And if Ron is me then it was a very interesting phone conversation we had with ourself the other week. But such conversations with himself might be the norm for our mate Phil.

Most of my working life has involved the detection of lies and bull$hit in job applications. And I can confirm to all that dishonesty is a muscle which, if exercised often will become an involuntary muscle. Conversely, honesty is also a muscle which becomes an involuntary one when it is exercised often. And the reason why shonks and spivs prey on religious communities is because they are really poor liars and are therefore poorly equipped to detect liars in their midst.

And from my experience honest people voluntarily give you all the information you might need to make a decision while the dishonest are invariably selective with the facts and even question your need to have them. They just can’t help themselves.

I have never had a pro-religious bias because I have always applied the appropriate techniques to all. But I can confirm that a much higher proportion of religious folk, be they good christians, good muslims, good hindus or good buddhists, tended to pass the tests that were set for them.

My attitude to the green movement, government officers and certain parts of the research community, has been shaped by detailed, proven and specific assessment methods and too many of them have failed dismally.

1 First is the shift in religious focus from the demands of how to become a better person, as exemplified by all the great religions to date, and the green demand to “save the planet”.

The objective of “being a better person” is incremental and requires constant effort throughout one’s life to achieve a broad range of desirable traits from self discipline to compassion. But the desire to “save the planet” places no defined expectations on individual or community behaviour. Deception, greed, theft, sloth, envy, negligence and even manslaughter of both humans and wildlife can be excused so long as a vague intention to further planet salvation was loudly proclaimed as justification.

And it is long overdue to note that the green religion has no associated moral code that governs or guides the manner in which they will work towards their objectives. The end justifies any means.

2 The second is how we cope with being governed and administered by people who do not believe that some ultimate, all knowing arbiter will pass judgement on their misdeeds.

Prior to last century almost every culture was governed by people who held the view that, no matter how high their station in life, their actions were always under the scrutiny of a supreme being and they would eventually be brought to account for their actions. It is what moved Voltaire to say, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him”.

It is no coincidence that the first century in which this belief was subject to serious challenge produced Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Ratco Maladic. But their extremes were only possible because they had an entire chain of authority that also thought the same way.

This is not to say that belief in an ultimate arbiter prevented appalling injustices in earlier centuries. Far from it. But the very worst behaviour always required an elaborate body of rationalisation, and often demonisation of the victims, before such outrages took place.

And historical research is now uncovering the extent to which such excesses were driven by physical and mental illness, like syphillus, and poisoning, from the use of lead pipes in water supply, in a context of dealing with famine and plague. At the community level, hunger, malnutrition, poor sanitation and grossly inadequate housing played major roles, as they still do in many parts of the world.

But throughout these earlier times the decision makers wrestled with their consciences. An ultimate arbiter was part of most executive actions. And it tempered decision and exercised a brake on raw power in all but the most desperate of circumstances.

With the loss of this notion of ultimate arbitration we now have the green movement claiming that we are in the most desperate of all circumstances, where the very planet itself is supposedly under threat. And this extreme threat is used as pretext for discarding all the hard fought for, and sacrificed for, principles that defined a better person, and just and equitable governance.

In any situation where belief in an ultimate arbiter can no longer be assumed to be present then our society must develop a system of government disclosure and transparency that is robust enough to serve the same purpose. It is no good making futile demands for a return to our earlier religious values when a false oath, before a God they do not believe in, is such a readilly available option for abusers of the system. In particular, the notion of privacy and confidentiality, for all persons involved in governance, must be fundamentally reviewed.

It is no longer acceptable to allow important information on governance to be withheld from public scrutiny for 30 years or more on the basis of it being presented to Cabinet in the form of five cardboard boxes full of unread papers on a hand trolley. All material, including Cabinet submissions, must be made available for scrutiny. Restrictions could still be retained as to appropriate persons to whom such disclosure could be made, and the sort of circumstances in which the information may be used. There would also need to be substantial penalties for the misuse of such material.

The head of power for such measures must rest with the primacy of parliament. It is already recognised as a fundamental contempt of parliament to mislead the house in any way. And it is already accepted that a misleading of the house can take place by way of omission of relevant material. Yet, a government is granted the power to withhold highly relevant material for 30 years or more, merely on the basis that the material was presented to Cabinet.

If a Cabinet is discharging its powers properly then every last bit of material presented to it is relevant material. And if decisions are being made by a Cabinet after which the Parliament is expected to ratify then the parliament must have access to all that material.

It may mean that some sessions of Parliament would need to be closed to the public so that sensitive material can be considered. It would follow that any disclosure of such material outside the chamber would constitute contempt of parliament. But just as both sides in a court case must always act as servants of the court, both sides of parliament must act as servants of the parliament.

At the moment we have a system that was drawn up at a time when almost every member of parliament held the belief that they were individually and collectively accountable to an all knowing arbiter. That condition no longer applies and even if it still did apply it is a very simple step for anyone who does not hold that belief to convey a false impression that they do.

And as far as those people are concerned, the only moral brake on their actions are their own ethics, which are always subject to revision, and the risk of their misdeeds being discovered.

The system could be strengthened by a requirement that each piece of legislation, policy or head of appropriation, should outline the relevant facts and considerations that have lead to the decision. These could include confidential elements that are referred to only by reference to a confidential register, as well as the publicly available considerations. And if it is subsequently discovered that any of the public or confidential considerations were false or in error, then the legislation, policy or appropriation would be struck down.

That is, the parliament would be bound to strike down legislation it had previously passed if a confidential consideration (known only to parliament) was subsequently found to be false. And a failure on the part of a majority to strike down such legislation would become grounds for an opposition to release the relevant information to the public for proper scrutiny.

I don’t have Huxley’s collected works in front of me, but I consider Irvine’s biography provides ample evidence that Huxley himself professed to be a determinist. In particular I refer to these direct quotes from Huxley himself:

Huxley directly used the term ‘determinism’ for his belief system on at least one occasion, in the direct Huxley quote I gave from p. 244 in Irvine. Also, determinism is affirmed in Huxley’s own words, twice, in the passages I quoted from p.193 in Irvine. True, Huxley on these latter two occasions does not directly use the word determinism; but the terms he does use clearly have the same meaning as determinism.

Huxley attacked religion because it was incompatible with determinism. But determinism is equally incompatible with free will.

I also read the large piece in the SMH this weekend about the earth warming and how the planet shows all the signs of a person with a terminal disease. Absolute rubbish in a broadsheet read by Sydney’s educated!