The collapse of conservatism

James Allan below writes well but takes insufficient notice of the fact that conservative policies have always undergone a lot of change. Consistency in answer to the question "What is a conservative?" will always be hard to find over the long run. That is because ALL politicians have to react to changes in the world about them and changes in reality will often require changing policies.

That is not to say that there is abolutely no consistency in what makes a conservative. Consistecy CAN be found but it is at the pychological, not the policy level. In a nutshell, the essence of conservatism is caution and the essence of Leftism is anger. Whatever they do, conservatives will be cautious, as they see that, at the time


In the developed Anglosphere countries over the past couple of centuries, there has been a general understanding of what it means to be a conservative voter. In rough and ready terms, with plenty of arguments and differences at the periphery, conservatives wanted to keep in place the main tenets of the core institutions, practices, conventions, and principles that had worked up till then. They were for conserving. Not everything, always and forever. Not in aspic jelly with no changes or innovations ever allowed but rather with a prima facie weighting towards the status quo and with the burden on those proposing change and restructuring to make a clear case why the novel was preferable to what was already in place. Gradual reform over idealistic revolutionary aspirationalism. Clearly, as I said, there was plenty of room for intra-conservative fights and disagreements. But the general proclivity for the established and ‘what already was in place and seemed to work moderately well’ was plain.

Spelled out in those terms it is pretty obvious that the desire to conserve what happens to exist is contingent. It depends on where you happen to be and when. No sane person would want to be described as a ‘conservative’ in today’s North Korea, and only religious zealots in today’s Iran. Put bluntly, there is an element of luck as to whether it makes sense to be a Tory or conservative. It is time and place contingent, along with depending on the sort of instincts, preferences, and political taste buds the individual brings to the table.

I am a big fan of the Scottish sceptical philosopher David Hume, one of the all-time greats. In fact, I did my philosophy doctorate on his moral and legal thinking. But Samuel Johnson, London high Tory, wit, and author of the first real English dictionary, was rather scornful of Hume. His renowned biographer James Boswell reported Johnson as saying of Hume ‘that he’s just a Tory by chance; if anything he’s a Hobbesian’. I’ve always thought that Johnsonian description of Hume rather excellent. It’s just that Johnson meant it as a stinging criticism whereas I think it shows the genius of Hume.

In a way, it is just chance whether it is sensible for anyone to be a Tory or favour conservative political positions. And that brings us to the present day in countries such as the US, Canada, Britain, and Australia. Because what should those described as ‘conservatives’ want to conserve right now? You might think ‘the presumption of innocence’ would be a no-brainer. But vote for the Libs in 2019 and you got a prime minister, Scott Morrison, who wouldn’t grasp or adhere to this principle if it walked up and hit him in the head. Just ask Bruce Lehrmann. Or Christine Holgate. Or a fair few of his own cabinet ministers. And let’s be clear that today’s Australian legal fraternity hardly makes one confident it cares much, if at all, about this formerly core precept in the criminal justice system.

Or take the notions of free speech and an impartial and questioning media. No one with a functioning brain could have come through the pandemic years with any confidence our present institutions and establishment class uphold either of these. The same goes for upholding our core civil liberties. I don’t mean rushing off to bring picayune standards against the government when those seeking to come to this country illegally are involved. Our judges can be counted on to do that. I mean that over the two and half years of the pandemic, we saw the ‘greatest inroads on our civil liberties in two hundred years’ (the words of former UK Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption, and they’re correct), and yet not a single country in the Anglosphere saw judges do anything. And I mean countries with potent bills of rights included. The judges pushed back against government Covid brutality not one whit. The legal establishment was all in on the fear-mongering and enforcement of what a moment’s thought would have told you were nonsensical rules dreamt up by puffed-up bureaucrats. (Did you see Mr Fauci in the US last week concede that the six-foot separation rule was just made up out of thin air and had no scientific basis?) Put it this way, those of us known as ‘conservatives’ have very little reason to want to conserve the ABC, do we? And given its profligacy, making up out of thin air the ‘National Cabinet’, and willingness to facilitate state premiers’ thuggery, tell me what there is to want to conserve about today’s Liberal party? (I avoided mentioning the state Liberal iteration in Victoria because, well, it is so pathetic it doesn’t really feel fair picking on people who take sides against those who simply believe that those with XX chromosomes will always be different than those with XY chromosomes, and that public policies will sometimes have to reflect that core fact about the external, causal world however much it might hurt some people’s feelings.)

I could keep going for some time. Treasury and the RBA seem to be completely in thrall to Keynesianism. They just whitter on about GDP and never mention Australia’s pretty ordinary to awful recent record as regards GDP per person. A side effect is that our political class is addicted to big immigration to keep GDP looking okay even as it makes individuals poorer, traffic far worse, and house prices more astronomical. (And yes we should all feel sorry for today’s younger generation because it is way, way harder to buy a house today than when we were all younger – look at average wage to average house price – and no amount of shunning a daily flat white will fix that.) Put bluntly again, I don’t see much reason to conserve the economic thinking that prevails at present. Heck, the entire political caste, with only a few exceptions here and there, seem to be out of sync with the average voter. The Voice referendum sure showed that while exposing the faultlines in the Liberal party. Then there’s the universities, (not what they were I can assure you all), the corporate boardrooms, the list goes on.

So what do we voters formerly known as ‘conservatives’ do when much of what was worth conserving has been jettisoned? Tough question. But I think I’ve gone a long way in explaining the appeal of Mr Trump, the so-called populist parties in Europe, and the current Tory leader in Canada, Mr. Poilievre, who is up 10-15 points in the polls. He’s promised all sorts of ‘radical’ policies such as halving the CBC’s budget. And we ‘conservatives’ love it.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/taking-conserve-out-of-conservative/

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Crooked Greenie scientist

The University of Western Australia scientist found by the Federal Court to have “lied” when preparing a report that helped block Santos’s $5bn Barossa gas project had earlier been compelled to make multiple corrections to another disputed piece of work.

But oil and gas giant Woodside Energy says it will not be carrying out any review of the work done by Mick O’Leary that found the undersea pipeline at Woodside’s contentious $US12bn Scarborough LNG project would have little to no impact on archaeological heritage values in the rock art-rich Burrup region.

The findings delivered this week by Federal Court Justice ­Natalie Charlesworth savaged Dr O’Leary’s research into the potential impact of Santos’s Barossa pipeline on underwater cultural heritage sites and sacred dreaming places of Tiwi Islanders.

In handing down her decision dismissing the Tiwi Islanders’ legal challenge to Barossa, Justice Charlesworth was scathing of Dr O’Leary’s conduct while carrying out cultural mapping.

“Dr O’Leary’s admission was freely volunteered, such that he did not lie to the court. But he did lie to the Tiwi Islanders, and I find that he did so because he wanted his ‘cultural mapping’ exercise to be used in a way that would stop the pipeline,” she said.

“It is conduct far flung from proper scientific method and falls short of an expert’s obligation to this court.”

The court’s findings cast new light on the stoush that has played out inside UWA in recent years, with Dr O’Leary’s colleagues having previously raised issues with some of his methods.

UWA researchers led by geo­archaeologist Ingrid Ward and her husband Piers Larcombe in 2022 wrote a paper that was highly critical of the findings made by Dr O’Leary and others in their ­research into Indigenous artefacts on Western Australia’s Burrup Peninsula.

Dr O’Leary and his colleagues fired back with a retort describing the critique as a “wet straw man”. The response dismissed “armchair critics ignorant of recent developments in the field” and said “their critique is detrimental to the ­development of this entire field of ­archaeology, as well as damaging to the rights and interests of coastal Indigenous communities through­out Australia”.

But Dr O’Leary also went on to publish in June 2023 a correction to his original report, making multiple revisions to his original text. Those corrections included addressing errors in three statistical analyses and “additional discussion of interpretations”.

That original report was prepared by a group called Deep History of Sea Country, a collection of academics from various Australian universities and which has won more than $2m in funding from the Australian Research Council since 2017.

The group’s project with the biggest ARC grant – worth just over $1.1m – began on July 1 last year, just a fortnight before the corrections to the original report were formally published.

Despite Dr O’Leary’s corrections, in December Dr Ward and Dr Larcombe’s paper was retracted. The journal Geoarchaelogy said the retraction was the result of “evidence confirming that the required university approvals were not sought prior to the research being conducted”.

Dr Larcombe, who had earlier questioned whether Dr O’Leary should maintain his position at UWA in the wake of the Federal Court’s findings, said he still stood by the scientific content of the criticism. The retraction, he said, was “not about the quality of the science” and that the process that led to retraction was still under review.

Woodside, meanwhile, confirmed that it would not be re-examining the work Dr O’Leary did for the company when it was assessing the cultural impact of its proposed Scarborough pipeline.

Dr O’Leary in 2021 helped design a research project to assess areas of archaeological prospectivity along the pipeline route within the proposed development area. Sea level changes since the last ice age mean some artefact-rich and heritage-rich areas of the Burrup Peninsula are now underwater, and Dr O’Leary’s research helped establish that the Scarborough pipeline plans would not damage potentially undiscovered rock art examples. The Scarborough project has attracted opposition from some Indigenous groups, with one of those – Save Our Songlines – last year securing a court injunction against Scarborough’s seismic testing program.

“Woodside does not intend to reassess an earlier scope of work undertaken by Dr O’Leary between 2020 – 2021, which was also subject to independent expert review. Dr O’Leary was one of several contributors to a suite of work relating to the identification of submerged cultural heritage, which also included close consultation with Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation,” a spokesman for the company said.

“Woodside considers Dr O’Leary’s contribution was within his area of expertise and exceeded baseline industry standards.”

The Federal Court’s findings have also sparked scrutiny of the potential conflicts that can arise when academics are commissioned to consult on projects.

Professor Peter Ridd, a physicist who was sacked from his role at James Cook University after he flagged concerns over some of the university’s climate change research, told The Weekend Australian that Santos should consider taking legal action against UWA in the wake of the court’s findings.

He said it would take such a legal challenge for universities to increase the intellectual rigour and scrutiny applied to consultancy work. “If Santos actually takes UWA to court, it will start to concentrate the minds of universities to actually do the job they’re supposed to do,” he said, adding: “UWA should carry a significant fraction of the responsibility for what happened.”

Santos declined to comment on whether it was considering any further legal options.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/earlier-red-flags-for-scientist-at-centre-of-barossa-debacle/news-story/1ced4f7236e30a96d2a52da5efec1ce2

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Consent laws ‘criminalise spontaneous marital sex’, says Queensland Law Society

New sexual consent laws in Queensland could criminalise married couples having spontaneous sex and be misused in messy divorce cases, the state’s peak legal body warns.

The Queensland Law Society has told state MPs their attempts to replicate consent laws in other jurisdictions – which demand a person get “affirmative” consent before sex – could lead to miscarriages of justice.

But the parliamentary committee reviewing the consent bill has ignored the Law Society’s warnings and recommended the bill go to a vote.

The Queensland Law Society, in a submission to the committee, said the state’s proposed bill could criminalise spontaneous sex ­between long-term partners ­because they would be required to explicitly communicate consent.

“A long-term married couple may have spontaneous sexual intercourse without any prior explicit communication because their history enables them to understand each other’s non-verbal behaviours,” the submission reads. “(The bill) is an inappropriate extension of the criminal law.”

NSW, the ACT, Tasmania and Victoria have reformed consent laws in recent years to adopt an affirmative model, in the wake of the MeToo movement after many alleged victims came forward to reveal their experiences with sexual assault and the justice system.

Queensland’s recommended reforms come as the federal government on Saturday releases a national framework guiding consent messaging for young people, which champions consent as “affirmative” and “communicated”.

The QLS said it did not support a provision in the bill that "a person who does not offer physical or verbal resistance to an act is not, by reason only of that fact, to be taken to consent to the act”.

“It should not be passed because it artificially limits the circumstances in which consent is, in fact, given and is not good law,” the submission reads.

“Queensland law already recognises that silence or lack of resistance does not equal consent in R v Shaw (1996) when the Court of Appeal stated that ‘a complainant who at or before the time of sexual penetration fails by word or action to manifest her dissent is not in law thereby taken to have consented to it’.”

The QLS said the proposed laws could be weaponised by parties undergoing disharmonious divorce proceedings, which could result in a “miscarriage of justice”.

“Take a long-term married couple (as an) example again. Suppose that five years later they are divorced. Person A subsequently alleges that the ‘spontaneous sexual intercourse’ was rape. Why should Person B be prevented from saying that s/he believed there was consent arising from the context of their previous long-term loving relationship where sex was often initiated on the basis of non-verbal cues and without physical resistance,” the submission reads.

The Queensland Council for Civil Liberties agreed with the QLS submission, adding that there is not enough clarity around what the consent laws would look like for those in long-term relationships.

“For example, a couple in a long-term relationship have sex every Friday night after dinner, they need something more than the relationship and its understandings to establish consent,” the QCCL submission reads.

“However, the proposed statute does not make it clear what that is.”

But on Friday afternoon, the report from the state parliament’s Legal Affairs and Safety Committee recommended the government adopt the controversial bill, saying “many stakeholders supported the implementation of an affirmative consent model”.

“This bill implements a host of recommendations from multiple inquiries, including the Hear her Voice reports from the Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce, the Commission of Inquiry into the Queensland Police Service, and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse,” the report forward, written by Labor MP Peter Russo, says.

“Years of investigations, reviews, hearings and submissions at both levels of government across Queensland have shown one thing – the need for change.

“This bill is about change. Changing how we think about and treat consent. Changing how the criminal justice system responds to coercive or controlling behaviour. Changing how juries are to be directed, how first-time domestic violence offenders can be channelled towards rehabilitation, and what considerations exist when deciding bail and sentencing.”

Queensland Liberal MPs said the inquiry into the bill did not go far enough to address the concerns of the QLS and the QCCL, and “significant concerns” remain about its present form.

“It cannot be enough to only discuss some of the more minor concerns raised by learned and serious stakeholders,” an addendum to the report, written by Laura Gerber and Jon Krause, reads.

“This report should have reflected the significant issues raised by submitters, and it is the opposition’s opinion that at present this is seriously deficient. These serious issues have largely been ignored.”

The government has three months to respond to the committee’s report.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/consent-laws-criminalise-spontaneous-marital-sex-says-queensland-law-society/news-story/2d60ee2d97000f5779383c83dcd40663

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Australia day is worth celebrating

Senator Jacinta Price astounded the nation during the recent referendum campaign when, courageously, she dared tell a journalist there were no ongoing negative impacts of colonisation.

The only continuing impacts, she said, were positive.

Pointing out that Aborigines have the same opportunities as other Australians, she said that constantly telling them they were victims was ‘the worst possible thing’ that can be done to any human being, creating the impression that ‘someone else’ was responsible for their lives.

She said that those in remote communities who experience the ‘highest rates of violence in the country’ do not do so because of colonisation.

It was because ‘young girls are married off to older husbands in arranged marriages’.

These were certainly not the answers expected by the many Australians indoctrinated by our seriously failing education system as well as those in the mainstream media who would push a victimhood agenda.

Chairing the function, the Sydney Morning Herald’s David Crowe challenged her unorthodox denials about colonialism.

‘Would you accept that there have been generations of trauma as a result of that (colonial) history?’ he asked.

Referring to her mixed-race background, Senator Price said this would mean that those whose ancestors were brought to Australia in chains as convicts were also suffering from intergenerational trauma.

‘So, I should be doubly suffering from intergenerational trauma,’ she declared.

This brought the house down and Mr Crowe moved immediately to the next question.

In one fell swoop, Senator Price exposed what Keith Windschuttle long ago named the fabrication of Aboriginal history.

Little wonder that the big talking point across Australia after this was that hers were the words of a future prime minister.

That struck terror into the heart of the ruling elite wondering what on Earth they had unleashed.

The establishment does not of course accept the landslide defeat of the Voice referendum, just as they do not accept any refusal to agree with every new dogma imported into Australia and designed to undermine Western civilisation, however ridiculous.

The Voice referendum has taught Australians two things.

First, rank-and-file Australians are far more capable of taking common-sense decisions for the benefit of the country than their elite rulers.

Second, a small but determined far-left minority plans to take over and seriously damage the country. They will never stop raising new ways to undermine Australia.

Australians are realising the danger of compromising on fundamental matters.

Among these is Australia Day.

It represents exactly what Jacinta Price was arguing. What 1788 unleashed was of course not perfect, but its consequences have been of great benefit to all Australians.

Although they deny it, the Albanese government’s policy is to undermine Australia Day. Why else did it remove the requirement that naturalisation ceremonies take place on Australia Day?

Now, over 80 local councils have joined the Albanese campaign to change Australia Day.

Yet councils are famously only about the three ‘Rs’– roads, rubbish, and rates. Foreign policy, global warming catastrophism, or undermining Australia Day are not within their purview, nor do they need useless overseas trips and vast expense accounts.

Let them have a sword of Damocles over their heads ─ recall elections, either for a specific alderman or a whole council.

This could be triggered by a petition of no confidence signed by, say, five to ten per cent of voters.

Australia Day, it must be emphasised, commemorates a settlement, not an invasion.

It was inconceivable this continent would not have been settled or otherwise acquired, although most European or Asian powers had shown little interest.

Only the British and French did, and only the British had both the will and the capacity to settle the country. They were by far the best colonisers and the ones most inclined to treat the Aborigines fairly with Governor Phillip instructed in detail to ‘conciliate’ the ‘affections of the Aboriginal people’, and to live in ‘amity and kindness, with them’, and moreover, ‘to do them no wrong’.

As to the Aboriginal people, rather than life being utopian, it epitomised Hobbes’s description of primitive life as ‘nasty, brutish and short’.

Their reaction to British settlement has been misrepresented as involving frontier wars. That there was nothing that could be referred to as a frontier war has been painstakingly demonstrated by Keith Windschuttle in his book The Break-Up of Australia, published by Quadrant Books in 2016 and discussed at length in ADH TV interviews.

Rather than resistance in any significant way, what occurred was a mutual accommodation of the indigenous people into the settlement. As Windschuttle observes, by 1805, barely ten years after the establishment of the Hawkesbury settlement, and after only ‘a handful of interracial incidents’, Governor King found the ‘most effective punishment’ he could impose on Aborigines was to ‘deprive them of the company of British settlers’.

The best reward he could offer was to ‘allow them to come back into colonial society again’.

The important point to remember is that the British did not come alone with their extraordinary, unprecedented First Fleet.

They brought with them what are still the pillars of the nation, the rule of law, the English language, our Judeo-Christian values, and access to a sophisticated form of government, probably the most sophisticated in the world at the time.

As to the rule of law, those who would liken the penal colony to a gulag should be reminded that the very first case brought in the colony was by a convict, reported as Cable v. Sinclair [1788] NSWKR 11.

Brought by Henry Cable against the captain of a ship in the First Fleet concerning the theft of goods, the court found for Cable, who later became a successful businessman.

Can those who say NSW, as a penal colony, was a gulag, point to a similar case where a Soviet court made a similar award? This case illustrates how the settlement was already the basis of the development of an extraordinary country, one which is gradually being devastated by the delinquency of its ruling class.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/01/keeping-australia-day

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Also see my other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM -- daily)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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