On the "Christian Values Checklist"

Each Australian election, a coalition of Christian groups promote a resource called the "Christian Values Checklist" from the Australian Christian Values Institute, comprised of a list of twenty-odd "issues of concern to Christians", with the major three parties and a few right-wing minor/micro-parties evaluated. For each issue, each party gets a green tick or a red cross (or sometimes a question mark). The list has varied only slightly each time, but the contents are dominated by a relatively narrow set of issues in sexual and bioethics, along with certain privileges associated with the maintenance of a "Christian heritage".

The results mean that parties identifying as Christian typically get all green ticks, the two majors get a mix (with the Coalition faring much better than ALP) and the Greens get all red crosses except for the very last line, which is a generic environment question where every party gets the same green tick. The overall effect is far more important than the specifics. At a glance, readers are confronted visually by the idea that the more right-wing the party, the more "Christian" it is.

Each election cycle, I've posted some critical observations on this document. If they wanted to call it "our opinions on some issues we care about", that would be one thing. But they claim to be addressing issues "affect[ing] the very foundation of our society" and implicitly, the most important issues Christians care about, which is not true either empirically or (I would argue) theologically.

So, to limit myself to two brief comments:

1. What is left out? Heaps! A brief list off the top of my head: corruption, military spending and priorities, health spending and policies, education spending and policies, taxation, welfare, homelessness, Indigenous justice, DV, banking regulations, freedom of the press, economic inequality, racism, sexism, homophobia, surveillance, foreign aid, foreign policy, industrial relations, agricultural policy, water policy, negative gearing, ABC/SBS funding, disability policy and more and more and more.

On some of these, one small(ish) aspect is singled out as the "Christian" bit: that wealthy private schools get "equitable" funding, that abortion funding be removed from foreign aid, that gender-selective abortion be removed from Medicare (interesting double standard there: if you're opposed to abortion overseas, why not make the abolition of all Medicare funding the issue?), and so on.

2. What is put in? Many issues where Christians disagree in good faith. Some direct contradictions (support free speech but want default internet censorship). And much that is oversimplified and thoroughly misleading. For instance, if the Coalition get a tick for their support "legitimate orderly immigration", then this means abuse and illegality are considered legitimate.

Yet the bit that makes me laugh the hardest every time is the final line.

As though the entirety of environmental policy can be handled with a tick or a cross, and then every party gets a tick! This is such a crass way of giving the most curt of nods to the near universal support amongst Christians for creation care (NCLS says that over 80% of churchgoers affirm it as part of Christian discipleship), while defusing it as an issue by saying that we're all greenies now and the differences between preserving a habitable planet and the thinnest veneer of greenwash are irrelevant.

So, as a document revealing one strand of Christian political beliefs and priorities, it is illuminating. As a document intended to guide Christians' electoral discernment, it is not.

Intentions vs functions: when a desire not to offend is insufficient and largely irrelevant

They say that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

Intentions matter for personal ethics, less so for social ethics. When we're considering a particular belief, act or behaviour pattern in an individual, then the conscious intentions held by the individual play a significant (though not exhaustive) role in the ethical evaluation of the belief, act or behaviour. If my six year old knocks her brother to the ground, the question of whether she accidentally struck him in the heat of a game or deliberately struck him in anger with a desire to hurt him is an important one.

But in the sphere of social ethics, where we are evaluating policies, cultural dynamics or systemic realities, then the beliefs, motives and intentions of particular agents fade into the distant background. Whether or not a policy was well-intentioned is largely irrelevant in comparison to how that policy actually functions. A slavery that the slavers conceive of as a form of enlightened benevolence is still slavery, and if the realities on the ground are no different, then it is no better or worse (for instance) than a slavery undertaken on the basis of explicit doctrines of racial subjugation (even if the two examples may lead to somewhat different strategies by emancipationists).

This distinction is crucial when it comes to social and political critique. When a policy or system is attacked, it will not do simply to point to the good nature of the policymakers, or the lack of enmity on the part of those in a privileged position. Such considerations may be important if the personal virtue of the individuals concerned is under discussion, but not for the policy, cultural dynamic or system.

President Obama may harbour no personal conscious anti-Muslim sentiment, but if the foreign policy of his administration includes support for dictators in Muslim-majority nations, the invasion of Muslim-majority nations, the extra-judicial killing of predominantly Muslims, the deliberate stoking of sectarian tensions to provoke intra-Muslim violence, and the upholding of an apartheid regime that oppresses mainly Muslims (for instance), then it may still be accurate to describe US foreign policy as significantly anti-Muslim in effect.

Tony Abbott may have a genuine concern for the plight of Australia's first peoples, but if his administration's policies included opposition to a treaty, the forced clearance of remote communities, the approval of mining licenses allowing for the destruction of sacred sites and degradation of indigenous land, the cutting of services to indigenous communities and the upholding of a colonialist narrative, then it may be still be accurate to describe the Abbott years as significantly anti-Aboriginal in effect. (And PM Turnbull may shed real tears as he speaks of the importance of upholding indigenous culture...)

The CEO of BP may have a genuine desire to see an orderly transition to a lower carbon economy in order to limit climate change in the most sensible low-cost way possible...

George Pell may have genuine compassion for the victims and survivors of institutional child abuse...
The CEO of Woolies may really want to see an end to problem gambling...

Premier Baird may lose sleep over the rates of domestic violence...

In short, the critique of bad policy needn't imply any criminal or otherwise deficient intent on the part of its crafters, nor is the upholding of their benevolence either necessary or particularly relevant in the evaluation of its effects. And this has implications not just for policymakers, but for all of us as we inhabit cultural spaces and social systems.

I may have strong commitment to fight racism, but if I am amongst the beneficiaries of a history of colonialism and white supremacy, I am not thereby immune from the need to check my privilege or at liberty to innocently assume race is irrelevant in my social interactions (nor do I get to put on blackface and claim that it's all good fun).

I may have a firm belief in the universality of human dignity and equality before God and an unswerving desire to honour women, but if I live in a society shot through with ongoing patriarchal logic, in which women are not in fact treated equally in all kinds of ways, then I do not get a free pass to (for instance) select an all-male discussion panel and hide behind a claim of meritocracy.

Wealthy capitalist philanthropists may have every good motive in wanting to alleviate poverty, but if their wealth accumulation was through a system that reduces labour and ecology to tradable value through the absolutising of instrumental reason and sacrifices lives and a liveable planet in pursuit of endless growth, then the people they may manage to save from capitalism's own ills do not thereby justify it.

In each case, the innocence of heart or otherwise of the agents is not what matters. What matters is the function of the system, policy or cultural norm in the lives of those affected by it. That is rarely straightforward. In each of the cases above, there are also positive functions. And so it is often a difficult responsibility to weigh the complex contributions of this or that cultural element, political agenda or economic model.

Indeed, part of the attraction of doing social or political evaluation through intentions is that we are all very familiar with the task of determining whether we believe an individual is trustworthy, a decent bloke/lady, a good egg, and so on. This is the attraction of working to put "good people in charge" and of all personality politics in which we obsess over the personal lives of elected representatives, and thus in which politicians are (generally) carefully stage managed to avoid perceived gaffes. But the temptation of such shortcuts must be resisted.

The good intentions behind bad policy make for might impressive pavement, but it's the destination that matters.

Stop the boats! Torture and the agony of being lectured

"Stop the boats!"

And we have. Apparently.

Except what we have done is stop (most of) the boats from arriving. Stopped the public from hearing about them. Stopped the xenophobes from having to share our boundless plains with tiny numbers of uninvited people in desperate need.

We have not stopped people getting onto boats, as there are still tens of thousands in our regions who do so, driven largely by genuine and well-grounded fear of life and limb, according to basically every official attempt to quantify such matters. We have probably not stopped people drowning at sea, even if there are now fewer who drown in sight of Australian land. We have not stopped dangerous and possibly illegal things happening on water, we just no longer hear about them from the minister who is meant to be accountable to us for the actions taken in our name. And we have certainly not stopped xenophobia by flattering it with policies designed to woo its votes.

We have facilitated the abuse - physical, sexual, emotional - of thousands, including more than a thousand children, and destroyed the mental and physical health of many. Two have died unnecessarily, one violently, yet no charges have been laid more than twelve months after his murder, witnessed by many (some of whom were then allegedly flogged into recanting their testimony). We have seen abused children used as hostages in parliamentary negotiations. We have violently ended peaceful protests. We have thrown billions at a false solution during a "budget emergency", the annual cost per asylum seeker detained offshore being greater than the PM's (very generous) salary. We have corrupted the governments of multiple poorer neighbours, through leveraging our foreign aid to secure policy outcomes amenable to our purposes, forcing them into impossible Kafkaesque situations so that we might technically have clean hands - and so journalists and human rights commissions can be kept away. We have transgressed the sovereign territory of our neighbour with military vessels on a string of occasions. We have flagrantly breached multiple critical international treaties and undermined international trust and the rule of law. We have dragged Australia's reputation through the mud, behaving in ways whose only parallels are found in dictatorships and repressive regimes.

And yet, for a majority of Australians, these costs are worth it. Because we've stopped the boats. A system of lies, cruelty, abuse, fear and manipulation has been constructed with bipartisan support (at least for the basic policy structure), in order to achieve a goal questionable in value, efficacy and morality. Yet the popularity of the idea that we have thereby reduced deaths at sea makes it all justified.

Let me be clear: fewer deaths at sea is a great thing, all else being equal. But the bottom line is that we simply don't know if our draconian policies have saved a single life. Our government claims to have saved thousands of lives, claims that it's working, but won't show its working.

Let's for a moment assume they are telling the truth. Let's assume that thousands of would-be economic migrants without a genuine fear of death or persecution have been dissuaded from risking perilous journeys on leaky boats run by shonky operators with little regard for their passengers and consequently thousands of those who would otherwise have ended up floating in the Indian Ocean are still safely in their crowded Jakartan apartments without legal protection (or safely incarcerated in Indonesian detention camps). Even then, Tony Abbott's dismissal of the UN report on Australian torture would be irrelevant and misleading.

The UN Convention Against Torture does not rule out torture used for bad ends, or torture used by bad people, or torture implemented through particularly cruel mechanisms. It rules out torture. Unconditionally and universally. There are no circumstances under which torture is appropriate. You can fantasise all day about ticking bombs and "noble" uses to save a city from a WMD; such instances would still be torture, and still be banned. You can have inflicted torturous conditions on innocent third parties in order to deter thousands of potential drowning victims from risking a voyage and hence have saved many more lives than you tortured, and still have breached your unconditional, universal commitment never to commit torture. Article 2.2 states: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

So pointing out, as I have done many times, that stopping the boats has not kept desperate people out of serious danger, only pushed them elsewhere, at one level, misses the point.

Affirming that seeking asylum is a human right and so genuine refugees who happen to arrive on a leaky boat are thus protected by international law from being prosecuted for any irregularity in their mode of immigration, which means that the victims of our torture have been convicted of no crime also misses the point (though I've used this one too).

Even explaining that punishing innocent third parties to deter others from a course of (legally protected) activity is a form of deep moral cowardice still doesn't quite nail it.

It is simply wrong - deeply, wickedly, heinously wrong - to torture people. It is wrong to torture people when you think you are serving a good cause. It is wrong to torture people if you are indeed actually serving a good cause. It is wrong to torture innocent people. It is wrong to torture people who are guilty of every crime in the book. It is wrong to torture as a deterrent to others. It is wrong to torture in secret where deterrence of third parties can never enter into it.

The recent UN report has confirmed in perhaps the most official way possible what has been obvious for some time. The conditions under which we have been (and still are) holding thousands of people are horrendous. The fact that we are holding them indefinitely is brutal and unnecessary. Using mandatory indefinite detention under cruel and abusive conditions as a deterrent to others denies natural justice. Our capacity, even desire, to "legally" commit refoulement stands against every lesson learned about displaced and persecuted peoples through the horrors of genocide and world war. In short: we have become torturers.

So Mr Abbott, what is worse than being lectured to about torturing people?

Torturing people.

Three missing numbers: climate in the 2013 Australian federal election

"These are the three crucial numbers missing from the climate debate in Australia. Neither major party is likely to mention them. These three bipartisan agreements are fundamentally incompatible with the demands of either justice or prudence, let alone the love for neighbour at the heart of Christian ethics, a tradition from which both Rudd and Abbott claim to draw inspiration."

The ABC Religion and Ethics site has published a piece I wrote for CPX outlining some of the missing numbers in this federal election. Between writing the piece and its being posted, Abbott indicated he is not, after all, committed to even the paltry 0.5% emissions reduction target that he had previously (repeatedly) promised. Also, if I'd wanted to pick five, rather than three, numbers, I would have included these two as well.

• One twelfth: the share of global carbon reserves Australia controls.

• Eighty billion: the number of dollars in the Australian Future Fund, which ought to divest from fossil fuels, given that it is a future fund after all.

Happy Amnesia Day

Language NSFW. Colonialist guilt NSFL.

Australian carbon policy makes coal plants more profitable

"Australia's highest-emitting brown coal electricity generators are between $400 million and $1 billion better off than they would have been if there were no carbon tax, new modelling shows."

- Lenore Taylor and David Wroe, Carbon tax [price] leaves big polluters better off, SMH, 6th September 2012.

Some days, I think Australia's climate policy is a joke: a sick joke to be aiming for a 5% reduction from 2000 levels by 2020 when the UK has legislated targets for a 50% reduction from 1990 levels by 2027, and a sick joke to allow a majority of that target to come from international offsets, and a sick joke to plan on doubling Australian coal exports over the next decade when we are already the largest coal exporter in the world (and our coal exports don't count towards our targets). Australians have the highest per capita carbon footprint in the OECD (even ignoring our coal exports) and yet our targets for emissions reductions are some of the weakest.

This is indeed a major Gillard failure, taking baby steps when we need to be running. It is an even bigger failure of Australian culture, since we collectively choose (and vote for) short term personal acquisitiveness (a.k.a. greed) over justice and prudence (a.k.a. doing our fair share of working for a habitable planet).

Fortunately, the good news of Jesus has a lot to say to those who steal from their neighbours and can't see very far.

"There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead"

It is refreshing to find a journalist who has done a little bit of homework prior to an interview and is ready to question spin, half-truths, strategic inexactitudes and "misstatements" from political leaders.

Rather than contribute another dissection of this particular interview, instead I thought I'd gather a few thoughts on the Australian carbon price and its place in contemporary Australian politics.

As Leader of the Opposition Tony Abbott is so fond of reminding us (especially when facing an interviewer turning the screws on his own truthfulness), Australian PM Julia Gillard did indeed say during the 2010 election campaign, "there will be no carbon tax under the government I lead". Yet one of the signature pieces of legislation from this minority government has been the introduction a price on carbon coupled with income tax reform.

A straightforward broken promise? Yes and no.

It is axiomatic that a minority government will need to compromise its electoral platform in order to get the support of other parties or independents required to govern. If a party could gain the support of enough MPs without altering its policies, then the extra MPs would just join the party. It is abundantly clear in this case that the price on carbon was the top item on the Greens agenda (and also on the radar of the independents) and so compromise was necessary. Once the election results were known, that such legislation would be the price of Greens support (needed by either party to govern) was entirely predictable.

As far as I can see, there were really only four other alternatives: (a) for the Greens to have dropped this demand, which was considerably more core for them than a promise made once on the campaign trail (did Gillard make this claim more than once? If so, I am not aware of it), (b) for the Greens to have negotiated an agreement with the Coalition, which would have faced the same sticking point (along with likely even more disagreements on other policies), (c) for the two parties who were against a carbon price (Labor and the Coalition) to have made this the sine qua non of their respective positions and so come to a power-sharing agreement between them in order to prevent the Greens from introducing such an idea, or (d) for no agreements to be reached and a new election called.

As I've said before, too much is usually made of campaign promises. Governments exist to execute wise political authority, not merely to implement the majority will.

While it is a minor point, it's worth noting that the carbon price is not a tax. The current system is based on carbon credits that are sold to the five hundred or so largest polluting companies in a market mechanism that spends the first few years with a fixed price and unlimited credits in order to give business certainty and then shifts to a fixed number of credits (declining each year) and a moving price (with a floor and ceiling imposed). It may well have been better as a direct tax at the point of extraction with proceeds distributed equally to all Australian citizens (tax and dividend), but that is not the system that was chosen. Now it is quite arguable that most Australians do not understand the difference, but that is because there has been such an effective effort by the Opposition to muddy the waters and no effort on the part of the government to explain it. Public ignorance is assumed and reinforced by both sides.

More importantly, the current legislation is way too unambitious, with tiny targets that put Australia towards the back of industrial counties in its level of ambition and which, if adopted by all advanced economies, would most likely see us sail past two, three and four degrees. Furthermore, current legislation does not including our massive coal exports, which are already the largest in the world and are planned to double in the next decade (blowing any domestic reductions out of the water), nor the embodied carbon in imported goods, nor international aviation or shipping. It provides extremely generous free credits to many industries to soften the initial burden. And it includes international offsets, so that we can continue to emit locally while paying someone else to make changes elsewhere that Treasury does not actually expect domestic emissions to decline very much, if at all.

Yet perhaps the greatest failure by the government regarding this legislation has been the failure to make use of its introduction to keep raising climate literacy, explaining the basics of climate science (which are still widely misunderstood), why serious action of carbon emissions are morally justified (getting beyond short-term cost-benefit analyses) and necessary at every level (personal, local, national, international), why Australia must do its bit (which is considerably more than most other nations, not less) and why this battle is worth fighting, even if it looks like we're currently losing.

So be assured that I am no particular fan of the present legislation or government, but repeating Gillard's broken promise - while it may be a satisfying way of expressing anger at a government that has had its fair share of controversies while being surprisingly effective at getting more than an average amount of legislative work done - is doubly misguided.

Obama is a moderate Republican, and other stories

Obama and the polarisation of US politics: According to Dave Roberts, the left's gone left but the right's gone nuts. US politics has become more polarised, but not equally so. By the standards of just a decade or two ago, Obama truly is a moderate Republican. As one illustration of Obama's centre-right approach, consider the fact that his recent attacks on Romney over rapacious capitalism are quite hypocritical from a President who has done very little other than to encourage such behaviour. Some may be interested in a comparison of Obama vs. Romney on environmental policy. Of course, Romney and Obama are not the only candidates.

Who drinks the most soft drink? The answer may surprise you. OK, maybe not.

Assessing Australian climate action: David Spratt offers a sober assessment of our situation. This is the first in a series: part two and three. I have a lot of sympathy for most of his account.

What's in a name? We should stop calling them "mobile phones" and start calling them "trackers", according to this piece. The little electronic devices in our pockets reveal much about our behaviour to all kind of people you probably didn't realise.

Food in Australia: The draft National Food Plan, set up at the urging of corporate interests and tailored to their perspective assumes business as usual is a smart idea for Australia's food production. Instead, the goal is not simply more food at whatever cost.

The End Game: Raoul Pal offers some tips for traders wishing to maximise their profits during these last few months before catastrophic global economic collapse. Cheery stuff: make sure you get yours before we all what's coming to us. That kind of thing.

A history of democracy: Noam Chomsky takes us on a whirlwind tour from the signing of Magna Carta through the US Constitution, Civil War and into drones, rendition of terror suspects and climate change. Compulsory reading for US exceptionalists.

Australian media: what a week

This week has been a momentous one in Australian news media. The two largest print media corporations (Murdoch's News Ltd and Fairfax) have both announced major restructuring leading to more than 3,000 job losses. Furthermore, the world's richest woman and Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart has announced her intention to take a controlling share of the beleaguered Fairfax. Rinehart has made it clear that her goal is not profit, nor public service but influence, and she intends to exert editorial control, refusing to sign the Fairfax Media Charter of editorial independence. The implications of these changes are wide ranging and yet the precise shape remains uncertain. Rinehart is a noted climate dissenter and fierce opponent of the government's superprofits mining tax. I am no particular fan of Fairfax media, but am not feeling very confident that it will improve under Rinehart. Indeed, if I look at the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) pieces I've linked to over the last few years, I wonder how many would have made the cut under Rinehart's hand. Perhaps we may have little difficulty anticipating more voices like Andrew Bolt and his serial disinformation. It will be interesting to see whether those like Elizabeth Farrelly or Ross Gittins remain.

The week's events have only made me feel more favourably towards The Conversation (which I introduced back here), a not for profit news media site set up by CSIRO and five universities (with a few other corporate partners) that runs ad-free, is editorially independent and with nearly all contributions by accredited experts in the subject who have to declare all potential conflicts of interest next to their article. And just today I've realised that they also publish all their material under a Creative Commons license, meaning it can be republished for free (under certain very non-onerous conditions).

Here are some perspectives on these developments that appeared this week at The Conversation:

Malcolm Fraser: Does it matter who owns our papers? Yes it does.
Malcolm Fraser was Australian Prime Minister between 1975 and 1983 for the more conservative of Australia's two main parties.

Stephan Lewandowsky: Rinehart’s tilt at power is bad news for public debate.

David McKnight: Gina Rinehart and Rupert Murdoch: a study of power in the media.

Andrew Jaspar: Fairfax or Gina-fax? Let’s have the debate before it’s over and Media earthquake: panic, disinformation, and competing visions at Fairfax and News.

UPDATE: GetUp are running a simple survey on public attitudes towards Fairfax, which will take less than 60 seconds.

Assorted opinions

The Conversation: Celebrating 150 years of captivity. I am increasingly uneasy about the ambiguities involved in most zoos. This piece articulates a number of them succinctly.

NY Mag: Sugar Daddies. Sugar Daddies are "private donors or their privately held companies writing checks totaling $1 million or more (sometimes much more) in this [US] election cycle." Some profiles on those spending most to influence the 2012 US presidential election.

Biologos: Thinking aloud together (part 2, part 3). Scot McKnight ponders how to get scientists and pastors talking about the implications of evolutionary biology and human origins.

Rachel Held Evans: 15 reasons I left church. Though many are quite US-centric, these are worth pondering. I'm sure I could add a few more.

Stephen King: Tax me, for F@%&’s Sake!. Multi-millionaire horror writer joins Warren Buffet and numerous other super-rich figures in calling for much higher taxes on themselves. King brings his own (very profitable but not always highbrow) blend of narrative shock and awe to the argument.

ABC: Why we hate Gillard so much. "[T]here are three pertinent distinctions between this government and the Howard Government: it is a Labor Government, it is a minority government, and the current prime minister is a woman."

Brad reflects on economies of deception - "When the pursuit of profit becomes a self-justifying end, truth becomes a readily dispensable commodity, because truth will not maximize profit" - and reviews the important book Merchants of Doubt.

Bob Carr's maiden speech

Bob Carr, the newly sworn in Australian Foreign Minister, used his maiden speech in the Senate to raise an issue close to his heart. What was it?

I say, hurray for a scientifically literate politician, and for one who is not afraid to show it out of fear that it might lose him votes. And hurray for a politician who knows that climate change has a twin that may well be just as evil.

The sin that dare not speak its name

Guest post by anonymous
I have asked Byron for permission to remain anonymous since I fear the backlash (personal and official) that may occur if I put my name to this post.

There is a grave sin openly celebrated in our nation (perhaps especially in Sydney) that makes me feel queasy. At certain times of year - and this is one of them - its advocates feel they can come out of the closet and proudly flaunt their unfortunate condition. Criticism is difficult to raise in polite company, especially amongst educated people. To speak out is considered ignorant at best, hate-filled at worst. Yet the Bible is clear and so we must be too. It would be cruel to remain silent.

This perversion is aggressively defended by highly organised and well-funded lobby groups. Some political parties treat it as a normal and desirable pattern of life, and most teach it is necessary to at least tolerate it. I know that every political party has strengths and weaknesses and that no party is perfect, but I still struggle to understand how a Christian can in good conscience vote for any party that openly and brazenly supports a sin so roundly and straightforwardly condemned in the Bible.

Advocates want to teach our children to embrace it and indeed in many schools it is put forward as perfectly natural, even necessary for a well-functioning society. I personally know of parents who have had the courage to question the ideology being taught in our classrooms and who, as a result, have subsequently been slandered and ostracised - or perhaps worse, condescendingly patronised as backwards and ignorant.

From my study of history, I realise that this abomination has been tolerated by the elite of some societies, but I am not aware of any civilisation that has embraced it so wholeheartedly as ours.

It was not so long ago that the church's teaching of such things carried more weight and a man would have been ashamed to admit such desires in public. Parents would have warned their children against it with serious and hushed voices. The tables are now turned and it is those of us who still hold to the conservative position embraced by the church for centuries who are shunned. I was sickened to discover that is possible to buy children's books that celebrate what ought to be anathema.

And worst of all, many churches now overlook members who ought to be disciplined - preferring perhaps to avoid controversy - or even teach inclusion of this most egregious wrong, claiming that the cultural conditions of the biblical authors blinkered their vision, that they had not seen the great good that could result from accepting such desires as part of God's blessing upon humanity.

Don't get me wrong; there is such a thing as natural and healthy desire. But not every desire is healthy. Some are simply corruptions in which we mistake our true needs for manufactured false wants. Whether cursed with corrupt genes or seduced by an iniquitous lifestyle I cannot say, but those ensnared in wickedness are not to be despised. They are to be pitied and helped, not attacked. We must try, as the saying goes, to love the sinner while hating the sin. Let us remember that none of us are without fault. I am sure they make all kinds of positive contributions to society in other ways. And they are not beyond repentance. With the help of God's Spirit, they can begin afresh and discover healing.

What am I talking about? What is the sin that dare not speak its name? I am referring, of course, to the love of money, which is a root of all kinds of evil. Tolerance is cruelty. Repentance is possible. Healing is promised.

When history was made and other stories

The Economist: When history of made, a graph in which the historical novelty of the last six decades or so is made breathtakingly clear. H/T Michael Tobis, who offers his own reflections upon it.

SMH: Bob Brown, the most ______ man in Australia. Fill in your own adjective to complete the title of an interesting profile of a fascinating man.

Naomi Klein: Climate change, capitalism and the transformation of cultural values. Klein suggests that perhaps the insistence of the deniers that climate change implies the necessity of a left-wing cultural transformation ought to be taken with more seriousness.

Slavoj Žižek: Occupy First. Demands come later. Žižek answers the critics of the movement who claim it is a gathering of un-American violent dreamers. Speaking of Occupy (which surely deserves its own post or three at some stage), I found this summary (from a NZ perspective) useful, these images illuminating of protesters' motives and this warning (from an American in London) quite salient.

ABC: Anti-consumerism is the new democracy.

John Dickson: Art of persuasion not so simple. Dickson turns to Aristotle to gain some basic insights into how to be convincing: logos, pathos and, crucially, ethos.

Orion: The Consolations of Extinction. A reflection on how deep time affects our perception of the ongoing sixth extinction event and of our own mortality as a species.

Say yes to putting a price on carbon

Despite the drawbacks of the proposed Australian legislation to put a modest price on carbon pollution, if you support the idea of doing so, then you might like to add your voice to this campaign.

Refugees and responsibility: boat people are not going away

Like many other topics, that of refugees, asylum seekers, stateless persons, internally displaced persons - in short, all those who are gathered together by the UNHCR under the phrase "persons of concern" - is a complex one. Yet political discourse (and blogging, for that matter) is all too often impatient with complexity, preferring communicative modes reliant upon slogans and conflict.

Having followed a few recent online discussions concerning Australian immigration policy, I don't think I'll surprise anyone by suggesting that such exchanges frequently generate more heat than light. In lieu of having neither time nor expertise to put together a post (or series of posts) that could begin to do justice to the topic, I thought instead I'd start gathering some links to significant contributions which may then be of benefit to others in the ongoing debates about this topic. I'm interested in both primary sources with relevant data and ethical/political analyses that attempt to understand and respond to it.

Here are a few to get started. This is not at all intended to be comprehensive, and so please add more in the comments.

• United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). This is the peak international body that has been doing everything from compiling data, to coordinating governmental responses, to working on the ground in partnership with NGOs. UK is here.
• UNHCR Global Trends 2010 report. One of many such reports. Finding specific statistics can take a little patience, but these reports have a wealth of information.
• Australian Parliamentary Library background note on boat arrivals in Australia since 1976, which introduces many of the key terms and history behind present debates. Ought to be required reading for Australians participating in such discussions, though needs to be updated to include recent events, such the High Court decision last week.
• Julian Burnside's reflection on the High Court decision
• A statistical analysis of push vs pull factors in Australian asylum seeker numbers. Again, it would be useful to have this extended to include the last couple of years.
• And some more links can be found on previous posts here and here.

Given my expectation that coming decades are likely to be quite bumpy ecologically (and so geopolitically), debates about immigration policy are set to continue for some time. "Boat people" won't be going away anytime soon.

With friends like these...

The great big tax on everything* based on absolute crap science* that has put the Greens in charge of government policy* and which will result in economic armageddon* has been given the thumbs up by the most powerful conservative leader in the world. Will David still get his Christmas card from Tony this year?
*These are all direct quotes from the opposition leader.

However, the endorsement also highlights the weakness of the plan. The UK is aiming at a 50% reduction from 1990 levels by 2025 (and has already managed a 28% reduction between 1990 and 2009, though with this important proviso). Gillard (and Abbott, officially) are aiming at 5% below 2000 levels by 2020. As I have said before, I think there are serious problems with the proposed Clean Energy Scheme. Criticising the opposition ought not be confused with uncritical endorsement of the government.

It is of course quite possible to pay too much attention to governments, and to find in their failures a salve for our own consciences or in their dramas a welcome distraction from our own inaction. But the reverse is also possible.

Collective responsibility

"No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible."

- Voltaire (attributed).

"Australia produces less than 1.5 per cent of the world's carbon emissions but will pay the world's biggest carbon tax."

- Claim of recent Australian ad campaign
funded by the Australian Trade and Industry Alliance.

Is Australia but a bit player in the carbon game? Are our emissions irrelevant on the world stage? I intend to write more in the coming days about this line of thinking. So far I have identified twelve possible faults with the statistical or ethical assumptions behind it. So, for a little exercise over the weekend, I'd love to hear how readers respond to the ATI ads (see below) and this claim about Australia's role in particular.

I am mainly interested in the first half of the claim (with its implication that Australian emissions are too small to be worth causing any economic pain). The second half of the quote ("the world's biggest carbon tax") is refuted here without even mentioning the fact that Sweden has had a carbon price since 1991 that is now around 150 AUD per tonne (the price in the proposed Clean Energy Plan starts at 23 AUD per tonne).

The price of carbon

"The good news is that the modest carbon price announced yesterday will neither impoverish Australians nor bankrupt our economy. The bad news is that the modest carbon price announced yesterday won’t save the planet either."

- The Australia Institute, Has the PM "knocked the brick wall down"?

The minority Labor government in Australia has announced the details of a long-awaited scheme to put a price on carbon. The basic outline is quite helpfully explained in the animation above, and summarised in greater detail here.
I speak of a carbon price, because it is not a tax, but an emissions trading scheme with a fixed price for three years. This is not simply a matter of playing with words, as explained here.

The scheme is modest in ambition, with only a 5% reduction in emissions by 2020,* despite Australians having the highest per capita emissions of all advanced economies and the 10th largest aggregate emissions overall (it would be interesting to see figures on aggregate per capita emissions, but I haven't been able to find them anywhere). However, unlike Kevin Rudd's defeated ETS, this target is not locked in, but can be raised by an independent Climate Commission anytime from 2015 when the carbon price shifts from being directly set by the government to being dependent upon the auction of a set number of emissions permits. Furthermore, the target for 2050 has been raised from 60% to 80%.
*From a 2000 baseline, which Australia continues to use, despite a global agreement to use 1990 as the benchmark. Therefore, Australian targets cannot be directly compared to those of most other countries. The later baseline makes them less ambitious than a similar figure from a 1990 baseline.

The price for tradable permits will start at a set price of $23 per tonne, rising slightly until 2015, when the number of permits will be capped and the price determined by the market. Only the largest five hundred or so companies will be involved, who together emit the vast majority of Australian emissions. Agriculture and petrol are excluded from the scheme. The former because monitoring of agricultural emissions are too complex; the latter because petrol prices are too politically sensitive (despite this weakening the social, economic and ecological benefits of the scheme). Most households will receive compensation in the form of tax rebates and a raising of the minimum tax threshold will simplify matters for the tax office and for about a million Australians who will no longer need to lodge a return. Only the wealthiest households will be worse off (or rather, only the most carbon-intensive wealthy households).

Many experts see the scheme as representing a decent first step of what was politically possible with a few regrettable compromises. This piece gets into more of the details than I have time or inclination to do at the moment.

A few brief thoughts: with the vast majority of Australian households projected to be better off and the administrative burden falling on about five hundred major companies, the threat of bureaucratic and economic armageddon waved around by Tony Abbott will hopefully be quickly rejected.

Yet with all the focus (by both sides of politics) on what it will mean for the average household budget, most people don't seem to understand that the point of the system is encourage behavioural change. If you don't want to pay more for your energy bills, then switch to renewable power and implement some basic energy efficiency and conservation measures. If you don't want to pay more for your food, then switch to eating local and organic produce. If you don't want your small business to pay more for its inputs, then consider lower-carbon alternatives for your business model. Whether the price will remain too low to encourage these changes directly through the hip pocket remains to be seen. It may be that the primary benefit of the system in the short term will be to provide some needed stability to the renewables market.

From a political perspective, the claim that the Greens are not interested in environmental issues ought to be put decisively to rest, given the political costs Gillard has borne over the last few months during negotiations. What these demonstrate is that without the Greens pushing her, she would not be here of her own free will. This was the price the Greens and independents demanded of Gillard after the hung parliament, and it is clear that this is therefore at the heart of what the Greens hoped to achieve with their new-found political influence. Whether they were right to block Rudd's proposed scheme back in 2009 (which was superior in a couple of ways to the current proposal, though clearly inferior in many others) is a more difficult question. Hindsight offers a perspective of the enormous fallout of that earlier decision (change of leadership in both parties, an early election, a protracted chance for the opposition to pursue large swings in popular support for a carbon price), little of which was obvious at the time.

The Greens' shift from principled opposition to pragmatic support of a least worst viable option represents a difficult yet crucial debate. The proposed scheme may represent the best that was actually available, that is, politically palatable, under current conditions (and so requiring plenty of sweeteners for some of the worst polluters), yet it is important to admit and repeat that it falls far short of what is necessary to avoid some very bad outcomes. Under such circumstances, is a small step better than nothing? Does this represent the strategic establishment of a system that can be scaled up as the political will builds over time? Or can much ado about very little ultimately prove a distraction from or substitute for more radical change, locking in assumptions about the viability of the status quo without addressing the root causes of the problem in our consumerist idolatry and myopic pursuit of further economic growth?

UPDATE: Ethos have kindly published a version of this post on their site, and there has been further discussion over there.

On broken (political) promises

Much has been made in the media here and in Australia about broken election promises. Nick Clegg promised (indeed, publicly signed a pledge) to not raise tuition fees. Then voted to raise tuition fees. Julia Gillard promised there would be no carbon tax, then announced plans to introduce a system which includes an initially fixed price on carbon.

Are these simply more examples of lying politicians, out to pursue short term political advantage by whatever means? Possibly, but the outrage whipped up by certain sections of the media in each case is, in my opinion, somewhat misguided.

In both cases, we are talking about elections that failed to deliver a clear majority government, thus requiring negotiations between parties to deliver a stable result. There is nothing especially wrong with hung parliaments, minority rule or coalitions. Yet under such conditions, it entirely possible that pre-election promises will have to be broken or modified in order to reach a new agreement.

Consider the UK. We are governed by a coalition between a party who promised more nuclear power and to support the Trident nuclear programme and a second party that promised to end Trident and to build no new nuclear stations. How is it possible for such a coalition to not break promises?

I think there is actually too much emphasis on campaign promises (in the media and by politicians). Representative democratic government is not, despite all the rhetoric, about implementing the will of the majority. It is system whereby elected representatives are entrusted with the authority to make wise judgements on our behalf. A government that makes an unpopular decision is not thereby undemocratic since representative democracy is not about how decisions are made but how representatives are elected.

It is possible that many people do not like this and would prefer a direct democracy. While this has many advantages, especially in polities of a smaller scale, under our present conditions, I'm not sure I trust my fellow citizens enough (or rather the media that all too often guides us by the nose down paths of its own liking - or should I say, of Rupert's liking). In any case, it is not the system we have.

We consent to certain decision-makers, not to certain decisions. How then are we to discern who is to lead us if we are not simply looking for someone who promises to do things we like? All kinds of ways. We examine their history, their qualifications, their character, their party values, their voting record, their ability to demonstrate critical thinking in their public and personal communications, our impression of them from meeting them personally and engaging them in conversation, their ability to persuade, their ability to bring people with them, their vision for the future - and so on. While pre-election promises are clearly part of what we base our electoral judgements upon, they are a relatively small part of the package and must always be taken with a grain of salt in a world where politics is the art of the possible.

The cost of carbon

Although I'm not present, I have been keeping an eye on the Australian debate about carbon pricing. This is an interesting recent poll. The highlights include:

• 58% of Australians think the best way to reduce emissions is to tax big polluters. Only 17% think paying polluters (Tony Abbott’s plan) is better.
• 66% of Australians support a price on carbon that tax the biggest polluting industries, returning all revenue to compensate households and businesses, and provide investment in climate programs such as renewable energy. Only 23% oppose.
• 84% of Australians would like to see fossil fuel subsidies redirected to renewable energy research and development. A mere 9% think they are an worth retaining.

If you agree with the majority in each case, then please join with thousands of others on 5th June in making your voice heard during this critical period of debate.

SYDNEY: Prince Alfred Park, 11 am
MELBOURNE: Outside the State Library, 11 am
ADELAIDE: Victoria Square, 11 am
BRISBANE: Riverstage, 1pm
PERTH: Perth Cultural centre - Wetlands stage, 11am
HOBART: Franklin Square, 11am
CANBERRA: Regatta Point (near the bridge), 1.30pm

More information about the family-friendly and upbeat rallies can be found here (or follow links on the page for non-Sydney residents).