Who to vote for in NSW?
I would not presume that I can tell anybody, let alone a libertarian, who they should vote for. None the less here is my recommendation for the NSW election.
The “Outdoor Recreation Party” is the NSW arm of the “Liberal Democratic Party“, Australia’s only registered libertarian party. The lead candidate for the Legislative Council (upper house) is David Leyonhjelm. David has been involved with the LDP for many years as a member of the federal executive and is a rock sold libertarian. All libertarians should be voting one for the “Outdoor Recreation Party” in the Legislative council.
In the Legislative Assembly (lower house) the options are less compelling. However in Penrith, Ku-ring-gai and Wollondilly there are Outdoor Recreation Party candidates. Please offer them your support if you live in those areas. If you live in Port Macquarie I’d suggest you vote for the Nationals candidate Leslie Williams. Two reasons. One is that she has put lower taxes for NSW as her number one priority. And secondly unlike the sitting MP she isn’t Rob Oakeshott’s protege.
Please offer tips and suggestions for other seats in comments.
Gillard’s Carbon Tax
To register your objection to Julia Gillard’s recently announced carbon tax check out the following:-
http://www.stopgillardscarbontax.com/
This tax is bad public policy. It is not revenue neutral. It will become an ETS over time. It will not cool the planet. It will cost us heaps. And it contravenes an explicit pre-election promise.
Liberalising Immigration
On Sunday I wrote an article exploring immigration and the financing of public infrastructure. In today’s article I’d like to chart different types of immigration policies and the associated forms of control.
The table below has six regions marked A to F. The vertical axis of the table indicates the degree to which the policy tries to control the number of immigrants. The horizontal axis indicates the degree to which the policy tries to control the type of immigrants.
The policy of a libertarian purist would be represented by the region marked “F” in the table. Under policy “F” there would be no restrictions at all on the number or type of people that could immigrate to Australia. This policy is sometimes called open immigration. A libertarian purist would want our immigration policy to be reformed to become more like “F”.
Current Australian immigration policy can be regarded as being mostly in the region marked “A”. We have hard limits on the overall number of people that can immigrate to Australia in a given year. We are also selective about the type of person that can come. We are no longer selective on racial criteria like we once were, but we do discriminate on the basis of age, disability, health, technical skills, language ability, family connections etc.
The reform I suggested in my earlier article would move Australian policy from “A” to “E”. Or perhaps to policy “B” but with a strong leaning towards “E”. As such I think it is correct to describe this reform as a “liberalisation” of our immigration policy. Instead of hard restricting the supply of immigration opportunities we would merely moderate the demand for such opportunities. Instead of being selective we would be more open. Note that this reform is essentially the reform advocated by the LDP immigration policy.
Note that for New Zealand citizens we have an alternate policy setting roughly represented in the table by position “C”. Under policy “C” we are selective, you must be a New Zealander. However we are also unlimited in the sense that we don’t restrict the number of New Zealanders that can immigrate here.
Fibre or wireless
Media reports today are suggesting that Telstras upgrade to a 4G mobile network, with speeds of 20-100Mbit/s may threaten the future of the NBN. I think there will always be a place for fibre optic cable. However I don’t think we need it inserted by decree into nearly every home in the country. Users are going to be increasingly interested in mobile data services. The issue is up for debate but sometimes a picture is worth a 1000 words.
Giving away our sovereignty
There are many reasoned arguments as to why immigration is good for the economy and good for the country. Without wishing to dismiss those arguments there is however a sense in which letting foreigners into the country is akin to giving away our sovereignty. Let me explain.
Australia is a vast nation with lots of land. For the purposes of this discussion I’m going to assume that large tracts of it are currently worth next to nothing. For example if a million illegal immigrants secretly arrived tomorrow, secretly set up camp in the Simpson desert and then secretly did their own thing there for the next 50 years or so, it is not as if we would feel deprived of the land they occupied. The reality is that we are not using lots of our land.
Some of our land however is extremely valuable and this tends to be land in cities where there is a high amount of established public infrastructure. Libertarians will at times argue that some of this public infrastructure should be privatised or even given away to Australian citizens. However they would not generally argue that ownership of this infrastructure should be given as a gift to foreigners. Given that public infrastructure is essentially owned by the Australia people, via our sovereign government, any admission of additional new Australians represents a dilution of our equity in this stock of public infrastructure. Of course in such a vast land we have the capacity to build new cities with additional public infrastructure but none the less any admission of new Australians represents a dilution of our equity in the current stock.
According to chart 4b on page 7 from the following Treasury article the stock of public infrastructure in Australia is worth in the order of 50% of our annual GDP. According to Wikipedia our GDP per capita is currently $41,300 which suggests that on a per capita basis our public infrastructure is worth around $20,650. At the margin this is the amount of equity in public infrastructure that is given away each time an immigrant is admitted into the country.
This dilution of equity does not occur with private infrastructural, such as housing, because private infrastructure is not owned collectively by all Australians. It is owned individually and privately. An immigrant that moves to Australia may get to use the same footpath you use but they don’t get to use part of your house.
This dilution of equity situation is akin to a company that gives away shares for free. The new shareholders get a stake in the collective assets of the company and the existing shareholders find their stake diluted. For this reason companies don’t generally issue new shares for free. They expect new shareholders to contribute new equity so that existing shareholders do not see the value of their holding diluted.
Following on from the above analogy an argument can be made that immigrants should be blocked from coming to Australia unless they either move to the Simpson desert and live quietly with no expectation of infrastructure, or else they live amoung us but pay a contribution towards expanding the stock of public infrastructure. In essence this arguments says immigrants to Australia shouldn’t be let in for free but should instead pay an immigration tariff of $20,650 each toward collective public infrastructure.
Assuming immigrants pay this fee there really is no problem with any realistically conceivably rate of immigration. If the rate is very high we will have the funds to build the infrastructure for the new cities required. An immigration tariff would be more fair to existing Australians.
The conclusion to this argument isn’t new. On this site I have previously argued for an immigration tariff however on the basis of rather different reasoning. Whilst the conclusion in both cases is the same the argument is none the less different. Of course I should also mention that an immigration tariff is long standing policy for the Liberal Democrats (LDP).
Should we stop giving our sovereignty away for free?
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Oz Political Quiz
