Submission To Tasmanian Electoral Act Review

Initial submissions to the review of the Tasmanian Electoral Act close today.  The review was mainly prompted by issues raised (mostly during the state election, but also during previous state elections) concerning:

* authorisations for social media posts

* restrictions preventing naming candidates without their permission in certain kinds of material

* restrictions preventing newspaper coverage on election day

* lack of state-specific donation requirements

* issues with involvement of non-party actors in the electoral process (the call for submissions singles out unions, though in 2018 there was far more concern about gambling interests)

Proposed Anti-Discrimination Changes And "Don't Mess With Marriage"

The Tasmanian Government has introduced the Anti-Discrimination Amendment Bill 2016.  This differs little from a draft version that was circulated for public comment, but a notable change is that the proposed addition of a reasonableness clause has been dropped.

This is the second consecutive government to try to amend the fabric of free speech in the state.  The previous Labor/Green government introduced particularly extreme changes which were fortunately thrown out by the Legislative Council.  The latest proposals are nowhere near as concerning but they still raise some serious issues about the fair and clear application of the law to a range of differing beliefs.

There are two main backgrounds to the proposed changes.  The first is the complaint by Martine Delaney against the Catholic Church over the circulation of a booklet entitled Don't Mess With Marriage, a modestly worded but in places highly insulting defence of supposed church creed against same-sex marriage.  The complaint attracted high-profile attention and at times was frothed about in the opinion sections of the Australian on a more or less daily basis.  In fact, all that happened was the complaint was sent to conciliation as quite clearly required by the law, and we never found out whether the booklet actually breached the law because the complaint was dropped after the conciliation stage.

Nil-All On Anti-Protesting

Last night the new Tasmanian state Liberal government fulfilled one of its election promises by passing the Workplaces (Protection From Protestors) Bill 2014.  This bill was mainly inspired by a desire to crack down on anti-forestry protestors who obstruct lawful businesses.  We haven't seen that much of that sort of thing lately in Tasmania, but based on the new government's attempts to rip up what it can of the forestry "peace deal" passed during the last government's rule, we may be seeing more of it quite soon. Anti-forestry protests are considered a problem not just because of the obstruction to workers they create, but also because the ease of conducting illegal anti-forestry protests greatly assists activists to gain media coverage that helps in their attempts to damage the industry's brand.

If You Care About Gay Rights, Vote Below The Line In The Tas Senate

And no, I don't just mean same-sex marriage.  This goes way beyond just that.

If you care about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender rights even to the smallest degree, and are considering your vote in the Tasmanian Senate, then I have the following strong advice:

Vote below the line and direct your own preferences

If you absolutely must vote above the line, consider doing so for the Pirate Party or the Sex Party, but only if you broadly support their policies and are happy with their preference allocations (which you may or may not be, depending on your politics). I should caution here that the Sex Party direct their preferences first to the Country Alliance, who are an unknown quantity (to me) on sexual rights issues. [Update: you can see their vague and socially-conservative comments on same-sex marriage here.] The Pirate Party is only a suitable choice for an above-the-line vote if you do not mind your preferences going directly to the Greens. Many people, of course, do mind this, but quite a few readers won't.

If you want help voting below the line, see the bottom of this article.  (If you're short of time and don't need me to explain the reasons for my advice, feel free to skip to that bit right away.)

Why am I suggesting voting below the line, even though this means numbering 54 boxes instead of one?  Because a vote above the line for any party except the two mentioned above could potentially help elect anti-gay-rights extremist Peter Madden of the Family First Party - who has a very strong above-the-line ticket flow - ahead of at least one of Labor, Liberal, or the Greens.  Yes, even if you vote Labor or Green above the line in the Tasmanian Senate, it is possible for your vote to elect Peter Madden.  If you vote below the line you can put him 51, 52, 53 or 54, and still support your chosen party.  Let's forget all the silly sparring between the big three about how a vote for Labor is a vote for the Greens or whatever - the bigger problem is that a vote for any of them above the line is potentially a vote, or part of a vote, for Peter Madden.  A vote for almost anyone above the line in Tasmania is potentially a vote for him.

Nothing To See Here, Just The Future Of Free Speech In Tasmania

(Update 27 Sep: This has been resolved now, see updates at bottom of article)

Today, or at least in the next few days, the Legislative Council may determine the future of free speech in Tasmania when the Anti-Discrimination Amendment Bill 2012, passed on party lines by Labor and the Greens late last year, finally makes it to the top of the pile.

Of particular concern is the proposed amendment to Section 17.  This amendment, which ostensibly deters bullying and redresses inconsistent aspects of existing legislation, would make it an offence to ridicule, insult, offend or humiliate (as well as "intimidate", which I have no problems with) someone on the basis of their political or religious beliefs, affiliations or activities, assuming that the person doing the offending (etc) could have reasonably known their comments might offend (etc).  There is not even any caveat to protect comments of such a sort if they are public acts done in good faith for the public interest.

Liberty, Abortion and the "Salamanca Declaration"

Warning: this article may offend some readers. 
(Not much pseph in it either; a little bit in the Emily's Voice section mainly.)

It has been, for the most part, an unedifying fortnight in Tasmanian public debate, and I am not about to make it better.  I generally dislike writing about abortion-related issues at all, because there are too many people who appear to believe that being emotional on behalf of "unborn babies" trumps not only every opposing philosophical argument, but also the most basic responsibility of understanding the existing legislative situation and understanding what changes are actually being proposed.  Admittedly, understanding the existing legislative situation has been too much for not just ranting objectors, but for many doctors as well, and that is exactly one of the reasons why the Lower House has attempted to change it.

Abortion Law Reform: The Vote

Finally late last night, abortion law reform was passed 13-11 by the House of Assembly and is off to the Legislative Council.  The bill that was passed has the following key features:

LegCo Ices Forestry Peace/Surrender Deal - Updated

UPDATE:  This is an old article with a now dated title that has been updated.  For the updates scroll to the bottom.

(Admin notes: 1. Thanks to readers who voted in the jump breaks poll; poll has closed and preferences have been distributed!  2.  On or about 1 January 2013 this site will award the inaugural Ehrlich to the maker of the most wrong prediction in or relating to the year 2012 in any field that interests me.  The winner has been decided already, but nominations are welcome!  3. This article concerns (i) my views of the Tasmanian forest "peace deal" (ii) my comments about the voting behaviour that occurred during the LegCo vote on it and the (iii) possible future electoral and reform impacts.  As there are some out there who may not be interested in (i) and only wish to read (ii) and (iii), I advise them to scroll down to the point marked "It is safe to come out now".)

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In the beginning, there was the Acronym, and the Acronym was HCV.

And HCV stood for "High Conservation Value", and was a term employed to imply that certain forests were objectively so important that it would be unconscionable to log them.

In fact, HCV is a term with no objective scientific standing, since there are many different conservation-related properties that different people think are important, and valuation is a subjective process.  One person might think the forests that are most important are those that are the most scenic, another might most prefer those that shelter rare animals, and still another might prefer those that they believe best capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  Any forest might be found very valuable by someone who in some sense cares about "conservation", and of little value by someone else who meets the same description.

The term, however, formally derives from its use by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), an international forest certification agency.  At the time of writing Wikipedia has what appears to be a sound coverage of this term and if you fancy a detailed look at implementation possibilities the High Conservation Value Forest Toolkit is also worth a look.

Negotiations between environmental groups known collectively as the ENGOs (Wilderness Society, the umbrella group Environment Tasmania and the Australian Conservation Foundation) and industry bodies began in 2010, against a backdrop of the desire by the now under-administration Gunns Limited to get out of native forest logging in order to obtain a social licence for its proposed Bell Bay Pulp Mill, one of an endless series of pie in the sky development proposals for the state, most of which never eventuate.

An Open Letter to Brian Wightman

Dear Tasmanian Attorney-General Wightman,
Recently I posted about my concerns about a proposed amendment to the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Act (Anti-Discrimination Change Requires More Scrutiny).  This amendment, ostensibly designed to control bullying, appears to go much further and potentially have a major impact on various forms of political speech in Tasmania.  I've now seen the Hansard transcript of the debate in which Elise Archer (Liberal, Denison), Michael Ferguson (Liberal, Bass), Brian Wightman (Labor, Bass) and briefly Kim Booth (Green, Bass) spoke (the amendment passed on party lines), and I've posted all the relevant excerpts up on Google Docs for anyone interested. It's notable that Ms Archer not only raised the same concern I raised about the lack of a proper free-speech exemption for the new Section 17, but also quoted from a long letter by the Hobart Community Legal Service Inc raising many concerns about the proposed change.

(As there have been problems for Liberal lawyers who interact with shady characters recently, I advise that I did not have any accidental coffees with Ms Archer prior to her quoting me.  Indeed, I did not know that she had seen the piece at all!)

I'm going to make some comments about my view of your speech and what I think it says about your political views, and then at the end I'm going to ask you a question.  And I'll ask it now too:  if your amendment is passed by the Legislative Council, will this open letter still be legal?  I ask this because nothing you have said so far has reassured me that it will be.  But I think that everything I say in it consists of the sorts of things that people should be allowed to say - and that it should be totally clear that people will be allowed to say.  It isn't.

Of course, I agree that the amendment, if passed by the LegCo, does not simply ban all communication someone finds offensive, and some of the criticisms may have overestimated the impact in this regard.  A person must be offended, humiliated, intimidated, insulted or ridiculed on the basis of their political or religious views or some other attribute, and it must be the case that a "reasonable person"  "would have anticipated that the other person would be offended, humiliated, intimidated, insulted or ridiculed." 

But that's just not nearly as big an obstacle as you think it is, and I don't think you have any real idea of why.  Take this from your speech for instance:

Anti-Discrimination Change Requires More Scrutiny

(See also later article An Open Letter to Brian Wightman)

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Advance Summary:

1. A proposed amendment to Section 17 of the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Act, designed to address bullying, is flawed by appearing to carry unintended consequences for political speech and lacking appropriate, explicit and prominently-debated exemptions in this area.

2. The proposed amendment should not be passed by either House of Parliament in its present form.
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Skimming the Sunday Tasmanian, which I buy mainly for the TV guide, I came across a piece on pp. 74-5 (sigh) by Simon Breheny. (This is now online here.) The piece argued that proposed changes to the Anti-Discrimination Act will curtail free speech in Tasmania, mainly by greatly extending the grounds on which it is an offense to "offend, humiliate, intimidate, insult or ridicule" someone. 

This piece had many signs of something I should not expect to take too seriously.  It was headlined "Attacks on free speech" (the sort of headline that usually indicates simplistic and invalid tabloid melodrama.)  It was written by a law-student "lobbyist" for the Institute of Public Affairs (a self-described "free-market think-tank" with a dubious historic form guide), and worst of all it tried to curry sympathy for Andrew Bolt.