Tony Abbott (1957):
Nauru is humane, cost effective and it's proven.
(Nauru turns on charm for visiting Abbott, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 June 2011)
Gillian Triggs (1940) [President, Australian Human Rights Commission]:
As of February [2017:]The average time in detention is about 490 to 500 days but many have been detained for years.
- 1,400 (approximately) continue to be detained in indefinite immigration detention in Australia.
- 378 detainees, including 45 children remain in Nauru, [and]
- 837 adult men remain, and have remained for years, on Manus.
When I was at Villawood, just a few days ago, I didn't meet anybody under 4 years in detention and one woman … had been detained for 7 years …
The countries of origin, of most asylum seekers and refugees, are predominantly Muslim nations: Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Iran …
Religious persecution is one of the five grounds on which people can seek protection under the refugee convention. …
It is notable that Australia is the only common law country in the world that does not have a bill or charter of rights.
(Islamophobia and human rights, 18 July 2017)
John Winston Howard (1939) [Prime Minister of Australia, 1996-2007]:
[If] you try to institute a bill of rights, you run the danger of limiting, rather than expanding freedoms …
All you'll do is open up yet another avenue for lawyers to make a lot of money being human-rights … practitioners.
(Jon Faine, ABC Local Radio, Melbourne, 25 August 2000)
David Marr (1947):
[In February 2007, 85 Sri Lankan] men were brought in by barge from HMAS Success and herded onto Christmas Island's only wharf. …
Keeping the press at bay has remained a top priority in all the operations that have followed to scoop up boat people wherever they appear and detain them on Christmas Island.
(p 41)
According to the Australian government these people are not prisoners.
They've committed no crimes. …
(p 42)
The Immigration Department was playing its usual cat-and-mouse game: asylum seekers can only have a lawyer if they ask for one, and they have to ask for one by name.
Holding them incommunicado for as long as possible is about denying them a voice in both the press and refugee processing.
Good people take their careers in their hands to smuggle lawyers' names to asylum seekers.
(His Master's Voice, Quarterly Essay, Issue 26, 2007, p 44)
Lionel Shriver (1957):
My politics … are libertarian …
I don't like being told what to do.
Actually, deep down inside, I'm a 10 year old child with a problem with temper tantrums.
(Lionel Shriver on free speech, identity and the future of the US, 19 September 2016)
Bryan Stevenson [Professor of Law, New York University]:
Each of us is better than the worst thing we've ever done.
(The fight for racial justice in America, 19 March 2015)
Augustine (354 – 430):
The good Christian should be wary of mathematics and all those who make empty prophesies.
The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the Devil to darken the spirit and confine Man to the bonds of Hell.
June 14, 2015
Big Ideas
ABC Radio National
June 9, 2015
Robert Manne
Green Army: Persons of Interest
Just as stagflation fatally undermined the Keynesian social-democratic consensus, so too will the combination of the Great Recession and the growing recognition of the destructive role played by neo-liberalism in inhibiting an effective response to catastrophic climate change eventually discredit the idea at the heart of neo-liberalism: the faith in the magic of the free market. …
[However, there] are two important differences between the circumstances surrounding the end of the Keynesian era in the late 1970s and the present unravelling of neo-liberalism.
When the Keynesian consensus collapsed, a party-in-waiting existed, ready to seize its chance.
No equivalent anti-neo-liberal party exists today.
Old-style socialism is dead.
Left-of-centre neo-Keynesians are far less ideological, far more divided and far more cautious than their neo-liberal adversaries.
Even more importantly, at the moment of the neo-liberal collapse, humanity confronts the diabolical problem of climate change.
Those who inherit the post-neo-liberal world will be obliged not merely to strive to reconcile the hope for renewed prosperity with the quest for domestic and global social justice.
They will also be obliged to reconcile both these ambitions with the gravest challenge humankind has ever faced.
No one yet knows what the new era will look like or what it will eventually be called.
Only one thing seems, at present, reasonably certain.
At the end of the era of free-market faith, we will be in a far better position to turn our attention to the kinds of ethical and environmental questions which, for thirty years, neo-liberalism encouraged us to [ignore.]
(Goodbye to All That? On the Failure of Neo-Liberalism and the Urgency of Change, 2010, p 36)
Joseph Stiglitz (1943):
[It] is not surprising that policies based on models that depart as far from reality as those underlying the Washington Consensus so often led to failure.
(Nobel Prize Lecture, 8 December 2001)
… John Williamson's original 1989 formulation [of the Washington Consensus advised policy-makers to:]
One recent study of [economic output] and consumption since 1870 has identified
(p 342)
(The Ascent of Money, Penguin, 2008)
Robert Manne (1947)
Just as stagflation fatally undermined the Keynesian social-democratic consensus, so too will the combination of the Great Recession and the growing recognition of the destructive role played by neo-liberalism in inhibiting an effective response to catastrophic climate change eventually discredit the idea at the heart of neo-liberalism: the faith in the magic of the free market. …
[However, there] are two important differences between the circumstances surrounding the end of the Keynesian era in the late 1970s and the present unravelling of neo-liberalism.
When the Keynesian consensus collapsed, a party-in-waiting existed, ready to seize its chance.
No equivalent anti-neo-liberal party exists today.
Old-style socialism is dead.
Left-of-centre neo-Keynesians are far less ideological, far more divided and far more cautious than their neo-liberal adversaries.
Even more importantly, at the moment of the neo-liberal collapse, humanity confronts the diabolical problem of climate change.
Those who inherit the post-neo-liberal world will be obliged not merely to strive to reconcile the hope for renewed prosperity with the quest for domestic and global social justice.
They will also be obliged to reconcile both these ambitions with the gravest challenge humankind has ever faced.
No one yet knows what the new era will look like or what it will eventually be called.
Only one thing seems, at present, reasonably certain.
At the end of the era of free-market faith, we will be in a far better position to turn our attention to the kinds of ethical and environmental questions which, for thirty years, neo-liberalism encouraged us to [ignore.]
(Goodbye to All That? On the Failure of Neo-Liberalism and the Urgency of Change, 2010, p 36)
The Washington Consensus
Joseph Stiglitz (1943):
[It] is not surprising that policies based on models that depart as far from reality as those underlying the Washington Consensus so often led to failure.
(Nobel Prize Lecture, 8 December 2001)
Niall Ferguson (1964)
… John Williamson's original 1989 formulation [of the Washington Consensus advised policy-makers to:]
- Impose fiscal discipline;
- Reform taxation;
- Liberalize interest rates;
- Raise spending on health and education;
- Secure property rights;
- Privatize state-run industries;
- Deregulate markets;
- Adopt a competitive exchange rate;
- Remove barriers to trade;
- Remove barriers to foreign direct investment.
One recent study of [economic output] and consumption since 1870 has identified
- 148 crises in which a country experienced a cumulative decline in GDP of at least 10% and
- 87 crises in which consumption suffered a fall of comparable magnitude,
(p 342)
(The Ascent of Money, Penguin, 2008)
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