Thoughts on Freedom

Australian Libertarian Society Blog

Hunting ferals

There is this bunch of volunteers that want to spend their spare time helping to rid NSW national parks of feral animals. I’m not sure why they want to do it for free but it seems they do. The NSW government wants to amend the law to allow them to help. According to one media report “the Public Service Association, which represents park rangers, has ordered its members not to assist“. I’m not sure where it’s authority to order people about stems from but in any case it seems a little bit knee jerk. Surely removing feral animals from national parks, essentially for free, would be a good thing.

As I understand the state of play in NSW hunting is already allowed in state forests and on some other crown land. South Australia allows hunting in national parks and national park rangers have worked effectively with hunters to remove pest species in several parts of the state.

Perhaps some of the opposition to this stems from the fact that they won’t be hunting bare foot with spears or clubs. Apparently they want to use firearms.

November 3, 2009 Posted by TerjeP (say tay-a) | General | | 62 Comments

Crickeynomics

For those of you sensible enough not to read Crikey, I’m sorry to do this to you. If I was a stronger person I would also just stop reading neo-socialist commentary. But like a gawker at a car crash, I just can’t seem to look away.

Crikey’s main writer — Bernard Keane — has been telling us for months that expansionary fiscal policy works well, and that the ETS is good policy. I have occasionally sent him a quick e-mail pointing out some of his more egregious errors (not understanding how national accounts work, claiming that most economists prefer an ETS to a carbon tax) but he hasn’t responded or corrected them.

But today’s mistake deserves a special mention.

Flicking through the recently-released MYEFO (Commonwealth mini-budget) Keane claims that it “gives the lie to the absurd line from ETS opponents such as the Nationals that the CPRS is a giant tax.”

For Keane, the reason that the ETS isn’t a big tax is that the government is going to match the tax with higher level of government spending. In the world of neo-socialists, if you tax and spend then you haven’t really taxed. Wow.

Read more »

November 3, 2009 Posted by John Humphreys | Economics, Environment | , , , , , | 9 Comments