Just Repeal and Undo

How many readers have noticed this huge failing in so many longstanding, establishment conservative political parties around the democratic world? To start, the Left side of politics when in power will seed or remake some institution. Or it will enact some big-ticket legislative reform. Maybe it’s bringing into being a beefed-up, more potent and renamed Australian Human Rights Commission. Maybe it’s enacting a statutory bill of rights in Victoria, in Queensland, in New Zealand, in Britain. Maybe it’s the whole Tony Blair remaking (and noticeably worsening) of the democratic world’s longest-standing constitutional arrangements, the unwritten British set-up with parliamentary sovereignty at its heart. Or maybe it’s entering into some UN convention or treaty that clearly has the potential to hamstring future democratic decision-making at home. Or maybe it’s Canada’s public funding of ‘Charter of Rights challenges’, namely taxpayer-funded rights-related attacks by aggrieved groups against laws passed by the elected legislature (and which every sentient being knows will be used against conservatives vastly more than against progressive Lefties). Or maybe it’s the creation of taxpayer-funded writers’ festivals, portraiture prizes and the like where conservatives are so rare they call in Attenborough to do a documentary when one is spotted. Or maybe it’s even changes at the public universities to emphasise a litany of identity politics-related essentials – flying four, five or six flags each day; days, weeks or months dedicated to pick-your-favourite supposed victim group; endless land acknowledgements; posters put up to virtue-signal the institution’s tolerance of all DEI groups, while free speech is made a third-order concern.

You see it again and again. The Left side of politics aggressively seeds new institutions. Or it remakes ones already there. It enacts democracy-enervating legislation. Or it enfeebles the elected branches by signing up to supranational treaties and conventions that give unelected and unaccountable elites far too much power. And then, when the Right side gets back into office you get crickets. Nada. Nothing. They simply allow these institutions, laws, treaties, arts festivals, remade universities, every Lefty innovation to carry on. No bureaucracy is disestablished. No treaty withdrawn from. No statute repealed. No writers’ festival defunded. No public broadcaster’s budget slashed, or better yet the whole thing made a subscription service. No fight. No cojones. Just a quiet sort of implicit surrender.

Take the Australian Human Rights Commission (and yes, I know, the Fraser Government stupidly brought in an early, much weaker version of this – just as it was ScoMo who prevaricatingly signed us up to Net Zero). But we have now had decades to see this body in action. Indeed, for well over a decade I have been publicly calling for it to be dismantled. It does nothing for free speech in this country. It supports the s.18C hate speech laws. During what retired UK Supreme Court judge Jonathan Sumption rightly called the biggest inroads on our civil liberties in 200 years – the whole panoply of lockdown thuggery and made-up out of thin air irrational regulations – this body with its grotesquely overpaid commissioners never once objected to any rights-infringement. Not a single one of the thousands from which to choose. And in the Tickle vs Giggle case they supported and funded the trans activist. Not women. Yet nine years of Coalition governments and they did nothing. Heck, they couldn’t even find it in themselves to support Peter Ridd – who lost his job for telling the truth.

But why do nothing about the Human Rights Commission? Just close it down. It not only deserves to be made extinct, it would also be politically popular to do so (outside the corridors of Ultimo, that is). Or what about Queensland’s statutory Bill of rights, opposed by the LNP when Labor brought it in without taking it to an election? But once Crisafulli and Co get into power they just go quiet and leave it there. Exactly as we saw in Victoria with Ted Baillieu’s pusillanimous surrender on the Bill of rights issue. (Does anyone imagine a future Jess Wilson government – we’re imagining here – repealing it? Don’t make me laugh.) Likewise, we saw the same unwillingness to repeal theirs from 14 years of Tory governments in Britain after the Blair constitutional malfeasance. No repeal of the statutory Bill of rights that greatly empowered the unelected judges. No repeal of the statute that lets judges there pick their own successors. No withdrawal from the European Convention. Just abject surrender on all fronts save Brexit (so credit where it’s due). But even with Brexit, once it was half-accomplished the Tories refused to use their new freedoms to break free from the regulatory leviathan that is the European Union – the rich world’s slowest-growing economic area for the last couple of decades and the place Mark Carney wants Canada to somehow join. The same goes, yet again, for the Right side of politics in New Zealand. The Left brings in and the Right cowardly accepts these changes once it gets back into government.

Or look at the Paris Accords. Trump starts his second term and pulls out of Paris, out of the WHO, out of the UN Human Rights Council. Sure, we finally have a Coalition that promises to jettison Net Zero and is proposing detailed policies that will seriously hurt the climate doomsters. But it stops short of pledging to leave Paris. Why? If Paris is just symbolism, and everything that those of us who want much lower electricity prices can be achieved without leaving Paris, well, it’s still hard to fathom why we should stay. Why not cut the umbilical cord to this supranational monstrosity? Because the politics of staying are the politics of One Nation reminding voters that the Libs just look to be a lighter shade of Labor. Right? Meanwhile, if Paris is something more than just symbolism, tell me why we’re not leaving. It is pusillanimity wrapped in stupidity, enveloping a party room with far too many so-called ‘moderates’ who have to be bought off.

Voters like me are just craving bravery and a willingness to repeal, withdraw, dismantle and undo all the Labor seeding of our institutions. Shut the taxpayer tap for the writers’ festivals that can’t find more than one token conservative per year. Ditto for the woeful arts festivals. Show some cojones. Start with shutting down the Australian Human Rights Commission. It is virtually always on the opposite side to me of every political issue going that can plausibly be characterised as a rights-related one. Why are my taxes (in this very high-taxing jurisdiction of Australia) going to pay for this body? It makes the country worse, not better. Heck, why not let Giggle’s Sally Grover decide if it warrants continued existence?

Look, it can be done. Trump has closed down, withdrawn from and defunded all sorts of the Left’s pet projects. There is every sign that Nigel Farage will be aping this approach. The longstanding, established parties of the Right need to start repealing and undoing – or get out of the way so that the Paulines of the world can have a go.

Dr James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at Queensland University. This article was first published in Spectator Australia.