The Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice is slowly rolling out and I’m very optimistic that it will be successful. The launch party will be late June and I’ll post the details here as soon as they are available.

In the mean time have a look at the What We Believe In section. Comments would be greatly appreciated.

There will also be a mobolg associated with it which will be an interesting new endeavour for me as a contributor. Not sure how I’ll manage the two blogs and I suspect that there will be some cross posting. Some comments on how best to go about this would also be appreciated.

I went to a Deakin Lecture on Sunday that included a presentation by one of my heroes, Lawrence Lessig.

I tend to act like a star struck school girl in these sorts of situations. To me, it’s just as exciting to see one of these intellectuals as it is to see my favourite musician (and I must say I’m also particularly excited about seeing Roni Size on Friday – without him there would be no Drum and Bass in my life). Lessig did not let me down.

The first thing to note is the amazing way that the lecture was delivered. If you haven’t seen this then do yourself a favour and watch it. His presentation was in a similar format.

So just to recapture his argument very quickly, and please correct me if I misrepresent his arguments, he argues that all culture is a ‘remix’ of old culture. We are influenced by what we read, hear and see. We build on our history. In the past this hasn’t been a problem. Copyright is limited to text and the laws were quite appropriate considering you could use that text to develop your own culture by commenting on that text and quoting that text (within reasonable boundaries).

However, now in the digital age, you basically can’t do anything without copying. Such is the nature of digital technology. Law makers and corporations have essentially used this to prevent remixes. You can’t cut up images, string them together and add music to it without the permission of everyone’s material. However Lessig argues that this practice is no different to the remixing of the past where you would quote a book and comment on it.

Moreover, the younger generation (dare I suggest my generation) are shifting from passive consumers in front of the computer to active creators (perhaps this blog is a good example) which further compounds these issues.

So basically it is a classic case of the law being well behind technology and what is needed is massive legal reform. However, it is unlikely that this will happen for at least another decade (according to Lessig). So what he is calling on the individual artists to do is licence their work under a Creative Commons Licence. This way artists voluntarily give up some of their copyright in order to allow the continuation of culture.

Brilliant.

For another perspective on this (and a more critical one) it is worth having a look over at Weatherall’s Law here and here.

The NP Times has reported that the number of Non-profit organisations in America who are 501(c)(3) organisations has hit 1 million. Of America’s 1,540,554 non-profit organisations, approximately one third have the American equivalent of Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) status.

This is in stark contrast to Australia where only 19,000 of Australia’s 700,000 community groups have DGR status. DGR status (as I think I’ve mentioned before) is a particularly difficult status to get and if you are lucky enough to have it a lot of doors automatically open for you. DGR status is the status you have when any donation you receive over $2 is tax deductible. Research shows that most people don’t claim their donations anyway so this isn’t really the issue (although it does tend to confirm your legitimacy to donors). The problem is that if a trust is created and tax concessions are granted for this – ie the trust has DGR status and someone uses that status to gain tax concessions – then that money can only be redistributed to organisations with DGR status. The end result is that hundreds of millions of dollars that are tied up in philanthropic trusts can only be granted to the 19,000 non-profits in Australia with DGR status.

The definition of charity in Australia is very dated. There was a review of it last year which made nominal changes to these laws, however while they were a step in the right direction, it was a particularly small step.

There is a much stronger philanthropic tradition in America which has many historical roots, not least of which is a tradition of a small government and a lack of welfare which has meant that philanthropics have picked up the slack. Oddly, for historical and legal reasons the culture of giving is much stronger in Victoria than New South Wales.

What we need to do is Australia is have a particularly large expansion of those eligible for DGR status. You probably don’t even need to change the definition of a “charity” or more importantly a “public benevolent institution (PBI)”. You simply need to expand the number of categories that can receive DGR status so that people who aren’t PBIs can have DGR.

If people are interested about their eligibility and the possible tax concessions available to then then the ATO’s non-profit section on their web site is actually quite good.

The National Sorry Day Committee has decided that Sorry Day (26 May) should now become a National Day of Healing.

Sorry Day (or National Day of Healing) seems to have gone off the agenda a bit in recent years. Needless to say it is a great opportunity to keep indigenous issues on the agenda – particularly in the face of the Howard Government’s quite patronising ‘mutual obligation’ approach.

There is information and events listed on the Journey of Healing site and I would encourage all of you to attend these events and list your own if you are having one.

God bless him because someone has to (George W. Bush on tribal sovereignty).

This strikes me as problematic:

The best way to encourage skilled people back into the workforce is to push forward with industrial relations reform, Prime Minister John Howard said tonight.

Does it strike anyone else that this is somewhat of a warped logic. Job security will be at around a 100 year low. I can’t think of anything more attractive than being fired with no recourse because I work for a small business. Can you?

I came across this article which is well worth a read in itself as it covers topics such as class and globalisation.

However I thought I’d share which paragraph with the cricket fans out there:

The puzzle only deepens when one considers that cricket was once popular in both Canada and the United States. It rivaled baseball for most of the 19th century, with as many stories in the sports pages of The New York Times until 1880. Indeed, the world’s first international test match was played between Canada and the United States in 1844. So the puzzle is not so much why it was never adopted in North America, but why in the early 20th century it was subsequently rejected.

Bracks and Brumby release the Victorian state government budget today. We wait for the details to filter out through press releases and the media. But in the mean time it looks like it is once again a pretty conservative budget.

I’m uneasy with the fact that I find myself agreeing with Doyle on a small issue, that it is poor form for Bracks not to reinstate the nominal amount for money granted to people with disabilities for taxis. Very poor form. However, I please to acknowledge that everything else Doyal has said with regards to the budget is completely irrelevant.

So once again, it’s a pretty conservative agenda with modest gains across the board. The $89 million to connect every government school in the state to the SmartONE fibre-optic broadband network sounds like a great idea though.

It is also revealing to hear that they will be running a deficit (albeit a very small one) to pay for further infrastructural development – which if done properly can improve the functioning of Victoria as well as decreasing the negative environmental impacts. Unfortunately a deepening of the Port Philip Bay Channel is still on the agenda despite my hopes that it wouldn’t go ahead – I’ll continue to hope.

Deficits are not a good or a bad thing. If it is done correctly then it will have positive economic effects in the long term. Of course no one wants irresponsible financial management. At the end of the day, if you buy a house, you borrow money for that purpose. Infrastructure is no different. Moreover, it is precisely this ‘surplus economics’ that will spell the downfall of the Howard government as it has failed to adequately plan for the future. So at least Bracks has some vision – albeit a pretty boring one.

Be thankful you’re not blogging in Iran.

It is hardly confidence inspiring when Australians are being deported as illegal immigrants.

If we’re deporting Australians incorrectly, then we’re hardly in a position to indefinitely detain Refugees because we can’t establish what country they are citizens of.