Tucker on the absolute state of this country
9 responses to “Tucker on the absolute state of this country”
-
The creation of the USA was an act of defiance against the colonial power that used to rule it.
Australia was created as a dumping ground for prisoners of the same colonial power and its Constitution was a poorly thought out act of submission to the ideals of the mother country. . Unlike the US Constitution, it was not an act of independence from Great Britain.
Australians, after all, were mostly former prisoners grateful to have been released by their oppressors. In the Australian Constitution, freedom was an abstract concept that did not embrace basic freedoms such as the right to bear arms against oppressive government.
As Carlson observes, the Australian federal government confiscated its citizens’ gun rights in the 1990s, so “there is precisely nothing they can do” about the confiscation of their freedoms in the past two years.
Australians can never be more than prisoners without chains whose freedoms can by confiscated by government at any time. Exactly what you expect of a former prison colony.
A serious democracy would stage a second constitutional convention to fix the errors of the first.
-
The trouble with a second constitutional convention is that it would be dominated by the usual suspects, with the usual results.
A better plan would be to install a flat-tax provision in the Constitution. Governments can’t steal more rights from citizens if their capped incomes leave them unable to pay Vic Plod’s overtime after two weeks of bashing people, especially women.
-
Tom…
The “descendants of convicts” theme is so much bullshit.
Firstly, Australia was not envisioned as a “dumping ground”, but a place in which criminals who did their time, could make new lives away from the rigid class system and old associations that made it virtually impossible for an ex-con to reform his life in England. That is a matter of public record in the writings and speeches of the scheme’s promotors.
However imperfectly it was -at times – carried out, it should not be forgotten that a considerable number of former convicts did make new lives, acquire property and become accepted citizens.Secondly, the number of transported convicts was absolutely swamped by the number of free immigrants attracted by cheap land and gold, during the mid-part of the 19th century. The convict era meant absolutely nothing to them, especially as new money outstripped old money and anyone might be rich with a lucky strike.
Again, it’s a matter of record that many regarded themselves as having an energy and initiative that those still in England lacked, and New Chums were regarded as suspect until they had proved themselves under harder conditions.
As Australia’s most popular writer penned…
“The narrow ways of English folk are not for such as we.
They bear the long-accustomed yoke of staid conservancy.But all our ways, are new and strange
And through our blood there roams.
The vagabonding love of change
That drove us westward of the range….”
A B Paterson. -
Some of the best things we could have done constitutionally to avoid the last 18 months of dystopia:
Break the Federation and reform as a Confederation.
Create more states out of the existing ones.
Give the electorate recall & initiative power.
Have term limits on all officeholders.
Have automatic sunset clauses on all legislation.
Remove the plenary legislative power of State Parliaments.
Collate and reinforce the rights we have under privacy, medical, general human rights, evidence, criminal, constitutional and anti-discrimination law.
Leave a Reply