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If you're having problems reading this newsletter, please view the original at http://www.ldp.org.au/news/Jun09newsletter.html
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Victorian LDP monthly meetings will now be held at: Madame Brussels 59-63 Bourke Street Melbourne, VIC 3000 (above the Spaghetti Tree restaurant). The venue is opposite Café on Bourke where we were previously meeting and is the place where we hosted the meeting with Peter in March. The meetings will continue to be the first Wednesday of each month at 7pm and the change of venue is effective for the next meeting in June. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Victoria signed up 6 new members in the 2 hours they were at the SHOT Show, Flemington racecourse, last month. Ross Currie reports that reaction was favourable and 80 fliers were handed out. Thanks to Philip Lillingston and Andrew Ferguson for their efforts on the day. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lisa Milat, Martin Walsh and Graham Nickols manned a table at the Illawarra Computer Market at Unanderra last Sunday. During the day 20 new members were signed up. A nearby store owner said the number of people attending the monthly fair had diminished markedly over the last few months. She put this down to the economic decline. We also felt that the attendance was quite poor. Interestingly the cost of admittance had been reduced from $4 last month to $3.
One of the people we signed up said he had recently phoned the Swine Flu hotline but that all he got was crackling. (sorry!) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you see an opportunity to recruit members to help the party reach its membership goals for State registration, please tell us about it. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Federal Executive has printed a quantity of LDP "business cards" for members. There is space on the cards to apply a small printed sticker with your name and contact details (telephone, email, etc). The cards can be used to hand to friends and associates who are interested in knowing more about the LDP. Anyone interested in obtaining a quantity of cards should contact the Treasurer, David Leyonhjelm (treasurer@ldp.org.au). You will need to indicate how many cards you need (eg 20, 50) and the text of your sticker. Stickers will be provided for you as well. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I recently asked my friend's little girl what she wanted to be when she grows up. She said she wanted to be Prime Minister someday. Both of her parents, Greens supporters, were standing there so I asked her, “If you were Prime Minister what would be the first thing you would do?” She replied, "I'd give food and houses to all the homeless people." Her parents beamed. "Wow...what a worthy goal." I told her, “But you don't have to wait until you're Prime Minister to do that. You can come over to my house and mow the lawn, pull weeds, and sweep my yard, and I'll pay you $50. Then I'll take you over to the grocery store where the homeless guy hangs out, and you can give him the $50 to use toward food and a new house." She thought that over for a few seconds, then she looked me straight in the eye and asked, “Why doesn't the homeless guy come over and do the work, and you can just pay him the $50?” I said, “Welcome to the Liberal Democratic Party.” Her parents still aren't speaking to me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ABC serves up same old breakfast with a touchy lefty feel By David McAlary Over the last decade we have seen State and Federal Governments sell off publicly owned "assets" such as the Commonwealth Bank, Telstra and Qantas. Recently the Bligh government flagged the sale of Queensland Rail and other assets. The reasons in favour of such sales are obvious and as economic realities continue to bear down on Governments we will no doubt see this trend continue. Each announcement of an intended sale brings the obligatory "outrage" and predictions of doom from the usual suspects, but these days the public is not as easily spooked. They have come to appreciate that far from services becoming worse as a result of privatisation, they become better and cheaper. How long then, can the most obvious of privatisation candidates, the ABC, remain untouchable? The National broadcaster has for years been airing second rate programming which consistently attracts significantly lower audiences than its commercial rivals. Friends of the ABC would argue that its purpose is not to provide the same kind of content as the commercials but rather provide alternative content. The problem is that the alternative content is not only intertwined with the ABC's left wing bias, but is also much the same as what the commercial channels offer anyway. A good case in point would be the Breakfast show that began broadcasting in 2008 on ABC2. We currently have rivals Sunrise on 7 and Today on 9 engaged in a bitter ratings war. Both commercial networks are in financial difficulty facing dwindling advertising revenue, the encroachment of pay TV and the gradual evaporation of their younger viewers who increasingly look to the Internet for their news and entertainment. Why then would the ABC wade into an already saturated market with another breakfast show? The Howard Government should have gone in much harder on the ABC when it had the chance. It should have pushed through a partial privatisation as was done with sister broadcaster SBS. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- From the Sydney Morning Herald, May 16. THE Director of Public Prosecutions, Nicholas Cowdery, QC, has condemned the Government's new bikie laws as "very troubling legislation" that could lead to a police state and represent "another giant leap backwards for human rights and the separation of powers - in short, the rule of law". Mr Cowdery's warning comes after a second wave of anti-bikie laws passed through Parliament, this time providing for penalties of up to five years' jail for members of a proscribed gang who "recruited" members. Last month the Premier, Nathan Rees, insisted the first set of
laws be rushed through Parliament after the death at Sydney
Airport of Anthony Zervas during a bikie brawl. Those laws allow
the Police Commissioner to move in the Supreme Court to
proscribe criminal gangs and jail members who associate with
each other. In a paper published on his website, Mr Cowdery says: "There may be a need for better enforcement [rather] than for legal powers." He warns that the law "does not apply only to bikie gangs but 'to any particular organisation" in respect of which the Police Commissioner chooses to make an application. "Where will the line be drawn?" he asks. "These words cast a very wide net … Why should the responsibility for identifying which organisations warrant being declared under the act be vested in the Police Commissioner, an unelected official? "The spectre of a police state lurks here: an unacceptable slide from the separation of powers by linking the powers of the Police Commissioner with those of 'eligible' judges." Mr Cowdery says the fact the Attorney-General has the power to declare which "eligible" Supreme Court judge could hear an application to proscribe a gang meant an attorney-general could have "unfettered power to 'stack' the hearing of applications for declarations of organisations under the act with judges willing to enforce it". The Attorney-General could also "revoke or qualify the authority of a judge to determine applications for declarations if he or she does not perform to the Government's satisfaction". He says that while this may not be the intention of the present Attorney-General, John Hatzistergos, "a provision so drafted left on the statute books is extremely dangerous and potentially open to serious misuse". Mr Cowdery writes: "It matters not that the motives of the urgers or policy makers may be honourable … we all need constantly to be alert to the erosion of rights and be proactive in preventing it … This is especially a time for vigilance in NSW. Someone once described it as the price of liberty." When Mr Rees rushed through the laws, he said it was "proportionate response to an escalation in violence [involving] outlaw motorcycle gangs". He said bikie gangs had "crossed the line" with the Sydney Airport brawl in March and subsequent shootings on "public streets". The laws received initial internal opposition from Mr Hatzistergos. Last year, the the fiercely independent Mr Cowdery described the Iemma government as as "ruthless" and guilty of "grubby" tactics and said Mr Hatzistergos was a "micro-manager" who had lost sight of the "bigger picture". Recently, the Government legislated to give a future DPP a
10-year-term in the job, rather than open-ended tenure. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The Institute of Public Affairs has found a graph from the US demonstrating that Government unemployment forecasts cannot be believed when it comes to the effect of the Government's "stimulus". In blue is what Barack Obama hoped would happen. In red is what actually happened. Does anyone believe the stimulus will be any more effective in Australia?
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 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 _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 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 If you have a link you'd like to appear here email info@ldp.org.au and let us know about it. |
Want to help the LDP?The best way to help is to join the party or upgrade to financial membership by downloading the application form.If you're already a financial member you can make a donation
by direct bank transfer to:
Meet-UpUp-coming state branch meetings.NSW Branch For more info regarding how to get there go here.Vic Branch 7.00 pm Wednesday 1 July Madame Brussels
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