Clive Hamilton regrets the ‘sad demise’ of OLO and says he won’t be paying it any more attention, so he presumably isn’t reading these comments and won’t be responding here.

In ‘Death Rattles of the Climate Change Skeptics’ (New Matilda, 19 May 2008), Clive criticised Don Aitkin for acknowledging my work, and described me as one of ‘Australia’s foremost climate skeptics’. He claimed I was ‘associated’ (how?) ‘with the denialists of the Lavoisier Group, an organisation that sees the Kyoto Protocol as a European plot for a “new imperial order” that would see our sovereignty “relocated from Canberra to Bonn.”

Last Saturday I said on this Forum ( http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=8132&page=16 ) that “My views are as stated in the papers, submissions and blog posts that I’ve authored and to which I’ve referred. As these are quite voluminous, I continue to wonder why most of the criticism directed at me is for things I’ve never said and, in many cases, don’t believe.”

Clive was one of the critics I had in mind. He’s an economist, but hasn’t addressed any of the economic issues raised in my papers. He chooses instead to assail me for the way an organisation with which I’m allegedly associated ‘sees’ the Kyoto ProtocoI.

A recent Reuter’s report from Lima ( http://www.reuters.com/article/governmentFilingsNews/idUSN2149971220081121 ) says that Kevin Rudd, who ‘led the left-leaning Labor Party to power last November’, had ‘urged a global response to a problem that [had] led to calls for tighter regulation and a bigger role for the International Monetary Fund.’

Left-leaning? Bigger role for the IMF? Here’s Eddie Ward, ‘the truest Labor man’, speaking on ABC Radio in1946 about the Bretton Woods Agreement that created the IMF:

“… the Agreement will enthrone a World Dictatorship of private finance, more complete and terrible than any Hitlerite dream. It will ... pervert and paganise our Christian ideals and [endanger] world peace ... World collaboration of private financial interests can only mean mass unemployment, slavery, misery, degradation and final destruction. Therefore, as freedom-loving Australians, we should reject this infamous proposal.”

The protectors of Australia’s national sovereignty are losing their punch

rpg writes:

quoting me: 'The ALP under Rudd is in fact far more moralistic and authoritarian than the Liberals ever were.'

And then goes on to say: " Steady on there, does this mean you are admitting that JWH was not as bad as you all claimed, culture wars and all that, suppressing free speech - ask David Marr about it?

You have the government you wanted, you all shouted about everything the Liberals (Coalition to some of us) said and did, and you brought in another party.

The ALP can do what it wants since they are so popular. OK, I can live with that, it is a democracy after all. Get over it, if it costs the country bandwidth - well that's what you signed up for isn't it?

Did you not realise, not everyone would get what they wanted?"

Just to clarify:

I didn't vote for the ALP. I voted informally. That was my only choice since I supported neither party. As you would know, our current absurd election system makes sure that even a vote for a minor party will end being passed down the line until it ends up with one of the major parties. This is due to the requirement that one cast a "preference" for *every* candidate on the ballot paper (when voting for the House of Reps).

For the record, I really do regard the ALP as currently more reactionary, opportunistic, moralistic and authoritarian than the Liberals. I was never part of the pseudo-left clamour for Kevin to come and save us from the "dark years" of Howard. My view at the time was that an ALP government would definitely be somewhat worse than a Liberal one.

Kerry Miller

What's the bet Hamilton will be found in a seady hotel somewhere with a rent boy and bag of fruit and runner watching from under the bed.

I would worry about total censorship on the net but Clive Hamilton's paper on the sexualisation of children has many valid points which cannot be ignored.

The question is how we deal with this. I have no problem with the illegal sites being 'censored' as censorship is part of any society - we call them laws because their aim is to protect.

Societies don't always get the balance right but at the moment the pendulum is very much on the 'anything is okay' in the interests of freedom no matter what the consequences might be.

I think parents should have the right to be able to choose a filtered internet service stream to protect their children. The idea that parents are always home to monitor their children's net activity is disingenous.

The fear is that censorship will grow to include non-illegal sites based on any particular group's own belief system on issues like abortion, euthanasia etc.

It is not a straightforward concept - censorship - but neither is the overt exploitation and marketing of sex to children particularly in the music industry, fashion etal.

Being sensitive to the issues that Clive Hamilton raises is not the same as being prudish or a wowser as some might accuse.

We need to distinguish between "child porn" (in which real children have been used to produce fantasy material for paedophiles) and all other porn.

Child porn is *already* illegal and the people who produce it (as well as those who look at it) are regularly caught and prosecuted as a result of internationally co-ordinated ( and very effective) police efforts. For that very reason, child porn is hidden away and almost impossible to come across accidentally. Mandatory ISP-level filtering is not necessary for protecting children from this type of porn.

Hamilton’s problem is clearly with all the other porn. His frequent references to “child porn” are an attempt to demonise those who disagree with him. The reason he wants a filter is because once there is an official mechanism for blacklisting and blocking various sites, it will be possible to put all sorts of material on the illegal list (and there will be no provision for any of us to opt out of the “illegal list”). In fact, the proposal is for the illegal list to be secret. There will be no opportunity for any public discussion as to what should go on it.

Hamilton’s research is contentious to say the least. It’s clearly driven by his own politically correct agenda as to what constitutes “healthy sex”.

If we allow the filtering proposal to go ahead we will be giving Clive, and people who think similarly, a mechanism for deciding what is good for us.

The Howard government provided free downloadable filters for use by concerned parents. That should have been as far as it went. However, since all filters can be bypassed by clever kids (including the proposed mandatory one) there is always the risk of simply driving the activity underground.

Most of us don’t want our children to be exposed to pornography at a young age. The best thing we can do is to take an active interest in what our kids are doing, and at the same time, create an atmosphere in which they feel comfortable talking freely to us.

Kerry Miller

Kerry Miller wrote;

"Most of us don’t want our children to be exposed to pornography at a young age. The best thing we can do is to take an active interest in what our kids are doing, and at the same time, create an atmosphere in which they feel comfortable talking freely to us."

I question that porn does harm to little children. My mother acquainted me with the facts of life and elimination at an early age. I had to learn all the proper words: coitus, orgasm, defecation etc. One exception was that I could call my penis a doodle. I was bored stiff by her yammering about the subject. My Dad had a stash of porn which I found, and it didn't interest me. It was not until much later that I became interested in sex.

However, feeding children on a diet of violence and giving them the idea that problems can be solved by applying enough force and enticing them with adverts for unhealthy junk food does far more damage in my opinion than watching or reading porn.