Cheap political points at the expense of the justice system

Once again the opposition are attacking and undermining the democratic institutions that underpin our society in another appeal for cheap votes. Liberal Senator Julian McGauran has used parliamentary privilege to launch and extraordinary attack on the Melbourne academic who provided expert witness testimony in the case of the man who threw his daughter of the Westgate bridge - R v Freeman [2011] VSC 139 (11 April 2011)

Sen. McGauran used the the parliament to attack Graham Burrows as "a psychiatrist of last resort and one who will sing whatever song the defence wants". Not only is this an appalling attack on Mr. Burrows but it is an attack which undermines our justice system itself. Expert witnesses need to be able to give their evidence in difficult cases and not have parliamentarians calling for them to lose their job.

Sen. McGauran fails to understand that the primary duty (see form 44A) of any expert witness is to the court and not to any particular side of the case - and it is up to the jury, not parliamentarians, to decide on the weight of that evidence. In this particular case, the jury did not agree with Mr. Burrows' evidence. This in no way determinative of the veracity or otherwise of Mr. Burrows evidence - the jury has decided that there was more evidential weight to the expert testimony of the prosecution (as well as other evidence adduced in the case) and it is beyond reasonable doubt that Mr. Freeman committed the crime. In essence the system appears to have worked as it should so it is difficult to see that Sen. McGauran's attack is anything other than an abuse of parliamentary privilege for the purpose of scoring the very cheapest of political points.

These cheap political points come at the expense of the integrity of the system itself. It undermines justice if an expert witness is second-guessing their evidence because they are afraid of being attacked in parliament. It undermines their fundamental duty to the court to provide their expert witness testimony if they curtail the way they present their evidence for fear of an attack on their reputation.

Members of the opposition seem to be happy to undermine fundamental societal institutions such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion and now the justice system itself. This pernicious grab for votes shows that the Liberal party is happy to appeal to the extremes of society to pursue its cynical attempts to gain power at the expense of the fundamental institutions of this country.

Multiculturalism, cultural relativism and "political correctness gone mad"

David Cameron's Speech earlier this month appears to have sparked a flurry of commentary from the Australian Right about how multiculturalism has gone wrong here as well.  Sen. Corey Bernadi has also written a piece that has been picked up by the media which echoes some of Cameron's sentiments combining them with a bit of racism for a unique Australian perspective.

I'll start by dealing with Mr. Cameron's speech first, mainly because it's the sanest and does express some subtlety before delving briefly into Sen. Bernadi's racist rant.

Mr. Cameron's main thrust is that the "soft" left's articulation of the causes of extremism is incorrect and the soft left position has resulted in a "passively tolerant society [that] says to its citizens, as long as you obey the law we will just leave you alone", which has led in turn to segregation and isolationism encouraged by State multiculturalism. Mr. Cameron's  argument is that society needs to champion liberal democratic "values" as part of a national identity.

The funny thing is, this is just the sort of thing that some in the Left have been arguing for years. Cameron accuses the supporters of multiculturalism of preventing debate on issues and hampering efforts to confront some of the egregious cultural practices and beliefs in some communities.

According to Cameron:

"when a white person holds objectionable views, racist views for instance, we rightly condemn them.  But when equally unacceptable views or practices come from someone who isn’t white, we’ve been too cautious frankly – frankly, even fearful – to stand up to them."

This is, of course, the sort of complete bollocks that the Right loves to trot out - it's actually the articulate way of expressing the Bogan battlecry "political correctness gone mad".

The problem is that when the Left argues for a particular liberal value, the argument is often articulated in a universal way. For example: "sexism, in all its forms, is unacceptable". Its never articulated with the provsio "unless its OK in X culture" - however this is just what Cameron is accusing.

The Right, however, has no problem in doing exactly the same thing - playing a bit o' relativism.  Confronting sexism in a cultural group is admirable to the Right because "they treat women badly in their culture", however universalising the value to apply to everyone (for example, policies to combat sexism in the workplace) is "political correctness gone mad" because hey, the boys were just joking...right?

So which liberal "values" are we really championing here? It sounds like the sort of relativsim that comes out the "clash of civilisations" ideology, ie. that a particular culture is unable to incorporate liberal values.

Which brings me away from Cameron's more reasonable argument to Sen. Bernardi's rant.

Bernardi argues that the multicultural acceptance of Islam "has resulted in a cultural clash that has brought almost unprecedented levels of social unrest ". Further arguing that Muslims cannot be integrated into a liberal democratic culture - even going so far as to quote that paragon of liberal values and tolerance Lee Kwan Yu.

Sen. Bernadi agues that Australia must do something before its "too late" but nowhere in his rant does Sen. Bernardi propose any solution. Which makes one wonder, if Islam is impossible to integrate and as dangerous as Berardi suggests what could possibly be the solution to them living within our midst? For fear of Godwin's Law I won't continue to speculate.

Ultimately this debate from Cameron and Bernardi is a cheap resort to petty Nationalism in the guise of liberal "values". There is nothing wrong with championing liberal values in society to combat extremism, in fact, its admirable. However, the Right has to understand that this means applying those values universally to our own culture as well as to other cultural groups within our society - without the incessant yells of "political correctness". The universal application of these values is what will construct a truly liberal democratic, multicultural society rather than pandering to petty Nationalism to undermine multiculturalism as a policy.