'Family' values and the privatisation of welfare

If women have a baby outside a stable relationship, they may break the social security system.

A couple of news items in the weekend papers have piqued my interest in the ongoing conservative putsch to retain the centrality of the family in society. The first of these was a story about the Federal Opposition MP, Kevin Andrews, who has signalled a 'socially conservative change' to welfare policy under a coalition government. (Andrews' views on family are well known.)

The second is a piece in the Weekend Australian by Catholic pro-family conservative writer, Angela Shanahan opining about the importance for women of marrying a stable man. For the children.

These uncritical views rely on a combination of sentimentality and ‘facts’ about how society benefits from this institution. What they fail to reveal is the history of paternal control over women and children central to the effective operation of the family in a patriarchal society. And by family, what they mean is a married heterosexual procreative union.

These views of family implicitly blame single mothers and their children for the breakdown of society. I maintain that it is instead the narrow construction of the institution of ‘family’ that feeds into the moral (conservative) panic of social collapse. What we need instead is a re-imagining of society.

'Invisible substances': Can we trade them? Of course we can...

Today I heard the leader of the federal opposition, Tony Abbott, describe the government's proposed change to an emissions trading scheme, as:

A market in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no-one.

This position is not new, and Mr Abbott has for some years described carbon in terms such as an 'invisible, odourless, weightless, tasteless substance'. Regardless of the science or the economics involved in characterising carbon and the effectiveness of a carbon market per se, what interests me is the problematising of a market in an 'invisible substance'. It also surprises me in light of the law's unambiguous acceptance of intangibles as property, which supports the commodification and therefore marketisation of a host of 'invisible, odourless, weightless, tasteless'...non-substances.

The Ecology of Land Regulation in Queensland

In the last couple of weeks, the Queensland government has passed changes to tree clearing legislation and introduced provisions allowing cattle to graze in certain national parks and reserves. Both changes represent a regulatory shift in land use priorities relating to biodiversity and conservation and the ecological sustainability of industrial farming that threaten legislative and policy progress on ecological sustainability.

Human Embryo Research: Who Donates the Eggs?

Who donates the eggs?*

In headline news today, scientists have announced a breakthrough in human cloning. Human skin cells and a woman's egg were used to create an early stage embryo that is a copy of the original skin cell. The news is being celebrated largely because of the possibility for this process to develop therapy or cures for many afflictions.

There is also concern however over other implications of the process - principally the spectre of cloning humans themselves. Most responses I've heard on this point so far, have focused on the strict regulation of human cloning for reproduction, and the severe legal penalties for breach.

This is a complex enough issue - weighing the obvious therapeutic benefits for those suffering debilitating diseases and the concerns attendant on the technology taking us down the path of human cloning. However there is another aspect that I've not seen mentioned in the media so far: namely the origin of the 'donated' eggs.

Compensating Organ Donors: Commodification or Freedom?

The Commonwealth government has today announced a ‘grant’ scheme for live organ donors. The scheme will pay live organ donors the minimum wage for six weeks following donation, with the aim of supporting them financially.

Such a decision is likely to ignite the debate over the morality of payment for 'transactions' involving the human body. There are two sides to this debate: the risk of commodification of the human; and the freedom and autonomy of donors to choose how they deal with their body.

Paying the Tax Man

Students of taxation law often see little connection between tax and other practice areas. In reality, tax tends to raise a variety of interesting issues in almost every other field of law. This post is about one such example.

Those who have bought and sold real property would be aware that at 'settlement' the buyer pays the purchase price and in exchange, they receive the clear title to the land. Clear title means that any mortgage over the property is released. To release the mortgage, the seller's mortgagee will need to be paid out. Usually, all this happens in one place at the same time. While it looks like a single seamless transaction, in fact it involves two discrete transactions: that between the outgoing mortgagee and the seller; and that between the seller and the buyer.

A 2012 decision of the Full Court of the Federal Court has called into question the position of hte releasing mortgagee at settlement through the operation of a tax statute.

Women's rights are human rights

Nurse-in on Bribie Island*

Well the double standard is alive and well on social media today.  Outrage - outrage - at women staging a 'nurse in' outside the Sunrise studios. The tenor of this outrage on Twitter seems to be somehow that David Koch, in calling for women to be discreet and classy in their breastfeeding habits, is simply expressing opinion and that this is not deserving of protest.