John Menadue

  • Walter Hamilton. A Chandelier in the barracks.

    In July 1940, five months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Emperor Hirohito met with his military planners to discuss the details of Japan’s new “southward advance” policy. An apparently skeptical Hirohito asked them a series of questions, including whether the policy would involve “occupying points in India, Australia and New Zealand.”

    Although Japan’s supreme commander felt nervous about his country’s impending military adventure, he did not resist it––as he had, for instance, in 1936 when his disapproval was sufficient to crush a military coup by disaffected elements of the Imperial Army.

    Both episodes show Hirohito to have been a much more activist leader than some portrayals suggest.

    The latest attempt to paint Hirohito as a strict constitutionalist, obliged to follow the advice of his ministers, and look mildly martial on a white horse, is a 61-volume, 12,000-page publishing colossus, the Annals of the Showa Emperor. (Showa is the era name of Hirohito’s reign that lasted from 1926 to 1989.)

    Commissioned by the Imperial Household Agency, and 24 years in the making, it supposedly brings together all available documents related to the Emperor’s life. The first volumes are due to be published next year, with the remainder dribbled out to the public over five years.

    Although the work contains some new material of interest to academic researchers, critics complain that, on major points of historical conjecture, it is both incomplete and intentionally obscure. The Mainichi newspaper found it contained “hardly anything new” of real significance. The annals’ summaries make it impossible to link information to a particular source; it omits any direct quotations attributable to the Emperor; and some records of his close aides are withheld altogether. (I rely for this analysis on Japanese media and academic sources, since only a select group of individuals so far has been allowed to see the contents of the annals.)

    One example stands out. While the annals make reference to a 2006 newspaper article about a memo in which Hirohito is quoted as criticizing the honouring of Class “A” war criminals at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, the actual memo is not among the documents reproduced. It is not known whether this particular omission was done to appease the Abe Government, with its strong nationalist bent, but there can be no doubt that the project as a whole set out to avoid controversy.

    Professor Herbert Bix, author of Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan* told the New York Times he had been asked by a Japanese newspaper to comment on the annals––on condition he refrained from discussing Hirohito’s “role and responsibility” in World War II. Having expended much time and effort researching the Emperor’s close involvement in military planning, Bix naturally declined: “The very idea of a carefully vetted official biography of a leader fits within the Sino-Japanese historical tradition, but raises deep suspicions of a whitewash…”

    The annals cultivate the image of a leader who was war shy and peace friendly, and yet this analysis cannot withstand even the most superficial investigation. If Hirohito had the power to end the Pacific War in August 1945––and he did play a decisive role––why did he not have the power to prevent it starting in December 1941 or to bring it to an end much sooner? The evidence, in fact, shows he was enthusiastic about Japan’s early military successes and only swung his support behind the “peace faction” once his very existence was threatened by atomic annihilation.

    Australia wanted Emperor Hirohito put on trial as a war criminal, together with the military, industrial and political leaders who were convicted, and in some cases, executed. The United States, however, took the view that hanging Hirohito would play into the hands of Japan’s Communists and make the postwar occupation (and security realignment) of Japan that much harder. The Chifley Government eventually concurred.

    For the President of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Australian Justice William Webb, Hirohito’s immunity from prosecution rankled: “No ruler,” he wrote in his separate opinion on the Tokyo Trials, “can commit the crime of launching aggressive war and then validly claim to be excused for so doing because his life would otherwise have been in danger.” Evidence of Hirohito’s responsibility was suppressed during the actual hearings until Hideki Tojo slipped up while being questioned by a defense lawyer. “No Japanese subject,” insisted the loyal wartime prime minister, “let alone a high official of Japan, would ever go against the will of the Emperor.” Tojo was later given a chance (by the prosecution) to “correct” his mistake, but that ghost could never be laid to rest.

    Hirohito died in 1989 at the grand old age of 87. I remember, on the occasion of his funeral, standing with the crowds lining the streets near the Imperial Palace, sleet falling on a bitterly cold February day, and reflecting on the legacy of a man who had led Japan through its darkest and its brightest days, first by means of war and then by means of peace. The shuffling, bespectacled, grandfatherly figure I had witnessed performing his many official duties––whose only public opinion was an enigmatic smile––seemed to have redeemed himself. Certainly, at least, he and the Americans (those mighty republicans) had saved the imperial institution.

    But there was a cost, which we are still paying.

    Professor Bix, in his analysis of Japanese power, identified a “system of irresponsibility,” a closed circle of buck-passing in which politicians and generals acted in the name of an Emperor who, in turn, acted in accordance with their advice. Thus no individual took the blame (each of the Tokyo Trial defendants pleaded “not guilty”) for ideas and actions that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people.

    In some respects modern, democratic Japan perpetuates this system of irresponsibility, including in the way it refuses to render a full and proper accounting for the past.

    Japan spent ten years between 1931 and 1941 creeping towards war with the great powers. The imperial institution was the chandelier in the barracks: a decorative incongruity lighting the way for the militarists. Still remote and unaccountable, I wonder what way it will light for Japan in the days ahead.

    * From my reading of his book, Bix seems unable to make up his mind whether Hirohito was a warmonger or an acquiescent nationalist, and some of his conclusions about the personality and temperament of the young Hirohito go beyond the evidence adduced. But, particularly in its second half, the book effectively demolishes the revisionist arguments of Japan’s “textbook” patriots.

    Walter Hamilton reported from Japan for the ABC for eleven years.

     

     

  • John Menadue. Nelson Mandela’s leadership.

    You might be interested in this repost. John Menadue.

    In all the tributes and stories about Nelson Mandela, there was one that caught my attention. In his book ‘The Long Walk to Freedom’ he said:

    ‘A leader is like a shepherd. He stays behind the flock, letting the most nimble go out ahead, whereupon the others follow, not realising that all along they are being directed from behind.’

    What I think he was saying is that leadership is a set of activities in which the South African people as a group were persuaded to make necessary but difficult decisions and being courageous enough to pursue them until a resolution was found. It was a collective effort. There was no messiah out in front. They were in it together. Nelson Mandela suffered on Robben Island and the young activists were gunned down by white police in Soweto. The pain was shared.

    Nelson Mandela was not about management – coping with complexity and maintaining equilibrium. For him, leadership was much more than that. It involving creating disequilibrium and forcing the South African people out of their comfort zone. He led South Africans until almost everyone believed that change was both necessary and possible. In the end it was change that almost everyone owned. It was as if in their final victory they could say to each other ‘we did it ourselves’. That was the inclusive type of leadership that he pursued.

    Nelson Mandela showed that leadership is not the same as authority. After all you can’t exercise authority in prison for 27 years Authority is usually bestowed or is positional. It is not always earned. A good example is the Bishops in our churches, or the inherited presidency of such people as George Bush. Authority by itself is designed to keep the organisation or country on even keel. An authority figure observes the ceremonials. Such an authority figure usually discourages people who challenge or ask the hard questions. Authority figures like the group to be relaxed and comfortable.

    True leadership is quite different as Nelson Mandela showed.

    • It encourages honest and hard questions. It helps the group to clarify its problems and the way to proceed – like addressing climate change in our time.
    • It is not naïve or dismissive of the problems and risks.
    • It is prepared to create disequilibrium knowing that people don’t change in comfort zones.
    • It doesn’t attempt to solve the group’s problems or make decisions ahead of the group. The nimble ones up front may set the pace, but a solution is only possible when the group as a whole catches up. And that takes time.
    • It doesn’t get lost in detail or attempt to micro-manage.
    • It recognizes that mistakes will be made and that remedial action will be necessary to get back on course.
    • Supporters must be honest and trust-worthy. Ciphers who cling to the old networks and clubs are no help.

    Leadership is also not the same as charisma. Bin Laden had charisma, but he was mad.

    Nelson Mandela gave us inspired leadership with few of the trappings of authority.

    The most moving example for me of his leadership was the celebration of the victorious Springbok rugby world cup team in 1995. Standing with the South African captain, Francois Pienaar, he wore the Springbok jersey and cap. South African Rugby was at the core of apartheid with racially selected teams and refusal to play other teams that were racially integrated. At the world cup and with one gesture of reconciliation he cleansed South African rugby of its awful past. Few could do it with such simplicity and credibility. Words were not necessary. Or as Saint Francis put it “only use words as a last resort” Who could deny a man who sacrificed so much for racial equality?

    It was leadership not authority that won the day. And a leadership that was prepared to forgive but never forget.

  • Edmund Campion. Australian Catholic Lives.

    Fr Edmund Campion has just published a new book. A book review and information about the book can be found on the following link.  John Menadue.

     

    http://tintean.org.au/2014/10/06/australian-catholics-lives-by-edmund-campion

  • Geoff Hiscock. Abbott on the friendship trail with Modi

    China rightly dominates most discussions of Australia’s economic outlook, but Tony Abbott has made it plain he also wants to be good friends with the other emerging Asian heavyweight, India.

    A tangible example came during his visit there early last month (September), when he handed over two ancient Hindu statues that allegedly were stolen from temples in Tamil Nadu and subsequently acquired by Australian art galleries.

    It was a gesture that prompted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to express his gratitude and to say Abbott had shown “enormous respect” for India’s cultural heritage.

    Next month, the two leaders will have another opportunity to get closer. As well as attending the G20 summit in Brisbane, Modi has accepted Abbott’s invitation to make a bilateral visit to Australia — the first such trip by an Indian prime minister since Rajiv Gandhi in 1986.

    As a pro-business leader, Modi’s priority is domestic economic development, including in the manufacturing sector – hence his mantra of “Make in India.” To speed up the process, he needs funding from abroad, which is why he is courting big potential investors in Japan, China, the United States, and to a lesser extent, Australia.

    In his first four months in office, Modi has made a string of overseas visits and played host to some key leaders. Under his “neighbourhood first” approach, Bhutan was Modi’s first destination in June, followed by Brazil in July and Nepal in August. In the last month, he has visited Japan to meet the man he describes as a “dear friend,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and has just caught up with US President Barack Obama in Washington. At home, he welcomed Abbott in early-September and then hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping in mid-September. During his visit, Xi committed China to investing a further US$20 billion in India over the next five years.

    That suits the pragmatic Modi, who made some valuable Chinese contacts when he was drumming up business as Gujarat’s chief minister. China, of course, is the object of as much attention in India as it is in Australia. India wants a lot more Chinese investment, but the border issue continues to weigh on overall ties.

    In a September 19 joint statement in New Delhi, Modi and Xi agreed that pending a final resolution of their disputed boundary, the two sides would continue to make an effort to maintain “peace and tranquillity” in the border areas.

    India’s relationship with Beijing is nowhere near as comfortable as the one Modi has with Abe’s Japan. “India considers Japan among its closest and most reliable partners,” Modi told an approving audience during his visit to Tokyo, adding that as “two peace-loving and democratic nations,” India and Japan could “play an influential role in shaping the future of Asia and the world.” Abe has committed Japan to doubling its Indian investment and financing to US$35 billion, also over the next five years.

    Modi’s other big bilateral challenge is the relationship with the United States, where business ties have not developed as rapidly as both sides might have liked. Issues such as civilian nuclear power liability, intellectual property rights, foreign investment regulations and delayed financial reforms remain impediments to the fivefold increase in trade that Obama and Modi envision in their September 30 joint statement. Two-way trade in goods and services now stands at just under US$100 billion a year. The leaders also committed to a joint investment initiative on infrastructure. But in agricultural trade, India’s recent action to block a World Trade Organisation deal on food security upset Washington, despite Modi arguing that India had to retain the unfettered right to make food available to its poorest people.

    Like the US, Abbott wants to quickly grow Australia’s two-way trade with India from the current modest figure of $17 billion. He would also like to have some more big-ticket Australian investors entering India. “We are not as close as we should be,” Abbott said in New Delhi on September 5. “My visit to India reflects Australia’s desire for India to be in the first rank of Australia’s relations.”

    The on-the-ground reality is that India is not the easiest place to do business. Plenty of big international investors have burnt time and money trying to make headway there: Wal-Mart and Carrefour in modern retail, for instance, or Posco and ArcelorMittal in steel. Bureaucratic inertia, domestic opposition from vested interests, entrenched corruption in the police, judiciary and government layers, and an ongoing Maoist insurgency in parts of the country, combined with poor infrastructure, difficult labour laws and poor levels of skills and education all make for a testing investment environment.

    That said, with 1.25 billion people and a growing middle class of several hundred million, there is no denying India’s promise. Energy demand is rising rapidly, gross domestic product is approaching $2 trillion (still well behind China’s $10 trillion), economic growth this year should finish above 5 per cent and comfortably pass 6 per cent next year, and there is a big push for more and better food, and more consumer comforts in general. All of that plays to Australia’s strengths in energy, agribusiness and technology.

    Abbott’s focus in recent weeks has been on security at home and abroad, but his long-term economic agenda is unchanged: how best to maintain and expand the prosperity Australia has enjoyed virtually without interruption for the past 23 years. China, Japan, the United States and India are all crucial to that effort (as are South Korea and Indonesia). So far, Abbott has established good relations with their various leaders, but is the first to acknowledge that ties with India in the past have been under-done because of Australia’s fascination with China.  November’s visit by Modi will be a good pointer as to how quickly that situation might change.

    Geoff Hiscock writes on international business and is the author of Earth Wars: The Battle for Global Resources, India’s Global Wealth Club, and India’s Store Wars, all published by Wiley.

     

  • John Menadue. Insiders and Outsiders.

    You might be interested in this repost. John Menadue.

     

    As social beings, we usually like to be part of the group, an insider. We are cautious about being outsiders, on the periphery. Yet being outsiders has some real advantages.

    Growing up in country towns in South Australia, I felt what it was like to be an outsider. As the son of a Methodist manse, I often felt an outsider in the socially conservative country towns of South Australia where we lived. I was able to join the group however through sport. As a university scholarship holder I also felt different to those in the mainstream. I felt I had to work harder so that I wouldn’t lose my scholarship.

    At the age of 41, working for Malcolm Fraser, I felt very much an outsider. But by that time I found I didn’t really care. I vividly recall a lengthy evening discussion at the Lodge in the early days of the new Liberal Government with Malcolm Fraser and senior members of his private office. The evening was informal and quite friendly, but I had a strong sense that I didn’t belong. But I didn’t feel perturbed as perhaps I would have earlier in my life. Belonging, being an insider, was no longer so important. It was transforming, that if push came to shove I knew that I could survive as an outsider, not comfortably but I could manage.

    As a board member of Qantas and Telstra, I felt the strong pressure to be one of the ‘club’ with my eye fixed on re-appointment. That caused problems and disagreements with the boards of both organisations. But I felt content to be an outsider and as far as possible be my own self.

    I remember many years later at a social gathering I was asked by James Strong ‘how many boards are you on’. It was not a subject which I had ever asked myself but it suggested to me the importance placed on being an insider, being in the directors’ ‘club’.

    I have never felt an insider within the Catholic Church of which I have been a member for over 30 years. In all that time only one Catholic has ever asked me what it was like growing up in the Methodist Church. I am not one of the Irish tribe. But I am content. I often rationalise to myself that being an outsider gives one a perspective that insiders do not have. Popes and the Catholic hierarchy have lived almost their entire lives within institutions of the Catholic Church. This cultural grip is a particular problem for Catholic clergy. Invariably they are brought up in a Catholic home, attend a Catholic school, join a Catholic seminary and then are ordained as celibate priests to serve for the next 50 years. It is hard to break free of the cultural grip of that upbringing. Some do but many don’t.

    The Polish have a proverb that the visitor sees in ten minutes what the host does not see in ten years. The Chinese have a proverb that the mountain is seen best from the plain.

    There are advantages in being an outsider, even if uncomfortable from time to time.

    John Menadue

  • Mike Steketee. Abbott faces the reality of multicultural Australia

    While many conservatives continue to hold to the Howard line against multiculturalism, Tony Abbott is adjusting to the reality that Australia is a multicultural country, writes Mike Steketee.

    “The Australian Government will be utterly unflinching towards anything that threatens our future as a free, fair and multicultural society; a beacon of hope and exemplar of unity-in-diversity.”

    This is how Tony Abbott expressed his defence of Australian values before the United Nations Security Council this week.

    Many, probably most, Australians will find his words commendable, if perhaps unremarkable. Yet not so long ago, he would never have put it that way.

    His views on multiculturalism used to align with those of his conservative predecessor, John Howard, who hated the “m” word and avoided it at all costs. As he wrote in his autobiography, Lazarus Rising: “My view was that Australia should emphasise the common characteristics of the Australian identity. We should emphasise our unifying points rather than our areas of difference.”

    His views translated into action, with his government’s abolition of the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Bureau of Immigration, Multiculturalism and Population Research and with the substitution of “citizenship” for the “m” word in the Immigration Minister’s title.

    Many conservatives continue to hold to the Howard line. According to Senator Cory Bernardi, “the naïve … proclaim multiculturalism as a triumph of tolerance when in fact it undermines the cultural values and cohesiveness that brings a nation together”.

    Queensland National MP George Christensen this week supported a ban on burqas. In 2013, Scott Morrison, then shadow immigration minister, argued thatmulticulturalism “simply means too many things to too many different people and increasingly runs the risk of fuelling division and polarising the debate, which is the antitheses of what it is supposed to achieve”.

    But Abbott no longer counts himself amongst the critics. Two weeks ago, he said: “I’ve shifted from being a critic to a supporter of multiculturalism, because it eventually dawned on me that migrants were coming to Australia not to change us but to join us.”

    His conversion goes back some years. In Battlelines, the book published in 2009, not long before he became opposition leader, he wrote that he previously had underestimated “the gravitational pull of the Australian way of life”. The influx of people from a long list of countries who applied to become Australian citizens, “far from diluting ‘Australian-ness’ …. shows people’s enthusiasm to join our team”.

    That would be Team Australia of recent invocation.

    In 2012, as opposition leader, he explained an experience that helped changed his mind:

    With (historian) Geoffrey Blainey, I used to worry that multiculturalism could leave us a nation of tribes. But I was wrong and I’ve changed my mind. The scales fell from my eyes when I discovered – while running Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, would you believe – that the strongest supporters of the Crown in our constitution included indigenous people and newcomers who had embraced it as part of embracing Australia.

    The irony is that this conversion has come at a time when multiculturalism is under greater stress than at any time since its introduction by the Whitlam government. Each successive wave of immigrants to Australia has caused friction, stretching all the way from the Irish in the 19th century to the post-World War II surge of Italians, Greeks and other Europeans and the large numbers of Vietnamese who arrived in the wake of the Vietnam war.

    Yet the cycle became a familiar and reassuring one, from initial resentment and discrimination towards new immigrants to acceptance and later celebration.

    “Wogs” used to be a term of derision; now it is a badge of honour for many of Italian and Greek origin. Despite some initial tensions and problems with crime, the successful integration of Vietnamese into a nation that only recently had abandoned the White Australia policy was eloquent testament to a tolerant society.

    Immigrants typically worked hard and soon spread out from the then poor inner suburbs as they became more affluent. Their sons and daughters started marrying outside their ethnic group and often became indistinguishable from other Australians.

    In short, as Abbott came to realise, Australia changed migrant families more than they changed Australia.

    The 2005 Cronulla riots, sparked by an attack on lifesavers by young men of Lebanese origin and fuelled by inflammatory comments by broadcaster Alan Jones, shattered the image of Australia as a model of racial harmony. Still, it could be rationalised as an isolated incident. Harder to dismiss is the emergence of home-grown jihadists who regard themselves as enemies of Australia – hardly a stellar example of unity in diversity.

    Unlike previous immigrants, some from the Middle East, predominantly Lebanese with often low education levels admitted by the Fraser government in the wake of the Lebanese civil war, did not follow the traditional path of working, inter-marrying and generally spreading out into society. For some, unemployment, crime and racism contributed to alienation, particularly amongst the young.

    In some senses, Abbott’s conversion may be more rhetorical than real. On coming to government, he shifted responsibility for multiculturalism from the immigration portfolio – something for which Morrison may be grateful – to Social Security, suggesting a narrowed focus.

    That brings it under Kevin Andrews, a big “c” conservative who, as immigration minister in 2007, cut the intake of African refugees because he said they had more trouble integrating into Australian society.

    Deriding their religion, criticising how they dress, let along branding them as terrorists, is seriously counter-productive.

    The Australian Multicultural Council, an advisory body to the previous government, is in limbo, with all its nine positions listed as vacant, although a spokesperson for Andrews told me the Government is in the process of appointing new members.

    The ministry of multicultural affairs under Labor has been downgraded to a parliamentary secretary’s position, filled by Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, who, although a member of the hard right of the NSW Liberal Party, is preaching the success of multiculturalism.

    As prime ministers need to do, Abbott is adjusting to the reality that Australia is a multicultural country. The Government frontbench includes members with strong ethnic connections – Treasurer Joe Hockey (Armenian-Palestinian), Finance Minister Mathias Cormann (Belgian), Government Senate leader Eric Abetz (German), suspended assistant treasurer Arthur Sinodinos (Greek) and Fierravanti-Wells (Italian).

    Abbott is conscious that the ethnic vote can swing the result in federal seats, particularly in Sydney. He disappointed some of his strongest supporters with his decision to drop the so-called Bolt amendments to the Racial Discrimination Act after widespread opposition from ethnic groups.

    In this area and particularly in the current context, rhetoric matters – all the more so when it comes from the nation’s leader. Abbott is setting the right tone, balancing his uncompromising language against would-be Australian terrorists with words of reassurance for the Muslim community and an appeal to other Australians not to overreact.

    Given the rise of Islamic State and threats of beheadings in Australia, it is easy to lose perspective. The number of Muslims in Australia has risen rapidly – by 69 per cent between the 2001 and 2011 censuses. But they still number fewer than 500,000 and represent just 2.2 per cent of the population, fewer than the 2.5 per cent who are Buddhists.

    The vast majority are as law abiding as any other Australians. They have alerted Australian authorities to planned terrorist attacks. Deriding their religion, criticising how they dress, let along branding them as terrorists, is seriously counter-productive.

    Mike Steketee is a freelance journalist. He was formerly a columnist and national affairs editor for The Australian. View his full profile here

    This article was first published by the ABC, The Drum, on 26 September 2014.

  • Marilyn Lake. fracturing the nation’s soul.

    You might be interested in this repost. John Menadue.

     

    During World War 1 Australia lost its way. Its enmeshment in the imperial European war fractured the nation’s soul.

    Marilyn Lake

    World War I had consequences for individuals as well as nations. HB Higgins’s life would be deeply affected by the British decision to invade the Ottoman empire in early 1915. As a member of the new federal parliament in 1901, Higgins had opposed Australian participation in the Boer War, fearing that this would set a terrible precedent for involvement in other imperial wars, whose purpose, goals and strategy would always be determined by other powers. He also doubted the legitimacy of the European war, writing to his friend Felix Frankfurter, Professor in Law at Harvard, ‘What do you think of it? … [T]here are higher ideals than attachment to a country because it is my country. I blame our British jingoes…’ Higgins was deeply troubled when his only child Mervyn elected to join British forces fighting in the Middle East.

    When his son was killed in battle on 23 December 1916 Higgins and his wife Alice were devastated. Higgins poured his grief – and his bitterness over the imperial cant that had justified the war – into a new commitment to internationalism and disarmament. The only good that might come out of the war was not national pride, but a new world order. ‘Vengeance is a fruitless thing’, he wrote to Frankfurter. ‘I feel that the best vengeance my dead boy could hope for would be an integrated world, an organized humanity.’ No nationalist flag-waving or eulogies to the Anzac spirit for him.

    We tend to forget the doubts and expressions of opposition to Australia’s participation in World War I in which in fact only 30 per cent of eligible men chose to enlist. The anti-war mobilisations have largely gone unheeded in official and contemporary accounts of the war, which have recast the widespread destruction as a creative experience, one that gave ‘birth to the nation’, conveniently forgetting that our distinctive Commonwealth of Australia, with its world famous democratic reforms, made its name on the world stage in the years before the war, between 1901 and 1914. Australian nation-building was a peace time achievement.

    A decade before the outbreak of the European war, in 1904, an American visitor to Australia, Victor Clark, one of a number of investigators who journeyed south to Australasia, noted that ‘New Zealand and Australia are the most interesting legislative experiment stations in the world and they experiment so actively because their political institutions are extremely democratic’. The colony of Victoria had first invented the idea of a legal minimum wage in 1896, which was later elaborated as a living wage calculated to meet the diverse needs of workers defined as human beings, in the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Court by HB Higgins, in the Harvester judgment of 1907. Australia and New Zealand had pioneered industrial democracy and women’s political rights. ‘While the principles of democracy were first enunciated in the United States’, noted the historically-minded American suffragist, Carrie Chapman Catt, ‘Australia has carried them furthest to their logical conclusion’. Thus did we take our place on the world stage, not in fighting an imperial war.

    In Australia, it was noted by numerous overseas commentators, the working man and the voting woman advanced together, during the first decade of the nation’s existence, which saw a steady increase in the Labor vote, until the Fisher Government was elected, with majorities in both Houses in 1910. By war’s end, however, the Labor Party had split, conservative forces had triumphed, and the British Empire had gained a new lease of life in Australia. In World War 1 Australia lost its way. Its enmeshment in the imperial European war fractured the nation’s soul.

    Let’s look at this impact further through the experience of Higgins, now a largely forgotten Australian, but one of our unsung national heroes. Henry Bourne Higgins was a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly in 1896, when it introduced the minimum wage. He became an opponent, as noted above, of the British imperial war in South Africa, a member of the federal parliament from 1901 and then, from 1906, President of the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration, whose path-breaking reforms, shaped by a profound commitment to social justice and the public good, won him renown around the world. In 1914, he was invited by the Harvard Law Review to contribute an article on his innovative jurisprudence which he titled ‘A New Province for Law and Order: Industrial Peace through Minimum Wage and Arbitration’.

    By 1920, however, the conservative backlash unleashed by the impact of World War I and the fevered imperialism of Prime Minister WM Hughes, who sought to by-pass the Arbitration Court by setting up his own tribunals saw Higgins submit his resignation. It would seem appropriate to remember Higgins, the Australian idealist, and others of his generation, as we prepare to deal with the veritable tidal wave of military commemoration, funded already by $140 million, even as our universities face further funding cuts, increased student fees and the number of historians employed to teach students actually declines. Which funding bodies, one wonders, might finance commemoration of those who fought for Australia’s distinctive democratic and political ideals and support projects to carry their ideals forward?

    My current research project on the international history of Australian democracy has highlighted Australia’s high reputation around the world before World War I as a distinctive, pioneering, bold, independent-minded democracy. It was the perspective afforded by distance that enabled American Professor Hammond of Ohio State University to write of ‘the most notable experiment yet made in social democracy’ established in Australia in the first years of the Commonwealth, in the years preceding the outbreak of war.

    In 1902, in the shadow of the South African War, HB Higgins wrote an essay called ‘Australian ideals’ in which he asked prophetically whether the new Commonwealth of Australia was to become a militaristic nation or a progressive one: ‘Australia must make her choice between two ideals – the ideal of militarism and the ideal of equality’. Australians had to choose between the opposing standards of militarism and social reform, he suggested. He and his generation dedicated themselves to the latter, while we in our time seem to have committed to the former. Australian values we are now ceaselessly told are military values.

    One hundred years on from 1914, Australia has seemingly become the militarist nation Higgins warned about. Rather than celebrate the world-first democratic achievements forged by women and men in the founding years of our nationhood, the years that made Australia distinctive and renowned, we are told that World War I, in which Australians fought for the British Empire, was the supreme creative event for the nation. But those who lived through it knew that our nation was not born in the carnage of the world war, which left the country divided, disillusioned, disoriented, desolate and dependent on a resurgent British Empire.

    In the inimitable words of novelist Miles Franklin, writing to her American friend Margaret Drier Robins in 1924,

    it seems to me that Australia, which took a wonderful lurch ahead in all progressive laws and women’s advancement about 20 years ago has stagnated ever since. At present it is more unintelligently conservative and conventional than England and I am sad to see the kangaroo and his fellow marsupials and all the glories of our forests disappearing to make room for a mediocre repetition of Europe.

    Miles Franklin knew that although men could do many things they could not give birth to nations. Only women could do that. And in 1902, Australian women’s political ‘lurch ahead’ had made Australia the most democratic country on earth, an object lesson to humanity.

    _____________________________

    Marilyn Lake is Professor in History at the University of Melbourne. This is a revised version of a keynote address presented to the Annual Conference of the History Teachers’ Association of Australia, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 23 April 2013.

     

  • Peter Day. The Middle East: it’s important to talk.

    David was a good Jewish man: faithful to his God; devoted to his family, and deeply connected to his land.

    Khalid was a good Palestinian man: faithful to his God; devoted to his family, and deeply connected to his land.

    Each year, in early spring, David and Khalid would meet for a chat at a small cafe. It always began with a respectful, silent handshake. Then, after a kindly nod towards the waiter, the pair would sit down.

    More silence would follow, usually a couple of minutes at most, until their coffee and sweet biscuits arrived. Then, without any small talk, off they went – as they had done for 34 years:

    Said the Jew: “I think it’s important we are allowed to state our case.” 

    Said the Palestinian: “I think it’s important we are allowed to state our case.”

    Said the Jew: “This is rightfully our land.” 

    Said the Palestinian: “This is rightfully our land.” 

    Said the Jew: “We are victims of your aggression.” 

    Said the Palestinian: “We are victims of your aggression.” 

    Said the Jew: “We will fight ‘til the bitter end.” 

    Said the Palestinian: “We will fight ‘til the bitter end.” 

    Said the Jew: “You killed my family.” 

    Said the Palestinian: “You killed my family” 

    Said the Jew: “We are a brutalised and traumatised people.” 

    Said the Palestinian: “We are a brutalised and traumatised people.” 

    Said the Jew: “You hate us.” 

    Said the Palestinian: “You hate us.” 

    Said the Jew: “There can be no peace ‘til you change your ways.” 

    Said the Palestinian: “There can be no peace ‘til you change your ways.” 

    Said the Jew: “Look, this is our land.” 

    Said the Palestinian: “Look, this is our land.” 

    Said the Jew: “Mmm, a nice coffee. Give my regards to your family. See you next year.” 

    Said the Palestinian: “Mmm, a nice coffee. Give my regards to your family. See you next year.”

    The conversation continues …

    Fr Peter Day is the Parish Priest at Corpus Christi, Canberra.

  • John Menadue. Reform of our banking sector.

    In my blog of May 30, 2014, ‘Are our bankers listening or caring?’ I drew attention to a conference in London on ‘Inclusive Capitalism’.  At that conference the Governor of the Bank of England and the IMF Chief both said that bankers regarded themselves as different and not bound by the need for economic and social inclusion that is essential in a modern society. Both the Governor and the IMF Chief said that the actions of the banks were excluding them from mainstream society.

    Just look at the combined salaries of our four bank CEO’s, $35 m last year to see the validity of those comments

    Money and finance are critical in a modern economy and society. But is the financial sector making a social contribution to match its size, profitability and very high executive salaries?

    Our four major banks made a combined profit of over $27 b last year. They are the most profitable in the developed world thanks in part to government guarantees and lender of last resort guarantees. It is not all due to the skill of our bankers. Australia has a population of only 25m But the Commonwealth Bank of Australia has a market capitalisation that is more than Goldman Sachs or American Express

    The global savings glut in the 1980’s was fuelled by China keeping its exchange rate artificially low and its staggering trade surplus. This created the condition that encouraged US banks to sell more risky products to increase their returns. We saw dubious new ‘products’ like packaged sub-prime mortgages and various “derivatives”. There was excessive profiteering and excessive salaries by dealers.  The selling of shonky financial products out of New York gave us the GFC.

    The financial sectors in many countries have become so large and powerful that governments find it hard to control them. They are too big to fail. So governments inevitably step in to prop them up and in the process reward those who take excessive financial risks. No-one went to goal in the US, but millions of US citizens lost their homes and their savings. .

    In 2001, the Australian financial sector accounted for about 9% of our GDP and less than 4% of our total employment. A decade later our financial services sector had grown to 11% of our GDP. Has there e been an increase in social value to match this growth? I doubt it.

    A lot of Australian business is focused on rent seeking through lobbying rather than real wealth creation. Negative gearing and the discount on capital gains taxes which largely benefits the wealthy are funded by the banks. They have also lobbied successfully to wind back consumer protection in superannuation advice. With their lobbying and networks of influential business and political colleagues they are very powerful.

    Most of the business economists we see on television or read in our newspapers are employed by the banks. They are not likely to side with consumers against the banks in their rapacious fees for superannuation advice or the conflict of advice that banks exploit to the cost of clients; Most of our business economists that we see and hear so much of are caught up in the bank drag net.

    In 1972 Professor Tobin proposed a tax to ‘throw some sand into the wheels of international markets and to reduce speculation’. But the problem was how national governments could impose an effective and a comprehensive tax on international transactions.

    However eleven leading countries in the EU have now signed on to developing by 2016 a financial transactions tax to raise money but also to limit risky market speculation. Good luck!

    The G20 meeting in Brisbane in November will be also considering higher capital requirements for the banks to strengthen their balance sheets.  These increased capital requirements would also require the amount of capital to be adjusted according to the riskiness of the bank’s assets. In principle this should remove the financial incentive to back risky investments.. Also on the ‘too big to fail’ problem the authorities are seeking to ensure that while deposits are guaranteed, the value of bank shares are not. In other words shareholders cannot be expected to be bailed out in the future and that will also mean that executives that destroy shareholder value will be dismissed and their stock options being worthless.

    These reforms would need to be carefully managed. For example the Europeans are worried that if the repair of bank balance sheets too quickly it might lead to a drying up of bank lending and so damage the fragile European recovery.

    The interim report of the Financial Systems Inquiry made some useful suggestions but major concerns are likely to continue. Three of the five members of the inquiry are former senior bankers. David Murray was CEO of the CBA for 13 years. What do they know of banking who only banking know! There must also be a major governance concern when RBA Governors and Treasury Secretaries join major bank boards after leaving office. Three have done so.It all sounds very incestuous.

    We have a long way to go in banking reform. The biggest obstacle will be the banks themselves and the powerful networks they have constructed.

  • John Menadue. Stuck in a closed information loop

    Conservatives who read and listen to News Corp media have a problem. They are encouraged to believe that the world is really like News Corp says it is. The inevitable result is a loss of reality.

    Paul Krugman in the New York Times on September 23 wrote of the problems of right-wing Republicans who keep complaining about the lazy jobless. He said

    ‘In a nation where the Republican base gets what it thinks are facts from Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, where the party’s elite gets what it imagines to be policy analysis from the American Enterprise Institute or the Heritage Foundation, the Right lives in its own intellectual universe, aware neither the reality of unemployment nor what life is like for the jobless. You might think that personal experience – almost everyone has acquaintances or relatives who can’t find work – would still break through, but apparently not.’

    That closed information loop also operates extensively in Australia through the same News Corp. Australian conservatives are encouraged to think that the unemployed are dole-bludgers, that Muslims are terror suspects and that poor people don’t need to drive cars.

    News Corp says in its outlets that the war in Iraq was justified and that climate change is nonsense. They are probably the two most important issues of the last decade. On both News Corp has been on the wrong side of history.

    In the short term conservatives get a ‘sugar hit’ out of reading The Australian, The Daily Telegraph, The Courier Mail and The Adelaide Advertiser, but in the long term they become divorced from reality.

    These publications are not as extreme as the old Pravda, but rusted-on party supporters feel affirmed in their ideological correctness. But gradually they come to the view that they are being told nonsense and that the world of political unreality does not match their own experience.

    As Daniel Moynihan, the former US Senator said, ‘everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but no-one is entitled to their own facts’. And News Corp keeps pushing opinions of issues such as climate change denial and pretends that they are facts. Scientific advice is overwhelmingly telling us that climate change is occurring and that human activity is responsible for that change. But News Corp keeps telling its conservative readership that climate change is nonsense.

    Think tanks, like the Institute of Public Affairs adds to this closed circuit information loop. The IPA is secretly funded, apparently by big Tobacco and the foreign miners, but pretends it is an independent and intellectually honest think-tank. Just like News Corp it is a propaganda vehicle which helps conservatives to affirm their view of the world.

    In the long term, ideological institutions like News Corp who feed into and from their ideological base do a great disservice not only to serious conservatives but also to the long-term interests of a diverse and informed community.

  • Mike Steketee. Buying favours of politicians.

    You might be interested in this repost. John Menadue

     

    If the staggering evidence before the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption has taught us anything, then it must surely be to end the charade that democracy can function properly when people are buying favours of politicians, directly or indirectly.

    The standard argument that political fund-raising is conducted at arm’s length and that the politicians making decisions are not involved or even aware of who the donors are, no longer has an ounce of credibility. The Chinese wall is rice paper thin.

    Geoffrey Watson, SC, a person who does have credibility, arrived at this position a few months ago. The counsel assisting in recent inquiries by ICAC brought up the idea of full public funding of political campaigns. That is, taxpayers would foot the bill and all private donations would be banned.

    It seems a radical idea and it may be unattainable in pure form, given the constitutional hurdles. But it also is a logical extension of where the debate about corruption in politics is heading. If politicians so readily and willingly get around NSW laws that they themselves introduced for the purpose of cleaning up their act, or giving the appearance of doing so, and that on paper are the toughest in Australia, then drastic alternatives deserve consideration.

    After prosecuting the case against Eddie Obeid, Ian Macdonald and sundry other malefactors with Labor connections, Watson turned his attention to the Liberals. In his opening address for Operation Spicer, he laid out another remarkable saga of politicians rorting the rules to their own advantage. As he put it, “this inquiry will expose the systematic subversion of the electoral funding laws of NSW”.  Watson detailed how the office of Chris Hartcher, who resigned as minister after ICAC launched the investigation, had used front organisations to accept some $165,000 from property developers, who were banned from making political donations and some of who had planning applications before the state government.

    He argued that the systemic failure of the system of political funding encouraged and rewarded corruption. “Something must change,” he told the Commission hearing, adding that “the problems caused by election funding are not intractable.” One suggestion that had been floated, he said, was full public funding as a way “to free political decision makers from the insidious effect of improperly motivated donations”. While ICAC was not the place for the debate, he pointed out that the Commission had an arm devoted to corruption prevention, whose experts “would be more than pleased to assist”.

    Tony Abbott didn’t think much of the proposal. “At a time when we’re talking about a very tough budget indeed, the idea that we should scrap private fundraising and fund political parties through the taxpayer, I think, would be very, very odd.”

    Hello! We’re already doing that. Last year’s federal election cost taxpayers $58 million, calculated on the basis of $2.49 per vote received. Four of the six states also have public funding systems – NSW, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia – as well as the ACT.

    The implication in Abbott’s comment and the assumption of many others is that public funding would have to be increased to fill the gap left by the withdrawal of private donations. Politicians can make that argument if they like, though Abbott obviously doesn’t have the appetite for it. The major parties even could agree on a bipartisan approach and justify it on the need to end the corruption, which is the position that NSW political leaders have taken.

    But there also is a clear alternative: restrict spending to the present amount of public funding. It is not as though the taxpayer contribution is parsimonious – given they have a vote for the House of Representatives as well as the Senate and that not all voters pay taxes, taxpayers are contributing well over $5 each to federal elections.

    The major parties in particular might complain long and hard about such belt tightening. But what a relief it would be to be spared of much of the largely fact-free deluge of election advertising that soaks up most of the money donated to the major parties. This competition between the parties has turned into an obscene arms race, in which parties feel compelled to spend more and more on advertising just because the other side is doing so, all the while admitting that they may not be getting much return on their investment.

    The campaign managers are coming up with ever more far-fetched schemes for raising money, like conducting auctions at fundraisers for private meetings with prime ministers, premiers and ministers, all the while arguing that no favoured treatment ever flows from this. And they wonder why public trust in them keeps falling.

    NSW Premier Mike Baird thought Watson’s idea had enough merit to send it off for review. Or perhaps more correctly, he didn’t feel he could dismiss the idea out of hand. He may have been relieved when the head of the panel he appointed – former senior public servant Kerry Schott – said she thought full public funding would fall foul of the High Court. Last year, the court declared invalid the law by the O’Farrell government banning all corporate and union donations on the grounds that it breached the freedom of political communication implied in the Constitution.

    Graeme Orr, a law professor at Queensland University and an expert on electoral funding, does not see the High Court as an insuperable barrier. Rather, he says, the court said in last year’s case that the NSW government had not given a proper rationale for the legislation. “The court is really saying we require you to have an evidence-based explanation for these laws that restrict the implied freedom of political communication.”

    He believes a system can be designed that could withstand challenge. It would need to allow for some private funding but a low limit could be applied – perhaps $1000 a year – that could not be considered potentially corrupting.

    What about fabulously wealthy individuals like Clive Palmer funding their own parties? Caps can be set on campaign expenditure as well as on donations. They already exist in NSW and Queensland, although the Newman government has announced it will abolish them, together with the cap on donations.

    There would be complications in implementing a system relying predominantly on public funding. While it may be possible to stop third parties, like trade unions or business lobbies, from donating directly to parties, they could still run their own partisan campaigns. But if the argument against radical reform is that loopholes will emerge, we may as well throw up our hands and give up. As Watson says, “something has to change”.

    Mike Steketee is a freelance journalist.

  • Portraits of Humanity

    An exhibition by Wendy Sharpe is planned for February/March next year.   See details below and contacts for Wendy Sharpe and Lee Meredith of the Asylum Seekers Centre. JohnMenadue.

    Renowned artist, Wendy Sharpe, is developing a portrait exhibition to highlight our common  humanity with asylum seekers.  A previous Archibald winner and 2014 finalist, Wendy is drawing portraits of 39 refugees and asylum seekers as her contribution to creating public awareness and putting a human face to the issue.

    “This is not about politics.  I want to show our common humanity,” she said.  “I want to show that they are people like us, with hopes and dreams just like ours.

    “Many of those I have met during this project have fled situations of great danger, whether it is political, cultural or religious.

    “I can’t imagine how it would feel to have to leave everything behind.  But they have had to leave their family, their home, their culture and their country.  All of these form your personal identity.  But they have survived and are now focussed on rebuilding their lives and starting all over again.  It has been an inspiring experience for me.

    “Through these portraits I want to reach out to as many people as possible, especially those who may be confused by the many myths about the issue or feel uncomfortable with what is currently happening.”

    The exhibition will portray people who are living legally in the community while they wait for their applications for protection to be processed as well as some who have recently been granted protection.

    “This exhibition will continue projects I have undertaken in the past, particularly as an official war artist,” said Wendy.  “The portraits will be displayed in a major exhibition and then placed on sale.  I will not be receiving any commission and intend to donate the proceeds to support the vital work of the Asylum Seekers Centre in Sydney which provides personal and practical support to asylum seekers, such as legal advice, accommodation, health care, food and employment assistance.

    Melanie Noden, CEO of the Asylum Seekers Centre, said it is an incredible honour to have the support of an artist of Wendy’s status.

    “We believe that most Australian’s want to see asylum seekers treated with respect and dignity while they are in our care and waiting for their applications to be processed.

    “Through her art Wendy will be sharing the lives of asylum seekers with the general public, and show that underneath all the troubles and politics around the issue, we are all the same.”

    The exhibition will run for four weeks in February/March next year at The Muse Gallery, Sydney TAFE, Harris Street, Sydney.

    We are grateful to the following supporters for their contribution towards making this exhibition possible:  Sydney TAFE,  Michael Amendolis and Kadmium Art+Design Supplies.

    Contacts:  Wendy Sharpe:  0448 887 319, 

    Lee Meredith, Asylum Seekers Centre:  0432 062 122

     

  • John Menadue. Great Teachers

    There has been a lot of recent comment about the importance of good teachers; how they can be recruited, trained and rewarded.

    Let me tell you about two teachers who turned my life around. Many of us have had such experiences with great teachers.

    Professor W.G.K. Duncan at Adelaide University taught me Political Science in 1958. I was used to lecturers and teachers presenting facts and interpretations for me. I would write down my lecture notes with the intention of reproducing them at examination time. I was a passive learner. But in WGK, I had a lecturer who asked question after question. I found it very frustrating for the whole first term. What was this fellow all about? He wouldn’t tell me what was correct, right or wrong.

    Should inheritance or property have any special rights in a democracy? How do we draw a line between individualism and collectivism and so on? In all these carefully crafted questions, he never provided me or other students with anything that looked like an answer.

    It took me a whole term to get over my frustration and irritation with him. But it was brilliant and challenging teaching. There is a kernel of truth to be found, but we have to work to get inside the shell to find out what it is. But once we find it, the truth is our own. I found that exploring, challenging and finding answers is where life’s energy comes from. Unknowingly WGK had helped me draw the link between social justice and faith which I had learnt in the Methodist manse of my father.

    WGK’s lectures were transforming.  He motivated me to think for myself. Both my head and heart were engaged. His own identity was clear and I felt a connection to it.

    There was also an earlier experience with a head master at Naracoorte (SA) High School in 1949. My family were Methodist improvers, but not particularly academic. My mother never went to university and my father never went to high school.

    I coasted along as a student, played a lot of sport and sitting comfortably in the lower half of every class. My father enquired about a job for me as a PMG linesman or bank teller.

    In my Intermediate Certificate year, the head master Alex McPherson decided that our examination class didn’t have a sense of urgency and direction. In effect, he became our teacher in almost all subjects for the last term. He was determined to get good results for us and the school in the external examinations the Intermediate Certificate.

    The change for me was dramatic.  McPherson was so enthusiastic and dedicated, even fearsome. He carried us with him. We respected him. He was known around the school as the ‘Iron Duke’. He shook us up. He pushed himself to the limit and expected teachers and students to do the same. His commitment to me and others was infectious. Dull subjects came to life. He showed us how the area of a circle, the formula ‘Pie R squared’ could be demonstrated by cutting the circle into thin slivers, patching them together to make a rectangle, which was easily measured. He challenged me when I said that ‘the sun rises in the East’. He asked me how that could be when the earth moves around the sun and not vice versa. He clearly loved his subjects and he also respected and loved his students.

    Alex McPherson stirred and enthused us. He was a colourful and charismatic teacher who cared for us but demanded a lot from us in return.

    To my great surprise, I got good results in the Intermediate Certificate year. I learned for the first time that I had reasonable ability and that if I applied myself I could get good results.  Most importantly I learned that when it all came to push and shove, any success was basically up to me.That lesson stayed with me in later education and in my career. When doubts arose, I recalled my experience with Alex McPherson.

    WGK Duncan and Alex McPherson both turned my life around. They both worked in the public sector and as you would note from their names they were both Scots. They were great advocates and exemplars of public education. They were both great motivators and leaders. They loved their students and their subjects.

    We all need teachers like them!

     

     

  • John Menadue. The dubious trade deal with Korea

    In earlier blogs – See July 6, 2014 ‘Turbocharging our trade or mainly hype’ – I drew attention to the exaggerated benefits of bilateral free trade agreements. We now have 7 of them with more under negotiation, including with China and two signed but not yet in force.

    These FTAs are third-rate in promoting trade compared with multi-lateral agreements.

    The recent September Report of the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties on the FTA with Korea confirms my doubts about the net benefits of these arrangements.

    Peter Martin in the SMH of the 5th September 2014 said ‘A government dominated investigation of the proposed Australia-Korea Free Trade Agreement damned it with faint praise saying its benefits are “minimal” and that the intellectual property provisions lack “recognition of the broader public interest”.’

    Peter Martin added further ‘The unusually luke warm endorsement of the committee headed by Liberal National MP Wyatt Roy reflects concern about the incorporation of so-called investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) mechanisms.’

    The two ALP members of the committee and the Green member said that they could not support the agreement at all.

    Doubts about FTAs feature in the Report which said ‘The World Trade Organisation cautions that, although such agreements can complement the multi-lateral trading scheme there are a number of concerns.’ The Report then elaborates on these serious concerns like trade diversion and confusing country of origin rules.

    The Report noted that ‘The Productivity Commission found that commercial benefits for Australian businesses from bilateral Free Trade Agreements were limited as the agreements did not address the non-tariff barriers that prevented market access.’

    The Report queried the economic modelling of the likely benefits to the Australian economy of the agreement with Korea. The Report noted ‘that the Committee’s attention had been drawn to the Productivity Commission’s findings that the general equilibrium model used to establish the figures is generally over-optimistic – overstating the gains and underestimating the losses.’

    On investor-state dispute settlement arrangements the conclusion of the Committee was equivocal. It said ‘The evidence suggests that the escalated use of ISDS mechanisms has produced unintended consequences for governments globally …’ The Report noted that the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade had advised that Korea would not have signed the agreement without the ISDS mechanism.

    There will undoubtedly be some important benefits for particular Australian export sectors but on balance the report is suggesting that considering the downsides and the over-optimistic estimates, the benefits will be marginal.

    This agreement with Korea like the agreement with Japan received acclamation from Tony Abbott and Andrew Robb as a great break through. This all party committee of the parliament has given it a very cool reception

    In his chairing of the G20 meeting in Brisbane in November the Prime Minister would best serve our trade interests if he can persuade other countries to put life back into the Doha Round of multilateral trade negotiations that have lost their way. Our interests are best served in multilateral trade negotiations, as difficult as they may be, rather than spending so much time obtaining marginal benefits from bilateral free trade arrangements which are really preferential rather than free trade deals.

  • Robert Manne. “When the facts change I change my mind. What do you do, Sir.” JM Keynes

    You might be interested in this repost. John Menadue.

     

    I have been a supporter of refugee rights since the mid-1970s, when with others I formed the Indo-China Refugee Association. During the period of the Howard government I wrote tens of thousands of words in defence of the asylum seekers fleeing from Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran. This interest arose from family history. Not only was I the child of refugees from Nazism. I very recently discovered that not long after my father was accepted by this country he wrote passionate articles in The Jewish News expressing, on the one hand, gratitude to Australia, and, on the other, radical astonishment that the most anti-fascist element in the community, Jewish refugees, were subject to petty forms of discrimination as enemy aliens. I mention all this to make it clear that what I am going to say this afternoon is delivered with a heavy heart.

    The asylum seeker issue, or more accurately, the issue of those asylum seekers who arrive by boat, has been near the centre of Australian politics for the past fifteen years. Opinion has generally fallen into two broad camps—the friends of the asylum seekers and their enemies. These camps have now become very rigid. Thought has become frozen. As happens when thought is frozen, dishonesty abounds.

    The dishonesty of the enemies of the asylum seekers is familiar. They deny or diminish the human cruelty of their deterrent policies—mandatory indefinite detention; temporary protection visas; offshore processing; tow-back to Indonesia. They close their eyes to the damage these deterrent policies inflict upon the reputation of this country, especially in the Asia-Pacific region where the White Australia Policy is remembered. Their attitudes moreover reek of hypocrisy. The enemies of the asylum seekers opposed the idea of deterring boat arrivals by sending eight hundred to Malaysia on the grounds that it was not a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention. They simultaneously advocated towing boats back to Indonesia, itself not a signatory to the Convention. In public, they shed crocodile tears about the hundreds of drownings that occurred under the policies of Rudd and Gillard. In private despite the mass drownings they were delighted with the political advantages the accelerated arrivals offered to the Abbott Opposition, as a WikiLeaks cable revealed.

    Of more interest to me however is the dishonesty that I have witnessed among my former allies—the friends of the asylum seekers.  From late August 2001 the Howard government introduced the policies of offshore processing on Nauru and Manus Island and occasional tow-back to Indonesia, known as the Pacific Solution. Between 2002 and 2007 virtually no asylum seekers arrived by boat. And yet throughout these years, almost without exception, the friends of the asylum seekers refused to admit that in its deterrent objective the policy had worked.

    In 2008 the Rudd government dismantled the Pacific Solution. Shortly after, the asylum seeker boats returned, eventually in much larger numbers than during the Howard period. Under Howard there were approximately 13,000 boat asylum seekers; in just the final year of the Gillard government some 25,000. And yet the friends of the asylum seekers rarely admitted that it was the dismantling of the Howard policies that was primarily responsible. Frequently the friends of the asylum seekers claimed that with firm political leadership the anti-asylum seeker sentiment of the Australian people could be turned. This denied the meaning of hundreds of public opinion surveys and flew in the face of common sense.

    Most troublingly, the friends of the asylum seekers failed to register the moral meaning of the 1100 certain or probable drownings that took place under Rudd and Gillard. There was great anguish at the time of the mass drowning following the sinking of SIEV-X in October 2001 for which the Howard government was blamed. There has been even greater anguish following the recent terrible death of Reza Berati on Manus Island for which the policies of the Abbott government have been blamed. But among the friends of the asylum seekers, the mass drownings that took place under Rudd and Gillard barely registered or lingered in collective memory. I frequently read articles by prominent friends of the asylum seekers berating the present policies of offshore processing and tow-back where even the fact of mass death by drowning is not mentioned.

    In their principled opposition to all forms of deterrent policy, many friends of the asylum seekers are wedded to a Kantian absolute—for them it is never permissible to save a greater number of lives by treating certain people, like those presently marooned on offshore processing centres on Nauru and Manus Island, as a means to an end. Others are legal absolutists, for whom, no matter what the consequences, it is never permissible for what they believe is the letter or spirit of international law, in this case the UN Refugee Convention, to be violated by a regime of offshore processing. Yet others are indifferent to the political dimension of the asylum seeker question. For them there is no problem for the Labor Party, the only opposition party that is a serious contender for government, to hand a permanent political advantage to its Coalition opponents. This position implies that in Australia today the asylum seeker issue should trump all other considerations, for example whether or not our country becomes involved in the most vital question of our era—the struggle to combat global warming.  In my view, all these forms of absolutism—moral, legal, anti-political—are wrong-headed. On the asylum seeker issue many moral, legal and political questions have to be balanced and taken into account. The world is complex. Asylum seeker policy is inherently very difficult.

    Because of their commitment to one or another form of absolutism, almost all friends of the asylum seekers now advocate the dismantling of the policy of offshore processing and tow-back, in other words a return to the policy of the Rudd government in 2007-8. Our only reliable guide to what might eventuate if they succeeded in their ambition is what happened in the past. Following Rudd’s abandonment of the Pacific Solution, three things occurred. The issue of asylum seekers helped undermine the government’s popularity and served the interests of the Coalition. Asylum seekers arrived by boat in accelerating numbers—in 2010-11, 5,000; in 2011-12, 8,000 and in 2012-13, 25,000. Most importantly, in these few years, on their way to Australia, some 1100 asylum seekers died at sea. Those who now advocate the end of the current policy of offshore processing and tow-back, a policy that has quite predictably stopped the boats, need to explain why history will not repeat itself.

    There is another consequence of the present position of the friends of the asylum seekers—by campaigning for the dismantling of offshore processing, they have abandoned any prospect of contributing to the formulation of a more humane and politically realistic asylum seeker and refugee policy. One aspect would be to look to conditions in the offshore processing centres and the ultimate fate of those presently there in such a way that suffering was diminished but the deterrent purpose maintained. The other would be to look to the future of the thirty thousand or so recently arrived asylum seekers in Australia who are being treated with great cruelty by the present government. Some of these people are in detention centres. A larger number are on one or another form of bridging visa, waiting for their asylum seeker claims to be assessed. Some with adverse ASIO assessments have been imprisoned without trial for life. Many are living in penury. Many are not allowed to work. These people are promised that even if they are assessed to be genuine refugees they will never be allowed to become permanent citizens.

    Through the combination of these policies, Australia for the first time in its history has a government that is consciously engineering the creation of an immigrant under-class.  As there is now an effective deterrent at the border, older ineffective domestic deterrent policies—like mandatory detention, temporary protection visas, absence of work rights or access to decent welfare services—are not only cruel but entirely purposeless.  They are also quite predictably creating social problems for Australia in the future. All these policies should be abandoned.

    It is, moreover, a misunderstanding to think that Australians are hostile to refugees. Historical experience and almost all opinion polls show that Australians are opposed not to refugees but to those who arrive without visas by boat. It was more politically difficult for the Fraser government to accept the 2,000 Vietnamese spontaneous boat refugee arrivals than the tens of thousands selected by the government from the South-East Asian camps.

    Rather than advocating the dismantling of offshore processing, the friends of the asylum seekers in my opinion could play a far more fruitful role by the advocacy of full human rights for those asylum seekers presently on Australian soil, and an annual refugee intake of 30,000 refugees chosen from among those in most desperate need, like the persecuted Hazaras of Afghanistan or the Rohingyas of Myanmar, the ethno-religious groups most closely experiencing what the Jews of Central Europe experienced in the late 1930s. This is the kind of policy that the Labor Party could realistically take to the next election. It is the policy for which I intend to fight.

     

    This talk was delivered to Limmud Oz in Melbourne on Sunday, June 8 2014. Limmud Oz is a Jewish Festival of Ideas.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • John Menadue. Postcard from Copenhagen – I went to the ‘wrong’ church.

    I fronted up for Mass last Sunday – or so I thought. The web had described the cathedral as small case ‘c’ catholic rather than upper case ‘C’ Catholic. It was the Protestant/Lutheran cathedral in Copenhagen. I missed the Eucharist but it was a moving encounter with my ‘separated brothers and sisters’.

    In 1536 when the absolutist Danish monarchy decided to follow Luther rather than Pope Paul III, they arrested the Roman Catholic hierarchy and almost swept the state clean of Roman Catholics. In a population of only five or six million in Denmark, there are now only about 40,000 Roman Catholics, mainly foreigners. The historic old Roman Catholics churches, such as the 12th Century UNESCO listed cathedral in Roskilde, became Lutheran or Protestant churches.

    But I found the Sunday morning service instructive. The organ music and choir were superb. The congregation sat for hymns and stood for prayers. In the pew behind us sat Queen Margrethe II of Denmark. She was dressed informally in jumper and skirt, with no obvious security.

    The sermon or homily was preached from a side pulpit – those at the front had double seats, so we could switch our view to the back. With the sermon in Danish, I obviously couldn’t understand much of it but it gave me time to think how offensive it has been that the Christian churches have been divided for so long.

    The first major break was in 1053 as the Roman Church, on quite trivial issues, waved farewell to the Eastern Church based in Constantinople. This split was confirmed in blood in 1204 when the Fourth Crusaders under the Pope sacked Constantinople.

    The early Christian communities had been established in what is now Greece and Turkey, but we have been divided ever since.

    Then came the great divide in Northern Europe with the Luther Reformation in the 16th Century. Luther was right on two basic issues. The first was the corruption and selling of indulgences in the Catholic Church particularly under Pope Sixtus IV and Alexander VI. The second was the doctrinal insistence by Luther that believers were sanctified by faith and not by good works, although there was common agreement that good deeds should follow faith. The Augsburg Declaration of 1999 acknowledged that Luther and the Lutheran churches had been correct on this doctrinal issue. The Declaration was signed by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Lutheran Churches of Germany. But everyone was polite enough not to emphasise that Luther had been right.

    And so Christendom was split again in Western Europe in the 16th Century, a disruption that triggered wars, persecution and the counter-reformation.

    Every person and every institution is in need of reform, but we all cling to the power and security which familiar institutions bring. The Luther reforms were necessary, but it is regrettable that the reforms could not have been contained within the Catholic Church. What a difference it would have made if the necessary reform of the Catholic Church had occurred without the enormous and damaging Christian schism of separation.

    The Catholic Church faces similar problems today – how to reform? But the barriers will be, as they have always been – leaders, hierarchies and institutions that are more concerned about maintaining their power. They have a lot to lose personally from reform. So they resist.

    I am glad I went to the Lutheran Church in Copenhagen. But I missed the Eucharist and the sense that I get, particularly when I am travelling outside Australia, how universal the Catholic Church is.

    The barque of Peter has taken a lot of water particularly as a result of the division of Christendom in the 11th and 16th Centuries. But the barque sails on as the keeper of the Faith.

    As a Catholic, I still feel a very good Methodist! ‘Reform’ is in my genes.

  • Andrew Kaldor. Are We Paying Too Much To Stop The Boats?

    One of the claims that some commentators like to make about Australia’s asylum seeker policy is that it saves money. It’s got to be cheaper to stop the boats than to have people coming to our shores that way to seek refuge. Right?

    Wrong. It is not easy to find the actual total costs of Australia’s policy of mandatory detention and offshore processing across all agencies because no government has ever provided a total figure. But the National Commission of Audit recently released data which shines a light on the huge and rapidly increasing costs of our policies.

    By the Audit Commission’s reckoning, Australia now spends the same as the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) spends on its entire global refugee and displaced persons operations.

    The UNHCR is responsible for helping and protecting some 50 million displaced persons around the world, including 11.6 million refugees. It expects to spend about $3.5 billion (US$3.3bn) in 2014. To cover 10,000 staff and all relief for the emergencies in Syria and Iraq, and Africa, as well as the protracted situations worldwide.

    Compare that with the $3.3 billion Australia spent in 2013-14 on the detention and processing of boat arrivals. It has been the fastest growing Government programme over recent years, increasing from $118 million in 2010 at the average annual growth rate of a staggering 129 per cent.

    Next year, the Department of Immigration’s budget is about $2.9 billion for that operation. But this number probably understates the total costs. It appears to ignore the extra aid to Papua New Guinea for signing the Manus Island deal, $420m over four years. It also ignores the costs of the AFP, ASIO, and State judicial system. Moreover, the value of current contracts issued by the Immigration Department, just for offshore detention for the 2014-15 fiscal year, has been estimated to be $2.7 billion [Source: data compiled by Nick Evershed, The Guardian, 25 August 2014].

    The most expensive and least efficient part of Australia’s policy is offshore detention. The commission calculated that offshore processing costs Australian taxpayers is 10 times more than letting asylum seekers live in the community while their refugee claims are processed. The cost for detaining one asylum seeker offshore for one year is over $400,000, compared with $239,000 for onshore detention and under $100,000 for community detention. The cheapest option is a bridging visa which costs $40,000 a year. Moving all the asylum seekers to bridging visas, which are no guarantee of permanent settlement, would save the Federal Budget around $2 billion.

    The huge cost of overseas detention should be carefully examined particularly when other programmes are subject to budget cuts. An assessment should include a comparison of our expenditure with other countries, other government programmes, and particularly to the UNHCR.

    Given that Australia currently has about 34,000 people at various stages of the asylum process, expenditure of $3.5bn is extraordinarily expensive and wasteful.

    Sweden, which received around 54,000 asylum seekers in 2013 and expects more than 60,000 this year, spends some $1bn (7B kroner ) – a third of our costs – to manage almost double the number of asylum seekers.

    The UK will spend $3.13 billion (1.8bn pounds) on its entire immigration and border operations in 2014-15. Compare this with the Immigration Department’s total budget for 2015 of $4.8 billion.

    Compare this also with our spending priorities domestically. Proposed higher education cuts will save a total $3.1 billion over the next four years, equal to the costs of deterring the boats for one year.

    Using the data made publicly available, the savings from placing all asylum seekers on bridging visas for one year would equal, for example, the revenue gained from the unpopular fuel excise indexation over the next four years.

    Australia spends more on managing maritime asylum seekers than the total government funding for R & D. Total budgeted funding for research in 2014-15 is $2.55 billion.

    The $7 Medicare co-payment, designed to build a $20 billion research fund, is forecast to raise about $2.7 billion next year – still less than our cost of deterring asylum seekers.

    And to put these costs into a cultural perspective, stopping the boats costs about as much as funding the ABC, SBS, Arts Council, Australian Institute of Sport and National Parks put together.

    The “Winning Edge” plan by the Australian Institute of Sport to move our performance from world class to world best, receives an appropriation of $180 million. That is equivalent to holding about 450 asylum seekers in offshore detention for one year.

    In a new book Refugees: Why Seeking Asylum Is Legal And Australia’s Policies Are Not, authors Jane McAdam and Fiona Chong argue that the extraordinary expense of our deterrence measure is not justified by empirical evidence about the behaviour, threat or legitimacy of asylum seekers. We have better, cheaper options.

    The economic burden of stopping the boats is massive and unnecessary. Politicians on all sides of the debate should take the cost of our current approach into account.

    The question we should all be asking is this: is stopping the boats as important as our spending on research, or the entire budget of recreation, sport and culture?

    Andrew Kaldor is a Sydney businessman, philanthropist and founder of the Andrew and Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at NSW.

     

     

     

  • John Menadue. Why health reform is so hard. It’s about power.

    You may be interested in this repost.  John Menadue.

     

    I have been actively involved in health policy for over twenty years. Throughout that period Medicare has been the shining light that has well and truly stood the test of time. But necessary health reforms are hard. They are deferred or avoided.  Without ministerial leadership there is an enormous lethargy in the health system.

    The major reason I suggest for reform being hard is the power of “insiders” and the way they exercise that power. At one level there are those insiders that administer health services. Health is a highly technical, large and complex field that is difficult for outsiders to come to grips with. This gives disproportionate power to health administrators on the inside. Then at another level which is ‘joined at the hip’ with these administrators are the vested interests or rent seekers who batten on the health service and dominate the public debate. It was the same type of vested interests who so selfishly led the opposition to Medicare in 1975. They are still with us today but in a different guise.

    .These vested interested who can delay or veto reform must be recognised for the power they exercise.– the AMA, the Australian Pharmacy Guild, the private health insurance funds, Medicines Australia and the state and territory health bureaucracies..

    The AMA is opposed to reform of the perverse incentives of the fee for service system of remuneration.FFS is not appropriate for chronic care; it encourages over servicing, over referrals and over prescribing. The financial incentive should be to keep people healthy through contracts and capitation in general practise and not financially reward doctors when the patient is sick.  .

    The AMA is turning a blind eye to the growing corporate takeover of general practise and the associated vertical integration into radiology and pathology. The health sector is seen as easy picking by business, if only the government would get out of the way.

    No government will lightly challenge the AMA

    The Australian Pharmacy Guild stands in the way of competition and the need for pharmacists to become more health professional and less like shopkeepers. The APG often threatens to use its power through pharmacies across the country.

    The private health insurance companies are expensive financial intermediaries who receive a $7 b annual taxpayer subsidy. PHI’s benefit the wealthy and most importantly weaken the power of Medicare to control prices. Gap insurance has underwritten an enormous increase in specialist fees. Now PHI’s want to move into general practice.  Government subsidized PHI is a major threat to health care in Australia as it has become so disastrous in the US. PHI sees governments as a relatively easy pushover.

    Medicines Australia, that represents the manufacturer and distributor of drugs charges Australians $2b per annum more pa than New Zealanders for equivalent drugs. It is a powerful lobby group.

    We have 8 state and territory health bureaucracies supported by their ministers that are very concerned to protect their own turf at the expense of an integrated national system. The federal government is reluctant to stare down the parochialism of the states

    Unless we take the health debate to ‘outsiders’ and break the power of the insiders-the  rent seekers and vested interests-, we are unlikely to see significant progress in health reform. The vested interests invariably win out over the public interest.

    There has been incremental change in response to political and budgetary pressures, but that has produces a patchwork set of arrangements that lack guiding values or principles. The debate is about ‘managing’ the health system and not about the values and principles that should drive it.

    Eight years ago, Ian McAuley and I in New Matilda suggested some key reform that we believed were necessary to ensure universality and the improvement in both the equity and efficiency of our health sector. Those suggested reforms were.

    • To focus program delivery in primary healthcare which can provide an integrated range of services?  But the debate is focussed on iconic hospitals.
    • To move to a single, universal insurer and to avoid going down the US path.
    • To organise healthcare programs around the needs of users rather than in response to providers.
    • To rationalise user payments so as to achieve equity and not distort resource allocation.
    • To retain Commonwealth responsibility for funding and standard-setting and deliver programs through joint Commonwealth/State administrations.
    • To involve citizens in healthcare to counter the strong lobbies of service providers/vested interests.
    • To focus ministerial concern on health rather than health services because many of the key services to advance the health of the population are outside the health portfolio. E.g. poverty, diet and distance.

    The public ‘debate’ on health is between the powerful rent-seekers with their well-funded public relations machines and the minister. The public is excluded from the debate and the media is ill-equipped to undertake the important examination of key policy issues. Under-resourced journalists are forced to rely increasingly on handouts by the rent-seekers.

    Commonwealth  Ministers  for Health are very dependent on the Department of Health and Ageing, particularly, as is often the case with ministers who are not across the issues and don’t have a clear policy program themselves. Unfortunately ministers who rely on the DHA will be disappointed. The Department is ill-equipped .It is structured in ways that reflects the interests of providers, e.g. doctors and pharmacists, rather than structured on the basis of community interests, such as acute care, chronic care or demography.  DHA has little economic expertise. One very senior Commonwealth official said to me, DHA does not have any strategic sense in health policy. It doesn’t effectively integrate the Commonwealth’s own expensive programs, let alone make any real progress in bridging the Commonwealth and State divide. During the difficult negotiations with the states on health reform during the Rudd Government period, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet effectively had to step in because DHA was not up to the job.

    The role-out of e-health by DHA is an expensive mess. DHA sees Medicare as a funding vehicle and not a policy instrument. Medicare is not even within DHA. The Department clearly sees its major role to keep the peace and keep the minister out of any public brawl or argument.  Health reform and health policy is an after-thought.

    The Ministerial/Departmental model in health has failed. It is incapable of contesting the power of the rent seekers.

    Governments are invariably captured by their own health insiders who are people of good will and professional skills but they have often spent their whole professional lives working in the health sector. Take the example of the appointment in 2008 of the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission. The Commission was overwhelmingly composed of health insiders with their limited horizons. The Chair was a senior executive of BUPA. Not surprisingly NHHRC produced very little worthwhile reform. Labour governments as well as Coalition governments like to smoodge the powerful vested interests and avoid political trouble.

    I have been urging for many years two ways to overcome the problem of the powerful insiders and vested interests.

    The first is to bring the Productivity Commission and Departments of Treasury and Finance into active involvement in health policy. The rigour and the outside view that they can bring is essential.

    Secondly, because of the failure of the ministerial/departmental model which is intensified by the poor performance of DHA I have proposed the establishment of a Commonwealth Health Commission composed of professional and independent people to take responsibility for health policy administration, subject to government policy guidelines. The Reserve Bank has shown the value of an independent and professional body that can lead public debate on important issues and implement government policies. And not get waylaid by powerful vested interests.

    Unless the governance problem in health is addressed we can forget serious reform. As part of this governance reform we need to drastically cut the power of lobbyists, both third party and in house lobbyists. Secret discussions and deals by vested interests with politicians and senior public servants must be stopped.

    Health is too important a matter to be left to the health insiders.

    What do they know of health who only health knows?

    If there was one word I would use to describe the obstacle(s) to health reform it would be ‘POWER’

     

     

  • Kerry Murphy. Kurds in the way.

    Since the collapse of three divisions of the Iraqi army at Mosul in June 2014, it has been the Peshmerga, Kurdish militias, that have strongly opposed the apocalyptic death cult of ISIS in Iraq. Already Syrian Kurdish forces had strongly defended their territories in Syria. The relief of the besieged Yazidis on Mount Sinjar saw Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces and Turkish PKK forces help on the ground. The conflicts in Iraq and Syria are continuing to mutate and some of the results mean that western countries have to support groups such as the PKK previously labelled terrorists.

    The Kurds have long sought their own country and they were right to feel they were misled after the First World War when they were promised independence in the Treaty of Sevres in 1920 only to lose it with the resurgence of Turkish nationalism under Ataturk and the subsequent Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. Since then, the estimated 30 million Kurds have been split between Iraq, Turkey, Syria and Iran. They have risen in rebellion in Turkey on a number of occasions and the Marxist PKK is their armed wing. There have also been Kurdish rebellions in Syria, Iraq and Iran, all have been severely repressed. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein infamously used chemical weapons against the Kurds in the Al Anfal campaign against the town of Halabja, during the time of the Iran/Iraq war. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Anfal_Campaign)

    With the end of the first Gulf War in 1991, the Kurdish region in northern Iraq was established under the protection of the West’s no-fly zone. Since then, the Kurds have managed their own territory with little control from Baghdad. The new Iraqi State saw the Kurds gain the positon of President and further develop the Kurdish Regional Government, where Kurdish in the main language, not Arabic. Until recently, even speaking Kurdish in Turkey was likely to get you targeted by the Turkish security forces. US forces worked well with the Kurds and there were no reported deaths of US military personnel in the Kurdish region after 2003.

    Now we have the PKK and Iraqi Peshmerga fighting ISIS in Iraq, with the Syrian Kurds (YPG) and some PKK fighting ISIS in Syria. The Kurds have a formidable reputation but are not well armed, as the Iraqi Government did not agree to the Peshmerga being equipped with modern weapons, so the old Soviet era Kalashnikov is still their main weapon.

    Now it has changed and Australia, the US, France and other western powers have sent modern weapons to the Kurds, with the reluctant agreement of the Iraqi government. Combined with US and western airpower, the Kurds are holding their ground and recovering some territory in Iraq from ISIS.   (http://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iraq-situation-report-september-18-19-2014) They have also expanded their territory to include the ‘disputed’ city of Kirkuk, and its surrounding oilfields. The Kurds have long wanted to control Kirkuk and get the economic benefit of the oil fields nearby.

    Meanwhile in Syria, Kurdish YPG forces have held their own territory whilst Assad and the mainly Sunni rebels fought it out. In some places, the Kurds were supported by regime forces to defend their territory against rebels, especially those of Jabhat Al Nusra (JN is the Al- Qaeda linked opposition force).

    The Kurds now are threatened by the rise of ISIS which is advancing against the Syrian regime, JN, the Free Syrian Army and several Islamist opposition forces. In the last week thousands of Kurds have fled into Turkey seeking shelter from ISIS, whilst their militias try to hold the ground and repulse ISIS. (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/22/syrian-kurdish-fighters-islamic-state-isis-kobani) . It is estimated that 100,000 Kurds have fled to Turkey in a week. (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/21/isis-kurds-escape-into-turkey-from-syria-kobani )

    The Syrian Kurds have worked with the Turkish PKK forces against ISIS and now it seems a coalition of US lead airpower is helping them, as well as their fellow Kurds in Iraq. It is likely that the Syrian Kurds will also need more weapons to help them hold back an expansionist ISIS so will these weapons be supplied by the West? This would be an intervention without the support of the Syrian regime, but ironically, it would support the aims of the Syrian regime against ISIS.

    A week ago we saw the smiling face of unveiled female Kurdish fighters in Iraq on the front pages of the Fairfax papers. (http://www.theage.com.au/world/is-australia-arming-terrorist-pkk-fighters-20140915-10h8cc.html) The PKK is more political than religious, and religious extremism like you see in ISIS is rare amongst the Kurds.  She was with the PKK, and the PKK and Turkish government have only recently reached a truce after decades of fighting which has cost the lives of thousands. We must remember that Turkey is a member of NATO, and so it would be difficult for the West to supply weapons to armed militias that have until recently been involved in armed conflict against the Turkish State. However the advent of ISIS means that survival trumps politics.

    It is possible that if ISIS can be constrained, or even seriously depleted, then the Kurds in Iraq will be in their strongest position to claim de jure independence since 1920. Such a move would be provocative for Turkey and Iran, neither of which would want to recognise an independent Kurdistan as that would only encourage the minorities in their own countries. What will happen in Syria is a harder question, but if the Kurds can survive and hold back ISIS, it will make their bargaining position much stronger for a post war Syria.

    Kerry Murphy is a Sydney solicitor who specialises in Immigration Law

     

  • Walter Hamilton. A paranoid state?

    The same question might be asked of many places on earth in these security-conscious times. On this occasion, however, the subject is Japan: a state several times removed, one would have thought, from legitimate concerns about an imminent threat from an alien creed enforced by a ruthless blood-cult. (Enough of that; you only have turn on commercial radio to know what I mean.)

    Japanese paranoia comes to mind for several reasons. I could hardly believe my eyes when watching the main evening current affairs program on NHK (the national broadcaster) the other night. During a story on last week’s International Whaling Commission meeting, a graphic appeared giving the reason why New Zealand had brought a motion to impose stricter conditions on “scientific whaling”. The purpose, said NHK, was to “cause Japan international embarrassment.” It’s believed the program, News Center-9, is closely monitored by NHK’s conservative president––a man who on taking up his job stated that it was not the business of a public broadcaster to contradict the government of the day­­––and, under pressure from above, nervous editors can go to absurd lengths to toe the line. By the way, I can report that whale meat has just been added to the menu at the ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s headquarters in Tokyo. If that is not a snub to the International Court of Justice, which this year ruled against Japan’s whaling program, I don’t know what is.

    But enough of cetaceans, there are bigger “fish” to fry in this discussion.

    A Japanese friend of mine recently returned from a visit to Uluru. She enjoyed the trip very much, she said, especially the cordiality of the Australian tourists she encountered at the Rock. Most had either visited Japan or knew people who had, and they were eager to share their favourable impressions of the country. This affability came as a shock to her: “I had the impression foreigners did not like Japan,” she told me. My friend is a well-educated and widely travelled individual; so how can we account for her paranoia?

    The “foreigners” to which she refers, of course, are Chinese and Koreans––although NHK’s characterization of New Zealand as a hostile state suggests a deeper strain of vulnerability and grievance.

    Japanese antipathy towards China and South Korea, and vice versa, has rarely been as intense as it is now. About 53% of Chinese respondents (and 29% of Japanese), in a recent poll, said they expected a war to break out between the two countries before the end of the decade. The percentage of Japanese respondents who said they had a negative impression of China increased to 93% from 90% a year earlier, according to Genron NPO, a Tokyo-based non-profit group. Similar findings have emerged from surveys on attitudes between Koreans and Japanese.

    This siege mentality has been on display, too, in the nation’s mass media. I’ve mentioned NHK. There’s also the case of the Asahi Shimbun, the country’s venerable, left-of-centre newspaper that has been under fire from rivals on the right over its coverage of the “comfort women” issue. Some of the Asahi’s assailants have even called for its closure on the grounds that it willfully damaged relations with South Korea by publishing a false account of the Imperial Japanese Army rounding up Korean women on the island of Cheju during the war and forcing them into prostitution. The articles that ran in the newspaper in the 1980s and 1990s were based on the testimony of one Seiji Yoshida, who claimed to have witnessed the round-ups (his evidence is also cited in several “authoritative” books). The Asahi now accepts (many years after his claims were first challenged) that Yoshida fabricated his testimony and, under relentless attacks from right-wing commentators, the president of the newspaper group has made a public apology.

    In the context of the “history wars” now raging in Japan––fed, as I suggest, by a siege mentality verging on paranoia––this admission of error is not necessarily beneficial to the cause of reasoned debate. While the Yoshida claims undoubtedly should have been retracted earlier, the public is now being led into believing his testimony singularly brought about South Korea’s hardline position on the issue and caused the breakdown in bilateral relations. Some on the right are demanding that Japan abandon its earlier admissions of culpability, despite an abundance of other, unassailable, evidence of state-sponsored prostitution in Japan and its colonies. (Readers may care to review the treatment of this issue in my book Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story.)

    A far-right candidate in the last Tokyo gubernatorial election, Toshio Tamogami (who garnered 12% of the vote), has joined the chorus with a new book entitled Why Does the Asahi Shimbun So Hate Abe Shinzo? General Tamogami served as Chief-of-Staff of Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force until he was sacked in 2008 for publishing an article justifying Japanese imperialism: “If you say that Japan was the aggressor nation, then I would like to ask what country among the great powers of that time was not an aggressor?” If the Asahi can, at one stroke, be discredited in the public eye, then alternative versions of history propagated by Tamogami and his ilk gain traction by default.

    In the interest of disclosure, I should point out that I have used this blog-site to criticize Shinzo Abe myself on a number of occasions. I don’t hate him and neither do I judge, from reading its editorial pages, does the Asahi. Its criticisms of Abe’s new security laws, military ambitions and other actions provocative of Japan’s near neighbours reflect policy disagreements not personal animus. Given that the government has a skilled and well-resourced public relations machine at its disposal (not excluding NHK) to prosecute its side of any argument, the attacks on the Asahi seem superfluous, except for an ideological purpose.

    But if this blog is about paranoia, perhaps the author should take care not to succumb as well. And what is paranoia, anyway, but an unreasonable sense of persecution. When we take a look behind the poll figures quoted earlier, we find evidence of just that: a common tendency of human beings to feel antagonistic towards those whom it is presumed harbour ill feelings towards us. Both the Chinese and the Japanese are convinced that the other is hostile towards them, and because of this they must return hostility. In the vicious cycle the origins of their discord disappear into a fog of self-justification. Opinion polls may tap into the public consciousness, but they are often poorer predictors of behaviour. Is the prospect of war, alarmingly foreseen by a majority of Chinese respondents, as real if we also know that they expect the other side to start it?

    Contrary to the opinion-poll view of the future we have evidence that Chinese tourists, for instance, are growing tired of Japan being unofficially “off-limits” to their curiosity. As reported in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun: “In July, Chinese visitors to Japan doubled on the year to 281,000, making them the largest tourist group from aboard, according to the Japanese government. The figure has climbed back above the level seen in July 2012, before tensions flared.” Japanese businesses are said to be growing more optimistic about the Chinese market, as political considerations give way to pragmatic commercial interests. Perhaps the many Chinese tourists mingling with the temple crowds in Kyoto or taking their lunch at a noodle bar in Tokyo will discover that ordinary Japanese don’t really feel about them quite as they imagined they did.

    It would be a good beginning to a sounder dialogue.

    Walter Hamilton reported from Japan for eleven years for the ABC.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • John Menadue–We stopped the boats; we will now stop the jihadists

    You may be interested in this repost. John Menadue

     

    By linking boat arrivals and jihadists in the one sentence, a couple of weeks ago, Tony Abbott sounded very much like a dog-whistler that we can expect to hear more from in the future.

    He knows there is widespread, although a mistaken perception, that most boat arrivals were Muslims and that Muslim jihadist are a threat to Australia. A lot of dog-whistlers are going to feed on that perception.

    Scott Morrison has shown us what is likely to be in store. He told Jane Cadzow in the SMH that he had urged the coalition partners ‘to ramp up the questioning … to capitalise on anti-Muslim sentiment’.

    In my blog of December 31 last year ‘Are most asylum seekers and refugees Muslims?’ I wrote about the refugee settlement figures for two years that were then available – Calendar year 2010 and April 2011 to March 2012. With some qualifications, the figures showed that in the first period 51% of refugees were Christian, 26% Muslim and 23% ‘other’. In the second period, 42% were Muslim, 34% Christian and 24% ‘other’.

    In assessing refugees of course, no religious test is or should be made. Further the figures will vary from year to year on religious background depending on the asylum flows and countries of violence and persecution, e.g. from the Middle East, Myanmar, Africa or Sri Lanka. The Christian outflow from the Middle East is likely to continue as Christian minorities face continuing persecution and death.

    The figures that I mention above do not show that most asylum seekers are Muslim.

    It is also a mistake to suggest in any way that most Muslims are Jihadists. Some will be, but every group has its extremists and hot-heads that must be managed.

    I have not yet seen any figures to suggest that the Jihadists from Australia now fighting in the Middle East were former asylum seekers or refugees. Many of them look to be Australian born converts with very non-Middle Eastern names. Converts often have a habit of being more extreme. Every community has social misfits ,seeking notoriety and looking for excitement.

    It is the responsibility of the Australian government not to act with political opportunism over this problem, but to very forcefully and deliberately deal with extremists who leave this country to fight battles overseas that have got nothing to do with Australia. Where appropriate citizenship should be denied, passports withdrawn and breaches of our laws resolutely pursued. We can’t build a diverse and strong multi-cultural Australia if some of our number is allowed to abuse our hospitality and fight old battles overseas.

    In gathering intelligence on jihadists we will depend on ASIO and ASIS. Although my experience with these two organisations is dated they don’t give me much confidence.  They do attract a lot of odd bods, with little effective review of their performance. My experience was that ministers and senior officials are easily seduced into the unreal world of information and misinformation, facts and untested gossip.

    The Muslim leadership in Australia also has to bear a heavy responsibility in helping to manage the hot-heads in their communities. It may be apocryphal but I heard that during the Balkan War of 1991-99, Paul Keating summoned the Serb and Croat leaders in Australia, and warned them if violence continued between their communities, he would ‘knock your f… head’s off’. It sounds very Keatingesque – blunt and to the point. But to me it highlights the responsibility of leaders of our new communities to their new country.

    I have seen warnings but no evidence that Australians have involved themselves in the Israeli/ Gaza conflict

    I hope we can keep the dog-whistlers at bay, who will want to make the link between boat arrivals, Muslims and Jihadists. It is a sensitive issue and must be handled in a sensitive and resolute way without political opportunism intervening.

    Firmness is required by both the Australian government and its agencies, and the Muslim leadership in Australia.

     

  • Xanthe Emery: Family violence and immigration – is the message getting across?

    Family violence in Australia is at epidemic levels, with some horrific high profile cases dominating the news in 2014. Migrant women in Australia are extremely vulnerable to violence from their partners. Threats to cancel a woman’s visa are used to frighten, intimidate, and coerce her to stay in a violent relationship. More could be done to ensure that migrants are aware you don’t have to remain in a violent relationship to obtain a visa.

    Visas for family members of Australian citizens, permanent residents, and some eligible New Zealand citizens will make up 32% of the migration programme for Australia in the 2014-15 financial year. Partner visas (including spouses, de facto couples and fiancés) make up the vast majority of the visas in the family stream. In the 2014-15 year, the government has planned for 47,825 partner visas.[1] Generally, partner visas are granted first as temporary visas. After approximately two years, temporary partner visa holders can move to a permanent partner visa, once they have satisfied the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (“DIBP”) that the relationship with their sponsoring partner is genuine and continuing.

    However, in certain circumstances, a person can be granted a permanent partner visa, despite the fact that the relationship with their sponsoring partner has ended. One of these exceptions is where a visa applicant can demonstrate that they have experienced family (or domestic) violence at the hands of their sponsoring partner during the relationship. Very specific evidence is required to satisfy DIBP that violence has occurred, and the burden of providing the evidence remains with the visa applicant. These are referred to as the ‘family violence provisions’, and are part of measures to ensure that vulnerable migrants (predominantly women) don’t have to choose between their visa and their safety. 

    A number of recent high profile cases of family violence have caused politicians, the media, and the public to turn their attention to an issue that is a national disgrace. In 2013, there were 27,000 domestic assaults reported to NSW police.[2] And this only reflects assaults actually reported. An Australian Bureau of Statistic study in 2005 found that 82% of women who experienced violence from a current partner did not report it to police. Globally, intimate partner violence is one of the leading causes of death for women.[3]

    For migrant women in Australia, social isolation, lack of English language skills, unfamiliarity with Australian law, or dependence on sponsors, means they may be particularly vulnerable to domestic violence, and less able to take steps to leave a violent relationship. One of the most powerful tools partners use to suppress and control migrant women is the threat to have her visa cancelled or have her “kicked out” of Australia. Many women disclose a fear of immigration officials appearing at their front door and escorting them straight to the airport. Coupled with this, is the fear many women have for their futures if they return to their home country, separated and shamed. Additionally, the fear of losing access to children influences women to remain in violent relationships.

    In the 2012-13 financial year, there were 867 family violence claims made to DIBP. This is a small proportion of the number of partner visas but likely doesn’t reflect the true number of women at risk because many women do not report violence to police, let alone to Immigration.

    Family violence is not unique to particular ethnic groups or people from low socio-economic backgrounds. Migrant women from a variety of countries, ethnicities, religious affiliations and economic standing experience family violence from their sponsoring partner.

    So are we doing enough to ensure that migrant women are aware they can access protection in Australia and don’t need to choose between an abusive relationship and being forced to leave Australia? Many victims do not know that their partner has no power to cancel their visa and are unaware of the existence of the family violence provisions.

    The challenge for DIBP and Australian policy makers is to protect the family violence provisions from fraud, whilst ensuring that migrant communities are aware of the existence of the provisions and the help that is available. Abuse and misuse of the family violence provisions will have the biggest impact on genuine family violence victims. If the family violence provisions are viewed as a loophole for gaining residency, genuine family violence victims are likely to be viewed with suspicion. Seeking and then accessing help, as well as speaking up about their experiences, can be an extremely difficult ask for migrant women. Adding to this a sense that they must prove what they have been through is real, can be too much for some to cope with.

    Additionally, many women are unable to access legal assistance during this most difficult time. Financial vulnerability, and limited community legal services, means many women must try to fumble through complex immigration regulations unguided. For example, providing a letter instead of a statutory declaration, or a social worker failing to name the perpetrator of the violence in their evidence, can mean a person’s visa is refused. The consequences for mistakes here are serious. What is also important to remember is that while negotiating their immigration status and dealing with DIBP, many migrant women are also suffering from the trauma of their experiences, homelessness, and abject poverty.

    Funding has been cut to women’s refuges in NSW and a number of refuges are closing down. This is a big problem because many women are referred via the refuge for further help, including legal assistance. Often, a victim’s first point of call is the Domestic Violence Crisis Line and/or the police. Victims who are then homeless are usually assisted to find accommodation in a women’s refuge. The refuges have great staff and social workers who then assist their clients to sort out their various issues. There are serious concerns that without refuges, many women will become homeless, but also this vital referral ‘hub’ will be lost. This will mean more women are unaware of what to do about their immigration situation if their relationship ends with their sponsor.

    Australia’s migrant community, particularly women at risk of social and cultural isolation, would benefit from a targeted campaign that makes clear what their rights are once they arrive in Australia, and that violence need not be tolerated in order to hold on to a visa.

    Xanthe Emery is a solicitor at the Immigration Advice and Rights Centre, a community legal centre in Sydney.

    [1] Migration Programme statistics from the Department of Immigration an Border Protection: https://www.immi.gov.au/media/statistics/statistical-info/visa-grants/migrant.htm

    [2] ‘Time to act on domestic violence’, Sydney Morning Herald, 7 March 2014: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/smh-editorial/time-to-act-on-domestic-violence-20140307-34cqt.html

    [3] K.M. Devries et al, ‘The global prevalence of intimate partner violence against women’, June 2013: http://www.cugmhp.org/gamma/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/TheoVos2013-article3WomenViolence.pdf

  • John Menadue. What does Labor stand for? Part 5

    Democratic Renewal

    At the same time as addressing overarching ‘Labor’ principles that could guide Labor policies and programs, there are two immediate issues which must be given high priority.

    The first is democratic renewal in our public institutions, including the ALP

    Our democratic systems, almost everywhere, are under great challenge.

    We are increasingly alienated from our institutions. This suits the conservatives who implicitly seek to protect private corporate interests from public intervention. Loss of faith in parliament inevitably leads on to denigration and a loss of faith in government. Those that Labor has traditionally represented and the wider community are the losers.  In the last parliament the Coalition deliberately set out to destroy faith in our public institutions, public policy and politics. The government was ‘corrupt’ or ‘illegitimate’.

    The signs of democratic decay and lack of respect for politicians are everywhere. According to an ANU Social Research study 43% of Australians believed that at the last election it did not matter which Party was in power. Young people have particularly expressed disillusionment with politics. About 20% of eligible people did not enrol at the last election, did not vote or voted informal. According to a recent Lowy poll 40% of Australians did not believe that democracy was the best form of government.

    Executive governments monopolise information flows and policy advice. Policy advice is increasingly given by ministerial advisers while the public service is co-opted into providing political support to government.

    Governments are overly-influenced by powerful lobby groups and donors, e.g. miners, developers, licensed clubs and hotels. We have seen in the NSW ICAC enquiry how wealthy donors are corrupting our democratic system. Politicians are being bought with money.

    The health ‘debate’ is not with the public, but between insiders – the Minister and the AMA/pharmacists/private health insurance companies.

    Because Labor does not have a consistent principle-based set of policies – some would say a ‘narrative’ – it has little capacity for defence or explanation when its policies are misrepresented or misinterpreted in the media.  In the last Parliament Senator Conroy bungled a very modest attempt to limit media power and abuse

    Labor is no longer representative of those that vote for it or has empathy with it.

    The concentrated media does not properly expose abuse of power and directly skews the public debate towards personalities, the whims of proprietors, conflict and celebrities, rather than serious policies. We had an enquiry about the failure of our intelligence agencies over Iraq, but the greater failure was in the media, particularly News Corp.

    Democratic renewal is urgent – reform of the parliament, political parties, party factions, lobbyists, donors and the media.

     

  • Peter Day. An Open Letter to Cardinal Pell

    Dear Cardinal Pell,

    In the lead-up to next month’s Extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the Family you and a number of your confreres are re-asserting the church’s longstanding exclusion of divorced and remarried people from communion.

    Your foreword to The Gospel of the Family appears to leave us with little doubt: outsiders are not welcome.

    As you have said, “The sooner the wounded, the lukewarm, and the outsiders realise that substantial doctrinal and pastoral changes are impossible, the more the hostile disappointment (which must follow the reassertion of doctrine) will be anticipated and dissipated.”

    Respectfully, I have a number of questions I’d like to consider with you; conscious, of course, that neither of us in our grappling can claim to really know the mind of Christ.

    So, what was it that our Lord had in mind when he instituted the Eucharist with these self-emptying words, “This is my body, this is my blood?” Whose hunger was he responding to? Who was welcome? And what are the implications for our Sunday worship and beyond? 

    Well, we do know this: The tax collectors and sinners were all crowding round to listen to him, and the Pharisees and scribes complained saying, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them …’ (Lk 15:2-3) 

    And this: It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. Go and learn the meaning of the words: ‘Mercy is what pleases me, not sacrifice.’ And indeed I came to call not the upright, but sinners. (Mt 9:12-13)

    And this: Let anyone who is thirsty come to me!

    Let anyone who believes in me come to drink! (Jn 7:38)

    And this: When he arrived at the Pharisee’s house and took his place at table, suddenly a woman came in, who had a bad name in the town … She covered his feet with kisses and anointed him … the Pharisee said to himself, ‘If this man were a prophet, he would know … what sort of person [was] touching him and what a bad name she has …’ (Lk 7:36-39)

    And this: They were at supper … and he got up from table, removed his outer garments … and began to wash his disciples’ feet … (Jn 13:2, 4, 5) 

    And this: Peter said …‘You know it is forbidden for Jews to mix with people of another race or visit them; but God has made it clear to me that I must not call anyone profane or unclean … God has no favourites … and who am I to stand in God’s way?’ (Acts 10:28, 34 & 11:17)

    Could it be, given the exclusivity of our Communion, that when we proclaim these words we are potentially condemning ourselves as well?

    Just think: Jesus, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of sinners (Lk 7:34), real and present in our Breaking of Bread. Wow. Extraordinary. Out of this world. We actually believe this … don’t we?

    If we answer in the affirmative, there are profound consequences: are we not also compelled to look beyond the in-crowd and welcome outsiders; are we not also compelled to take risks: like the risk of being labelled and pilloried for sharing our table with those we are not supposed to; for doing something that is forbidden by law. I am not thinking here of people who do not care. I am concerned for those who are hungry for love and long to share even the crumbs from the table.

    Can any of us truly look at our Lord and Master and say without a profound sense of foreboding: ‘Yes, I am a follower; but you must understand there are rules …’

    His disciples were hungry and began to pick ears of corn and eat them. The Pharisees noticed it and said to him, ‘Look, your disciples are doing something that is forbidden on the Sabbath’. (Mt 12:1-2)

    If the Eucharist is essentially an encounter with the real presence, rather than essentially an institutional-cum-cultic event, then surely the Master’s social interactions make it abundantly clear: hunger, not worthiness underpins Table Fellowship. To allow the law, cultic statutes, and theology to take precedence over mercy and love and encounter, is tantamount to perpetuating the hard line rigour of those Pharisees who complained bitterly and moralised pompously about so many things.

    Their approach fostered a cold, superficial temple-based religion. But Jesus invited his followers to a change of heart, a heart oriented to the one called, Abba – Father : a relational, God-based faith.

    Indeed, if Jesus himself was bound by the strictures of his religious tribe and the social mores of his day, he would never have encountered the woman at the well because ‘Jews, of course, do not associate with Samaritans’ (Jn 4:10). Thankfully, he was not. Thus, a women consigned to the margins, and thirsting for love, was afforded one-on-one time with the One who risked everything to offer her living water.

    Yet, despite the extraordinary inclusiveness and openness of our foot washing Master; not to mention the accusations his behaviour attracted – blasphemy, law-breaking, ‘prince of devils’ – there are still those who insist that the meal instituted by him who emptied himself, taking the form of a slave (Phil 2:7) be an exclusive, High Church event with all the accoutrements, pomp and ceremony, do’s and don’ts, and rules about who’s in and who’s out, as if the Holy One needs protection and distancing from an encounter with the great unwashed.

    If this non-relational Temple-centred worship takes hold, then we too leave ourselves open to the criticism:

    Now here, I tell you, is something greater than the Temple. And if you had understood the meaning of the words: ‘Mercy is what pleases me, not sacrifice’, you would have not condemned the blameless. For the Son of Man is master of the Sabbath. (Mt 12:5-8)

    And if, in the depth of our being, we believe Jesus is real and present at the breaking of bread, then how do we justify the exclusion of so many? Can we in good conscience continue to turn away those longing to drink from the well-of-life because Catholics, of course, do not break bread with …? 

    There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither slave nor freeman, there can neither be male nor female – for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:28-29)

    I do not presume to know the mind of Pope Francis either, but his musings on spiritual worldliness seem especially apt:

    [There] are those who ultimately trust only in their own powers and feel superior to others because they observe certain rules or remain intransigently faithful to a particular Catholic style from the past. A supposed soundness of doctrine or discipline leads to a narcissistic and authoritarian elitism, whereby instead of evangelising, one analyses and classifies others, and instead of opening the door of grace, one exhausts his or her energies in inspecting and verifying. (Evangelii Gaudium #94) 

    In some people we see an ostentatious preoccupation for the liturgy, for doctrine and for the Church’s prestige, but without any concern that the Gospel have a real impact on God’s faithful people and the concrete needs of the present time. In this way, the life of the Church turns into a museum piece or something which is the property of a select few … The mark of Christ, incarnate, crucified and risen, is not present; closed and elite groups are formed, and no effort is made to go forth and seek out those who are distant or the immense multitudes who thirst for Christ. (Evangelii Gaudium #95)

    It prompts the question: has a simple, inclusive and profound ‘family’ meal been overwhelmed by an impersonal and, often times, sterile institutional sacrifice; one that tends towards mass exclusion?

    Peace and regards,

    Fr Peter Day, Parish Priest, Corpus Christi

    Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn, Australia

  • John Menadue. What does Labor stand for? Part 4

    Ethical responsibility

    Those in prominent office should promote those qualities which draw on the best of our traditions and the noblest of our instincts.

    The duty of those with public influence is to encourage hope and redemption rather than despair and condemnation, confidence rather than fear. It is to promote the common good – to encourage us to use our talents. It is to respect truth and strengthen learning to withstand the powers of populism and vested or sectional interests. This would set a tone of public discourse which nurtures public institutions

    Business cannot hide behind the corporate vale. As the late Bernie Banton reminded us during the dispute with James Hardy over asbestos ‘it is people that make decisions, not corporations’

    Areas where we fall short in ethical responsibility include

    • Leaders who appeal to our worst instincts, e.g. dog whistling on refugees,
    •  Media-drenched commercialism and the values it projects.
    •  Executive salaries,
    •  Undue influence of vested interests, corporate lobbyists and political donors e.g. NSW ICAC enquiry.
    • Those in public office should help the community to deal with difficult problems which may require painful adaptive change, such as climate change, rather than provide the false comfort of ignoring or downplaying them.

  • Gaza, Israel and Palestine.

    In the link below from AlterNet, published on 9 September 2014, you will find a very important analysis by Noam Chomsky. John Menadue.

     

    http://www.alternet.org/noam-chomsky-real-reason-israel-mows-lawn-gaza?akid=12222.32110.TSqdYT&rd=1&src=newsletter1018632&t=2&paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark

  • John Menadue. What does Labor stand for Part 3

    Citizenship

    We are more than individuals linked by market transactions.

    Our life in the public sphere is no less necessary than our private lives. As citizens we enjoy and contribute to the public good. It is where we show and learn respect for others, particularly people who are different. It is where we abide by shared rules of civic conduct. It is where we build social capital – networks of trust. We need to behave in ways that make each of us trusted members of the community. ‘Do no harm’ is not sufficient.

    Citizenship brings responsibilities – political participation, vigilance against abuse of power and paying taxes.

    Areas where we fall short in citizenship include

    • Our withdrawal into the private realm –there are growing gated communities, private entertainment,
    • Use of private rather than public transport and resulting reluctance of influential people to support investment in public transport.
    •  Disregard of neighbours,
    •  Opting out of community through ‘vouchers’,
    • Government subsidies to private health insurance and private schools discourage the coalescence of socially mixed communities around shared hospitals and public schools.
    • There is a lack of respect in the language of denigration – ‘bogans’ and ‘losers’.
    • NGO’s have increasingly become part of government
    • People are valued as celebrities and their wealth rather than as contributing citizens

    Stewardship

    We have inherited a stock of assets or capital; environmental (forests/water), public and private physical capital (roads/ports), human capital (education), family capital (family and friendship bonds), social capital (trust), cultural capital and institutional capital (government and non-government institutions). That stock of assets must be retained and where possible enhanced.

    We must use our resources as efficiently and productively as possible.

    Areas where we fall short in stewardship include

    • Our infrastructure, particularly urban rail is dilapidated.
    • We are amongst the highest per capita carbon polluters in the world.
    • We are placing a heavy strain on the planet which prejudices our future. Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change we are still influenced by the sceptics who ignore the facts and cling instead to ideology.
    • We waste water and degrade the land.
    • We continue to log old growth forests
    • We are degrading the Great Barrier Reef

     

     

  • Will we ever learn?

    In an article in the Washington Post – see link below – Katrina vanden Heuvel says

    ‘Our interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan should have made one thing clear: we have neither the patience, the resources nor the willingness to wreak the violence needed to suppress the regional sectarian conflicts. For more than a decade, we have spent trillions, sacrificed lives and rained bombs on assorted targets from Pakistan to Libya. And the civil wars, tribal rivalries and sectarian violence have only increased.’

    Tony Abbott said that he agreed with Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia. Tony Abbott spoke of ‘more Jakarta and less Geneva’.

    It now seems that we are pivoting back to the Middle East.  John Menadue

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/katrina-vanden-heuvel-obama-reneges-on-his-foreign-policy-promises/2014/09/16/7490e1ee-3d0c-11e4-b0ea-8141703bbf6f_story.html

  • Secrecy and Propaganda.

    Yesterday Richard Ackland in theGuardian.com highlighted the way that the media cooperated with the government in the propaganda about raids on potential Muslim terrorists in Sydney and Melbourne. Both the NSW and Commonwealth Governments spared no effort to highlight the raids. What a contrast this is to the secrecy of ‘on water matters’ in Operation Sovereign Borders.

    Richard Ackland’s article can be found on the following link

    John Menadue.

     

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/19/sydney-dawn-counter-terrorism-raids-why-now-and-why-so-few-answers

  • John Menadue. What does Labor stand for.  Part 2

    From values to principles

    The purpose and role of a Labor Government could be to give expression to the values set out below – to achieve as far as possible the ‘common good’.

    Values such as fairness, freedom, citizenship, stewardship and ethical responsibility would be generally accepted by most people. As the values are translated into practices however Labor makes a choice that can be further defined as principles that then lead to policies, e.g. the value of fairness can be expressed in the principle of a stronger link between contribution and reward- a link which has become severed by hugely disproportionate executive pay, high returns to rent seekers and financial speculators and the long head-start of inherited wealth.

    The following is indicative of a set of values and their expressions in principles which could underpin a Labor platform/policy statement.

    Fairness or equity

    A ‘fair go’ is primarily about economic opportunity.

    People should be provided with a good education and those who put it to socially useful ends should be rewarded. Governor Lachlan Macquarie was no socialist but his ‘tickets of leave’ gave the outcasts and underprivileged of this country another chance. We built a nation from many of this underclass. We must give a chance for newcomers and all people to have another opportunity.

    Fairness promotes social mobility and limits division and resentment.

    Fairness should not be restricted to education.

    The path to prosperity with fairness is through productivity and well-paid employment rather than government handouts. The Scandinavians have demonstrated that education and incentives for participation do produce fairness and economic prosperity.

    Fairness implies that we are tough towards ‘bludgers’, whether they be tax-dodgers, the vulgarity and indulgence of those with inherited wealth, protection from competition, government hand-outs and favouritism or cheating on social services.

    Fairness implies full employment as a macro-economic goal to ensure human capabilities are not wasted.

    Areas where we fall short in fairness include

    • neglect of early childhood education,
    • treatment of the needs of indigenous people and refugees,
    • diversion of education funding to wealthy schools,
    • neglect of public infrastructure
    • Inadequate ODA.  In Joe Hockey’s last budget we cut ODA to $5b per annum, the largest cut in spending. Yet we spend over $8b per annum on our dogs and cats. Does that reflect our values?

    Freedom

    We all have rights to the extent that they do not lessen the rights of others.

    Except where the rights of the vulnerable are at stake, the government should not intrude into the private realm.

    Denial of freedom does not happen overnight. It is eroded step by step.

    We must be vigorous in promoting our freedoms-freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the rule of law and free and fair elections

    The potential abuse of power should be minimized by the separation of powers and the separation of church and state and clear opposition to sharia law

    Areas where we fall short in freedom include

    • The growing power of cabinet and executive which is not adequately balanced by parliament. We have an ‘elected monarchy’.
    • We have no Human Rights Act.
    • We have reduced freedom as a result of counter-terrorism legislation.
    • The media increasingly fails to protect our freedoms and often facilitates abuse of power by lobbyists e.g. miners.