AD-Lib Summer 2018

AD-Lib Th e S o u t h A u s t r a l i a n Yo u n g L i b e r a l M o v e m e n t M a g a z i n e Summer 2018

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Disclaimer The opinions expressed herein belong solely to the respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editor or the South Australian Young Liberal Movement.

Contributions to this edition of AD-Lib are from members and friends of the SAYLM. To contribute to the next issue of AD-Lib or to contact the Editor, email adlib@sayoungliberals.com.

Authorised by Ms. Jocelyn Sutcliffe, President, SAYLM. 104 Greenhill Road, Unley, 5061.

Contents From the Editor 3 From the President 4 2018 Campaign 5

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Bankrupts and Failure - Henry Davis

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2018 Young Liberal Convention - Hugh Sutton

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Religious toleration in modern Australia - Jocelyn Sutcliffe

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From the Editor

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elcome to the Summer 2018 edition of AD-Lib, the South Australian Young Liberal Movement’s quarterly magazine.

As I write this, the campaign for the 2018 State Election is in full swing and things couldn’t be busier for hundreds of young liberals, party members and volunteers across South Australia as we gear up for the most important election in generations.

The sheer number of hours people have tipped into the campaign to support their local candidate would be mind-boggling – best guesses run into the many thousands. There’s no doubt that South Australia is ready for a change and if volunteer effort is any indication, there should be one on March 17.

Whatever the result, the dedication shown by so many in the movement is to be admired and praised. Having so many young people interested in building a better future for South Australia indicates that the Liberal Party in SA is in good hands After 16 years of Labor and the rise of the eternal populist, Nick Xenophon, it’s even clearer that South Australia needs a majority Liberal Government to take the reins of our state and steer her to a better future.

This edition focuses on a few events that have taken place over the past few months, but most of the time people have just been out campaigning to help deliver a majority Marshall Liberal Government.

You can find a brief gallery of just some of the campaign efforts on page 6 onwards.

On page 10 Henry Davis discusses how politicians (and people in general) need to be allowed to fail. In a world of participation awards and risk aversion, it’s only by taking risks, being willing to fail and learn from mistakes, can we foster a culture of entrepreneurship and innovation.

In January a small bunch of Young Liberals attended the 2018 Young Liberal Convention in Brisbane. Campaigns Director Hugh Sutton has written a brief summary, which you can find on page 13.

Lastly, our President, Jocelyn Sutcliffe, attended a lecture by the Hon Dyson Heydon AC QC at the end of last year on the importance of religious tolerance. You can find her report on the evening on page 14.

The next edition of AD-Lib will be a bumper post-election wrap up. It’s bound to be stuffed with images, stories and articles analysing the election results, so if you’re interested in contributing, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me. There’s always room for more articles, no matter how large they are.

Cheers, Rowan Thomas SAYLM Communications Director

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From the President

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t the time of writing this report, I have returned from Brisbane where I’ve just attended Young Liberal Federal Convention. This year, the South Australian delegation moved four policy motions, three of which were endorsed by the Young Liberal Movement of Australia.

The Conference was a huge success. Having been one of the conveners for the Federal Convention in Adelaide last year, I know the amount of preparation and effort that is required to pull off a successful weekend of social activities, policy debates and panel discussions. It was wonderful to sit back and enjoy this year’s event and get involved in shaping the Movement’s policy platforms.

I was pleased to support the election of this year’s incoming President (and immediate past Vice President) Josh Manuatu from the ACT division. Josh is not only an incredible warrior for our Liberal cause but a good friend who has supported the South Australian Young Liberals for an extended period of time.

As we near closer to March, I am constantly reminded about how important this Election is for South Australia. South Australia is in desperate need of a majority Liberal government.

As a young lawyer, I am concerned about what the South Australian economy (or lack thereof) holds for my generation and the generation that follows. In the legal industry alone, growth is stagnated. It is not uncommon for young professionals to be kept on short-term contracts on account of the economic climate. The reality of short-term contracts is that they offer no certainty or stability for the future. Those who have a trade are no different.

My generation is educated and has gained extensive skills sets from University, TAFE and trade schools but the opportunities to develop these skills are few and far between in South Australia. That is why we so desperately need a Liberal Government.

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The Young Liberals are notorious for doing the heavy lifting during election campaigns – I do not doubt that this campaign will be any different. Most of us don’t even remember what a South Australia Liberal Government looks like!

We are motivated and excited to find out.

The assistance we will gain from Young Liberals around the country who will travel to Adelaide through the EDO Programme will be invaluable. With a focus on grassroots campaigning, I look forward to working with all facets of our Party to ensure that the Young Liberals are an indispensable force.

Kind regards Jocelyn Sutcliffe SAYLM President

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2018 ELECTION CAMPAIGN The long road to March 17

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ver the course of the 2018 Election Campaign, Young Liberals from across the State have put in thousands of hours volunteering on local campaigns. Whether it’s letterboxing, phone canvassing, doorknocking, helping out at events or any number of other activities, the Young liberals have been out in force to ensure a Marshall Liberal Government is elected on March 17.

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BANKRUPTS & FAILURE Henry Davis wants our pollies to be able to fail and to ditch participation awards.

Only an “Innovation Culture” will steer Australia in the right direction.

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rom Footy to business, Australians can’t stand failure. We are ashamed of it. When our team performs badly we stop going to their matches, when a business goes into liquidation we look at their Directors and pity their poor souls because we know they are destined to carry the heavy label of “BANKRUPT” tattooed into their forehead and destined to sign off every email with “Kind Regards, THE GUY THAT WENT BANKRUPT”.

This overreaction to failure is a problem not unique to Australia but I think Australia is certainly far more susceptible to it than other countries. Countries like America or India have a strong innovation culture with towns twice the size of Adelaide dedicated to innovation (Silicon Valley… its also an excellent TV show but it’s not on Netflix so nobody cares…).

You might want to take the positive approach and talk about Australia’s successes. I know I often have fights with pessimistic NoNo Penguins who say “Back in my day Australia was great! Now it’s a disaster!” and I tell them to look at GDP per capita at which point they revert to “it’s the vibe”.

I am certainly not trying to be a NoNo Penguin

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but I think that with the introduction of Artificial Intelligence into our everyday lives, the jobs market will shift substantially from jobs that are rinse and repeat to where variety and innovation are king. Jobs that are mundane and repetitive will fall away with Artificial Intelligence. We already see couriers and drivers at threat and we see Artificial Intelligence programs beating my grade in my tax law elective.

If Artificial Intelligence can do legal work what am I going to do?

If you still doubt that Australia is any different in our approach to failure (I have to convince you there is a problem before I can get you to consider a solution), you need only look at Trump. Trump went bankrupt 6 times! Six times is a lot of times! That would never happen in Australia. In fact, far more mundane failures are held up uncomfortably as examples of overcoming failure. I think everyone in the Liberal Party would know that John Howard lost his first election when he ran for a state seat in 1968. The fact that we all know that and use it as an example of pushing through adversity is a bit strange. This loss was nothing really… why do we have such a focus on it? Someone who went bankrupt six times would never pass preselection let alone win an election in Australia.

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Furthermore, if a politician makes any mistake, no matter how stupid… the entire country goes absolutely nuts about it. It makes front page news that Julie Bishop didn’t know the ins and outs of the “transition to retirement scheme”.

We go mental when someone in authority makes a mistake. How can our future leaders actually get around to leading us if they can never try something new or make a mistake?

Trump doesn’t care! And neither do his supporters! (yep I started it with “and”. And I’m good with it!)

So hopefully you see the problem with this attitude going into the future. If not PM me and we can nut it out. But here are my solutions: 1. Toss Participation Awards for Good: loosing is important and you shouldn’t hide your children from it. Its about what you do with your loss rather than whether you win or not, that’s a lesson we can no longer teach.

You might think that participation awards are removing a fear of failure… but they aren’t. What happens when the child graduates university with a degree that nobody wants and can’t get a job? Do they sulk at home unemployed until they are 40 or reinvent themselves into something new? You are not going to succeed in everything. You are going to fail. If you decide to never run a race that you could lose then you will never

race again. Participation awards rob children of the chance to learn how to fail.

2. “Don’t quit your day job”: kill this phrase with fire. Unfortunately, it is part of Australia’s humour to put people down, but with every joke there is a bit of truth and it hurts. I was sitting in a tute when the tutor asked me to read out a passage from the textbook I was never going to buy. I read it out like a journalist from Today Tonight who was exposing the great Adelaide ferret thief. At the end of it the class was laughing and the tutor said “don’t quit your day job”. I lied and deadpan said I was a fulltime radio presenter and that I wanted to be a news reader… that scared him quite a bit and he had to double take and say sorry that was actually quite good. Then I burst out laughing… but the point is, you don’t know my hopes and dreams! What if I wanted to be on Today Tonight as a “news” reader? You just smashed my hopes and dreams Adelaide University! It’s a problem with our humour… when someone tries to sing publicly for the first time we always say “don’t quit your day job” we are telling them never try again because I think you are terrible. In reality we are inspired by their courage, its something we couldn’t do, but instead of building them up we smack them down and that makes the negative

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Nancy scared to try too! Now our country is devoid of flashmobs! Everyone loves flashmobs! Why you hate flashmobs?

3. Legal System: three year bankrupt period?

Well you can stick that. Right there is a reason for me never ever to take a chance at starting a new business. THREE YEARS! That’s a Hella long time! Instead of giving people a financial death sentence for the remainder of their lives why not have the ability for an individual to create a financial “save point” they can revert back to if they fail. So an individual could declare “for the next year and half I declare I am a high risk individual”. They would need to declare that to everyone and essentially this would be a new legal person (like company, trust, partnership etc). If a “high risker” goes bankrupt they get liquidated back to their nominated save point and bankrupt is discharged after 3 months. Now this person would need to declare they are a “high roller” at every application for credit or before entering into a contract (including as an employer). If they don’t then the save point is gone for that transaction and all their personal assets are on the line again.

This means that a bank is not going to lend to them on the same terms as someone else and employee will know that if they don’t get paid super on time they should probably walk off the job. This allows and encourages the individual to take more risk and fail if necessary. That individual would invest a certain amount of funds with them after the save point and then look to raise capital for their business. For example, if

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I wanted to start a brewery and lets say I have 200k of assets. I declare I am going to create a financial save point of 100k and invest 100k in my new business. I would then go to a bank and say I’ve got 100k of brewing equipment that I have bought, can you please lend me 80k, the bank tells me no way, so I ask for 25k instead and they give it to me. A year later turns out I shouldn’t have quit my day job and I’ve been trading whilst insolvent for 6 months. There are a whole bunch of creditors that are left. They sell the equipment and I declare I am no longer a “high flyer” and my financial situation reverts back to my save point where I still have 100k. (you might say that’s what companies are for … but there are heaps of look through provisions). Its not the solution but its an attempt. Other possibilities are reducing director penalties and shortening the bankruptcy period, but that’s not as fun to think about as creating a whole new legal person.

Australia needs to get its head in the game in developing an innovation culture. It happens from early childhood through to peers telling you that you should quit your day job and of course, the legislative system that hands out financial life sentences like a young liberal with how to votes near Ides of March. We need to prepare for a structural shift in our jobs market and that starts with our culture and most importantly it starts with us.

Henry Davis is a member of the SAYLM

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FEDcon 2018 Hugh Sutton reports on the 2018 Young Liberal Federal Convention.

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n January this year, a bunch of Young event. It is a fantastic opportunity to mix with Liberals had the privilege of attending the YLs from across the nation, make contacts and 2018 Young Liberal Convention in Brisbane. build new friendships.

After the huge success that was last year’s Convention (in Adelaide, of course) Brisbane had a lot to live up to!

Hugh Sutton is the Campaign’s Director of the SAYLM

Happily enough, the Convention was a great success and huge fun for those who attended.

There were dozens of policy motions, many of which our own members spoke to, as well as many other events over the course of the weekend.

For anyone interested in getting further involved with the Young Liberals at a Federal level, I encourage them to attend next year’s

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Religious toleration in modern Australia What is the role of the Church in Modern Australia and where does religious tolerance fit into the picture? Our own Jocelyn Sutcliffe attended a lecture by the Hon Dyson Heydon AC QC to find out.

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ate last year, a handful of Young Liberals attended The Monastery in Adelaide for the inaugural PM Glynn Lecture presented by the Hon Dyson Heydon AC QC, former Justice of the High Court of Australia. The lecture titled Religious ‘toleration’ in modern Australia was an initiative of the Australian Catholic University and promoted by the Samuel Griffith Society of which I and many others Liberals are members.

It was a timely lecture in the lead up to the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey some 4 weeks before the Australian Bureau of Statistics would confirm that the survey returned a majority “yes” response. As we know, on 15 November 2017, the day the result was announced, Liberal Senator for Western Australia, Dean Smith introduced the Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Act 2017 into the Senate. The Bill passed through both houses of Parliament with no amendments made, despite the best efforts of some Senators and Members, most notably Senators

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Abetz, Fawcett and Paterson, the latter who happens to be a fellow Young Liberal. On 8 December 2017, the Bill received royal assent and became effective the following day.

Rewind four weeks and one of Australia’s brightest legal minds was addressing the concerns of the faithful – and indeed those not of faith but rather staunchly supportive of freedom – about the church’s role in modern Australia. He reminded us of the impact that Almighty God played on our forefathers and the Federation generation who were responsible for bringing the Australian Constitution into being. He analysed the role of the Federation generation against those of modern elites, suggesting that the “public voices of modern elites are not humble”.

Interestingly, one of the most notable attendees at this lecture was Labor MP and former SA Health Minister, Jack Snelling, a Catholic man whose ideals and principles are often far removed from anyone on our side of politics. It is

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a timely reminder that those of faith and conscientious belief don’t always find themselves on the conservative side of politics. Indeed, the concerns raised by those who were in favour of traditional marriage undoubtedly present an underlying support for freedom – freedom of speech, expression, thought, belief and religion. As with any law (think section 18 of the Racial Discrimination Act), it must be tested in order to establish its strengths and weaknesses and the Marriage Amendment (Definition and Religious Freedoms) Act 2017 will be no different. I hope and pray (pardon the pun) that this Act will not be used as a “weapon of first resort by those claiming to have been offended by views they disagree with”[ Janet Albrechtsen, The Australian, November 15, 2017, titled “Forget hurt feelings, free speech is a birthright” ] just as the Racial Discrimination Act has been used. The question may well become whether it was Parliament’s intention that Religious Freedoms be protected – is it enough that the Act has the words Religious and Freedoms in its title or is it necessary the amendments proposed by the previously mentioned Senators have been accepted? Time will tell.

and interest groups have met and continue to do so, to discuss their concerns, and developments in the wake of the amended legislation.

In South Australia for example, Nicolle Flint MP and former Prime Minister Tony Abbott met with religious leaders in the electorate of Boothby earlier this year.

In late November 2017, the Prime Minister announced the appointment of an expert panel, chaired by the Hon Phillip Ruddock, to examine the new marriage law. The purpose of the review is to determine whether or not the amended legislation protects religious freedom. The report is due to be handed down on 18 May 2018. The findings will undoubtedly challenge us as Liberals to remain true to our values and principles in a changing world.

For the sake of our great Party, we must not deviate from our belief in the most basic of freedoms and the inherited social, cultural and religious traditions that our society has been founded on.

Jocelyn Sutcliffe is the President of the South Australian Young Liberal Movement

Since this national discussion took place last year, Members of Parliament, church leaders

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AD-Lib Summer 2018 www.saylm.org.au