The USA version of a carbon tax.
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Great post TS.
Fallacy of Decomposition summed up perfectly.
Australia is one part of the sum of many that is the world.
Exchange Value vs. Use Value is the economic argument that no-one is talking about yet. Except for the CEO of Bluescope trying to keep jobs in Australia and Les Twentyman trying to stand up for the average battler.
But then again what would "extremists" like they know.
And Bob Brown talking about how offended he was with the placards assembled by some members of the rally addressed by Tank Abbott and BJ.
I was insulted this week by Bob Brown's legislative approval that in effect attempts to silence free speech on the net and the "sources" that bring them to daylight.
Here is why Bob Brown is an unrepresentative pontificate and a sneaky scoundrel!
You can try to stifle the truth all you want Bob, in the end you support the State more than the responsible citizens that reside within it.
Green amendments a serious setback
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/nat...-serious-setback/story-e6frgd0x-1226026347126
THE federal Coalition is a longstanding supporter of the "Right to Know" campaign.
The Fraser government introduced the first Freedom of Information laws in Australia in 1978. The Howard government referred the protection of journalists' sources (shield laws) to the Australian Law Reform Commission in 2004. The next year, following the release of the ALRC's discussion paper, I became the first federal parliamentarian to call for the introduction of commonwealth shield laws following the anomaly revealed by the Harvey and McManus case.
At last year's election the Coalition, unlike Labor, pledged to introduce comprehensive shield laws. Late in the day, as part of the price for securing the support of independent Andrew Wilkie, Labor came on board.
On Monday, the bill introduced by Wilkie and independent senator Nick Xenophon and then adopted by the government, passed in the House of Representatives. It was prematurely greeted by many as a victory for the public's right to know. However, in the form the bill ultimately took, it was a serious setback. The reason is because the government was foolish enough to adopt several amendments moved in the Senate by the Greens.
Superficially,
the Greens amendment appears to expand the scope of the legislation, but their practical effect will be to limit its operation. This results from the alteration to the definition of journalist. In its original form, the bill sought to protect information obtained from sources by a journalist "in the normal course of that person's work in the expectation that the information may be published in a news medium".
In its amended form, the protection has been expanded to cover any person who "is engaged and active in the publication of news" in "any medium".
The alteration of the focus of the definition from "the normal course of a person's work" to being "engaged and active" in the publication of news clearly takes the definition well beyond those professionally engaged in journalism.
Because news itself is not defined, these alterations make a serious difference.
They potentially include anybody, whether a journalist or not, who publishes in "any medium" what they consider to be news, including bloggers, tweeters and those who post on social media such as Facebook and YouTube. The legislation has ceased to be a law for the protection of journalists and their sources. It has become a law that protects any secret told by one person to another which the latter considers to be newsworthy and decides to publish in any form.
There are two reasons this matters.
First, the legislation has immediately made secret a vast body of information that was never secret before.
Given that the objective of the Right to Know campaign has been to extend the public's access to information, it is a bizarre example of the law of unintended consequences - or perhaps poorly thought-out lawmaking masquerading as law reform - that the bill may now keep much more information from the eyes of the public.
The second reason is the likely reaction of the courts against the bill's extended operation.
The way in which the bill originally proposed to protect journalists' sources, following the model of the NSW Evidence Act, was to give the courts a discretion to exclude evidence that would have revealed the source. Shield laws work by keeping certain facts from disclosure; that is, the identity of a source. Paradoxically, it is by concealing one type of information that such laws serve the policy of extending the right to know because journalists will have a greater capacity to publish other types of information more widely.
Justice is served by having all of the relevant facts before the court. Excluding otherwise admissible evidence is justified only if an important public value is served by doing so. Where those relevant facts are not excluded per se by the operation of the laws of evidence but on a discretionary basis, judges approach the exercise of the discretion with proper scepticism. The wider the exclusion - the wider the range of otherwise material evidence that is sought to be kept from the court - the more reluctant will judges be to exercise discretion in favour of doing so.
The opposition originally proposed to assimilate the law with respect to the protection of journalists' sources within the general law of the protection of professional confidences.
Such legislation would have served the public policy purpose of shield laws without over-reaching.
Sadly, in the form in which they have emerged from the parliamentary sausage machine, Labor's much-vaunted new shield laws are no longer focused on journalists, no longer concerned to protect their sources, and are, in their operation, likely to weaken the very policy objective they purport to serve.
George Brandis is the shadow attorney-general.
IMO Just my