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OLO: here's to the next ten years

By Graham Young - posted Monday, 6 April 2009


On Line Opinion hopes to play its part in this diversification of politics by providing a platform for new stars to make a name for themselves. Because of our philosophy of "gate-keeping lite", a relatively open architecture approach to publishing ideas, along with the fact that mainstream media regularly comb us for story ideas, the opportunity is there for thinkers and doers to start to build public awareness of themselves and what they stand for.

1999 was notable for other things. In March that year NATO launched airstrikes against Yugoslavia, undoubtedly a war crime. Again we broke ground. Vladimir Sukalovic was then a student in Belgrade, and as the civil infrastructure crumbled around him sent us posts on what it was like to be on the wrong side of democracy. I recruited Vladimir using ICQ, and his first post was in our second edition.

Now it is commonplace to hear from people on the other side of a war via blogs, or broadcasters like Al Jazeera whose material is freely available over the Internet. In the next ten years I am sure that this will become more prevalent, but no more effective in stopping these wars, than was Vladimir.

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The Yugoslav conflict was a different type of war. It was a pre-emptive strike and probably the first time we were bombing for democracy, not to defend our countries, or an ally. Had the Yugoslavian conflict not succeeded in producing democracy in the Balkans I doubt whether George W Bush would have been persuaded to invade Iraq.

Now Bush and Bill Clinton have gone it doesn’t make pre-emptive strikes less likely. I predict that Barack Obama will be just as interested in them, but will be constrained by the size of the US budget deficit.

In November 2003 we asked if this was the Chinese century. I’m not sure that it will be, but I am absolutely certain that it won’t be another American century. Kevin Rudd is right to be spreading himself around because we need to make new friends. He's wrong to be neglecting the countries that will make the most difference to us in the longer term – India, Russia and Brazil. But OLO won’t be neglecting them, with a look at Brazil our feature for May this year.

In some ways the Great Depression made the US. This depression is unmaking it. Not that it won’t continue to be a significant economy, but that the measures that it is taking now will institutionalize low growth and low productivity, hobbling it and increasing the time that it takes to recover and allowing other countries to surpass it. It won’t get another deal like WWII.

It may also be a significant set-back to Australia if we continue to copy US economic policies. 1983 saw the worst recession since the Great Depression (until now) and was used by Paul Keating to modernize the Australian economy. Floating exchange rates, low tariffs and a robust banking system, strengthened by increases in flexibility in the workforce and large government surpluses under the Howard government, mean that Australia has done better than most countries in the current circumstances.

Yet the present government is using the Global Financial Crisis to start unpicking much of this valuable work in the pretence that it can cushion Australia from the effects of the crisis. Where is the heir to Keating who can turn the crisis into impetus for further genuine reform? Where is the concentrated intellectual opposition to these government policies?

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We seem to have come to the end of the classical liberal reform period. 10 years ago it was weakening, and 10 years of continuous growth since then, as well as the 8 before, have convinced voters that affluence is their birthright, a payment received in return for just turning up. Ask Geoff Huegill. It's one thing to be world class, it's another to stay there, and it is much harder to come back once you've left.

Another momentous event 10 years ago was the imposition in January 1999 of restrictions on Internet use in China. Since then the "Great Firewall of China" has become a global joke, so who would have thought that our own government would plan to implement one here?

My prediction is that Australia's Great Firewall will be an expensive failure, but that nevertheless the Internet will become less free. This will be through the actions of lawyers and litigants using lowest common denominator defamation laws in whatever country suits. Just as the Internet makes international boundaries porous it also makes publishers and writers much more subject to foreign jurisdictions than they have ever practically been before.

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About the Author

Graham Young is chief editor and the publisher of On Line Opinion. He is executive director of the Australian Institute for Progress, an Australian think tank based in Brisbane, and the publisher of On Line Opinion.

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