I think what we’re seeing now, with Tony Abbott, is that fig leaf being discarded.

We’re back to old fashioned paternalism – faith, country, and trust in your betters. And in the economic sphere, Abbott, who knows nothing much of economics, is happy for the state to sit down and carve up the pie in consultation with his preferred interest groups. All this is really classic National Party stuff.

What’s perhaps astonishing on the surface, at least, is how little we’re hearing from the so-called libertarians and classical liberals about Abbott’s lack of faith in the market. Could it be that they’re mostly more interested in anti-Labor partisanship than their own ostensible creed?

At least one member of the federal government stands opposed to mandatory internet censorship, with Senator Kate Lundy pushing the Minister for an “opt-out” alternative from the online blacklist.

But Lundy says she has “a job cut out for me” lobbying colleagues before legislation is introduced to parliament next month. The former Labor front-bencher and passionate advocate for open IT has told Crikey she believes “the majority of caucus” wants a mandatory filter in place.

Lundy has used her blog to vent over her “discomfort” in Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s push for mandatory ISP-level blocking of websites refused classification, defying the government’s commitment to the filter by outlining a “preferred approach” including more effective parental education, internet skills development and voluntary filters at the desktop.

Late last month Lundy wrote Conroy’s proposal left “little room to move”, but she suggested allowing ISPs to offer adult customers an “opt-out” from the filter. This week she has begun canvassing support for the option among Labor colleagues.

“My feeling is I’ve got a tough job ahead of me,” she says. Conroy has vowed to introduce legislation when parliament resumes on February 2.

Lundy acknowledges the flaws in her own plan: there will be a stigma attached to requesting access to an unfiltered internet, and she admits it may “lead to interest by the authorities, even though individuals may simply want to ensure they are not having legitimate content filtered”.

But for Lundy it’s the least-worst option. It “respects people can make an informed choice” while upholding a policy Labor took to the last election (she says she was against it then, too).

Lundy backs Conroy and the process he has gone through in testing filtering technology while boosting funding for cyber crime enforcement. She never believed a filter was feasible but she says the government’s testing has proven that false and she will support the final legislative outcome. But, as she has admitted on her blog, “many mechanisms used by criminal networks will not be stopped through a filtering mechanism”.

Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA), a not-for-profit group leading the campaign against the filter, certainly agrees. Campaign manager Peter Black calls the opt-out compromise a “significant improvement”, but the group is dedicated to a public campaign rejecting any filter altogether.

EFA is investing all its funds in Black, a senior law lecturer specialising in new media at the Queensland University of Technology who will drive the campaign at least for the next three months. New branding and a website (“a hub of campaign activity for all the different individuals and organisations” against the filter) will launch soon to “shift the focus away from the ‘no clean feed’ slogan to a more positive message not only on the flaws in the proposed filter but also provides solutions to the Australian public”.

For Lundy, this is a hobbyhorse. She is a former shadow minister of information technology, a stalwart of Senate inquiries into the subject (she claims not to have missed one in 14 years) and has been a long-time advocate for harnessing IT since working as a communications officer in the union movement. The internet, she says, “really inspired me as a tool for empowerment”.

The ACT Senator says the public has not been properly educated on net safety and filtering technology since the Howard government first put forward censorship plans; the net filter has “never really been tested” as an issue in the community.

In her maiden speech to parliament in 1996, Lundy spoke of the “rewards that come from investing” in IT. She said: “The importance of public policy relating to the use and control of credible information sources and its increasingly complex delivery technologies cannot be underestimated if we are serious about equitable and affordable access.”

From outside, the Labor ministry she has spearheaded the government’s 2.0 online public participation initiative and led public forums on policy development. Last April, Lundy took on IT consultant and open source software advocate Pia Waugh as a full-time adviser on technology policy.

A volcanic decade in global politics ends amid deep unease about the world’s ability to rise to key 21st-century challenges. openDemocracy writers draw breath and look ahead by reflecting on three questions:

1) What was the most significant trend in the century’s first decade?

2) What do you most hope for, and most fear, about the decade to come?

3) What idea do you see fading and/or emerging in 2010 and beyond?

Their reflections and prognostications can be found here and here.

Reading through the responses, a number of common themes emerge. One is the rise of China and the end of a unipolar world (and in this context, it’s interesting to observe more evidence surfacing about the snubs Beijing has been giving Barack Obama). Associated with this theme is the end of the liberal optimism of the 1990s, the decline of effective peacekeeping and conflict resolution, and the rise of the anti-terror security state in the 2000s. Whatever the views of the ideologues of globalisation, it’s difficult not to conclude that the first decade of this century saw the state come back. While much could be written critical of the emergence of international human rights law and international co-ordination which was one of the important trends of the 90s, conversely urgent problems like climate change are insoluble without concerted world action (while the last years of the late decade showed that the global financial sector could be bailed out at all deliberate speed).

Here too, it might be germane to observe that the sort of authoritarian state led capitalism characteristic of the Chinese model has both its parallels and echoes in the West (as civil liberties decline and torture becomes an acceptable subject of public discourse) and that its rise challenges the 90s end of history/democratisation thesis that market activity brings civic virtue in its wake. For many of the writers, the 2000s were a somewhat dark decade, characterised by rising inequality. Notable is a focus on the practice of multinationals buying up huge swathes of agricultural land in developing countries (particularly in Africa); for instance the leasing of almost half Madagascar’s arable land by a South Korean corporation. This issue warrants more attention than it’s received. It’s in stark contrast with pronouncements such as the Millennium Goals, and symbolises the end of the discourse of development and the entrenchment of a core/periphery model in the global economy, aside from its obvious human and ecological implications.

There’s much to ponder here.

Interestingly, only a small number of contributors referred to the rise of social media and the dissemination of the internet as a key development of the 00s. That’s something I’ll take up presently in another post.

In an earlier post I briefly discussed the issue of civil rights in Australia, particularly as to how we justify infringing rights in order to deal with specific segments of society. It’s a distinctly worrying trend, but when the decision of the Western Australian government to grant police the power to stop and search citizens without reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing is cast in terms of ‘cleaning-up the streets’ to the benefit of ‘decent families’, as opposed to violent thugs, it’s pretty hard to say ‘Hang on a minute’ without being accused of being with the terrorists.

But… hang on a minute.

The trend in Western Australia, and Australia generally, should be alarming its citizens. This isn’t just about physical intervention by police forces, but an active campaign of intimidation designed to inculcate a compliant population.

And it appears to be working.

As of 2004 Perth was home to the largest single closed-circuit television surveillance system in Australia. CCTV isn’t about catching crooks; its advocates argue that it is meant to act as a deterrent to crime. Much could be written about the value of deterrents in criminology, but let’s skip that for now. In this instance, deterrence can only mean one thing: intimidation. CCTV exists to intimidate citizens into obeying the law. As does the newly increased use of sniffer dogs in police patrols through the city.

But which laws?

It’s all very well to say that many of the current laws are beneficial, serve to reduce violence and theft and so on. There are some laws, though, that really only serve to modulate society. Laws about littering or spitting, skateboarding or busking. Intimidatory surveillance is intended to promote fear of prosecution for all unlawful activity regardless of the social merits of the laws that may be broken, laws the passage of which is frequently the result of political maneuvering that may diminish or devalue the interests of minority communities of interest. When we introduce systems of intimidation they serve to enforce a societal rigidity, which arguably makes people more compliant and willing to accept subsequent, more interventionist laws.

Like stop and search powers, for example. The Western Australian government has introduced legislation which would enable police officers to stop and search any citizen without the need to rely on a reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. I guess it’s good that laws which increased the penalties for assaulting a public officer were passed before these new laws: readers can judge for themselves how likely it is that levels of violence against police will increase as a result of being physically searched for no apparent reason other than that an officer doesn’t like the cut of a person’s jib.

These powers are not, as some might suggest, the thin edge of the wedge. Western Australia’s legislators have hammered the thing in a good couple of centimetres already.

The problem remains, however, that the people that such laws are intended to be used against are actually bad people. I know there’s a whole bunch of romanticism in Australia associated with some criminal organizations, and I also know that drug laws in Australia are not sufficiently effectively enforced (if they ever could be) and so there are people (’entrepreneurs’?) who are essentially just taking advantage of those circumstances. But let’s not forget that there’s a very high degree of human misery involved in the trade in which these groups so violently peddle.

It makes a bit of a mockery of concern for civil rights that the most ardent advocates for their preservation have such obvious and unabashed links with these interests. And if the only other voices raised against this progression towards ever increased surveillance and intervention are lawyers whose income largely comes from defending crooks, it’s going to continue to be pretty hard for the trend to be slowed, let alone halted or reversed.

Who from the not-tainted-by-association could or would take a stand on these issues? Until our parliamentarians hear it from the socially pure, it is virtually inevitable that future legislation will become increasingly harsh. If the current advocates, let’s be generous and call them ‘rights campaigners’, really want to make an impact, they need to start broadening the base of supporters of and advocates for their cause.

And will anyone actually buy the thing?

Possibly the only winner in this publishing deal is Labor (and maybe News Limited…)

Elsewhere: Andrew Bartlett.

What Collier found in brief outline is that below a per capita GDP of $2,700 the adoption of democratic forms actually leads to more violence, civil strife, corruption and indeed civil war than democracy.

Above that level authoritarian forms of government are more likely to lead to strife. Beware China which passed that level some little while ago. On this list China comes in at $6,000. There are 59 countries below $2,700.

Democracy is quite popular in the “poor billion” but Collier says that rigging elections is distressingly easy.

I found the ideas of building a national identity as against ethnic or tribal identities intriguing.

It seems to me that when economic development reaches a certain point the state begins to have genuine options about instituting services for the general good. Below that level, with the general situation hopeless, the temptation of securing scarce resources for a narrower group or collection of individuals seems overwhelming. Internal capital accumulation also becomes easier. Special programs can be considered to address the problems of disadvantaged groups. The state can provide nurturing services as well as providing the institutions necessary for justice, law and the reserve power to preserve civil peace.

There are quite a few reviews on the net. I found the best was in the New York Times. Here’s an excerpt:

Collier’s primary conclusion: democracy, in the superficial, election-focused form that tends to prevail in these countries, “has increased political violence instead of reducing it.” Without rules, traditions, and checks and balances to protect minorities, distribute resources fairly and subject officials to the law, these governments lack the accountability and legitimacy to discourage rebellion. The quest for power becomes a “life-and-death struggle” in which “the contestants are driven to extremes.”

Collier’s data show that before an election, warring parties may channel their antagonisms into politics, but that violence tends to flare up once the voting is over. What’s more, when elections are won by threats, bribery, fraud and bloodshed, such so-called democracies tend to promote bad governance, since the policies needed to retain power are quite different from those needed to serve the common good.

Ethnic identification in the multiethnic societies that predominate among the bottom billion is a particular impediment. Leaders have no incentive to perform well, Collier explains, if voters cast ballots according to ethnic loyalty rather than governmental competence. Nor should we be fooled into thinking that democracy is working just because voters turn out in large numbers. Where identity politics prevail, “voting is likely to be primarily expressive,” like “wearing a football scarf.” It doesn’t mean voters have faith that their ballots will lead to more effective government. Besides, because news organizations in these countries are weak and objective information scarce, citizens probably don’t even know how well or how badly their leaders are performing.

Of the rest The Independent may be worth a look. Collier also has his own site.

It is interesting to contemplate whether democracy is able as a political form to meet the challenge of climate change. Ronald Wright in his Masey Lectures back in 2004 argued that in fact democracy was our only hope. In the past elites have chosen to look after their own interests to the exclusion of the many when the situation became serious. Unfortunately for them, they couldn’t continue to retain their privileged state without looking after the masses on whom their wealth and position depended.

But perhaps a necessary condition is building an identity the includes the whole human race and respects the right of other species to survive in manner to which they have become accustomed.

The ALP under Rudd is in fact far more moralistic and authoritarian than the Liberals ever were.

I think that’s far too broad a statement, and could be contradicted with evidence from other policy domains. And needless to say, there were enough Howard Ministers – Tony Abbott being one who immediately comes to mind – who could trump almost anyone when it comes to sanctimonious authoritarianism. It’s more accurate to say, in my view, that the arguments of “communitarians” provide useful cover for left ALP ministers (for instance, Gillard, Tanner and Macklin) to sign on to an agenda which actually derives straight from the Catholic right, and which has more than a little political calculation behind it – both in terms of Senate numbers (and the cohesiveness of the ALP Senate caucus itself) and also in terms of skimming some votes from churchgoing socially conservative Catholics and Evangelicals.

A very similar dynamic is observable with regard to the arguments of the Noel Pearsons and Warren Mundines of this world – in that they provide cover for authoritarian interventions in Indigenous affairs (and increasingly in social policy more generally). The basic mindset is the same – worrying about the breakdown of norms and the absence of community. The communitarian stream of political philosophy – which largely developed in the 1990s and has strong affinities with “Third Way” politics – generally bemoans the alleged fracturing of moral values and shared ethics and places the duty on the state of recreating community in its absence. Very often, the practical and political application of such views has more than a tinge of racism about it. The goals set can never be achieved (which is useful politically for the more canny operators), and a lot of the concern is misplaced and wrongly framed, but a lot of damage can be done along the way by state intervention. Also writing in Spiked, Guy Rundle is much more sensitive to the real political dynamics of moralistic social democracy than Miller.

Probably the best way of understanding what’s going on is in terms of the clash between post-materialist and materialist politics. Labor governments need their own discourse to recapture those who “should” vote for the centre-left on economic grounds, and moralism and campaigning about the dire effects of pr0n and binge drinking or whatever provides the missing piece of the puzzle. But it is very much the case that such attitudes – or at any rate similar attitudes – cross the political spectrum, and that’s why it’s far too simple to judge one government as more authoritarian than another. There is a reason why Miller is partially right in suggesting that the left’s response has been “anemic” but again I think she’s too predisposed by her political dispositions to be an objective analyst in this instance. That reason has to do with – yep, you guessed it – the same legacy of 60s libertarianism Hamilton rails against, but it’s a big issue, and one I’ll return to shortly in another post.