Australia's university system towards some sort of quality, and has permitted private Universities to be established. In addition, the government has encouraged students from overseas to pay their way through Australian universities, as a way for universities here to raise money.

Recently, the government has also allowed Australians to enter universities by paying their own way.

This move towards a more financially sustainable education system has not been well received by many members of the Australian academic ecosystem. One of whom has put together a rather amusing parody website which takes a humorous potshot at trends in Australian university education.

Underling the parody is the normal assumtion that anything in the private sector must be inferior, and that any private qualification must obviously be worthless as it can be bought.

But the site has caused a bit of a flurry of attention in various educational quarters in Australia, and one consultant has been tracking the progress of this satirical site.

This recalls to me the time, long ago now, when I was studying like a demon in order to obtain the Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) qualification, back in the dark days when networking involved lots of wires. As it was, I was dating a university student at the time and she was appalled that I had to acheive an 85% score to pass and obtain the qualification. She was doing sociology or something of that ilk in a Melbourne university and told me smugly that she only needed to score 55% to pass. Easy for her, but who do you think knew their subject better? After all, Cisco had a real stake in me being proficient in knowing how to use their product.

Thanks to Professor John Kersey for alerting us to these sites.

It is hard to know what to make of this article, which seems to be pressing for an ID card system for Australia. Australian Prime Minister John Howard seems to be not so keen on the idea, but refuses to rule it out.

More depressing is the quote from the chief of the Australian Defence Association calling for ID cards because terrorists do not like it:

Australia Defence Association chief Neil James said he believed Mr Howard was considering an identity card because it was identified as one of the chinks in Britain's counter-terror armour. "If you have a look at Europe the terrorists gravitate to Britain because all of the European Union countries have some form of national identity system," he said.

Unfortunately this is fairly indicative of the quality of debate in Australia regarding security matters.

(Hat tip- Tim Blair)

Chen Yonglin, a Chinese diplomat with inside knowledge of his country's large scale espionage activities within Australia, has revealed that the Chinese intelligence services sometimes 'forcibly repatriate' (i.e. kidnap) political enemies in Australia and bring them back to China. He has also just tried to defect in order to tell his story and has, with indecent haste, been refused political asylum within only 24 hours of asking for it.

Why? Because too many members of the Australian ruling class are in the pockets of Chinese business interests and allowing Chen Yonglin to defect could cause the Chinese government to threaten lucrative trade deals with Australian companies.

Our Australian Samizdatistas have often told me just how cynical and corrupt the people at the top of Australian politics are but I still find this deeply disturbing. These are shameful days down-under and I hope a lot of Australians are angry as hell.

Fancy that.

An interesting email arrived in my inbox this morning. It was from Stephen Mayne, telling me, along with 5,300 other subscribers, that he and his wife had sold their e-magazine crikey.com.au for $A1 million.

The interesting thing about this is the business plan that Mayne established. Although the website holds plenty of interesting articles about Australian politics, news, sports, media and business, the main effort that Mayne and his team put their energies into is the daily news email. Subscribers pay a fee, and in return, the daily email with between 15 and 20 news and gossip items come into their inbox.

It is a gossipy sort of publication, but no more so then the mainstream Australian media, and it was at least a different point of view then the reliably statist points of view that are published in the mainstream Australian press. Although Mayne has given up control, he will still be contributing so I hope the 'crikey.com.au' spirit lives on, and I am pleased for Mayne personally. The man has worked incredibly hard over the last five years to build up his little niche in the Australian media.

And it also gives hope to others that there is a long term viability to 'new media'. You do have to work incredibly hard, and take risks, and you need a bit of luck. The only equivilent online publication I can think of is the Indian website Tehelka.com, which, after many adventures, seems to have made the transition from online to print media. (Samizdata magazine, anyone?). So well done to Mayne, and I hope he enjoys his new fortune to go with his more established fame.

In case you get caught short Down Under, the Australian government has a website to help you.

None of us are getting any younger. This truth, long recognised, has finally dawned on the Australian government, and the media is in panic mode about the cost of it all.

No wonder. Australia has a socialised medicine and health system, so the costs could well rise to infinity. At least we will be able to read about it because one of the few medical procedures in Australia that are not regulated to death is laser eye surgery.

But there are none that are as blind as those who will not see.

We will find any means we can to further restrict them because I hate guns. I don’t think people should have guns unless they’re police or in the military or in the security industry. There is no earthly reason for people to have... ordinary citizens should not have weapons. We do not want the American disease imported into Australia

So said re-elected Australian Prime Minister John Howard, in an interview on April 17 this year. (Audio here). While Howard is certainly America's friend in the war against Islamic fundamentalism, you should actually be careful before assuming that he shares your position on much else. This is after all a man who once introduced a hypothecated income tax specifically for the compulsory purchase of people's firearms.

(Link via Tim Lambert.)

The Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, has called an election for October 9. So we get to choose once again between a fuzzy right-wing statism, or a 'Blair wannabe' statism. You will excuse me if I do not get ferociously excited about this choice.

One of the worst things about Australian elections is the placards that political parties insist on hanging on street poles. At no other time of the year are any other organisation permitted to do this, but political parties do like their perks; inflicting an eyesore I call it.

I am not going to vote - I will defy the State, and not vote. That is an offence which will cost me a parking ticket fine. It is actually also illegal for me to advocate not voting to other people as well.

As to who will win, I think the 'Blair Wannabe' Party will win; I wrote about this back in June and nothing has happened since to make me change my mind. In the great scheme of things, this is a small matter but it will consume the local media and blogs here for the next six weeks.

Although Australia and the US have signed a free trade agreement, it is an imperfect document, with many exemptions on both sides. In Australia, there has been a loud campaign to have existing 'local content' rules for Australian television excluded, and this campaign has been successful.

The 'local content' rules mean that a certain proportion of television programmes that are broadcast on Australian television must be locally made. The scrapping of this rule was an American objective in the free trade negotiations, as it meant that US television companies were restricted in their access to the Australian television market by what in effect is a quota.

Australia resisted this; we should not have.

Australian television has had local content rules for a long time, they provide that at least 55% of the programming on Australian television between 6am and midnight must be locally produced. This creates a local internal market for television, which is actually quite a cut-throat industry. The economies of scale mean that Australian television products are not cost-competitive, but they do rate well.

That is the rub- many of the people involved in the industry here do not wish to concern themselves with anything so grubby as 'ratings'; but would rather follow their artisitic vision. A noble thing, to be sure, but television is a business. Local variants of the 'reality tv' genre have been ratings winners and have made a lot of money for their networks through advertising sales.

The local lobby present a 'nightmare' scenario where Australian television is totally dominated by US television product. This seems curious since Australian television networks are more worried by market share rather then raw cost. But then the local content lobby are more about emotion then cool business sense. In point of fact, the ratings show that many of the best rating programs are local productions.

But there is a strange sense of values in the local content lobby. Their catchphrase seems to be 'telling Australian stories with Australian voices'. But this is a remarkable way to be going about it. It is almost like forcing a 'book quota' on Australian readers, making Australian readers read a set proportion of Australian written books.

What is screened on Australian television screens should be decided by the television networks, who make (more or less) rational decisions based on the ratings of what people want, rather then by a government directive decreeing what is best for them. It is most unfortunate that this principle has been lost again.

After legalising prostitution last year, the New Zealand government has now issued a 100 page Occupational Health and Safety manual.

The recommendations - which the New Zealand Herald said will also be distributed to brothels and sex workers - include detailed advice on safe sex practices such as the storage and handling of sex toys and disinfecting equipment.

Employers are asked to ensure condoms in a variety of shapes and sizes are always available, and to provide beds that support the back for a variety of services to be performed without strain or discomfort.

Sex workers are cautioned to watch out for occupational overuse syndrome, often caused by rapid repetitive tasks or forceful movements, and to carry a small torch in case they need to check clients for sexually transmitted diseases.

Comprehensive training of staff in the safe use of all equipment, particularly for fantasy work, is also recommended.

Ah, governments. Where would we be without them?

On August 17, 1980, a woman named Lindy Chamberlain reported to the police that her nine week old baby daughter Azaria had been taken by a dingo (ie a wild dog) from the tent where she and her family had been holidaying in a campsite near Ayers Rock (Uluru) in Australia's Northern Territory.

The events of the resulting Azaria Chamberlain case, in which Chamberlain was ultimately convicted of the murder of her daughter, and the conviction was later quashed after the forensic evidence was completely discredited, are epochal and notorious in the country's psyche. There are occasional media and news events when a whole nation is watching. What they are and will be is sometimes hard to predict, and it's sometimes hard to tell just why everybody is watching, but this was one of those cases where people were watching because of the bizarre quality of the case and the luridness of the allegations. And as nothing has ever really been settled, the case has lingered on in the media in the 24 years since. Despite various claims, most people (including myself) have been of the belief that we would never see definite evidence as to exactly what happened.

At least, not until this week. As it happens, a story that has been told this week that may or may not be true (although once some excavations have taken place we will know), but which is almost as strange as the original events, and which would (if true) explain all the facts. Although maybe it will be true and we still won't have any definite proor, because four of the five people involved are dead, including those who would know the location of the body. So perhaps an old man has just made up a story.

But first, the background.

After Mrs Chamberlain reported the loss of her baby to the police, a huge search took place, but the body of baby Azaria was never found. However, some of the baby's clothes, in particular the jump-suit that she had been wearing at the time of the attack, was found. At a subsequent inquest, it was determined that in the state it was in, the suit could not have been ripped off the baby by the dingo, and that it would have had to have been removed by a person. The inquest came to the curious conclusion that the baby had been taken and killed by a dingo, and that the body had been later disposed of "by person or persons unknown".

This was a curious and unsatisfactory finding, and in the belief that additional evidence had been found, the relevant coroner's office reopened the case later that year, and a second inquest took place. Evidence was presented that bloodstains had been found on the floor of the Chamberlain's car, and that the car had been used to dispose of the body after Lindy Chamberlain had killed her own daughter. It was ultimatelly ruled that sufficient evidence had been found for a prosecution, and in 1982 Lindy Chamberlain was put on trial for murder.

At this point, all kinds of allegations flew around Australia. Michael Chamberlain was a pastor in the Seventh Day Adventist church, which was not a religion most Australians knew much about, and strange stories went around about blood rituals and other goings on in this in fact fairly inoffensive church. Lindy Chamberlain had been calm and collected after losing her baby, and had later sold her story to a women's magazine, which somehow wasn't "appropriate behaviour" in the circumstances. (Hysterics and crying would presumably have been better). In any event, the case went to trial, and Lindy Chamberlaiin was convicted of murder, and spent four years in prison.

However, as the years went on, it became clearer and clearer that the evidence against her (which had been mostly circumstantial in the first place) was weak. There was a question of motive, and there was no body, and there were obvious defences that were actually not used in the trial but one thinks would have been if the Chamberlains were lying. ("So what if there was blood in the car. Azaria had a nose bleed on the way to the camp site"). Eventually, the forensic lab that had supposedly identified the blood was demonstated to be completely incompetent and it seems now more likely that it was red paint (yes, really). Azaria Chamberlain was released from prison, and evntually her conviction was overturned and she was paid compensation. Her marriage to Michael Chamberlain collapsed at some point, but since then she has remarried and got on with her life.

And that is where the case has rested for the more than a decade. In Australia the story has come up in the media from time to time. Every now and then some suggestion as to what happens will come up, or there will be a report of a dingo attacking another child (but being fended of by the child's parents) or similar, strengthening people's beliefs that Lindy Chamberlain's story of the dingo was true. That is certainly my own feeling. At the time of the trial (I was 13 at the time) I professed to not caring, as a reaction against the extent of the media coverage, and I didn't pay enough attention. A few years later I came round to the view that I didn't know what had happened but that Lindy Chamberlain had clearly been denied her presumption of innocence, and the case against her had not been proved beyond reasonable doubt. I few years after that I discovered that I in fact completely believed her, and that I believed that the baby had been taken by a dingo (as I still do).

In 1988 a film was made about the case, directed by an Australian but starring an American (Meryl Streep) and produced by a British company, and the case became well known around the world. Not in the all encompassing OJ sense it was known in Australia, but as one of those things that people might know about Australia. "Oh, there was that story about the baby and the dingo". (For some reason, the even stranger story that Australia once lost a serving Prime Minister who went swimming and was never seen again is less well known). The story has sort of worked its way into global popular culture. There have been references to it in The Simpsons, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and various other places.

Which was where we were this week. Australia was going through one of its periods where it remembered the incident. A second dramatisation of the story has been made for Australian television, this one starring Miranda Otto (most famous internationally for playing Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings but very well known on Australian television in Australian movies prior to that). A television program had coaxed Lindy Chamberlain into doing an interview for what is believed to be a substanial sum of money. And then this week the extraordinary story came out. A 78 year old man from Melbourne named Frank Cole has stated that he and four friends were shooting for dogmeat at Uluru on August 17, 1980. One of them shot a dingo, and discovered the body of a human baby in its mouth. They were shocked by this, but were reluctant to go to the police, because shooting (and having a dog) in a National Park was illegal.

The friends separated, and drove back to Melbourne, and Mr Cole states that he does not know what happened to the body. One of his friends may have buried it anywhere between Uluru and Melbourne, which is a very long way. There is some thought that one of his friends may have buried it in his back yard in Melbourne. It may be that excavations will take place shortly to determine if Azaria's remains are there. Certainly the rest of the story will be investigated, and Mr Cole and his late friends will no doubt be investigated to see if the rest of the story matches, if they were indeed at Uluru at that time, and if perhaps the location of the remains of the body can be determined.

If indeed the story is true. It could be a complete fabrication. In combination with the dingo story in the first place it is just so weird that one almost thinks it is true. And if it is true, Mr Cole and his friends allowed a tremendous injustice to take place, which they could have prevented at any time by coming clean about their story.

The reason why academic politics are so vicious is because the stakes are so low.

This quote from Henry Kissinger could easily be applied to Australian federal politics. And, with a Federal election in the offing, the stakes are getting lower and lower. Australian politics, more then ever, resemble drug-gang warfare- there are two gangs, both eager to secure the lucrative cash flows that come with the commanding heights of the Treasury Benches.

This may surprise the casual observer of the political scene. On the surface Australian public life seems to have a frantic flurry of debate, on foreign policy, on health, and on values. But a closer inspection reveals that this is just surface froth, designed to sate the appetites of the media machine and the political junkies. Beneath the scenes, one sees that the purpose of all these debates are simply designed to enjoy the power and perquisites of office.

In Australia the time and date of the election is at the choosing of the Prime Minister, and he studies the signs, looking for the opportune moment to strike. The opinion polls suggest that the ALP has a slight lead over the governing Coalition, but the bookmakers, who have the edge in accuracy in predicting Australian elections, have the Government as firm favorites to retain office (for what it is worth, Bush is just ahead of Kerry, although prices vary from firm to firm).

So what is this government that is, if you believe the bookmakers, about to be elected for a fourth term?

John Howard has been Prime Minister since 1996 and everyone has a clear view about him. His strengths are obvious, as are his weaknesses. His most obvious attribute is determination. He has been written off so many times and yet bounced back to defy all his critics. Even now it seems difficult for him to win. However, his come from behind election win in 2001 was a more impressive comeback win then what would be required from him now.

Howard is not, and never was, fashionable- he rarely has ever been popular with the gatekeepers of the media, those valiant seekers after truth. But he is widely seen as a 'safe pair of hands' and a competent administrator. That is certainly true and it counts for a lot in these uncertain times. It counts enough to keep him in with a fighting chance despite his shameless populism and rampant dishonesty- like Tony Blair, he has squandered what credibility he had so the political class as a whole generally believes nothing he says.

You can believe one thing he says- he really does want to continue as Prime Minister. He is a social conservative, and he would have it be known that he's an economic liberal and small-government man, but these latter attributes do not have any relation to the truth. He is in fact a classic right-wing statist.

He dominates his government- like Blair in Britain, he overshadows his main finance minister and internal part rival, Peter Costello, but while it is plausible to think that Gordon Brown might one day unseat Tony Blair, it is quite impossible to think Costello could do the same here.

The Howard government is nominally a pro-business, tax-cutting, small government party. Its actual record here is poor- the tax system has been fiddled with at the margins, and half the phone company has been privatised, but that is all - a poor outcome indeed after eight years in office. Part of this is because the Australian Senate is a permanent stumbling block to reform, and the minor parties that hold the balance of power there are generally left-wing. But fundamentally, Howard is a statist, who has faith in government programs of various natures to deliver useful outcomes.

In addition, he has learned that government money, carefully directed, is a wonderful way to bribe key parts of the electorate. Many of these dollars have flowed to the interests of the National Party, the partner in his Coalition government, which is a party of agrarian socialism and social conservatism. (I have complained about farmers before.)

Is this government irredeemably useless? In my view it has been okay in the response to the terrorist threat that has become a global menace. Australia has in effect occupied the Solomon Islands in a bid to prevent it becoming a failed state, an act which it did unilaterally and without the support of the United Nations. However, since this has been a very successful operation, even the local media have not opposed it.

In terms of keeping the local economy out of trouble, it has done a middling job- but the Australian economy is still hampered by regulatory handicaps, crony capitalism (which often has legal protection, most notably in broadcast and media industries) and subsidies. Future generations will rue the lost opportunities of this government.

*

Against the government is the Australian Labor Party (ALP). There is, it must be said, not much in common between the British Labour Party and the Australian version, beyond a shared trade-union heritage. The ALP is a wide ranging centre-left party in principle, but it is fact no more 'socialist' then the governing Coalition is 'free-market'. It is simply a vehicle for several ambitious men and women to indulge their taste for power.

In fact it must be said that the most free-market government in Australian history was the ALP government led by Bob Hawke which was elected in 1983. Michael Jennings's recent post on aviation policy gives an example of how that government went about its deregulatory business. It nevertheless has a taste for left-wing statist ideas, and in no sense could it be described as libertarian, unless those liberties have a self-indulgent slant to them.

Because Australia is a federation we do in fact have a very clear idea of how an ALP government might look like, because the ALP actually is in office in every state and territory government in the country.

The main characteristic of these governments is that they are populist, and socially authoritarian. The party has to balance economic management with social activism. The Australian electorate is one of the more economically literate electorates in the world, a searing recession induced by interest rates on mortgages rising to 17% in the early 1990's having made the Australian public keenly aware of the importance of balanced budgets and the like.

But the ALP has to satisfy its own activists who worship on the alter of state spending as the cure for all the ills of mankind. This can lead to tricky situations but the activists are usually satisfied with high office, and are usually pragmatic enough to ignore their social consciences when their electoral interests are involved. (In contrast, the Liberal Party activists, having no conscience at all, can pillage the Australian taxpayer and sleep soundly at night.)

In general, the ALP State governments are very good indeed at this balancing act. They are able to appease the public sector unions in the most part without blowing out budget deficits. And they are in the happy position of enjoying a windfall of money courtesy of GST tax,(the Australian version of VAT, introduced in 2000) which in Australia goes into state government coffers rather then the Federal governments. Hilariously, the Federal ALP bitterly resisted this tax which has benefited their State colleagues so much.

The challenge for the Federal ALP in government is in managing the economy and foreign policy. I suspect that they will defer to their departments on both, as they will be keen to appear competent in these factors- meanwhile, I expect some sort of 'initiative' somewhere else to be developed as a rallying cry to satisfy the activists- possibly (hopefully) a renewed push on making Australia a republic

*

What do the electorate make of all this? Not much. The Australian public is for the most part famously apathetic to politics, which is why we have compulsory voting in Australia. It is an amusing diversion to guesstimate what the turn out would be if it was not compulsory to vote in Australian elections, but no one seriously suggests that it would be above 50%.

Generally, the elevation of the mercurial Mark Latham to the leadership of the ALP has seen a revival in that party's electoral fortunes, but it must be qualified that Latham is a polarising figure. He is seen by many as a loose cannon, and his style as a man and a political leader is felt to be a turn-off by women. It must also be remarked that much of the revival of the ALP in the opinion polls is in the ALP's own seats- with Latham having less bite in the marginal seats that is required to win the election.

There are also significant regional variations in the different Australian states. Latham has revived the ALP position most strongly in Queensland, somewhat less strongly in South Australia, and has actually lost support for the party in West Australia. In the most populated state, New South Wales, there has actually been little change.

The main issue of the day, the war in Iraq and Australia's involvement in it, is a very volatile issue. It is not that Australians worry about the course of events in Mesopotamia, but rather they care about the honesty of the government in dealing with it. This is not surprising, and is a issue in the US as well. There is also the vexing question of terrorism. After the political impact of the Madrid blast, it is possible that al-Queda's South East Asian affiliate, Jemiaah Islamia (JI) might fancy its chances of doing a repeat performance.

Although the political effect of the Bali attack on Australia was to strongly rally people behind the government, the truth is, no one knows what the political effect of a terrorist strike during an electoral campaign might be. It remains the deadly wildcard in the election brew.

*

From a libertarian point of view, it is irrelevant who wins the election. Neither political party has the slightest interest in libertarian ideas, and it must be said that this is merely a reflection of the mood of the electorate. Taxation is quite high in Australia but a well organised individual with a good accountant can avoid most of the worst of it. (although wage and salary earners can not).

Both sides of politics are running on a nannyish social agenda, a high tax and spend agenda, and there is not a hint of a promise to wind back the state. Increasingly I'm inclining to the view of Perry de Havilland that democracy is nothing more then kleptocratic populism. Certainly, the way parliamentary politics is practiced in Australia can be characterised as such.

I am loathe to tip against the bookies, but I predict that the voters will toss the Howard Government out of office, and the ALP will enjoy the benefits that accrue from a thumping landslide win. The general rule in Australian politics is that when the party of government changes, it changes in a very big way. It seems to me that all the signs are there this will happen again.

Skiing in Australia might seem rather like sunbathing in Britain, but just as there are actually beaches in the UK, so there are indeed ski slopes to be enjoyed in Australia. And the Australian skiing industry has been around for quite a while in its own quiet little way. In some sections of the Australian community, it is an annual feature to have a trip to the ski slopes in August or September.

The industry lives in terror of global warming, which is forecast to reduce the amount of snow available. However, since even the most rabid statist accepts that there is no way for the government to change the climate, the Australian ski industry has conceded that there's no point pestering the government about it, and have decided instead to do something about it.

But the crucial factor in sustaining the industry is an increase in, and better application of, snow-making.

"Each of the resorts told us what type of depth they would like throughout the year, and we were able to use a model to show that that profile throughout the year would tend to become lower, and to compensate for that they would need to invest in between 11 and 200 per cent more snow guns," says Hennessy.

Colin Hackworth, managing director of Australian Alpine Enterprises, which runs the Victorian snowfields at Mount Hotham and Falls Creek, says snow-making is now vital to attracting crowds.

"As the industry has embraced snow-making, we have been able to provide a more consistent product, which has given people more comfort when booking a ski holiday," he says.

Hackworth says snow-making technology continues to improve and artificial snow can now be produced at up to 10C.

It's not the only challenge that the Australian ski-industry faces, but once again they are trying to solve their own problems, rather then whine about it.

It's funny how that happens, isn't it?

Rather like Robert Clayton Dean in America, when I cast my libertarian eye at the Australian political scene, I find little reason to cheer. Australia is due to have a Federal election this year, although the exact date is at the pleasure of the Prime Minister. So election date speculation abounds, with some saying in August and others saying October.

The government here is dominated by the old line 'conservative' John Howard, who is basically a right-wing statist. In power since 1996, after a moderately good start at cutting back the state, the government has been in decline ever since and is now a menace, wandering through society causing havoc wherever it goes.

As it happens, last night was Budget night, where the government gives its annual account of its rapine and pillage of our wallets. With the election looming, this is a classic 'tax-cut and spend' pre-election budget, although the 'cuts' to taxes are not really cuts at all, but mere adjustments of the brackets. Therefore, you have a chance to earn 'slightly' more money before the government decides that half of your income belongs to them.

If London readers wonder why their city is full of very clever Australians, that is one of the bigger reasons why.

This is, by the way, the supposedly 'free market' party in power. It will in all probability be replaced by Mark Latham and his Australian Labour Party. On economic issues there is very little difference between the two parties, just a disagreement about where to splurge the tax-take on. I can only echo what Mr. Dean said in his survey of his own country's political scene-as it is, one simply despairs of advancing the libertarian agenda in current Australian politics.

Australians are known for having a fondness for drinking alcohol. This is all part of the general easygoing Australian lifestyle, beaches, beer, BBQ's, and an all round good time.

As you can imagine, those killjoy statists in government here have always found this to be deplorable.

No government in Australia has ever had the courage/suicidal tendencies to actually try to impose prohibition, but in general, the trade in alcoholic beverages is one of the most highly regulated type of commerce in Australia.

And, as we have a Federal system of government, and the regulation of the sale of alcohol is a state matter, we have in effect seven different regulatory environments.

Although in nearly each case, the regulations started out as a Puritan attempt to regulate the drinking habits of Australia, over time the regulations have become a way for various rent-seekers to protect their interests at the expense of the consumer.

This can have unforseen consequences...

I live in the state of South Australia, and this state is the largest producer of wine in Australia. We've lots of famous wineries that are exporting their product all over the world. This has seen a boom in wine production, with smaller, more enterprising producers trying to cash in on the action.

They are not being helped, though, by the regulatory framework in which they are required to operate. The problem isn't so much in producing wine, but in selling it.

The laws in South Australia require that wine, and indeed all other liquor products, be sold in specialist stores or hotels. You cannot get alcohol at a supermarket. And these specialist stores are increasingly in the hands of two large supermarket chains. And it is not so easy to get your hands on a licence to open a competiting store.

These large chains are resisting pressure to deregulate the liquor licencing laws, and using their market power to control the wine market. Because they have the cushion of increasing control of the sale of wine products, they are able to squeeze the wineries into charging less for their wines, and also, restricting who the wineries sell to.

The Adelaide Review, an oddball monthly publication hereabouts with no serious online presence covered this story last month, and told the tale an enterprising chap called Tom Hesketh, who established cleanskins.com.au to sell a range of unlabelled wine from some of the smaller wineries. His site is providing some good wines at great prices. The Adelaide Review takes up the story.

Hesketh would like to establish a shopfront to compliment his internet trade, though he estimates it would cost $30,000 to apply for a liquor licence that he probably won't win under corrent laws. He also alleges that anti-competitive practices are affecting his business. Some wineries have withdrawn prodcuts from the cleanskins.com.au site under pressure from their wholesalers. One small winemaker who did not want to be identified for fear of commercial retribution issued this notice: "I have had to field a couple of phone calls from my current wholesale customers that buy my cleanskins and they have complained about the listing on your website. These guys are a fairly major part of my business and they won't buy any further stock until the listing of ... is removed. So I'm sorry to say that I would like to cut our brief relationship short ASAP".

Of course, on one level this sort of thing happens all the time, and there's actually nothing wrong with it. If you've worked hard to dominate the market, then it's fair enough that you've got commercial muscle that you can use to wring the best terms you can out of your suppliers.

But these wholesalers haven't worked hard to dominate the market. They are using the commerical anabolic steriod of government regulation to cheat their way to market prominence. They are the commerical equivilent of drug cheats.

The state of New South Wales, Australia (which contains the city of Sydney) is in some ways irritating. If anything, the state government is even worse than the government of the United Kingdom in attempting to over-regulate every aspect of its citizens lives. Carrying weapons of any kind is completely illegal. (I like to carry a Swiss Army Knife, and technically doing even that is contrary to the law). If you want to go into a supermarket and buy a bottle of wine, or a newspaper, or anything but the mildest of medicines, there are laws preventing you from doing so. (Liquor stores, newsagents, and pharmacies are all granted local monopolies). And heaven forbid if you want to go to a quite cozy bar for a drink. But there are some compensations, as fellow Samizdatista Scott Wickstein and I discovered yesterday evening.

Scott and I ventured to what is now named "Telstra Stadium", which was the main stadium for the 2000 Sydney Olympics, which is now sponsored by a telephone company. (More than 50% of the shares of said telephone company belong to the Australian federal government, but I digress....). It was a beautiful evening, and after a beer or two in a nearby bar, we headed for the stadium.

The game was an Australian rules football game between the Sydney Swans and the Melbourne Demons. The atmosphere inside the ground was extraordinarily pleasant. Unlike in certain sports I could mention, the home and away supporters were not segregated from each other, and the atmosphere was enormously pleasant, however fanatical were the Melbourne supporters. (And boy, are the Melburnians fanatical). With 18 players on each side, seven umpires, and certain strange figures called "runners", who carry messages from the coaches to the players while the game is going on there are as many as 45 people on the field at once.

The game is lightning fast, and completely incomprehensible to foreigners. While many Australians think that Aussie rules football is a matter of life and death, in global terms the game is incredibly insignificant. Both teams could probably be bought for what Roman Abramovich spent to bring Damien Duff to the Chelsea Football Club in London.

As it happened my team, the Swans, ended up losing. But there are some compensations. Sydney people are enormously proud of their lifestyle, which involves going to the beach a lot, eating fine food, relaxing, and simply enjoying what life has to offer. And that applies at football matches as much as anywhere else.

And however many millions Mr Abramovich has spent, I seriously doubt that there is a bar where Chelsea supporters can enjoy oysters together after the game, as there is in Sydney. And even if there is (ha), they are certainly not this reasonably priced. And even if they are that, I am sure they are not freshly shucked.

So says local MP Robert Brokenshire. It is a moot point, actually. I am not convinced the social fabric in Adelaide is really under that much pressure. There is nothing wrong with Australia that making us responsible for ourselves again will not fix.

That is by the by. Mr Brokenshire is a local MP who is angered by this website, which is a sperm donor registry. The problem with the site is that it is run by, and aimed at, lesbian couples.

Mr Brokenshire has introduced a private Member's bill in the South Australian Parliament to prohibit such websites.

At present, homosexual couples are not permitted to use publicly funded fertility centres in SA.

The Australian Sperm Donor Registry bypasses these laws because it only connects the donors with recipients – forcing potential mothers to arrange insemination themselves.

Ms Thompson, who started the registry with Ms Ryan almost a year ago, said they had 'matched up' about 70 recipients.

My first instinct is to ask why the State is funding any fertility clinics- but the notion that the taxpayer should pay for all health in Australia is one of those assumptions that is just not questioned out here.

Be that as it may, if the State decides to discriminate against certain people on the grounds of their sexuality, people, being free, try to work around such restrictions, in the way Ms Thompson and Ms Ryan have. But you cannot keep a good Statist down, and Mr Brokenshire and his Parliamentry thugs, who know what is best for this couple, and me as well, are on the case.

After all, there is a social fabric to protect.

At last, someone is doing something to curb the terrifying menace of the Flying Spring Roll:

Yum cha restaurants in Chinatown will now have to train workers who push food carts to pass a "driving licence" under new regulations from Sydney City Council.

The move comes after a spate of accidents in which novice or careless trolley-pushers have crashed carts, injuring or making a mess of patrons and co-workers.

In one case last year, an elderly customer at a large yum cha restaurant was covered in plates of sticky black bean sauce after a trolley waitress lost her load while she was text messaging on her mobile phone.

Waitress was texting: "going to spoil rude customers day...ha...ha...ha.."

In another incident in 2002, a yum cha trolley waiter lost control of a cart laden with steamed dumpling as she was trundling down a steep ramp between levels of a Chinatown restaurant. The dumpling cart ended up ploughing head on into an unattended trolley at the bottom.

The unattended trolley spent several weeks in hospital and is still convalescing. It cannot sleep at nights, suffers from flashbacks, life has been ruined etc etc.

After completing the course, they will be required to carry a small "L" plate on their carts for six months before being granted full licences. Learners can only push a cart while accompanied by fully licensed waiting staff.

Too little, too late. Reckless trolley pushers are a danger to us all. Get those tax-cameras up now! And don't try to tell me that all those steamed dumplings are not adding to the threat of global warming. Save the planet from the greedy, capitalist Trolley Menace now!!

The Australian is a national broadsheet newspaper published by Rupert Murdoch's News Ltd, and in terms of quality and direction is fairly similar to the British Times. I suppose. Like any paper it makes the odd mistake, and has to publish a correction. On Tuesday it published the following.

A story headlined 'Syria seeks our help to woo US' in Saturday's Weekend Australian misquoted National Party senator Sandy Macdonald. The quote stated: "Syria is a country that has been a bastard state for nearly 40 years" but should have read "Syria is a country that has been a Baathist state for nearly 40 years." The Australian regrets any embarrassment caused by the error.

Personally I think that if anyone is embarrassed by this, there is absolutely no need for regret whatsoever. But that may be just me.

(Thanks to crikey.com.au for pointing this out).

Further to Brian's comments about state sponsored tourism, it gets much worse here in South Australia, where the state government not only advertises for tourists, but funds ephemeral events to attract them. Brian would assume that everything else in this state is a mess- and he'd be quite right.

The state government is addicted to these things, and has been for a long time. We have just finished the Adelaide Festival of Arts which I read in the Adelaide Advertiser's dead tree version cost the taxpayer $7 million. A far cry from the start of the Festival in 1960, which was wholly privately funded. And it's not only the artistic classes that are well catered for. The Clipsal 500 motor race was held last weekend, a festival of motorsport for the petrol head community. The spending of public money on motor sport is also a long Adelaide tradition which I wrote about here and even in the Age of Google, it is quite difficult to get an actual number in answer to the question "how much taxpayer money was spent on this race?".

Given that, and the way the Adelaide Advertiser keeps telling us how good it is for our economy, one is inclined to think the worst.

Unhappy is the taxpayer forced to pay for public circuses.

No doubt many readers of this site are of the libertarian persuasion after reading scholarly tomes by Ayn Rand, or Karl Popper.

Not me, though. I simply observed governments in action, and compared them to the workings of the free market.

One interesting thing I have observed over the years is that even governments who present themselves as 'friends' of the free market get the political urge to regulate, with the purest of motives, to 'help' the market along.

Markets aren't like that, though. Even the best intentioned meddling by governments have consequences that are undesirable. Consider the Australian government's well intentioned meddling in the Australian property market...

Australians, it must be said, have a long standing tradition of investing in property, rather then equities in private companies. It is a bit of a chicken-and-egg riddle as to whether or not investors were reacting to the tax code, or the tax code evolved to suit property investment.

The tax code in Australia has a provision known as 'negative gearing'. What this basically means is that if I go to the bank and borrow money to invest, the interest on that loan is tax deductible.

In practice, banks much prefer to lend to people who use that money to invest on property rather then shares.

Hillary Bray takes up the story

Negative gearing is not being driven by the investment return on rental property. Returns are better in both the share market, and also in sticking the money in an investment bank account. Rental property investment is entirely driven by its beneficial tax treatment.

Having some method to encourage investment in housing is a good thing. However, the problem in Australia at the moment is that rental property investment is a consequence of the high rates of tax elsewhere in the system. The existence of a housing price bubble is evidence that the market is being driven by tax returns – not investment returns.

Negative gearing is tax effective because it allows people to lower their income to get below the top rate of tax threshold at the same time as they benefit from a capital gains tax levied at only half the top marginal rate.

The current housing price surge began almost as soon as the capital gains tax was lowered three years ago. ...

As the Reserve Bank pointed out, these two incentives are being made even more extravagant by the treatment of depreciation for rental housing. As the bank asked out loud, why are there depreciation allowances for appreciating assets?

The Reserve Bank’s submission to the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into house prices is basically saying that the extraordinary increases in house prices are in fact being driven by the Government’s fiscal policy – by the current structure of the taxation system.

So as a result of successive Australian governments tinkering to help the property market along, the result has been to send housing prices through the roof; to the point where it is now difficult for ordinary wage and salary earners (read voters) to afford a house in Melbourne and Sydney.

No doubt if the government had abolished the negative gearing provisions of the tax code when it halved the capital gains tax there still would have been substantial rises in the property market; that is the natural result of cutting the taxation of appreciating assets. The effect of leaving negative gearing intact is the market's self correcting mechanisms aren't able to kick in.

I would quibble, though, with Hillary Bray's contention that "Having some method to encourage investment in housing is a good thing." I do not believe that the state should favour one form of investment over another- all it should do is provide a climate suitable for all sort of investment and let the market decide the best place for capital to go.

The State is NOT your friend, even when it's trying to help you.

(The Times, March 28, 2003)

An Australian swam 300 yards with a live shark clamped to his leg before driving a mile for assistance to have it removed (the shark, not the leg)!

They make 'em tough down-under!

If anyone is considering a trip to Australia then may I most heartily recommend that you travel by rail. It really is the only way to see the real, authentic Australia:

The first passenger train to cross Australia from south to north arrived in Darwin yesterday to be welcomed by women flashing their breasts and men baring their backsides in a mass "moon".

The Australians: so dignified, so cultivated, so urbane.

Denis Dutton is a new name to me, but I have the strong feeling that this says a whole lot more about me than it does about Denis Dutton. Unless I'm grievously mistaken, Dutton is a New Zealander. He is certainly based there, at the University of Canterbury, and writes a lot about New Zealand.

Arts & Letters Daily today linked to Dutton's excellent review article about piano playing, classical music etc., which I enthusiastically recommend to anyone who is even slightly interested in such matters. I've just been saying all that on my Culture Blog, and then had another of those this-guy-should-also-be-on-Samizdata reactions. So I followed the links I'd just been setting up, and got to this 1998 review article, which starts thus:

That the old politics of right and left are obsolete is demonstrated in the very person of the Rt. Hon. Mike Moore. A Labour man with a unionist, shop-floor background, he was once a hero of the working man. He still ought to be. But when he became New Zealand’s Trade Minister, he saw it as his "patriotic duty" to pull down this country’s Berlin Wall of import controls both for the benefit of New Zealanders and incidentally to help our small Pacific neighbours to make a living for themselves.

This was viewed as a betrayal of working-class interests. "From hero to traitor in a decade!", he writes. But this stubborn bloke knows vastly more than his embittered critics about trade and the creation of wealth in the brave new borderless world of international commerce and he’s not about to be shouted down. In A Brief of the Future he mounts a persuasive case for the increased internationalization of New Zealand and for greater individual liberty and responsibility: "democracy and the ingenuity of our species know no bounds when freedom unleashes the genius of the people."

The word “reactionary” once applied exclusively to the political right. The reactionary conservatives who count most today include not only jingoistic provincials like the Australian Pauline Hanson, but leftists who, disappointed by the failures of socialism and embarrassed by the stupendous successes of capitalism, are keen for any excuse to reintroduce their programmes of government economic control. (I’ve been told by at least a half-dozen friends and correspondents from the left that the recent share-market setbacks are clear evidence that capitalism is on the ropes. Or so they seem to hope.)

Hardly, says Moore, pointing out that the living standards of at least half a billion people have doubled since the early 1980s, and it wasn't state socialism that achieved it. The setbacks Southeast Asia don't negate that. Even countries such as India that once seemed backward basket cases now have prosperous, growing middle classes of hard-working people. Singaporeans, to whom New Zealanders used to send food parcels, now earn more per capita than we do, have a lower infant mortality and higher life expectancy.

For Mike Moore, the key to New Zealand's future is to take an open and competitive attitude toward world markets. We must eschew protectionism and commit ourselves, both intellectually and technologically, to the information revolution.

See what I mean about a guy who should be plugged by Samizdata? All that, and he knows his piano playing.

It's also good to know that being called Mike (née Michael?) Moore doesn't automatically make you an idiot.

In the Australian state of New South Wales, which includes the city of Sydney, the number of pub licences is finite, and by all reasonable measures too few. Pub licences in Sydney trade like New York taxi plates, and sell for hundreds of thousands of Australian dollars. Because existing licences are so valuable, pub owners are extremely hostile to any competition that would reduce the value of their licences. Therefore, there is very strong resistance to increasing the number of licences and hence the number of pubs. Also, restaurant liquor licences are highly restrictive. Diners may not buy alcoholic drinks in a restaurant unless they "intend to dine", and they may not drink alcoholic drinks in a restaurant while standing up. If these restrictions were relaxed, there would be little difference between restaurants and bars and pub licences would lose some of their value. The pub lobby therefore opposes any change, and a succession of state governments have given in and have not changed the law.

Of course, if a pub licence costs several hundred thousand dollars, it is necessary for pubs to make a decent return on this investment, and therefore in Sydney there are essentially no small pubs. Pubs are mostly large and fairly soulless. The sort of small, cosy pubs with character that are everywhere in England are mostly absent. And this is a shame.

As it happens, I was today in Canberra, Australia's capital city. Although the city is entirely surrounded by the state of New South Wales, it has a similar status to Washington D.C. The city sits in a jurisdiction called the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), which is not part of any state but which constitutionally speaking is entirely the responsibility of the federal government. (An ACT government does exist, with powers somewhere in between those of a city government and a state government, but it does so entirely at the pleasure of the federal government).

One thankful consequence of this is that the liquor and pub licensing laws of the state of New South Wales do not apply in Canberra. In Canberra it is not necessary to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a pub licence, and small pubs are possible. As it happened, I met up with a friend. Knowing my fondness for good beer, the friend took me to a nice cozy little brew pub, that served seven or eight different beers brewed on the premises. There was a hefe-weizenbier (not as good as what I would drink in Germany, but still quite good), a Kölsch style lager, three or four English style cask conditioned ales, and more. It was possible to brew all these beers and sell them on cozy little premises that catered to a clientele that liked that sort of thing. It was nice.

But in Sydney such a thing cannot easily exist. And it is all to protect rent seeking vested interests. Sydney has a huge number of restaurants serving excellent food of every kind imaginable, and is one of the finest cities in the world in which to eat. But as a place to go out for a drink, it leaves something to be desired. Canberra does not have this problem. (To be fair, Melbourne does not have this problem either). And this is entirely due to the difference in regulation.

Tim Sturm sees some interesting parallels between the British Tory Party and the New Zealand National Party.

UK Conservatives concerned with the current leadership battle might take note of similar events in New Zealand, where the NZ equivalent, the National Party, has just voted in Don Brash¹, former Governor of the Reserve Bank, and a classical liberal, as its new leader.

The similarities between National and the Conservatives are many:

• National has been the dominant party since at least WWII and considers itself the natural party of government

• It is currently floundering in the polls in its second consecutive term in opposition

• It is unable to counter the lefty backlash against the 'Thatcherite' reforms of the 80's and 90's and is apparently unwilling or unable to articulate any clear policies or principles.

• It appears to be self-destructing through infighting and ineffectual leadership.

Hopefully much of this is about to change.

The elevation of Brash to the leadership role can be seen as a firm pronouncement of principle, even if a reluctant one for some. Brash is not necessarily the best politician in the tactical sense, but he is certainly the highest profile man of principle the party has.

For instance, he is unashamedly supportive of the earlier reform programme. His central bank reforms were a key part of that programme and became a model (albeit flawed) for central banks around the world.

What's more, his principles are generally quite good. In his maiden parliamentary speech, he said:

People are generally in the best position to make decisions for themselves and their families. This argues for the maximum amount of freedom for the individual.

(Brash also, incidentally, subscribes to and has occasionally written for The Free Radical, New Zealand's premier libertarian magazine).

National has finally therefore drawn a clear dividing line with the ruling Labour government, which is staunchly antagonistic to the earlier reforms and to free markets in general.

It remains to be seen whether this attack of principle will be successful in lifting National out of the poll doldrums. Frankly I do not care about that. The long term future of conservative politics lies in principles, not in random shifts of sentiment that National and the UK's Conservatives have been hoping for.

I only hope the Conservatives are watching.

Tim Sturm

¹ = The linked article overstates Brash's 'social conscience'. Brash has written extensively for a reduction in the size of the welfare state. See for example here.

There is probably a drop-dead serious point to be made here about the gradual 'feminisation' of boys but, for now at least, I am content just to publicly guffaw at this latest forlorn attempt to make the world a safer place:

Children in Melbourne have been banned from dressing up as Batman, Superman and the Incredible Hulk because schools say the action hero costumes encourage aggressive behaviour.

At least 10 childcare centres have declared themselves "superhero-free zones", claiming that youngsters who don capes and masks are more likely to end up wrestling, punching and karate-kicking unsuspecting classmates.

Lex Luther take note: all their childcare centres are belong to you!

The head of one childcare centre, Madeleine Kellaway, told the Sun Herald newspaper: "There is a lot of violence involved, where you get wham-bam aggressive behaviour."

Perhaps the kids just don't like her very much.

She said banning the superhero costumes had encouraged more creative play.

'Okay children, today we're all going to dress up as Outreach Co-ordinators and play a game of who can get most money from the government in order to implement a policy framework for achieving diversity in local authority management structure. Hooray!'

A newspaper advertisement headlined "Prostitutes Required" for a club "downstairs at The White House" has riled US officials in New Zealand. The crossed Stars and Stripes and bald eagle logo may appear to suggest the Bush administration has branched out, but the advert is in fact for a brothel in Auckland looking for new ladies for its nightclub, Monica's.

The US Embassy has sent a letter to the business complaining that the advert, especially the logo, is in poor taste.

We believe that any likeness of a national government symbol in a commercial advertisement is in extremely poor taste. We are sending a letter to the advertiser that expresses our disappointment and displeasure about their choice of symbolism.

The brothel's theme is unashamedly American and the building even has white columns outside similar to the US President's residence. During the previous US administration the women working at the complex wore blue dresses like that of former White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The bordello's owner Brian Legros was unrepentant.

They don't own the White House. They should get on with the affairs of their country and not worry about little old New Zealand..."It's my crest. "It might look like theirs, but it's not."

I must commend the BBC for not allowing the victims of the Bali massacre to be forgotten. Indeed, they have devoted a whole page on their website to the father of one of the young victims; a man who displays far more magnanimity than I could ever muster:

"Directly after the Bali bombing, it became apparent to us that ignorance and mistrust between people of different nations, faiths and backgrounds around the world fosters prejudice and hatred," Mr Braden said.

Mr Braden said he did not feel hatred for his son's killers, but sorry that they did not have the education and life Daniel had.

The BBC doubtless felt that Mr.Braden's thoughts were worth sharing with the world. And they are. But, strangely, no mention whatsoever about the thoughts and feelings of some of the other victims:

Unrepentant Bali survivor Jake Ryan said he was overwhelmed by raw emotion when he loudly abused an alleged bomber in a Denpasar courtroom.

Accompanied by his brother Mitchell, Mr Ryan reacted to Samudra's religious chants by screaming: "You're a fucking dog, mate. You're going to fucking die."

Clearly Mr.Ryan wasn't 'repentant' enough.

[My thanks to Tim Blair for the link to the article on Mr.Ryan.]

I note with disappointment (but not surprise) that the 'global warming' hoax is still proving useful to cash-strapped governments everywhere:

New Zealand's farmers have criticised a proposed tax on the flatulence emitted by their sheep and cattle.

The move is part of the Wellington government's action to meet its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.

Scientists estimate that methane emitted by farm animals is responsible for more than half of the country's greenhouse gases.

To be known as the Federal Advanced Rural Tariff, it surely has to rank as among the most secure of long-term revenue raisers. Contrast this to the UK where draconian petroleum taxes are justified by HMG's creepy 'behaviour modification' rubric. The argument goes that taxing people out of their cars and onto public transport is a good thing because it 'saves the planet' (stop laughing). Of course, if we ever did stop using our cars so much, the paladins in Whitehall would have a collective coniption fit.

However, short of turning them all into cheeseburgers, there is no way to persuade cattle to stop passing wind, so a different bonus has to be invented:

The money is be used to fund research on agricultural emissions.

Read: "Job creation scheme for the political classes". Further proof that the Kyoto Protocol really was a lot of hot air.

Still, there is a political upside to this. Next time some veggie enviro-mentalist hisses at you for tucking into a steak, you can always respond by telling them that you're helping to reduce global warming.

Today, it is May 1, the day when we celebrate the greatest thing to benefit the living standards, opportunities and happiness of ordinary working people - capitalism.

I could wax lyrical, cite lots of clever books and such like, but I thought this item, via Reuters, surely says it all.

Shares of the bordello enterprise, which hired Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss to spice up its stock listing and touts itself as a recession-proof, five-star hotel, doubled on their first day of trading on Thursday.

About 1.4 million shares of the company -- called The Daily Planet -- changed hands.

"Obviously the price is going to go up. It's sex...and everyone knows sex is a smart investment," Fleiss told reporters just before the shares started trading.

God bless capitalism!

Once again Australians are celebrating ANZAC Day. It seems only yesterday I was writing about it here on this blog but another year goes by and yet again, British and Australian soldiers are on Middle Eastern soil together.

Somebody (they have chosen to remain nameless) has posted a comment to one of the posts below requesting a 'plug' for their Australian libertarian website.

Our anonymous commenter describes it as a "meagre attempt to create a Samizdata down under" which I think is an undersell. It looks like a fair dinkum site to me.

Anyway, surf on over and crack open a few tinnies with those intrepid (but modest) Antipodean freedom fighters.

To all those who believe that first-world farming cannot survive without the theft of subsidies, please then explain how New Zealand seems to manage with hardly any help from the state.

I second the suggestion by Ross Clark in The Spectator... let's have a buy-cott of New Zealand's theft-free farm produce: the Kiwis puts British, European and North American agriculture to shame.

Alas, the 'British Disease' appears to have spread to Australia:

"Australia is set to ban more than 500 types of handguns and will give people six months to hand in their arms or risk going to prison."

Is there still time for free Australians to fight back? If so, then I urge them not to make the same mistake that gun-owners in the UK made by trying to defend gun-ownership as necessary to the continued participation in shooting sports. Minority sports are casually expendable. Not so, the right to self-defence. It is the latter that you must fight for. It also has the benefit of being the truth.

Make sure every Australian knows that. Shout it from the top of Ayers Rock.

It is good to know that in a turbulent world, one can count on our Anglosphere cousins down under to maintain their glorious traditions of brash vulgarity and plain-spokenness (and not to mention the ability to kick ass at cricket). On a gloomy November afternoon, while pondering the latest tragic events in Kenya, I came across this cheeky little news report, which should gladden the hearts of anyone who has less than 100 percent respect for the police, who increasingly seem more intent on social control than beating crime.

Lawyers for an Australian man who "mooned" a police car claimed it was his constitutional right and part of the larrikin Australian character.

Sounds entirely reasonable to me!

Tim Blair has noted an arkward fact about the Bali bombing for the Australian left to deal with, namely that the Australian left's (entirely reasonable) campaign to free East Timor from Indonesia was one of the things that provoked the bombing, according to the latest production from Bin Laden Records and Tapes.

They are in a bind; how now do they blame the Howard government for making us a terror target by aligning with the US when their own pet issue seems to have done the same thing?

Good question.

What so many of capitalism's defenders seem to miss is that just because a large company is doing something legally, that does not mean it is 'kosher' capitalism. In Germany in the 1930's and 1940's, companies like Krupp and Seimens remained under entrenched private management in spite of the National Socialist German Workers Party coming to power, or more accurately, because of the new overtly anti-capitalist government.

They did this by running their companies in such a manner as to support the objectives of the National Socialists. In return, the state ensured they maintained a privileged position, insulated from upstart new market entrants in their respective fields. These companies, working hand in glove with the state, could ensure that national laws would be adjusted as needed to support whatever business models the entrenched companies liked, and the state could be sure that company strategies would be based servicing the needs and objectives of the Nazi Party, not to mention paying backhanders to leading Party members.

Of course, one does not have to look as far back as National Socialist Germany of the 1940's to see examples of companies trying to manipulate the state to prop up an entrenched way of doing things: for the last few years the music industry in the United States has been trying to use the law of the land to crush challenges to its old physical media based business models. Rather than running their business in the interests of the state, nowadays in modern democratic statist political systems, large companies spend vast sums on lobbyists and on funding the election campaigns of politicians who might as well have an hourly rate for their services stamped on their foreheads.

Now in Australia, Microsoft looks ready to try and buy themselves some legislation for much the same reasons after an Australian court declined to stop people modifying XBox hardware:

Microsoft would be forced to reconsider selling the Xbox video game system in Australia, or seek changes to the law, following the acquittal in July of a Sydney man alleged to have sold chips that modify a Sony PlayStation 2 to play imported games, Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said yesterday.
[...]
"Given the way the economic model works, and that is a subsidy followed, essentially, by fees for every piece of software sold, our licence framework has to do that," Mr Ballmer said. "If there are aspects that are not allowed, it would encourage us to require a change in the legal framework. Otherwise, it wouldn't make economic sense."

As usual a pure laissez-faire solution beckons: if Australia refuses to criminalize innovation and therefore Microsoft declines to sell its XBox Games Consols down under, then simply abolish all the idiotic import restrictions and tariffs currently clogging up Australia's economy and then... who gives a damn where Microsoft chooses to sell their products: if there is a demand for XBox in Oz, a 'grey market' will rapidly appear as capitalist importers across the world buy up XBoxs by the container load elsewhere (such as Taiwan, USA, India) and ship them in themselves.

If that busts MS's business model, so what? Let them find another one that actually works without the involvement of police around the world to make it succeed.

End of problem.

A commendably good analysis from James C. Bennett on the strategic decisions facing Australia following the Bali massacre:

"In Australia, there are two competing interpretations of the Bali attacks. Which one prevails will be critical to the security of Australia and Australians, and important to the United States. One interpretation sees the attacks as a consequence of Australian support for the U.S. policy in Afghanistan and on the issue of Iraq. Its conclusion is that Australia should cut and run, and hope not to be attacked again.

The other sees the attacks as evidence that Australia has no options in this war; that Australians were attacked not for what Australia had done, but for what Australians were. They see, quite correctly, that if radical Islamists conclude that the easiest way to change Australian behavior is to kill a substantial number of Australians, then Australians will be murdered in large numbers again and again."

He also examines the potentially catastrophic consequences for the Balinese.

James has an audacious talent for getting to the heart of the matter without cant or hyperbole and by my reckoning he has hit a multitude of nails squarely on the head yet again.

If you wish to help, you can send contributions to the Australian Red Cross Bali Appeal here

What do you say to someone whose 20-something daughter has been transformed into a charcoaled cadaver because she was dancing and drinking cocktails? Personally, I have no idea. I really would not know what to say.

Some, however, seem to possess the requisite linguistic tools. One such is Abu Bakar Bashir a Moslem cleric who offered this advise in an interview with the Australian newspaper The Age:

"Asked if there was anything he wanted to say to families who lost relatives in the bomb blast, he said: "My message to the families is please convert to Islam as soon as possible."

Yes, I have no doubt that they will be falling over themselves in the rush to do just that.

From David Harthill:

"We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields".

I have nothing to add

The curious thing about idiots is that they never allow their intellectual disabilities to slow them down; always frightfully quick off the mark, they are. Mind you, it does help if you have the script already written beforehand.

As per usual the Guardian is the frontrunner (and I promise that I am not making it up this time):

"Short-sighted politicians in Washington, notably Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, are putting it about that there are links between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. They have been trying desperately to come up with evidence to prove it, a task which they have singularly failed to achieve. But in trying they have diverted the resources of their intelligence agencies, including the CIA, and worse, they are trying to manipulate intelligence-gathering for political ends."

So now the Australians know who to blame; it was Rumsfeld all along! And he would've gotten away with it too if hadn't been for those pesky Guardianistas!

Hot on the heels of the frontrunner, comes the The Subservient:

"But some of the pool of grievances on which al-Qa'ida draws are real injustices – in particular the failure of the US to use its influence to secure a fair settlement between Israelis and Palestinians. These injustices ought to be resolved anyway, but resolving them may well reduce the supply of potential martyrs to murderous causes."

Freedom for Zionist-occupied..er..Bali.

"The response of world leaders to this weekend's attack should be to act to ensure that there is more justice in the world, rather than to deepen the sense of injustice that is the breeding ground of terrorists."

Oh I'd wager that there are quite a lot of people just aching for a bit of justice, my old chum.

You know, in a world of rapidly spiralling uncertainties, there is a perverse comfort in knowing that some things never change.

183 people at least are dead, probably more as 220 Australians and 20 or so British remain unaccounted for. All the victims were civilians, mostly young backpackers on holiday or the Indonesian staff serving them. Yet judging by what I seen written by John Pilger or Robert Fisk or Noam Chomsky since September 11th of last year, I thought the reason terrorists are attacking 'us' was something to do with injustice in Palestine? Is Bali part of Palestine? How many Palestinians have the Australian Army killed?

I recall hearing that the WTC was attacked because it was a symbol and centre of exploitive capitalism and the US military industrial complex. And what exactly was the Sari Club in Bali a symbol of? Will the people on WarbloggerWatch or at New Stateman tell us how the forces of US imperialism have been thwarted by the death of so many young Aussies and others in a holiday resort?

What was that you said? It is all about oil? Ah, silly me.

Paul Marks has been keeping his eye on the antipodes

The recent election in New Zealand was widely predicted to be another triumph for the left. Certainly I predicted that this is what would happen (and my predictions have to be treated with some care - I tend to assume that things will go badly), but I was not alone - the BBC and the rest of the international media were all expecting the victory of their comrades (with the only dispute being between those media people who supported Labour and those that supported the Greens).

Sure enough the Labour party has got the most votes (about 40%) but even with the Greens (and fringe leftists "the progressive list") it would not have a secure majority (even assuming these various factions of collectivists did not tear each others eyes out over things like G.M. crops).

So Labour is looking to the "United" party. I had a look at this parties web site (just go to "New Zealand" on your searcher - then go to the elections and then on from there). And it does not seem to be in favour of greater statism.

That is the thing about New Zealand - it has a lot of political groups (perhaps thanks to P.R.). I looked into all of the political groups and "ACT", the National Party and New Zealand First can not be described as supporting greater statism (if anything the reverse - even judged by a negative minded old swine like me).

Now here is the rub. If one adds up the votes of United and the National Party and "ACT" and New Zealand First one gets very near to a majority of the voters. Now I am not saying that there is any chance of all these factions getting together - but I am saying there are a lot of "right of centre" (for want of a better term) voters out there (far more than there are in Britain). So the next election (three years time) may well see Labour kicked out and some real reform in New Zealand.

This is certainly not what I thought I would be reporting when I decided to look into this.

Final points - yes there are Christian and Rural parties in New Zealand (I have not dealt with them for reasons of time and space - they do not change the overall picture). And yes there is a Libertarian Party in New Zealand (and they seem like fine people), but as hardly anyone votes for them (they do not seem to have got one per cent of the vote) I decided not to examine them here.

Paul Marks

There are times when everything in your life comes together so sweetly you almost want to cry. On Friday this arrived by e-mail:

Dear Brian - My name is Miranda and I got your email address from the Internet and the Libertarian Alliance website.

I am most interested in the LA and got details about it from an English dominatrix who I met whilst travelling around Australia. She declined to give her real name as she was working in Australia without a work permit but was known as Madam Extreme. She told me she had been in association with your organisation about ten years ago and referred me to a number of your publications. Having read the views of LA particularly in regard to prostitution and drugs I can say that I am a capitalist anarchist and in line with your views.

I am English and also work as a dominatrix. I am still living and working in Australia, (also without a work permit) as I have a boyfriend here. He also agrees with LA views and we wondered if there was a similar organisation in Australia that you could recommend?

Well the main reason for writing is that I have been watching with interest the Unionisation of Sex Workers going on in the UK now. Sex workers there have formed a union called the International Union of Sex Workers which recently joined the GMB Union. Well I can tell you as a dominatrix working in Australia where sex work is legalised and licensed by the state and the projects for sex workers are funded by the state the situation is horrendous.

I work as a independent operator outside of the state system and not only because I do not have a work permit, but also because I do not want the way I work to be controlled by the state. Most of my Australian friends also operate outside the state system for the same reason.

The sex worker projects that are funded by the state allow only those views to be expressed that are in line with state ideology and are full of political correctness. There is a rule book about what can be expressed and what can not! As a female the sex worker projects are run by women only. Note that they are not run as self support groups by those in the industry, they are run by professionals licensed by the state and it is explicit in the employment contract of these state employees that they must not be sex workers themselves! Yet they run the projects! They are basically a bunch of what I call state feminist fascists who only want their idea's to be allowed to be expressed and no-one else's!

I refuse to use their services and employ a private doctor and buy my equipment from private suppliers. In other words I purchase on the free market which is also where I sell my services.

I also do not use the word "sex worker" to describe myself as (a) I do not sell sex and (b) I object to it because it is a politically correct term!

The sex worker projects here support the unionisation of sex workers which I also oppose because I believe that sexual services should operate on the free market not under state collective control. If a person operates as self employed there is not need for a union. I do not like unions any way, but those who promote them here say they are needed to protect the rights of sex workers who work in collective situations e.g. brothels, that are controlled by others e.g. owners/managers. And who are these owners/managers? Those individuals that are licensed by the state as being allowed to run brothels. The very situation brought about by the original legalisation of sex work now becomes the very basis for arguing that sex workers need to be unionised! Is this control upon control upon control or what? And guess who runs the unions? Yes the same state feminist fascist thought police that campaigned for the original legislation that first started to control the sex workers who prior to that had operated quietly and discreetly in the black/shadow economy. (Read for that the free unregulated untaxed libertarian market!)

Note that I am not talking about people forced into sex work and controlled by pimps. That is another issue and not allowed by LA politics anyway. But it seems to me that most of the sex workers that continue to operate in the now hidden shadow economy, like me, are natural born libertarians!

I know you can guess now that I am totally opposed to the legalisation of prostitution and the mess it has caused here and I am currently writing a paper about this and also my opposition to the unionisation of sex workers. I wanted to submit my paper to "Respect" the newspaper of the recently formed International Union of Sex Workers in the UK and guess what? It was censored. Why am I not surprised?

I was therefore wondering if the LA would be interested in taking a look at my paper with a view to publication …

I e-mailed Miranda back. Yes the Libertarian Alliance would love to consider any writing Miranda cares to send us. I remember the English dominatrix lady. She wrote a piece for us called The Morality of Prostitution. Please give my best regards to her if you see her again.

An internet search yielded two Australian libertarian societies, namely The Australian Libertarian Society and The Libertarian Society in Australia.

Also try these two Aussie-based blogs, Zemblog and The Catallaxy Files. It's interesting the way that "legalising" something could actually make it worse. This has long bothered me with regard to drugs "legalisation".

Oh, and could Miranda send us a photo of her no doubt great looking self? (I explained Samizdata's policy on gorgeous women photos: we like gorgeous women photos.)

Miranda came back to me on Saturday:

Sorry I have to say no about the photo. I don't want to be on the Internet in photograph form just yet. …

You win some, you lose some. But get this. She also said:

I'm on the Internet now listening to LBC and your good self is on there discussing drugs. Good debate! …

Crikey, you really do win some. Miranda the dominatrix, in Australia, listening to me! LBC Radio radio is not on the regular radio anymore here in London. It's only, I had lamented to myself, on the internet. I only did the show down the phone from my kitchen rather than from a studio like they wanted, for fun and for practice. But before I was on I'd said here what and when I was on, and my huge worldwide fan base was able to tune in. So now it's an official global fact. All drugs should be legalised, and I mean really legalised, not just "better regulated".

Shame about the photo though.

iFeminists.com reports that the Queensland state government in Australia has given license to five legal brothels, with three more pending. Licensing fees and operating revenues from these facilities will go to the government. At the same time, the government there has aggressively cracked down on unlicensed brothels (aka "competition") -- 72 unlicensed houses of ill repute have been shut down since January of 2001.

"We take a tough approach to illegal prostitution while at the same time provide strict laws to ensure health and safety standards within the legal industry," says Queensland Premier Peter Beattie. Of course, the very fact that prostitution (outside these few licensed facilities) is illegal is what creates health and safety problems. If someone sells you a defective car, you can sue to get a new car; but if an illegal brothel operator lies to a client about the health of one of the workers, you can't get the law involved without incriminating yourself. Similar problems arise in the illegal drug trade, obviously.

I suppose that the Aussies in Queensland are to be applauded for partially legalizing prostitution; but of course they are only doing it because they found a way to make money from it. (Likewise, governments generate billions of dollars from lotteries, but would prosecute the exact same lottery system in the private sector as a "numbers racket.") The unanswered question remains: why do certain activities carry so much moral baggage that only the government may participate?

This day of days again we keep -
In memory of those who sleep
Away beyond the quiet sea.....
Away in far Gallipolli.

'Tis ANZAC Day Day - 'tis Anzac Day..
Our soldier comrades far away,
They died in war  -  that we in peace
May live and love that war may cease.

As I read more and more stories in the press and see the astonishing images of the inferno around Sydney on the British news channels, I cannot help but marvel how well Australia is served by its magnificent firemen. Yet it is clear that what is happening is hardly less than an emergency of wartime proportions. And in wartime, a society has to do what it has to do to protect itself. Of course people might argue that a natural disaster is hardly the same as a war and that is true.

But many of these fires are not natural at all, they have been set by arsonists. Just because the state is not the target of these premeditated acts, it is not regarded as an act of terrorist violence. Yet, the target of these vile nihilists is nothing less than Australian society itself, an infinitely more valuable asset than the damn state.

So what is to be done with any captured arsonists? Well my vote is to handcuff them to a tree and just leave them there. That might not sound very libertarian but the way I see it, acts of violence are intolerable and can be reasonably met with acts of violence. Liberty is about being free to reap the fruit of your own actions... what could be a more elegant manifestation of that than an arsonist roasting in the fire they themselves started?

Perhaps I will not feel so extreme tomorrow but seeing the images of those exhausted fireman just fills me with fury at the thought their lives are in peril through the actions of worthless nihilists who care nothing for the property or life of others.