Bruce Duncan

  • Bruce Duncan. Pope runs moral template over G20.

    Pope France outlined a sharp moral template for world leaders at the G20 meeting in Brisbane. In a letter on 6 November to the current chair of the G20, Prime Minister Tony Abbott, the Pope warned that “many lives are at stake”, including from “severe malnutrition”, as he highlighted the values and policy priorities needed for the global economy.

    Francis regarded the Global Financial Crisis as “a form of aggression” equally serious and real as the extremist attacks in the Middle East. He specifically condemned abuses in unconstrained speculation and maximising profits as “the final criterion of all economic activity.”

    In effect, the letter was a firm rejection of the neoliberal policies that have been driving economic policies in recent decades, resulting in a yawning chasm between the very rich and the poor, within and between nations.

    In line with his earlier statements, Francis called for urgent measures to reverse “all forms of unacceptable inequality” and poverty, and to restore social equity and opportunity for everyone, but especially to focus efforts on the needs of the most vulnerable. “Responsibility for the poor and the marginalised must therefore be an essential element of any political decision”.

    His concern about “the spectre of global recession” springs from his experience of the economic collapse in Argentina in 2002 and the terrible results of the 2008 financial crisis. In parts of Europe unemployment is still running up to 50 per cent among youth. He urged “improvement in the quality” of public and private spending and investment, especially to create “decent work for all”. He warned that prolonged social exclusion can lead to criminal activity and “even the recruitment of terrorists”.

    Mr Abbott would welcome the Pope’s comments in support of “concerted efforts to combat tax evasion” and proper financial regulation to ensure “honesty, security and transparency”. Abbott would also take heart from the Pope’s support for the United Nations legal system to “halt unjust aggression” against minorities in the Middle East. The Pope affirmed the duty of the international community to protect people from extreme attacks and violations of humanitarian law.

    But the Pope also contended that there can be no military solution to the problem of terrorism, since the roots causes derive from “poverty, underdevelopment and exclusion” as well as distorted religious views. The Pope did not mention the huge cuts to Australia’s overseas aid, but urged support for the UN Assembly’s post-2015 Development Agenda.

    Mr Abbott may not have been so happy to read about the Pope’s concern with climate change and “assaults on the natural environment, the result of unbridled consumerism”, with serious consequences for the world economy.

    Mr Abbott may not have been so happy to read about the Pope’s concern with climate change and “assaults on the natural environment, the result of unbridled consumerism”, with serious consequences for the world economy.

    Nor would Abbott feel too comfortable with the Pope’s appeal about the humanitarian crisis of refugees around the world. While not mentioning Australia’s extremely harsh treatment of refugees arriving by boat, the Pope asked the G20 states “to be examples of generosity and solidarity”, especially for refugees. Australia’s current quota of 13,750 refugees, reduced from 20,000 by the Abbott government, appears inordinately meagre in comparison to our wealth and resources.

    None of what Pope Francis is saying about the moral criteria for a more just economic system will come as a surprise to those who have been following his earlier criticism of abuses in capitalist and other economies. Indeed, the critique of capitalism by the popes has been consistent since Pope Leo XIII in his 1891 document, On the Condition of the Working Class, and more especially since John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council which finished in 1965.

    Pope Benedict also reiterated the call for reform in economic systems in his 2009 document, Caritas in Veritate, in which he extolled Pope Paul VI’s incisive critique of neoliberalism in his landmark 1967 document, Development of Peoples.

    What is new with Pope Francis is his ability to communicate refreshingly in a friendly and popular way, and articulate clearly a renewed moral perspective on our global economic plight. Even people who are not Catholic or Christian can hear his voice as a call to reason, humanity and sanity at this critical moment in the human story.

    Fr Bruce Duncan CSsR is one of the founders of the advocacy group, Social Policy Connections, and Director of the Yarra Institute for Religion and Social Policy in Melbourne.

     

  • Bruce Duncan. Iraq: where to now?

    Threats from the self-styled Islamic State to kill Australians randomly on the street or wherever by any means possible have shocked us all. The threats were not just against Australians, nor only against westerners, but against other Muslims, even Sunnis who refused to bow to the IS, and especially against the modernising Muslims and the political elites in Muslim countries.

    It appears that Islamic State is trying to unleash a global war between Muslims and non-Muslims, believing that the final apocalyptic battle against the ‘crusaders’ or ‘Romans’ to be fought at Dabiq in northern Iraq will usher in a new golden age. Many Muslims in the Middle East believe that this battle will occur within decades.

    The response of the Australian government has been to urge western intervention and even to despatch fighter aircraft to help destroy IS forces. Urgent action was certainly needed to prevent the slaughter of minority groups, including Christians, Yazidis and Kurds. But commentators have been troubled by what appeared as overreach by Australia and grandstanding by our politicians.

    Australia is partly responsible for the chaos and disintegration in Iraq, since Australia was only one of three countries to invade Iraq in 2003, despite widespread public dissension in western countries and strenuous opposition by Pope John Paul II and other religious leaders. As they feared, the consequences have been that hundreds of thousands have died, millions have fled Iraq or been internally displaced, and most in the ancient Christian communities, over a million, have left the country which has been riven by sectarian conflict between Sunnis and Shia.

    Yet many of the very politicians who determined to invade Iraq in the mistaken belief that Saddam posed a threat with nuclear weapons are now plunging us back into this crisis. Former Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, now says he was ‘embarrassed’ that no weapons of mass destruction were found, despite his earlier insistence that they had certain evidence. Australians still do not know how or why the government was so mistaken, and our politicians have failed to make any apology for helping precipitate this long and disastrous war.

    A cynical view might hold that politicians today trailing badly in the polls will readily wrap themselves in the flag of nationalism and embrace a military venture to restore their electoral fortunes. Not surprising the Labor Party is trying not to be wedged on this issue, and is largely endorsing Prime Minister Abbott’s interventions.

    The ‘crusade’ rhetoric

    One of the blunders some western leaders made, especially President George W Bush, was to demonise Saddam’s regime and even talk of a new crusade.

    Tony Abbott talks of a ‘hideous death cult’, a group of ‘ideologues of a new and hideous variety, who don’t just do evil but they exult in doing evil.’ He warned that Australian Muslims would be acting ‘against God’ if they joined IS.

    Our political leaders need to be very careful not to talk of the conflict in terms reminiscent of a crusade, or as a struggle between the forces of outright good and evil. Yes, IS fighters have committed barbarous atrocities against thousands of innocent people, including many women and children. Perpetrators of these crimes need to be brought to justice and tried according to the laws of war as massive human rights abuses. But the perpetrators still remain human beings. Though they have done atrocious acts, they are not the embodiment of Evil.

    This is not a trivial point. A danger is that we in the West would fall into a mentality that depicts IS and similar Islamists groups as ‘pure evil’ or a demonic force that has to be totally eradicated. In the Muslim world, this draws on memories of the crusades with both sides fighting in the name of God against opponents seen as being the forces of anti-God.

    This religious wrapping can also take on non-religious forms, as in the struggle against communism when depicted in extreme forms as a life-or-death struggle against the embodiment of Evil against the forces of Good, the West.

    This was particularly the issue during the Spanish Civil War, when both sides tended to see themselves in terms of absolutes, of Good versus Evil, almost as embodiments of metaphysical forces. With its long history of crusades, Spain appeared particularly vulnerable to this perception, on both sides, and even in parts of the Catholic Church.

    The French political philosophy and activist, Jacques Maritain, called this the ‘crusade mentality’ and blamed it in part for the ferocity and extremism of the Spanish Civil War. If enemies are depicted in terms of ‘total evil’, they are no longer being seen as human beings who still retain human rights when captured and need to be treated humanely. The crusade mentality involves a commitment to total war without compromise or political resolution.

    Maritain denounced any religious legitimation for war, insisting that it risked blasphemy to kill in the name of Christ. His call was taken up strongly by later popes, including Popes John Paul II, Benedict and Francis, reiterating that though a just war is possible, especially to protect innocent people against groups like IS, it must not be seen as a war of religion.

    Pope Francis has appealed to ‘stop the unjust aggressor. I underscore the word “stop”. I don’t say bomb, make war – stop him’, remembering how often powerful nations have dominated others in wars of conquest. In Albania on 21 September he reiterated: ‘No one must use the name of God to commit violence! To kill in the name of God is a grave sacrilege. To discriminate in the name of God is inhuman.’

    No military solution possible

    It is a mistake to think that IS can be defeated simply militarily. Islamic State has emerged from deep disillusionment among disaffected Muslims in crumbling states about the failure of modernising efforts to bring employment and prosperity to their peoples. Instead, it has invented an imaginary future drawn from a supposed golden era of Islam for how Sharia law could usher in an era of peace and justice.

    However its cruelty and atrocities have mobilised the international community against IS. Its beheading and crucifying of opponents have been particularly odious. But do not forget the huge human toll of the invasion of Iraq, followed by systematic use of torture which so disturbed Muslims among many others. The invasion was preceded by the UN sanctions on Saddam’s Iraq that resulted in the deaths of an estimated 500,000 children.

    In addition, foreign intervention exacerbates older notions in Islamic belief that if non–Muslims attack a Muslim country, Muslims elsewhere are required to come to the defence of the realm of Faith and repel invaders. This helps explain why the Islamists are able to attract tens of thousands of overseas Muslims to fight and perhaps die. You can see how counter-productive Australian military intervention in Iraq might be in such a context.

    Instead of rushing into military engagement in Iraq, Australia should be pushing diplomatic initiatives through the United Nations and perhaps supporting an arms embargo. Instead of recently ending our development assistance to Iraq and committing hundreds of millions of dollars to military action, Australia could play a directly humanitarian role funding urgent relief for millions of refugees, and expanding our refugee intake back up to 20,000 instead of the recent reduction down to 13,750.

    It will be up to the wider Muslim community to resolve the Jihadist movements, interpreting the Koran and Muslim traditions for contemporary circumstances in ways that can sustain in peace and justice not just the worldwide Muslim community, but all others as well. These Jihadist groups bring disgrace on themselves and dishonour their faith in the eyes of the world.

    Bruce Duncan is the Director of the Yarra Institute for Religion and Social Policy.

  • Bruce Duncan. Pope Francis: economic system is failing millions.

    A blog in the Economist accused Pope Francis of following the founder of the Soviet Union, Vladimir Lenin, in adopting an “ultra-radical line” on capitalism. The blog, “Francis, capitalism and war: the Pope’s divisions”, was reacting to the Pope’s interview on 9 June in the Spanish journal, La Vanguardia, in which he linked an earlier form of capitalism with imperialism as the main causes of the First World War.

    In response the Pope said “the Communists have stolen the flag. The flag of the poor is Christian… The poor are at the centre of the gospel.” He pointed to the Beatitudes, and Matthew’s Last Judgment scene when God will judge us on how we treated the hungry, naked, the prisoners (in interview with the Italian daily paper, Il Messaggero, 30 June). “The communists say that all this is communist”. Yet Christians said this 20 centuries earlier. Francis said one could reply to the communists: “you are Christians” in your concern for the poor.

    Pope Francis’s views are arousing controversy, since many people seem unaware how strongly Catholic social thinking is opposed to the neoliberal policies of the free-marketeers. In the La Vanguardia interview, Francis was distressed that in some countries unemployment levels exceed 50 percent of workers. He had been told that 75 million young Europeans under 25 years of age were unemployed. “That is an atrocity, discarding an entire generation to maintain an economic system” that was collapsing, and that depends on the armament industry to survive. He supported the possibilities of globalisation, but deplored the discarding of the young and the elderly. It was “incomprehensible” that so many people in the world are still hungry. He said “the world economic system is not good”, and “we have put money at the centre, the god of money”.

    Others disputed the Pope’s critique of inequality. In the UK Telegraph (17 June), Allison Heath contested the views of Francis for his attack on economic inequalities and the “new tyranny” of the “absolute autonomy of markets”. “Francis’s wholesale condemnation of inequality is thus tantamount to a complete rejection of contemporary economic systems. It is not a call for reform… but a radical denunciation.” She rejected Francis’s criticism of “trickle-down economics” as a caricature of free-market arguments. Instead, she regarded capitalism as “the greatest alleviator of poverty and liberator of people ever discovered.”

    Farrell’s suggestion is for Francis to support Bill Gates’s “Giving Pledge” for the super rich to give away half their fortunes in their lifetimes. So far 122 of the super rich have agreed to do so. But, alas, this would do nothing to challenge the causes of the perverse distribution of wealth in most capitalist economies.

    As Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio experienced the trauma of Argentina going into the biggest financial default in history in 2002, owing nearly $100 billion, much of it lost by mismanagement and war under earlier military regimes. The percentage of the population plunged into poverty rose to 50 percent, compared with seven percent in the 1970s. Millions lost their savings, a quarter of workers lost their jobs, and a quarter of the entire population was left destitute and hungry. While most of the debt was restructured, so-called “vulture funds” bought up some of the debt for a pittance and demanded that Argentina pay $1.33 billion, making a return of 1000 percent to these 1.6% of original bondholders. Despite a German court striking out similar “vulture fund” claims in 2013, astonishingly the US Supreme Court in June 2014 ordered the full debt be paid. Francis is speaking against the background of such predatory forms of capitalism.

    Francis and economic inequality

    On 28 April the Pope tweeted that “Inequality is the root of social evil”, quoting from his exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel, #202. The message quickly drew 10,000 retweets, some critical. The director of the Acton Institute, Joe Carter, tweeted: “Seriously, though, what was up with that tweet by @pontifex? Has he traded the writings of Peter and Paul for Piketty?” Thomas Piketty’s massive tome, Capital in the Twenty-first Century, had recently appeared arguing that the capitalist economy was inherently geared to greatly increasing inequality.

    Francis considers extreme “unbridled consumerism combined with inequality” outrageous, and he fears that resentment by impoverished populations will fuel revolutions, as it has in the past.

    Francis is not arguing for absolute equality, as some of his critics have claimed. The Catholic Church has never called for absolute equality, but it has argued for a just distribution of goods and services that ensure everyone the possibility of a reasonable life and standard of living. Perhaps “social equity” is a better translation for what the Pope has in mind, but this implies more than the notion of equality of opportunity, since outcomes matter as well.

    While sharply critical of the neoliberal views that exacerbated the global financial crisis, Francis strongly supports economic policies that promote material and social uplift more equitably. Speaking in Rome on 16 June, Francis said:

    “It is increasingly intolerable that financial markets are shaping the destiny of peoples rather than serving their needs, or that the few derive immense wealth from financial speculation while the many are deeply burdened by the consequences.”

    These issues are likely to figure prominently in the forthcoming document on the environment that Francis’s team of advisers have been preparing.

    Bruce Duncan is Director of the Yarra Institute for Religion and Social Policy. This article was first published in The Conversation

  • Bruce Duncan. The Coalition: how to lose friends and alienate people

    Mr Abbott in his 2013 book, Battlelines, wrote that in government he would balance social values with pragmatic policy for the common good of the country.

    Yet one could be forgiven for thinking government policy is being driven by neoliberal ideologues, with a very heavy stress on policies of privatisation of public assets, further deregulation (including in banking and finance), expanding free trade agreements, and creating more flexible labour markets (reducing wages and conditions).

    Mr Hockey’s budget has created a toxic reaction for its astonishing unfairness to the most vulnerable groups, most notably the 600,000 unemployed, while doing nothing to wind back the tax subsidies and other ‘entitlements’ for higher income groups. Election promises were broken like plates at a Greek wedding. Even many Liberal supporters were dismayed at the brazen effrontery of this.

    Mr Abbott might reflect on his own words in Battlelines: Australians “rarely forgive a government that makes promises before an election to win votes, but abandons them afterwards to hold power.” (p. xiii).

    Budget exaggerations

    Many of the claims made in the 2014 budget speeches have been shown to be misleading or simply wrong (see John Legge, The Age, 29 April). Most contentious is the view that the economy was facing an economic crisis that justified severe cuts to the welfare sector.

    Various leading economists have insisted there is no need for panic about Australia’s debt, which can be managed over time. Merrill Lynch chief economist, Saul Eslake, said it would involve serious risks to move too quickly. His views were supported by Chris Richardson of Deloitte Access Economics, Paul Bloxham, HSBC chief economist, and Kieran Davies, Barclays Australia chief economist. Michael Pascoe in The Age (20 June) called for the Treasurer to stop “scaring people with dire warnings of economic disaster unless the lower classes keep their place.” The economist, John Edwards, has outlined the way forward for Australia by increasing exports in services, farm products and manufactures (AFR, 27 June).

    The Coalition government appears to have gone out of its way to alienate and antagonise vast sections of the population, from pensioners to university students, State governments with the unprecedented withdrawal of $80 billion of funding for schools and hospitals, migrant communities (Senator Brandis’s right to bigotry views and the $100,000 fee needed to bring parents to Australia), the Aboriginal constituencies, social welfare networks, lifting the pension age to 70, introducing co-payments for medical care, cutting $7.6 billion from overseas aid over five years (while spending billions to fund offshore detention centres), along with cuts to university funding and research organisations like the CSIRO. At least Clive Palmer has saved the renewable energy industry.

    No wonder support for the Coalition has fallen so dramatically. Are these really the policies the Prime Minister wants? It is a far cry from what he wrote in Battlelines:

    I‘m a Liberal because our party has always stood for the decent, the humane and usually for the practical too… We know that without honesty there is no trust and without trust there is no fairness and without fairness civil society cannot long survive. (p.19).

    Growing inequality

    As everyone knows, the richer are getting far richer, astronomically so at the top end, far beyond imaging in earlier ages. Nobel laureate and former chief economist at the World Bank, Joseph Stiglitz, captured the extent of extreme inequality in his Vanity Fair article of May 2011, “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%”, and chronicled in his books the corruption and mismanagement propelling the Global Financial Crisis. In his mind, the crisis is fundamentally a moral one, with the collapse of values into a free-market mindset as a relentless pursuit of wealth, without acknowledging that economies are meant to serve all human beings, not just the rich. In the United States, the real median income of full-time male workers is lower than it was 40 years earlier. So much for ‘trickle-down’ economics.

    The worst of it is, in Stiglitz’s view, that financial markets have not learnt the lessons or changed their ways, and the GFC may well be repeated. Currently lecturing in Australia, Stiglitz draws on his extensive experience at international institutions to stress the need for adequate oversight of markets to ensure they do not fall prey to powerful sectional interests.

    It would seem little has changed since Adam Smith warned two centuries ago about manipulation of markets by powerful business interests, as he campaigned to advance the living standards of the ordinary people as much as possible. Neoliberals, please read your Adam Smith.

    Banking and finance: “fear versus greed”

    The neoliberal problem has infected Australia. Though we escaped the worst of the financial contagion because of our better bank regulation, our four big banks earned over $27 billion last year, exceptionally high cash profits; and the enquiry into the Commonwealth Bank shows how badly ethical standards declined in recent years.

    The chairman of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, Greg Metcraft, stressed the need for closer regulation by ASIC. “As a former investment banker, unfortunately it is fear versus greed” that is needed to police financial planning (AFR, 28-29 June). Thousands of Australians lost financially because of corrupt advice from CBA personnel, some even losing their homes. Yet financial interests have been pressuring the government to wind back Labor’s Future of Financial Advice laws introduced to protect investors against conflicted advice not in their best interest.

    According to Philip Dorling in The Age (20 June), WikiLeaks documents show that the government is in secret negotiations aiming at radical deregulation of our banking and finance sectors, which could allow foreign banks to set up in Australia, and undermine our ability to respond appropriately to financial crises.

    The policies of the Abbott government are difficult to reconcile with the Christian convictions of many of its members, especially with church leaders, including Pope Francis, appealing for greater fairness and social equity in economies, and a focus of alleviating poverty.

    The budget has been a disaster for the Abbott government, and one hopes that its leaders move aside their neoliberal advisers in favour of sounder economists and the professional advice of seasoned public servants.

    Bruce Duncan is a Redemptorist priest lecturing in social ethics at Yarra Theological Union in Melbourne. He is one of the founders of the advocacy organisation Social Policy Connections.