Category Archives: Articles

Help! Help! I’m being regulated

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The Report of the Independent Inquiry into the Media and Media Regulation by Ray Finkelstein (which I shall henceforth refer to as RIIMMR, more enthusiastically had it come in holographic form) was released about 3 weeks ago1.

One of its more interesting recommendations appeared to be that blog sites having 15,000 hits per year or more would fall under the jurisdiction of the hypothetical News Media Council. This has a personal interest for me, because Dave’s Archives would be caught in this net (along with, I imagine, thousands of other small blogs). The NMC does not yet exist, but according to RIIMMR it would:

…set journalistic standards for the news media in consultation with the industry, and handle complaints made by the public when those standards are breached.

Now, the Internet, having largely been a bastion of libertarianism ever since its inception, tends to Really Hate this sort of thing. Libertarians tend to rally against any sort of regulation, no matter what context it may occur in.

To be fair to them, 15,000 hits is a very low threshold indeed, and doesn’t sound particularly workable. To be fair to RIIMMR, however, that’s not quite the whole story. The actual text says this (paragraph 11.67):

There are practical reasons for excluding from the definition of ‘news media’ publishers who do not have a sufficiently large audience. If a publisher distributes more than 3000 copies of print per issue or a news internet site has a minimum of 15 000 hits per annum it should be subject to the jurisdiction of the News Media Council, but not otherwise. These numbers are arbitrary, but a line must be drawn somewhere.

The implications of that last sentence (my emphasis) are rather missing from the analysis so far (as far as I can tell). Although clumsily-worded and with insufficient consideration, RIIMMR is clearly not proposing a threshold of 15,000 hits; that figure is merely an example. To compare, 3,000 copies per issue for a weekly print publication would come to 156,000 physical copies per year (and each of those is much more substantial unit of exposure than a mere “hit”). It is unlikely the authors intended these numbers to be taken seriously at all. They are are plainly leaving any deliberation on the actual criteria to whoever comes next.

I fancy I can hear the echoes of the aftermath of the Andrew Bolt racial discrimination case. Then, so much of the edifice of our democracy seemed to hinge, for reasons unknown, on Bolt’s inalienable right to launch vicious, unprincipled and unprovoked attacks in a major newspaper on a group of perfectly respectable individuals. All our freedoms were at risk, it seemed, when it turned out that Bolt had to pay the ultimate penalty: a public apology for being an arseclown.

So, without jumping to conclusions, let’s just sit back for a moment and work through the issue.

My first major criticism is that RIIMMR does not appear to establish any solid, explicit reason for extending the regulatory process to blogs. Perhaps the case could be made, but RIIMMR does not really make it; blogs seem somewhat incidental to the main focus. RIIMMR does point out (paragraphs 5.106-5.110) that “defamation is not an effective check on journalistic excesses” due to long delays, costs, and complexities, but this is an argument for overall media regulation in general. RIIMMR also points out (paragraph 4.17) that people don’t trust blogs nearly as much as news sites anyway. Presumably, then, issuing corrections on blogs is not quite as crucial as for professional news organisations. I also personally hold hopes that, in the long run, projects like Hypothes.is will succeed. If they do, they may prove more workable than any government-backed media regulator.

Nonetheless, let’s say for the sake of the argument that we do have a good reason to regulate blogs. What practical problems, if any, might there be with regulating blog sites in the manner proposed by RIIMMR?

To keep things in perspective, we’re not talking about punitive measures to silence dissent for political ends. The News Media Council would be government-funded, but otherwise independent2. Its powers would be as follows (paragraph 11.74):

  • To require publication of a correction.
  • To require withdrawal of a particular article from continued publication (via the internet or otherwise).
  • To require a media outlet to publish a reply by a complainant or other relevant person.
  • To require publication of the News Media Council’s decision or determination;
  • To direct when and where publications should appear.

And the NMC would not be able to fine you (paragraph 11.76).

There should be no power to impose fines or award compensation. Powers of this kind are likely to involve constitutional difficulties. In any event, inevitably they will make the complaints-handling process more complex and time-consuming. One of the main advantages of the proposed News Media Council will be lost. The incentive to resolve a complaint quickly will also be lost.

The proposed remedies do not strike me as inherently Orwellian in themselves. They are not punishments. It would not be especially difficult for anyone running a WordPress blog (like this one), for instance, to perform any of the actions mentioned.

That said, there are practical problems to overcome in administration. How would the NMC actually contact a blogger? Owners of small sites often do not list any contact details on the site itself suitable for official/legal correspondence. If the blogger holds a .au domain name, the details are there for the taking from the domain name registrar. Web hosting companies within Australia could also probably be compelled to divulge a blogger’s postal address. However, any blog with a non-.au domain and hosted outside Australia is potentially beyond reach, even if all the content is Australian (whatever you consider that to mean) and the blogger lives and works in Australia. This is the case for any blog hosted at wordpress.com or other such sites providing ready-to-go blogs, and anything posted on most social media sites.

RIIMMR declares (in paragraph 11.69) that:

…if an internet news publisher has more than a tenuous connection with Australia then carefully drawn legislation could enable the News Media Council to exercise jurisdiction over it.

This seems rather optimistic. In reality, bloggers would need much more than a “tenuous” Australian connection to be subject to regulation, no matter how the legislation is written. (We’ve had similar arguments before, such as back in 2001 over our ability or lack thereof to ban child pornography on the Internet.)

A related problem occurs in trying to determine whether a blog is “big enough” to fall within NMC jurisdiction. If one criterion is a threshold number of hits per year, then the NMC first needs to acquire that data. Australian hosting companies might be forced to report it, but any foreign hosting company won’t have to. Thus, NMC jurisdiction will be impossible to determine in many cases. Where contact details are available, could the NMC compel an Australian blogger to reveal their own traffic statistics? That opens a whole other can of worms. What if a blogger doesn’t collect those statistics, or doesn’t know how to find them, or simply makes them up? And in any case, what if a potential complainant realises that they can cause a blog to be subject to media regulation simply by reloading the page a few thousand times (with or without a script)?

Nonetheless, suppose the NMC can contact bloggers as needed, and suppose we can resolve jurisdiction issues. Most bloggers write for free in their spare time, and many probably do not have the time or energy to comply with formal regulatory and legal processes. Many more may find the regulatory process intimidating, and overcompensate for the complaint received by ceasing to blog altogether. Further, if the regulatory process imposes hard deadlines on responses to complaints (as it would probably have to), casual bloggers might find themselves in legal hot water simply by forgetting to check their mail for a few days.

You could perhaps devise a more sophisticated set of criteria to distinguish between high-volume blogs that ought to be equipped to deal with complaints and smaller blogs that aren’t. I don’t know what this would look like, and it would require a great deal of thought.

There are also countermeasures that a small blog can take if the blogger is inconvenienced by or philosophically opposed to regulation. The simplest option is to move the site to an off-shore hosting company, to hide traffic statistics and contact details. This would only work as a pre-emptive measure, prior to the blog itself being brought to the attention of the NMC, before the NMC can acquire the details it needs.

But there is another, more dangerous consequence that may apply if the NMC attempts to exercise its power to “require withdrawal of a particular article from continued publication”. Censorship is a hot button issue for the online community. The interest generated by anything perceived to be censorship can lead to much wider dissemination of the material in question, and possibly active retaliation. I don’t agree with this mentality in many cases (because there are good reasons to not publish certain information that have nothing to do with manipulating the public), but we can’t ignore its existence. If the material in question is indeed something that is not in the public interest, then trying to have it removed might perversely cause more harm than good. Opponents of regulation may look to actively facilitate precisely this sort of event, and so any small-time blogger may be capable of triggering a privacy/defamation nightmare.

This perhaps isn’t a problem where large organisations are concerned, because people are naturally less sympathetic towards them. We are used to the idea that they should be held to account. However, the NMC ought to be extremely cautious when wielding that particular power where bloggers are concerned. Its other powers (e.g. to “require publication of a correction”), while perhaps still not greatly appreciated by the blogger, might avoid the same level of discontent and retaliation.

You might think, if you agree with me so far, that I’ve raised enough problems to comprehensively damn the notion of regulating blogs. However, I’m reluctant to say it can’t be done, given enough forethought. I don’t think I would suffer for it, in principle.

Yet, the notion of regulating online articles may be overtaken by other events, described in my previous post. If Hypothes.is can produce a working prototype — a peer review system for the Internet — and if it can attract a critical mass of users, then the News Media Council may be obsolete.

  1. I’m a bit late to the party, but the wheels of government do turn rather slowly. [↩]
  2. Cynicism and paranoia notwithstanding, there are various existing government-funded institutions in Australia that aptly and routinely demonstrate their independence from the political considerations of the government. [↩]

Non-consensual wisdom

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Previously, Shane Greenup brought to my attention two very interesting software projects, with somewhat similar goals: his own rbutr (currently in beta testing), and Dan Whaley’s Hypothes.is (currently being planned and prototyped).

Rbutr (pronounced “rebutter”) allows its user base to link together web pages that rebut one another. These links eventually form conversation chains and webs that may span any number of websites, without needing or seeking the consent of the website owners. I, as a blogger, would have no control (or, at least, no veto) over rbutr links connecting my blog posts to someone else’s refutation of them, but these links would be available for any reader (who uses rbutr) to see and follow.

Hypothes.is has the even more ambitious goal of providing an “annotation layer” for the Internet. Any arbitrary passage of text (as well as other media types, including images, video and audio) within any web page may be adorned with a critical remark, visible to anyone else using the software, again without the consent of the web site owner. It aims to be a fine-grained peer-review system for, well, everything.

The minds behind Hypothes.is are open about the fact that others have tried and failed (to varying extents) in the goal of creating a “web annotator”. However, they seem very determined to identify and learn from past mistakes. Perhaps the most important of these has been the lack of quality control in creating annotations. In a previous post I mentioned a similar project called Dispute Finder. I now gather that Dispute Finder’s database itself may have been overrun by misinformation. As one article explains:

Third, and most critical in my thinking, there will be [in Hypothes.is] an extensive reputation system to qualify and rank comments based on the expertise of the commenter. The lack of this was part of what doomed an earlier project called Dispute Finder. I thought for a while that it would evolve into the tool skeptics needed, but very quickly the data in that tool was awash in conspiracy theories and other nonsense, with no way provided to sort by quality.

Hypothes.is is bringing together a pool of experts to determine how to create a “reputation model” to prevent this sort of thing from happening again. After all, Wikipedia seems to manage commendably well to resist incursions from interest groups1. Even the Slashdot moderation system seems to successfully raise up interesting and insightful comments at the expense of mundane and simplistic ones. I feel that our collective intelligence, though sometimes disorganised, is often under-appreciated.

Projects like this might prove an attractive middle road between (a) the Internet as a anarchic incubator of (mis-)information, and (b) the Internet as an oppressively-sanitised, centrally-regulated newspaper. Join the dots, for instance, between Hypothes.is and the current debate over media regulation in Australia. Libertarian-minded newspapers and bloggers take furious offence to any suggestion that their activities should be overseen by The Government.

It would be hard to mount quite the same argument, with quite the same emotive imagery, against Hypothes.is or rbutr. While non-consensual, there is certainly no coercion involved — no fines, no censorship, no forced apologies, etc. There is nothing here that need be sanctioned by those in power. The system operates on a purely informative level. Affected websites are not required to do anything, and nobody is required to use the system in the first place. Such systems can only succeed if people choose to use them. That (presumably) will only happen as long as they meet a socially/psychologically acceptable level of reasonableness and transparency.

But neither is Hypothes.is or rbutr a “toothless tiger”. It would surely be a blow to authors’ and editors’ egos and credibility to have third-party corrections publicly scribbled over their otherwise majestic prose. They would have to contend with new, publicly-known metrics that assess aspects of their intellectual integrity, not just “hits” and the like that demonstrate their popularity. They would no longer enjoy the same flexibility with the truth, considering that their errors may be almost immediately visible. Any third-party annotations could easily become the most attention-grabbing parts of an article, destroying at a glance whatever the original (accidental or deliberate) misinformation may have been.

As a result, there would surely some backlash from tabloid newspapers and bloggers upon discovering that they no longer have absolute control over what their readers read when visiting their sites. They might even consider it a threat to their business model. Operators like Andrew Bolt certainly seem to make a career out of saying things that need to be corrected (while at the same time exhibiting extraordinary defensiveness).

If it works, Hypothes.is could initially make a lot of people very, very angry. There could be lawsuits — particularly of the defamation variety, I imagine — and that could be a problem for a non-profit organisation. But, if it gets that far, the idea of a peer-reviewed Internet has already won.

 

  1. That isn’t to say I’d rely on the quality of Wikipedia, necessarily. However, for a publicly-editable resource, it is curiously bereft of the kind of backhanded misinformation and puerile simplicity you find in many — even professional — online news articles or blog posts, and the outright lunacy you find in the comments section underneath (present company excepted, of course). [↩]

Horrifying pixelated photos of Bob Katter emerge

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It appears that some disreputable person has been mud-raking, after our hitherto good friend Bob Katter released a political ad showing a shocking, pixelated photo of two guys hugging (to bring our outraged attention to evils of gay marriage).

Now, take a look at these revealing photos of Katter himself, and see if you aren’t as deeply offended as I was.

That Katter could hypocritically engage in such perverted pixelation is an affront to all right-minded conservatives. He must apologise immediately to Campbell Newman, to his Queensland electorate, and not least to the pixels themselves.

Curing viral misinformation

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A great deal of mischief is caused, regularly, by viral misinformation. Factoids that support one side of any controversial issue are rapidly copied and pasted many times over (the “echo chamber”). By the time anyone manages to marshal the truth into a coherent response, it’s too late — the lie has convinced enough people for it to become self-reinforcing. Everyone can probably name some examples of this, particularly in day-to-day national politics.

I can’t help but quote Churchill:

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

(Given the Internet, this actually seems rather conservative.)

For me, the frenzied reaction in 2009 to the hacked CRU emails springs to mind. All manner of nefarious interpretations were placed on isolated snippets of private correspondence of climate scientists, before anyone in a position to understand the emails’ context (or at least the lack thereof) could conduct an honest evaluation. And in cases like this, the lies are often more complete than the truth, and certainly more interesting.

I don’t have an exact model of how this process unfolds. However, I suspect that, if we sat down and analysed a sample of propagated misinformation, we’d find that important parts of the original wording have largely been preserved, with very little paraphrasing. Misinformation only manages to propagate so fast because higher cognitive levels1 are (probably) never reached in the initial hours of propagation. This means that the propagation of misinformation is largely a mechanical process (not a creative one), which places it within the reach of automated or semi-automated analysis.

To come to the point, we can and should devise a tool to automatically detect this misinformation, and build it into the web browser — a browser extension. It should highlight and annotate misinformation in any web page the user views, based on a regularly-updated database. There are a few sites already dedicated to correcting misinformation (Snopes, Skeptical Science, etc.), and they are certainly invaluable, but a greater prize is to have misinformation annotated without any immediate human effort at all.

I’ve been toying with this idea for over a year, considering how to engineer communication between the browser extension and the database, how to provide flexibility in searching for different types of misinformation, while avoiding software security vulnerabilities, etc. (I should probably have written a prototype by now, but paid work took priority.)

It turns out — unsurprisingly — that others have considered some of these issues as well. The existing research tool Dispute Finder is very similar to what I’d envisaged. (It was well reported back in 2009, but clearly escaped my attention at the time). However, that project has apparently ended, and its principal investigator Rob Ennals has moved on. The Firefox browser extension has been removed, so I haven’t seen it in action, and presumably the database is no longer available either. The project did get as far as conducting user evaluations of the software. Perhaps Dispute Finder was only intended to have a fixed lifetime, or perhaps the authors decided that the project was not sufficiently successful.

Skeptical Science has its own Firefox browser extension, but this is climate-change-specific, and so is most likely to be used by those who consciously and actively accept the reality of climate change. That’s not to say it isn’t useful, but its effects on public discourse are probably indirect.

A generic “lie detector” tool might have a disproportionately greater impact on public discourse compared to a domain-specific tool. The generic tool would cover a much greater array of misinformation, and as a result would probably also gain wider acceptance. For instance, at least some of those who don’t particularly care about or believe climate science may nonetheless choose to use the generic tool for its treatment of other issues. (Hard core denialists of any stripe may complain about the “anomalous” treatment of their pet topics. Such complaints might be a blessing in disguise, actually boosting awareness.)

In fact, there are really two pieces of software here: the browser extension itself and the database. Given an appropriate means of communication, they could be developed quite independently.

The source code for Dispute Finder (previously “Think Link”) seems to be available here. I still intend to write my own independently, because I have different views on the technical architecture, which I may elucidate in future. The research findings of the Dispute Finder / “Confrontational Computing” project are certainly worth pondering, though. It would be a waste to ignore the experience gained, and it seems too good an idea to give up on.

  1. Bloom’s taxonomy breaks cognition into distinct levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. The “knowledge” level is pure rote learning, while “evaluation” represents critical thinking. [↩]

Hopes for 2012

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Here’s a bit of everything for the new year — some hopes for what we could and should be doing as a nation, in no particular order.

We must address the asylum seeker debate with decency, maturity and humility. We should accept many more refugees, and at the same time encourage other countries to do so too. There’s really very little downside to this, save for the political ramifications of xenophobia. The world collectively might not be interested in finding a safe home for all its refugees, and so if we let refugees come to us, they will certainly continue to do so. We might prefer that their lives were not further jeopardised by the journey, but, having arrived, it’s an utter perversion of human decency for us to turn them away, no matter how much we’d like to discourage further risky voyages. We must not create disincentives that rely on penalising innocent people; we have no right to play chess with human beings.

We must get some perspective on the economy; it is not a blanket reason for putting aside all other problems. Yes, it’s important. No, we are not teetering on the edge of starvation. Panic is precisely the thing that causes economic problems in the first place. Basically, let the disinterested economic experts make rational, progressive decisions based on careful, objective modelling, and ensure there is a safety net for the poor. Everyone else, suck it up.

We must continue to insist that our politicians get off their conservative arses and legalise same-sex marriage. This is truly a no-brainer. The arguments against it are utterly, unequivocally spurious, and will dissipate like so much hot air once the requisite legislation is passed. Nobody opposes same-sex marrige for any substantive reason, but basically just “because”. Once legalised, the whole “debate” will be relegated to the inane murmurings of ineffectual dinosaurs. (Do politicians fear a backlash from voters angry that their marriages are suddenly devoid of meaning following the gender requirements being dropped?)

For the love of humanity can we please redouble efforts to improve the health and living standards of those living in remote Aboriginal communities? Of course it won’t be done in a year. It’s not just about grand rhetorical gestures — though these have their place — and it’s certainly not about sending in the army. We have a lot of smart, dedicated people who have been on the case for some time, and surely by now we’ve learnt a thing or two about what can usefully be done, given sufficient government funding.

The climate change debate is not over, and won’t be for decades. We must not lose sight of the fact that the goal, in the end, is zero (or even negative) carbon emissions. The purpose of a carbon price is not simply to reduce emissions, but ultimately to price them out of existence. To make this work, alternatives must exist. Australia should, by all rights, be a world-leader in solar energy. We could be a world-leader in all kinds of renewable energy. Surely there is much more scope for public and private funding of renewable energy research. We might only contribute 1.5% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, but renewable energy research could help reduce everyone’s emissions, not just our own.

Recycled drinking water — get used to the idea, people. Water efficiency is vastly more important than your squeamishness; there’s really no rational objection. Even now, the water you drink has already passed through the digestive tracts of a trillion different organisms, without any technological assistance. Water recycling is the lowest-hanging fruit for securing our water supplies (especially in places like Perth that are drying out). Why would we ignore it in favour of energy-intensive desalination  or enormous engineering works to transport water from thousands of kilometres away? Yes, we can build wind farms, tidal generators, etc. to power desalination plants, but we could be using that power to replace coal, not just to replace water.

The location of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) — the world’s largest telescope, and one of the world’s largest scientific projects — will be decided in 2012: either Australia or South Africa. Let’s step back from the parochial contest. Australia might not get it, but would this be such a terrible outcome, all things considered? Maybe Africa would benefit more from this project than Australia. Besides the raw economics, the presence of such visible, cutting edge science must have some inspirational effect. Scientists can travel, but for young Africans trying to discern their opportunities in life, a local SKA would surely leave an impression.1

Finally, in an Olympic year, let’s not lose sight of our non-sporting heroes. A nation defined by sport is a nation not defined by its doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers and other professionals. Sport is exciting, and important in its own way, but not really on the same scale as curing illness, defending human rights, exploring the universe and creating things that have never existed before.

Now, you lot, get started on that while I take a holiday.

  1. The same would be true of young Australians, but we are relatively spoiled for choice. [↩]

Glossary of politics

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I thought I’d iron out some common appropriations of English words and phrases as used by politicians and journalists. Let me know if you have any more suggestions.

accountability. 1. (n.) The state of being duly sniped at while virtuously refraining from voicing any counterargument that would draw attention to the ridiculousness of the snipes. 2. hold to account (v.) To uphold democracy by sniping at one’s opponents.

ban (v.) To voice an opinion that something is perhaps not entirely constructive. Examples include: (a) to suggest that Lord Monckton is not conducive to an informed debate on climate change, and (b) to suggest that junk food advertising during children’s TV programming is not conducive to public health. Also, fascism.

balance (n.) A journalistic ideal whereby truth and rationality are kept in check by things that aren’t true or rational.

come clean (v.) In response to an innocuous misunderstanding, to suddenly, unreservedly and inexplicably admit the most outlandishly horrible interpretation of events. This is entirely hypothetical but nonetheless widely anticipated, as shown by its most common usage, “When will _____ come clean on …?”. For instance, in response to the question, “When will the minister come clean on budget figures?”, said minister may choose to either truthfully describe the dry nuances of the budget, or “come clean” by spontaneously blurting out that tax revenue is being siphoned off for secret genetic experiments on pregnant mothers.

debate. 1. (n.) A choreographed joint press conference held by exactly two people who hate each other. 2. (in parliament) (v.) To toe the line by reiterating talking points, after all decision making has concluded.

democracy (n.) A system of government in which the protagonist wins.

free speech (n.) The right of the media to report in an unrestricted fashion anything that is misleading, voyeuristic, harmful to powerless individuals, or demonstrably false.

hypocrisy (n.) An assumed failure to adhere to someone else’s distorted interpretation of one’s own principles. Hence, a hypocrite is a person who has principles that are possible to misinterpret.

mandate (n.) An obligation of government to behave according to whoever is talking.

message. 1. (n.) A narrative invented by politicians to alleviate journalists from their own jobs. 2. send a message (v.) To commit an act of extraordinary and disproportionate stupidity in the blind hope that others will back off.

not rich (adj.) Having a second percentile income (excluding those who can’t work or can’t find work).

political correctness (n.) A diffuse, pathological quality of all progressive social movements that utterly devastates the lives of the well-off.

public interest (n.) The set of things that people will pay money for despite their better judgement. Hence, the sexual activities of famous people are in the public interest, whereas information on their public responsibilities is not.

tax (n.) Anything complicated done by the government that involves money. Hence, poker machines involve money, so any government policy concerning poker machines is a tax.

values (n.) A set of unspecified attributes we possess that makes us better than everyone else. Hence, a “values”-based electoral campaign is one in which voters are simply reminded of how wonderfully amazing they are.

win (in a debate) (v.) To voice arguments with which the speaker broadly agrees.

The land of marking

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Those less fortunate among us are, on occasion, forcibly sent to a distant (and somewhat two-dimensional) realm of existence to undertake grueling mental labour: the marking of student submissions.

I have mapped this land from what little remains of my mind after many hours crossing its ragged terrain, with naught but a red pen and enormous supplies of chocolate.

A traveller’s guide to CHOGM Security Area

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I had a nice lunch today in a little place called CHOGM Security Area.

This is, in fact, a microstate similar to the Vatican City, though it requires a little explanation. CHOGM Security Area (CSA) is an Indeterminocracy; it has many different leaders (including both Prime Ministers and Presidents), none of whom have any power over each other. Nonetheless, civil disturbance is kept to a minimum as fully half of the population is employed in the nation’s pervasive security force. (The other half seems to consist of the leaders themselves, and some slightly dazed Australian tourists, like myself.)

It was this security force that won a brief war against neighbouring Australia on the night of Thursday 27 October, to secure CSA independence. Despite the size disparity, CSA forces rapidly overwhelmed the Australian resistance. An uneasy peace now exists between the two sides. The flag of one of CSA’s leaders – the Queen – flies over Government House, though some holdouts in other parts of CSA territory defiantly continue to fly Australian flags. To save face, the Australian government now claims that the annexed territory was voluntarily gifted to CSA in the spirit of bilateral co-operation. Thus, today marks the inaugural CHOGM Security Area Independence Day. However, I have since learnt that a renewed offensive by CSA forces may take place tomorrow to capture the highground at King’s Park.

The main street running through CSA is The Terraces. Unfortunately, CSA is largely inaccessible by car, except for security personnel and the various leaders (which, admittedly, is most of the population). However, a number of buses do take tourists on sight-seeing tours. I attempted to see CSA on bike. On passing through the Australia-CSA border checkpoint, I was instructed to dismount. Not knowing CSA laws or customs, I obliged, though later discovered that cycling in general is permitted. I briefly feared my cycling top being mistaken for one of the hundreds of fluorescent yellow uniforms worn by security personnel, but nobody questioned me. Possibly that colour is a sign of privilege in this unusual society.

Accommodation in CSA is essentially non-existent for tourists, though there is a rudimentary camping site a short distance across the border in Forrest Place. I cannot personally comment on the level of service there (having planned a day-trip), but I suspect it may be rather noisy at times.

It was a little deflating to finally leave CHOGM Security Area. There was still much to learn about how a country with so many leaders can possibly get anything done. However, for a taste of something a little different, I can highly recommend it.

Unhinging the Bolt

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I’m going to contradict myself on Andrew Bolt. In a previous post, I defended Bolt’s right to free speech, as have so many others, in the face of his court case. At the time, my esteemed nemesis, the Slightly Disgruntled Scientist, came to a different view. Since the judgement, I find myself changing my mind, and I feel I ought to say something.

David Marr eloquently describes just how low Bolt actually sank, and also gives this important context:

The nine [who took Bolt to court] chose not to sue. They did not want damages but a public correction and a promise not to print such stuff again. So they brought an action under the Racial Discrimination Act, which has embedded in it a strong freedom-of-speech defence: insulting or humiliating people because of their race or colour is not unlawful when it is done “reasonably and in good faith” in pursuit of a matter of public interest.

Jonathan Holmes maintains that this is nonetheless about free speech, and discusses the relevant sections from the Act: 18C and 18D. Section 18C describes the kinds of behaviours considered racially intolerant and thus unlawful. Section 18D overrides it, making allowances for (basically) anything done, as Marr quotes, “reasonably and in good faith”.

Holmes is concerned that Justice Bromberg has set the bar too high, making 18D essentially useless:

[Justice Bromberg] specifically mentions, not just the wrong facts, but “the derisive tone, the provocative and inflammatory language and the inclusion of gratuitous asides.”

In other words, if you want the protection of section 18D of the act when writing about race in a way that’s likely to offend, you need to be polite, not derisive, calm and moderate rather than provocative and inflammatory, and you must eschew ‘gratuitous asides’.

If you did all that, of course, you’d be unlikely to offend anyone in the first place. So there doesn’t seem much point in section 18D. And you’d also struggle to express your view in a way that would attract readers in a popular newspaper.

But consider Justice Bromberg’s whole sentence (in paragraph 425):

The lack of care and diligence is demonstrated by the inclusion in the Newspaper Articles of the untruthful facts and the distortion of the truth which I have identified, together with the derisive tone, the provocative and inflammatory language and the inclusion of gratuitous asides. For those reasons I am positively satisfied that Mr Bolt’s conduct lacked objective good faith.

I have underlined the parts quoted directly by Holmes, and made bold certain parts not quoted. To my untrained, unqualified eye, Holmes is misreading the judgement. From my reading, Justice Bromberg is not suggesting that offensive language in itself renders 18D inapplicable; he is talking about offensive language in the context of untruths and distortions. The combination of those two is damning in a way that neither can be by itself. To me, it seems entirely possible that the protections of 18D could apply to anyone who (a) is wrong but avoids derision, provocation, etc. or conversely (b) is right but in a derisive, provocative, etc. manner.

Thus, I have no problem imagining, hypothetically, that Sections 18C and 18D might both apply. That is, someone may be insulted, offended, humiliated or intimidated (18C) by material that is (a) wrong but politely worded, or (b) right but derisively worded (18D). (In fact, people can often be insulted and offended by things that are both correct and polite.)

I do have a great deal of respect for Holmes. Maybe I’m misreading the judgement and Holmes is correct. Even so — even if the Racial Discrimination Act is too broad and infringes genuine free speech — consider the consequences for those violating the act. As Malcolm Farnsworth points out, in an article delightfully named “Help, help, I’m being repressed“:

There is no penalty for Bolt.  Removal of two blog posts and an apology will satisfy Justice Bromberg. It’s slap on the wrist time, but the confected outrage has poured forth.

So what are we getting worked up over? Why should we fear this judgement, when the most onerous consequence of engaging in racially offensive speech is the requirement for an apology?

I think we’ve been programmed by contemporary political narratives to treat free speech as one of those places where, perversely, we stop thinking. We exhibit such conditioned deference to the term ”free speech” that we consider it an absolute right. As a result, we have a tendency to focus on the most minute of infringements. It’s all-or-nothing, we assume. The pedants in all of us seek out the most trivial, technical, legalistic injustices. We then swing wildly into conspiracy theorist mode, and extrapolate this to the whole of human experience, imagining that tyrannical oppression is upon us.

Of course, free speech has never been an absolute right; not in the freest societies on Earth. We are constrained by myriad factors in what we can say, which makes worrying about technical infringements all the more ridiculous. Defamation law is the closest approximation to the Racial Discrimination Act, and we don’t blink when people are sanctioned for spreading malicious untruths to damage the reputations of others. As the Slightly Disgruntled Scientist puts it:

The difference is that defamation affects one person. Humiliation based specifically on sexuality, gender, ethnicity, or any other class of institutional marginalisation affects (a) the person targeted, and (b) any other member of such a group. Gay people still have to choose between publicly disclosing incredibly private information up front, or not running for any kind of publicly scrutinised office. Indigenous Australians now have to consider just whether their skin is dark enough to go for, say, an Aboriginal liason position, or risk being targeted by the likes of Bolt (who implicitly undermines the legitimacy of such positions, with the consequence of further marginalisation of a whole group of people).

Now, I do think that free speech is essentially about protecting our right to say things that others would prefer remained unsaid. Powerful political parties and interest groups do tend to find certain facts and opinions inconvenient, and have certain means of persuasion that need to be countered by legal protections. But it’s hard to find a justification for speech that is racially offensive and factually bogus and not in good faith. This sort of thing does not serve democracy at any level, and in fact causes real damage.

If Mr Bolt’s right to speak freely has been infringed, it is the most minor infringement imaginable. He has maliciously spread damaging untruths in publications read by millions of people, and been given a slap on the wrist.

Manoeuvring the boats

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In a previous post, I described Labor as the “architects of unconscionable incompetence”, specifically with respect to the Malaysian Solution, at least temporarily defeated by the High Court. This post is motivated by the latest political manoeuvring on the issue.

I was about to declare myself wrong over the “incompetence” tag (but certainly not the “unconscionable” tag). It occurred to me that perhaps Labor was playing a Machiavellian political game to ensure that the “boat people” moral dilemma went away for good. They would put up with whatever short-term political damage they might incur, on the basis that eventually the policy really would actually stop the boats. If anyone arriving by boat really was transported to a place as hostile to refugees as Malaysia, it can’t have been long before Bowen’s logic – “breaking the people smugglers’ business model” – was borne out. The original crimes – abandoning the most vulnerable to stop anyone else even trying to ask for help – would eventually be forgiven by an amnesic electorate too wrapped up in future political issues. If the boats stopped, then it would no longer be necessary to invoke the policy, and so it would become invisible.

But no, not content to abandon human rights, Labor really does seem to have a political death wish. Once the High Court had made its ruling, it could have been foreseen that Abbott would block any attempt to change the law. He ostensibly wants to “stop the boats” too, and in that capacity the Government’s argument makes sense. Except that’s really not what he wants to do at all; at least, not until he becomes Prime Minister himself. As long as refugees continue to make the voyage from Indonesia to Australian waters, a disconcertingly large proportion of voters will continue to be outraged at the Government’s apparent inability to “protect our borders”, and will (by a trivial process of elimination) look to Abbott instead. Thus, for the moment, Abbott has a crucial political interest, perversely, in ensuring the boats do not stop.

Abbott did not have any power to actually act in this interest until the High Court ruling (along with the Greens’ opposition to off-shore processing). Now that his support is needed, he can casually mull over the effectiveness of any Government proposal, and then vote perversely. The likelihood of Abbott supporting any change is inversely proportional to its likely effectiveness (and legal robustness), because that’s what maximises his political advantage. Bowen has attempted to call him out on this, but Abbott plays the rhetorical game much more skillfully. The Government was extraordinarily foolish to even attempt negotiations under these circumstances.

Now, the Government has an untenable policy – both morally bankrupt and politically dead. If Labor had bitten the bullet and gone with the Left faction’s push for on-shore processing of asylum seekers, their policy would instead have been both (relatively) humane and politically viable. The issue would not have magically disappeared, of course – many “patriots” would continue be outraged at the thought of the hordes of persecuted foreigners being given safety and comfort. But what can be done about this? The issue will not disappear now no matter what the Government does.

Meanwhile, Abbott is seizing the moral high ground (rhetorically, at least) on asylum seekers – something many Liberals have long given up on. His excuse for not supporting the Malaysian Solution is that there are insufficient protections for those sent there. This excuse has the advantage of actually being a perfectly valid reason. I continue to say “excuse” though, because I’ve seen too much political expediency from Abbott to have any faith in his adherence to actual principles. The Malaysian Solution would have been a masterstroke of Coalition genius if Abbott had thought of it. But that’s hypothetical, and not many people are likely to care.

Abbott may yet “slip up” in a moment of uncharacteristic honesty, but I’m not counting on it. Indeed, I can only applaud his rejection of this particular policy, regardless of his actual reasons. I suspect the only way out for the Government is still to abandon off-shore processing, and live with the consequences. Of course, it may prefer its own approach of bludgeoning itself to death.