The pie on the left is how Australia’s first preferences – the real popular vote – were cast. Looks like we want a Labor-Greens coalition, don’t you think? But the pie on the right is how the parliament will look after the single-member seat system “takes away the number you first thought of”.

The big winners are the big parties, the big losers are the almost 20% of Australians who voted away from the major parties, but who are represented by 3% of the seats in Parliament. Especially skewed is the single seat won by the 11% Green vote.

Tony Abbott is right to interpret the people’s verdict as a loss of legitimacy for Labor, but is thinking wishfully if he believes that this automatically confers legitimacy upon the Liberals.

Two parties are not enough to represent the diversity of our views, and it’s time we adopted a proportional, fair voting system that doesn’t simply remove that inconvenient variety.

As much as I love the idea of holding public fora where voters can ask unscripted questions of their elected representatives. (“Our leaders need more Q & A in the real world”, The Australian, August 18), the Rooty Hill RSL forum was not a good model, as only undecided voters were allowed to participate.

The majority of Australians consistently vote according to their convictions. A minority, mainly the least engaged and informed, make up their minds, ad hoc, at the last minute. Due to the vagaries of our electoral system, these people have an undue influence on election outcomes, so the major parties must court them passionately, showering them with gifts and flattering them with endearments like “Middle Australia”, “the Real Australia”, or even “the Real World”.

The swinging voter is an over-represented minority and is no more “real” than any other segment of the electorate.

But there is one jarring note: the bizarre proposition (from Noel Pearson amongst others) that the market alone, particularly through the uniquely Western notion of private land ownership, can undo centuries of post-colonial trauma.

The market has its uses, but this is not one of them. It has worked well for telecommunications and resources, been slightly detrimental for public utilities, and disastrous for healthcare, education and prisons. For cultural and social fragmentation, it is more likely to be a cause than a cure. But to a boy with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

All rights, and laws, are social fictions which presumably have benefits but come at a cost of enforcement. In this regard property and drinking water are the same. Who is paying for the enforcement of the laws protecting your property, and even your life, if not the taxpayer? Once we have accepted this, it is simply a matter of priorities, and I for one put safe water very high on the list.

The Australian further argues for the privatisation of water resources, a idea which has had patchy results and met with stiff popular resistance, but is actually not incompatible with this resolution, as private operators are also subject to law and enforceable rights – it is not only the state from whom we require protection, although this focus reflects propertarian preoccupations.

Articulate ex-Islamist and ex-socialist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who recently visited Australia, has become a pin-up for neo-conservatives. But her bitterness against Islam clouds her argument.

She conflates Islam with extreme social conservatism (for example, submission to authority, subjugation of women, and persecution of homosexuality). But many Muslims do not hold these views, and many non-Muslims do, including people who already live in Australia. If these issues are a threat to Australian values, then we must address them specifically, opposing the actual repressive ideology, not a religion, not a country, not an ethnicity. To take the other road is mere prejudice. Are we going to ask immigrants from the U.S. if they are Amish? Are we going to deport Australians who oppose gay marriage or think women belong at home?

Hirsi Ali overdresses her straw man in the style of Joseph McCarthy when she describes secret evil plans for “the gradual Islamisation of Australia” by methods which don’t sound much different from those of the Hari Krishnas, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, or the Landmark Forum.

Hirsi Ali says that The Australian‘s Janet Albrechtsen told her  it  is “taboo” in Australia to hold this “unconventional view” – yet it is commonplace and widely publicised. By targeting a particular religion, and particular countries and ethnicities, rather than the actual beliefs and values concerned, she has played right into the hands of shock-jocks, bigots and outright racists.

Her proposal to tear up the UN convention on refugees and replace it with an assimilation test is a dog-whistle which confounds refugee policy with immigration policy.

Her evidence that the current convention is inadequate? “Most applicants lie” about fear of persecution (well, at least, she did). What, then, would stop them from lying about their intention to assimilate?

The evidence that we need an assimilation test? According to Hirsi Ali, it’s “the key to a successful multi-ethnic society”. In case you hadn’t noticed, we already have one; and even if we didn’t, that would be down to immigration policy, not refugee policy, which is about helping those in need. Tearing pages out of statute-books won’t reduce our moral obligations.

Even if we accept the validity of applying immigration policy to refugees, to require “willingness to live by the values of the host country” is obvious and trivial – if that’s all it really means.

But to the ears of those to whom this dog-whistle is tuned, “assimilation” is code for not speaking non-English languages, not wearing certain clothing, abandoning unfamiliar cultural practices including religious ones, and generally trying to conform to some chimerical, narcissistic image of Australian-ness. This kind of oppressive mono-culturalism is as old as migration itself, and is the real failure to assimilate.

Real assimilation is a two-way process: Australia has already absorbed many waves of migration, each of which changed our economy, society, culture and values – for the better.

Personally, I can’t stand Tony in Speedos, but we all have to look at things we don’t like or agree with in a democracy.

All legal penalties are a maximum designed to be applied only in the worst cases. No Centrelink officer, or any fair-minded person, wants to condemn a family to destitution because someone has missed an appointment, which is what will happen if the Liberal proposal is adopted.

Under the current market orthodoxy that an unemployment rate below 5% is too low, an interventionist approach to welfare for the unemployed is as useful as coaching the loser in a round of musical chairs.

Even in this time of “low” unemployment, for one in twenty, there simply is no job. Demonising them, punishing them and making them jump through hoops may sell tabloids but otherwise helps no-one.

This chant, which advocates the interventionist editorial regime favoured at NewsCorp and even presumes so far as to prescribe – by name – who should be hired and fired at the ABC, contains a telling contradiction: that the ABC should simultaneously inform and reflect the views of all Australians.

And there is the conceit: if most believe the world is flat – and we all do in one way or another – it is the responsibility of the press to inform us it is round, rather than pander to our ignorance.

The relative independence granted ABC journalists is the precise opposite of bias, and must be jealously guarded against global media bullies who only want the story told their way.

“Minimum call” provisions are standard for any casual employment, and serve as a flagfall to ensure workers are fairly paid for inconveniently short or split shifts. They do not stipulate a minimum shift duration, but a minimum payment.

Nonetheless, this furphy has prompted some more general assertions about “rigidity” in the labour market.

Many comparative studies have been done on this subject (typical is one from the Journal of Economic Perspectives vol 11, no 3, 1997). They find that strict employment protection, labour market legislation and high unionization – provided it is in a context of co-ordinated bargaining with employer organisations, as we now have – do not cause unemployment.

Employers do not hire as many people as they can afford, but as many as they need to meet demand. Obviously they will try to minimise cost by opposing any regulation – each individual employer will want their staff cheap but their customers well-paid (by someone else!) – but that doesn’t mean that we should accept this as valid economics.

Julia Gillard has given some succour to xenophobes with her carefully-worded recognition that electors are “anxious”, but is clear about the fact that refugee intake is not a significant contributor to population. The obvious conclusion: electors need to be educated to realize that their fears are unfounded.

Instead, we see more pandering to ignorance by imposing further cruelty on asylum seekers: more offshore and remote-area incarceration.

Imprisonment is a grave step which should only be taken when we are certain someone has committed a crime. The vast majority of asylum seekers are found to have genuine claims and therefore have been needlessly imprisoned. Even those whose claims are rejected have not thereby broken any law.

Using wrongful imprisonment as a deterrent to smuggling is as illogical as it is ineffective as it is immoral.

In Australia and every other democracy, prior to the current wave of xenophobia, refugees simply lived in the community, given the benefit of the doubt until their claims were assessed.

If we reintroduced this policy, on current figures about 200 applications for asylum would eventually be rejected. Even if every single one of these went on the lam and had to be apprehended, the impact and cost would be negligible compared to the expensive, ugly ethical quagmire we are now wallowing in. Importantly, we would no longer be locking up innocent people.

Both Ben Chifley and Malcolm Fraser had to go against popular prejudices to create their immigration programs, of Jewish and Indochinese refugees respectively. It’s time this government showed the same strength of leadership.