The brutality and assasination of the editors and cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo must be condemned. Those responsible must face and perhaps have faced the full consequences.
But if I were a Muslim, I would have been offended by the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. They were not a critique of Islam but gratuitous insults. I expect my Christian faith to be respected. Religious tolerance requires respect for other people’s beliefs. The cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo did not do that.
We live in a fragile and pluralistic world and we must be aware of the consequences of what we do and say. Surely that is what fraternity and solidarity is about – respecting the rights and beliefs of others.
Both the New York Times and The Guardian have refused to publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. I believe that shows mature judgement.
Charles Walton of the the University of Warwick sets out in the link below the problem when free speech becomes a kind of fundamentalism. This article was published in The Conversation on 9 January.
Extremism in any religion is a major concern. We need to consciously build relations with moderate Islam so that the extremists can be isolated. Building relations with Islam goes far beyond anti terrorism action. It involves economic, social and political action so that young Muslims in particular are not isolated in frustration and urban ghettoes.
The west has exploited the Middle East and antagonised Islam from the time of the Christian Crusades. The Middle East has been attacked, colonised and its resources exploited. That inevitably leaves a legacy of hostility. That hostility must be addressed on a range of fronts.
Andrew MacLeod in The New Daily writes about the need for the West to undertake a wide range of activities that will encourage and support moderate Muslims and at the same time isolate extremists. The link to this article is below.
The Parliamentary Library has prepared a report for the Senate inquiry into corporate tax avoidance. The report provides background on this issue as well as a summary of what other countries are proposing to address corporate tax avoidance by multinational companies. See link to report below. John Menadue
In the SMH on 2 January, Michael West drew attention to the ways that two BCAs were treated differently. The Blind Citizens Australia (BCA) learned that it had been subject to federal government funding cuts. Another BCA, the Business Council of Australia, did much better. ‘Only a week earlier the government had backflipped on a proposed tax-avoidance reform entailing some $600 million in tax deductions that multinational companies could claim on interest on their debts in offshore subsidiaries.’ For the full story from Michael West see link below. John Mendue
The missing element in this week’s mid-year economic and fiscal outlook, and more broadly, in current government policy, stares Australians in the face. Revenue needs to be increased. Increasing taxes, reducing tax concessions and eliminating loopholes are all options, which I and other commentators have argued for.
For example, journalist Peter Martin has shown that if compulsory superannuation contributions were taxed as income, i.e. like wages (rather than being taxed at a concessional rate) there would be a net gain to the budget of approximately A$12 billion a year. But there are many other measures to consider, all designed to increase revenue. Prominent is the ending of negative gearing.
Many of these possibilities, and more, were discussed in the Henry tax review, with many more expected to be discussed in the forthcoming white paper on tax reform. But this should have been the first order of business. This is where the solution to the “budget crisis” lies. There is, indeed, no reason why there should be a crisis.
Corporations and households all borrow – and as a result go into debt. Why can’t governments do the same? At present Australia’s federal public debt is modest (relative to GDP) compared with the debt of most comparable countries. Why then create this air of panic or, at least, guilt?
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There are two explanations.
The first is that the Coalition has demonised deficits. In its view Labor produced deficits for several years but it – the Coalition – will produce surpluses by some specified time. It seems they believed in the demons they created, and as a result made unwise promises. Perhaps they genuinely believe that deficits are “bad””. Some of them even thought that the deficits of 2008-9, which were produced deliberately for Keynesian reasons to avoid excessive unemployment during the global financial crisis, were dangerous.
There is a second, more rational, explanation for being concerned about budget deficits and setting the attainment of a surplus as a target. Too much debt leads to having to pay higher interest rates and, with the accumulation of debt, a bigger burden on the budget. All this is obvious. But there is the problem of political discipline. Less discipline on spending leads to more debt. Someone who has a tendency to alcoholism is wise to stay off alcohol altogether. This is the argument from prudence. But it can be carried to extremes, as it is at present.
It is quite surprising that in the mid-year update there is a massive concern about a budget deficit and the objective of getting to surplus, relative to a concern about the state of the economy at a time when there is excessive unemployment. Is the government’s focus sensible?
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The blame game
Treasurer Joe Hockey blames (1) the sharp fall in the iron ore price, (2) the Senate and (3) the adverse inheritance from the previous government. With regard to commodity prices, one can never foresee world price changes precisely, but way back in the Howard years, when the iron ore price rose so much, there were plenty of people who saw the probability – not the certainty – of a later decline, and recommended caution (Ross Garnaut was one of them).
With regard to the cross-bench Senators, they have reflected public opinion. They simply bear out the observation that the biases of the budget, as originally presented by the Treasurer, were not in tune with Australian historical attitudes and public opinion.
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To what extent are the policy decisions of previous governments to blame for excessive spending commitments? The Gonski education reforms and the proposed establishment of a Disability Insurance Scheme under the Gillard government can take some of the blame. Perhaps there were other (possibly irresponsible) decisions as well. But what the budget statement seems to ignore is the severe harm done by the “Howard Gift”, namely the five personal income tax reductions and superannuation concessions of the Howard Coalition government.
The elephant in the room
Commentators like me are sometimes accused of being “economic rationalists”. Well, this is an area where more rational thinking is needed. The GST might be broadened and increased (though Hockey seems loathe to do so). Even the carbon tax might be reinstated, since it would both help to finance the budget substantially and bring about a desirable reduction in carbon emission. Both these widely-canvassed and very rational ideas, while economically sound, would encounter political and public opposition, particularly the broadening of the GST. Bipartisanship is needed here.
Given the missing elephant of revenue, the mid-year update can be summarised as follows: Government spending can and will be cut, but the possibility of increasing revenue is not considered. The Australian government is required to live within its means, the means being defined as ruling out measures that generate extra revenues. The aim is to minimise the size of government irrespective of the purposes and efficiencies of the various governmental activities.
The only hopeful sign is the admirable recent decision of the government to produce its tax white paper in 2015, which presumably includes the possibility of increasing revenue – the missing element in the budget update.
Max Corden is Professorial Fellow in the department of Economics at University of Melbourne.
This article first appeared in ‘The Conversation’ 19 December 2014.
I have said many times that a person from Mars who read and listened to Australian media would conclude that we are an island parked off London or New York with little relationship to Asia. Our news and media coverage is so derivative, relying heavily on the BBC, CNN and other news and entertainment houses in the UK and the US .We are recyclers. Tony Abbott delights in our being part of this Anglosphere with its British monarchy, Sirs and Dames.
My main concern about the ABC is its meagre coverage of our region by its foreign correspondents. That coverage is grossly inadequate at the present time and I expect that with the current funding cutbacks the situation will worsen.
Having said that about the ABC, it must be conceded that it is much more regionally oriented and less derivative and parochial than the commercial media in Australia.
But the ABC has a particular responsibility to project and respond to our regional interests. The importance of our region was on show only last week with the visits of President’s Xi and Widodo and Prime Ministers Abe and Modi and others. The Asian region accounts for almost 60% of Australia’s two way trade. Seven of our top trading partners are from the Asian region. Asian investment is increasing. China, Japan and Korea are three major sources of tourists. Our educational institutions depend very heavily on foreign students, particularly from China and India. India is now the top source of migrants. These trends are clear and are likely to accelerate.
We speak glibly about our future in the Asian Century and the need to equip Australia for its future in Asia, but our media remains fixated on London and New York.
I don’t accept that the ABC should cut its foreign correspondents in our region. A Board that is seriously interested and concerned about Australia’s future would be expanding our coverage in and of the region and cut costs in lower priority and domestic areas. Unfortunately the Board and senior management of the ABC is largely bereft of anyone with experience in or of Asia.
I am also inclined to the view that there are pockets of waste in the ABC that need excising.
The Prime Minister has clearly broken another promise with funding cuts to the ABC and SBS and Malcolm Turnbull made a futile effort to explain away the clear breach of promise.
The government also throws a red herring across the track by suggesting that the ABC cuts are about getting the budget into shape. There is also a nasty factor at play and it is called political revenge by the Abbott Government which would like the ABC to be as compliant and supportive as the Murdoch media. Cutting funds to the ABC also does a favour to Rupert Murdoch who supported the Coalition in such an unprofessional and unprincipled manner at the last election. Further, Rupert Murdoch and his sons have conducted a relentless campaign against both the BBC and the ABC. They don’t like public broadcasters. News Corp has polluted the media in the three major English-speaking countries of the world. It is too horrible to contemplate the consequences for Australia if there was no ABC and News Corp filled the space.
But my main concern at the moment is about the failure of our media, including the ABC to respond appropriately to the facts of our geography and our national interests. The structure of our media was laid down over 100 years ago. It is still north Atlantic oriented.
In the White Paper ‘Australia in the Asian Century’, October 2012, the government was advised in the following terms about our media.
‘Media is central in shaping perceptions and enhancing communications between Australia and the region, and the information revolution offers unprecedented opportunities to connect in new ways. … The content and coverage of the region in Australia’s media needs to improve. This is the responsibility of media organisations themselves. It is an important part of the whole of Australia approach to building links and engaging with Asia that is needed. … We will request the boards of the ABC and the SBS to examine how to promote more extensive coverage of the Asia region in all aspects of their content and programming, with special attention to news and information coverage, to ensure their content reflects the depth and diversity of our regional connections.’ P271/2
We have been warned and told directly, and in quite explicit terms, about the importance of our media for our future in the region.
The only media organisation that will redress our north Atlantic orientation is the ABC. Only the ABC can fill the gap as the business model for commercial media and journalism collapses.
But with the cutbacks to the ABC, it will now be much harder.
The commercial media has failed its responsibilities in regional coverage. The ABC has done much better, but that is now at risk.
We really do have a White Man’s Media that is failing to advance our interests and responsibilities in the Asian region.
The Palestinians have requested that they join the International Criminal Court. It could be a double-edged sword if both Palestinian and Israelis were brought before the International Court. But most people would believe that joining the International Court would be an important way to demonstrate that the Palestinians wanted to join the international community and be subject to its norms.
But both Israel and the US opposed the request. Robert Fisk in The Independent on 6 January this year underscores the futility of policies in the Middle East. See link below. John Menadue.
In his recent book, ‘The Origin of Political Order and Political Decay’ Francis Fukuyama of ‘End of History’ fame, focuses on how even developed and democratic societies can be captured by powerful vested interests. He suggests that this has happened in the US with the coalition of extremists in big business, the Republican Party and the Tea Party.
First there was the crippling of the political process in the US with money and lobbying; then followed the capture of the state.
It is a warning for us. We have the institutions of democracy- responsible government, a parliamentary system, the rule of law and a ‘free’ press. But we run a serious risk of these institutions being hollowed out by powerful, wealthy and unrepresentative vested interests. In Australia we are seeing what Ross Garnaut has called a ‘diabolical problem’, the power of the polluter lobby. Ken Henry has spoken of the appalling public debate on key issues.
Perhaps the only US lobby group that we are not tracking is the gun lobby
There is no better illustration of the threats we face than donations by the rich and powerful to buy favours from political parties and the state. The US sets an appalling precedent with its Supreme Court opening the flood gates for political donations.
Our mining sector has an effective veto on mining tax reform. For $20 million the mining lobby threatened the elected government and saved itself billions of dollars in tax. Will any Australian government in future ever seriously address reform of our mining taxes?
The payment of tax in Australia by many wealthy people and large corporations is optional. It is costing us tens of billions of dollars each year. Fifty seven percent of our ASX100 companies have subsidiaries in tax havens. One third of the top ASX200 companies pay company taxes of 10 % or less. The statutory rate is 30%. We need to hear from senior executives before a Royal Commission how companies like Westfields, Glencore, Ikea, Google, Apple and News Ltd can avoid so much tax.
Wealthy and powerful interests are handed out tax benefits in superannuation deductions, capital gains, negative gearing, family trusts, salary packaging and subsidies to coal, oil and gas companies. Yet we are told that we have to cut back on welfare concessions to fund the disability program. Australian government expenditure is one of the lowest in the developed world but wealthy interests keep proposing cuts to government spending and cuts in taxation.
With over 60% of newspaper circulations in Australia, News Ltd is a major supporter of vested interests including Big Tobacco. It is an obstacle to informed debate on key public issues. News Ltd aided our disastrous involvement in Iraq and is vehemently opposes serious action on carbon emissions. News Ltd is polluting the public debate in Australia more than any other company.
The ABC is under attack by News Ltd and other powerful interests.
With journalists under-resourced, the media depends increasingly on the propaganda and promotion put into the public arena by vested interests. The Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at UTS found in a survey of major metropolitan newspapers published in Australia in 2010 that 55% of content was driven by public relations handouts from lobbyists and their associated public relations arms.
There are over 900 full time independent lobbyists working in Canberra. That is over 30 lobbyists for every Cabinet minister. On top of these third party lobbyists there are special interests who conduct their own lobbying, e.g. Australian Mining Council and Australian Pharmacy Guild. On top of these lobbyists in Canberra, there are the lobbyists in state capitals. These lobbyists encompass the whole range of interests; mining, clubs, hospitals, private health funds, business and hotels that have all successfully challenged government policy and the public interest. They are doing great damage in undermining the public interest.
The health ‘debate’ is really between the Minister and the Australian Medical Association which opposes workforce reform, the Australian Pharmacy Guild that restricts competition, Medicines Australia which exploits its monopoly pricing power and the private health insurance companies which get a taxpayer funded subsidy of over $6 b per annum to undermine Medicare. All these vested interests effectively push aside the public interest.
The wealthy private schools, with their influential alumni, lobby against needs-based funding which is necessary for both equity and efficiency.
Most of the business economists that we see on television to ‘inform’ us are employees of banks and other financial institutions. They are unlikely to tell us about the conflict of interest of financial advisers employed by the banks. Public intellectuals have gone missing in action.
Many of the ‘think tanks’ that pose as independent are funded by secret and powerful interests. Yet we take them seriously.
The wealthy polluters successfully destroyed an emission trading scheme and the carbon tax. We no longer have any credible program to reduce carbon emissions.
We have seen enormous concessions given to casino operators without proper public processes and transparency. The casino operators lobby both sides of politics.
The wealthy and powerful have little sense of their enormous privileges and the damage that they are wreaking. During the debate on the mining tax we had the richest people in Australia such as Gina Rinehart and Twiggy Forrest protesting from the back of trucks about how the poor mining companies were being threatened. They should have been laughed off the political stage but we took them seriously. They tell us that the sky will fall in if their privileges are challenged. .
One of the objectives of the privileged and News Ltd in particular is the discrediting of the whole political process and politicians. They are concerned because it is through political action that their privileges will be challenged. They tell us that only the private sector produces benefits for the community and that the government is both a burden and inefficient. Yet governments have been great contributors in the past and must be in the future.
The discrediting of our parliament and government reached a peak during the last parliament with disruption and wild accusations of corruption. We need to improve our political processes because they are essential to any reform of our democratic institutions and countering vested interests.
We face a serious threat with the hollowing out of our democratic institutions through the actions of wealthy and powerful vested interests. We should not take our liberal democracy for granted. It faces a serious threat from within.
It is getting late and dark.
Where is the protest movement to check the abuses by the wealthy and powerful and the takeover of the state for their own purposes?
After WWII the financial hegemony of the US and Europe in the IMF and International Bank was established. Later, the Japanese came to dominate the Asian Development Bank. That is now being challenged by China. See article below by William Pesek in ‘Bloomberg View’, subject ‘China steps in as world’s new bank’. John Menadue.
If there’s a problem in primary health care then nurses are (and always have been) the solution.
Susan Sontag wrote in 1978 “Illness is the night side of life: a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and the kingdom of the sick”. I was working in palliative care nursing when I first read this and it struck me that, continuing the metaphor, nurses were therefore like tour guides for those negotiating these health care kingdoms of both the well and the sick. We provide the translator services (“what did they say nurse?”), the coordination of meetings and events (“I need an appointment to see…”); the advice on what to do and how to do it (“I don’t know how to work this spacer thing”), and always, always, always the assistance to do whatever needs to be done when people lack “the necessary strength, will or knowledge” (Henderson, 1966) to do it themselves.
If we look to primary health care (PHC) there is clearly a need for “tour guides” in this space, whether it be to help them stay in the kingdom of the well or to assist them to travel in the kingdom of the sick. John Menadue has suggested the key is to rethink funding for general practice. I would go further. The key is to rethink who provides the bulk of PHC and then think about how to fund it.
In 2009 I compiled a compendium of nurse-led PHC models in 38 countries for the World Health Organisation (WHO, 2009).The elements of PHC identified for reporting purposes in the template were that each service, programme or project should:
provide essential health care based on practical, scientifically sound and socially acceptable methods and technology;
be universally accessible to individuals and families;
involve full participation of the community;
have a cost that the community and country can afford to maintain;
foster self-reliance and self-determination;
be an integral part of the country’s health system and overall development; and
have an entry level for patients located close to the heart of the community.
The main needs of the populations served were those of the chronically ill and the elderly, basic social and infrastructure needs, psychological and mental health needs, maternal and child health needs and acute care needs (particularly in war zones).
To provide a local example of what is possible, the work of an Aboriginal renal nurse practitioner in Australia with both indigenous and non-indigenous groups suffering from end-stage renal disease brought about significant health gains. The need for this role was identified as a result of the rising number of people needing acute dialysis 24 hours a day. A retrospective study of the causes of this rise suggested that 80% of the patients had risk factors that, if addressed early enough, would have prevented admission to the tertiary referral hospital for acute intervention. These risk factors were further examined and the diagnostic, clinical and referral skills required to address them were evaluated, and it was found that the scope of practice of a nurse practitioner met the requirements. The community nephrology nurse practitioner was able to develop and implement nursing models that integrated evidence-based clinical management with nursing advocacy for quality of life.
Two key areas, considered central to the success of the case studies, presented challenges for a number of contributors. These were the issues of reliable and adequate funding and resources, and challenges to narrow thinking about the capacity of staff to take on new roles. The issue of sustainable funding; access to other resources such as medication, equipment, textbooks and staff created significant challenges. Some projects were completely or predominantly funded through the charitable sector (for example Chile, Haiti, United States). For example, a US project working with a poor community in Chicago sought its primary funding from a charity, and supplemented it with grants from no less than 16 funding sources and a further 13 in-kind donation sources. The time required to undertake the fundraising, administration and reporting on so many donations takes the nurses away from much-needed care delivery.
In addition, there were a number of reports of medical and some nursing staff having difficulty in letting go of conventional and stereotypical thinking about who ought to perform which tasks. This issue has been much studied and discussed (Chiarella 2002) and has been described in relation to affirmative action as the ‘myth of the meritocracy’ – the possibility of work being taken on by another group, unless similarly qualified, is unthinkable because they are seen as incapable of meeting the challenge (Hall 1997). Yet there is ample evidence and experience to show that different personnel and community members are capable of equal, high quality participation in health care decision-making and delivery. Strong claims to maintain the status quo are often made on the grounds of safety and quality, but the evidence about the outcomes demonstrates this resistance to change is based only on protecting professional power and privilege.
There is such potential to harness the skills of nurses to provide first class primary health care in this country, yet currently we seem to move further and further away from this potential and back to outdated models of health care provision that service only those who can afford to pay.
Mary Chiarella is Professor of Nursing, Sydney Nursing School, University of Sydney.
We are infatuated by the convenience of our cars, particularly at holiday time.
There are clearly major economic and social benefits but the costs both economic and social are going to become much more apparent. How can we continue to realise the benefits of car travel, but minimise future costs.
There are enormous political problems in addressing the cost of traffic accidents, traffic congestion and carbon pollution from cars, but we need to start thinking seriously about a suite of options to minimise the damage that cars will continue to inflict on our economy and society. It is not only a political problem in terms of disruption of our lifestyles but the political problem is intensified because of the power of the automobile lobby and the large construction firms who want to keep building more and more freeways and tollways.
I posted two earlier blogs on this subject. They were ‘Increasing the petrol tax is good policy’ on 9 May 2014 which included an earlier post, ‘Cars are killing our cities’.
Some people suggest that public transport is the answer to the damage caused by car accidents, car congestion and pollution. But it is only part of the answer. Cities like London and Paris have very good public transport systems, but they still have problems of car congestion, accidents and pollution.
The fact is we need to curb our use of cars.
In 2013 a report by eight of the nation’s transport, health and planning organisations estimated that congestion on our roads is costing Australia about $10 billion p.a. This is projected to increase to $20 billion by 2020.
The Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics estimated the cost of road accidents at $17.85 billion in 2006. When the cost of loss of life is included, the total cost of road crashes increased to $28 billion in 2006. There are reservations about these estimates, but they are the best that are available. Almost all commentators believe that the cost of road accidents is conservative and in any event the data is eight years old.
According to the Australian Government Department of the Environment, ‘transport’ contributed 17% of our greenhouse emissions in 2013-14. The highest contribution of greenhouse gasses was ‘electricity’ which contributed 33% of greenhouse emissions. Clearly greenhouse emissions from transport are a serious problem.
We need to consider seriously a range of measures to maximise the benefits of car travel and to minimise the cost.
We invariably complain about the cost of petrol, but we pay some of the lowest petrol prices in the OECD and petrol prices in Australia today are the lowest for four years. In the September quarter this year only Canada, Mexico and the US amongst OECD countries paid less for petrol than we did. The tax component of our petrol prices was the fourth lowest in the OECD. For these and other reasons, I support the government’s reintroduction of the indexation of petrol taxes which John Howard abandoned in 2001. Reintroduction of the indexation of fuel excise would be useful transport policy to discourage car use as well as making a small contribution to the budget.
The Henry Tax Review recommended a traffic congestion tax. Well implemented, a congestion tax would encourage more rational use of our roads. We would have an incentive to travel outside peak congestion periods. It would provide an incentive for employers and for schools to move to more flexible work and school hours. London and Singapore have taken action on traffic congestion with clear public support.
Just as the sensible carbon tax was designed to impose a charge on companies that pollute so motorists should pay a tax when they choose to travel in peak hours. Such a tax would have to be a state tax. Who is game!
We need to consider increased sale taxes and registration fees. In almost every respect these imposts in Australia are much lower than in the rest of the world. In Denmark the sales tax on cars is 143%, in Finland 53%, the Netherlands 48% and Sweden 30%. In Australia it is 10%.
A feature of many European countries is smaller cars, not the large SUVs that are so common in Australia. A Toyota Hilux emits double the carbon dioxide of a Toyota Carola. In addition to the high levels of pollution from large vehicles they obviously occupy more road and parking space. A useful approach would be to increase the sales tax and registration fees of these larger vehicles and reduce the fees for smaller vehicles with a neutral financial result for the government. Higher fuel excise would also discourage car use.
We also need to tighten emission standards for all our vehicles. The Climate Change Authority says that the new tougher emission standards to operate from 2018 are one of the best and least costly options available to reduce carbon emissions from cars. In doing so we would bring Australian emissions into line with international standards.
We also need to ensure that in future there is effective integration of transport and urban development policies. So often urban planning is deficient where there is no convenient or efficient means of transport except by car.
These issues will involve hard political decisions. We cannot put off indefinitely addressing the problems of car use.
In the short term we should be very cautious about repeated proposals from federal and state governments for more and more ‘freeways’ that only shift the bottleneck and line the pockets of construction and finance companies..
We do need improved public transport and many major cities of the world show that that is possible. But we can’t avoid facing up to our own infatuation with cars. We are all guilty of helping to kill our cities.
Across Australia Year 12 students are collectively holding their breaths to see what results they’ve achieved and, consequently, what their futures hold.
Only hours after their release, many secondary schools proudly display their best results on billboards for passers-by to see. Newspapers select high-achieving students to profile. As schools promote these glowing results, it’s worth highlighting that many have had the invisible slave of the disadvantaged schools working for them.
That is, the high-profile academic success of some schools has occurred as a result of social stratification – the increasing gap between students into schools of low socio-educational advantage and schools of high socio-educational advantage – as well as differential funding arrangements. Around Australia, some condone these arrangements in the name of “school choice” while others condemn them in the name of “school equity”.
School choice
Australian states and territories each have their own version of one or more senior secondary certificates that promote pathways for their students – usually into some form of further education or the workforce. Victoria, for example, has the academic, university-oriented Victorian Certificate of Education (VCE), as well as the practical, vocationally-oriented Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning (VCAL). However, the relatively high public profile of VCE results can incline schools seeking an academic reputation to offer only VCE – and in some cases, the even more prestigious International Baccalaureate (IB).
Schools that promote their academic orientation and excellence usually do so to attract predominantly upper or middle-class families, or those aspiring to such classes. In addition to using expensive advertising to recruit their students, many academic schools provide scholarships to entice high-achieving students away from their neighbourhood schools. The pressure on these schools to maintain reputations for strong academic scores can motivate them to focus more on grooming their star academic learners and less on affirming their applied learners, or on catering for students from disadvantaged backgrounds requiring additional support.
In pursuing such a strategy, academic schools privilege a select group: conforming, middle-class, elite-performance students. As a result, students and families that do not fit into the compliant, middle-class, academic profile of the school may find they are overtly or covertly encouraged to seek another school. The actual wording of this encouragement may be couched in language that indicates the student needs to find a new school “to suit his or her needs”, but the subtext is clear: the school is safeguarding its academic reputation and status. The outcome for these schools is an increasingly homogenised and advantaged school community.
School equity
In contrast, Victorian schools that offer both VCE and VCAL pathways meet an equity principle under which VCAL was introduced in 2002, to ensure that all students are able to access a senior secondary program of study. Schools prepared to take all-comers may find themselves catering not only for bright local students who haven’t been tempted elsewhere, but also non-academic students other schools have chosen to ignore or reject.
As a result, these schools can be perceived as less successful than their high-achieving counterparts because their outcomes are likely to be skewed toward non-university pathways such as apprenticeships, traineeships, vocational courses or employment.
These are each valid pathways, but as the Australian government acknowledged when it looked into youth transitions in 2009, much work is required to promote vocational pathways so they are seen as equal first-choice options. Unfortunately, five years on, little has changed in Australia regarding this public perception.
One reason disadvantaged students are more likely to choose a less academic pathway such as VCAL can be found in Australia’s national and international testing results. Both NAPLAN and PISA results reveal that the lower the social class of an Australian student, the lower his or her test scores.
It seems reasonable, therefore, that students who have been disadvantaged from an early age, the time when they learn foundation skills such as reading and writing, will be less inclined to pursue the reading and writing-oriented VCE. It is also not surprising that VCAL might better appeal to young people from economically disadvantaged families who then seek job-related pathways as a means to gain crucial financial independence or contribute financially to their families.
School funding
It’s no secret that schools don’t operate under similar funding conditions. Recent researchreveals funding increases from 2010 to 2013 across the three main school sectors are inversely proportionate to the socio-educational advantage of their student populations.
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This growing social stratification and inequitable funding between advantaged and disadvantaged schools represent a critical equity issue for Australian schooling. While recommendations from the 2011 Gonski review of school funding attempted to address this inequity, it clearly continues.
At a time of year when many advantaged schools celebrate their students’ high scores, it’s important to point out the contribution that disadvantaged schools have played in their success. It’s also timely to highlight the growing number of flexible learning programs in Australia that teach diverse student populations, including those with complex needs related to their disadvantage.
These schools and programs too have valid stories to tell of their students’ successful academic and vocational results obtained under far less advantageous conditions. Unfortunately, these achievements are unlikely to appear on billboards or in newspaper articles.
Maggie Callingham is a PhD candidate at the Victoria Institute for Education, Diversity and Lifelong Learning at Victoria University.
This article first appeared in ‘The Conversation’ on 15 December 2014.
The National Interest, in its January/February 2015 edition has just published an article by Malcolm Fraser, ‘Australia’s dangerous ally’. The National Interest is not sold on news stands in Australia, but it is available online.
Malcolm Fraser concludes his article by suggesting several steps that Australia should take to address problems in our relationship with the US. First, the removal of US task force out of Darwin. Second, closure of facility at Pine Gap. Third, expanded diplomatic facilities and relationships in our region. Fourth, a boost to Australia’s defence force spending to about 3% of GDP.
This article is based on submissions that Malcolm Fraser made to the 2015 Defence White Paper.
Concluding our two year term on the Security Council, Australia voted against the proposal in the Council demanding Israel and the occupation of Palestinian territories end within two years. For the resolution to pass, nine votes were needed. Eight countries voted in favour of the resolution, including China, Russia, Luxembourg, France and Jordan. Five countries abstained, including the UK and South Korea. Only two countries voted against the resolution, the US and Australia.
Over the years there have been a number of UN resolutions. Australia’s voting on these important resolutions can be found in the table in a blog from the Parliament of Australia ‘Diplomatic terrorism’: Palestinian statehood, the United Nations, and Australia’s voting record. See link below. John Menadue
In the SMH on December 20, 2014, Michael West draws attention to Glencore’s checkered history on paying tax and the consequences for Joe Hockey’s budget if Glencore acquired Rio Tinto.
Michael West said that ‘billions of dollars in tax payments are on the line, not to mention job losses and the spectre of this country seeding control over a large chunk of its natural resources to a secretive group of commodity traders ultimately run out of Switzerland.’
Glencore has a colourful history. According to an Australian public radio report the company was founded by Marc Rich and Company in 1974 by billionaire commodity trader Marc Rich who was charged with tax evasion and illegal business dealings with Iran in the US, but pardoned by President Clinton in 2001.
As reported in the SMH of December 22/21 this year, Dyson Haydon, who heads the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption, said the following in respect of Julia Gillard. Her ‘intense degree of preparation, her familiarity with the materials, her acuteness [and] her powerful instinct for self-preservation made it difficult to judge her credibility’.
What an extraordinary and remarkable things to say by a Commissioner who is a former High Court Judge. Would he have preferred Julia Gillard to be un-prepared and incompetent before the Royal Commission? If he could not find against her credibility he should have left it at that and refrained from gratuitous comments.
The Royal Commission that we really need is an enquiry into massive tax avoidance by wealthy individuals and large corporations who are paying minimal or no tax at all.
There is a lot of privilege and unfairness in Australia that needs exposure and correction.
With two glaring exceptions, Australian public figures and media outlets generally rose to the challenge during the long siege at Martin Place this week. Mike Baird and Tony Abbott spoke with calmness and compassion, careful not to inflame the situation or do anything to encourage bigoted and unjustified reactions. The media – especially theABC, Nine, Seven and Sky News – reported the long hours of uncertainty, when very little was happening, with restraint, generally resisting the temptation to speculate in the absence of verified facts. While some false reports and rumours were broadcast, a sense of professional responsibility prevailed.
In a sensitive, ongoing situation like this one, when TV can be viewed by hostage-takers, it is important that broadcasts avoid detailing planned police operations or inflaming relations between perpetrators and captives. They must also do all they can to preserve the dignity and anonymity of the hostages. The TV channels, and radio presenter Ray Hadley (who was in phone contact with hostages), acceded to police requests not to broadcast statements made under duress by hostages, or to report all they knew about what was going on inside the cafe.
The first exception to this restrained coverage was the Daily Telegraph, whose special afternoon wraparound was headlined “Death cult CBD attack: IS takes 13 hostages in city cafe siege.” Desperate for sales and attention, the ailing tabloid seems to take the view that all publicity is good publicity. In this case, though, in addition to its manifest inaccuracies, the paper’s misplaced sensationalism jarred with the anxious and sombre public mood.
The other jarring intervention was a tweet the following morning from the paper’s owner, Rupert Murdoch. “AUST gets wake-call with Sydney terror,” announced the American mogul. “Only Daily Telegraph caught the bloody outcome at 2.00 am. Congrats.”
Murdoch saw a terrorist rather than a deranged individual, and on the basis of that hasty appraisal believed that Australia needed to wake up. What’s more, apparently oblivious to all the TV footage of the climax and the live online newspaper coverage (including that of his own paper, the Australian), he thought only his Sydney tabloid had caught the key action.
If a political figure had made these comments – inaccurate, insensitive, alarmist – they would have attracted immediate and sustained criticism, but Murdoch has somehow attained a unique status in Australian public life. His frequently outrageous comments are certainly criticised in social media and on internet news services, but not, of course, by the two-thirds of daily newspapers he controls. The Fairfax papers and the ABC tend to either ignore his comments or treat them with undue respect. And, despite everything we’ve learned in recent years about the behaviour of his companies, it is almost certain that no one from the two major political parties will comment adversely.
American journalism scholar Jay Rosen has criticised what he calls “he said, she said” journalism, a device used by news media to achieve “balance” at the expense of any serious search for the truth. When Rupert Murdoch appears in the Australian media, however, it is more a case of “he said, and he also said.” Perhaps this has been most evident this year, with Murdoch’s high-profile July visit to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the Australian.
This was Murdoch in an expansive mood, most notably in an interview on Sky News. He gave his views on climate change, which he thought was overplayed as a problem. “Climate change has been going on as long as the planet is here,” he told viewers. The “most alarmist” scenario was that there would be a 3ºC rise in a hundred years. “At the very most, one of those [degrees] will come from man-made [sources].” If the sea level rises six inches, it would be a “big deal, the Maldives might disappear, but we can’t mitigate that… we just have to stop building vast houses on seashores.”
These fanciful propositions seem to come entirely from within his own head. They were picked apart on internet news sites and in social media, but within the metropolitan papers and on ABC TV they were simply reported at face value.
The most striking aspect of Murdoch’s current political views is their extremist content. The billionaire is now a proponent of a US Tea Party–style ideology – especially the view that government is the problem rather than part of the solution – although thankfully he hasn’t adopted that movement’s pro-gun views.
Even when he expresses less extreme views, his grasp of facts can be shaky. Weighing into the debate about Australia’s 457 working visa last year, for example, he advised Australia to follow the United States in welcoming new arrivals. “I’m a big one for encouraging migration,” he told Sky News. “Just look at America.” No media reporting these words pointed out that nearly 28 per cent of Australians were born overseas, but just 13 per cent of Americans.
But the greater impact comes from the way Murdoch expresses these views. Apart from the large number of inaccuracies in his public interviews and tweets, their key characteristic is dogmatism and intolerance. So, during his July visit, he described the NBN as “a ridiculous idea” and deplored investment in “windmills and all that rubbish.” He has been equally scathing of renewable energy investments in Britain, which have, he says, ruined the English countryside with “uneconomic bird killing windmills. Mad.” “Mad” was also his considered verdict on British efforts to contribute to the resolution of the crisis in the eurozone.
His tendency to stereotype and malign those he disagrees with has often caused him trouble, perhaps most notably when he asked, via Twitter, “Why is Jewish-owned press so consistently anti-Israel in every crisis?” You’ve got to give Murdoch credit, said American political commentator Peter Beinart. “He’s packed a remarkable amount of idiocy and nastiness into 140 characters.”
Under Labor, Murdoch thought Australia was a “weird place mucking up great future,” and that “Gillard once good education minister, now prisoner of minority greenies. Rudd still delusional, who nobody could work with. Nobody else?” His most constant hostility is towards the Greens: “whatever you do, don’t let the bloody Greens mess it up.”
This style pervades his newspapers. “Kick this mob out,” the Daily Telegraph’s front-page headline on the first day of its 2013 election coverage, embodied not only the proprietor’s view, but also his style. And yet, at the same time as his media organisations are a force debasing the level of public debate, his utterances fail to attract the scrutiny received by those of other public figures. •
Rodney Tiffen recently published ‘Rupert Murdoch: A Reassessment ‘.
This article was first published in Inside Story on 18 December 2014.
In Australia today, we accept that a person who has expressed ideas that justify terrorism may be restrained from acting out those ideas. But we would not justify torturing a person suspected of harbouring such notions to force him to reveal them or to reject such ideas. However, surveys in the Western world find that torture to obtain information is sometimes justified. The Prime Minister’s acceptance of torture in the context of the Sri Lankan civil war was as follows: “Obviously the Australian Government deplores any use of torture. We deplore that, wherever it might take place, we deplore that. But we accept that sometimes in difficult circumstances, difficult things happen.” (http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2013/s3893068.htm, retrieved 15 Jan 2014).
The Catholic tradition does not have a good record on torture. Pope Nicholas I in 866 condemned both the practice and the judicial institution of torture. However, later torture came to be accepted by Church authorities and theologians. Under the influence of Roman law, torture was first permitted legally by Pope Innocent IV in 1253. This pope allowed the infliction of torture on heretics by the civil authorities and torture had a recognized role in the courts of the Inquisition. Torture was also adopted by secular courts. Pope John Paul II in 1993 condemned physical and mental torture as intrinsically evil. This is a striking example of the development of doctrine; how can we explain it? The failure of the tradition to consistently reject torture can be attributed, apart from human sin, to three factors: Roman Law; a theory of order in the world and the lack of an adequate notion of dignity.
Ancient Roman law accepted torture. When the “barbarians” invaded Europe and the Roman Empire fell, the practice of torture was abandoned. Trial by ordeal was instituted in its place. To prove his innocence an accused had to submit to an ordeal, for example he had to walk a set distance over red-hot ploughshares. If he survived and recovered this was taken as a sign from God that he was innocent. In the eleventh century, with the revival of Roman law, the practice of ordeal was abandoned and torture was reinstated. Judges were instructed to obtain a confession from the accused and to obtain this they could use torture.
Behind this we can discern a complex legal, philosophical and theological theory. God’s judgment on the matter was now no longer sought by examining the results of an ordeal. Instead, ecclesiastical and legal officials sought to examine the contents of the mind of the accused. They no longer looked for blisters on the accused’s feet as indicative of guilt, but for “blisters” or heresies in his mind.
Drawing on Greek thinking, philosophers and theologians held that there was an order in the world. This order expresses the wisdom of God. Human beings could participate in this order by knowledge and free will. This order was called an “ontological” order. An ontological order expresses the way things are. The order was also considered to be a moral order; that is, it expressed the way things ought to be. A rational person could thus recognize the truth of things and also discern what ought to be done. This order was considered to be a template for the social and political order of society.
Deviant ideas and practices were like a virus attacking the order in the world; moreover, they threatened to corrode the social and political order. Both the Church and the secular power had a vital interest in preserving this order. Secular courts and the Church Inquisition sought to discover the deviant ideas or “heresies.” If individuals who were accused of heresy refused to confess, it was considered legitimate to torture them to obtain a confession. It was known of course that people will make false confessions to avoid pain. But those who justified torture were terrified at the prospect of their world falling apart as a consequence of people’s wrong ideas. They ignored the problem of false confessions and continued to practice torture. When the Inquisition found that persons had deviant ideas and would not change, the Church turned such persons over to the state. The state would then execute them.
What was missing in this theory was an adequate idea of the dignity of the person. In the thinking of the period an individual had dignity on the basis of his being in the right place in the order in the world. In the case of a person who held heretical thoughts, his intelligence was out of order and by accepting such ideas his free will was out of order. He was not in the right place and so did not have dignity. Being in the appropriate place in the world was also equated with being in a set place in the social order. An egregious manifestation of this way of thinking was that it could justify the torture of slaves and the lower classes, but not of the nobility or the clergy.
This confusion was corrected by the Catholic Church in the Second Vatican Council, especially in the document on religious liberty (1965). Every person has dignity because every person is created in the image of God. To be created in the image of God means to have received the gifts of intelligence and free will. Intelligence and free will are received as gifts and we employ these capacities in communicating with other persons who have received the same gifts.
The notion of order in the world that fits with these notions is not that of a fixed “ontological” order. It is an order that is brought into being through free communication between persons; fundamentally between God and human persons, then between human persons. The most basic form of this communication is the exchange of gifts. Dignity comes about through the mutual gift of the recognition of dignity. A primary gift to another is the recognition of the other’s dignity. It is in recognizing the dignity of another that a person acquires his own dignity.
It does not follow that only persons with intelligence and freedom are to be recognized as endowed with dignity. Disabled persons, even the severely disabled, may not be denied dignity. One who refuses to recognize the dignity of the disabled fails to acknowledge what is required by his own dignity and so loses that dignity. A person who tortures another denies the dignity of the other and so denies his own dignity. To allow torture as an exception in “the hard case” is to concede that society, in the final analysis, is founded not on free communication, but on violence.
Brian Johnstone. is a Catholic Priest who taught moral theology in Rome for nearly 20 years. Currently he teaches at the Catholic University in Washington.
In the ‘New Daily’ of December 17, 2014, Bruce Guthrie, a former editor-in-chief of ‘The Age’ and Murdoch’s ‘Herald Sun’ tells us what he thinks about Murdoch’s twittering ‘But here he was seemingly gloating over the outcome of the appalling Martin Place events as if the only thing that mattered was its news value and the profits that might bring. No wonder he was dubbed a “gleeful ghoul” for the tweet. 24 hours later, despite dozens of entreaties, he still hasn’t apologised for it.’
In this blog on 5 November I drew attention to an article by the Economics Editor of the Guardian Larry Elliott. In that article Elliott said “As the Berlin Wall fell, checks on capitalism crumbled.” The principal thesis of that article was that with the end of communism capitalism became more aggressive and less inhibited. He said
“The fear that workers would ‘go red’ meant that they had to be kept happy. The proceeds of growth were shared. Welfare benefits were generous. Investment in public infrastructure was high. But there was no need to be so generous once the Soviet Union was no more. What was known as neoliberal economics was born in the 1970s but it was not until the 1990s that market forces reigned supreme. The free market spread to poorer parts of the world where it has previously been off limits, expanding the global workforce. That meant cheaper goods, but it also put downward pressure on wages. What’s more, there was no longer any need to be inhibited. Those running companies could take a bigger slice of profits because there was nowhere else for workers to go. If its citizens did not like ‘reform’ of welfare states, they just had to lump it.”
This is not a new thesis, but it is becoming more and more urgent as a result of growing inequality.
And inequality is becoming more entrenched and apparent as we see the massive scale of tax avoidance by large multinational companies like Google, Westfields, Apple, Amazon, Ikea, News Corp, Glencore/Xstrada and hundreds of others. Taxes which we pay to maintain a civilised society are becoming optional for the wealthy and powerful.
In the next week or so I will be posting articles by Ian McAuley on this issue – capitalism, society and morality.
I think that there is widespread evidence that with the end of communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall 25 years ago, capitalism has become less restrained, and more aggressive. The neoliberal theorists told us that if the rich have more money through tax reductions and other benefits they will invest more and the poor would get the ‘trickle down’ benefits. This has not happened.
There is growing concern across the world about the rise of inequality and the destructive social and economic consequences. Thomas Piketty in his book Capital in the Twenty First Century draws attention to the long term trend to greater inequality. This book is terrifying conservatives. Inequality has become a major issue in the US where the process began with Ronald Regan and his neoliberal supporters. Alan Kohler in the Business Spectator points out that “rising inequality began in the 1980s and was the direct result of Reganomics and its pursuit of tax breaks for the rich”. Regan also set about quite deliberately to cripple the trade unions. This crippling of the trade unions and the tax benefits for the rich in the US have bought enormous benefits for the wealthy and a major skewing of income with disastrous effects on the economy and political life where wealthy vested interests can, in effect, buy governments. Even Rupert Murdoch has shown his concern by hopping on the bandwagon about growing inequality. But his concern is not convincing when we know that in the last 16 years he has paid $US 600 million in salaries to himself, his children and a few senior executives.
Maggie Thatcher followed suit in the UK. She said there was no such thing as society, only individuals and markets. This has culminated in what the Governor of the Bank of England said in May this year that “capitalism is at risk of destroying itself and that bankers have an obligation to create a fairer society”. He added “the basic social contract at the heart of capitalism was breaking down with rising inequality.” He warned “my core point is just that as any revolution eats its children, unchecked market fundamentalism can devour the social capital essential to the long term dynamism of capitalism itself…Capitalism loses its sense of moderation when the belief in the power of the market enters the realm of faith”.
The neoliberals present their case in terms of how they favour an open and competitive market when in practice a major objective is to favour capital against labour and reduced competition. In Australia, market based approaches to climate change through carbon taxes or an emissions trading scheme are rejected in favour of government handouts to polluters. Vested interests are able to bring influence or buy governments in a way not possible 25 years ago before communism collapsed.
We have seen rapacious banks with their obscene executive salaries bring the world economy to its knees in the global financial crisis.
In Australia we have a government that speaks about ending the age of entitlement but seems more determined to extend the benefits of the privileged. We have a Royal Commission that is allegedly about corruption but I suspect that the real agenda is to cripple the trade unions, the strongest countervailing force for justice in the Australian economy and society. The CFMEU and the HSU are fair game but not the much more culpable Commonwealth Bank.
In my blog of 20 September this year, What does Labor stand for?” I emphasised that only a strong society, including a strong and respected government can support a strong economy. There is no point in an economy that does not serve social ends.
There is a prevailing view by the present government, as the Liberal Party platform says “that only businesses and individuals are the creators of wealth and employment”. As I said in that September blog this Liberal Party view sees government as a burden rather than a contributor to the common wealth. There is a danger that the increasingly unrestrained power of capital and big business legitimises destructive social divisions which encourages people to separate themselves from society in physical or metaphorical gated communities such as schools and hospitals. It allows the connection between contributions to be severed. It encourages rent-seeking, speculation and protection of privilege rather than productive investment. Increasingly, companies in Australia are paying large amounts out in dividends, buying back shares and sitting on idle cash rather than investing in the future of the Australian economy and Australian jobs. There are not many ’trickle down’ benefits in all of this.
The fall of communism has emboldened the exponents of capitalism. There is a continual assertion of the importance of business over and against society and the community.
Pope Francis is one clarion voice saying that business and the market must be underpinned by morality. He has challenged market fundamentalists who hawk ‘trickle down’ theories as naive. He has denounced the new tyranny of unfettered capitalism and calls inequality ‘the root of social evil’. He is a lonely voice at the moment.
Ian McAuley will be discussing these issues in a series of articles starting later this week in this blog.
The fall of communism is proving to be a great boon for the powerful at the expense of the powerless. The restraints on the powerful are crumbling.
In the International New York Times of December 20, Roger Cohen focuses on the future of Israel. He says ‘Every day … another European Government or parliament expresses support for recognition of a Palestinian state … In the space of a few weeks something has shifted. The Leader of the Labor Party, Isaac Herzog has been ushered from unelectable nerd to plausible patriot. Polls show him neck and neck with the incumbent [Benjamin Netanyahu]. For link to this article see below. John Menadue
James Carroll has been writing about religion for over 40 years. In this beautiful piece in the International New York Times of November 7 this year, he describes how he still keeps going to Mass despite his many doubts. See link below. John Menadue.
In his pre-Christmas address to Cardinals, Pope Francis referred to a Curia that is outdated, sclerotic or indifferent to others. He said that the Curia, the administrative pinnacle of the Roman Catholic Church was suffering from fifteen ailments which he wanted cured in the new year. See link below for Pope Francis’ comments to the Curia. John Menadue.
I have written before about Julie Bishop’s mistakes as Foreign Minister despite the media spin that she has successfully generated. Those articles were: ‘Julie Bishop – Substance and Style’ on the 18th November; and ‘Julie Bishop -‘Undiplomatic, politically partisan and wrong’ on 22 November. Just recall her foolish attack on President Obama over the Great Barrier Reef.
Since then Julie Bishop has continued on her merry way with a pliant media.
In the recent budget cuts Julie Bishop volunteered a further cut in her foreign aid allocation of $3.7 billion. Together with the May budget cuts that she agreed to this represents a cut of over $12 billion in our aid program over four years.
Julie Bishop has clearly decided that it is easiest to attack politically soft targets like the poor in our region. Australian foreign ministers do not have a domestic constituency to defend and so she attacks people who can’t vote or protest about her decisions.
Michael Keating in this blog has noted that foreign aid has been the fastest growing item in the UK budget over the last four years, increasing by 25%, while expenditure on most other UK government functions has fallen. Indeed the Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, is on record as saying that the increase in foreign aid is his proudest achievement in government. In Australia, however we are moving in the opposite direction with Julie Bishop cutting help for the powerless and the poor.
As Caritas has pointed out, ‘The budget cuts mean that in terms of OECD rankings, Australia’s contributions to overseas aid are now at the lowest level ever since OECD records began in 1954. These cuts are severe and will put Australia near the bottom of OECD rankings as a contributor to international aid and development. … Australia is the third wealthiest country on a per capita basis in the world yet we will now slide to around 20th position as a contributor to international development.’
Perhaps we have also forgotten that Julie Bishop led the charge against Julia Gillard over the so-called union ‘slush funds’. I recall the day when she was the sole opposition questioner and every question was directed at Julia Gillard’s association with Slater & Gordon and the AWU. Accusations of criminal conduct were made against Julia Gillard, but the Royal Commissioner Deyson Haydon has now found that there were no grounds for criminal action over Julia Gillard’s involvement in the so-called slush fund.
Julia Gillard has called for her accusers to show decency and apologise. But Julie Bishop who led the charge has said nothing and the media continues to give her a free ride on this and on the litany of mistakes she has made.
Julie Bishop was the loyal deputy to both Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott. She sided with leaders who took diametrically different positions on climate change and the need to address carbon emissions. She shows great flexibility in all things.
I was on retreat recently in Hong Kong and there was a very small pool with eight turtles in it. It took me some days to notice; you have to slow down to see them. Their water was muddy, there was certainly no vista here, just the close company they kept with each other, and the bonus of the big shell that they could pull their heads in and out of. I liked the turtles, I watched them lean on each other to get up, rest on top of each other, they had that shell, but mostly their heads were out, steady and still, looking at me, as I looked at them, curiously. They seemed absorbed and present in their small world, except when I jumped up quickly one day, full of some internal noise, and they too fled from their rock, plopping back into the water. I had disturbed their universe, and they disappeared for cover. Having our known world disturbed is never easy.
A retreat is a particular time, seems simple enough, go away from the normal routines, from the usual sense of place and keep the silence to find the inner quiet. Then let surface what will. But the bed is too short for my frame, and I am restless, I want to roam the Island. The thought of being cooped up like the turtles is not attractive, although I admire their quality of mind.
Hong Kong is familiar, as a young woman I lived here in transit, restless and aching for another life. Now it is many years later and the advent wreath is here with its candle lit, and I come to wait on God, to be like one of those turtles, still. Nice idea, thinking I may have some control in this relationship, thinking these pains may have gone.
This year when I read the Annunciation what I notice are Mary’s pauses, her response to the angels’ avowal that she is favoured by God. But what she utters is that she is deeply perplexed. Imagine Mary, a young woman, now, suddenly, in God’s presence told she is favoured. She pauses, perhaps for a moment, perhaps longer, as she goes inside like these turtles, to what she knows, her own world.
Then she is told she will conceive, she will carry the Christ, the saviour. Again the pause, how can this be? There is no longer Mary and her desire for God, there is Mary and God and their relationship. She pauses, the world must feel very strange to her now, unimaginable, and then in the midst, God’s fingers reach out to her, to touch a ‘yes’ between both of them.
In these moments when we have no protection, no status or wealth, nothing except what emerges out of us in this pause, we can get a real and sharp feel of ourselves, and it is different to what comes out of us when we feel the world is our domain. Now made vulnerable, at last vulnerable to God, our pretences empty, a hand reaches out to us, unexpectedly, and it is almost too much, scoured as we are, surviving on scraps, a hand that knows us and an unbearable, but so needed warmth, envelopes us.
We are totally unprepared for this no matter how versed we are. And often in such situations and facing such challenges we can behave like the turtles, scatter and hide.
These challenges of living on the edge are not ones we usually leap toward: to be aged, disdained, ill, poor and perhaps not even Mary’s experience of being chosen. Yet this is where we are met, our wounds bathed. Control is a fear soaked antidote to friendship and love.
The pauses reveal us, ordinary and wounded, afraid, afraid of love, of being known, of being not much.
I fear and know that the only way home to my creator is through my story, my life of yes’s and no’s, the hurts that have left me afraid, and the no’s that have made me inflexible. It is in relationship where the wounds lie, and it is when we wait that we come to know how we have been waited for. The pains and fears that tear me are also where the balm lies. I am not forced only made ready. Joy is an outcome, but this indwelling love, happens by becoming all that shames and mortifies me and all that I secrete from myself is where God’s hand touches.
This is God’s time, and the most difficult thing to accept is that God is waiting on me even more than I am waiting on God. God waits on Mary, waits on us, whatever we are up to, whatever stories and pains we carry, whatever the state of lapse, or homelessness. That’s what I think Advent is really about.
What we receive is a pathway to those who suffer, not as benefactors but as the same. Learning how to love ourselves, others, as we are loved by Him.
And the turtles, they only have each other in their little pond, and shells to crawl into when they need to turn their heads away, but then they will lean into each other again, help each other to climb to the rock in the sun, and sit there and look, just as they are.
Christ is born to us all, surprising us in the midst our littleness, pausing, we find the “Yes!” between us.
We have all been moved by the outpouring of grief and emotion by the deaths in Martin Place, the school children killed in Peshawar and eight children murdered in Cairns. The flood of floral tributes has been remarkable. We saw it only a few days earlier with the untimely death of Phillip Hughes. There was an even more remarkable outpouring with the death of Princess Di in 1997.
But what does our response mean? How do we interpret these events?
Let me try.
We all have brokenness, loss and grief in our lives that so often we suppress. The recent public tributes are a means to release some of this personal anxiety we all have. In a sense it is almost a public therapy for something we don’t really understand but need to express about our own lives. There is something deep within each us that breaks through,unbidden, to the surface.
We need ceremonies and rituals to help us express our grief. Sometimes those ceremonies and rituals are formal memorial services in a church, a synagogue, a mosque, a temple or a shrine. But for many an informal ‘memorial service’ with massed flowers shows the same purpose. It is a way of expressing both our grief and our respect. Ceremonies to mark death, like other ceremonies in our life, are very important milestones.
We particularly respond to untimely deaths, particularly of children. They are lives of great or unknown potential that are cut short. These untimely deaths remind us of the fragility of life. Though we try to manage and organise our lives to limit risk and the unknown, the fact remains that there is a fragility and mystery about human life that is beyond our understanding.
Perhaps in such public memorial services we are determined to show that evil will not triumph. We are determined to show that goodness and generosity, despite our shortcomings, is part of each of us and is essential in any decent society.
In these informal declarations of respect and support, we are also asserting that human relationships are more important than economic prosperity and success. In effect we are saying that there is a dimension to our lives that is more important than the material.
Perhaps we are also saying that the human person is precious and valuable. Some would say that it is sacred, that we all have a touch of the divine and when we plumb our humanity we will find the divine.
In our daily lives, dying has become different. In the extended family the death of grandparents and the viewing of the body were common place. Our parents wore mourning clothes. With our nuclear family, much of that has changed. Death is so often transferred to the hospital where doctors and nurses are in charge. We have removed death from the common place. Something is lost.
In the memorial of dying we want to hang on to a place, a cemetery, a war memorial or a road-side cross that can be the focus of grief. That is why we are likely to see a memorial erected in Martin Place and perhaps in Cairns. Like ceremonies, markers are needed in our lives.
The mystery of life and death will always be with us. That is what these floral tributes say to me.
We are consistently seeing the ghastly side of Islam with public beheadings but we also need to keep in mind the ghastly side of Christianity which was so evidence during the Crusades.
Many conclude that religion, now and in the past, is the cause of so much violence. Karen Armstrong has just written ‘Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence’. This book has been reviewed by David Shariatmadari in The Guardian. He says ‘We know that the slaughter of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, the American Civil War, the Opium Wars, the First World War, the Armenian Genocide, Stalin’s Great Purge, the Second World War and the Holocaust, had little to do with religion. Indeed, much of us was explicitly anti-religious. So how on earth have we ended up with the idea – still in evidence in, for example, the comments readers leave on news websites – that religion above all is to blame for human violence.’
How can we make sense of the contemporary situation of increasing violence? Some groups engage in terrorism against other groups and these engage in torture as a means of defeating the terrorism of the others? In liberal states torture is condemned as immoral; some seek to prohibit it by law, others defend it as a necessary and effective means to defend freedom. Historical experience suggests that torture will continue.
Paul W. Kahn, in Sacred Violence: Torture, Terror and Sovereignty, (Ann Arbor, 2011) argues that secular, liberal philosophy and the theories of rights that it has developed, cannot deal with these issues. The key is a religious notion that he calls “sovereignty.” By this Kahn means a notion of ultimate reality. Both sides of the contemporary war on terrorism appeal to an ultimate reality. For the jihardist this may take the form of a distorted notion of “god.” But western, liberal states have their own conceptions of a sacred reality. We may call this “our freedom.” To defend this, these states send their young women and men to kill terrorists and to be ready to sacrifice their own lives in the service of the sacred reality. Once we begin to speak of “sacrifice” we move into the realm of religious experience and religious discourse.
We can relate Kahn’s analysis to our Australian situation. If we have any doubts about the importance of the religious dimension in Australian political imagination we need only think of the veneration attached to the sacrifices of Anzac. In the conflict between the two sides, terrorists and their opponents, as interpreted by Kahn, each side seeks to “degrade” the other and ultimately to prove the other’s “god” is false. This degradation is what is going on in the macabre beheadings carried out by ISIS; in the logic of such groups it is not enough to kill members of the other group. The killing must be done in such a way as to mock and debase the basic values of the other group. The same dynamism drives the exhortations to kill as many “unbelievers” as possible.
It is a requirement of justice to repel the violence of such groups. But the response of the “West” has gone beyond this. As example we can cite the degrading practices of torture as revealed in the recent U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee’s Torture Report. The twisted arguments invoked to justify these practices are not examples of good reason; they are the utterances of distorted, self-justification, more akin to pseudo-religion. Other nations have been no better. For example, in 2013 the British government finally agreed to compensate 5,228 Kenyans who were tortured during the Mau Mau rebellion of the 1950s. Other cases of torture for the protection of the British Empire are coming to light.
Torture is not the only issue. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, CIA drone strikes in Pakistan have killed 416-959 civilians, including 168-204 children and injured 1,133 – 1796. It is reported that the CIA has now recognized that such “targeted killings” can strengthen extremist groups and be counter-productive. Killing by drones, it is now recognized, may actually increase support for the insurgents, “. . . if these strikes enhance the insurgent leaders’ lore, if non-combatants are killed in the attacks, if legitimate or semi-legitimate politicians aligned with the insurgents are targeted, or if the government is already seen as overly repressive or violent.”(The Age, December 19th. 2014) We may note the logic of these reservations; they are not based on considerations of morality and virtue. Drone strikes are questioned because they have been found to be a counter-productive use of power.
It is facile to present the current conflict as between unmitigated evil on one side, and absolute good on the other. We are told by politicians that, “They hate us for what we are,” as if “they” hated the virtue that “we” represent. In an interview in Le Monde, 26 November 2001, René Girard explained the social and cultural mechanisms that are involved. The terrorist groups do not hate the virtue that “we” represent: they envy the power that we have and desire intensely to acquire similar power.
The contemporary terrorist is in fact caught up in a relationship of mimesis or competitive imitation with the “Great Satan,” as he calls the U.S.A. and its allies. The terrorist desires to have what the opponent has, namely great, overwhelming power. The more violently “the great Satan” exercises that power the more attractive that becomes to the terrorist and the more violence the terrorist will use in an endeavor to acquire that power. The more “productive” the power of the terrorist, the more he is convinced that his “god” is true.
We cannot counter terrorism and defend our values by the use of violent power that is contrary to those values. Torture and targeted killing are not only counter-productive they are a denial of what we claim to stand for. They are irreconcilable with faith in the ultimate reality or God that we hold to be true.
Brian Johnstone, is a Catholic Priest who taught moral theology in Rome for nearly 20 years. Currently he teaches at the Catholic University in Washington.
Most violent deaths of Muslims in the world are due to others claiming to be Muslims. The conflicts in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are all predominantly conflicts within the Islamic community. This is strongly felt within the communities but not usually reported in the mainstream media.
This week in Peshawar in north western Pakistan, more than 140 mainly Muslim children are killed by men who claim to follow a version of Islam that requires them to chant ‘God is Great’ whilst they execute unarmed school children. They claim this is because the military in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan has attacked yet another group of people where other civilians are killed. “We selected the army’s school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females,” said Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani. “We want them to feel our pain.”
Attacks on school children are only too common in Pakistan. Only a short time before, Pakistani schoolgirl Malala Yousufzai was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize and she continues her campaign to support the education of children. She has her own experience of violence against women seeking education. Her response was not to give up, but to continue her work and support for education to build a better Pakistan.
Our own Christmas preparations are confronted in Sydney by an angry, disturbed man with a gun. He has a history of violence, possibly also mental health issues, but he has a gun. He was claiming a link to a murderous sect committing war crimes in Syria and Iraq and takes hostages in a Sydney café the week before Christmas. He has been rejected by his own community for abandoning Shia Islam for the extremist Sunni Salafists of ISIS. Three people are killed; two families will have a very sad Christmas. Christmas is normally a time when gifts are given, families congregate and a birth is celebrated, not usually a time for reflecting on death.
How do we respond to this violence and death, confronting us in the week before Christmas? Do we respond with violence and vengeance, as is likely in Pakistan? Or is there a lesson in the outpouring of support and reflection that can be seen in Martin Place, Sydney. Possibly thousands have walked along to offer condolences to people they never knew, and leave flowers which are now filling up parts of the usually busy mall. Australians and visitors from many diverse backgrounds can be seen looking and reflecting on the violent outburst in our busy commercial centre.
It lead me to reflect more on how we respond to death, and how different communities commemorate their families and friends. Recently my wife and I, not being Muslims, were invited to attend the memorial ceremony for the death of a respected elder in the Hazara community in Sydney. Hazaras are ethnically and religiously distinctive in Afghanistan and Pakistan. We did not see anyone in the large group who was not Hazara, and there were many people there. We attended the Shia Mosque in Sydney and were welcomed by the Hazara community as we paid our respects during the recitation of the Fatihe – the initial verses of the Quran, commonly recited when someone dies.
Outside, we met up with many Hazara friends, who we first met in detention and are now Australians with their families helping to contribute to our multicultural society. I saw a man who was my first Hazara client, back in 1998. We met in Port Hedland detention centre and have maintained irregular contact since then. We reflected on the recent changes for new Hazara refugees coming to Australia and how their community is at risk in both Afghanistan and Pakistan by those claiming adherence to the Taliban and their Wahhabist supporters simply because they are Shia. Reports of attacks on Hazaras are all too common.
We can feel the pain of others, even those we never met, but unlike the Taliban or ISIS, we do not need to respond by inflicting more pain in revenge or retaliation. Destroying is easy. Building up takes a long time and maybe reflecting on creating, not destroying will be a more uplifting mindset for the Christmas and New Year period. Is it too much to hope that in 2015 more people will work towards building and creating rather than destroying? We can but hope for without hope what do we have?
Kerry Murphy is a Sydney solicitor who specialises in refugee law.
I was astounded when I read what Archbishop Antony Fisher told The Australian last week. The report said ‘Australia’s most senior Catholic cleric has proclaimed that families are more likely than priests to abuse children and rejected a church report that linked celibacy to sexual abuse. Archbishop of Sydney Antony Fisher said that celibacy could not be to blame for abuse, which occurred in every church, regardless of whether it was celibate. The thing about child abuse is most of it happens in families. It is an awful thing we hate to even touch on it, but it can’t be about celibacy because you look around society at the moment, it’s in every church, celibacy or not. It’s in many families and their not celibate, generally speaking.’
The Archbishop is falling into a tendency we all have to normalize crime in our own group, church or community by saying that the rate of crime in our own group is no worse than in other groups.
Cardinal Ratzinger who as Pope failed the Church so badly on sexual abuse of children used this argument at a conference in Spain in 2002 ”…the percentage of these (sexual) offences among priests is not higher than in other categories and perhaps it is even lower…less than 1%of priests are guilty of acts of this type. The constant presence of these news items does not correspond to the objectivity of the information or to the statistical objectivity of the facts”.
Professor Patrick Parkinson of the Faculty Law at the University of Sydney released last year a sobering Paper “Suffer the Teenage Children. Child Sexual Abuse in Church Communities”. Twice he reviewed the Catholic Churches protocol “Towards Healing”. He was a key adviser to the Catholic Church on sexual abuse issues. He is a remarkably well informed commentator. He has seen the problems close at hand and over several years.
As he says in his Paper he terminated his work with the Catholic Church over the failure of the Salesians in Australia to address sexual abuse issues. He then called for a Royal Commission.
In his Paper he acknowledges the patchy data on sexual abuse but the information pointed in one direction. The Catholic Church has a special problem which is outside the “normal”.
He noted that at “a particular (Catholic) seminary in Melbourne 4.75 % of priests ordained between 1940 and 1966 sexually abused children”. Drawing on US data he concluded that “the rate of conviction (of these priests) is much higher than in the general population”.
In comparing the Catholic Church with other churches in Australia he concluded, “When all explanations have been offered the rate of conviction of Catholic personnel does seem to be strikingly out of proportion with the size of this faith community compared with other faith communities”. Go to ssrn.com/abstract=2216264 for the Parkinson paper
It is no help to try to distract attention from the problems that the Catholic Church faces by saying that the Catholic Church is no different to others. As Parkinson points out ‘the conviction of Catholic personnel does seem to be strikingly out of proportion’
To say nothing about the abuse of trust.
This is not an encouraging start for the new Catholic Archbishop of Sydney
Ten years on from the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, Australia is entering another round of negotiations towards the new and controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership. In this Free Trade Scorecard series, we review Australian trade policy over the years and where we stand today on the brink of a number of significant new trade deals.
Negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership present an opportunity to correct a mistake made a decade in the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, which led to Australia paying higher prices for pharmaceuticals.
In July 2004, Tony Abbott, then health minister in the Howard government, issued this statement:
The price of pharmaceuticals will not rise as a result of the AUSFTA…
Contrast this to what the Abbott government’s first budget, in May this year, told Australians:
Over the past decade the cost of the Pharmaceutical Benefits Schedule (PBS) has increased by 80%.
To be sure, the “price of pharmaceuticals” is not the same thing as “the cost of the PBS”. But since the PBS is responsible for providing medicines to the vast majority of Australians, it is reasonable to infer that a contributing factor has been a rise in the price of pharmaceuticals. It is also reasonable to infer that the AUSFTA is partially to blame for that rise.
The legislative instrument through which the AUSFTA was implemented is the US Free Trade Agreement Act 2004. The Therapeutics Goods Act 1984 was also amended to require companies seeking marketing approval for a pharmaceutical to provide a patent certificate as part of the Therapeutic Goods Administration’s (TGA) regulatory assessment process.
The patent certificate must say if the sponsored medicine will “infringe a valid claim of a patent that has been granted in relation to the therapeutic good (being the patented medicine)” in question. It must also notify the patent holder.
Otherwise known as “patent linkage”, the application for regulatory approval creates a link between a patented medicine and a possible generic substitute.
The patented medicines are categorised as F1 formulary medicines, which means there is no approved substitute.
When a generic medicine comes onto the market, these drugs are contained in the F2 formulary. Generic medicines contain the same active ingredient or have the method of production to the patented drug, or they may be similar in terms of its administration, dosage, method of treatment or indication.
How does ‘patent linkage’ play out in Australia?
“Patent linkage” provides advance warning to a patent owner, usually the manufacturer of a patented medicine, that a generic medicines’ manufacturer is about to enter the market with a competing and cheaper substitute medicine.
With the knowledge that a generic medicine will trigger an automatic 16% price drop for the patented medicine – and result in its transfer from the F1 formulary to the F2 formulary – the patent owner applies to the Federal Court of Australia for a preliminary injunction.
The injunction is normally granted and as a result, the marketing of the generic medicine is delayed by an average of three years.
This means that the patented medicine stays in the F1 formulary. This affects the pricing of that medicine not only because the price is higher, but also because medicines in the F2 formulary are subject to mandatory price disclosure. This tends to exert downward price pressure on all medicines within the F2 formulary.
For a generic manufacturer to defeat the injunction, it must mount a challenge to the validity of the allegedly infringed patent. The average cost of patent litigation is about A$5 million and requires a team of specialist patent lawyers, patent attorneys and highly skilled experts.
In addition to the legal cost, the generic manufacturer is, by effect of the injunction, denied sales revenue for the duration of the injunction – not to mention the opportunity cost it incurs as its workforce diverts attention to the patent litigation.
Patent linkage refers to the link that regulatory approval creates between a patented medicine and a possible generic substitute.Sarahbean/Shutterstock
In Australia, legal costs follow the event, meaning that should the generic manufacturer lose, it will also be required to pay a significant percentage of the legal costs incurred by the patent owner in defending its patent.
So, it is critical that a generic company carefully assess any patent that puts at risk a proposed generic medicine launch. This assessment costs money. And unfortunately, because of differences in patent law around the world, it is impossible for a generic manufacturer to extrapolate the results of a patent challenge in one country to that in another.
How does it affect medicine prices?
The longer a medicine remains in the F1 formulary, the higher the cost of that medicine to the PBS. This, combined with the consequences on price once that medicine moves into the F2 formulary, creates a significant incentive for patent owners to stop generic competition.
Patent owners encircle a valuable patented medicine with a series of “evergreening” patents. These usually apply after the patent (for the active ingredient) has or is about to expire. This can extend patent protection beyond the normal 20 to 25 year period to a period closer to 40 to 50 years.
Unfortunately, the profit margin for generic manufacturers has fallen significantly due to the price disclosure mechanism, while the cost of patent litigation has risen significantly. Consequently, the capacity of generic manufacturers to assume the risks involved in risky and expensive patent litigation has fallen dramatically.
In the absence of any serious intervention by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, it is likely that fewer “evergreening” patents will be challenged in the future. This means that more medicines will remain in the F1 formulary and for a longer period and the costs of medicines will rise.
A consequence of price rises, particularly at a time of economic austerity, is that newer medicines are not being listing on the PBS. The Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee, which decides which drugs will be subsidised through the PBS, for instance, recently rejected the costly drug Sovaldi, despite effectively treating hepatitis C virus infection.
If the Abbott government wishes to limit the annual cost increase of the PBS to 4%, it is critical that only medicines that are truly innovative and deserving of patent protection remain in the F1 formulary. If room in the PBS is to be made for medicines such as Solvadi, then it is essential for more of the older F1 medicines be moved into the F2 formulary more quickly.
The cost of the PBS has risen by 80% in the past ten years. It’s likely that without the AUSFTA, the cost of the PBS, and by inference the cost of medicines, would have risen by much less.
This article draws on research prepared for the 2014 Workshop “Ten Years since the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement: Where to for Australia’s Trade Policy?”, sponsored by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, UNSW Australia.
Luigi Palombi is Adjunct Professor at Murdoch University. This article was first published in ‘The Conversation’ on 21 October 2014.
