Kieran Bennett

It seems that every day I am less free.

We live in a society, we do not live as individuals divorced of society as the right wing libertarians seem to believe. We cannot all live on private islands, pay no tax and ward off intruders with guns. We exist through society, and as a result the freedom debate always seems to be about trading off freedoms in order to better live within society.

Society is about individual responsibility.

But we are missing something vital.

Responsibility cannot exist without freedom.

Let me pose a simple scenerio, I would like to play some loud music, but my neighbor is a shift worker. If I have the freedom to play the loud music, I can choose to be responsible, I can choose to think of my neighbor.

But in our society we don’t have this choice. We don’t play the loud music because then the police will come. In this situation we are not exercising responsibility, we are not fulfilling our duties as citizens. In this situation we do not have the freedom to be responsible.

How can we ask people to be better citizens, if we try and mandate in each and every situation what is the appropriate course of action through the exercise of the heavy hand of the law? When we substitute duty and responsibility for law and compulsion, we are no longer citizens with rights are responsibilities, we are subjects with naught but fear and forced obedience.

And the latter is not the best outcome. Because the heavy hand of the law is no substitute for the appropriate ethic of an empowered and free citizen.

I fear it’s getting worse. Do you?

Analysing who the No To Pope Coalition are, what their motives are, and how many members they might be able to mobilise.

Last night saw the first media mentions of a group organising to oppose Catholic World Youth Day in Sydney on the 19th. Perhaps it’s just that I was raised to value critical thinking, but my first thoughts were “who are they and what are their motives”. So here’s a post examining just that.

Read more »

I have long had wiki software installed on this domain, I often use a wiki when planning and compiling a post or project. I would also use a wiki to compile resources and links for my own use.

With the reboot of this blog, I have again installed some wiki software for my use. On a whim, I have decided to open the wiki up to all comers. It’s called CollaborationSpace.

I’ve got three vague goals in opening up this wiki:

• ResourceSharing
• BarnRaising
• In-house Collaboration

This wiki is not meant to be an Encyclopedia. Think MeatBall instead of Wikipedia. Like MeatBall, there are no “special” pages, every page is a resource page, a talk page, and a category page if it needs to be. And like MeatBall, any user can delete any page by adding the words DeletePage, which result in the page eventually being deleted. If a user removes the tag, someone cares so the page stays.

I hope this project proves useful to other people.

New South Wales will have laws against offending Catholics during the upcoming “World Youth Day” in Sydney. New South Wales police just want us to enjoy a peaceful happy World Youth Day, and that’s justification enough to introduce powers allowing police to arrest and fine people for “causing annoyance”.

There is so much I could say about this, and so little that needs saying. This makes a mockery of any notion of individual liberties, democracy and freedom of expression, whilst also making a mockery of the claim that this is a secular state.

Draconian, repugnant and unnecessary. These are just a few of the criticisms of special regulations coming into force for the upcoming Catholic World Youth Day event in Sydney.

Civil libertarians and legal experts say the regulations could see situations such as someone deemed to be wearing an offensive T-shirt being arrested and given a hefty fine.

New South Wales Police say the measures are designed simply to ensure that World Youth Day is a peaceful and happy event. - ABC

UPDATE: The best comment on this sorry state of affairs comes from The Chaser’s Julian Morrow:

“I reckon everyone in New South Wales who’s concerned about civil liberties should be printing up T-shirts and walking around World Youth Day to make their statement,” Morrow said.
…
“This is part of a trend of governments passing unnecessary and bad laws in their own self interests.” - ABC

Deb Foskey MLA has announced she will amend Canberra’s civil partnerships bill to restore provisions for ceremonies.

Civil unions should be unnecessary. Sexual minorities should enjoy the same marriage rights as the sexual majority, but thanks to religiously inspired homophobia, it’s not the case.

Instead the ACT had to struggle for “separate but equal” rights, “rights” that became just a little less equal thanks to the federal government’s intervention in the ACT legislative process. Our civil union’s bill was only passed when all references to ceremonies were stripped. It seems like a small thing, but it was deliberately pointed. The federal Labor government wanted to ensure that these are separate “rights”, and not very equal. We wouldn’t want Australia’s Christian conservatives to think that sexual minorities could engage in the charade of marriage!

Jon Stanhope and the Labor party were crusaders for the rights of sexual minorities when it was their political opponents who threatened to overturn ACT law. Now that their compatriots in the Labor party are playing conservative on the hill, they have suddenly gone very meek.

Deb’s civil partnerships amendment will probably fail to get a second, but whilst we can’t obtain equal rights for all citizens, we can at least try to make what “rights” we do have a bit more “equal”.

Post Script: I oppose state involvement in private affairs, and I consider marriage a private affair. But whilst state sanctioned marriage exists, it should be open to all.