An Interview with Tim Wilson, Freedom Commissioner
Established in 1986 by an act of Parliament, The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) is a body that reports to the Attorney-General. Among other things, AHRC seeks to resolve complaints of discrimination or breaches of human rights under federal laws and facilitates the holding of public inquiries into human rights issues of national importance.
Tim Wilson (TW) was appointed Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner in February 2014.
Dubbed the “Freedom Commissioner”, Tim is a proud and passionate defender of universal, individual human rights. As Commissioner, he is focused on promoting and advancing traditional human rights and freedoms, including free speech, freedom of association, worship and movement, and property rights.
Prior to his appointment Tim was a public policy analyst and a policy director at the world’s oldest free market think tank, the Institute of Public Affairs. The Savvy Street’s Vinay Kolhatkar (VK) caught up with Tim in December 2014.
VK: At the AHRC, what is your typical week at the office like?
TW: Manic. Before I was appointed, I understood where I wanted to take the office – to refocus human rights back onto the rights and freedoms of the individual, and importantly to increase an understanding of how important property rights are as part of that discussion. I knew that, and it was straightforward. The bit that hits you when you start the role is the challenge of being the Human Rights Commissioner for the whole country.
Australia is enormous and a lot of my time is spent flying around and engaging with people. To give you a picture, in a recent week I started Sunday in Melbourne, flew to Cairns for Monday, Tuesday I was in Townsville, Wednesday I was in Charters Towers, Thursday I was in Sydney and Friday I was in Melbourne.
It’s not just the geography, it’s also the full spectrum of issues; in that week we tackled issues ranging from environmentally restrictive practices for rural and regional property owners, removing barriers to Aboriginals exercising their property rights, access to mental health support for transgender Australians, reform to national security laws and preserving and protecting religious freedom in a future Australia when the Parliament legislates marriage for same-sex couples, among many others.
VK: In your formative years, which thinkers or books most influenced your thinking?
TW: My ‘thinking’ formative years were not until I was at University. Prior to that time, most of my insights were observational about the community I lived in, and the human impact that resulted from not preserving and protecting the rights and unleashing the potential of the individual.
It was not until I went to University that I was able to put that into a framework. There were lots of thinkers, but Milton Friedman was a key influencer. Friedman was influential because of his thoughts, but also because of his style. Friedman understood how to tell people something they didn’t like, or want to hear, but with a smile.
The work of Hernando de Soto, and particularly his book, The Mystery of Capital, was equally influential in my thinking. De Soto taught me the importance of property rights in a modern market economy and how that then translates to both wealth, as well as environmental and social progress.
VK: The AHRC is a national body. Yet the U.K., Canada, the U.S. do not have nationwide human rights commissions, only selective, regional ones. Which is the better model?
TW: There’s a certain irony that governments even have human rights institutions. Human rights are predominantly about preserving the rights of the individual against the excesses of government power. So it is ironic that a government body is then charged with the purpose of protecting individual rights. In practice, Human Rights Commissions are really only a small part of the picture. To truly preserve and defend human rights the values sitting behind the rights of the individual need to sit in the culture of the body politic. What’s written on paper is secondary to a lived culture.
VK: What do you hope to achieve in your term as the Human Rights Commissioner?
TW: I am learning that I have to temper my ambition from changing the whole country. Since being appointed, I have been completing a nationwide consultation on the human rights issues that exist in Australia. I am then marrying them to the practical capacity to bring about change within the political environment.
I think there is real opportunity to reform property rights in Australia, particularly for Aboriginal Australians, so the focus shifts to enabling people to exercise their rights, rather than having them in name only.
Equally, I think there is an opportunity to renavigate the discussion about religious freedom in a modern, pluralistic liberal democracy, with a secular State.
I am also the Commissioner responsible for sexual orientation and gender identity issues and there are a lot of issues that impact on transgender Australians, particularly in the health and education sectors, which desperately need addressing.
VK: In January 2013, the IPA publicly asserted that the Human Rights Commission should be scrapped, because it does not support human rights. Have you formed a different view after the experience of being here and managed to convert your IPA colleagues to this view?
TW: Some of my former colleagues called for the Australian Human Rights Commission to be abolished, but I never did.
My focus has been to reassert the importance of individual rights as part of the Commission’s purpose and ensure it is fulfilling its whole purpose. Human rights are not just about marginalised groups, they are about everyone.
Since being in the Commission, I have an awareness of the full spectrum of work that it does and the role it can play. But without a robust assertion of individual rights and freedoms within the Commission, it is worse off because it struggles to fulfil its whole purpose.
VK: You maintain that you are a classical liberal—it should mean free markets, free speech, and no central banking. Yet you have been a long-term member of the Liberal Party. Can you reconcile this apparent contradiction?
TW: I call myself a classical liberal because I believe that we should have a free and open liberal democracy built on the rights of the individual so that they can be free to pursue their lives, their opportunities and their enterprise. I was a member of the Liberal Party, but it was a requirement of accepting this role that I resign while holding this office; nor should I really comment on the consistency between my views and those of a political party.
The challenge of advancing individual liberty in Australia is that Australians are complacent about their liberty. It is assumed and taken for granted. Australians value other principles such as ‘fairness’. If you want to win a debate in Australia you need to argue fair, not free. Free can be fair. But fair often conflicts with free. I think those who believe in enlarged individual liberty need to be more comfortable finding narratives and arguments that freedom is fair.
VK: If a true conception of rights should be of expression and be protected at law, why then should the Government have a “Multiculturalism” policy that encourages taxpayer-funded “promotion” (not just tolerance) of ethnic cultures?
TW: I am not completely sure I understand the question. But what I can say is that in a pluralistic, liberal democracy we should want people to live in a society where we exercise sufficient mutual respect for others, while also acknowledging that we are individual and different. But nothing promotes a degree of mutual respectfulness and mindfulness of others than exposure and engagement.
Every country has a dominant culture, but that doesn’t mean there cannot be undercurrents and sub-cultures that legitimately co-exist. Even without migration, Australia has a dominant culture for the nation, but then sub-cultures, such as those based on geographic regions. Take Victoria and Queensland, each have their own sub-cultures.
Australians are fair-minded people. But we are all limited in our life experience. Since taking on this role, I have had the privilege of engaging with the full spectrum of Australian society and that has enabled me to appreciate the necessity of respecting individuality while advancing common goals.
VK: Let’s hypothesise for a moment that the LNP, the Australian Tea Party (converted into a political force, say), and the LDP, have “safe seats” for the lower house at the federal level and that all three were to invite you to stand for election in a “safe seat”—which one would you choose and why?
TW: As a non-partisan Statutory Officer it would be inappropriate to answer.
VK: You and your colleagues at the IPA did well to expose the carbon racket, but it has grown rather than died. Is it your view that the LNP heavyweights like Abbott and Turnbull are pretending to buy into climate scientology for the sake of elections, or did they actually get swept by the pseudo-science?
TW: I don’t agree with your line of questioning. I don’t think terms like “carbon racket” or “carbon scientology” are accurate or helpful.
There are different dimensions to public debate surrounding anthropogenic climate change – the science, the economics and the policy. My main focus has been on the economics and policy, including rent seeking behaviour by many multinational companies.
No one disputes that there is a changing climate; there are ongoing disputes about the contribution that humans make to it. That scientific debate should continue. Evidence should inform scientific discussion. No one should be shouted down for holding a contrary view. The weight of their opinion should be based on the evidentiary basis of their comment and the individual’s credibility.
We should then use that scientific information to inform public policy development. I want to place heavy emphasis on the word “inform”, which is very different from “direct”. Some people seem to believe that evidence should dictate public policy outcomes. I strongly disagree. Evidence informs public policy considerations, including the cost, benefit and the economic, social and environmental sustainability of inaction, or different forms of action.
What I would caution against is underestimating technological innovation and over-estimating the gains from regulating in favour of existing low or no-carbon dioxide emitting technologies that don’t deliver on their promise.
VK: Real climate scientists have had their careers destroyed or diminished for daring to express a contrary view. Can the Human Rights Commission help them?
TW: People’s careers are always dependent on reputation, which includes the views of their peers. It is a reminder of how we informally regulate conduct within our society. How that community governs themselves is up to them. It is not the role of the Commission to interfere with this process.
It is a reminder of the importance of why we should never have closed minds or seek to silence opinions. Human progress is built on people challenging and contesting ideas and views of established people in positions of power and privilege. We should never let people in positions of power go unchallenged.
VK: Objectivists understand that all property is intellectual property because wealth is created by the human mind in action, that we create our reputations, and they should therefore be protected at law from material negligent false claims (but not arbitrary opinions, no matter how bad). Libertarians, on the other hand, attach property rights to scarcity, and thereby conclude that we do not own our reputations, and that defamation by way of knowingly making damaging false claims should be “free speech” without legal consequences. Which side of the debate do you fall on?
TW: I am a classical liberal, not an objectivist or libertarian. I have sympathies with protecting people’s reputation by law, but I think any protection needs to be tightly linked to a loss of reputation that impacts on commercial opportunity off the back of previous investment. I am wary of any other protection by defamation law.
VK: Can you think of three things that are politically correct, but also actually correct?
TW: I am not 100 per cent sure I know what that question means. But I do think good policy means good politics. But good policy that drives serious reform needs to be relatable to people in a liberal democracy. That means identifying a problem, connecting it to people’s lived experience, explaining an alternative and why it works. If you can’t convince people there’s a problem, you’ll never convince them you have the solution. Take healthcare, the reality is that many Australians don’t know there is a long term structural challenge with socialised healthcare financing. Until they do, they won’t accept the important role markets can play in fixing it.
VK: What is the one thing you might have done differently in the last twenty years?
TW: Only one? I make mistakes, we all do. I am often better for failure. Failure provides opportunities to learn.
VK: Many thanks for your time, Commissioner Wilson. We wish you the very best in your endeavours.
About the Author: Vinay Kolhatkar
« The Courage to Face a Lifetime: Nathaniel Branden, 1930-2014 The One True God »
