A New Public Law? Australian Constitutionalism in the Age of Globalisation

When the history of the age of globalisation is written, the last five or so years may well be counted as among the most significant. That significance is visible but by no means obvious, at least not for those absorbed in conventional (ie, chiefly liberal) academic debates and pre-occupations. I am not talking about an explosion in the value of global financial transactions, or even, despite the lurid ‘bio-tech’ dreams of this moment, a technological catapult. The significance of this time lies in the realm of political ideas and action. In these years, two alternative global futures have lined up for battle, on the streets of Genoa and Prague, Melbourne and Seattle. Some have died for their cause. But it is the coming to life of communities, of a ‘newish’ politics, not the death of individuals, that distinguishes these displays of anger, fear and optimism. But before going further weren’t the protestors on the streets of Genoa and Prague anti-globalisation protestors? Isn’t there a broad consensus on the left that globalisation is an evil? That idea is beginning to slip away. Any perpetuation will most likely come from the media’s determination to paint contemporary activists as ‘hippy anachronists’. Globalisation is not a disintegrative force, a tide of limitless endings on which we must either float (according to the neo-liberals) or against which we should pile the sandbags (to follow state socialists and nationalists). Globalisation is an identifiable, if not entirely discrete, step in the evolution of the social life of the species. No one group or nation controls it, can lay moral claim to it, or can even claim to know precisely where this step will evolve to. In this way, the now highly visible and idealistic politics of anti-capitalism are not merely global in scale, but also, it is now clear, a defining ideological and political quality of globalisation itself. Pursuing this line, the real alternatives are not those of global hyper-capitalism, with all its risks and technological rewards, or a return to old-fashioned styles of