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Who Does Law and Order?
Tonight I sat and watched, as I always do, the nightly edition of The Drum. The topic turned to gun violence in our own backyard, with the Gillard Government foreshadowing plans to tackle the recent spate of highly publicised gun-related crime, mostly gang related, across Sydney’s west. It was an interesting discussion, coming so soon after the Newtown massacre in the United States of America and in the same week as a report which found that the level of gun ownership in Australia has returned to pre-buyback levels.
Ostensibly, what was actually announced by the Prime Minister today was an examination of what could possibly be achieved by the government under the present legal arrangements. Prime Minister Gillard has given Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare that task and has asked him to bring a list of options to the cabinet table.
Crime is an emotive issue. Talk about cracking down on crime and criminals plays to something deep in our psychological make-up. We as humans love to feel safe. We love to feel as if we are being protected not just by ourselves, but by others, by a sizable and powerful police force there to watch over us.
Now, we all know it’s an election year and law and order is often an election issue. The trouble is, that law and order, under the Australian Constitution, is a concern for the states to wrestle with. And state political parties do make battling crime a big focus at election time and throughout the electoral cycle. The commonwealth government does however have the Australian Federal Police and Customs under its purview, so in that sense, it is not strictly true.
There is something that the discussion seemed to forget and that is what John Howard did in the first year of his time as Prime Minister, after the indescribable horror of the Port Arthur massacre which saw 35 people gunned down. He was not a state Premier, but through discussions with his state colleagues, was able to secure a national ban on automatic weapons and a uniform gun buyback scheme.
By virtue of the fact that law and order and policing is largely a state issue, there really is little that can be done by the federal government on its own. The Gillard Government can however try to negotiate a package of measures with the states for them to implement in their own jurisdictions.
There is however one thing that the government can do unilaterally. They’ve cut funding to Customs and they can, since they no longer wish to return the budget to surplus, restore funding to the crucial agency. Alternatively, or at the same time, extra funds could also be directed to the AFP.
The question of what the states and the federal government can do in terms of powers in a more broad sense is interesting. It would appear that traditional state/commonwealth roles are becoming increasingly blurred, with the commonwealth appearing to want more power and resources at the expense of the states.
And that shift clearly extends to law and order issues, with politicians at the federal level wanting to affect change, or at least be seen to be trying to reduce crime.
Law and order will be an issue during this federal election year and beyond. We just have to get used to it.
More Misguided Industry Policy
The Gillard Government has announced another plan that, in their oodles of wisdom, they believe will perform some truly heroic feats in terms of saving the ailing Australian manufacturing sector.
Prime Minister Julia Gillard, on a visit to OneSteel yesterday, announced that her government would set up an anti-dumping commission to police the dumping of imported goods in Australia which are sold at below cost price. The Prime Minister also announced a doubling of the Customs’ Anti-Dumping squad as part of the plan.
To fund the plan, Australian Customs will receive extra funding of about $24.4 million over four years which will be directed towards furthering the aims of the commission and its investigators.
This plan comes after the Coalition’s announcement in November last year that they would establish a body to investigate anti-dumping if they were occupying the government benches.
According to the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service’ Anti-Dumping website dumping “occurs when goods are exported to Australia at a price that is below the ‘normal value’ of the goods. The website defines the ‘normal value’ of goods as “the domestic price of the goods in the country of export.”
The Customs website acknowledges that dumping is not illegal under international trade agreements, but that “remedial action may be taken where dumping causes (or threatens to cause) material injury to an Australian industry.”
There are a few observations to be made about both the announcement by Prime Minister Gillard and dumping itself.
The first is about the increased bureaucracy as a result of the plan. How a larger public service will substantially resolve what is termed as a problem for Australian industry is uncertain. By virtue of the fact that dumping is not illegal under international trade agreements, surely resolving the vast majority of cases in a positive way for Australian businesses will be a near impossible outcome.
What’s even more sad is that both sides of politics agree that a response needs to be initiated. Both sides of politics want the same kind of action in this area. They both think the same action will provide some significant relief to industry. Of course, industry groups think this will happen too.
Both sides of politics are living in a policy fantasy land akin to being on some kind of LSD trip.
Australian manufacturing, even if regularly successful in prosecuting anti-dumping cases, will still be at a distinct disadvantage compared with Asian companies when it comes to producing and selling cheap goods on a large-scale. Our inputs costs will always be higher than in Asian countries and therefore, so will the costs of our manufactured goods.
Next, why doesn’t someone in government think of the consumers?
Would it not be absolutely fantastic if we could receive even cheaper goods, especially when cost-of-living pressures are impacting on consumers in our domestic marketplace?
Many people have already shifted to online shopping through overseas businesses because of their ability to offer cheaper products than we could ever hope to have offered to us domestically and good on them for doing so. If ever there was an example of consumers being rational, then the decision to shirk Australian businesses is a positive example thereof.
Of course, the response, endorsed by both sides of politics is designed to appear as if they are doing something to support industry. And industry groups actually think the move will help them survive
The reality however, is that there is little that they can, or would be prepared to do in order to really protect what are largely uncompetitive industries in global terms.
Whatever happened to focusing on the things that we are good at as a nation? The areas of the economy where we can actually compete with the world and where we have a competitive advantage.
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