Now, I don’t usually get involved in the nitty-gritty of politics. I don’t know how far my my general sympathies are obvious to readers because I have unorthodox views which mean I don’t fit well into any party camp. Let’s just say it’s very unlikely you’ll ever see me campaigning for the Liberal Party.
But when I saw that Clive Hamilton is going to run as a candidate for Higgins, I was suddenly possessed by an unfamiliar feeling. I want Kelly O’Dwyer to beat Clive Hamilton hands down for the seat of Higgins.
Disclosure: I know Kelly personally, although I haven’t seen her for a few years. I don’t agree with her on many issues, but she’s willing to discuss questions in a cordial way. If there’s one Liberal I’d like to see elected in this country, it’s her. She is strong, smart and articulate. I like her. I note that she has been copping some flak for being young and female. I think that it’s fantastic to see a woman get ahead.
Now on to Hamilton. I’ve never had much time for him. I think that there is a definite place for environmentalism and environmental concerns. But it is a theory of mine that some in the Green movement combine the worst elements of paganism and the worst elements of Christianity.
On the pagan side, I have seen dippy ideas about the great balance of “Mother Nature”, without remembering that in pagan religions, there is a threefold division between Creator, Preserver and Destroyer. Nature is a bitch. Think of cuckoos – laying their own eggs in the nest and throwing out the legitimate eggs so that some other bird has to bring up baby. Or sharks eating baby seals. Or whatever.
I have also discerned a kind of hideous neo-puritanism in the Green movement. Perhaps they have borrowed this from the Christians, but lack any of the compassion which true Christians display. According to this neo-puritanical view, we are all reaping the rewards of our environmental sins, and the only way we can rid ourselves of these sins is self-denial (along with a bit of self-flagellation). We must deny ourselves airplane travel, car travel, big houses, exotic food, procreation, etc etc. (Well, “the masses” must deny themselves these things…of course, those who are elite intellectuals in the Green movement can be trusted to be wise). There is a strong millenarian streak in this brand of environmentalism – the end of the world is nigh unless we take urgent action now. The meek shall inherit the earth because they burn cow dung and do not use electricity. Hamilton typifies that latter category.
Someone in comments at Andrew Norton’s place likened Hamilton to an Old Testament prophet, but I wonder if Saint Paul isn’t a better comparison. There’s that fervour mixed with piety and self-hatred. Like Andrew Norton, Pollytics isn’t impressed either. On the other hand, Guy Rundle thinks he has a chance. and Mark at LP think he has a chance. Mark at LP thinks it’s yet another instance of putting in a high profile candidate which may backfire.
Personally, I would never vote for Hamilton, and Sinclair Davidson’s excellent post at Catallaxy illustrates why. He simply contrasts Hamilton’s statement that he is taking a principled stance with a quotation from a 2007 article by Hamilton in the Courier Mail:
Very few people, even among environmentalists, have truly faced up to what the science is telling us.
This is because the implications of 3C, let alone 4C or 5C, are so horrible that we look to any possible scenario to head it off, including the canvassing of “emergency” responses such as the suspension of democratic processes. [my emphasis added]
This guy is not to be trusted. He thinks that he knows better than anyone else what is good for them. And if they don’t know what’s good for them, he’ll force it down their throats… I wouldn’t touch him with a six foot barge pole. Go Kelly!
Update:
What was I saying about dippy paganism and environmentalism? [Incidentally, I am reliably informed that serious pagans call dippy paganism "fluffwicca", a name which I love]
Andrew Bolt has collected some quotes from Clive Hamilton, including this beautiful ripe one which rather proves my analysis above:
So I think where we’re going is to begin to see a Gaian earth in its ecological, cybernetic way, infused with some notion of mind or soul or chi, which will transform our attitudes to it away from an instrumentalist one, towards an attitude of greater reverence. I mean, the truth is, unless we do that, I mean we seriously are in trouble, because we know that Gaia is revolting against the impact of human beings on it.
[Hamilton on Philosopher's Zone on ABC radio]
58 Comments
What I find pretty extraordinary in the contrast between Hamilton and Nick Griffin.
Hamilton says we may need to suspend democratic freedoms and seems to get away with it. In fact The Green party selects him as a respectable candidate for office.
Both have fascist leanings yet only one of them is treated like a total scum bag.
Present fascist leaning on a far left wing template and you’re respectable. Amazing.
Certainty is the most among the most dangerous of mental diseases which afflict intellectuals.
Hamilton’s involvement in the start of the net-filter push (something the Howard government did RIGHT by rejecting, and KRudd/Conroy have done WRONG) is a big black mark against his name, and very much against the policies of other Greens in parliament.
And frankly, I see a big source of incorrect policy responses is the perversion of the democratic process by thick-walletted lobbyists putting parties in their pockets.
Walked past O’Dwyer’s shopfront on my way home. On your recommendation I might drop in and ask for a set of policy position statements…. but personally, I’m hoping the Democrats put up a candidate… or I’ll have to fall back to voting for Silly Party, Slightly Silly Party, or Monster Raving Loony Party.
Dave, that’s the thing – I live in a blue ribbon electorate, and too often there’s barely a choice in who I can vote for anyway. Once I just got cross and wrote P I G in each of the boxes – there were only three choices, each equally horrid from my point of view.
Hamilton’s involvement in the net-filter is symptomatic of his puritanical leanings. As you note, it’s against the more libertarian social policies of the Green Party.
I agree. Hamilton is woeful for the reasons stated.
This candidacy places all the greens policies to do with speech freedoms, civil rights into disrepute as this far left, neo-fascist and sanctimonious moralizing twerp doesn’t believe in them as he’s said so many times… suspension of democratic rights being one.
Mel and JC in sort of agreement. Will wonders never cease.
Theodora – you beat me to it! Gosh, I was hoping to be controversial, but I guess Hamilton is too widely disliked…
The problem is that being detested by people-of-literacy from both left and right will be promoted to and seen by many voters as a virtue, as “balance”.
When do candidates have to be paid up to the electoral commission? Unless someone else with half-way decent policies enters the race, I’ll have to cough up a couple of hundred bucks so I can vote formally with a clear conscience. But then I’d magically transubstantiate into a bastard! Oh noes!
So the nub of your argument is that he says that in emergency situations, democratic processes might have to be suspended.
IF the premise is granted that warming of that kind would have catastrophic and State-threatening consequences, what exactly is your problem with CH’s views?
You’re a lawyer I presume. Doesn’t the defence power expand and contract? Isn’t s 61 power expansive in times of total emergency? Also, read McHugh’s judgment in Coleman v Power.
Your seem categorically to reject bread and butter law.
The ramifications of Clive Hamilton running for the Greens will be far felt, what ever the result.
Who next will be approached by the Greens to run in seats where Greens have a greater potential in … like Melbourne, Sydney, Wentworth, Bass and a range of other electorates.
Rather than thank Clive Hamilton for lifting Greens profile in Higgins, I must thank the Liberal Party for being a 30% primary opposition, and their choice of leader. Roll on the 2010 Federal Election.
Greens. The Defence Power. I think that says it all, really.
And Dave, you’re dead right: Australia needs a Screaming Lord Such and its very own Monster Raving Loony Party.
Whitefrankblack, I’ve read McHugh J’s judgment in Coleman v Power [2004] HCA 39 and I am unable to see any relevance to the present situation. That case involved freedom of political speech and the limits which governments can impose upon it. Perhaps you are trying to argue that some kind of “appropriate and adapted” test be applied to the suspension of democratic process?
As far as I’m concerned, the Defence Power should be used sparingly, and should not be used to justify massive incursions into the rights of citizens. Indeed, it is worth noting that a majority of the High Court has said in the Communist Party Case that the Defence Power should be used sparingly, and was not a justification for outlawing the Australian Communist Party. Prime Minister Menzies had said that in the case of Communists, normal democratic measures should be suspended because these people represented the “enemy”.
Yes, I am a lawyer. And because of that, I do have a problem with someone who seems to have few qualms about suspending fundamental democratic processes and liberties.
Mel and JC in sort of agreement. Will wonders never cease.
Yea, but if we work hard enough I’m sure it could be turned into a stoush. Recently Mel has sort of become a trainee libertarian and I of course am helping him along. LOl.
No, on a serious note, Hives must have an extraordinary pull when people of different political persuasions are against him.
I keep saying that Hives would be close to being the most unpopular person in Australia.
——————
Green Millennium
You do realize someone else was also talking about 1000 year Reichs and junk like that. You’re carrying an avatar alluding to that as well as supporting a candidate with those sorts of leanings.
You do realize that, right? It’s not an accident, right?
So the nub of your argument is that he says that in emergency situations, democratic processes might have to be suspended.
Yep. Never saw anyone demand democratic processes being suspended when London was having the shit bombed out of it. Did you?
IF the premise is granted that warming of that kind would have catastrophic and State-threatening consequences, what exactly is your problem with CH’s views?
Hives never really put it that way. The bulbous headed fascist is moving the goal posts to the point where catastrophic warming becomes no longer a deep out of the money call option. He’s actually started to turn in into a deep in the money call. In other words he’s framing it as a likely event.
You’re a lawyer I presume. Doesn’t the defence power expand and contract? Isn’t s 61 power expansive in times of total emergency? Also, read McHugh’s judgment in Coleman v Power.
Your seem categorically to reject bread and butter law.
Really, you’re over egging the soufflé. The temp has gone up .65degs over the past century.
Done be scared and don’t let bulbous-head frighten you.
I’m sure CH’s point wasn’t that the suspension of democratic processes is required today, or tomorrow, but that it may one day be. If he meant the former, then I agree with you: he is a lunatic.
As for what you think the defence power *should* be used for, that doesn’t really concern me. The point is that on the basis of current, and as far as I can tell, uncontroversial authority, it could be used to meet a critical threat to the body politic. Bringing up what Menzies thought is no answer, as this is exactly one of the reasons the Cth in ACP Case failed: trying to recite itself into power. But the door is open to the HC taking judicial notice of a particular situation and suspending democratic processes so that those very processes might be saved. And I don’t think anyone would say that it shouldn’t be used sparingly. Which is where McHugh comes in. At [98] he notes that a law that sought to ban all political communication would be valid if that was the only way to save the systems of gvt set up by the Constitution. It is accepted by many people, and not just CH, that sometimes democracy requires extraordinary and undemocratic measures for its preservation.
So if you think he is a nutter and should be disregarded just because he believes in the acceptability of extraordinary emergency measures, I disagree with you.
@JC: take a deep breath. Not everyone sees blog commenting as a blood sport.
Wow. Just, well, wow. I’ve long suspected this bloke was influencing far too many people on both sides of politics. Now he’s contaminated the Greens (who used to be good on things like free speech and not censoring the internet, as Dave points out above).
Don’t be such a drama queen, SL.
It’s true isn’t it? He’s like midas in reverse. He fucks up everything he touches when it comes to policy.
So if you think he is a nutter and should be disregarded just because he believes in the acceptability of extraordinary emergency measures, I disagree with you.
I think he is a nutter and should be disregarded, however I also think he’s a opportunist nutter and ought to be politically body slammed out of the democratic process. He’s basically a left wing fascist type.
As I said London was leveled and no one spoke of suspending the democratic process.
He poisons everything he touches politically and he’ll end up poisoning the greens too which I don’t particularly mind.
Bravo. Just, well, bravo. My commenting was to go beyond just bellowing at a quote taken out of context. But you had to get all Matryoshka in my face and do it again in the comments. So I guess the HCA is ‘contaminated’ as well?
Damn, I am really going to have to start inserting those smilies, Mel, although I think you’ll agree that comment is pretty, ahem, out there.
I do mind him poisoning the Greens, JC, for the simple reason that the Greens were bloody good at sticking it to the puritans in Labor over their internet censorship hoohaa; now they’ve gone and endorsed the loudest puritan of the lot.
I think Hamilton is a twit who has tickets on himself.
Of course I will always listen to what he has to say, and on some things I may agree with him – it all depends. I always try to give everyone a fair hearing.
But on the issue of extraordinary emergency measures, I think he’s wa-a-a-ay out of line, and for me, that means I wouldn’t vote for him if I lived in the electorate of Higgins (which is hypothetical anyway, because I don’t live there).
However, it also means I have less respect for the Greens because they took him on despite their socially libertarian policies.
Can’t speak for Guy on this one, LE, but I don’t think he was in with a show. My post wasn’t opinion/commentary heavy, but I did note that I strongly suspected a local candidate would do better.
Hamilton, as a stack of people have observed, may also be trying to frame it all in terms of The Greens’ view on what the electors of Higgins should be saying about national politics, but that doesn’t mean:
(a) that will stick;
(b) he won’t have to spend a huge amount of time defending his own previously expressed views.
It’s almost a case study in the dangers of selecting a high profile candidate who’s in the opinionating business. I personally think, as I said too, that Hamilton’s views aren’t necessarily the best or only standard to judge his possible worth as a political representative, but that’s the way the game is played in Australia.
Sorry Mark – will put a more nuanced version of your view in the post.
Mark, have updated post, with strikethrough to show what I have deleted – my bad.
WhiteFrank:
What are you smoking, seriously?
Cue ball is an interminable, sanctimonious, sermonizing dickhead and a fascist loon. Why is this too hard to understand after everything he’s said.
he won’t have to spend a huge amount of time defending his own previously expressed views.
Of course he won’t. There’s not enough money in the Fed’s vaults to spin the rancid crap he’s peddled.
Thanks, LE! I was pretty tired when I wrote it, so may not have expressed myself with the desired clarity!
I personally think, as I said too, that Hamilton’s views aren’t necessarily the best or only standard to judge his possible worth as a political representative, but that’s the way the game is played in Australia.
Should we use another method in the future such as the number of hair follicles above his ear lobe.. how many dark freckles one has on their back?
Or perhaps if s/he quacks like a fascist and those quacks sounds fascist then the quacker is possibly a fascist.
I realise now that I thought you did live in Higgins, LE, and have also said so over on LP. Maybe it’s because you know the Liberal candidate… I somehow got it into my head that you lived there. Bugger.
Well, you do have more of an interest than me — at least you’re in Melbourne.
I’m in Higgins. I’d be delighted to meet him. In fact a friend has asked me to help finance someone follow him in a fascist uniform and poke fun at him if he dares to show his Mussolini-like bald head here.
Sorry for sounding like this but that twerp evokes the worst in me.
SL, I’m not too far from Higgins and know a lot of other people who live there (of all political stripes, I should say too). But no, I won’t get a vote in this one. My local member looks depressingly unlikely to retire…
Mark – I was tired when I wrote my post too, brain not functioning at its best these last few weeks. Glargh.
jc – I’d pay to see that.
Benito Hamilton has a sort of ring to it. No? I thought so, along with a fascist uniformed bald guy with a placard making loud, aggressive sounding incoherent comments over a speaker.
Actually, that’s kind of how I imagine you, JC, Herr Bloviatorr.
Wow. Putting the moron into oxymoron…
No actually, democracy doesn’t require these kind of actions – they may be more convenient but they’re neither required nor essential. Suspending habeas corpus was not required to fight the bogus “war on terror” – we have perfectly adequate criminal law that covers violence and conspiracy – it was required to avoid legal and democratic accountability for the terrorist actions taken by our own states (surveillance, kidnap, torture, imprisonment without trial etc).
Mr Kneejerk, can I direct you to [21]?
DEM – touche. You can’t protect freedom by limiting freedom. That’s what’s always struck me as strange about the US going around saying that it’s the champion of democracy and freedom…and then behaving in ways which, to me, are undemocratic and the antithesis of freedom.
jc … Higgins too huh? Wonder if we’ve ever tripped over each other in Glenferrie Rd (although I admit in the last year, my weekends are mostly down in Pt Lonsdale with my grandson and daughter).
If you see a long-haired bearded bespecktackled tree-hugging hippy freak with a laptop near Glenferrie and Wattletree, introduce yourself!
What a cheap slimy comment Frank.
Here’s the thing. I’m not the person making excuses for a cue ball who thinks it would be a good idea to suspend the democratic process and install a fascistic ruler in it’s place. That’s you and bulbous head.
As for cue ball…….
As I recall every single thing he’s discussed has been to remove civil rights……. like closing down part of the Internet or prevent people from doing what they want. Now you’re the one supporting that sort of twerp, Frank. I don’t and in fact I would fight that sort mindset until the end.
It takes a pretty delusional mind to suggest my libertarian instincts are somehow fascist while cue ball (and you) are fun loving freedom worshipers…. making excuses why the democratic process ought to be suspended.
While we’re on that subject, can I ask you who would you install as the great ruler. Do you have anyone in mind?
Not even Nick Griffin from the BNP has suggested crap like bulbous-head has.
Consider the extent of Commonwealth regulation and power over pretty much everything during WWII? Surely that was that a case of protecting freedom by limiting it.
Dave… hahahahahaa… I’m actually down the other end as wifey made us sell up due to the horrors of new development in the street we were living. It was fast becoming provincial France in the most horrendous way possible.. Some of the shit has 4 or 5 different architectural styles.
Frank:
Stop apologizing for someone making fascist pronouncements. Or rather continue to do so and create a bigger train wreck than you already have.
whitefrankblack, well the Cth did take over a lot in WWII pursuant to the “defence power” – but it wasn’t actually that comfortable with the legality of it…for example, tax powers
@ JC: two things:
1. I never said I am down with his policies. I’ve been trying to point out all along that extraordinary emergency measures suspending civil liberties are well accepted in constitutional law and history, in this country, by recent judges. In fact, I don’t know much about CH, as I’ve never read his stuff. But I disagree w/ internet censorship, I disagree w/ emergency measures for anything short of imminent annihilation of the nation state, and they must always be judicially reviewable.
2. The obsession you have with CH’s baldness suggests to me that you too are as bald he-whom-you-detest. Just saying.
@LE: I’m not too sure whether the taxation that the Cth took on was justified by the defence power, but whatever. Look, I don’t think anyone would ever be comfortable with emergency measures. Matter of fact, in those kinds of situations, I suspect the country could just as easily fall into permanent totalitarianism as revert to what we have. Point I’m making: let’s stop acting as though emergency measures are a priori unlawful. Or at least that it isn’t possible to think that without being considered a fascist.
Okay all, I’m taking my sick little self off to bed – so won’t be able to moderate. Be nice.
baldness suggests to me that you too are as bald he-whom-you-detest.
Nope, wrong again. I have a full head of hair. Sorry, but I find everything about cue ball detestable.
I’ll repeat he makes Griffin look good and Griffin is clearly a rancid fascist.
Now — as people may or may not know — I live in the UK and am actually supposed to be at work right now, so I’m going to have to leave. And as should be obvious, this thread is getting a mite stoushy. I’d like the stoushiness to stop, thanks. People need to pull their heads (whether bald or otherwise) in.
Otherwise the cutting tool will come out on my return.
Ladies, gentlemen, in the words of the Notorious B.I.G, it has been real. Thanks and goodnight.
Hives is into fluffwicca. Now why does that not surprise me? (read LE’s post update if this comment makes no sense).
Frank @ 47: I guess I’m just really, really wary of emergency measures. I concede that there may be times when emergency measures are necessary (total breakdown of law and order). But I wouldn’t be planning in advance to be using them, and the fact that Hamilton is quite blithely prepared to consider this as a possibility tends to suggest to me that he has a totalitarian mind-set (i.e. he knows what’s best for everyone, and he’ll force them to see that). Ugh.
I also really hate the politics of fear (whether it’s fear over asylum seekers, global warming, terrorists etc). I just think that bad decisions tend be made on that basis, and Hamilton’s screeds reek of fear — which tends to suggest he won’t make good decisions.
So by all means, he can run for office, and he can say what he wants, but I don’t find it at all attractive or consistent with his party’s policies. And I hope that his opponent wins. That’s all I’m saying.
I love that added quote by Clive. Bob Brown has similarly dippy religious views. I wonder if a tendency to new-age/Gaian spirituality is more common amongst Greens voters/politicians? The major parties seem to be more inclined to traditional belief.
Clive in that email about Leigh Sales asking one or two questions about climate skeptics: “And I thought, well, just shut up.”
Just shut up. Yes, there’s a nuanced, tolerant, and non-divisive position that certainly bodes well for the future policy initiatives of the Greens… not!
I should have said ‘link’, not ‘email’, in that previous comment… not that it matters until it gets unmoderated!
Sorry, Tim T, spam filter is being stupid again. SIGH.
I think you’re right, TimT, although I do find it amusing. In writing the novel I’m working on now, I’ve had to do a mountain of research into classical and Celtic paganism… and believe me, dippy and cute it is not. The line that keeps occurring to me when I read various accounts of what people believed and the practices they followed is ‘Mother Nature, the Bloody Bitch’. This is not to say that it is any better or worse than what came after (Christianity and Islam). Sure, a strong case can be made for greater tolerance and a more positive view of sexuality (the former has been seized upon by aspects of the Green movement, although I suspect most people draw the line at orgies; Clive Hamilton certainly does — he is very puritan) but other aspects are deeply retrograde.
The worst of both worlds, it really is.