Thursday, September 11, 2014

Senator Leyonhjelm hires Helen Dale as adviser

David Leyonhjelm calls on Helen Dale to help fight for libertarianism - Paul Sheehan, Sydney Morning Herald:

September 10, 2014 - "Only one official libertarian sits in the [Australian] federal Parliament, though there are many closet libertarians hidden inside the tax-and-spend big government of Tony Abbott. This week that libertarian, Senator David Leyonhjelm of the Liberal Democratic Party, ... appointed Helen Dale, born Helen Darville, also known by the literary pseudonym Helen Demidenko, to his staff as a senior adviser.....

"I first met Dale and Leyonhjelm at a libertarian conference in Sydney earlier this year where both were delivering papers. Dale's presentation focused on social changes caused by technology, not expensive social engineering....  Practising law, she saw government regulation and compulsion as frequently having both adverse and unintended consequences.

"'I noticed the extent to which government regulations often had a malicious effect,' she said. 'Unlike many lawyers, I do not think the solution to every problem is "pass a law". Law has limits.'

"She arrived at this belief via a circuitous path, having become famous at age 20, as Helen Demidenko, for a novel written when she was 19, The Hand that Signed the Paper. It won the Miles Franklin Award in 1995....

"In 2002, at the age of 30, she turned to the law. She graduated with first-class honours from the University of Queensland and became a judge's associate. She won a scholarship to the University of Oxford, where she graduated with a bachelor of civil law. Because she has dual nationality, holding British and Australian passports, she remained in Britain and practised law. While doing a graduate course at the University of Edinburgh School of Law, she won the Law Society student essay prize....

"'Senator Leyonhjelm is a classical liberal, as am I," Dale says.... 'Working for him means leaving a job I enjoy and a city, Edinburgh, I love, ... but if I can help introduce the public to the radical notion that people are often best left alone, then my move will be wholly worthwhile'."

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/david-leyonhjelm-calls-on-helen-dale-to-help-fight-for-libertarianism-20140910-10f132.html
'via Blog this'

No comments:

Post a Comment