That's no think tank, that's my lobbyist

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Glen Fuller

Researcher at the Institute of Public Affairs, Chris Berg, drew my attention to a tweet by Simon Banks from Simon's official Hawker Britton (lobbying/PR firm) twitter account:

"More proof that Think Tanks are Lobbyists: and my article on why they should disclose their funding."

It is about the plan to create an industrial relations think tank in the existing Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs. Support for the new think tank is being provided by those who would benefit the most from a dismantling of the existing Fair Work industrial relations policy:

"The [SMH] has learned the former mining executive, Hugh Morgan, has also been a key driver of the process, as has Michael Chaney, a former president of the Business Council of Australia and currently the chairman of Woodside Petroleum. Both have been recruiting executive support."

Bernard Keane has posted an article on Crikey about trying to measure the effect of the existing Fair Work policy on industrial relations. There are a number of measures or indicators for gauging how successful or not the policy has been. He argues that the aspects of industrial relations that would result in the easiest and most beneficial response to the overall economy (the "low hanging fruit") has been addressed. Now there is the far more "complex challenges" to address to lead to greater productivity:

"Now there are more complex challenges like infrastructure investment (and charging for infrastructure), lifting the return from our health and education investment and the “human capital agenda” which the Howard government, under pressure from the Bracks government, belatedly recognised as important to lifting productivity."

Chris got fired up about Simon's tweet and framed the tweet in terms of whether or not "people genuinely hold views about public policy":

Australian researcher of social work and welfare, Philip Mendes, describes two of the most common 'defences' that think tanks mobilise when critiqued for their role in the production of policy and the influence they have on governance. The first is regarding funding (and it is a similar point to that of Simon Banks regarding lobbyists:

"The think tanks claim to be politically independent, and to be offering impartial and disinterested expertise. They insist that their intellectual integrity and hence credibility is protected by their multiple sources of income [...]. However, critics argue that they are generally partisan, motivated by political and ideological bias, practice the art of directed conclusions, and have more in common with corporate-funded vested interest groups or pressure groups concerned with political activism and propaganda than with genuinely academic or scholarly institutions [...]."

Berg defends this new think tank by following similar lines of argument. He argues that the work of the IPA is funded from 1000+ sources:

At stake here for Berg here is a kind of cash for comment scenario where Berg is trying to ward off the impression that the IPA simply becomes an ideological mouthpiece for the highest bidder. The other part of the defence is regarding the "truthfulness" or "genuiness" of the beliefs held by members of the IPA or think tanks more generally. The line of argument is that members genuinely hold their beliefs and that they are not bought by those that fund the think tank. Mendes describes part of this point thus:

"Finally, they persistently claim to be independent and objective purveyors of truth, uninfluenced by vested or sectional interests. Consequently, their pronouncements, however extreme or bound by ideology, are often granted greater legitimacy and receive less critical public attention than the views of organisations holding more obvious political links and interests."

Of course, the "truth" that Berg is advocating is the "truth" of his own (and it seems those of his fellow IPA members) beliefs in relation to the research he carries out and the arguments he mobilises in his research and opinion-piece writing work. He is making a distinction between think tanks and lobby groups, where he is implying that lobby groups do not genuinely hold their beliefs and are therefore less "true" (or authentic maybe?) than the think tanks, such as the IPA, who are also attempting to intervene in policy debates.

A third defence that Berg mobilises in a tweet in response to me is based around an understanding of the public sphere and whether or not participants in policy discussions in the public sphere should be considered "lobbying":

Berg is implicitly defining lobbying as the activity of professional lobbyists. If lobbying is understood to happen as the intent of "non-lobbyists", he suggests, "that would make everyone who participates in public debate a lobbyist, surely". Well, no. The definition of lobbying that most people understand to be lobbying is defined by the activities of special interest groups, such as those that fund the IPA, to advocate their "genuinely held beliefs" in such a way to influence public debate and therefore government policy. For example, one of the wikipedia definitions of lobbying is:

"Lobbying (also 'Lobby') is a form of advocacy with the intention of influencing decisions made by the government by individuals or more usually by Lobby groups; it includes all attempts to influence legislators and officials, whether by other legislators, constituents, or organized groups."

Surely the point of a think tank such as the IPA or the new industrial relations think tank is to advocate a particular position and in doing so influence decisions made by the government?

Of more interest to me is reframing lobbying activities in a "post-political" era. (And here I am going to go off on a tangent concerned with my own research.) Chantal Mouffe has described the "post-political" as characterised by the negation of antagonisms. Distinct from a rational consensus model, the point of democracy is to promote the confrontation of opposing hegemonic positions. She writes:

"This kind of liberalism is unable to adequately grasp the pluralistic nature of the social world, with the conflicts that pluralism entails; conflicts for which no rational solution could ever exist. the typical liberal understanding of pluralism is that we live in a world in which there are indeed many perspectives and values and that, owing to empirical limitations, we will never be able to adopt them all, but that, when put together, they constitute an harmonious and non-conflictual ensemble. this is why this type of liberalism must negate the political in its antagonistic dimension."

The negation of antagonism and the reproduction of a (neo)liberal hegemonic consensus is not simply a philosophical point; it is a political practice. The work of think tanks may, at first glance when taken in isolation, appear to exist purely for the purposes of antagonism. That is, their only point is to advocate their genuinely held political views and work hard to impose their ideologies on the rest of the population by influencing policy decision making. The negation of antagonism and the reproduction of (neo)liberal hegemony does not simply happen through think tanks however. As Mendes notes (writing in the early 2000s):

"It should be emphasised that neoliberal think tanks do not promote these ideas in isolation. Other important sources of neoliberal influence in Australia include sections of the media such as the Australian Financial Review and influential journalists such as Alan Wood, Christopher Pearson and Piers Akerman, academics such as Judith Sloan and Peter Dawkins, senior econocrats in Canberra such as Ted Evans and Ian Macfarlane, business economists and financial analysts, overt corporate lobby groups such as the Business Council of Australia, and significant groupings within the mainstream political parties. The think tanks constitute one specific component of this larger 'economic rationalist' coalition ... "

This coalition or 'media ecology' has changed to some degree over the last decade or so, but there are enough familiar names in Mendes's list for the point to stand. They all work in concert to reproduce the hegemonic 'common sense'. Mouffe's (and Laclau's) arguments about "hegemonic articulations" focus on their apparently self-positing character. A classic example of this is when someone explained to me that "We shouldn't have illegal immigrants because they are illegal".

Another way to frame the post-political era that relates to the work of think tanks is regarding the production of political enthusiasm. "Political enthusiasm", particularly in any kind of liberalist context, would appear to be an oxymoron. "Enthusiasm" was traditionally understood to refer to the religiosity (and therefore, irrationality) of the public in the pre-Enlightenment era. It was the work of great Enlightenment figures to banish enthusiasm (in its religious guise) from the public sphere. It would seem that the (neo)liberal think tanks would align themselves on the side of Enlightenment figures who advocated on the side of rationality in the face of religious enthusiasms. As Mendes (writing about another think tank, the Centre for Independent Studies) notes, they advocate "an economy based on free and competitive markets, and individual liberty and choice, including freedom of association, religion, speech, and the right to property". Hence the apparent contradiction in me suggesting that the work of think tanks and the rest of the hegemonic media ecology is not ideological per se, but primarily regarding the (real or apparent) induction of enthusiasm in a given population for particular policy outcomes. The appearance of population-wide anxiety is a good indicator that the hegemonic media ecology is working to produce enthusiasm for a given set of ideological policy imperatives.

The contemporary media apparatus in general trains audiences to be anxious about "complexities". A "complexity" is the hegemonic term adopted by nearly everyone in politics for the site of what Mouffe calls an "antagonism". The next key term in (neo)liberal discourse when negating antagonism and producing enthusiasm is "challenge". A "challenge" denotes a political contingency that cannot be easy incorporated into existing perceptions of whatever is at stake. It is often used in the phrase "the challenge of [issue]", particularly in speeches. If you do a cursory search for the keywords ["challenge of" speech] you’ll see what I mean. Isolating the "challenge of" in political discourse signals the emergence of a heterogeneity in the normally hegemonic dialectical (for example, us vs them) order. A "challenge" has relatively unique onto-epistemological characteristics in that various populations with various partisan interests can engage with the same, single contingency presented in the social or political order in different ways. (Here is some earlier writing on the subject.)

For example, if you suggest, as Bernard Keane does in his Crikey article, that "more complex challenges" are coming in industrial relations debates, then most casual or informed observers from any side within politics will probably agree in the first instance. In the second instance, the "challenge" will be rearticulated in such a way so as to strip it of its heterogeneity and antagonistic potential. This is the work of the hegemonic media ecology and in particular this is the work of (neo)liberal think tanks to present "ready-made" policy positions so as to frame such heterogeneity in ways that negate the “complexity” of social and political issues. The heterogeneity of antagonisms is important in the political arena as the absence of consensus indicates a site whereby the collective imagination of a population must strive to find a way to accommodate such heterogeneity.

My interest in all this, and an area of possible future research, is the function of think tanks to produce enthusiasm for a given set of ideologies within a population and thus mobilize a population according to the ideologies of that of the think tank and its funders.

Dr Glen Fuller is an Assistant Professor of Journalism and Communications at the University of Canberra.

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Please: don't dump the Monck

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Anson Cameron

More than 50 Australian academics have signed a letter imploring Western Australia's Notre Dame University to cancel a speech by Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. So he must have something profound to tell us. He must be going to reveal unsettling truths. Truths that will upend the stale dogma of the academy and shake the boffins from their tax-feathered nests and render them Emeritus. Just unkempt bar-flies mumbling yesteryear’s eternal verities into their beer.

Or maybe not. Let me tell you, there are few more enjoyable ways to spend an afternoon than to go online and read and watch Viscount Monckton of Brenchley debunked by actual scientists. I worry for golf as a pastime if people cotton on to how much fun the debunking of Monckton is. The TimeZone arcades and bowling alleys will be abandoned by the young if they get wind of what an unholy high Debunking the Monck can give. It’s great fun to see a man of this stripe so scrupulously discredited.

These debunkers are so damned thorough I wish they’d vacuum my house. Forget strongarming scientific fact and misquoting scientists. This is the least of the Monck’s skulduggery. You will find it said on these sites, that he has claimed to have developed a cure for AIDS and multiple sclerosis, among other diseases; and has claimed to be a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, later saying this was a joke (On whom?); has claimed that a Chinese naval squadron sailed right round the Arctic in 1421 and found no ice; and, perhaps worst of all... he attacked mainstream estimates of climate sensitivity by a misapplication of the Stefan-Bolzmann equation (Cad!!) Oh, he also accused NASA of crashing its own satellite so it wouldn’t have to deal with more data that contradicts the scientific consensus about climate change. His recent comparison of Ross Garnaut with Adolf Hitler should have come as no surprise; he has many priors on this front, accusing people of being Nazis and Hitler youth. Always apologizes in a most aristocratic fashion when called to account. And he once suggested rounding up and isolating all AIDS sufferers, later lamenting the problem had got too big and the logistics too unwieldy. Oh, he also claimed to be a member of the House of Lords. Isn’t, though. Not now. Nor ever.

He is, however, a lot of fun. A barrel of monkeys. The type of peer who used to be widespread but is now all too rare. Since antibiotics got on top of syphilis the poms seem to be running short of truly potty peers. Used to be they’d tour a Duke a year through these parts, pontificating about cunning reds and wily natives and slashing at imaginary Hun as they handed over The Cup to an astounded horse trainer unused to dealing with the quality.

But these fellows seem to be going the way of the thylacine and the Auk. Maybe that’s why Monckton reminds me of that grainy black-and-white footage of the last thylacine in the Hobart zoo. A flashback to a day when eccentric Earls made eccentric remarks and the Common Law.

I implore the academy not to add Viscount Monckton to the long and distinguished list of the gagged and banned. He does not deserve to stand alongside Aung San Suu Kyi, Mandela, Darwin or Mick Jagger. If the Academy gags Lord Monckton it will reward? him with a wholly undeserved gravitas, and afford him the glow of the messiah among his flock. Censored by lefties and eggheads sponging off our tax dollar, the things he wasn’t allowed to say will take on an unwarranted profundity. The flock will be whispering of NATO, a world government, thought-control, and only fearless mavericks like the Viscount standing in the way of a global communist dystopia.

Here’s the tastiest irony; these 50 or so academics want a university RUN BY A CHURCH to ban a man from speaking because they are afraid he might speak balderdash. "He stands for the kind of ignorance and superstition that universities have a duty to counter," they say. Well, he does too. But counter him by refutation and argument. Not by banning him. If a person can be banned from University for speaking ignorantly and superstitiously Jesus will have to set up his soapbox across the road from Notre Dame when he returns and shout through the chain-link fence with a bullhorn.

Anson Cameron has written five critically acclaimed novels. He lives in Melbourne.??

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A history of marriage in Australia

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Rodney Croome

On August 13, 2004, in a debate punctuated by rage and tears, the Senate passed a Howard government amendment to the Marriage Act banning same-sex marriages.

Exactly 45 years earlier, on August 13, 1959, in the midst of debating Australia's first national Marriage Act - the one Howard later amended - the House of Representatives erupted at the news an Aboriginal woman had been denied permission to marry.

In Darwin the protector of Aborigines had refused Gladys Namagu permission to marry her white fiance, Mick Daly. In response to questions from the opposition, the Menzies government promised such discrimination would never be written into Australian marriage law.

This coincidence highlights the direct link between the way Aborigines were once denied freedom to marry the partner of their choice and how gay and lesbian Australians are denied the same freedom today.

Yet the link runs deeper than infringing the principle of individual autonomy.

In an article published in the latest edition of Overland, I argue Australian governments have a shameful history of manipulating who ordinary people marry in order to engineer broader visions of what Australian society should be. This history goes back to the earliest times.

In convict Australia the government assumed control over who the majority of white Australians married and used this control for overt ideological purposes. Governor Philip wanted to create a native Australian yeomanry and rewarded those convicts who exhibited appropriate traits with permission to marry.

Forty years later, governor Arthur sought to inculcate convicts with industrial rather than agrarian values and gave the reward of permission to marry to convicts who conformed. There was resistance to these controls from convicts who insisted on marrying for the sake of love or children, from women convicts who married to escape the convict system and become "free subjects", and of course from the anti-transportationists who despised this kind of governmental intervention in personal life and brought it, and convictism, to an end in the 1850s and 1860s.

But Australian governments had not lost their weakness for infringing freedom to marry. Into the 20th century women had to fight hard for the right to marry who they wished and conduct those marriages free of laws against contraception, abortion and divorce.

Because of the White Australia Policy servicemen in occupied Japan were refused permission to local Japanese women or, if they married anyway, were unable to return to Australia with their Japanese wives.

Infringement of Aboriginal freedom to marry was most notorious of all. Beginning in the 1860s in Victoria and culminating in the 1930s in West Australia and Queensland, authorities assumed ever more control of who Indigenous people married.

In Queensland the purpose was to prevent miscegenation by preventing black/white marriages. In WA it was to absorb blacks into the white population by preventing black/black unions.

The adverse effect on Indigenous people was always the same, and, as with convicts, some Aborigines resisted control. Women deliberately fell pregnant to their forbidden fiancés, couples escaped to states without marriage controls, and in 1935 the "half-caste women of Broome" petitioned the WA Parliament declaring:

Sometimes we have the chance to marry a man of our own choice... therefore we ask for our Freedom so that when the chance comes along we can rule our lives and make ourselves true and good citizens.

Aboriginal advocates in Sydney and Melbourne were slower to pick up on the issue. But when they did – as a way to prick the conscience of an Australia increasingly concerned about "Hitlerism" – the right to marry the partner of one's choice shot to the top of Aboriginal Australia's list of demands above land rights and equal pay, and second only to the right to vote.

When the case of Gladys and Mick hit the headlines across the world, thanks in part to an appeal to the UN Secretary General, it helped end the entire rotten system of Aboriginal protection laws and propelled the nation towards overwhelming endorsement of Aboriginal citizenship in 1967.

Many white Australian's have forgotten how important freedom to marry was, but not so Indigenous people like lawyer, Tammy Williams. When the issue of same-sex marriage was raised during the recent national human rights consultation she said, "I couldn’t help but think about my family, when you talked about the right to choose your partner... In my family, it's only one generation ago that we were prevented from choosing our chosen partner to marry – not because of sexual orientation, but simply because of our race, our Aboriginality.

The denial to gay and lesbian Australians of our freedom to marry follows the historical pattern I have outlined.

The decision to form a lifelong legal union with one other person is one of the most important decisions most of us is ever called on to make. To rob an entire group of citizens of the legal right to make that decision sends the message that they are not fully adults, fully citizens or fully human. This was the burden convicts and Aborigines carried in their day and it is the burden gay and lesbian Australians carry today.

As it was in the past, today's infringement of the freedom to marry is part of a broader ideological vision imposed by government. That vision is a theocratic one which sees the subtle re-introduction of Biblical values back into civil law following their removal in the second half of the 20th century.

Most importantly, the success of today's freedom to marry movement will, like the movements before it, have consequences far beyond those directly affected. It will mean a re-affirmation of equity, impartiality and humanity as the values that govern Australian law. It will mean marriage is no longer manipulated to discriminatory, ideological ends and is instead what it should be, an affirmation of love, a commitment to fidelity, a source of security and a font of personal happiness.

Routine violations of the freedom to marry seem to well up from the bedrock of Australia's history. But so do challenges to these abuses. As a result, when these challenges succeed, Australian society matures quickly and profoundly.

Rodney Croome AM, is an honorary lecturer in sociology at the University of Tasmania.

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Pim, Lucas, Bernard and the poems of Leonard Nimoy

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Justin Shaw

I am well aware, thanks for asking, that my approach to sports journalism could be described in some circles as a little bit haphazard. Those circles would have their own definition of haphazard no doubt, and it would probably match what I do. See the previous two sentences for supporting evidence.

Being thusly aware, I am also aware of the various levels of irony attendant in what I am about to say. (As usual, send your complaints to PO Box Whatevs).

Dear Les Murray: WTF?

As I and several hundred lesser sports journos wrote last week, Les' new book contains a pretty stunning revelation about a Lucas Neill-led player revolt against Pim Verbeek's tactics going into the opening game against Germany at last year's World Cup.

Now "new facts have come to light" (Lucas Neill says it didn't actually happen and is kind of upset by the suggestion that it did) and Les has apologised unreservedly. It’s not that big a deal, though, people get things wrong all the time, even me.

But come on… Les Murray's publisher and editor, WTF?

He is the Face, and Voice, and some would say the Heart, Brains and Duodenal Gland of Football in Australia. Everyone interested in football in this country will be interested in his book.

He sends you the final draft, including the Player Revolt thing, and you just print it? It didn't strike you as perhaps a bit, um, controversial? You didn't consider that that story would be the big selling point of the book, and the first and probably only thing the media latched onto?

Maybe you did, in which case I am stunned like a mullet and have stoned several crows and am shaking the sauce bottle fairly, mate, that you didn't then consider checking his sources and perhaps doing some research and maybe even talking to some lawyers and stuff, or even going out on the ceraaaazy limb of asking Lucas Neill??

My stunnedness is offset somewhat by my new-found knowledge that there are obviously publishers out there dumb enough to consider my proposed coffee table book entitled "The Following Players Are Drug Cheats And These Ones Are Gay".

The publicity surrounding the dozens of wrongly-identified players will guarantee sales, which will be nice. The weeks of mea culpas that follow will hopefully generate enough further sales to cover my legal bills.

Oh hang on, I just realised what's going on, did you?

I HAD a slightly uncomfortable moment the other day, made all the more uncomfortable by the fact that I have had to take some interest in something that I really don't like.

A senior person with whom I have an entirely and necessarily professional and formal relationship let the walls down for a few moments and tried to engage me in a friendly chat.

"So, how far's Tomic going to go, Mr Shaw?" he asked.

Suddenly kicked out of my formal comfort zone, it took a few seconds for the word Tomic to bubble into my frontal lobe.

"I mean, with your knowledge of sport" (like all educated and brilliant people, he's a reader of this page) "what do you think of his chances?"

"Ah, Tomic, the tennis player, yes. Well I do know a fair bit about sport, but unfortunately I can't stand tennis, Sir. Tennis and swimming. Don't like them. Not a bit."

Eventually I stopped telling him how much I loathed something he's interested in, and took a sudden studiousness regarding a paperclip on the table before me.

He wasn't actually offended (I hope) but the silence that followed was so awkward that everyone in the room grew nine extra elbows and started bumping into tables that weren't there.

So in an effort to avoid future awkward moments I have been brushing up on Wimbledon, and I am glad of the illumination gifted me by the Seven Network.

Here are some things I have learned:

Pat Cash is Forty Six years old, and still wears a dangly earring.

Mark Webber's opinion on Tomic is important, as is that of every vaguely Australian celebrity hanging around Wimbledon for the free lunches.

Todd Woodbridge is extremely irritating.

There is a female player who had a breast reduction.

Some of the female players are very pretty, and what they wear on the court is very important, particularly for the slo-mos.

The female players who aren't pretty are variously described as "strong" and "powerful" and whatever other vaguely complimentary words spring into the brains of commentators who have just spent the past five minutes saying "phwoar" about Hantsuchova and are really just thinking "Blerg, what an Uggo" about the less-pretty woman currently on screen.

I have accidentally also learned that this Tomic chap is Australian, and Carried Australia’s Hopes all the way to a few games in, and just recently he Went Down Fighting Bravely, instead of being Bundled Out like other non-Australians, which I think means he eventually lost.

More importantly, Pat Cash is forty six years old, and still wears a dangly earring.

So there. I now know things about tennis, which feels strange. As a result I am now able to engage in harmless and polite conversation, which feels even stranger. I can’t see this being much of a problem with the aforementioned gentleman however; he appears to have learned the lesson that attempting polite harmless conversation with me is on a level of weirdness comparable only to the poetry of Leonard Nimoy.

My efforts at being polite and informed will absolutely not under any circumstances (except of course maybe a really big bag of money – donations to PO Box Yes Please) extend to swimming.

Justin Shaw is the Deputy Editor of The King's Tribune. He Tweets at @JuzzyTribune?

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Getting the WorkChoices band back together

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Simon Banks

The news that Peter Reith is seeking business support to establish a new pro-WorkChoices industrial relations think tank should not be a surprise.?

Nor is the fact that its natural ideological home is the Institute for Public Affairs.

It follows the recent engagement by the HR Nicholls Society of Liberal stalwart Ian Hanke.

The Liberal Party backbench has been active too with calls for debate by newer MPs including Jamie Briggs (John Howard's former industrial relations adviser), Josh Frydenberg, Kelly O'Dwyer and Steven Ciobo.

At the same time, one of the first acts of the O'Farrell Government was to limit the wage increases of public servants including police, nurses, firefighters and ambulance drivers to less than the rate of inflation – sending their wages backwards in real terms.

The processes for setting fair minimum wages, basic terms and conditions of employment and the independent industrial umpire are all under threat.

Tony Abbott has finally declared that 'in good time', the Opposition will have a 'strong and effective workplace policy'.

Abbott, Reith and the Liberal Party are entitled to argue their views in public and will be judged by the Australian people at the next election.

But the role of bodies like the Institute of Public Affairs and the HR Nicholls Society deserve scrutiny too. It is clear that Reith sees the institute as not just a generator of ideas, but an important advocate on behalf of the views that he and some in the business community hold.

It is further proof that these think tanks are increasingly seen as influential lobbyists for the very causes they pursue.

As a result, Australians are entitled to know who will be funding the institute in this expanded role.

The same was true in the recent debate about tobacco advertising, where the institute repeatedly commented in the media on the issue, but also refused to disclose whether it is taking money from big tobacco.

The same disclosure should also be required for think tanks across the political spectrum, such as The Australia Institute, The Climate Institute and GetUp!. Many on the right of politics have expressed concerns about the funding of these bodies too.

United States politics has increasingly become dominated by the power of large political action committees. Think tanks, industry, union and community-based lobby groups are increasingly playing the same role in Australia. It is also an inevitable consequence of the fragmentation of political debate and the decreasing influence of traditional party affiliations.

Disclosure is also becoming increasingly important with the rise of the commentariat in political coverage (of which I am a self-confessed participant).

Political parties have to disclose who their donors are. Third party lobbyists like Hawker Britton disclose who our clients are on publicly available Lobbyist Registers (and in our case we make no secret of our ties to the ALP).

Most industry associations and trade union bodies – from the ACTU to the Minerals Council and Australian Industry Group are proud to declare who their members are. Whether you agree with their views or not, these organisations are also not afraid of stating publicly who they are lobbying on behalf of.

However, some think tanks and industry lobby groups hide their financial backers behind the corporate veil and refuse to say who the ultimate promoters of their views are. For example, the recent debate on plain packaging of tobacco saw an alleged small business coalition being overwhelmingly funded by big tobacco.

Australians deserve better. We are entitled to know who is seeking to influence public debate. Governments and parliaments as decision-makers and the public as participants and voters can then decide what weight to put on these views.

Governments, parliaments and the media can help by laying down a simple standard. They can refuse to receive submissions or publish comments or opinions from industry associations, interest groups and think tanks that refuse to make appropriate disclosure. At the very least, they can indicate that the organisation has not adequately disclosed its funding. The Australian people can then make up their minds.

In the coming debate about workplace reform and the resurrection of WorkChoices, Australians are entitled to know who is bringing the band back together and paying for these views to be promoted on the public stage.

Simon Banks is a government relations, campaigning and strategic communications professional and the director of Hawker Britton.

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No shortage of land or food... or hot air

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在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
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Asher Judah

Despite the economic populism and political fear mongering of Senators Brown and Joyce in recent days, Australians need not fear running out of arable land.

Nor should they worry about an impending food security crisis. In fact, the only thing they should worry about is a shortage of politicians prepared to speak the truth about how strong our nation's agricultural future really is.

As the world's ninth largest agriculture producer, Australia is one of the most food-secure nations in the world.

According to the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australia's terrestrial and aquatic food producers are capable of producing enough food to feed approximately 80 million people per year.

And despite the lingering effects of a debilitating national drought, Australian farmers still grow enough to provide 93 per cent of our domestic food supply, including 98 per cent of all locally consumed fresh produce.

Instead of facing a serious food supply problem as alleged this week by Senator Brown, Australia in fact enjoys a healthy oversupply – to the tune of $14 billion per year. This production makes us one of the world's largest food exporters, unlike the 131 other nations around the world who are net food importers.

One of the key reasons Australia produces so much food is because we have so much arable land.

Measured by people per square kilometre of arable land, Australia has 68 times more than Japan, 25 times more than the United Kingdom, 22 times more than China and four times more than the United States.?

In fact, Australia has more arable land than Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Japan, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea combined.

Rather than running out of arable land as routinely suggested by Senator Joyce, Australia has the largest oversupply per person of any nation in the world. If anything, we should feel more relaxed about selling it.

But our agricultural edge doesn't end there.

Despite living on the world's driest inhabited continent, our farmers happen to be amongst the worlds most resourceful. Over 60 per cent of the Australian land mass is used for agricultural activity each year, resulting in the production of over $40 billion worth of agricultural goods.

Our farmers are also ranked amongst the worlds most productive. According to the Productivity Commission, between 1974-75 and 2003-04, Australian farmers consistently achieved productivity growth levels of 2.8 per cent a year – the third highest of any industry sector in Australia. These amazing productivity gains have made our farmers one of our nation's greatest economic success stories, attracting solid foreign investment and sustaining thousands of jobs in regional areas.

Put simply, even in the face of challenging climatic conditions, distorting trade rules and growing competition for land use, Australia's farmers still know how to grow success. Rather than imposing more control over their businesses, as proposed by Brown and Joyce, the Government should just butt out. If a NSW farmer wants to sell his land to a Chinese extraction company, it's his God-given right to do so. Now is not the time to start impinging on farmers' rights for the sake of political popularity.

Through this century, our farm community will face many serious challenges in regard to how it chooses its farm businesses. Vexed issues like live exports, carbon taxes, GMO's, salinity, labour shortages, drought, trade access, pest control and water and native vegetation management will test the farm sector.

As a result, what the farm community needs is not a phony political campaign about a problem which doesn't exist, but a proper discussion on the issues which genuinely threaten their social and economic wellbeing.

Australian farmers have a bright but challenging future ahead of them. Our political leaders could do a lot worse than speak the truth about it.

Asher Judah is a Research Fellow with the Institute of Public Affairs and a former VFF Economics Adviser.

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The plausibility gap in the denial of climate change science

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
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Nicole Hodgson

For climate change 'sceptics', denialists, contrarians or what Barry Jones recently called 'confusionists' to be right about the science of climate change, an alternative reality must be both plausible and logical.

Firstly, the consensus amongst climate change scientists that human activity is a significant contributing factor to climate change must be misguided at best. The 97 per cent of active publishing climate scientists surveyed in 2009 or the 97 to 98 per cent of climate experts who support the consensus, as evidenced by a 2010 study, must all be wrong.

In addition, the Joint Science Academies from the G8+5 countries statement on climate change must also be misguided, as must be the large number of scientific bodies from around the world which support the consensus on anthropogenic climate change (just part of the long list includes NAASA, American Institute of Physics, in Australia - the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology, in Europe the European Federation of Geologists, and the Royal Society of the UK).?

In this alternative reality, climate scientists exhibit impressive worldwide powers of persuasion to be able to mislead their scientific peers so decisively.

In this alternative reality, consensus on climate science is anyway irrelevant in the case of climate science - "the language of consensus is the language of politics not science" - but curiously only half the time: consensus in this alternative reality is important when lists are compiled to demonstrate the ostensibly large number of "scientists" who do not support the consensus.?

The expertise of those "scientists" is not important when it comes to demonstrating an opposition to the scientific consensus – geologists with links to the mining and fossil fuel industries are just as valid as climate scientists here.?Those inhabiting this alternative reality, who cannot help but notice that the actual scientific consensus is quite compelling, procure another explanation: the consensus only exists because of malpractice, a stifling of critics and a misuse of the peer review process.

The argument appears to be: the vast majority of publishing climate scientists agree with the basic hypothesis of anthropogenic climate change, therefore it demonstrates that climate scientists are just 'following the pack', primarily because they want to keep their funding grants.? Those scientists with views contrary to the consensus therefore cannot get funding or cannot be published in the peer-reviewed literature.?This is where the narrative of this alternative reality becomes extremely illogical.

Somewhere in the process of doing science around the world, this alternative reality presumes that there must be an inherent bias towards the confirmation of anthropogenic climate change.? That is, some people, somewhere (in government perhaps, or the public funding institutions such as the Australian Research Council) only want to see research that confirms the human causes of climate change, and somehow those people monopolise the funding process to secure that outcome.

Given that climate research is mostly conducted by universities or research institutes funded out of the public purse, this means that in this alternative reality, governments right around the world, regardless of their ideology, have funded scientists for decades and, for reasons unknown, only to affirm anthropogenic climate change.

This is despite the fact that the outcomes of this research are in conflict with the same governments' status-quo economic interests, energy systems and transport systems. In this alternative reality, governments around the world have conspired to fund the creation of a problem that they prove incapable of solving. Why the public research funding bodies of countries such as the US and Australia, whose governments were so opposed to action on climate change in the early to mid 2000s, would at the same time be perverting the independence of the scientific process and directing the science towards enshrining anthropogenic climate change defies a plausible explanation – except in this alternative reality.

In the real world, one could argue that it speaks volumes of the relative independence of the scientific process that important research on climate change could continue to be published in the US and Australia during the early to mid-2000s when the governments in both countries refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol and actively undermined the global policy making efforts. Additionally, in the case of the US, the federal government was shown to have significant political influence in preventing the communication of the current climate science.? In Australia, the self-styled greenhouse mafia consisting of key figures from the fossil fuel industry was shown by whistleblower Guy Pearse to be responsible for much of the Federal Government’s policy on climate change at the time.

Back to the alternative reality, where the bias surrounding climate research is ensuring that only outcomes supportive of anthropogenic climate change are produced. Given the global spread of climate research institutes, this must be happening in every country with a major scientific research program, and in just about every university with a climate research program.?In the alternative reality, there is some kind of globally orchestrated program to influence the public funders of science in every country, to in turn influence all the universities and other scientists, to ‘toe the line’ on climate change and keep developing this apparently fundamentally flawed body of science.

Pause for a moment and consider the plausibility of this scenario in the real world. Is there any group of people clever enough to be able to sustain this level of deception for three decades or more?? This would require the orchestration of a staggering number of people, funding processes and scientists right across the world.? Where are the whistleblowers?? Where are the exposés?? Where are the investigative journalists uncovering this conspiracy? Where are the Auditor-General departments (or their equivalents) monitoring such a blatant and indefensible misallocation of public funds?

The explanation, in the alternative reality, that there must be implicit vested interests behind the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change is one way of explaining away yet another striking anomaly - the demonstrated links between the fossil fuel industry and the manufacture of doubt about the validity of climate science.? The logic here seems to be if there are demonstrated vested interests on one side of the so-called debate, then there must be vested interests on the other side to explain the scientific consensus on climate change.

In 2006, BBC journalist Richard Black invited so-called sceptics to send in documentation or other firm evidence of bias, undertaking to look into any concrete claims. Expecting a deluge, he received only "one first-hand claim of bias in scientific journals, which was not backed up by documentary evidence; and three second-hand claims, two well-known and one that the scientist in question does not consider evidence of anti-sceptic feeling".

So far the sum total of published explanations of this alternative reality seems to be Michael Crichton’s fictional State of Fear.?The underlying motivation for this scale of scientific fraud is even more difficult to fathom. Most people who subscribe to this alternative reality rely on some creative conspiracy theory, ranging from neo-fascism or Communism (often in the same breath), or the creation of a new world order, to a plot by environmentalists who have a secret agenda to bring down industrial society.? ??

Yet, this bizarre alternative reality is what many in the Australian community are (implicitly) choosing to accept in escalating numbers when they dismiss the science of climate change. ?It is no real surprise that many people would not want to accept the existence of anthropogenic climate change.? The full implications of the process we've set underway are daunting. Taking meaningful action on climate change will require an economic and energy revolution in societies who appear paralysed by the status quo.?

For those with conservative political views, in an increasingly ideologically polarised debate, the prospect of action that requires some level of government intervention is fundamentally at odds with their neo-liberal views.

Yet it is time that we started to recognise this alternative reality for what it is – an elaborate, illogical and implausible work of fiction.

Nicole Hodgson lectures in sustainability at Murdoch University

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