australia

Quo vadis, Conservatism?

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

The most abused word in our language may be ‘conservative’.  When applied to the political attitudes of a person or party, what does it mean?  Is it of any use here in Australia now?  Do we have a conservative political party?

The Shorter OED has: opposed to change and holding traditional values… (in politics) favouring free enterprise and private ownership.  The Macquarie has: disposed to preserve existing conditions…cautious or moderate…traditional in style or manner….

These categories are very wide, and obviously open to questions of degree.  They practically invite the application of bromides like ‘broad church’ – until the body is so wide that it is no longer a church. 

Most labels are suspect – this one is even more so.  Some people are optimistic about the work of government.  Others are pessimistic.  Some crave change.  Others fear it.  There may be deep emotional values underlying differing world views.  The place of ‘science’ in all this is wobbly.  The temptation of deception is strong.  And the poseur might have a field day.  Especially one who craves the ear of the ‘people’.

We can see the room for slippage in the notion of ‘conservative’ from the definition in The Oxford Definition of Philosophy.

Conservatism.  Originally in Burke an ideology of caution in departing from the historical roots of a society, or changing its inherited traditions and institutions.  In this ‘organic’ form, it includes allegiance to tradition, community, hierarchies of rank, benevolent paternalism, and a properly subservient underclass.  By contrast, conservatism can be taken to imply a laissez-faire ideology of untrammelled individualism that puts the emphasis on personal responsibility, free markets, law and order, and a minimal role for government, with neither community, nor tradition, nor benevolence entering more than marginally.  The two strands are not easy to reconcile, either in theory or in practice.

Those remarks are English and dated now.  No sane person here would refer to ‘a properly subservient underclass’.  But no political party in the Welfare State can reject ‘benevolent paternalism’.  That would be political suicide. 

We inherited the Welfare State from the English.  The constant political issue is that we demand to retain the benefits, but we turn against those who want us to pay for them.  The result is that our government is broke, because its members are too scared of us to do what is required.  They just pass the buck to the next lot. 

They deny that, but we do not believe them.  Nor do we do anything to fix the problem.  This failing looks to be inevitable in our model of democracy.  I have no idea what the end will be.

Another thing we inherited from the English was a rejection of theory or ideology.  We distrust both.  ‘Ideology’ comes from the study of ideas.  We act on the lessons of experience rather than the demands of logic.  You see very different attitudes across the Channel or the Atlantic.

Another thing we inherited from England, after America had not, is that the English had accepted the responsibility of government for looking after the poor from at least the time of Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603).  In the sixteenth century, before white people had even seen America, the English people had assumed obligations for their poor that would have been abhorrent to their Puritans back then, and which still look at best alien to most Americans today.  By 1563, the English had made a law for the compulsory levy for the maintenance of ‘impotent, aged and needy persons’.  The Oxford History of England records that the English accepted that the poor were ‘a charge on public benevolence’ and that ‘responsibility in the matter could not be left to the conscience of the individual, but must be enforced by law upon everyone.’ 

The English did not do this for ideology or out of charity, but for the prosaic object of keeping the peace against vagabonds.  They faced reality, not God.  Common sense trumps theory.  The distance from this very old English position to that in America now is as deep as the Atlantic.

When you add to that the fact that the Welfare State was introduced to England by Lloyd George and Winston Churchill in the People’s Budget, you get a better idea of the difference between us and the U S. 

Before Churchill, Disraeli had been the pin-up boy of English Conservatives.  That did not stop him taking the plunge and introducing something like universal male suffrage.  The great Prussian, Count Otto von Bismarck, had done the same for Germany before he introduced the Welfare State there.  Disraeli and Bismarck were archetype conservatives – and I admire both.

‘Conservatives,’ then, could be alarmingly ‘progressive, to use another very plastic label.  Even when ‘conservatism’ was in full flower it allowed policies we now call liberal or progressive and which would be pure heresy to those who claim to be ‘conservatives’ in the U S today.  Burke, Bismarck and Disraeli did things that would lead to apoplexy on Sky After Dark.

England had both a conservative party and a liberal party.  (Churchill flitted between both, but he was one off.)  England still has a party with ‘Liberal’ in its name beside the party of the Tories.

Australia has a party called the Liberal Party.  It also claims to be conservative, although its lore is that the title ‘Liberal’ was deliberately chosen.  It now looks neither liberal nor conservative.

For about a generation it was wedded to a party of very determined agrarian socialists.  That party now looks to be in the hands not of farmers, but mining companies and urban ideologues in think tanks.  The coalition further dilutes any recognisable platform.

What are the results in Australia? 

 First, neither of the two main parties can come close to forming a majority in parliament.  Each is on the nose to the public at large.  One is accused of forgetting its roots or past.  The other is accused – and fairly accused – of not fulfilling its obligations in opposition and of turning its province into a one-party state. 

Secondly, on vote-driving issues, the only differences between the two parties are those of degree.  With the possible exception of preserving the environment, neither major party offers policies that derive from its platform, and are different in substance to those of the other side.  Each is engaged in a listless and useless game of charades that turns people right off politics as a whole.

Thirdly, whereas two generations ago it was the Labour Party that was unelectable because of division, ideology, cranks, and crooks, now it is the turn of the Liberal Party.  They look useless and bent on sustained irrelevance under the sedative of the ideology of their media drivers. 

It is best to pass over the National Party and One Nation in silence.

The conclusion is, I think, that the word ‘conservative’ has no place in Australian politics.  It is at best useless, and at worst misleading.  Like ‘socialist’, it is a darling dodo of our time.

And no populist can claim to be ‘conservative.’  They stand, they say, for ordinary people against the ruling Establishment, whose members they brand with the term ‘elites’.  I long for the day when an Australian says ‘I don’t want the best cricketer in my Australian XI – I want a dinky die Aussie battler or bludger.’  Or someone walking into a hospital saying ‘I need surgery to deal with a life-threatening condition, but I don’t want a Top Gun surgeon – a GP from the sticks suits my schtick.  I distrust all elites.  I am but a child of the people. Who was it who said of the people, by the people, for the people?’

The most hilarious claimant for the label ‘conservative’ is Donald Trump.  His mission is to obliterate the whole status quo by deceit, and if necessary by violence and force.  And a frightening number of Americans are happy to go along for the ride on a violent road.  And the last thing Trump wants to ‘conserve’ is the planet.

His major trumpet, Fox News, has nothing to do with politics.  It exists simply to enrich and aggrandize its owners.  In this respect, it resembles Trump.  By contrast, the function of the Murdoch press in Australia is simple.  It appeals only to a portion of the voters who can only vote for one party, and while doing so makes that party unelectable.

The American ideology is home grown – the family, God, and the flag.  They look still to have a hankering after royalty, as do the French, but at its worst in the U S, you get the spewing hate of Stephen Miller, who is besotted by the very idea of ideology.

There is an ideology that has steadily been growing in this country which hates everything that is good, righteous and beautiful and celebrates everything that is warped, twisted and depraved.  It is an ideology at war with family and nature. It is envious, malicious, and soulless.  It is an ideology that looks upon the perfect family with bitter rage while embracing the serial criminal with tender warmth.  Its adherents organize constantly to tear down and destroy every mark of grace and beauty while lifting up everything monstrous and foul.

You would not want to be left alone in a room with a man who talks like that.  Goebbels would have blanched.  This is wild uncharted Scapegoat Territory.

So, the future looks bleak for democracy all round. 

Conservatism is a natural and decent instinct, but it has been claimed by people who are anything but decent, either because they are stupid, or greedy, or both.

Oddly enough, Australia may be well placed to deal with the Fall.  This is because we are not interested in ideology – or, for that matter, politics at large.  Life offers so much more.  Most sane Australians would much prefer to talk about footy or cricket than the so called ‘culture wars’.  And that is very healthy.  Australians correctly suspect those who have the time and inclination to indulge in what are called the ‘politics of grievance’.  What more do these people want?  What drives them to keep stirring the possum?  Did they not have enough toys in their childhood?

I was reminded of a very cold morning in the middle of winter on a crowded platform on a railway station an hour from Melbourne some years ago.  Then came the dreaded announcement.  The train was delayed.  Yet again.  That led to the following conversation.

I am going to punish these bastards for this at the next state election.

So am I, Mate.

Can you just remind me, Cobber – which set of bludgers claims to be running this bloody joint at the moment?

Who cares any longer about race?

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

Many summer schools at Cambridge and Oxford – and one at Harvard – have been lights in my life.  One or other university in England used to ask questions about what I suppose might be called my ‘race’.  Fortunately, they gave me the option of declining to answer.  This was just as well.  It’s not just that I did not know what the answer was – why was I even being asked?  I could not give a hoot about what label about race someone may seek to pin on me – but why would someone even try?

I suppose an exception would be if someone tried to pin me as being ‘Aryan’.  That would be deeply offensive – like calling someone – of either sex – an acolyte of Ayn Rand.  For that matter, I would be unsettled to be called ‘white’ – what decent inquiry could that be a response to?

As best I can see, I am a common garden Australian – in the name of God, anything but ‘Aussie.’  My dad’s mum was born in Scotland – hence my middle name ‘McPherson’.  On one of my trips through the Highlands, I got into the heart of the territory of the clan McPherson and visited the clan museum.  I went in thinking I might make a donation – as a member of the family, so to speak.  But I was informed, and not apologetically, that I was disqualified because the alleged clan connection was through the female line. 

‘McPherson’ means ‘son of a parson’.  My wife was born Clark and said to be Irish.  Clark meant ‘cleric,’ and the Scot thought she may have a stronger claim to being Scottish.  At that point I decided that they could stick any donation in a place happily made more accessible to those wearing a kilt.

That is a full account of any inquiry into my ancestry.  (But I was glad to hear years later that the McPhersons had a claim to fame.  Culloden was the site of the battle where the English toweled up the Scots once and for all.  My lot, I was told, were a day late.  Smart bastards.)

I was reflecting on this the other day while going to see my podiatrist.  He is Indian.  How do I know?  Because he is a person of colour with an Indian name and accent and we naturally discussed his background when discussing cricket, which has the power of religion in India.  Like so many from India, he is a passionate follower of cricket, especially when India is involved. 

We discussed a recent Test Match in England when most of the crowd was said to be Indian.  Perhaps I should say ‘of Indian extraction,’ since most of them probably lived in the U K.  We laughed at the difficulty of imagining such a scene in the land of any other former imperial power – like France, Spain or Holland.

When I lived an hour out of Melbourne in the sticks, I was occasionally heard to mutter that the problem was that there were too many white men.  In Yarraville, our needs are mostly met by people from every part of Asia.  The Greek and Russian Orthodox churches and the Greek and Italian cafes now look very Establishment, and if you cross over to Footscray, you may wonder what part of Africa or Asia you have landed in.

But in what instances might it be appropriate to talk of the racial background of someone?  If I say my mate Joe is Australian, Chinese, Aboriginal, Muslim, White, Coloured or Jewish – what does the epithet add to the conversation?  (I put to one side instances where the epithet may have consequences for the times of the meeting or the food to be served.)

If I say Joe is Aboriginal or Jewish, I am I think making a statement about his racial antecedents.  When might that matter?  Put differently, when might a statement about the race of a person become racist?

The Australian Constitution contains on my search only one reference to race.  Section 25 refers to persons of any race being disqualified from voting by the laws of a state.  ‘Race’ is not defined, but had its own meaning in the Imperial Parliament of the Empress of India.  The primary criterion was colour, even when Disraeli was Prime Minister of the U K.

Nor is the word defined in the Commonwealth Racial Discrimination Act 1975.  Its operative provision (s. 9) refers to ‘race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin.’  Those terms are not synonymous.

A glance at the Macquarie Dictionary (7th Edition) shows what a minefield we have.

race…. a group of people sharing genetically determined characteristics such as skin pigmentation or hair texture…. the differentiation of people according to genetically determined characteristics…. a group of people sharing a language or culture or traditional beliefs or practices….

racism…. the belief that human races have distinctive characteristics which determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule or dominate others…. behaviour or language…. either demonstrating an inherent prejudice without specific hostile intent or, alternatively, intended to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate…

Jewish: of or relating to or characteristic of the Jews; Hebrew…

Hebrew…a member of that branch of the Semitic people descended from the line of Abraham; an Israelite; a Jewish person….

Perhaps I should set out s. 9 of the Commonwealth Act:

 It is unlawful for a person to do any act involving a distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of any human right or fundamental freedom in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life.

It is apparent that the Commonwealth regarded the qualifier of ‘race’ as being at least potentially different to the qualifiers of ‘colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin.’  ‘National’ looks to be in a different kind of field to ‘race’, ‘colour’, ‘descent’ or ‘ethnic origin’.  But if you are speaking of ‘national origin,’ that may be as hard to shake off as ‘ethnic origin’ or ‘race’ ‘colour’ or ‘descent’.

But when might any such distinction matter – decently or at all? 

As I recall it, the Irish got justifiably sick of being on the wrong end of tasteless slips or slurs.  There is no doubt that England’s ‘Irish problem’ began many hundreds of years ago because they regarded the Irish as racially inferior – they had about the same level of contempt for indigenous peoples in Ireland as their successors would show to indigenous people in Australia when they settled here.  ‘Beyond the pale’ was an exercise in apartheid in the fourteenth century.  (The English had similar feelings of superiority toward the Scots, but the Scots were armed and dangerous to the people of England in their own homes, and accordingly were treated with less obviously lethal contempt.)

If you can afford a Zegna suit, a Panerai watch, or a Ferrari, you will be said to enjoy ‘Italian flair’ – and pay heaps for the privilege.  The Germans on the other hand have not had a good press since Dante or even Tacitus – where they are treated as a nation of drunks.  But they also meet more sinister and persistent aversions.  When I started following F1, Michael Schumacher was preeminent.  He was also guilty of misconduct – that I was, and am, prepared to make allowances for.  Then I read a sensible analysis by an English journalist who said that Ayrton Senna was much worse.  But his misconduct was mere ‘Brazilian flair,’ whereas Schumacher showed ‘ruthless Teutonic efficiency’ – and ‘Teutonic’ has shades that go back to the Dark Age.

Here was a typical case of how we slip back to prejudice through a combination of haziness, laziness, and nastiness.

If I talk about Joe’s beliefs, these are matters that Joe can, at least in theory, change.  But that is not the case if I am talking about qualities ascribed to Joe at birth – race, colour, or descent.

The real vice in each case is the same.  I am allowing an incursion into Joe’s dignity or worth that arises merely from the fact that he is human.  If it matters, the person who most clearly stated that opinion was a German named Immanuel Kant.  It may be described as a masthead of the Enlightenment – which was in large part driven in Germany. 

The other disservice I do Joe in looking at attributes he might be said to have been saddled with at birth is that it may appear that he has been denied the benefit of the movement, in what we call the civilized world, by which our rights are said to derive from Contract rather than Status.

And if we find that status is in some way genetically determined, at what point might we enter the verboten world of caste?

The upshot is that I see little or no point in talking about my race or that of any other people.  There are of course some harmless exceptions – like the wonderful capacity of Pacific Islanders to play rugby, or the endurance of Africans in long distance athletics, but they are exceptions.

And I am happy enough to live with ‘Australian’ as my only relevant signifier of my background or standing in my community.  If I had been embraced by the McPhersons at Newtonmore, and become a devoted self-proclaimed Scot, with the zeal of a convert, could I perhaps have got to the stage where I felt being called on to decide which was my best call sign – Australian or Scots? 

Or perhaps I may have reflected on The Divided Self written by the Scot R D Laing who said that if you put up a front long enough, you might wind up with nothing left behind the screen.  (At least, that is how I read it a very long time ago at university.)

As for religion, most people believe that religion holds nothing for them – except the one they subscribe to.  That is my view, except that I have no exception.  I have no faith in any religious faith.  Others can do what they like that is lawful, while I hope that they do not get in my way, either politically, or so as to cause me grief when it comes my time to go.

If you want to know why I am so cool about God, consider Deuteronomy 20:16-18.  The passage begins:

But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive.  But you shall utterly destroy them….

As I follow it, the three major faiths to come from the Middle East give some credence to the book that contains this command from God to annihilate tribes other than God’s chosen people: ‘let nothing that breathes remain alive’.  Can you  imagine anything more lethal?  On a bad day, it might lead me to believe in another venomous proposition – Original Sin.

Since I was born in 1945, I came into man’s estate in Australia in a democracy crippled by the strife within one of the two major parties.  That strife was in no small part driven by forces out of Ireland and Rome – at least, that is what I was taught as a God-fearing Protestant.  The bigotry was both hurtful and harmful.  To my mind, it showed a national immaturity that only ended with the steep decline of religion. 

When the English and Irish strife arrived here, both sides were holier than thou, and my country right or wrong.  But it was beyond doubt that England had treated Ireland appallingly over the centuries, at first just on racial grounds, and later on both racial and religious grounds.  We don’t need to see anything like it again, and I am relieved that my children know nothing about sectarian or foreign division within Australia.

As I recall it from the mists of time, there were two twists in the tail for the Irish diaspora and the sectarian conflict between Protestants and Catholics here in Australia.  One was that if people here wanted to identify with people in Ireland, they were entrusting their standing to forces beyond their control.  What did they have to say about terrorism and the IRA? 

If I claim to be identified with a foreign regime because of some perceived genetic connection with those who run it, I may bring down on my own head unwelcome imputations if that regime behaves inhumanely.

The other issue with the Irish was that of divided loyalty.  This erupted in Britain with the Reformation, the Act of Supremacy, the Spanish Armada, and Guy Fawkes.  It was settled in the Glorious Revolution of 1689.  The result is that under the English constitution, and therefore relevantly ours, we cannot have a Catholic head of state. 

I wonder if we could pass a law to that effect now.  A key part of our inheritance from the United Kingdom would be against the laws that we presently have in place.

Well, then, in the year of Our Lord – anno domini – 2025, why do any Australians feel any need to get tied up about their ancestry?  Isn’t being Australian enough? 

After all, have we not enough on our plate already in dealing with the oppression of our indigenous people in the years that have elapsed since Governor Arthur Phillip ran up the Union Jack at Sydney Cove in 1789, and commenced the process leading to the creation of the Commonwealth of Australia? 

It helps to remember that Australia, as it now is, started off as a jail for the rejects of Britain – and those in charge were not much better than the convicts.   And not one of either had an ancestry to write home about. 

Not much of a rock to build a bloody nation on.

Non sequiturs

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

The most common form of fallacy, in the broad sense of that term, is a statement that the premises of an argument lead to a conclusion that they do not.  The conclusion simply does not follow from the premises.  The Latin term is non sequitur.  ‘My uncle smoked fifty a day and lived until he was ninety – when he got hit by a bulldozer.  Therefore, I can smoke the same amount without impairing my health.’

If I criticise the present government of Ireland, that act alone cannot establish that I have an irrational prejudice against Irish people at large – especially those people claiming to be Irish at the other end of the world.  That would be an obvious non sequitur.

But if Irish people in Australia accused me of such irrational prejudice against all Irish people on that basis, and no other evidence, I would resent that very much. 

And that resentment would be much greater if those making this untenable charge – because that is what it is – are plainly not stupid, but hold positions of responsibility and power.  (On a bad day, they may even get the sobriquet of being ‘influencers’, people who are rarely seen without a smart phone or podcast mike in their hands.)  I would regard this false charge from such a source as malicious. 

What do I mean by malice in this conduct?  In the words of Justice Holmes, ‘harm to another person was intended to come of it, and … such harm was desired for its own sake as an end in itself.’

The risk then is that a false charge against me has led to my having an adverse opinion of at least some Irish people.  And this might then be urged to support a claim that I had an irrational prejudice against Irish people at large.  And so, a false statement gets what some call ‘traction’, and this rolling ball can gather plenty of moss.

People can have their own views about the bearing of this analogy on the current discussion surrounding suggestions put forward by the Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism.  The lady is obviously one of outstanding credentials and honours.  She is one of the most privileged people in Australia, one who could attract the ear of government – or, if you prefer, call on our government to hear her voice.  Her Wikipedia entry is a trainline of civic adornment and government recognition in the Sydney Establishment.  University Medal.  Harvard.  Associate to High Court Judge.  Partner of the Sydney Establishment law firm.  Director of a bank.  Officer of ASIC, member of the Opera board, and other quangos.  Order of Australia.  As elite as it is possible to get in Oz, she would be as far removed from Old Jack out the back of Yuendemu as any person, white or black, in this Commonwealth.

And at least two things seem clear about the envoy. 

First, someone of this training and experience would be quite incapable of committing the non sequiturs that I have referred to above.

Secondly, we are asked to accept that those as elite as their envoy are in need of protection over and above that afforded by our laws and governance to identifiable minority groups who do not have the same political clout or economic heft.

And even this discussion seems both petty and insensitive when we reflect on the inexpressible horror of events in the Holy Land that have led it to it.  Is it not the case that a whole ocean of ink cannot wash away the stain left by one lost child?

But, still, in what sense is the lady an ‘envoy’ – a title certainly denied to the people of Old Jack? 

If I look at the Shorter English Oxford Dictionary, I find ‘A public minister sent by one sovereign or government to another for the transaction of diplomatic business’ and ‘An agent, commissioner, deputy, messenger, representative.’ 

Surely neither party contemplated the kind of separation in our community that those terms would suggest.  Do the people the envoy was appointed to represent really want to be seen to be that different to other Australians?  Should I be looking at my friends of Irish or Jewish descent as being somehow different to me – branded, even?  Do Albanian or Anglican Australians see themselves as separated from the rest of us by race or at all?  Outside of the First Nations, does human pedigree somehow count in my country?

I will look later at some issues arising from the appointment of this envoy and her recommendations to the government that appointed her.  The only thing I wish to say of it now is that both the appointment and her advice seem to me to be predicated on the proposition that events in the history of one race of people may entitle or even require a government to treat all people who belong to that race differently as a matter of law to people of other races. 

That in my view is a proposition that is as pernicious as it is baseless.  And I fear it will generate real resentment and cause just the kind of grief and stress that the creators of the office of envoy sought to contain.

Trying to deal with Australians who are seen by some to be different is not, then, this Prime Minister’s strong suit.  He is in my view honest and well meaning, but this is his second gutser in the tricky realm of race in Australia.  Honesty may be necessary, but it is not sufficient, and the old saying remains true – the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Well, at least some Australians may get some light relief from reflecting that those who support the appointment and the work of the envoy include a lot of those political and press warriors who spend so much time banging on about elites, identity politics (the tendency of people in a group to forge exclusive alliances), virtue signaling, or giving our First Nations people a Voice recognized in the Constitution – because, wait for it, it would be ‘divisive’ in the Australian community!

And then we could look at those people whom the envoy was appointed to represent, and ask how many people of, say, Aboriginal, Chinese, Arab, or Muslim descent or connection have risen to the same commanding heights as her lot in in the professions, business or government of Australia – or even just attained common garden membership of the Melbourne Club or Royal Melbourne Golf Club.

Events, dear boy, events – are what keep our weather cocks turning in the wind. 

, , , ,

Race – racism – Special Envoy.

Sam Kerr

/ Geoffrey Gibson / Leave a comment

It is hard to believe that this trial alleging ‘racially aggravated harassment’ against Sam Kerr is going on. 

I need hardly declare my bias, which will be shared by most Australians, and followers of sport.  Sam Kerr is one of the best footballers I have seen, and something of a national idol.

For a start, it had not occurred to me that Sam was of a different race to me.  If I had wondered about her complexion, I may have repeated the error I had made with Stan Grant about twenty years ago – until I was corrected, I thought he had spent too much time in a solarium.  But, then, in the 1950’s, when this nation’s traditional racism was at its peak, a federal MP asked whether Italians or Greeks – wogs or dagoes – were truly white. 

It all shows how careful we must be – it appears to be accepted that a reference to the colour of a person is a reference to that person’s race.

The accused was obviously drunk, and police are trained and paid to deal with problems that that condition might lead to.  It is remarkable that a whiter copper can be hurt actionably under the criminal law by a drunk referring to the colour of his skin while she abused him.  What if she had added that he was a ‘he’, and a straight one to boot?  Could he get some furlough to recover his composure and become whole again?  The copper could not claim to have been hurt as a member of an oppressed minority.

It gets worse.  The court has been told that the informant did not allege personal hurt when the charge was first formulated.  He only did so after he got knocked back by the officers of the Crown.  As a lawyer, I would feel uncomfortable in presenting such a case.  It had enough whiskers on it already.

Then the charge is one of ‘harassment’.  On my reading of the dictionaries – Oxford and Macquarie – that involves repetition or persistence.  I do not see that hear.

And all this is not being dealt with by a magistrate in a morning.  It is being heard by a judge and jury in a trial lasting more than a week. 

Yet I keep hearing on Sky News UK that the criminal justice system in the UK is hopelessly out of control.  Are real victims of sexual violence not getting the protection they desperately need because a drunken woman has ruffled the sensitivities of a male copper?

What politics could drive this oddity?  Surely at some stage there was a polite high-level phone call.  ‘Do your members really want this?  Is it good for their standing – what people call ‘optics’?  This could be seen as a ‘test case’ and front-page news here and elsewhere.  During the war, the trains carried a message: ‘Is this journey really necessary’?  Even the Palace might be interested.  A conviction would be a real shot in the arm for republicans in Australia.’

It is not hard to imagine at least some on the jury busting to ask the judge: ‘On the off chance we decide to pot this woman – and God knows I have done a lot worse with a skin full – can you give us an assurance you will not put her inside?’

This and the Federal Court case against the ABC arising from comments made about Gaza show how tricky and dicey it is to make laws about what we can and cannot say in public about issues we are wont to call ‘sensitive’.  If you push the law too far, you degrade it.

The one thing that is clear to me is that cases like that involving Sam Kerr are blood to a tiger to people like Nigel Farage, Peta Credlin, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Peter Dutton.  It’s hard to imagine a Queensland copper taking any of this seriously, but Pete will do what he can do for the team.

Put to one side all that bumpf about freedom of speech – making penal laws to enforce manners that you regard as appropriate demeans the law, and gives a free kick to vacuous, malicious, ideologues.