A review of competition laws is providing an opportunity for the Coalition Government and industry groups to push for a ban against environmental boycotts. If the exemption on secondary boycotts is dropped, then campaigns against industry practices that are seen to be environmentally damaging, such as logging old-growth forests, will become illegal.
It is always a wonder to behold when economic liberals start tinkering with the conditions in which their corporate allies conduct business. According to the parliamentary secretary for agriculture, Richard Colbeck, Environmental groups 'can say what they like', campaign about what they like' and 'have a point of view, but they should not be able to run a specific business-focused or market-focused campaign, and they should not be able to say things that are not true'. He goes on to suggest there is currently no recourse to 'enforce accuracy'.
It is a strange protectionism that portrays entire industries as victims, defenceless against the barrage of readily available information — to which their public relations and marketing divisions can contribute, by the way. It turns out that the free flow of information cannot be so free as to disrupt capital.
It would also seem that the only legitimate choices within a free market are ones unimpeded by things like ethics, conscience or even unease. That seems to be the gist of the Federal Government response to the Sydney Biennale boycott. This campaign was instigated by pro-asylum seeker activists who had drawn the dots between Transfield, the key sponsor for the arts festival, and the contractor for Manus Island detention centre.
In an interview with ABC Radio National, Arts Minister and Attorney-General George Brandis said 'I don't think that arts companies should reject bona fide sponsorship from commercially sound, prospective partners on political grounds.' He goes so far as to endorse moves to block government funding to arts organisations that refuse corporate sponsorship. In case it still isn't clear, the principal legal adviser to the Federal Cabinet and foremost officer of the law is telling us, 'Shut up and take the money.'
It would appear that money as a lever in the market is not meant to be wielded by ordinary folk. Many on the right side of politics who are hostile toward boycotts regard them as radical and misguided, anomalies in the free market rather an outcome of the conditions that they prosecute. Such hostility reveals that while they think it reasonable for the