In this blog on 19 August, I reposted an earlier blog from Jon Stanford on ‘The government’s new naval shipbuilding policy’.
Hugh White, a columnist at The Age and Professor of Strategic Studies at the Strategic and Defence Study Centre, ANU, has written a recent article on the same subject. The article is consistent with the thrust of Jon Stanford’s earlier article.
See link to Melbourne Age article below:
To justify its harsh refugee policies, the government has been telling us that their policies are designed to save lives at sea. What hypocrisy!
And only last week we saw at the ALP Federal Conference, former Labor ministers justifying their ‘turn-back’ policies as a means to reduce drownings at sea.
Please spare us this charade.
The objective of our inhuman refugee policies is overwhelmingly political, to be seen to be tough on boat arrivals and win electoral support as a result. The object of the present government has been to deride the Labor party for its alleged softness on refugees and to parade its own toughness on boat arrivals, and particularly towards Muslims. It has been overwhelmingly playing to our fears of the foreigner. It is not about stopping drownings at sea.
John Howard led the breakdown of bipartisan policy on refugees and deliberately sought to divide the country by the promotion of fear. Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison followed even more unscrupulously. This promotion of fear of the outsider and the person who is different has been exploited to the full and it has paid off politically, to our great shame.
Boat people were no longer people in great need and distress. For political purposes they have been demonised. They were ‘illegal’ and akin to criminals. Scott Morrison told us that they brought diseases and wads of cash. We were told that they were so inhuman that they would even be prepared to throw their children overboard.
To justify these disgraceful policies we are now told continually that their purpose was to stop the drownings at sea.
If the objective was to stop the drownings, we would have been sending ships to rescue distressed people at sea. That is what the Italian navy has been doing. But we send out our ships to stop arrivals, return asylum seekers to Indonesia or detain them off shore almost indefinitely. It is not designed to save lives at sea.
During the Indochina outflow in the late 1970s and early 1980s there were tens of thousands of refugees drowned at sea. We will never know the number. Thousands were thrown overboard, raped or robbed by pirates on the high seas. But we did not turn away from the plight of desperate people by suggesting that if we helped it would only encourage more risky voyages and more drownings.
If we were seriously committed to a genuine policy of stopping drownings at sea, one would expect Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison to be nominated for humanitarian awards – perhaps a Nobel Prize each. But when they are honest with themselves they will know that this argument about their policies being designed to stop drownings at sea is disgraceful and dishonest nonsense.
And by what moral authority have we a right to say that we should stop desperate people taking risks for freedom. If a family is fleeing the Taliban or that death cult IS or fleeing persecution and facing death in Iraq or Syria have we a right to say that they should not risk their lives in flight either by land or sea. Surely it is for them to make the calculation that the risks in flight are less than the risks of staying in their homeland and facing persecution or worse. How can we honestly say that it is up to us to make the moral decision about whether other people should take risks for their own survival?
The whole campaign against boat arrivals is to politically exploit our fear. It is not to stop drownings at sea.
Let’s be honest with ourselves.
(or – Murdoch and Abbott in climate dial duet)
While the politicisation of climate change has transformed climate reporting into something of a circus, the Coalition’s announcement of a 26% emissions reduction target on 2005 levels for Australia by 2030 has surely placed its climate policy on a dangerous high wire.
The high wire is not that the target has been set too high. It is that trying to balance this “defeatist” target is going to lead to the collapse of Direct Action, and will impair the ability of the Coalition-News Corp publicity machine to defend fossil fuels.
Already, Prime Minister Tony Abbott is resorting to increasingly desperate and absurd arguments, such as his comments on the ABC’s AMon Wednesday morning about exporting coal to India and China:
The great thing about the Australian coal industry is that it’s actually helping countries like China to reduce their emissions intensity, if not their overall emissions, because our coal is better quality coal than the Chinese and Indian coal.
Never mind that the floor price for coal is set to continue diving worldwide. Here is an unfathomable argument that Australia’s increasingly worthless coal is better than everyone else’s unworthy coal, and is helping fight climate change.
With coal, as with its new target announcement, the Coalition’s honesty about its climate policy in the past will be unveiled. The ruse of a long and sustained campaign of impression management is about to be exposed by the high wire act.
In the context of every anti-renewable, pro-coal and denialist utterance from Coalition ministers over the past two years, the revised targets are a complete stunt that have little to do with decarbonisation.
Writing in the Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday, Peter Hartcherargued that the Coalition doesn’t make any of its:
… big decisions based on science, economics, markets, or any value other than politics. So let’s set aside the pretence that this is really about climate change.
The Coalition is continuing to play out a strategy that has worked for them in the past. This is to mount a defence against any charge that it is doing nothing about climate change, and then turn attention away from itself, by attacking Labor and the Greens as having scary policies that will hurt the economy, jobs and electricity prices.
This is why the Abbott government was sure to mention that while 26% is guaranteed, it might think about 28% if it is not going to hurt the economy. Never mind that the only target 26% meets is to keep Australia at the bottom of the league of nations that can actually afford to do something about climate, while having a per capita carbon footprint four times the world average.
The Australian revealed that while Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and Environment Minister Greg Hunt lobbied for a more ambitious target of 30% at the cabinet meeting prior to the announcement, it was Abbott who pushed for the lower target.
So while this all-too-risky high wire act is wanting to draw attention to “the economy”, it does so only as a means of attacking policies that actually do address decarbonisation.
Abbott is banking on a number of things here: that a “toxic carbon tax” scare campaign can be recycled for the next election, and that News Corp will do the heavy lifting for him by continuing to heavily editorialise against Labor.
And, right on cue, the day before the government announced its 2030 emissions target, the Daily Telegraph produced another of its signature attacks on Labor’s climate policy. Its front page prepared the way for a “responsible”-looking policy from the Coalition, citing rising power bills, job losses and a collapsing economy.
The News Corp tabloids are capable of ferociously nationalising their editorial stance toward a Labor emissions trading scheme and caricaturing it as a toxic carbon tax at a moment’s notice. But, such a stunt is looking rather worn-out. What both Abbott and the Daily Telegraph have ignored is that the electorate has noticed that power bills have spiked substantially under Direct Action, and that carbon emissions have dramatically increased.
Curiously, however, while two of The Australian’s columnists professed their love for coal and the Adani mine in the Galilee Basin, reporters David Crowe and Sid Maher ran an article that floated the inadequacy of the announced targets.
The Climate Council’s Tim Flannery, so often pilloried by The Australian, had the story lead with the quote:
Over the next few days, there will be a lot of spin to try and confuse Australians into thinking that we are doing more than we actually are. But no amount of smoke and mirrors will cover up the fact that an emissions reduction target of 40 per cent on 2000 levels by 2030 is the bare minimum and this target is far below that.
Crowe and Maher then go on to quote independent senator Nick Xenophon and Shadow Environment Minister Mark Butler’s dismissal of the target, before going on to conclude:
The Australian target would be below Canada’s ambition of 30% by 2030 and would not keep up with the US target of 26-28% by 2025 or the EU promise of a 40% cut from 1990 levels by 2030.
However, more significant is that the government is ignoring advice from its own Climate Change Authority, which has consistently recommended cuts of between 40 and 60% by 2030. With the Climate Change Authority providing a benchmark target, in a rational world you would think this would create a bidding war between the parties for the highest targets – especially given the level of public anxiety over global warming.
Climate change is set to be the main battleground of the next election campaign. Labor has declared it so. And newspaper polls, think-tank polls and even the major parties’ own internal polling show climate change to be front and centre of voter concern.
What is needed is a budget approach to framing policy that the Climate Change Authority itself uses. Globally, carbon emissions should not exceed 1700 billion tonnes between 2000 and 2050 if we are to give ourselves a reasonable chance of staying below two degrees warming. Australia’s share of this, adjusted for relativities with poorer nations and per capita carbon footprint, is calculated by the Climate Change Authority to be approximately ten billion tonnes of C02 between now and 2050.
However, unless the major parties listen to the Climate Change Authority’s advice, what risks getting lost is the comparability of effective action. By being pre-occupied with abstract targets rather than carbon budgets, parties will continue to compare their policies to other nations, and other timeframes, which end up becoming meaningless – for climate policymakers, economists and the public at large.
David Holmes is Senior Lecturer, Communications and Media Studies at Monash University. This article was first published in The Conversation on August 12, 2015.
We must not let our children, grandchildren, and even further generations to come, who have nothing to do with that war, be predestined to apologize.
This comes from the statement issued during the week by Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the war in the Pacific. It is perhaps unfair to highlight one sentence from a longish document, but, in my reading of it, this accurately summarizes its abiding sentiment.
Abe wants to draw a line under the past. He wants to end the culture of contrition that, he believes, has crimped nationalist sentiment in his own country for a generation and prevented Japan acting to its full and sovereign potential.
Personally, I do not believe anyone can ‘apologize’ for the mistakes of others. To apologize means to take responsibility before the public for one’s own error; it is expected that a correction or an act of restitution will follow. Real apologies exist in the present, when something can be done about the mistake, as opposed to retrospective compensation. The rest is an ex-post facto judgement: approval or regret, disgust or admiration. We may feel our forefathers, former governments, dead Popes or whomever have made mistakes we would not have committed, and wish they had not acted as they did. But we are not they; we are actors operating only within our particular circumstances, milieu and knowledge, not theirs. Apologizing on their behalf, therefore, is mere cant and nonsense.
I say this because for too long Japan, its neighbouring countries, and others who suffered at the hands of the Japanese in the 1930s and 1940s have been fixated on the quality of the apologies post-war leaders have been obliged to utter for the deeds of the past. Every statement, especially on the anniversary of the war’s end, is scrutinized for its ‘grief’, ‘remorse’, ‘regret’, ‘apology’ words, in a fruitless game of semantics, as if this changed anything.
(In his own, much briefer, commemorative speech on the weekend, Emperor Akihito for the first time used the phrase ‘deep remorse’ to express his feelings––well and good, as far as it goes. This liberal-minded emperor is perceived by some to be a counterweight to the bellicose Abe. On such a formal occasion there was never much scope for him to articulate an alternative narrative, but the fact that he broke new ground––when Abe merely re-hoed old ground––is worth mentioning.)
The past rules a line under itself. What matters, the only thing that matters, is the quality of our understanding of history and our ability to admit and learn from the mistakes of the past. On this score, Abe’s statement fails miserably. It provides an apologia for Japan’s actions rather than a nuanced and forthright account of the policies and actions that brought disaster upon Japan and inflicted suffering on millions of others.
The statement was drafted by a committee of ‘experts’ whom Abe appointed, in characteristic manner, to shift from him the responsibility for its particular contents. And yet it is pure Abe in its thesis.
Time and again, the Japanese Prime Minister recounts events leading up to the war in terms of Japan being forced into a corner: threatened with loss of sovereignty by the American/European imperial powers in the 1850s and threatened again with economic ruin by their trade protectionist policies in the 1930s. Japan always acted out of a sense of ‘crisis’, a need for survival. There is some truth in this, but it is not the whole truth.
What this thesis fails to acknowledge is the agency of Japan’s own leaders in planning and executing an imperialist policy from the very start of the nation’s modernization in the second half of the 19th century and the many steps taken to suppress democratic movements inside Japan in the first half of the 20th century. Japan’s ‘manifest destiny’ of imperial aggression in Asia (thence extended to the broader Pacific) was not something it had to invent because the nation was excluded from the benefits of international affairs and commerce––it was an exercise in hegemony intended to ‘perfect’ the colonial empire of the ‘White’ powers.
Abe states: ‘The Japan-Russia War gave encouragement to many people under colonial rule from Asia to Africa.’ I have heard this sort of comment from all sorts of right-wingers in Japan. It is laughable, in the sense that one colonial power, Russia, was simply replaced by another, Japan. Abe cannot talk about the ‘encouragement’ of 1906 unless he is willing, in the same breath, to admit the disillusionment of 1910 (the year Japan annexed Korea) and beyond. The feelings of ‘profound grief’ and ‘eternal, sincere condolences’ expressed on several occasions are empty without an acceptable historical accounting for the events one is ‘grieving’ about.
Abe is forthright when he chooses to be and evasive when it suits him. For instance, we have this about Japan’s sufferings: ‘The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the air raids on Tokyo and other cities, and the ground battles in Okinawa, among others, took a heavy toll among ordinary citizens without mercy.’ The ‘without mercy’ here, the only use of the phrase in the speech, is applied exclusively to the Allies. But when it comes to acknowledging the so-called comfort women, the many mainly Korean women organized into brothels to service the Japanese military, this is his oblique way of addressing the issue: ‘We must never forget that there were women behind the battlefields whose honour and dignity were severely injured.’ The ‘we’––and not ‘I’––of this statement is particularly greasy; Abe requires others to ‘never forget’ what he himself has previously denied ever happened.
In describing the postwar setting in which Japan re-emerged as a great power, Abe makes no acknowledgement of the reforms undertaken during the Allied Occupation––he doesn’t even mention that there was an Occupation (just as he fails to mention Pearl Harbor). He talks about never again resorting to the threat or use of force to resolve conflicts, but omits to say that this principle only came into existence through the 1947 Constitution adopted by Japan under the watchful eye of the Americans. Since Abe considers this document does not represent the will and culture of the Japanese people, and wants it changed, he commits a double hypocrisy by paraphrasing its Article 9.
Australia is referred to several times in the statement, generally in the context of the POW issue. There is acknowledgement of the POWs’ mistreatment, though the main reason they are mentioned is to stress how Japan has been so graciously forgiven by its former enemies. The whole second half of Abe’s statement is about receiving forgiveness and moving on from a position of apology. For every mistake, whether by Japan or its opponents, he offers ways in which Japan has learnt and will act differently in the future. Sounds fine, except, as itemized in this blog, promises built on a shoddy foundation of historical distortions and wishful thinking do not carry much weight.
Forget the ‘apology’ trimmings, feel the cloth.
Walter Hamilton reported on Japan for 11 years for the ABC.
Harry Anslinger’s dream to rid the world of drugs was given legs in 1930 when he was appointed the first commissioner of the U.S. Treasury Department‘s Federal Bureau of Narcotics.
He was a brilliant bureaucrat with a grand vision underpinned by prohibition; a man who single-handedly turned a marginalised, underfunded Bureau into an uncompromising and powerful war machine.
But, as Johann Hari reveals in his compelling book “Chasing the Scream – the first and last days of the war on drugs,” Anslinger was also a zealot and racist:
“The most frightening aspect of marijuana, [Anslinger] warned, was on blacks. It made them forget the appropriate racial barriers – and unleashed their lust for white women.”
Harry’s dream has become a global nightmare.
A story:
I’m not sure of the exact date, but I’ll never forget the encounter.
I first met ‘Sally’ (not her real name) in late 1997 at St Canice’s parish, Kings Cross.
She was homeless. She was an addict. She was paid for sex.
Sally was exhausted – her life was exhausting.
She needed some respite – just a couple of nights in a safe place, please.
At that time, St Canice’s was providing temporary shelter for working girls just like Sally. The accommodation was very basic: a small room with a single bed and a sink overlooking the church’s carpark.
For a brief period, it was my responsibility to help clean the room and welcome its guests. It was a simple process: strip the bed, put on clean sheets, wash the floor and sink, and empty the bedside bin which was a popular hang-out for used syringes.
This is how I came to meet Sally. She arrived one afternoon set for a couple of night’s accommodation and we had a chat:
Cuppa, Sally?
Yeh, that’d be good, thanks.
How’d you sleep?
Not bad; it’s nice to be safe, which ain’t too common given me lifestyle.
It must be awful feeling so unsettled …
Yeh, not much fun; not much of a life, neither.
If you don’t mind me asking, how long have you been using … and living on the streets?
God, I’ve been usin’ since I was a teenager … almost 20 years now!
Sorry, excuse me; the kettle’s boiled; any sugars?
Yeh, three, please … make it four.
Biscuit?
Ta; that’d be nice.
There you go, hope it’s not too strong.
Perfect, ta.
Yeh, I had me first shot when I was fourteen. Mum used to entertain a lot, if you know what I mean; not nice blokes, neither. They used to rough me up quite a bit; had a pretty terrible childhood, really. Mum was a user too. That’s how I got into the gear … and prostitution.
Hope you don’t mind me asking; but do you think you’ll ever escape all this; the drugs, the …?
Look, gettin’ off the gear’s the easy bit; but what for? What am I goin’ to do when I get off it? I’ve been a prostitute and user since I was fourteen; haven’t worked for nearly 20 years; not much of a CV. Not much of a story for a future employer, is it? The thing people don’t understand is that all me friends are users, too. This is my world. This is all I know. So, if I stop usin’, it means I’ve gotta give up me friends as well. I’d have to find another world. It’d be like startin’ all over. I’m not sure I can do that. I’m not sure I’d know where to start … it’s not just a physical thing, drug addiction …
_________________
When one listens to stories like Sally’s, two things become apparent: firstly, how traumatised and sick she is, and secondly, how much her drug induced chaos makes sense, as terrible as that may sound. After all, why wouldn’t she pursue relief from such unbearable psychological pain – ever had a knee replacement or a tooth pulled and refused pain-killers?
As many addicts will tell you, addiction is really a disease of loneliness and self-worthlessness – much of it stemming from abuse.
Indeed, “it’s not just a physical thing, drug addiction.”
And here-in lies the problem with the war on drugs: it is a war that predominately targets the sick and the weak and the poor.
It is a war against the Sallys of the world who, thanks to prohibition, are forced to hunt for their pain relief amidst wicked and brutal people in wicked and brutal places.
One might even say we have criminalised pain relief.
Yet still, after almost a century, most of the generals and policy boffins prosecuting this war continue to pursue Mr Anslinger’s ideology of prohibition and criminalisation: if you get rid of the chemicals and swat away the users and sellers, all will be well.
But all is not well wherever this ideology abounds.
Indeed, prohibition has inadvertently created another war: the war FOR drugs: a murderous, multi-billion dollar free-for-all overseen by transnational cartels, gangs, and assorted opportunists.
The global misery and damage is incalculable.
This tsunami of crime has also spawned a brutal and unjust judicial system; one which powerfully prosecutes the weak and weakly prosecutes the powerful. Look who is filling our gaols: in the U.S. and Australia it is those who are poor and black and addicted – Mr Anslinger would be pleased.
The nature of this racist backdrop is encapsulated in the following exchange between decorated American police officer, Matthew Fogg, and one of his superiors. Once again, we turn to Hari’s “Chasing the Scream”:
“Fogg was bewildered as to why his force only ever went to black neighbourhoods to chase drug users. He suggested to his boss they start raiding white neighbourhoods as well.
“‘Fogg,’ his boss said, ‘you know you’re right they are using drugs there but you know what? If we go out and we start targeting those individuals, they know judges, they know lawyers, they know politicians, they know all the big folks in government. If we start targeting them … you know what’s going to happen? We’re going to get a phone call and they’re going to shut us down … There goes your overtime. There goes the money that you’re making. So let’s just go after the weakest link. Let’s go after those who can’t afford the attorneys, those who we can lock up.’”
The war on drugs has encouraged governments, police, the law, and us to look upon the Sallys of our world with a dismissive contempt. Thus, Sally and her ilk are swatted off to the streets and into humiliating prison settings which are far more adept at re-traumatising the traumatised than rehabilitation.
When asked how Australia might most effectively respond to the drug problem, Dr Alex Wodak AM, President of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation, had this to say:
“We should be making primarily a health and social response. I say ‘primarily’ because there should always be some law enforcement; if there was a tanker full of heroin coming to our ports I like to think something would be done about that.
“But this is also about gross inequalities in our communities. Australia is a much more unequal county compared to countries in Scandinavia, or Japan that have lower levels of drug use. Generally the more unequal the country the higher the levels of drug use.
“From a social perspective, we should do everything we can to keep people who use illicit drugs integrated in the community, and if they fall out then we should help them reintegrate. One of the most helpful things we can do is encourage them to get a decent education and some training and help them gain meaningful employment that will maintain their self-respect.
“From a health perspective, let’s say it was your sister with the drug problem and she really wanted to stop. Every relative would want her to go to a counselor or health professional rather than be picked up by the police. The criminal justice system is stigmatizing, if your sister was to go to jail the stigma will always hang over her… when finding a boyfriend, getting a job, renting a place. Making sure people are not irretrievably damaged is very important.”
Hear, hear. Sally’s worth it.
Peter Day is a Catholic Priest in Canberra.
When does a political system become corrupt? When is the line crossed from garden variety rorting by a few members of parliament to institutionalised abuse of taxpayers’ money by the system?
The latest scandal over politicians’ entitlements has been like lifting the proverbial rock to discover a deeply, ethically challenged netherworld. One flagrant folly scuttled out, only to be followed by a horde of others.
Individual politicians have responded by pointing the finger at everyone and everything except themselves. This includes blaming their transgressions on a “system” of entitlements they created.
The public has reacted with disgust. And rightly so. This is our money being used for gratuitous chopper rides and flying the family business class to outback resorts.
It’s also compounded a growing view that our democratic system has become largely unaccountable and insensitive to citizens and, as a result, is reaching breaking point.
In this hothouse environment of outraged public opinion, it can be easy to exaggerate current events into claims of a full-blown crisis. After all, politicians have been up to these sorts of shenanigans since forever.
So how do we run a ruler over recent transgressions to see if they represent a superficial problem, or something more deeply embedded? Fortunately we have guidelines in the form of an article by American philosopher Amelie Rorty on how and why corruption begins and spreads.
Rorty is concerned with “the gradual corruption of an individual”. But her observations have important implications for the institutions and systems that individuals inhabit.
Her article, “How to Harden Your Heart: Six Easy Ways to Become Corrupt”, says the slippery slide to corruption is rarely obvious or defined by a single event. Instead, it happens by nuance and degrees.
It usually starts as the result of small errors of judgment. Individuals might rationalise their behaviour as minor infractions and even admit wrongdoing. But no real steps are taken to stamp out these behaviours. As acceptance of small errors compounds, hardens and spreads, self-deception leads to denial. The occasional individual ethical lapse becomes habitual corruption.
Applying Rorty’s thinking to our national political system provides a disturbing insight into where it is, and where it might be heading. The conclusion is unthinkable in a country that prides itself and its democratic system as being largely “clean”.
Rorty points to six warning signs that indicate if an individual is moving into the danger zone. The cues are eerily similar to what many in the community now consider to be broader weaknesses of our political system.
The first danger signal is what Rorty calls “attention to the present”. In the context of our political system it’s the overweening obsession with the short term and is potentially dangerous in fostering corruption because it allows wrongdoers to disconnect their present actions from future consequences. Obsessive reliance by MPs on fortnightly opinion polls is but one example of this corrosive impact.
Another warning sign is what Rorty calls “groupie attraction” or “gravitating to the company of like-minded” – a succinct way of describing the Canberra political bubble.
This is dangerous because the groupthink it creates provides both protection and support for wrongdoing (what is upheld as the “standard” in Canberra won’t often pass the pub test in Castlemaine).
Another red flag, “imitating the leader”, is self-explanatory in a political world where parties and Parliaments are increasingly organised around the dictates of their leaders.
“Captain’s calls” are increasingly the norm. The result is political subordinates who struggle to think for themselves. Rorty describes this warning sign as when “newcomers and initiates gravitate to powerful figures. Without realising it, novices emulate the behaviour of those who model ‘how things are done’.”
One final sign is “papering over the cracks”, which Rorty highlights as an attempt to distance the problem from the cause. We have seen this in Canberra via claims the problem lies with the “system” and not the ethical lapses of individuals.
In short, Rorty requires us to face up to the cause, not the symptom.
The entitlements scandal is a sign of alarming and unprecedented corrosion of Australia’s political culture. It has emerged from a succession of suspect individual moral judgments contributing to what is becoming a debased political system. That’s why far-reaching measures are needed to stamp out the rot before more damaging behaviours take hold.
Measures offered by politicians that are likely to tinker with the present expenses system will be insufficient. As Rorty warns, “when corruption is widespread, home-grown prevention can at best provide only some resistance”.
Full, immediate and independent transparency on entitlement use is but the first step on the long road to democratic renewal.
Dr Mark Triffitt is a lecturer in public policy at the University of Melbourne. Dr Travers McLeod is the chief executive officer of the Centre for Policy Development.
This article first appeared in the Melbourne Age on August 13, 2015.
Dyson Heydon is in the news again.
Several weeks ago he appeared to question the credibility of Bill Shorten as a witness before the Trade Union Royal Commission. He also had unusual things to say about the credibility of Julia Gillard when she appeared before the Commission.
See below a repost of an article on the Liberal Party and royal commissions.
John Menadue
REPOST
With the Abbott Government there is a pattern of using Royal Commissions to attack former and current ALP leaders. See the links below to two earlier posts on the subject.
What we really need is a Royal Commission into billions of dollars of tax avoidance by major companies operating in Australia. They are avoiding proper scrutiny.
John Menadue.
The Royal Commission into the Home Insulation Program – a ‘dog’s breakfast’.
The consumer magazine Choice has recently carried articles by Sarah Agar about the TPP and what might be traded away in terms of cheaper medicines, public interest laws and food labelling. This report was updated on 29 July, about a fortnight before Trade Minister Andrew Robb decided that he would walk away from the TPP negotiations. This article in Choice is a useful background on many of the key issues that were at stake. Fortunately the government has decided that the TPP was balanced too much in favour of corporate interests and at the expense of consumer interests. John Menadue.
See link to article below.
The Senate saves the day on the Trans Pacific Partnership.
Often the Senate is seen as obstructive or worse. But it has performed a very useful purpose in helping to derail the Trans Pacific Partnership. Hopefully the TPP will not be put back on track.
According to the New York Times, our Trade Minister Andrew Robb told the TPP negotiating ministers in Hawaii that the Australian Parliament – read Senate – would not accept the further restrictions on trade in pharmaceuticals which the US was proposing. He was apparently concerned that to accede to the US demands would result in substantial increases in Australia’s Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme and penalise Australian pharmaceutical users. As a result of this breakdown on pharmaceuticals, the Australian government ‘walked away from the negotiations’.
Perhaps I missed it, but I was surprised that I read this report from the New York Times and not from the Australian media. With a few exceptions, the Australian media has consistently failed to report and analyse the minor benefits that we will obtain from successive ‘Free Trade Agreements’ that Andrew Robb has finalised with Japan, China and the Republic of Korea. The so-called benefits have been grossly exaggerated but the Australian media has largely accepted the government’s version of events. And so we saw little serious examination in the Australian media of the TPP. https://publish.pearlsandirritations.com/blog/?p=3226
There are many reasons why the proposed TPP was not in our interest.
The first of course was the US proposal to increase protection from five to eight years for US pharmaceutical companies and their biologic products. It would have added to the high costs of pharmaceuticals in Australia as a result of Big Pharma’s influence on Australian governments in the Australian market.
Very frustrating was also the fact that it was only late in the day that we were able to have some understanding of what Big Pharma and other powerful US multinationals were attempting with the TPP. This secrecy made it difficult to access the real agenda of corporate America. But with the benefit of some hindsight it is clear now that the US corporate agenda was not to free up trade but to increase protection.
From the beginning TPP should have been suspect in terms of our national interests. The TPP was designed deliberately to exclude China. The US has been trying to build a trade bulwark against China, our main trading partner. Surely our objective and that of the US should not be to confront and contain China, but to accommodate wherever possible its involvement in the world economy and in world politics. Furthermore TPP did not include Indonesia which by 2050 is projected to be the world’s fourth largest economy. 70% of Australia’s merchandise trade passes through Indonesian waters every year. Indonesia is our most important strategic partner.
How could the TPP serve our interests by excluding both China and Indonesia that are so important for us? Only two years ago we released a White Paper ‘Australia and the Asian Century’. That White Paper which highlighted the importance of the Pacific region for our future, has been taken off the government website and was clearly ignored in the TPP negotiations.
Another major concern over TPP was the provision for settlement disputes between investors and countries whereby investors could sue governments in compliant pro-business fora for losses incurred when governments legislate in the public interest. Why this presents such a problem can be seen by what has happened in Hong Kong. Having lost its case in the High Court over plain packaging of tobacco, Phillip Morris is now suing Australia in Hong Kong because of an earlier trade agreement that Australia signed with Hong Kong. What an awful abuse of corporate power in defiance of our national interests.
There were also other problems. At the end it seems that the US was not prepared to provide reasonable access for dairy products and sugar. This was a re-run of the US attitude ten years ago in the negotiation of the US-Australia Free Trade Agreement. That agreement not only denied proper access for Australian sugar and dairy products it also turned out to be a real dud in helping to promote Australia-US trade. Shiro Armstrong of the ANU has reported that both Australia and the US are ‘worse off than they would have been without the agreement’.At the time John Howard told us what a wonderful outcome it was for Australia
In retrospect it is clear that almost everything was wrong about TPP – both its objectives and its processes.
The collapse of negotiations is a welcome outcome but our media hardly noticed. So often it is obsessed with adversarial politics and personalities and has little interest in policy. In the TPP negotiations we had major national issues at stake, but our mainstream media was asleep at the wheel – again.
In my post of 12 May this year ‘Democratic renewal and our loss of trust in institutions’, I wrote about our loss of trust in so many institutions including our parliament and political parties. If Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten want to improve public debate and restore some faith in our public institutions the election of new speaker Tony Smith provides an opportunity to change course.
The most trusted of our institutions are all public institutions; the ABC, the High Court and the Reserve Bank. The least trusted are political parties and the expenses mess triggered by Bronwyn Bishop will add to that lack of trust.
Trade Unions and business groups rank about equally in trust but they are well down the list of trusted institutions. The Federal Parliament is trusted about as much as our media and not surprisingly with News Corp the least trusted of all of our media.
The abuse of public trust by Bronwyn Bishop and others must be addressed but there is an unfortunate and consistent clamour by the powerful to undermine parliament and governments. The powerful, the wealthy, large businesses and the media don’t want their powers checked. That is why they target the parliament and political parties for criticism. This is not really surprising as the parliament in particular and our general political processes are the best means to redress power in favour of the powerless.
Consider the furore over Bronwyn Bishop and the minimal attention to other rorts. Last week the media reported that the privileged and poorly performing sons of Rupert Murdoch would each get $US 27 million a year for four years in remuneration. There is little comment about the widespread and enormous tax avoidance by the powerful.
Politics is the means to rebalance power in favour of the poor and needy. That is why democratic renewal is so important.
The main concern I have about Bronwyn Bishop is her abuse of power and using her powers in the parliament in the interests of Tony Abbott and his government. She also had the unpleasant knack of looking down on those that she considered of less merit than herself. Unfortunately neither Tony Abbott nor Bronwyn Bishop has shown any real appreciation of the parliament and its proper role. How galling it was to hear from her on her resignation that she had done it ‘because of my love and respect for the institution of parliament and the Australian people’.
There are few signs that government leaders appreciate the damage that Bronwyn Bishop has done to the standing of the Parliament. Christopher Pyne said that Bronwyn Bishop ‘had been felled in the most unfair circumstances by politics today’. Tony Abbott added ‘Despite some admitted errors of judgement she has served this parliament, our country, her party, with dedication and distinction over 30 years. She has been a warrior for the causes she believed in.’ But clearly she was not a warrior in the interests and integrity of our parliament.
Hopefully the new speaker will provide an opportunity for parliamentary and democratic renewal. He has said that he will not attend party meetings. That is important but he needs to go much further. He should consider the practice of the House of Commons in the UK that speakers in future must be nominated at least by a minimum number of members of the Opposition. This ensures a less partisan speaker.
With the new speaker’s leadership, the parliament should take responsibility and in a quite transparent way for the control of members’ of parliament’s expenses and entitlements. These matters should be the responsibility of the Department of Parliament and not the Department of Finance.
As I mentioned in my earlier post on democratic renewal, I outlined other important ways to reform and improve the parliament.
To assist members of parliament to counter the power of the cabinet and the public service the last parliament established a Parliamentary Budget Office. It provides independent and nonpartisan analysis of the budget cycle. It was a good start. But its work is restricted to budgets. Similar offices should be established in such areas as health, defence and foreign affairs.
The research resources of the Parliamentary Library should also be enhanced. In the development of Gough Whitlam’s policy program the Parliamentary Library was a critical enabler.
We need an improved parliamentary committee system where hopefully we can begin to see again the art of negation and compromise. The Senate has shown that improvements are possible. A good start in our next parliament would be an all-party committee to consider ways in which the performance of the parliament could be improved and the power of the executive contained.
We need a broad agenda for parliamentary reform. The major party that is credible on parliamentary reform will reap a large electoral dividend. The best way for Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten to prove their bona fides as parliamentarians is to demonstrate by actions how they value the Parliament and use it as their forum and not television grabs, and talk back radio. What a pleasure it would be to see the parliament as a lively forum for debating policy and asking genuine questions to elicit information rather than a means to score political\l points. If only our politicians would seriously endeavour to find common ground by starting on such issues as senate electoral reform, political donations and ending the abuse of power by lobbyists. Leadership by Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten in these areas is the best way to restore confidence in parliament and politics. Don’t talk about it. Do it.
There is a lack of trust in most of our major institutions. With the help of Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten the new speaker does provide an opportunity for the reform of Parliament and the restoration of confidence in our political processes. Those processes are essential for good policy and governance in Australia and supporting the most vulnerable and powerless in our community.
As I reflect on the ongoing complaints at federal and state level about our ailing health system, widespread community concerns and a medical culture which is still often hospital- and doctor- centric, I wonder how we will be able to sort it all out.
In the 20th Century, when average life expectancies were in the 60s and 70s, we died from a range of illnesses, but often from vascular diseases (heart attacks and strokes) and cancers. With our increasing longevity, the 20th Century diseases are being replaced by the neurodegenerative diseases of the 21st Century. These include Parkinson’s, motor neurone disease, the dementias (Alzheimer’s being the most common one in Australia) and many more less well known. They involve physical and very often cognitive elements, marked by increasing frailty and dependence. Impairment of mobility, balance and all the senses (hearing, vision, taste, smell and touch) are common features. They are all progressive.
In what ways is this world of neurodegeneration different?
Our hospitals are no longer full of acutely unwell younger people, as they were even during the period of my training. Many hospitalised patients now are older people who have had a fall, become delirious with a trivial infection, become confused after some “relatively” minor event, or are just not coping. The old rules simply no longer work.
First, our patients very often lack adequate cognition to give us a good history so that an appropriate diagnosis might be made, or lose their cognition over time. This means that a collaboration with family or care-givers is required to provide satisfactory management.
Second, the notion of confidentiality and privacy must be reconsidered. Those patients with failing cognition are vulnerable to their own lack of understanding, judgement and decision-making, abuse by others, bureaucracies, and a community health system which is still the poor cousin of hospital care. Families and care-givers frequently complain that doctors will not hear their concerns, and feel demeaned or angry when their stories are not heard or believed.
Third, neurodegeneration is not “curable”. There might be exacerbations of ongoing problems, or superimposed illnesses (often due to falls or infections) which can be treated. But in the main, these conditions are palliative. That means that there should be an early diagnosis, a plan generated, and families and care-givers as well as health professionals all party to it. Care-givers must know what’s ahead. It is essential that there is recognition of the palliative focus, and that each of these conditions is relentlessly progressive. Just how much do we put a frail elderly person through so that the same thing can occur within days or weeks of hospital discharge? How often do we ask our patients (and their families or care-givers) what they want? It’s OK to die. We will all do it, and we have no control over that. But we do, or should, have control over the manner of our death.
Fourth, admitting to hospital these frail elderly people is often bad medicine and it’s bad for the health system. The effect will be to “decondition” the patient so that an admission of a week with the presenting problem my well require a month or longer in rehabilitation in an effort to restore to function.
Solutions to the myriad problems of our ailing health system are complex. But talk of more beds and more doctors in hospitals misses the point. We need to understand our patients, and their needs and preferences. We need to stop pouring our precious health dollars into the seemingly bottomless pit of our hospital system and concentrate on prevention of these precipitants of admission, and to re-direct the resources into the community. Dementia alone is threatening to cripple the health system. Carers are carrying a huge and increasing burden with little recognition or meaningful support. When things go wrong, the fall-back position seems to be to admit to hospital, a choice which just happens to be the worst for everyone. Having a proper, well-resourced and comprehensive system of community care for those with dementia, backed by well-informed health professionals, supporting families and carers, is essential.
Reading Death Rules: how death shapes life on Earth and what it means to us by Queensland Palliative Care physician Dr Will Cairns (Vivid Publishing, 2015), and Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End (2014) by American writer and surgeon, Dr Atul Gawande should be mandatory for health bureaucrats and clinicians.
As we learn to appreciate the impact of neurodegeneration, we should constantly reflect on this question: what are we really trying to achieve? It’s all about people, and about how to give each of us the best time possible. It is not now about prolonging life at all costs.
Improving care for those with neurodegenerative conditions and supporting their carers, will also serendipitously aid the health care system. It might be more expensive in the short term. And certainly there will be considerable system reconfiguration, with substantial emphasis on education for both health professionals at all levels, and the community. The biggest challenge, though, might be the required culture change.
Advertisement: a good start for education on dementia might be to enrol in our Understanding Dementia MOOC (Massive Open On-Line Course) which can be found at www.utas.au/wicking/wca/mooc
Jane Tolman
(Associate Professor in Aged Care at the Wicking Dementia Centre at the University of Tasmania, previously Director of Aged Care in the Tasmanian health system)
The Australian Government has presented new legislation that would enable the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection to revoke Australian citizenship for dual nationals who might have been involved in terrorism activities. There would be no judicial review.
As a result of an apparent disagreement in Cabinet, the government has deferred a decision on how to deal with sole Australian nationals who might be linked to terrorism.
This is a massive overreaction for largely party-political purposes – promoting fear of terrorism and feeding anti-Muslim sentiment in the community. Determined not to be wedged on the issue the ALP is yet again in ‘me too’ mode.
There are good reasons why we should not tamper with citizenship. Citizenship is a critical and unifying national symbol and should not be used to address alleged short-term problems. Acts committed by Australians should be punished under criminal law and if the law is not effective for the job it should be strengthened.
Some four million Australians are dual citizens. They are a national asset. We are a country built on migration and citizenship is the culmination of that migration process. Citizenship is a key part of nation building and should never be discounted or discouraged. It should basically only be revoked on the basis of false claims in the application for citizenship. We should not be diverted from the centrality of citizenship.
A key principle of all citizenship is that people of many different backgrounds can become good and loyal Australian citizens. In the present situation that means that Muslims, like others, can become good Australian citizens. It is belief in that principle that holds this country together. If we debase that principle we should not be surprised that many people, particularly young people with origins in the Middle East might decide that they have no future in this country.
Australians citizens commit many crimes – murder, drug trafficking and child abuse. Should we revoke their citizenship? Why only IS supporters? Each year our police forces are called to intervene in over 200,000 cases of domestic violence. Surely that is a much greater problem than IS. All offences including supporting IS must be addressed with rigour but we must ensure that citizenship is open to all people who have met our criteria.
Some ministers have sought to strengthen their case for denial of citizenship to dual-citizen holders by pointing out the citizenship revocation legislation in the UK. But the UK is not a country built on migration. We are.
The government estimates that revocation of the status of Australian citizens who have dual citizenship would affect less than half of those allegedly assisting IS. The numbers would be small but the consequence would be that the legislation would probably prevent these people returning from overseas. This would leave a few of our jihadists overseas to continue their damage. How perverse this would be. It would be much better if they return to Australia and we prosecute them under our laws.
The government legislation proposes that the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection should have the power to revoke citizenship based primarily I would expect on information from ASIO or other security services. There would be no judicial review. The rule of law would be trashed. What a worry it would be relying on ASIO and Minister Dutton!
In addition to strengthening our criminal law there are other ways that we can protect ourselves against terrorism or discourage possible recruits. We can withdraw passports to prohibit travel. We can also suspend legal entitlements such as Medicare and social security payments which attach to permanent residence, and not to citizenship.
As Malcolm Turnbull has said, citizenship revocation should not be a ‘bravado’ issue and used to weaken our rule of law. Government bravado and promotion of fear is making us less safe. It is undermining citizenship.
Michael West, in the SMH continues his many articles on tax avoidance by major international companies who operate in Australia. He mentions many of them, including Big Pharma, Google, Paypal, Newscorp. He comments ‘How long can [these companies] continue to treat Australians as fools. While multinational tax avoidance remains so rife, how can governments possibly claim a democratic licence to his ordinary Australians with a hike in the GST.’ See link to article below:
There is more to the ALP policy on refugees and asylum than what we heard from the media, focused as it is on factional battles and the language of “back- flips” on contestable pieces of public policy such as boat turn backs.
As always in such a highly charged area of public policy the “devil is in the detail”. Labor however gets it about right in focusing on the priority for international engagement and the development of regional and bilateral responses to population displacement. But this policy also hardens the shift in asylum and refugee policy begun when Labor was last in office by maintaining the Offshore Processing Centres (OPCs) , regional resettlement and adopting a policy of boat turn backs.
It will be several weeks before we see the final endorsed platform but putting together the draft platform and the amendments voted during the conference Labor appears to have crafted a policy strong on border protection but mixed on responses regarding asylum seekers.
For instance, detention will be as a last resort, community processing will be the norm, the refugee status determination will be improved, the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) reestablished and there will be better oversight of the offshore processing centres. These are all welcome policy aspirations. The track record with implementation has not been as good so if Labor wants to avoid another policy mess it would be smart to start working on such implementation plans now.
On the most controversial pieces of policy, the maintenance of the Offshore Processing Centres, regional resettlement and boat turnbacks Labor has lost an opportunity to articulate why these are important planks of their platform – beyond the deaths at sea argument and having an independent oversight of OPCs.
For this reason parts of the platform read more like a tactical and political response than a comprehensive policy on asylum and refugees. This policy is tactical because it gives a little to those people opposed to OPCs and boat turnbacks – an increase in the program, removal of Temporary Protection Visas, reinstatement of the RRT , insertion of critical Convention obligations into domestic law and more funding to UNHCR – in exchange for a reluctant acceptance of the offshore processing arrangements and boat turn backs.
The fact is that turning back boats is an ethically contentious policy. While the argument of deaths at sea is compelling – the reality is any on water operation, including transfers to lifeboats or navy vessels is risky. Moreover such a policy is not a sustainable long-term approach – cost wise or through the deployment of additional vessels. It is a last resort policy, reflecting the failure of our regional engagement strategies.
Australia’s approach in the region has been selfish – it is all about our domestic problems and us – we do not hear what the regional issues are or how we could help. The most recent example of this is Australia’s refusal to assist in search and rescue of boats carrying displaced Rohingya from Burma in the Andaman Sea, when even the USA deployed flights to search for vessels.
What Labor needs to now do is strengthen its policies on regional and international engagement. It needs to set in context these controversial pieces of policy. It needs to say they are there only for so long as we get the regional architecture right and we have an agreed regional approach to displacement and asylum – where burden sharing is genuine and people are treated with dignity and humanity.
For instance, a regional response needs to be more than increased funding to UNHCR or a statement that they will work on a regional cooperation framework. It should clearly articulate the regional partnerships and bilateral arrangements that are needed to support displaced people.
It could for example articulate a regional response strategy that highlights:
It is in this context then that an increased humanitarian resettlement program makes sense, as well as the maintenance of hard-nosed policies such as turn backs and the OPCs.
But if such cooperation is to be sustainable it needs to be a long-term project not easily achieved in electoral cycle and in reality should be bipartisan in approach. If Labor is serious about regional engagement then it needs to be working now on its implementation strategies.
As with any policy response to a complex issue and one involving desperate and vulnerable people displaced from their homes and countries this is a curate’s egg of a policy. There are good elements to the policy and some that will challenge our sense of fairness and well-being. Labor has a chance to articulate that this is a humane response by moving away from the language of military operations, singularly inappropriate for dealing with asylum issues, and acknowledging that as a package it does make us confront very difficult policy choices concerning our fellow human beings.
Arja Keski-Nummi is a former First Assistant Secretary in the Refugee Division of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. She is a fellow of the Centre for Policy Development.
The former head of NAB, Cameron Clyne, has published an opinion piece in the SMH about the failure of political and business leaders to address the issue of climate change. He said that business leaders overwhelmingly support the need for a market based carbon trading system. In respect of Maurice Newman, he said that he had never encountered such thinking in the Australian business community. For a full report of Cameron Clyne’s article, see link below:
The loss of Bronwyn Bishop from the role of Speaker in the Federal Parliament is a blow to the Abbott Government.
Bishop was not the least talented in a Government which – despite the supposed neutrality of the office – she seemed never to cease to be a part.
In her chaotic 22 month reign as Speaker of the House of Representatives she was, in the eyes of long-time parliamentary watchers, the least competent, least impartial and most disruptive person ever to hold that office.
Yet, given the ministerial performance of some from Tony Abbott’s front line, Abbetz, Brandis, Dutton, Andrews, Hockey and the PM himself come to mind, Bishop’s inadequacies hardly made her singular. Some actually made her performance look normal. Tony at least seemed to think so.
Bishop’s departure is a personal loss for the PM whose judgement on her future was once again letting himself and his Government down.
It was in fact a double failure in the political judgement of the PM who had already attracted notice for his seeming lack of familiarity with even the most basic tenets of Australian politics.
Bishop’s appointment in the first place was an Abbott’s Captain’s pick – there was no chance she could ever be elected to the post – and when, what was widely foreseen from the start eventually happened, it took him nearly three weeks to appreciate what was apparent to most of his backbench in a matter of days – to the Australian public Bishop and her outrageous excesses were electoral poison.
Abbott has a deep personal commitment to Bishop whom he once described as his political mother. This supposed relationship perhaps explains his own repeated hopeless lapses in political judgement – lapses which almost cost his job back in February.
Like a real Mum Bishop returned the favour of her ‘off the wall’ appointment, day after day in parliament setting out to protect her boy from the buffeting of awkward questions and criticisms, often at the cost of abandoning any semblance of independence or impartiality. Isn’t that what good mums do?
Anyway, the loss of an independent or impartial facade hardly mattered. Statistics alone demonstrate that these qualities, the hallmarks of competent occupancy of the Speaker’s Chair, had long since been abandoned. 400 dismissals – a record for barely half a term with more than 390 Opposition victims and barely a half dozen from her own side quite adequately told that story.
Way back, Labor’s then Senate Leader Gareth Evans remarked of Bishop, then a relatively new Liberal Senator, that the reason people often took an instant dislike to her was that it saved them time.
The Australian Electorate was only slightly more tardy than the prescient Evans.
However, they needed only minimal exposure to the egregious manner to which she approached an exalted office to make Gareth look prophetic.
But Tony’s latest misjudgement was that together they could successfully ride out the crisis, keeping his protector in the Chair.
Even as the rising heat forced him out of the public eye, where, to his considerable discomfort, there was only one question his interrogators wanted answered, he judged that time would provide a cure. Repeated statements from him and the Speaker herself that she had done nothing wrong, hardly surprisingly, did not assist in making what was a major scandal vanish.
In fact, the passage of time only revealed more serious lapses by the beleaguered speaker.
Finally, backbench protests and warnings, threats from his own side to abstain in any no confidence vote and the refusal of a succession of senior Ministers – some of them Abbott supporters – to defend her publicly led to what from the outside had seemed an inevitable end. Tony alone had not seen this.
In her very last act as Speaker, her resignation, she continued to demonstrate her appalling lack of independence.
Most Speakers are aware that they are Officers of, and therefore responsible to, the Federal Parliament – not to the political party from which they come. Bishop failed here too. As an Officer of the Federal Parliament the resignation should have been made to the Parliament not through the Party of which she was supposedly independent. But it was in fact made not by Bishop to the Parliament as would have been proper but by Abbott as Leader of the political party which she had never ceased to serve.
Bishop came to the office of Speaker promising to be exceptional – she was – not in the way she foreshadowed. She would, she said, on taking office,” restore dignity and order to the Parliament”.
She has in fact left behind some benchmarks.
Inside the Parliament she is widely seen as the most obviously biassed and disruptive occupant of the Chair in memory. Outside the Parliament her arrogant extravagances are also on a scale not seen before.
In two theatres therefore her activities have registered extremely poorly. For pure paucity of performance in both areas she has indeed set a very high bar.
Half a mile from Parliament House senior officers of the Foreign Affairs Department are nervously waiting on what they believe – probably correctly – an instruction to find a diplomatic post for this political failure. They fear – again correctly – that with her girlish charm and coquettish smile she might have the same effect diplomatically as she has had on the Australia electorate – in three dramatic weeks becoming the single biggest issue in her nation’s politics.
Tony who has once again demonstrated that he is at best a meagre politician has said that no plum job is planned for Bishop post-resignation.
But Tony also said there would be no cuts to Health or Education – there were. He said there would be no cuts to the ABC or SBS – there were. He said a referendum recognizing Aborigines in the Constitution would take place in the first twelve months of his Government – it did not.
Foreign Affairs, therefore, remains on red alert.
Before last weekend’s match between the Sydney Swans and the Adelaide Crows, the Chairman of the Sydney Swans, Andrew Pridham, gave a very challenging speech about Adam Goodes and racism in Australia. He said that recent events are a seminal moment in our history. He commented that Adam Goodes ‘has shaken the nation’s conscience‘.
He added ‘Change only occurs when someone takes a stand. Rosa Parks, who in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, refused to stand for a white person in the coloured section of a bus. She was arrested. She was later to become the face of the civil rights movement and heralded for her actions. Despite this, she faced massive discrimination – she was fired from her job, she regularly received threats … media of the day claimed it was her own fault, she was divisive. She was uppity and she was refusing to conform to the good ways of society. Does that sound familiar?It does to me.’
For full text of speech see link below.
Nurse Practitioners were provided access to the MBS in November 2010. Besides limited access to pathology/radiology, nurse practitioners were provided with four time-tiered MBS item numbers for professional attendances. While most nurse practitioners have established themselves in public hospitals, primarily because of the relative financial certainty it provides, there are a handful of NPs trying to establish a niche in primary care.
There is tremendous amount of debate in primary care about burgeoning Medicare costs and the ability to offer fully subsidised primary care. Whilst GPs are well placed in primary care, primary health care nurse practitioners have demonstrated to be an excellent resource in providing care that is safe, effective and affordable. Besides improving patient satisfaction, primary health care nurse practitioners facilitate a focus on complex and chronic care needs, which may increase patient throughput and productivity. Such services provide excellent examples of nurse practitioners offering value-added service at little cost. Nevertheless, primary health care nurse practitioners face daily challenges, some of which are worth mentioning. This in order to gain better understanding of these problem/s and convert such challenges into possibilities for change into the future.
Challenges:
Opportunities:
Minister of Health Hon Sussan Ley recently announced a new payment model that encourages General Practices to provide after-hours services. Though specific eligibility has not been announced, it is hoped that nurse practitioners working in collaboration with GPs are included in this arrangement.
At the same time an MBS Review Task Force has been announced. This taskforce will examine the relevancy of 5500 MBS item numbers and align them with clinical evidence. While this is encouraging there are no nurse practitioners on the review panel. This presents a missed opportunity to provide informed financial consideration of the nurse practitioner role in general practice.
The Primary Health Care Advisory Group (PHCAG) is another excellent announcement and shows the Minister’s commitment to support patients with chronic and complex health conditions. Except for the inclusion of the chair from the Australian Practice Nurse’s Association, nurse practitioners are missing from the advisory group. Perhaps it is time for a change of heart.
Nurse practitioners are underutilized in primary care due to financial constraints. This missed opportunity places added burden on GPs, and contributes to strain on the public health system. Small increases in government spending to improve access to existing MBS item numbers (at a reduced rate, e.g. 85%) will encourage nurse practitioner numbers in primary care and provide an impetus for practice nurses to enroll in nurse practitioner programs. While practice nurses work tirelessly, nurse practitioners provide an advanced level of expertise that can support general practices in a greater cost-effective manner.
Conclusion:
The current government is committed to cost savings in health and primary care is proving to be one of their toughest challenges. Primary health care nurse practitioners working together with GPs offer real support to all aspects of chronic and complex health problems, with the potential to contribute to real health systems savings. New payment initiatives and advisory committees demonstrate the government’s commitment to cost savings and evidenced-based care. Greater consideration of the primary health care nurse practitioners role can help support this Government’s aspirations. This valuable resource should be allowed to work to its full potential to demonstrate the potential of a cost saving alternative in the long term.
Mack Madahar is a PHC and MH nurse practitioner. He acknowledges the valuable input of Chris Helms, RN, NP, MSN, ANP-BC, FACNP, in writing this paper.
The first I heard of the Adam Goodes Bumala-y Yuurrama-y (war dance) I was in Aotearoa/New Zealand. I had been watching my son play rugby. It was a carnival (under 12s) and they had just lost the grand final. After leading for the entire game, players and parents alike watched helplessly as the opposing team swept down the field from sideline to sideline, much like the legendary Mark Coyne try in State of Origin.
Every tackle was made but players kept offloading the ball and passes were sticking until a boy went over the try line, taking the corner post with him. We all paused, waiting, before the referee blew the whistle and raised his hand – the try had been scored.
Our players slumped to the ground as whānau (family) and teachers alike from the opposition ran onto the field to celebrate.
A young man then screamed a war cry in Māori. That was the signal for parents and teachers to separate in preparation for the children to perform a Haka. As the winners approached our boys, slapping their chests and screaming to their ancestors, our boys raised to take on this second challenge.
The game was over; now it was about “Te Reo Māori”, each school’s representation of the local Iwi (tribe).
Each school has its own Haka and our boys rose to the occasion. Supported by our whānau and teachers as mobile phones immediately uploaded images to Instagram and Facebook, I watched with mana (pride) as my Kamilaroi First Nation Aboriginal Australian boy participated in a celebration of Indigenous culture denied back in his homeland.
These were Pākehā (European), Samoan, Tongan, Cook Island, Indian, Chinese and Māori expressing the culture of Aotearoa as one inclusive cultural identity. It was inspiring and heartbreaking. As a Kamilaroi Aboriginal father, I was left wondering if we will ever see such inclusive cultural practice back in my own traditional homelands.
We drove home and I jumped on Facebook to discover the reaction to Adam Goodes’ Bumala-y Yuurrama-y. That was almost two months ago … but it’s still making headlines around Australia while the celebration of Te Reo Māori by 12-year-old schoolchildren has faded into the cultural landscape of Aotearoa.
Māori culture is embedded in the cultural fabric of New Zealand – it is in evidence everywhere you look, 24 hours a day. Yet, in Australia, no matter what side of the political or culture divide you sit, we all have to admit one thing – ours is a divided nation.
In Aotearoa, presenters, no matter what colour, continually introduce and close shows in the Māori language. My Aboriginal boys think they are in an Indigenous Heaven … or should I say an Indigenous Dreaming. The school handbooks are written in both English and Māori and “Te Reo Māori” is taught in both schools my boys attend.
In Australia, we often hear that Māori speak only one language and that it would be too difficult to implement Aboriginal languages throughout Australia. That is simply not true – Māori has a number of dialects associated with various regions. The differences are overcome with the introduction of a pan-Māori that is spoken and understood throughout the country.
As Aboriginal children, we are taught that when on other people’s land you respect the local culture. Therefore, the fact that many Aboriginal languages are spoken is not problematic; you teach the local language of the region. And with language comes history and place – not just for Aboriginal people but for non-Aboriginal too. Rather than divide the culture, you all become richer.
It’s this easy … having returned from Aotearoa, I have made a conscious decision to speak an Indigenous language as often as I could. I end emails with many Kamilaroi terms and begin with Yammaa, which in my language means welcome. I do this with a translation after these words in English.
Work colleagues return in kind. I now have a collection of phrases in German, Greek, Italian and many other languages from colleagues. This builds solidarity and respect, thereby furthering understanding in the workplace.
Rather than Brisbane I now say Meanjin and instead of Sydney I say Warrang. Melbourne isNarrm and Perth is Boorloo. How and why is becoming educated within the local Indigenous culture so threatening?
To return to Adam Goodes and that contentious dance of pride and defiance, there is a final important point to be made. Some argue that a major difference between the Haka and the Bumala-y Yuurrama-y is that the Haka has a long history and that the Bumala-y Yuurrama-y is a recent invention.
It was only ten years ago that senior All Blacks voiced serious reservations about whether the Haka was a tradition worth preserving. The issue was that some felt the Haka had become divorced from its original significance and meaning in the 21st century as Aotearoa had so many cultures represented within the All Blacks.
All Blacks management and the senior leaders, led by team captain Tana Umaga, held a series of discussions on how the Haka could be maintained and kept relevant. Consultations were held with the Ngāti Toa tribe to whom Ka Mate Ka Mate, the older Haka, belongs. It was decided to commission Derek Lardelli, an expert in Māori customs, to compose a new Haka tailored specifically for the All Blacks.
And so Kapa o Pango was born. This was less than ten years ago.
The Aboriginal Bumala-y Yuurrama-y went through this exact some process, so why is it being dismissed as not having the same cultural standing? The bottom line is that when the All Blacks do the Haka it is as an entire country: Black, White, Polynesian, Māori and Asian all standing together as one. The one time we do our Bumala-y Yuurrama-y, it is in the Aboriginal All Star games of AFL and NRL and it’s our mob against the rest.
Cultures, no matter how ancient, are allowed to adapt and evolve, but that will not happen in Australia while we remain so divided and our Aboriginal culture excluded from mainstream education and popular culture. All Australians have a right to engage in informed discussion, but this opportunity is denied to people when the 60,000-plus years of Aboriginal occupation and culture was excluded from their formal education.
In finishing, I just received a phone call informing me that NRL stars Johnathan Thurston and Greg Inglis will perform a traditional Aboriginal Bumala-y Yuurrama-y at matches this weekend in a rally cry of support for Adam Goodes. Now that is culture!
Marcus Woolombi Waters, Lecturer, School of Humanities at Griffith University. This article first appeared in The Conversation on 31 July 2015.
Racism comes in many forms: overt and covert, crude and subtle. The harms of racism also come in many forms. We know from a large body of research that racism can lead to stress, negative emotions, psychological damage, even physiological effects.
We don’t always focus, however, on racism’s impact on our civic health. What I mean by this is the impact racism can have on the civility and cohesion of our society. Because when someone is subjected to racism, it can have the effect of undermining their standing as a fellow member of our community, and can have a fundamental impact on their freedom.
Racism can make people feel that they are not able to speak out in a way that they otherwise might. It can inhibit their ability to go out, or feel safe in public places.
In other words, the experience of racism undermines the assurance of security to which every member of a good society is entitled; the sense of confidence that everyone will be treated fairly and justly; that everyone can walk down the street and conduct their business without fear of abuse or assault, or without feeling that they have to keep their heads down.
This dimension of racism should remind us of its connection to power. Racism is something that is used to reduce, diminish and humiliate its victims. And when it does exist, some people benefit from it. The beneficiaries of racism may be direct: often, the perpetrators of racism do what they do because it can make them feel more powerful.
Then there are those who are the passive or indirect beneficiaries of racial power. Some may benefit from the status quo without even realizing it. Some may enjoy the benefits of a social privilege bound up in race.
There is more than one way, of course, that power manifests in conversations about race. Often, race can be brought to the fore when people seek to challenge power.
We have seen this through the example of footballer Adam Goodes, who for much of this year has been subjected to constant booing from opposition supporters at AFL matches. The booing has been a recent phenomenon. It appears only to have begun after Goodes took exception to being called an ape by a young spectator at the MCG in 2013 – and to have grown after Goodes was named Australian of the Year for 2014. The booing has further intensified since May, after Goodes performed an Aboriginal war dance during a match in the AFL’s Indigenous Round.
The booing of Adam Goodes has involved an element of racism, even if some say it occurs because spectators disapprove of Goodes’s playing style. Clearly, the booing has coincided with the public stand that he has taken on matters of racism and Indigenous affairs. If the booing was to do with Goodes’s playing style, why was there not booing for the first decade or so of his career? If Goodes has such an objectionable style, how is that he won the AFL’s Brownlow Medal – the decoration for the league’s best player – on two occasions? How is it that such a champion and statesman of the game is being treated like a pantomime villain?
It is strange, too, that the denial of racism has been typically accompanied by such intense feeling. Some have expressed deep hostility to any accusation that race and racial prejudice could be at play.
Let me be clear. There is no question that the booing is of an ugly and unedifying nature. It has everything to do with Goodes standing up against racism and speaking out about Indigenous issues. Goodes has been a public figure not afraid of challenging prejudice; not afraid of asking questions about Australian history and society. He has done it in ways that have made some people feel uncomfortable.
And it beggars belief to think that those booing somehow don’t know what they are doing. Not when there has been so much debate about it being tied to racial malice (last weekend, for instance, the booing in Perth was accompanied by some spectators being ejected for racial abuse aimed at Goodes). As others have noted, many may be joining in with the booing because they are seeking to put a proud Aboriginal man ‘in his place’ – because he has dared to speak out on issues touching on race.
Whatever the motivations, the booing has gone too far. The vilification has got to stop. Because it is doing damage – not just to the game of AFL but also to our society. With each match, each week, that this booing is tolerated, more and more people are being given licence to degrade, humiliate and intimidate; to believe that they can hound someone who speaks out about racism into silence. It is an unfortunate sign of the times that this has been allowed to go on for too long, to the point where there is now even the prospect that one of the greats of the sport may be booed into retirement.
It was welcome that the AFL has issued a statement making clear that racism had no place in the game, and that the league’s 18 club captains have taken a united stand in calling for an end to the bullying. If things do not improve (and assuming Goodes plays on), it may result in the players having to take matters into their own hands. In Europe, there have been occasions in football when teams have walked off the pitch in protest against racist abuse. What an indictment on our society it would be were things to reach such a point.
We should not forget as well the toll all this is having on the man in question. During the past two years I have had the opportunity to do some work with Adam Goodes. We are proud to have him as an ambassador of our ‘Racism. It Stops with Me’ campaign. His impact has been significant. In taking a stand against racism, he has inspired many, empowering others to do the same. And, partly because of that, he is now the target of despicable behaviour.
Adam Goodes is a champion of football, an advocate for human rights and a man of integrity. He deserves our respect. It is not him, but those targeting him, who deserve our contempt.
Tim Soutphommasane is Race Discrimination Commissioner. This is an edited extract from a speech delivered at the ANU on 29 July.
Climate campaigner Al Gore has been in Australia again – but this time he didn’t share a stage with a beaming Clive Palmer. He didn’t go anywhere near Canberra. And he had good reason.
Gore, the former US vice-president who travels the world spruiking action on climate change, wanted to meet with state governments and city councils instead. He has jumped on an emerging trend: a broadening of responsibility for addressing climate change.
Under the United Nations system it is national governments that are supposed to make emissions pledges and enact policies. Some are doing so.
But the reality is it’s often provincial governments or city councils who are the most ambitious, especially where national governments leave a policy void.
A global patchwork of thousands of provinces and councils enacting separate climate policies may sound messy, and it’s very much Plan B for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. But this bottom-up mish-mash might just prove efficient at reducing greenhouse gas emissions – while some national politicians grandstand and dither on the sidelines.
Gore, a Nobel laureate who gave his trademark slideshow to 1,000 staff and students at the University of Melbourne on Monday, talked about states that are “moving” on climate change: California, Washington and Oregon in the United States, and Canada’s British Columbia.
“I have a feeling that some parts of Australia are thinking of moving,” he added in his breezy Tennessee accent. “I’m stoked about that.”
Earlier in the day Gore met with ministers from the Labor states of Victoria, Queensland and South Australia, plus senior public servants from New South Wales and the ACT.
Later he told the university event, organised by the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, that those state governments “understand this crisis and the nature of the opportunity” (such as renewable energy).
It’s a different approach to Gore’s memorable joint press conference with federal MP Clive Palmer in Parliament House a year ago. The pair announced that Palmer would vote to scrap the carbon price, while saving the furniture (the Renewable Energy Target, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation etc).
This time around, Gore didn’t target federal politicians – he could hardly show his slide of a Hawaiian wind farm surrounded by flowers to Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who finds them “ugly”. (Gore did have a quick lunch with Opposition Leader Bill Shorten.)
Instead, Gore looked to the states to ginger up Australians ahead of the major UN climate summit in Paris in December.
Top of his mind was California, the example he cited frequently on this trip. Former Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger got an emissions trading scheme through state parliament and it started under the Democrats in 2012. (The design is fairly similar to Australia’s first emissions trading scheme under Kevin Rudd.)
California now has bills on the table to cut transport emissions and increase renewable energy, as well as a legislated emissions target. The Victorian government is particularly interested in the Californian example.
Gore also name-checked the Canadian province of British Columbia, which has had a carbon tax since 2008, introduced by the centre-Right Liberal Party. Petrol pumps in Vancouver now show the carbon tax ticking over.
British Columbia has relatively strict energy-efficiency regulations on buildings and their contents, a requirement that 93% of new electricity supply be renewable, and all government agencies offset emissions.
Gore didn’t mention Chinese provinces but there are seven state or city-based carbon trading schemes in China; the Beijing ETS covers everyone from Microsoft to news agency Xinhua.
So can Australian states follow suit? They already have. NSW had an ETS, which was scrapped in 2012 to avoid duplication with the (now defunct) federal carbon tax.
Victoria’s Labor government passed a bill in 2009 to cut emissions by 20% by 2020 and had a plan for the staged closure of the Hazelwood coal-fired power plant. The Liberals won government in 2010 and reversed those plans.
So there’s an Australian policy pattern best described as messy, regardless of one’s view on climate change. Sometimes the states act, sometimes the federal government does, but governments keep changing. Climate change has been caught in a federal-state see-saw which has left little policy intact.
That’s why Gore’s list of frontrunner states doesn’t include any Australian examples.
That’s also perhaps why no premiers met Gore on Monday. They face a tough choice – are they really ready to ramp up climate ambition, and cope with the risks of a hostile media campaign and a possible voter backlash?
Climate policy has helped see off three Australian prime ministers and two opposition leaders since 2007. The temptation to back away quietly is real.
South Australia and Queensland are talking up their climate ambition, while Victoria is formally reviewing its climate options, including an energy efficiency campaign, new emissions targets, and more renewable energy. (They’re all Labor states.)
Meanwhile, insiders are closely watching the Liberal NSW government, which is a different beast ideologically to the federal Abbott government. Watch to see if ministers from any state go to the UN Paris summit.
So it was perhaps the state premiers, and not the Melbourne University students present, that Gore had in mind when he called for “moral courage” on climate change, as he stood in front of a huge slide of the planet.
Cathy Alexander is Research Fellow. Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at University of Melbourne. This article was first published in The Conversation on 28 July 2015.
To justify an increase in the GST, Premier Baird has joined the long list of conservatives who keep telling us that our health system is unsustainable. Earlier the Treasurer, Ministers for Health and the Commission of Audit warned us in one way or another that the Australian health service is unsustainable, particularly with an ageing population.
The fact is that it is sustainable. .
We need to keep modernising Medicare but by almost any international comparison we have one of the best and most sustainable health services in the world. We need to keep our problems in perspective.
The Commonwealth Fund publishes a regular research report on health systems in major countries. The Commonwealth Fund is a highly regarded private US foundation that compares major systems around the world to stimulate innovative policies and practices in the US and elsewhere.
In its 2014 report ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall’ it compares the performance of healthcare systems in eleven major countries. The comparisons cover quality of care, access, efficiency, equity,‘healthy lives’ and health expenditures per capita.
Its overall health ratings for these eleven countries were as follows:
On almost all the measures the UK with its National Health Service is a stand-out performer. . Grounded in primary care and with a single payer it has well and truly stood the test of time. The regular laggard in almost all these rankings is the US. It tells us a great deal about the failure of a health service based on multiple private insurance payers. Our private health insurance lobby is trying to take us down this disastrous US path.
When one looks at the break-down of these rankings, the UK ranks at the top in quality of care, access, efficiency and equity. US ranks last in access, efficiency and equity. What is more, the UK system is the cheapest at $US3,405 per capita in 2011 compared with the US, the most expensive at $US8,508 per capita in that same year.
As indicated, Australia stands at number four in overall rankings amongst the eleven countries. In particular areas we ranked as follows
Another measure of our success of course is our high life expectancy.
It is quite clear that by world standards we rank quite well. We are behind the UK, but far ahead of the US. . Medicare has served us well but is 40 years old without major review.
But there are ways that we could improve our health services.
There are many ways in which the efficiency of our system could be improved and costs better managed.
There is clearly a lot we can do to improve healthcare in Australia and better manage costs. But overall, we have a very good and sustainable health service which ranks well against comparable countries.
Sorry if I keep repeating myself on health care but the myths about our unsustainable health care are recycled time and time again and seldom contested.
As the latest State of the Climate report reaffirms 2014 to be “the hottest on record”, the NSW Liberal Party is pressing ahead with plans for a “Carnival of Coal” in August. The party’s upper house whip, Peter Phelps, has appealed to members to download a sticker for MP office doors in support of the upcoming carbon love-in. It says:
I loved carbon before it was coal.
The Liberal paleo-love for coal, which Tony Abbott has declared “good for humanity”, is at least a point of differentiation with Labor. Labor does not promote such slogans at all – even if, in Victoria, the Andrews Labor government is still issuing coal exploration licences.
Both parties are capable of romancing the coal industry. But Liberal parties around the country have had much more success in convincing voters that either coal is more important than climate, or have decided that – with a population drip-fed on attention-deficit-consumerism and its reality television advertorials – their connection can be comfortably sublimated.
Whatever its form, the love for coal in Australia is going to end badly, like all relationships based on fantasy. To slightly misquote a 19th-century philosopher: the demand to give up the illusion that coal is good for humanity is the demand to give up a condition which needs such an illusion.
The condition I am referring to is the way our half-formed social democracy has become so captive to the ugliest form of corporate-servicing statism. It is not that the state has completely merged with corporate interests. Australia still has incredibly strong and progressive civic institutions such as its public broadcaster, its schools, universities, bureaus, museums and aspects of the legal system that do not serve capital’s interests.
It is that our governments have become servile – not to voters, but to a conjunction of multinational mining, energy and media interests, who have as their dating agencies the far-right silos of the capitalist class, such as the Institute for Public Affairs, which do not disclose their corporate donors.
Many believe, including perhaps Abbott himself, that he retains his power base at the pleasure of an ageing octogenarian who is well known for obtaining amusement from playing the Freudian Fort-Da game with entire democracies – the power to give and take away power – as long as he has also received something in return.
The same newspaper group that managed to squeeze a “toxic” “carbon tax” through the consciousness of millions of tabloid readers by means of slogan and cartoon did so when it was threatened by the Australian Tax Office (ATO) with having to repay almost A$900 million it had received on the eve of the last federal election.
The infamous “Kick this Mob Out” election blitzkrieg on Labor that started on August 5, 2013, was launched precisely at decision time for the ATO to appeal the Federal Court ruling on the windfall payout News Corp reportedly received by titanic-scale profit-shifting.
Global profit-shifting activities are routine for multinational empires such as Murdoch’s. But, not all have the ability to pressure governments at election times. And it is clear that at least the two major political parties believe they need a media mogul to gain office.
But political parties also need big donors. The largest to the Coalition are the energy and mining companies, who receive the greatest benefits in corporate welfare.
The examples are quite grotesque. Fuel rebate subsidies that mining companies receive run at A$2.2 billion per year. Meanwhile, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) is asked to cancel its A$2.1 billion in subsidies directed exclusively to windfarms – which have the ability to hurt coal.
Before it moved to neuter the CEFC, the Coalition has proposed what has been dubbed the ”Dirty Energy Finance Corporation” for Northern Australia. It will bewilderingly make up to A$5 billion available to subsidise infrastructure projects in northern Australia and Queensland in particular.
A source has suggested to me that the fund is actually an elaborate financial smokescreen to helping out the coal mines in the Galilee basin – particularly the Adani Enterprises mine, but also the GVK Alpha Coalmine. GVK Alpha, the largest coal mine in Australia, was approved 2 months after the Coalition assumed power, is part-owned by Gina Rinehart – and also stands to benefit from billions in taxpayer-funded subsidies. Ms Rhinehart attracted satire in 2011 for flying liberal MPs to India to attend the wedding of the granddaughter of mine co-owner GV Krishna.
With the coal price diving worldwide, the mines – are unlikely to be economically viable without a huge subsidy. They might also surpass the viability threshold if they were able to sell the coal to a nearby newly proposed coal-fired power station that has been endorsed by Abbott personally.
However, competition from renewable energy company Windlab for an adjacent 1.2 gigawatt combined solar and wind farm would be an enormous threat to Alpha and Adani. It is pledging to undercut the price of the coal station by $30 per megawatt hour.
Time for my readers to draw a diagram to figure out which proposal will get funded. A diagram might picture the coincidence that the CEFC was directed to cease subsidising windfarms – for which it actually returns a profit to Australian taxpayers – just as it was realised the Windlab proposal posed a threat to the coal-fired power station.
It is worth considering that, according to Bill McKibben from 350.org, the Galilee basin alone has so much coal that if it is all burnt, it would take the world 30% of the way to getting to 2 degrees. You couldn’t invent a more tragic case study on how destructive the Abbott government is on climate.
But then there is Direct Action. This is a government marketing exercise that disguises a further A$2.5 billion giveaway to corporate Australia that works with targets so small as to guarantee Australia’s status as having fallen off the climate action map.
Detailed analysis shows that Direct Action won’t even meet its miniscule targets. It has led to a demonstrable increase in Australias Co2 emissions since the carbon tax was repealed, according to the government’s own figures.
Given the Abbott government’s ongoing love affair with coal, it is little wonder that Australia was publicly scrutinised at climate talks held in Bonn last month about the impact of its domestic policies. The UN talks, attended by representatives of 190 countries, were an important stepping stone to the much-anticipated Paris summit to be held in December.
While the Coalition’s reckless disregard for addressing climate change may not get scrutiny by the tabloid media in Australia, it certainly will in Paris.
David Holmes is Senior Lecturer, Communications and Media Studies at Monash University. This article was first published in The Conversation on 18 July 2015.
The largest hurdle for the 12-member Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement — the US president’s ability to get Trade Promotion Authority, or fast track — has been cleared. Many people think that the TPP can be wrapped up in a few months.
There are still difficult issues to resolve, but they are trivial compared to the ability to get a straight up-or-down vote in the US Congress, without which the deal would be a non-starter. The remaining issues can easily be horse-traded at the political level and compromises can be made in order to complete the deal.
The temptation will be strong to rush across the finish line for what will be a major political trophy — but the risk is that the TPP will be an agreement that does more harm than good for economic and political relations in the Asia Pacific.
A completed TPP will be accompanied by grandiose statements about the deal covering 60 per cent of global GDP and half the world’s trade. This sounds much less impressive when you compare it to groupings like APEC, which includes China and Indonesia, that have even higher global GDP and trade coverage. But the numbers like these don’t tell us anything about what kind of deal it will be or what gains and costs it will bring. The most optimistic estimates suggest trivial increases in GDP.
The TPP aims to write rules for international commerce in the 21st century and includes a large number of chapters that go beyond 20th century trade issues.
There are three major flaws, though, that will likely overwhelm any positives the deal may deliver.
The first is that the core of the new rules involves aspects that further private interests (read: large multinationals) at the expense of general welfare in member countries. The most egregious of these is stronger intellectual property (IP) rights protections, which are anti-development and simply transfer wealth to US pharmaceutical companies and Hollywood. Stronger intellectual property protections stymy innovation. This means a net reduction in trade and a loss in global welfare. If ! countries like Australia think stronger IP protections are in their national interest, they do not need an international treaty to introduce them.
The second flaw is who the TPP leaves out. China, India and Indonesia, among others, are not party to the TPP nor will they be able to join anytime soon. The hurdles to membership are unreasonably high for non-advanced countries, who will pay a cost from being left out with strict rules designed to divert trade from them.
The third major flaw is that even in the win-win trade enhancing areas, the TPP will either entrench protection in some areas — chiefly agriculture — or, where it succeeds in liberalising, will do so at the expense of non-members. Inefficient and unproductive sectors are a drag on economies, and liberalising them would produce real gains. But many countries in the TPP are bringing an overly defensive stance — think Japan and its rice and other ‘sacred’ produce — or are starting with that sector off the negotiating table altogether, as is the case with US sugar.
More egregiously, the TPP will complicate trade and impose serious costs on non-members.
Vietnam is a case in point. The country is paying a high price for entry by adopting standards and rules inappropriate to its stage of development, but it will benefit from increased market access in the United States for its garments exports. Yet Vietnamese exporters will only enjoy that preferential treatment if it procures raw materials from another TPP member instead of from cheaper, more efficient suppliers like China. These and similar provisions that derive from the way TPP has been negotiated bilaterally make it a particularly complex and costly agreement. The trade diversion that will result imposes economic costs on members and non-members alike — and some of the latter are even poorer than Vietnam.
To make matters worse, the trade- and welfare-reducing IP rights provisions are being traded off against and bundled with market access provisions. And some provisions could be disruptive and costly when onerous standards, institutions and reforms — to state-owned enterprises, for example — are imposed and countries are expected to leapfrog stages of development.
As TPP members sprint towards the finish line, they will need to introduce measures to enhance the positives of the agreement — the genuine trade and investment liberalisation that occurs — and over time minimise the negatives. A first step is to limit the scope and reach of the welfare reducing IP protections.
The agreement needs to be expansionary on the win-win trade and investment liberalisation aspects. That involves limiting the complicated preferential deals within the TPP and making it easy to expand membership. That is no easy task given the design of the agreement is to punish non-members into compliance on terms set by the advanced economies. A more productive way forward would be to help build capacity in lower income countries so that they can reach those standards. That is how to further productive economic interdependence and win friends.
If progress can be made in reform and liberalisation unilaterally or through the help of other regional initiatives — and if the WTO and multilateral system can be strengthened — then the benefits of the TPP can be accentuated and some of its more pernicious costs averted.
Shiro Armstrong is co-director of the Australia-Japan Research Centre and co-Editor of East Asia Forum at the Australian National University.
This article was first posted on the East Asia Forum website on 26 July 2015.
I was surprised recently on arriving at Sydney Airport to see the new Australian Border Force (ABF) decked out in their new military-style uniforms. The personnel looked like part of the Australian Defence Force instead of Customs and Immigration officers. There was clearly a new message being conveyed.
But perhaps I should not have been so surprised as I had seen online only a few days earlier the launch of ABF in Canberra with the mandatory 10 Australian flags backing our Prime Minister, the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, the Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, and the new bedecked Head of ABF.
Militarisation has become increasingly the norm in Australia eroding more and more of our civic domain.
Tony Abbott has been running scare campaigns on many fronts particularly against ‘illegal’ asylum seekers and terrorists. The language is clear, we are at war with asylum seekers in their rickety boats. Scott Morrison described Operation Sovereign Borders as a ‘military-led border security operation’. He added that the battle against people-smugglers ‘is being fought using the full arsenal of measures’. Tony Abbott speaks of the continuing war against illegals. Operation Sovereign Border is run by the Navy. The Minister for Immigration and Border Protection refuses to tell the Australian people about asylum seeker boats because the matter is ‘operational’, i.e. we are in a military operation on the high seas..
Many of us had hoped that at last we were putting to an end the appointment of the Australian military as vice-regal representatives in Australia. But we are now back-tracking on that with General Cosgrove our new Governor General and General Hurley our new Governor in NSW. The military is the norm.
Our aid programs have been progressively militarised. AIDWATCH has recently reported that our ‘military forces manipulate humanitarian aid in order to achieve tactical and political objectives. While the military can play an important role in the immediate aftermath of a humanitarian crisis, particularly through the provision of transport and creating a secure environment, researchers have found that militarised aid is not effective and can cause harm to local communities and aid workers. It added ‘All Australian government activities in Afghanistan that are related to Operation Slipper – whether delivered by the ADF, AFP or Ausaid – are not aid. At a Senate Inquiry into Australia’s aid program to Afghanistan in December 2012 it revealed almost $200 million in military spending being reported as “aid”. The acknowledgement raises serious concerns about the close relationship between aid and Australian military and police forces in Afghanistan.’
The militarisation of Australia and our conditioning to it has been most evident in the extravagant celebration of the Centenary of Gallipoli and WWI. The Australian War Memorial has orchestrated an extremely well-funded campaign across the country, including schools, to depict WWI as the starting point of our history, our coming of age. We are encouraged to celebrate this disaster and forget our great civilian and peace time achievements in the decades just before 1900 and in the subsequent decade. There were remarkable civilian achievements; federation, the national parliament, a living wage, rights for women and an Australian ballot. We were world leaders in these and other civilian achievements but we are encouraged to forget them so we can focus on our military history and valour.
David Stephens, the Secretary of Honest History, wrote in this blog on 20 June this year that we will probably spend up to $A700 million on the Centenary of WW1. He said ‘The Australian spend per death [in WWI] is between five and nineteen times the average spend per death of the next five major combatant countries – NZ, Canada, UK, France and Germany.’ That tells us a lot about how militarisation has become the norm.
Our foreign policy has become subjected to our military dependence on the US. We are at the beck and call of the US military, usually regardless of our own interests. We do it time and time again – Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and now Iraq again. Malcolm Fraser has warned us that the US is a ‘dangerous ally’. The US has many attractive features but war seems to be in its DNA. As I wrote in this blog on 15 June this year, since its independence in 1776, the US has been at war 93% of that time. It has never had a decade without war. It has launched 201 out of 248 armed conflicts since the end of WWII and maintains over 700 military bases around the world in more than 100 countries. Former President Eisenhower warned Americans about the industrial and military complex in the US. The warning should be for us as well as for the Americans about the militarisation of civilian institutions and values. Our foreign policy has been eclipsed by our mistaken military adventures and dependence on the US.
There is great danger that the militarisation of Australian history and our ready acceptance of military as the accepted norm will lead us to more and more tragedy. We used to believe that committing our country to war was the most serious thing that any government could ever do. That is no more. We go to war without even the Australian parliament being consulted. Tony Abbott could hardly contain himself at the prospect of sending 1000 ADF troops to far away Ukraine after the downing of MH 17. The military threat of ISIS is grossly exaggerated as Malcolm Turnbull has told us.
Henry Reynolds in this blog on 18 April this year. ‘Militarism marches on’, warned us ‘The threshold Australian governments need to cross in order to send forces overseas is perilously low. Because there has never been an assessment of why Australia has been so often involved in war, young people must get the impression that war is a natural and inescapable part of national life. It is what we do and we are good at it. We ‘punch above our weight’. War is treated as though it provides the venue and the occasion for Australian heroism and martial virtuosity. While there is much talk of dying, or more commonly of sacrifice, there is little mention of killing and never any assessment of the carnage visited on distant countries in our name.’
Militarisation is becoming more and more pervasive. We are sleep-walking in dangerous territory.
I have reposted below an article I wrote on 8 December last year pointing out that Tony Abbott did not stop the boats. But the debate proceeds, assisted by journalists who still claim that Tony Abbott stopped the boats. He didn’t.
So that my argument can be better understood, see the graph below which reveals quite clearly that there was a dramatic fall in boat arrivals from July 2013 when Kevin Rudd announced the policy that future boat arrivals would not be settled in Australia. We may argue about the wisdom of this policy, but it effectively stopped the boats. There is a current debate about turn-backs of boats, but they were only a marginal influence in stopping the flow of boat arrivals.
Not only did Tony Abbott not stop the boats, but he, together with the Greens was responsible for the dramatic increase in boat arrival numbers after the rejection of the Malaysian arrangement in August 2011. At that time, irregular maritime arrivals were running at less than 300 per month. That increased to over 4,000 in July 2013 when the Rudd Government acted. For further background see repost below,
Repost from 8 December 2014.
The data just does not support the never-ending claims by Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison that they stopped the boats. The under-resourced and uncritical media accepts the Coalition’s line.
I will come to the recent data, but first the evidence is clear that action by the Coalition along with the Greens in the Senate to prevent amendments to the Migration Act greatly assisted people-smugglers and boat arrivals from 2011 onwards.
The rejection of the arrangement with Malaysia by the High Court started the rot. The High Court decision may have been sound in law, but it had powerful consequences for boat arrivals. The arrangement with Malaysia needed improvement but it did provide guarantees that Malaysia had never provided before. The UNHCR was prepared to actively cooperate. When the High Court rejected the Malaysian arrangement in August 2011, irregular maritime arrivals were running at less than 300 per month. That number increased to 1200 by May 2012, and kept on rising.
The Labor Government attempted to amend the Migration Act to address the problems identified by the High Court but the Coalition together with the Greens blocked the amending legislation. They bashed Malaysia at every opportunity. The failure of the Malaysian arrangement sent a very clear message to people smugglers that boat arrivals would succeed. Boat arrivals were running at over 4,000 per month in July 2013.
The action by Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison in association with the Greens triggered this dramatic increase in boat arrivals. Both Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison made it abundantly clear that they did not want to stop the boats with an arrangement such as that with Malaysia. They wanted to stop Labor stopping the boats. Their political intentions were revealed by WikiLeaks that reported that ‘a key Liberal Party strategist told the US embassy in 2009 that the more boats that come the better’. (SMH 10 December 2010). Scott Morrison became Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship in December 2009.
Action by the Coalition in the Senate triggered a large increase in boat arrivals in 2012 and into 2013.
But did Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison really stop the boats when they came to power?
The data shows that the downward trend in boat arrivals occurred from July 2013, two months before the Coalition came to power. See data below.
| 2013 | Boat people arrivals(excluding crew) | Boats |
| January 2013 | 471 | 10 |
| February | 925 | 16 |
| March | 2455 | 37 |
| April | 3396 | 47 |
| May | 3315 | 47 |
| June | 2715 | 41 |
| July | 4145 | 47 |
| Aug | 1591 | 25 |
| September | 837 | 15 |
| October | 339 | 5 |
| November | 207 | 5 |
| December | 355 | 7 |
Source: Department of Immigration and Border Protection, and Australian Parliamentary Library.
What largely stopped the boats, although not completely, was the announcement by Kevin Rudd on the 19th July 2013 that in future any persons coming by boat and found to be a refugee would not be settled in Australia. We may argue about the wisdom of that policy, but it effectively crippled the business case of the people-smugglers.
In the data above, there are undoubtedly some leads and lags and seasonal factors, but the data shows that the Rudd announcement of 19 July 2013 dramatically cut the number of boats and people arriving by boat. The major turnaround occurred between July and August, before the Coalition came to power.
As the Abbott Government was not sworn in until 18 September 2013, its policy on boats would also have had only marginal effect on September arrivals.
So between July and September, people arriving by boat fell from 4,145 to 837 and the number of boats fell from 47 to 15. The trend largely continued after that time.
Peter Hughes a former deputy secretary in the Department of Immigration and Citizenship put it this way in an article in the Canberra Times in late 2013. ‘The arrival of 546 asylum seekers in October and November 2013 represents only 14% of the number of arrivals for the corresponding months in 2012. This is a dramatic reduction … The announcement of long-term resettlement of refugees in Papua New Guinea and Nauru by the previous government has likely been decisive in changing the decision to travel to Australia on the part of those asylum seekers who have not yet handed over their money to a smuggler. ‘
The game-changer was Kevin Rudd’s announcement of 19 July 2013 on no resettlement in Australia for boat arrivals. It is also likely that tighter visa procedures on Indonesia’s part would have helped reduce the number of boat arrivals. In effect the Rudd Government slammed the door although the boat turn a rounds pushed the final bolt home. In other words, if there was any doubt in the minds of people smugglers and asylum seekers trying to come by boat those doubts were removed.
The Abbott Government capitalised on a trend which the Rudd Government clearly started in July 2013.
Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison have wrung every political advantage they could from boat arrivals. But the evidence is clear that they helped accelerate the numbers before they came to power and it was the action of the Rudd Government, before they came to power in September 2013 that put boat arrivals on a downward track
Operation Sovereign Borders has really been quite marginal and would not have been ‘successful’ without the July 2013 decision. Navy and Customs were able to turn a few boats around. This would have been impossible if boats had continued to arrive at 47 a month as they were in July 2013. OSB has been very high profile and very expensive – and offensive to Indonesia. But OSB has not been the main game.
The game-changer was Kevin Rudd’s announcement in July 2013.
I have yet to hear anyone who supports the spending by Bronwyn Bishop of $5,000 in taxpayers’ money for a helicopter ride from Melbourne to Geelong for a Liberal Party fundraiser. It is surprising however that, as a member of parliament, she attracts so much attention for this relatively small misuse of public money, but little mention is made of large scale indulgences of companies that provide private travel, yachts, holidays and entertainment for senior executives at the expense of the taxpayer..
But the real issue at the moment is the damage that Bronwyn Bishop has been doing to our parliament and the lack of trust we all have in our members of parliament. She is a biased and partisan class warrior and quite unsuited to uphold and advance the dignity of parliament. In the current parliament up to February this year she had ejected 309 MPs of whom 304 were from the Labor Party. That bias is intolerable.
Tony Abbott speaks often of our constitutional roots in the UK parliamentary system. There are some practices in the House of Commons that we could consider. The first is that candidates for speaker must be nominated by at least twelve members of whom at least three be of a different party to the candidate. This ensures a degree of bipartisan support. Second, the speaker resigns from his or her party and does not attend party meetings. Thirdly, the speaker’s seat is not contested at the next election by a member of the opposition party.
The speaker of the House of Commons clearly sees his or her role as the servant of the parliament and not of the government or the ruling party. There is a long tradition in the House of Commons that the speaker must protect the parliament against the encroachment and power of the king/the government. It is a hard won tradition. House of Common’s speakers have been executed for placing the interests of the parliament ahead of the government. That is why we still preserve the fiction that the speaker has to be ‘dragged unwillingly’ to the speaker’s chair. But that’s as far as the relevance goes these days. Unfortunately, in Australia on taking the speakership, the speaker becomes not a servant of the parliament but of the government and the ruling party.
Our system has developed differently but there are still things that we could learn from the House of Commons. Most importantly, there are two things. The first is that a new speaker should have the support of both the government and opposition parties. Second, the speaker should never attend caucus meetings of the ruling party. If Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten could agree to such terms in a replacement for Bronwyn Bishop, I would be confident that we could begin to see a renewal of our parliament. Alternatively, if they could not agree, Bill Shorten could propose that he would adopt such an approach in the next parliament if he was able to win a majority. I am sure the public would respond very favourably.
The real problem is not so much $5,000 for the helicopter ride, but the way parliament has been damaged by a biased speaker who cares little for the reputation of the parliament.
Now that Federal Labor Leader Bill Shorten has publicly stated his opposition to the China FTA labour mobility provisions, the Coalition is ramping up its attack on union and political critics of the deal.
Trade Minister Robb lead the charge this week, with allegations of union ‘falsehoods’ and a ‘racist scare campaign’ over the China FTA that do not stack up (‘Don’t give credence to union scare campaign’, AFR, Letters, 21 July 2015).
The main alleged union ‘falsehood’ is ‘that Chinese companies will be allowed to bring in their own workforces at the expense of Australian jobs’.
The fact is that Chinese companies will be able to do exactly this under the FTA package that Mr Robb negotiated. Under the terms of the China FTA, any China-based enterprise with ‘a contract for the supply of a service within Australia and which does not have a commercial presence within Australia’ can bring in an unlimited number of its own Chinese employees as skilled workers on non-concessional 457 visas, without ‘labour market testing or any economic needs test’ (ChAFTA, Chapter 10, Annexe 10-A, Clause 10(a)).
This includes Chinese companies with contracts on ‘significant infrastructure projects’ of $150 million or more under the Investment Facilitation Arrangement (IFAs) in the China FTA package.
This means a China-based enterprise contracted to perform say all the engineering and design work on a project in Australia, or all the welding work, can bring in unlimited numbers of Chinese engineers or welders to Australia on non-concessional 457 visas, with no obligation to even look for skilled Australian engineers or welders, let alone prove that none are available.
Chinese companies with these contracts can access unlimited numbers of 457 visas for their Chinese employees in all ‘skilled’ occupations – meaning all 651 occupations currently on the non-concessional 457-eligible list (known as the Consolidated Sponsored Occupation List or CSOL), and any added to the list over time. ‘Non-concessional’ means the Chinese workers must meet all the standard minimum requirements for a 457 visa, including minimum English language skills (which the Coalition has reduced), qualifications and salary.
The FTA also grants the exact same 457 visa privileges to China-based companies transferring their staff to Australia as ‘intra-corporate transferees’ moving ‘to fill a position in the branch, subsidiary or affiliate of the enterprise in Australia’. These include Chinese and other foreign nationals ‘with advanced trade, technical or professional skills’, who can be moved to Australia in unlimited numbers with no 457 LMT, for any reason including to perform work associated with ‘significant infrastructure projects’.
Mr Robb’s China FTA also permits unlimited numbers of Chinese workers as ‘installers and servicers’ of machinery and equipment where installation or servicing by the supplying Chinese company ‘is a condition of purchase of the machinery or equipment’. These Chinese workers enter on shorter-term 400 visas also with no labour market testing, like the non-concessional Chinese 457 visa workers mentioned above. Chinese project investors in Australia will preference suppliers of cheaper Chinese machinery and equipment, so we should expect many Chinese 400 visa workers under the FTA.
Coalition Ministers say nothing about these outrageous FTA concessions but instead deflect attention solely to the Memorandum of Understanding on Investment Facilitation Arrangement (IFAs), alongside the formal China FTA treaty.
Chinese companies can also bring in their own workforces of concessional 457 visa workers under these IFAs. ‘Concessional’ 457 visas mean Chinese and other foreign workers in semi-skilled occupations, and those in skilled occupations who do not meet the standard minimum requirements for a 457 visa, such as minimum English language skills. The government tries to conceal the fact these are concessional arrangements for lower-skill workers, with Ministers like Mr Robb saying IFAs are for ‘skilled’ overseas workers.
The arrangements for concessional 457 visa workers under IFAs are different to those for the non-concessional 457 workers covered by the FTA itself. The government has surrounded these IFAs with the fog of obfuscation since they were first announced back in November 2014 and has done little in nine months to clear that fog and persuade Australians that these are in the national interest.
Unlike the non-concessional 457 visas for Chinese workers, there will be negotiated limits on the numbers of concessional 457 visa workers on IFA projects. The number of concessional 457 visa workers and ‘guaranteed occupations’ on an IFA project will be set in an umbrella IFA project agreement, from which individual direct employers on the project will then draw down under concessional 457 ‘labour agreements’. The MOU expressly rules out any requirement for labour market testing for a project company ‘to enter into an IFA’, which will be valid for at least 4 years.
It now seems that the total number of concessional 457 visas approved for an IFA project will be determined based on consultants reports and similar speculative data as to projected future ‘shortages’ of Australian workers in up to 4 years time, provided to the Immigration Department (DIBP) by the project owner. On this basis, the IFA project owner will get approval for say 1,000 concessional 457 visa workers over the life of the project. IFA project employers can then ‘bid’ for a share of the 1,000 concessional 457 workers.
To access these 457 workers, there is no legal obligation for these IFA project employers to undertake 457 labour market testing (LMT) as legislated in the Migration Act 1958. The legislated LMT obligation does not apply to sponsors of concessional 457 visa workers under labour agreements, only to sponsors of non-concessional 457 visa workers. Labor must surely regret this oversight in its 2013 legislative amendments on 457 LMT which the Coalition will not remedy. Its policy is the abolition of legislated 457 LMT entirely.
The MOU says that direct employers on IFA projects may be required to undertake some form of labour market testing (LMT) before accessing concessional 457 visa workers. The MOU also states that ‘where labour market testing is required, employers may satisfy this requirement by demonstrating that they have first tested the Australian labour market and not found sufficient suitable workers. DIBP will make publicly available information on how any labour market testing requirements could be met’ (MOU on IFA, clause 8 and footnote 6 – emphasis added).
On 22 July, Assistant Immigration Minister Cash said DIBP Project Agreement guidelines for companies seeking to recruit overseas workers will give effect to IFAs. These guidelines, dated May 2015 but strangely not mentioned in DFAT’s ‘Myth-busting’ Fact Sheet on the FTA issued in mid-July, state that employers: “must provide a comprehensive written statement of the labour market need for the requested occupation(s), demonstrating ongoing shortages …. as well as evidence that you have made significant efforts to recruit workers from the Australian labour market within the previous six months.” Furthermore: “The department will only enter into a project labour agreement where it has been satisfied that Australians have been provided first opportunity for jobs.”
This is a much lower standard than the legislated 457 LMT obligation where sponsors must prove to DIBP that no suitably qualified Australian is available to do the job, at the time of each 457 visa nomination, where the LMT condition applies. Like most obligations and provisions in concessional 457 labour agreements, it also is embedded only in Departmental ‘guidelines’ and policy, not legislation or regulations.
The Minister’s attempt to assure that these ‘guidelines’ offer adequate protection for Australian workers also conveniently ignores the fact that these applications for concessional 457 visa workers by individual IFA project employers will be made in a context where the project owner has already secured approval for large numbers of these workers, in the umbrella IFA agreement.
This places undue and unfair pressure on DIBP officers to approve 457 visa applications from individual IFA employers, especially operating in a high-profile visa program area with no legislative framework and far too much room for Ministerial and political intervention.
The Coalition government will not admit that these IFA arrangements are unprecedented. Australia has never before in an FTA package deal permitted concessional 457 visas for even skilled workers, let alone for semi-skilled workers (like concreters, scaffolders, truck drivers, even office workers). It is also unprecedented for any Australian government to allow foreign companies access to concessional 457 visa workers under labour agreements. Until the China FTA package, only Australian businesses could access these concessional 457 visa workers because these arrangements are too high risk for abuse and exploitation.
Time for government honesty about the China FTA labour mobility package.
Bob Kinnaird is Research Associate with The Australian Population Research Institute and was National Research Director CFMEU National Office 2009-14.
We have yet to balance spirituality and sexuality in the Church especially in regard to women. Women’s leadership and spiritual influence will be compromised until we do, writes Good Samaritan Sister Patty Fawkner.
I thank my father for my friendship with Mary Magdalene.
I was a young woman when, after a brief illness, my father died of cancer. It was the first time I’d lost a loved one. I was devastated.
My gnawing grief for my darling Dad made me interpret well-meaning words of sympathy as hollow pious platitudes. God seemed nowhere to be found. I felt nothing of God’s comfort. Unbelievably naïve, I had expected God to shield me from normal human grief because I was a person of faith – I was a nun for heaven’s sake!
Many months after Dad’s death I went on a weekend retreat and the wise old monk who guided me suggested I read Chapter 20 of John’s Gospel and spend time with Mary Magdalene in the garden on the morning of Jesus’ resurrection.
The story is well-known and well-loved. A grieving Mary goes to the tomb. The body of Jesus is not there. Still weeping, she encounters a mysterious figure whom she mistakes for the gardener. He calls her by name. She re-discovers her Beloved. He tells her not to cling onto him but to go and tell the good news of his resurrection to his disciples. “I have seen the Lord,” she rejoices.
Something shifted in me as I spent time with Mary. Somehow, inchoately, I felt God calling me by name. Somehow God was present in my emptiness. Like Mary, I couldn’t cling onto a former idea of God. I had to, in Anthony de Mello’s words, “empty out my teacup God”. I had to find a new, more adult image of God. Instead of a Mr Fix-it God who did not honour my grieving humanity, I found a more mysterious God, a presence in emptiness, a bright darkness, a God who grieved with me.
I was grateful to Mary Magdalene but still didn’t really know her.
Years earlier I had seen Cecil B. DeMille’s movie, The King of Kings, where Mary Magdalene first appears as a bejewelled, breast-plated courtesan driving a chariot drawn by – what else but (?) – five plumed zebras! She is hurrying to meet her lover, Judas Iscariot, who she hears has become ‘distracted’ by some carpenter turned preacher.
I laughed at Cecil B. DeMille’s fertile imagination but still accepted uncritically the Christian tradition’s stereotype of Mary as the infamous scarlet woman who turned her life around upon meeting Jesus.
Scripture study over the years has led me to discover who Mary Magdalene is and who she is not. The more the real Mary Magdalene is allowed to ‘stand up’, the more significance she has for me, not only as a friend, but also as an icon of what women’s role in the Church is and could be.
Scripture scholars agree that there is not a shred of evidence that Mary was a prostitute. There are at least six or seven different Marys in the Scriptures and they get marvellously muddled.
Each Gospel writer portrays Mary Magdalene as the first witness to the resurrection and the first to announce this publicly. The definition of an apostle is one who has encountered the risen Lord and proclaims that Good News. In the earliest Christian tradition, Mary is therefore rightly celebrated, not as prostitute but as “Apostle to the Apostles”.
Mary was chosen for this special role because, I believe, she stood with Jesus in his suffering. Unlike the male disciples who, apart from the Beloved Disciple, fled or drew a weapon in the garden or denied Jesus, Mary endured the brutal horror of Jesus’ crucifixion.
She does not flee. She does not fight. She does not flinch. Like so many women after her, she gives practical expression to her faith in Jesus. She sits opposite the tomb till dark and then early the next morning comes to the tomb with spices to anoint the body.
We know that female community leaders and spiritual guides were not uncommon in the early Church. But as soon as the Christian community became part of the establishment, women became more marginalised. Patriarchy minimalized them.
Within a few centuries, Mary the “Apostle to the Apostles” was forgotten and Mary the former prostitute became entrenched in official Church teaching and in popular imagination.
As Mary Magdalene’s star waned, the other Mary, Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus, shone. The two Marys demonstrate the Church’s tendency to either put women on a pedestal or relegate them and discount the legacy of their spiritual leadership.
Mary of Nazareth is firmly on the pedestal. Dressed in virginal blue, she retains her spirituality but is stripped of her sexuality.
Mary of Magdala, the relegated one, retains her sexuality but has been stripped of her spiritual influence. Her name, Magdalene, continues to be mythically associated with female sinfulness. She continues to be ignored as “Apostle to the Apostles”.
The institutional Church has an abject record of recognising women’s spiritual leadership. In the Catholic liturgical calendar there are about 200 feast days for holy men and women, and only one in five – 20 per cent – are women, and a quarter of those 20 per cent belong to Mary, the mother of God. The greater majority of the remaining women are either virgins or religious – hardly the profile of the majority of women in the Church!
We have yet to balance spirituality and sexuality in the Church especially in regard to women. Women’s leadership and spiritual influence will be compromised until we do.
Pope John Paul II loved putting women on a pedestal. He spoke often about women’s “feminine genius”, but preferred that they remain in the private sphere of kitchen or cloister.
However, there are positive signs with Pope Francis, who said in an address for International Women’s Day, that “a world where women are marginalised is a sterile world”.
“Women have the capacity to see otherwise,” he said. They “ask questions that men never think of”. Of course they do! Their experience is different. Their perspective and insight is different.
Women have tended to start from their own experience of God, rather than theory about God. This is what Mary Magdalene does. “I have seen the Lord”, she says, and tells the other disciples what her Beloved said to her.
Repeatedly Pope Francis has said that the Church needs women’s wisdom and contribution in all spheres of Church life including decision-making. The critical issue, however, is how to break the nexus between decision-making and ordination. Pope Francis acknowledged this in his first major document Evangelii Gaudium, but worryingly, has not as yet made any significant structural moves to rectify the situation.
For me, Mary Magdalene represents all the unrecognised but spiritually significant women and men in the Church. She invites me to enter Jesus’ suffering and not shirk. She calls me to encounter the Risen One in my prayer. She challenges me to be a Good News person who proclaims fiercely and boldly not herself, but the One whom she has seen, the One who sends her. She has much to teach us about God’s inclusive, incredible love for the relegated, the disparaged and dispossessed.
Mary Magdalene proclaims Jesus as Good News. She is Good News. She certainly is good news in my life. As we celebrate her feast on July 22, may she be so in yours.
* Good Samaritan Sister Patty Fawkner is an adult educator, writer and facilitator. Patty is interested in exploring what wisdom the Christian tradition has for contemporary issues. She has an abiding interest in questions of justice and spirituality. Her formal tertiary qualifications are in arts, education, theology and spirituality.
This article was first published in The Good Oil, the e-magazine of the Good Samaritan Sisters http://www.goodsams.org.au/good-oil/mary-magdalene-friend-icon-model
Cardinal George Pell has criticized Pope Francis’ ground-breaking environmental encyclical. As Pell told the Financial Times on Thursday, July 14, “It’s got many, many interesting elements. There are parts of it which are beautiful,” he said. “But the Church has no particular expertise in science … the Church has got no mandate from the Lord to pronounce on scientific matters. We believe in the autonomy of science.”
In the encyclical Laudato Si’ Pope Francis engages his readers on three levels; the first is that of science, the second is that of faith and theology the third is that of reasoned ethics.
The first level is represented by chapter One of the document, (pars, 17-52). It has been generally acknowledged that the document presents the consensus of the majority of competent scientists. There are some scientists who hold differing views, but they are clearly in the minority. It is reasonable and responsible on the part of the Pope and his advisors to provide an account of the interpretation of the facts on which they base their further reflections. It is perfectly clear that that Pope, in this section, is not appealing to his religious authority to support the description of the contemporary ecological situation. He is reporting the consensus of scientists, who competence he acknowledges. If someone has different views, then a reasonable and responsible reply would be to present the scientific evidence for that view.
It is quite misplaced to insist that the Church has no authority on scientific questions. The Cardinal, however, asserts, “We believe in the autonomy of science.” Well, who are “we” in this matter? Pell and his fellow climate change deniers? Does he think that the Pope needs to be corrected on this point? The pope well understands what “the autonomy of science” means. The Pope, in contrast to His Eminence, was educated in science and had the assistance of internationally recognized scientists in composing this encyclical.
Pell states that the Catholic Church has “no particular expertise in science.” Pope Francis nowhere claims that the Church has such competence. What he does offer is a responsible account of his interpretation of the contemporary scientific consensus. If someone wishes to offer a differing view they ought to provide supporting evidence to support that view.
At a second level, the encyclical engages in reflection on faith and so enters the sphere of theology. (pars. 55-100) It is in this section that Pope Francis introduces what Professor Joseph Camilleri describes as a seismic shift in mainstream Christian thought: human life is essentially defined in its relationship to God, to others and to the earth. There is a clear move beyond an earlier anthropocentric view; the relation between nature and humanity is a crucial dimension of the encyclical. This important theme has entirely escaped Pell.
The third level is that of ethics. Reasonable ethical argument presupposes a responsible account of the relevant facts. This is provided by Pope Francis in the first section of the encyclical. In the following sections the Pope develops a critical, culturally informed ethical response which Pell ignores. John Allen reports that despite the cardinal’s criticism of the pope’s environmental stance, Pell noted the encyclical had been “very well received” and said Francis had “beautifully set out our obligations to future generations and our obligations to the environment.” These final animadversions can sound quite patronizing. Cardinal Pell is prepared to grant that the views of the Pope are indeed “beautiful,”—even if without a secure basis in scientific reasoning. But Cardinal Pell himself provides no reasoned argument in support is his assertions.
In the sphere of climate science, Cardinal Pell is himself no authority, but is rather at the mercy of his own bias. Perhaps he needs to re-read the Pope’s document, and update his previous views on climate change and the broader issues of ecology.
Brian Johnstone. C.SS.R. is a Redemptorist priest.