Chris Berg, Peter Spencer, property rights and bills of rights ...

It seems that the libertarians at the Institute of Public Affairs must run around in a strange bizarro world, unaware of the way the world works, and will go on working.

Chris Berg is the latest to seize on the hunger strike by Peter Spencer as a way of having a go at government.

Now even though Michael Duffy, the original inspiration for this site, has long been fascinated by Peter Spencer, we haven't taken up the issue. Better you read Duffy's ambivalent Hunger strike up a wind mast is an act of tragedies, and wonder why commentariat columnists haven't argued more strongly for Spencer to end his strike, come down and get some food and medical attention. If the aim of the strike is to draw attention to the issue, then that's happened some time ago; if the aim is to blackmail government into a compromise, or an offer or a deal, and Spencer is perceived to win, stand by for a lot more hunger strikes.

In the end it's a futile self-harming gesture, and if lefties or greenies got up to such antics, there'd be calls for some kind of cruel and unusual punishment (pity a few on the Sea Shepherd and the Andy Gil weren't killed by the Shonan Maru No 2 to teach 'em a lesson. Or perhaps a public caning in Martin Place would do the trick?)

Here's Duffy trying to fudge his way through the morass:

This level of response is a reminder of the moral ambiguity of a hunger strike. On the one hand it allows people to question the mental health of the person engaged in the strike. On the other, it can attract attention to an important injustice: if Spencer hadn't embarked on this action, no one today would be talking about land clearing. His action has been effective precisely because it is unusual, and unusual things tend to be done by unusual people.

Effective? In what way? What's the end result that will arise?

I wonder if Duffy would take the same attitude to IRA prisoners in British jails? Does he think we should all go on a hunger strike to protest injustice? By golly, watch out Marrickville council, I'm coming after you, you bastards.

Chris Berg, in Lost property: home in deed but not in fact takes a similar carefree attitude to protests of this kind:

NSW farmer Peter Spencer is coming up to the 50th day of his hunger strike. Spencer is arguing that he should be adequately compensated for native vegetation regulations that prevent his chopping down trees on his land.

Fair enough. Compensation for loss of property rights is part of the Commonwealth constitution.

Fair enough? Does he mean negotiating a deal by way of a hunger strike after rejecting the compensation on offer as inadequate? Moral blackmail is fair enough?

Then Berg truly jumps the shark, and makes you wonder what planet he's been on these past few years of life in the commonwealth:

Certainly, the nuances of regulations governing the clearing of native vegetation sound dull, but they're actually very important. A mountain of regulation imposed by all three levels of government is eroding one of our basic human rights - the right to own property.

This might seem a bit counter-intuitive. The Government hasn't literally taken Spencer's property away. He hasn't been kicked off: he's still allowed to wander his land at his leisure. He still holds the title. But his right to use the land has definitely been taken. Put it this way: what if the Government told you that you could keep your house, but couldn't live in it? Sure, you'd technically still own it, but you bought that house because you thought it would be a nice place to sleep. You don't really ''own'' it in any useful sense.

Um, you mean like zonings which stop you from doing things out of keeping with the neighbourhood, like setting up a brothel next to a pre-school, or keeping that pistol range a little out of town as opposed to in my laundry, Elvis Presley style, or setting up a sex toy shop next to a church, or having a right of way so that the government can tear down your building and erect a gigantic tollway so that Macquarie bank can help its investors loose squillions? As they did on our road, until we got agitated and made noises and greased wheels ...

That kind of property right?

It's the same with farmland. Spencer may not have been physically deprived of his land, but what's the point if he's not allowed to farm it? And if Spencer is not compensated for this regulatory taking, how is it much different from legalised theft? Spencer's is not an isolated problem. In urban areas, planning regulations and heritage restrictions are increasingly onerous as state and local governments try to micro-manage the ''character'' of suburbs.

Well that's all very well and righteous and laissez faire and free wheeling and enterprise driven, and I'm no lover of the ersatz heritage nonsense offered up by councils who wouldn't know Australian urban history if it bit 'em on the bum, but frankly when the old iron foundry down the road - a relic from the good old horse and cart days - finally shut its doors, and ceased emitting vile fumes into the neighbourhood, there were more than a few that shouted a joyful hurrah.

Because Berg seems to think that all this government interference is driven by government, just for the sake of government, when in fact most bureaucrats would be pleased to be left alone to enjoy their coffee and have a quiet surf of the intertubes.

It's actually driven by NIMBYism in many places, and I wish to god - as one of Berg's readers noted - that I had the wherewithal to buy a property next to Berg's house and after bribing the council in the preferred Woollongong Labor party manner, I'd put up a twelve story apartment block next to his - making sure that his sunlight was handily blocked and that there were plenty of opportunities to peer in through the window and have a good old voyeuristic time taking a geek at the Berg family.

Unless he happens to be an apartment dweller, in which case perhaps the best strategy would be to make sure my newly acquired apartment next to his is re-built by tradies schooled in Sydney job extension methods, whereby a one week gig can be spun out for a year or more.

Unless he happens to be a renter, in which case an eviction notice will remind him that all this talk of property rights is loose-lipped blather from the well off.

Meanwhile, Berg gets quite carried away, almost orgasmic, contemplating the huge economic benefits to property rights.

Karl Marx called the right to property ''the right of selfishness'', and property rights are believed by many to be a synonym for individualistic greed. Sounds like greed, looks like greed, sure - but it's not greed. More than anything else, property rights are essential for prosperity and growth. Nowhere is this clearer than in the developing world. Influential Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto has found that where property rights are not respected or recognised by governments and bureaucracies, countries are poor. After all, if you can't demonstrate you have assets to your name, it's very hard to get a loan to start a business.

By golly, where would we be without the benefit of a mortgage, or better still even more refined high risk packaging of derivatives based on property? Sssh, not a word about the GFC, that's so passe.

Property rights are the foundation of social mobility. Indeed, property is pretty much just another word for accumulated savings. Savings help us up the economic ladder. By contrast, a society that regularly violates property rights is an unstable society, and one where the road to personal advancement is blocked.

Ah, so that explains why NSW is such an unstable society. Damn, and I thought it was the state Labor government that produced the instability.

But what's the funniest thing in Berg's column, coming from the side of the fence which will explain exactly why a bill of rights is a useless infringement on human liberties, and a dangerous tool of repressive governments, and a way of handing over government and the people to activist judges? (Come on down Janet Albrechtsen).

Why it's Berg quoting John Locke on three fundamental rights - life, liberty and estate - and then the 1948 property rights article in the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, only to moan that by 1966 property was considered passe, like Dean Martin and the patriarchy, with property rights not mentioned in all kinds of covenants.

See, those damn bills of rights are completely useless.

Well let's quietly pass over Berg somehow thinking that Dean Martin and the patriarchy are hip and right on (quick, give him a glass of whiskey and some cards and letters to read from the folks at home and a woman to fuck over), and head to the even greater recent failures:

The European Convention of Human Rights says ''no one shall be deprived of his possessions except in the public interest''. The phrase ''public interest'' is meaningless. What government has ever thought it wasn't acting in the public interest? The 2006 Victorian Charter of Rights says no one's property can be taken ''except in accordance with law'' - not much of a defence from eager legislators.

Oh dear, well I guess since there's no such thing as society, there's no such thing as public interest. Quick, give me that park, I have the plans for a nifty twelve story apartment block, which I thought useless after Chris Berg took me off to the bureaucrats and the courts, and won ...

But back to Peter Spencer, the source for this whole irrational and half-arsed tirade by Berg:

Peter Spencer's hunger strike in defence of his human right to property is drastic and dangerous. We can only hope it won't be tragic. But his desperation must make us rethink our attitude towards this essential, but increasingly neglected, human right.

Well actually it makes me wonder just why Spencer's ended up where he is doing what he's doing, and for that insight Duffy is much more revealing. Calling it drastic and dangerous and hoping it won't be tragic, while cranking up the rhetoric, is just so much mealy mouthed piety.

Unsurprisingly, Berg got the response he was looking for:

G'day Chris,

Terrific article. Well done. The people at Peter Spencer's farm have printed it off and taken it up to Peter. He is very pleased that informed commentators like you are looking at the core issues and writing about the things he has been saying for over 5 years now.

Amazingly a few of the other punters were a bit gruntled with Berg and his rhetoric. Here's one:

Having any selfish land-owner demand to be allowed to do what they want went out with the Barons of the middle ages, when even the overall rulers of the regions could see that the selfish pursuits of a few were clearly against the interests of the majority.

The damage done to the Australian environment by generations of misguided farmers is there for all to see, so don't push up another stressed out person in the agricultural industry as some flag-bearer for the "right" to make further stuff-ups because this person happens to have a piece of paper with some boundary lines and a government stamp on it.

And another:

The freedom to do with our property what we want has always been limited, and rightly so. The amount of freedom required for the property-based system to work is actually fairly minimal.

Remember when farmers were able to use DDT on their farms and let the runoff pollute streams and water supplies of towns? They too argued that prevention of their "farming method" was a taking. IT wasn't. Neither is this.

If this guy had a case the lawyers would be agreeing with him and lining up. We aren't.

Ah well, I guess it's time for Berg to get cracking on writing up a decent bill of rights for Australia that'll ensure fair dinkum property rights for all. Make sure the NIMBY clause is good and strong. Meantime, pity about Peter Spencer's mis-guided self harming hunger strike ... but I guess ideologies need their martyrs ...