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March 7, 2006
When I was in Sydney over the weekend I noticed that the H R Nicholls Society was in town having their conference at the Novotel, Brighton Beach, the same hotel I was working at. I didn't attend. Rafe Champion over at Catallaxy did, presented a paper, and he has given a description of the conference ppers.
The Conference theme, "Let's Start All Over Again", puzzled me given the recent IR legisation passed by the Howard Government. Presumably, they are disappointed that Howard did not go far enough? So I picked up up a paper by John Stone, that traces the formation of the Society in response to the prospect of IR reforms under Bob Hawke following a review and report by Hancock, Fitzgibbon and Polites--The Hancock Report. Maybe Stone's paper would give me an indication of what starting all over again meant? Stone's paper disappoints--it is largely a description of the historical events of the last 20 years and it ends on an upbeat note:
The cause of reform continues to move forward. In the years ahead, the Society's role in advancing that cause with the community, and through that with ever-timid politicians, will remain as vital as it has been in our first 20 years.
What kind of reform? Just industrial relations and workplace reform? Or is it broader than that? Stone doesn't say.
I ask the question because Stone's paper lay next to one by Ray Evans entitled 'Nine Lies About Global Warming', which is available on the website of Lavoisier Group.I take it that this group is committed to economic prosperity and economic growth based on Australia's competitiveness of having access to cheap energy. They oppose expensive energy because it makes Australia uncompetitive. As renewable energy, Kyoto and the imposition of a carbon tax on energy produced by coal-fired power stations, is expensive, so it must be opposed. Global warming is seen to be one big scare.
I read the Evans paper over breakfast. The strategy of the paper is to say that only the critics of Kyoto operate in terms of public reason:
Environmentalism... is a form of religion based on the moral superiority of the believer, but which places no importance on telling the truth.... the Kyoto protocol is now almost dead. It was born in 1997 and it has been sustained to this point, through a web of mendacity, fraud and lies.
So Evans sets himself the task of exposing the web of deceit masterminded by environmental activists working through their NGO"s and their manipulation of the IPCC process. He is telling the truth and, in the process, defending the integrity of western science. Environmentalists want to take us back to the standard of living of the early nineteenth century and living in the dark without electricity ---when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. Nuclear power is the only alternative to coal.
What then of the arguments and evidence of the IPCC process? Are these not a form of public reason? Nope. It's nonsense as the computer modelling is flawed, as they cannot generate realistic simulations of climate, nor isolate the effects of human intervention in a large-scale natural process etc etc.
Is this where the HR Nicholls society is going? Embracing a political agenda of a restructuring of those scientific institutions in Australia that have asociated themselves with the IPCC process?
I can't say I was persuaded by Evans rhetoric, even though I understand the threat to CSIRO.
Update: 8 March
Well I missed the Finance Minister, Nick Minchin's address to the HR Nicholls Society's 20th anniversary conference in Sydney. Minchin said that the Howard Goverrnment should go to the next election with plans for a further wave of IR reform, even though the Government still faces significant challenges in bedding down the WorkChoices legislation. Minchin stated there is still much to be done in changing the post-WorkChoices IR "edifice" – "awards, the IR Commission, all the rest of it”---and that the HR Nicholls Society had to play a key role in formulating the next mandate.
So that's what is meant by starting all over again. Removing the IR edifice and replacing it with individaul contracts.
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