Freedom of Speech

The South Australian Attorney General says he will retrospectively repeal a law that requires internet bloggers and anyone making a comment on next month's state election to publish their real name and postcode when commenting on the poll. The backdown is acknowledged to be in response to fierce public opposition.

The law effectively prevents anonymous comments on politics on the Internet. The law also requires media organisations to keep a person's real name and full address on file for six months, with fines of $5000 if they do not hand over this information to the Electoral Commissioner. 

The law was passed with the support of both major parties, clearly oblivious to the implications for free speech. All its proponents could see was that it might prevent defamatory and libellous comments from sullying a high-minded political public debate.

True, there is an argument to be made that if you want to have a healthy democracy, people ought to put a name on the ideas they espouse and be willing to articulate and defend them openly. But there is a long tradition of anonymous political commentary, and for equally democratic reasons. The law would obviously have had a chilling effect on political speech. There is a huge difference between ought and must.

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On Government

This article refers specifically to the US situation but is applicable to all governments.

"When you subsidize something, you get more of it..." 

That is how governments operate. They punish success and reward failure. If a man is lucky enough to get a good job and earn a lot of money, it is taxed away from him. If he fails to find a job, on the other hand, they give him money. The longer he stays unemployed, the more money they give him. If a banker runs his bank well, he gets nothing but trouble from the government . . . paperwork, bureaucracy, pettifogging regulations. But if he runs it badly, he gets billions of dollars worth of bailouts. If an automaker takes the best business in the world and runs it into the ground, he gets the support of the federal government. If he runs his business well, he gets nothing but headaches. The government's recovery program pays for failure. 

Naturally, they get a lot of it (failure, that is)

Edited from an article in The Daily Reckoning

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Who's right? They all are expressing their own fears, desires, and ideas - through the markets and the economy. Any action a government takes to improve things necessarily means bending these people away from what THEY want towards what THE GOVERNMENT thinks they should have. And since prosperity makes no sense outside of the voluntary choices of the people themselves, the meddling government inevitably makes them poorer. 

Interference by government shifts time and resources away from what people really want. 

But beware! Each person is ultimately responsible for their actions.

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And on personal responsibility, the following is enlightening. Note that credit really took off after the (imperfect) gold standard was done away with by President Nixon in 1971.

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When Laws are a Threat

If Australia keeps making new laws at the current rate there will be 830 billion pages of tax legislation by the turn of next century.

In the past year alone the Federal Parliament passed 9042 pages of new law - four times the number passed between 1929 and 1939.

These figures were quoted by Mr Robin Speed of the Rule of Law Association as reported by Joel Gibson of the SMH, Nov21 2009.

Unlike elsewhere, where corruption threatened the rule of law, excessive regulation was the danger in Australia because it shifted power to faceless bureaucrats and made the law impenetrable for the average person. An example was the estimated 80,000 private rulings given by the Australian Taxation Office in the past eight years which carry complete legal authority.

The chief executive of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, John Colvin, said that the shift of decision making from courts to government agencies was a very real concern for business.

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National Conference

Videos of the address by Sir Roger Douglas at the National Conference are on the website  http://www.ldp.org.au/

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Tuesday 2nd March, 7:15pm    Jo-jo's, Cnr Queen St Mall and Albert St Brisbane.

New South Wales

Thursday 18 February, 7:30pm   Drummoyne Sports Club, 2 Hythe St, Drummoyne

Victoria

Wednesday 3 March, 7pm   Madame Brussels Level 3, 59-63 Bourke Street Melbourne

South Australia

Wednesday 10 March, 8pm   Historian Hotel, 18 Coromandel Place, Adelaide.

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Contributions

Contributions and details of meetings are welcome up to 6pm on the second Friday of each month, after which the newsletter is submitted for editing.

Send to Graham Nickols at secretary@ldp.org.au

Urgent material missing the deadline should be forwarded directly to David Leyonhjelm at treasurer@ldp.org.au

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Liberty Links

Given the size of the LDP a lot of our members aren't able to make it to our state branch meetings. So here's a list of links of websites that may interest you. None of the listed websites are affiliated with the LDP and none of the views expressed represent LDP policy.

Australian Libertarian Society
Catallaxy Files
Free Market.Net
Introduction to libertarianism
CATO Institute
Centre for Independent Studies
Institute for Public Affairs
US Libertarian Party

If you have a link you'd like to appear here email info@ldp.org.au and let us know about it.