What a difference a champion of civil liberties makes at the heart of government. The UK’s Deputy PM, Nick Clegg, is championing a bill rolling back terror laws and restoring personal freedoms. Where is the Australia politician with similar courage of his/her convictions?
Liberty’s page turns to freedom
The page on liberty and rights has been turned in Britain, their Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said in an interview recently.
Mr Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader who must steer a fine line because of the governing coalition with the Conservatives under David Cameron, supports much greater personal freedom…as well as switching Britain to the ‘Alternative Voting’ system – that is, the Australian federal system.
Columnist Henry Porter of The Observer newspaper said Mr Clegg’s Protection of Freedoms Bill, published in February 2011, is a genuine Liberal Democrat triumph: “Clegg can claim that his own firm belief in individual liberty has been placed at the heart of the coalition’s program. Although the bill doesn’t achieve everything that he, or indeed campaigners, wanted, it is a good start and alters the tone of government by asserting – by implication – respect for the public’s privacy and rights.”
Early in the interview, Porter reports Mr Clegg as saying: "I need to say this – you shouldn’t trust any government, actually including this one. You should not trust government – full stop. The natural inclination of government is to hoard power and information; to accrue power to itself in the name of the public good.”
But Porter also quotes Mr Clegg as winning over his Cabinet colleagues on the Freedoms bill by a relativity argument: "Let’s remember how this government is different to the previous government. This is something that distinguishes our government. Bit by bit, in quite imperceptible ways, these measures tell you profound things about the country we are trying to create."
Mr Clegg says the restoration of liberty is ongoing, and urges campaigners to "hold the government’s feet to the fire". Sounds like excellent advice for Australians in relation to the Australian government.
Porter comments that, “in good times, the weirdly phlegmatic British public took little notice of the loss of liberty and, I suspect, in rougher times, when people are pressed, they will be equally unresponsive about this bill. It’s worth remembering, however, that the people out on the streets in Cairo last week, in Tunisia last month and in Iran 18 months ago, would be astonished by our complacency. For them liberty is everything.”
http://snipurl.com/237zi0 %5Bwww_guardian_co_uk%5D
– report by Bill Rowlings, CLA CEO