Inside This Issue Volume 56 • Number 3 • September 2004 ARTICLES & REGULAR FEATURES 2 Editorial 25 There are Votes in the Murray Whatever we think of representative democracy, it is fairer A close look at the politics of water in the Murray reveals and more open than the perverted form of ‘participatory something odd: why does everyone seem so keen to return democracy’ that is gaining force in Australia. Mike Nahan water to a river that may not need it? Jennifer Marohasy 3Why Profits Are Good 27 Who Can Insure Against the Climate? An outstanding exposition of how countries grow rich and Believe it or not, insurers are trying to insure against acts bring prosperity to the largest number of people— from of God. When it comes to climate, it seems that blame- the First World to the Third, it is called profits and free shifting is more important than research and planning. markets. Roger Kerr R.M. Carter 6 Green Arithmetic and Doctors’ Wives 29 Education Agenda An analysis of some important electorates in the forthcom- Should the government fund private schools? As an ing election and how radical environment groups are election issue for Labor, this is a no-brainer. Just look at influencing an important, prosperous middle-class group. where students are going. Kevin Donnelly Christian Kerr 30 Around the Tanks 9 Have Research and Innovation Failed Australia? News from think-tanks around the world, courtesy of the ‘Picking winners’ and foisting them on our universities may Heritage Foundation’s The Insider newsletter. not be the way to create a vibrant and innovative economy. 32 The Capacity to Manage Index: The Australian Tom Quirk Petrochemical Industry 12 Discrimination Divas Our latest Index gives the overall rating of the petro- The media and feminists simply do not understand. Earning chemical industry in relation to other sectors as well as gaps between men and women have absolutely nothing to assessments for individual petrochemical companies. IPA with discrimination. Nowadays, women choose. Work Reform Unit. Janet Albrechtsen 34 Epstein on Epstein 14 Participatory Democracy: Cracks in the Façade A recent visitor to Australia, the distinguished Chicago Active, ‘participatory’ democracy allows some lobbies and Law professor discusses some of his formative experi- NGOs to get two undeserved bites of the cherry when it ences and his classical liberal outlook on the world. comes to influencing policy. Gary Johns Andrew McIntyre 16 Triumph of the Swill 36 Free_Enterprise.com Our television film reviewers fail dismally in their assess- In their zeal to secure and promote human rights, some ment of Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11. Ted Lapkin organizations tend to overreach, with some strange results 18 The ‘R’ Files as a consequence. Stephen Dawson The rate at which public money is being spent for anti- 38 What’s A Job? business regulatory zealots is cause for alarm—just where It appears that labour has at last become more aware of, and how is our money is being spent? Alan Moran and responsive to, the external market signals experienced 20 Choosing and Reforming Schools by firms. Ken Phillips Why is there widespread disenchantment with the state 39 Strange Times education system, and why do parents send their children The weird, the wacky and the wonderful from around the elsewhere in spite of the extra costs? Geoff Partington world. Compiled by IPA staff and columnists SPECIAL INSERT 40 Letter from London There is quiet desperation in England. Blair is walking Good, Safe, Banned backwards and the Conservatives are getting nowhere. Professor Richard T Roush John Nurick An edited version of his address to the annual HV McKay Lecture in Melbourne in August 2004. BOOK REVIEWS 23 Blackboys Tell An Interesting Story Recent research on that icon of the bush, the Blackboy, 41 Patrick Morgan reviews Culture of Fear: Risk-Taking and the proves that ‘muddled headed’, Green-inspired fire-exclusion Morality of Low Expectation by Frank Furedi; David Robertson policies on vegetation are just that. David Ward reviews In Defense of Globalization by Jagdish Bhagwati. R E V I E W Editor: Mike Nahan. Publisher & Executive Director: Mike Nahan. Production: Chris Ulyatt Consulting Services Pty Ltd. Designed by: Colin Norris, Kingdom Artroom. Printed by: Pinnacle Printing, 288 Dundas Street, Thornbury VIC 3071. Published by: The Institute of Public Affairs Ltd (Incorporated in the ACT) ACN 008 627 727. Level 2, 410 Collins Street, Melbourne Victoria 3000. Phone: (03) 9600 4744. Fax: (03) 9602 4989. E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.ipa.org.au Inside cartoons by Peter Foster [(03) 9813 3160] Front cover photo by John Carr Unsolicited manuscripts welcomed. However, potential contributors are advised to discuss proposals for articles with the Editor. Views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IPA. Reproduction: The IPA welcomes reproduction of written material from the Review, but for copyright reasons the Editor’s permission must first be sought. From the Editor MIKE NAHAN PARTICIPATORY While the NGOs—the political DEMOCRACY parties of participatory democracy— often claim to represent the One of the main planks of the Left’s unorganized, the inarticulate and the remaking of itself which has taken place disadvantaged, they seldom do so in over the last 30 years has been the either a formal or informal manner. Few promotion of what it calls ‘participatory have many members or even seek the democracy’. views of the people they claim to The concept appeals at many levels. represent. Most, as Dr Johns explains, First, it is rhetorically correct. By are nothing more than small groups of combining the two motherhood activists who share an ideology—an concepts of participation and demo- ideology which is often at odds with the cracy, it provides its proponents the values of the people for whom they high moral ground. It also implies that claim be acting. As such, they are both the alternative, representative demo- Finally, by focusing on process rather unelected and out-of-touch with their cracy, does not allow the direct than outcome, participatory democracy proclaimed constituents. participation of citizens. offers the much-desired opportunity for The ‘participatory democracy’ push Second, it is highly malleable. While activists to turn their ideology into a has not been restricted to the formal the concept has a long intellectual long, and hopefully lucrative, career. political process, but is increasingly tradition, it has remained undefined, The Left’s revitalization and, in seeking, and getting, access and with few institutional guidelines. As such, particular, its development of influence in the bureaucracy, regulatory it was ripe for the Left to capture the participatory democracy has been bodies and in business. Alan Moran idea and structure it to their advantage. hugely successful. Indeed, it has allowed (‘Funding the Consumerist NGOs’, page Third, after being ejected from the erstwhile activists of the Left to 18) explores the growing tendency of commanding heights of representative become the ‘new political regulatory bodies such as the ACCC to democracy, the Left needed to find a establishment’. It is supported by many, open their doors and their purses to new political path and set of institutions funded by all, invited into the halls of groups who claim to, but do not with which to mould society to its power in parliament, the bureaucracy actually, represent broader interests. image. Participatory democracy has and the boardrooms, and is paid Their impact, at least in the case of the been made to fit the bill. handsomely for doing so. The NGO ACCC, is perverting the fundamental Fourth, the problem with the old sector—the main institutional purveyor character of the Commission. It is ideologies of the Left—socialism and of participatory democracy—has grown turning it from a neutral enforcer of the communism—was that they were based to become a global business with an Trade Practices Act to a ‘campaigner’ for on achieving explicit outcomes—high annual income of $10 billion. In fact, causes identified by activists—activists levels of economic growth, redistributing large NGOs, such as Greenpeace, who for decades have been amongst wealth and power, changing people from World Wide Fund for Nature, Oxfam the most vocal critics of market-based being self-focused to being focused on and World Vision, now provide much competition which the Commission was the greater good. These objectives were safer, longer and more lucrative career- established to encourage. testable, the Left failed the test and paths than do government and business. Although our formal democratic were rejected at the ballot box. Rather As argued by Gary Johns in this issue system has it weaknesses, and although than fundamentally changing their beliefs (‘Participatory Democracy: Cracks in there is a need to encourage greater and aims, it sought to wrap much of the Façade’, page 14), while participatory direct participation in the political their old ideology in a new, less testable democracy has deepened and extended process, the representative system is far and transparent, set of concepts and access to political decisions for some, it more democratic and open to all than institutions. Participatory democracy, has not done so for all. It has skewed the perverted form of participatory along with other planks of the Left’s the political process in favour of the democracy that is gaining force in revival—sustainable development, social organized, the political and the Australia. justice and peace—are sufficiently articulate: those best able to get their opaque to avoid testing and therefore to voices heard in the noisy, free-for-all of avoid clear-cut rejection. the ‘participatory democracy’ world. I P A R E V I E W 2 SEPTEMBER 2004 Why Profits Are Good ROGER KERR HE chief social role of customers to part with their money, including consumers, employees, business is to produce the they will flourish.