Peter Martin is the best political columnist in Australia today. Hands down. The Sydney Morning Herald and the TheAustralian would do well to imitate his style, subjects and approach.

Peter has another fascinating article, this time on research to determine if people take external effects into their purchasing. This is compared to Australians when polled saying they would prefer better services to lower taxes - to which the political policy is, no; you will have lower taxes and like it.

Personally I believe in both. However, a analogous study was done in NY where fair trade products were tested against different price points. The study's authors found that sales increased as the price was increased.

From the article:

Their conclusion is that shoppers mean what they say in surveys [about a willingness to pay more for fair trade products]. They are prepared to put their money where their mouths are when it comes to fair trade. At least in New York. Its a business opportunity going missing.

I have a feeling that its the same with Australian voters and spending on hospitals and schools. We mean what we say. And we are prepared to give up tax cuts to get it. Can anyone see a political opportunity going missing?

Firstly this is consistent with Harpurian Republicanism where maximum liberty allows for greater individual moral expression. In this case the moral choice is a fair trade product over a sweatshop one despite the fair trade product being more expensive.

The liberty inherent in economic liberalism/rationalism and the capability for producers to bring a greater array of products to the marketplace and increasing consumer choice, allows consumers to balance economic and moral aspects of the commercial exchange. Liberty becomes a vector for individual moral expression.

So how does a public health and education system reconcile itself with Harpurian Republicanism and Deniehyian Democratism. Wouldn't a state run system limit individual moral expression in health and education?

Deniehy was opposed to the mingling of church and state, to the point that his clashes with the NSW Clergy while he was a NSW Assembly representative left him ex-communicated from the Catholic church. This separation of church and state extended to religous schools:

My own belief is that the greatest amount of freedom from the shackle of the state would be the best security for the Church obtaining its widest sphere of influence for good.

Deniehy would not be impressed with the Australian national government funding private religious schools. So Deniehyian Democratism does not include the public funding of religious schools. However in an article, "Our Country's Opportunity" Deniehy writes of the role of government in public works:

The subject of public works is one that will come before the Legislature, recommended by the Government; and we are of the opinion that this matter; joined with the questions of education and immigration, is paramount to all others, and will conduce more immediately to the prosperity of the colony than anything else that can be devised by the most fertile imagination.

Prosperity becomes the point at which state support for large capital works and services can be considered. This must still be compatible with maximum liberty for it to come under the description of Australian Republicanism.

By public works Deniehy meant road and rail to connect the colony economically and its lines of communication so that the "entire population ... [be able to] bring themselves into direct intercourse with each other". He was in Goulburn at the time when he wrote this so was probably very sensitive to the tyranny of distance from Sydney.

Deniehy wanted immigration to match the labor demands of the economy. Which is a very modern view of the state's influence on the economy and its management, as well as the role of an immigration policy. Australia currently has a testing regime for its immigration that effectively matches the skills of an immigrant to the demands of the Australian economy.

Deniehy does not elaborate what he sees public education being in that article but in another titled, "Legislative Advancement of Knowledge", Deniehy writes about Democracy being incomplete and subject to tyranny and mob rule unless there was universal education. Education becomes an obligation a democracy must bear to be described as the 'state'.

Note however that the goal is a universally knowledgable, informed and educated population for republicanism and democracy to be sustained. If universal education can be achieved privately then it is compatible with Harpurian Republicanism or Deniehyian Democratism.

Deniehy writes:

One of the prime duties of a government in any country is the education of its subjects. When it has provided schools for the young, its responsibility has by no means ceased. It has merely taken initial and rudimentary proceedings. It has merely trained the infantile and youthful mind as far as these can be trained.

It has only put intellectual tools and implements into the hands of its pupils, the due use of which in after years very considerably depends on further provision which this said government is bound to make.

The education of a man is never at end: it goes on always in this world - goes on, too, perhaps for ever in this context.

He continues:

The State is bound to provide, as far as its means will allow, institutions which may carry on the education of the man long after his nonage. This done - then with the individual who has neither tastes nor inclination for pursuits which alone impart to him power and individual happiness, the fault of wanting both alone lies - the State has done its part.

Deniehy's idea of education included the public funding of libraries, art galleries as well as schools and universities. Australia was an impoverished literary nation in the mid-19thC. Deniehy owned one of the biggest private libraries in Sydney at the time. Books are much cheaper now and the internet is almost ubiquitous which has changed that landscape.

His view on universal education is that Democracy is incomplete without it and that it is an important component for an individual to make moral choices; socially, economically and politically. Knowledge becomes the path to moral expression.

Deniehy does not dictate a curriculum or a christian view of morality, knowledge becomes an intrinsic individual and public good where moral decisions become inherent from that education. Morality is not taught, rather, knowledge leads directly to good moral choices. This includes the morality of liberty and the morality of democracy.

Deniehy died in a Lithgow street. He collapsed, vomiting blood from his mouth and nose. His body had been wracked by the alcoholism of his later years. Public health is mainly a modern policy from the 20thC. Deniehy would still have died if he been alive today, alcoholism does that, but at the first sign of collapse he would have been whisked away by a Lithgow Ambulance.

Can we extrapolate what Harpur or Deniehy's position on public health would be if they were around today? Harpur and Deniehy were technologists who saw Republicanism as an organisational technology which maximised liberty, minimised tyranny and enabled the greatest individual moral expression.

They recognise the limits of a technology and its imperfectability, just as they recognise the moral imperfectability of an individual in humankind's current moral growth.

The economic technology used for health is insurance. This is a technology that handles economic risk for catastrophic and one-off events. As a technology to handle recurring catastrophes it is a complete failure. As an example home insurance which covers a cyclone hitting once every one hundred years is acceptable risk. Insurance to cover hurricane hits every second year is where the technology fails. This is why insurers won't cover people in Florida for this recurring catastrophe.

Insurance is incompatible with recurring health issues. It is great for the one off event, like a heart attack, but inappropriate for preventative medicine. Until we discover new economic technologies or completely commoditise the health industry, there will be a role for the state in health care.

More Reading on Peter martin

• Peter Martin
• Dan Deniehy
• Charles Harpur
• Australian Republicanism
• Public Education
• Public Health
• Hapurian Republicanism
• Deniehyan Democratism
• An Incumbency Perk
• Dan Deniehy and Public Education/Health
• Federalism for Liberty or Service Delivery
• Peter Martin's stories of Peter Costello