'A classical liberal': Senator David Leyonhjelm. Photo: James Alcock <\/p>\n
Only one official libertarian sits in the federal Parliament, though there are many closet libertarians hidden inside the tax-and-spend big government of Tony Abbott. This week that libertarian, Senator David Leyonhjelm of the Liberal Democratic Party, had a lesson in the treacheries of politics delivered to him personally by The Australian newspaper. <\/p>\n
Leyonhjelm had intended to announce on Thursday that he had appointed Helen Dale, born Helen Darville, also known by the literary pseudonym Helen Demidenko, to his staff as a senior adviser. <\/p>\n
But a reporter at The Australian, David Crowe, got what the paper called an \"exclusive\" by simply ignoring the senator's embargo, much to the senator's chagrin, then delivering a cartoon about \"a hoaxer\" being appointed to the senator's staff. As the headline inThe Australian put it: \"Literary hoaxer signed up by LDP.\" <\/p>\n
The woman portrayed as \"a hoaxer\" is a 42-year-old policy scholar who has left behind a legal career in Edinburgh because she believes in what Leyonhjelm is doing. And what Leyonhjelm is doing, as a cross-bencher in a deadlocked Senate, is trying to slow what he sees as the decline of individual freedom and economic health under the growing weight of government. <\/p>\n
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I first met Dale and Leyonhjelm at a libertarian conference in Sydney earlier this year where both were delivering papers. Dale's presentation focused on social changes caused by technology, not expensive social engineering. Among many examples was a correlation between the removal of lead from petrol, paint and cosmetics and a decline in crime. Practising law, she saw government regulation and compulsion as frequently having both adverse and unintended consequences. <\/p>\n
\"I noticed the extent to which government regulations often had a malicious effect,\" she said. <\/p>\n
\"Unlike many lawyers, I do not think the solution to every problem is 'pass a law'. Law has limits.\" <\/p>\n
She arrived at this belief via a circuitous path, having become famous at age 20, as Helen Demidenko, for a novel written when she was 19, The Hand that Signed the Paper. It won the Miles Franklin Award in 1995. <\/p>\n
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Continue reading here: 'A classical liberal': Senator David Leyonhjelm. Photo: James Alcock Only one official libertarian sits in the federal Parliament, though there are many closet libertarians hidden inside the tax-and-spend big government of Tony Abbott. This week that libertarian, Senator David Leyonhjelm of the Liberal Democratic Party, had a lesson in the treacheries of politics delivered to him personally by The Australian newspaper Continue reading
\nDavid Leyonhjelm calls on the colourful Helen Dale to help fight for libertarianism<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"