John Menadue

  • George Lekakis recalls meeting Gough Whitlam.

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    Dear John

    I just wanted to share a memory or two with you before this day is over.
    My father came to Australia in 1954 and he always told me that he
    never felt Australian until Gough was elected in 1972.
    In 1993, at the tail-end of my first visit to Greece, my uncle took me
    to the Byzantine ruins of Mystras on the outskirts of Sparta in
    Lakonia.
    We were sweltering that day as we walked about that amazing setting.
    As we were about to leave, a familiar voice came into earshot. I
    turned to see a tall man perched on a walking stick with a
    handkerchief wrapped over his head. I didn’t recognise him at first –
    I had only been hearing Greek for four months. But the voice
    resonated.
    I decided to move closer to the old man who was encircled by a bevy of
    important Greek scholars. As I approached, the scholars motioned me
    away, but there was another bloke – a bearded fellow – who called out
    to me:
    ” Do you wanna meet Gough?”
    “Yes,” I said.
    ” Come over here,” he said.
    About 15 minutes later after Gough had explained the history of the
    place to the bevy, the bearded fellow waved me over.
    I’ll never forget it – at the summit of Mystras, of all places!
    It’s probably not right for journos to have heroes, but I have a couple.
    The Chicago journalist Mike Royko is one of them.
    But Gough touched my family in so many ways.
    Blessings,

    George Lekakis is a writer for The New Daily.

  • John Menadue. Some personal reflections – a light has gone out.

    Gough Whitlam’s death has prompted a quite remarkable bipartisan response in the parliament. And rightly so, for he was a great parliamentarian for over 26 years along with 70 years of public life. His forum was the parliament rather than the street or the protest march.

    He had great respect for the parliament and that is why the subversion of the parliament in November 1975, when he had a clear majority in the House of Representatives, hurt him so deeply. But his bitterness was reserved for one person.

    Listening to the parliament and reading the other media comments I was again impressed by the diversity and the range of changes which he introduced and how institutions and people were changed by the Whitlam years. The comments were more a celebration of his achievements and his vision than a eulogy. He enlarged and expanded Australia in a way that we had not seen before and have not seen since.

    Tony Abbott described him as a ‘giant of our time’. Bill Shorten said that ‘the ALP has lost a giant’. Julia Gillard referred to his ‘highest political courage’. The Governor General called him ‘a towering leader’. Malcolm Fraser called him ‘a great Australian … a formidable opponent’. John Faulkner spoke to the Labor Caucus of ‘Gough Whitlam as a towering figure in our party and in our lives as long as I can remember’.

    Gough Whitlam’s remarkable three years in government didn’t come out of thin air. He spent twenty hard years in opposition thinking, planning and working for what he could do in government. It was a rigorous and tough apprenticeship.

     

    Political and personal courage

    In my blog yesterday I spoke of Gough Whitlam’s courage, energy and determination to keep going despite the enormous obstacles, particularly from the machine men in the ALP who were more interested in retaining power in the party machine than winning elections and helping those in need. Looking back, I pay tribute to his determination to stay the course when he had so many factional and selfish people around him. Sometimes he could have expressed his contempt for them more diplomatically, but they really were ‘f…wits’ as he often called them.  And there are still some remaining.

    One phrase I remember above all others about the problems in the ALP was that ‘the ALP is not a national party. It is a federation of six state parties.’ Progress has been made but the journey he commenced over 40 years ago in party reform towards a national party is still not completed.

    Mick Young

    Gough Whitlam and Mick Young were unlikely political soul mates but they needed each other. Mick Young was the ex-shearer who knew better than others what it was like to wash your hands in solvol. He was grounded amongst working people, knew the trade union movement well and was active in ALP branches. His feet were very much on the ground. He didn’t have great office systems, but his people and political skills were in his head. Gough said that Mick Young was ‘One of the greatest things that happened to the Labor Party when he became Federal Secretary and National Campaign Manager for the 1972 elections’.  Mick Young had commented that in the past in its campaigning, the ALP had more slogans than candidates! He knew of the dysfunction between the party organisation and the parliamentary leader. But he knew that even ‘It’s Time’ and market research would not prevail without the policy and the vision that Gough Whitlam supplied.

    ‘Dame’ Margaret and Family

    Through good times and bad times, ‘Dame’ Margaret and Gough were together. They had their differences as all strong-minded people would. But their love was deep and abiding. For months after Margaret’s death, Gough would invariably commence our conversation ‘Wasn’t that a great send-off for Margaret?’ Her death was a great blow to Gough.

    He remained close to and very protective of his sister Freda who after retirement as Principal of Presbyterian Ladies College became Moderator General of the Uniting Church of Australia. I recall that at Gough’s 80th birthday, Freda said that when Gough left home in Canberra to go to Sydney University ‘the light went out of the house’.

    Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser

    Gough often said that he and Malcolm Fraser had not had a disagreement for thirty years. It was largely true. Malcolm delivered the Whitlam Oration in 2012 in Parramatta. He commenced the oration ‘Men and Women of Australia’. Gough and Malcolm expressed common views about the importance of an independent Australia within the US alliance. They campaigned together for a Republic, against media monopoly and in favour of land rights for indigenous people.

    I remember Gough saying to me in later years that Malcolm was a ferocious political opponent ‘but he never deceived me’. A few months ago Malcolm called on Gough at his Sydney office. He presented Gough with a copy of his latest book ‘Dangerous Allies’. He inscribed in the book ‘Dear Gough, with great respect and great affection, Malcolm’.

    Visits in later days and the bearer of the flame

    Quite separately and for several years, John Faulkner, Daryl Mellam and I visited Gough in his  office in William Street Sydney. Going to the office three days a week was a very helpful break from Lulworth. His staff, driver Michael, Aaron and Penny were great supporters and in the end, carers. Daryl Mellam invariably brought cupcakes that his sister had made with green and gold icing. I usually brought chocolate mousse although Cathy Whitlam said it wasn’t good for him and she had to wash the chocolate out of his shirt.

    I know that Gough particularly valued the regular calls by John Faulkner. Gough had a great affection and regard for John, whom he regarded as the bearer of the Labor flame. John usually obliged by bringing a few bottles of passiona which were very much to Gough’s abstemious taste.

    A secular treasure

    Excuse me for mentioning it, but when the Japanese emperor awarded me the ‘Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure’, Gough congratulated me but said ‘Comrade, you must understand that I am a secular treasure’.

    He meticulously planned Margaret’s funeral and his own. Having been a navigator in Ventura aircraft during the Pacific War, he asked Angus Houston, the then Defence Chief, whether a Ventura could be found to scatter his ashes over Sydney Harbour. Unfortunately, Venturas were no longer flying.

    Gough was determinedly secular; even though he proudly and often recalled that he had topped the examination in religious studies at High School but could not be awarded the prize because he was not a believer. He often described himself as a ‘fellow traveller’ in matters of religion. He was taken by Winston Churchill’s description of himself as ‘not a pillar of the church, but a flying buttress’.

    By introducing needs based funding for schools he did more to help the education of Catholic kids than priests or bishops ever did.

    He enquired frequently about my joining the Catholic Church. He was always interested and never hostile. He often said that ‘the Catholic Church is the big league”. He spoke to me a lot about matters of faith.

    He didn’t mind being confused with Saint Paul. At Fred Daly’s Requiem Mass he read the letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians. The letter is one of the most moving and challenging in any language. It is quite beautiful. ’For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three, but the greatest of these is charity’. After the service a good supporter of Fred Daly ,who probably knew more about the Labor Party than the scriptures came up to Graham Freudenberg, Gough’s speech writer and said, ‘Mr Freudenberg, that was a great speech you wrote for Mr Whitlam’

    At Nugget Coomb’s funeral at Saint Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney, Gough said of Nugget ‘all Australians can say in the words of Paul’s letter to Timothy “Well done thou good and faithful servant”’.

    It can also be said of Gough Whitlam.

    May he rest in peace..

     

  • John Faulkner. Gough Whitlam – Academy awards and Passiona!

    At the ALP Caucus today John Faulkner spoke movingly of Gough Whitlam as a towering figure in the ALP. The link to his speech follows:

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/edward-gough-whitlam-labor-party-caucus-condolence-motion-20141021-119b4y.html

    John Menadue

  • John Menadue. Farewell to Gough Whitlam, 21 October 2014

    Few public figures have left their mark on Australia like Gough Whitlam. I knew him for fifty years. He was the most exciting and challenging public person I have met.  Australians owe him a great debt for giving them new opportunities and linking the aspirations of working people with those of the university educated.

    For me two events stood out. The first was his letter to Richard Nixon at Christmas 1972 deploring the bombing of the people of Hanoi and Haiphong. The outrage of the Nixon administration was wonderful to behold. It was great to see that at last an Australian Government had and would express our own views.

    The second was the passing of Medibank/Medicare legislation in July 1974 after a double dissolution and a joint sitting of Parliament. That occurred after years of bitter and self-interested opposition by the medical profession. Medibank/Medicare, like the British National Health Service, has well and truly outlived its critics.

    After the dull, colonial and sexist years of Menzies, it was exciting to feel that at last Australia was an independent country, proud and confident. There was a sea change in the way we saw ourselves and the way others saw us.

    The achievements of the Whitlam Government were legion from ending conscription, recognition of China, needs based funding for all schools, Medibank/Medicare, equal pay and ending British honours. One significant reform which is not often recalled was the abolition of tertiary education fees. Many professional women still remind me of that because, in poor families, often it was only the son who would be sent to university. Gough Whitlam believed that giving educational opportunities to all, particularly women and poor Catholic kids, promoted social mobility and social solidarity. He described education reform as his “most enduring single achievement”. I think Medicare was just as good.

    Almost single-handedly he reformed the structure of the ALP to rid it of the “faceless men” who controlled it from outside caucus. After becoming leader of the ALP in 1967 he created an exciting new range of policies that Australians embraced with increasing enthusiasm. Effectively, he wrote the “New Testament” of the ALP.

    When reforming the ALP, “crash through or crash”, he was saved several times from expulsion by the support he had in the wider community. His goal was to break the control of union and party officials who had little interest in political power. “Only the impotent are pure” he said! He knew that only the parliamentary leader could break the grip of self-serving officials.

    What I found remarkable was his courage and determination to keep going despite the enormous obstacles. I once counselled him against taking too much overseas travel. “Comrade” he said “if I am going to put up with the f…wits in the Labor Party, I’ve got to have my trips”. At the time I thought he was being self-indulgent, but in retrospect I can much better appreciate the pressure he was under from archaic elements of the party.

    The Whitlam Governments are criticised for their economic management. There is some merit in this criticism. Too much was attempted too quickly. But after 23 years in opposition that was not surprising. His governments produced one surplus out of three budgets. During their tenure, Australian government net debt was zero, net foreign debt was minimal and domestic savings were at record levels. However, after the first oil shock, our inflation rose higher than in other countries. Wage increases were excessive. Some policies were clearly unwise, but there was never any illegality or bad faith.

    Gough Whitlam, like Paul Keating and Kevin Rudd had some testy times with Ministers and Caucus but only Kevin Rudd was to pay a high price for it.

    The dismissal of the Whitlam Government had little to do with its performance. Three months after Whitlam’s election victory in December 1972, Senator Withers, the leader of the Liberals in the Senate denied the legitimacy of the Whitlam Government. Withers warned: “the Senate may well be called upon to protect the national interest by exercising its undoubted constitutional power”. He said that the election mandate was ‘dishonest”, that Whitlam’s election was a “temporary electoral insanity” and that to claim that the Government was following the will of the people “would be a dangerous precedent for a democratic country”. More Bills were rejected in the Senate during Whitlam’s three years as Prime Minister than in the 72 years since Federation. Not content just to engineer the dismissal of a democratically elected Government, leading figures set about one after another to deceive the Prime Minister.

    Since then, criticism of the Whitlam Government has been largely designed to exculpate those associated with the horrendous dismissal of an elected government. To justify this foul deed, supporters of the coup keep harping on the illegitimacy and incompetence of the Whitlam Government. These supporters will never concede that his government fairly won two elections. Conservatives piously extol the importance of tradition and respect for institutions. They preach about democracy, free elections, the separation of powers and the independence of the judiciary. But they throw all that aside to hold onto power and privilege. Whitlam was naïve to trust them- as we all were! As more of the secrets of the dismissal are revealed like the clandestine meetings of High Court judges with the Governor General so is Gough Whitlam more and more vindicated.

    Gough Whitlam showed that politics does matter and that it can make a difference. We owe him an enormous debt. He showed that reform is hard, but possible, He shaped modern Australia. His vision and hope is still with us.

    John Menadue was Private Secretary to Gough Whitlam 1960-67. He was Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam 1974-75.

     

  • Faith in coal.

     

    In my blog of 5 January 2013, ‘A Canary in the Coal Mine’, I said that ‘The future of new thermal coal mines is doubtful. Would any sensible investor take not only the political risk but also the financial risk of investing in new thermal coal mines in Australia?’

    The canary warning is getting louder and louder, even though Tony Abbott tells us that ‘Coal is good for humanity’.

    In an excellent article in the SMH of 18 October 2014, Tony Allard says that Abbott’s faith in coal mining could be wrong – very wrong.

    It refers to companies such as Citigroup, Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Company and Deutsche Bank who stress the decline in the demand for coal and its dubious prospects.  It is not just the ANU that is discussing divestment in fossil fuels.

    Tom Allard’s excellent article can be found at:

    http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/why-abbotts-faith-in-coal-could-be-wrong–very-wrong-20141017-117k1b.html

    John Menadue

  • John Menadue. Post-script from France.

    My wife and I and quite a few members of our family, have been summering in France for a week or two.

    We have enjoyed the history, the architecture and the beauty of the countryside. Not for nothing, France has 37 sites inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage list. Many other Australians also feel the attractions of France. We heard a lot of Australian accents in Paris.

    But this year France seemed chillier and I am not just referring to the weather. I sensed a growing malaise particularly with unemployment stuck at around 12% and double that for young people. I did not sense any confidence that France was going to break out of its malaise.

    France is the world’s largest destination for tourists, with over 90 million a year. The number is growing and that pressure of numbers shows. Tourist numbers are placing great stress on the major tourist attractions. In all previous years, I visited the Louvre, but not this year. Large and aggressive tour groups have put me off. On our return through London, I found the National Gallery a pleasant experience. Paris has an excellent Metro but car congestion is a growing problem.

    The Presidency of Francois Hollande is proving lack-lustre and bland. He has an approval rating of 18% and seems confused as to what he could do to revive the economy and his own standing. He has changed his Prime Minister. Like other Europeans he hopes that the German economic engine will help power France and the rest of Europe, but the German economic engine has slowed down considerably.

    Whilst we were in Paris, Air France was continuing its two-week strike brought on by its pilots. The government seemed nowhere to be found, or interested in taking action. France’s sclerotic labour market needs a shake-up, hopefully without doing too much damage to the French social model that I find attractive – that people work to live and not live to work.

    Many French people are voting with their feet with an estimate of 2.5 million now living abroad, with 600,000 living in London. But I suspect that these are temporary exiles who still feel very patriotic about France.

    The biggest social and political issue in France is growing xenophobia over immigration and the resulting embrace of the very right wing National Front. The NF has been growing alarmingly. It has now won two Senate seats in France for the first time ever. There are 14 municipalities with NF mayors. If present trends continue, the Socialists will be eliminated in the first round of the next presidential election. The final round would then be a run off between the NF and the conservative party of the right, the UMP.

    The European Union has been one of the great successes of the second half of the 20th Century. What a contrast the present united Europe is compared with the centuries of European wars that preceded it. But the relatively free flow of people in Europe as part of the European Union has put great strain on the social fabric of Europe particularly at a time of low growth and rising unemployment. This concern about people movements was also shown a few days ago in the UK with the remarkable success of the UK Independence Party which wants to take the UK out of the European Union. The two by-elections in the UK produced an avalanche of support for UK IP.

    Unlike Australia, the major parties of France and the UK have not joined the rush to exploit xenophobia but present political trends suggest that they will need to make adjustments perhaps by introducing immigration quotas or some form of restraint. Hopefully, this can be achieved without great hardship and without prejudicing the European Project.

    With its traditional high rates of employment growth, Germany is handling the flow of people, including asylum seekers across its borders, with greater success than France. Germany also doesn’t have the problem which France has with former colonies in Algeria and Morocco. Increasingly Germany is being called on to provide greater leadership in Europe. But because of its social and political history, Germany is likely to be a reluctant leader. Importantly if it is to show greater leadership it needs a strong partner. France has traditionally been that strong partner, but France’s influence and standing is shrinking.

    The movement of people in Europe is just one part of a world-wide phenomenon of people on the move. The events in the Middle East are only intensifying that problem. There over 50 million displaced people and refugees in the world and the number is rapidly increasing. Almost all countries are finding that they cannot remain immune to this world-wide movement of people across national borders. Along with climate change, people movements are the two major global problems that we face.

    The coming winter looks like being much chillier in France and Europe.

     

  • The Failure of the South Korean National Security State – The Sewol Tragedy.

    Earlier this year, the Sewol ferry sank off Korea’s southern coast with 304 passengers drowned, mainly school children. An article by Jae-Jung Suh draws attention to an abdication of responsibility by the Korean Government and many others. He says ‘The whole tragedy serves as a reminder of how neoliberal deregulation and privatisation puts people’s safety and life at risk through a process of state collusion with business interests and how a powerful national security state may fail to protect its own people from internal dangers it helps create.’

    Jae-Jung Suh has been Head of Korean Studies at John Hopkins University in Washington for over a decade.

    The link to his important and disturbing report can be found below.  John Menadue

    http://www.japanfocus.org/-Jae_Jung-Suh/4195

  • The Italian solution.

    Last night the ABC program, Foreign Correspondent, carried a remarkable and moving account of the work of the Italian Navy in rescuing ‘people fleeing conflict or economic despair in the Middle East and Africa’.

    The Italian Admiral in charge of the operations in the Mediterranean said ‘We have the duty in these cases when we are at sea to intervene to save human life. If we are not at sea, then we can’t see what happens. We can close our eyes, turn off the lights and in that way, there’s no need to “turn back” the boats because they will die. We need to remember that International Rights exist. There are international laws that our countries have ratified’.

    I wonder if the Commander of Operation Sovereign Borders, Lt Gen. Angus Campbell, has time to watch this remarkable account of humanity in action.

    The Italian Navy shames our navy.   John Menadue

    See link to program below.

    http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2014/s4106724.htm

  • John Menadue. Asylum seekers – institutionalised cruelty, the banality of evil and immorality.

    You might be interested in this repost.  John Menadue

    The recent statement by the Australian Catholic Bishops on asylum seekers says ‘The current policy has about it a cruelty that does no honour to our nation … Enough of this institutionalised cruelty … We call on the nation as a whole to say no to the dark forces which make these policies possible.’

    In her book ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’, published in 1963, Hannah Arendt refers to the ‘banality of evil’. Her thesis is that Eichmann was not a fanatic or sociopath, but an extremely stupid person who relied on cliché rather than thinking for himself and was motivated by professional promotion rather than ideology.  She says ‘The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil’.

    In his post in this blog on February 17, reposted below, Hugh Mackay speaks of ‘international brutality … why not call our asylum policy what it is – immoral?’

    Our policies towards asylum seekers – cruel, evil and immoral- depend on our first dehumanising and then demonising asylum seekers. They are not like us and do not deserve empathy and protection.  It is an attempt to dull and chloroform our consciences.

    • Asylum seekers are illegals and akin to criminals. We launder our language to hide the cruelty and brutality of our policies. Even the Department of Immigration now uses the term ‘illegals’ which they are not.
    • Asylum seekers are so devoid of humanity that they would even throw their children overboard.
    • Journalists are excluded or deterred from visiting detention centres because we might hear of the hopes and fears of vulnerable people.
    • How can we have sympathy for asylum seekers who buy the services of people smugglers?
    • They are Muslims.
    • They are ungrateful foreigners who riot in detention centres.
    • They commit crimes in the community and should be treated and listed like paedophiles.
    • They bring disease and wads of cash.
    • They throw documents overboard and don’t tell the truth.

    As this day by day process of demonization proceeds the spark of humanity, decency or the divine in each of us is snuffed out. We are made to look foolish and soft if we respond to “our better angels”.

    Our leaders are not just determined to dehumanise asylum seekers but play mind games with us by suggesting government policies are designed to save people drowning at sea. If only there was the smallest bit of truth in this the government would be sending out ships to rescue desperate people at sea and ministers would be waiting hopefully for the UNHCR or the Nobel Prize committee to make a humanitarian award.

    Through political spin and by good people staying silent, we are losing our moral compass on what is right and decent. As Lord Lane, the former UK Lord Chief Justice put it ‘Oppression does not suddenly stand on the doorstep with a toothbrush moustache and a swastika armband. It happens step by step.’

    It is happening despite our asylum “problem “being minor compared with other counties and particularly poor countries like Pakistan.

    In allowing evil and cruelty to win our political terrain we could  recall the words of Pastor Martin Niemoller who was imprisoned by the Nazis ‘First they came for the communists and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Catholic. Then they came for me and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.’

    We don’t seem to care that perhaps in a decade we will be as ashamed of our present asylum and refugee policies as we are now for what we did  to our ‘stolen generation’.

    Where is our anger and concern?

    I recall a speech some time ago by Bill Moyes, the former host in the United States of the Weekly Public Series on PBS. He said ‘What has happened to our moral indignation. On the heath, King Lear asks Gloucester ‘How do you see the world?’ and Gloucester who is blind answers ‘I see it feelingly.’  I feel it feelingly also.  The news is not good these days. I can tell you though that as a journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free – not only to feel, but also to fight for the future we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair; the cure for cynicism … What we need is what the ancient Israelites called hochma – the science of the heart – the capacity to see, to feel and then to act as if the future depended on you.’

    And it does depend on you and me.

    We are acting cruelly and immorally. Evil now has an everyday face. But we pretend it is not us. Yet the opinion polls tell us that it is us – that we want to treat asylum seekers this way. Scott Morrison tells us ‘I get so much encouragement when I walk through Cronulla, go down to the beach or up to Miranda Fair’.

    Hannah Arendt said ‘The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.’  That “sad truth” is happening in Australia today. We are standing by and letting it happen.

     

  • Medibank Private and members’ equity.

    In the New Daily on 6 October, George Lekakis drew attention to a letter sent to a policy-holder in 1994 by Mary-Jo Henrisson, a customer services manager in Medibank’s NSW head office. Mary-Jo Henrisson said “We would be sorry to see you lose the equity you have built up in the fund.”

    For the full story in the New Daily see link below.

    http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2014/10/06/exclusive-medibank-letter-government-doesnt-want-read/

  • The community of expulsion.

    In the International New York Times of October 6, Roger Cohen spoke of ‘the community of expulsion’. He was referring not only to the expulsion of Jews and the diaspora, but also the expulsion of the Palestinians. He said “Palestinians have joined the ever recurring community of expulsion. The words of Leviticus are worth repeating for any Jew in or concerned by Israel today: Treat the stranger as yourself for ‘you were strangers in the land of Egypt’.”

    For full article see link below.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/07/opinion/roger-cohen-for-israel-a-time-of-self-scrutiny.html

  • Wooki KIM, Discrimination against Korean school children in Japan today

    On 29 August this year the Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD) which is under the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) made rulings on Korean schools in Japan. It said ‘The committee encourages the state party [Japan] to revise its position and allow Korean schools to benefit, as appropriate, from the High School Tuition Support Fund, as well as to invite local governments to resume or maintain the provision of subsidies to Korean schools.’

    Korean schools in Japan were established after the liberation of Korean people from colonial rule by Japan in 1945. The schools were established to educate Korean children in Japan who had been deprived of their Korean name, language and culture by Japan. It is estimated that at that time there were 525 Korean schools all over Japan and approximately 44,000 Korean children attended those schools. Today there are about 70 schools from kindergarten to university with approximately 8,000 students.

    In April 2010 the government of Japan introduced the Tuition Fee Waiver Program which would waive tuition fees for high school education. It was planned to include not only Japanese public and private schools, but also foreign schools in Japan that are accredited as ‘miscellaneous schools’ under the School Education Act. It was the first chance for all Korean schools that were accredited as ‘miscellaneous schools’ to be granted subsidies by the central government of Japan.

    However, the government started the program without applying it to Korean schools, because of the abduction of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s by DPRK. This amounted to using Korean children as political pawns between Tokyo and Pyongyang. The Abe Government decided to completely exclude Korean schools from the program by changing the legislative provision of the program in February 2013. As of today five civil suits claiming national compensation have been filed by Korean schools in the district courts of Tokyo, Osaka, Aichi, Hiroshima and Fukuoka.

    Following such discriminatory decisions by the Japanese central government, some local governments also have refused subsidies or cut subsidies that have been granted to Korean schools up to that point. The subsidies have been halted in some prefectures such as Tokyo, Osaka and Hiroshima as of October 2014. This represents about one third of local governments that have granted subsidies to Korean schools. In Osaka a civil suit demanding the Osaka prefectural government reverse the decision to refuse the subsidy for Korean schools was filed in the court in 2013 by the Osaka Korean school.

    Moreover some municipal governments such as Yokohama and Hiroshima have also followed the decisions of the prefectural authorities and withheld payments of the subsidies. As a result some parents have given up sending their children to Korean schools and sent them to Japanese schools which are granted much more subsidies than Korean schools.

    Our Association raised these discriminatory policies against Korean school children with CERD which we believe amounts to racial discrimination and infringes the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination that Japan ratified in 1995. I also visited Geneva in August to raise these issues directly with the members of CERD. As a result of the examination of the government of Japan, CERD ruled as mentioned above concerning Korean schools. This means that in the view of CERD, the exclusion of Korean schools from the Tuition Fee Waiver Program and refusing subsidies at various government levels constitutes racial discrimination.

    The Japanese government has also been directed in the past by several international human rights bodies to revise its policy which infringes on the rights to education in Korean schools.

    The history of discriminatory policy against Korean schools by the Japanese government can be traced back to the Japanese occupation of Korea from 1910-1945. This discrimination was worsened by the compulsory close-down of Korean schools in 1948-49 which has been called ‘4.24 Gyoyug Tujaeng (4.24 교육투쟁)’ which means ‘struggling for education on 24th April’. The Ministry of Education carried out its plan to prohibit Korean children from attending Korean schools in 1948 and over a million Koreans in Japan struggled against that policy. In case of Hyogo prefecture, 10,000 Koreans gathered around a prefectural office and made the governor reverse the decision to close down Korean schools on 24th April 1948. However the 8th US Army, in association with the government of Japan, oppressed those struggles of Koreans by announcing a state of emergency under the anti-communism and cold war structure at the time. As a result, 3,000 Korean were arrested and a 16 year old Korean boy, Kim Tae-il was killed and Korean activist Park Ju-bom was also killed as a result of shooting and torture by the Japanese authorities. These memories of struggle have been handed on to Korean residents in Japan and many of them say the discriminatory policy of the Japanese government against Korean schools has been continued for about 70 years.

    In the recommendations relating to hate speech and hate crimes in Japan, CERD recommended the Japanese government ‘address the root causes of racist hate speech’ and it should combat ‘prejudices which lead to racial discrimination’. This suggests that CERD recognizes that hate speech and hate crimes against Korean residents in Japan has not occurred suddenly. It recognizes that there are deep-seated causes which go back to the time when Korea was colonized by Japan. This colonization by the Japanese government is at the core of the discrimination against Korean school students and the spreading of hate speech and hate crimes across Japanese society.

    Most Korean residents in Japan are descendants of those who were forced to live in Japan because of the colonial rule of Japan in their homeland. The Japanese government has the obligation to ensure justice to Korean residents in Japan who were deprived of their language, name and culture by Japan. The Japanese government must guarantee ethnic education of Korean children. The Japanese government should immediately stop the discriminatory policies against Korean schools and guarantee right to education for Korean children.

    I hope the civil movement both in Japan and elsewhere will support Korean schools in their plea for acceptance and the elimination of discrimination.

     

    Wooki KIM is on the Secretariat staff of Human Rights Association for Korean Residents in Japan.

  • Malcolm Fraser. Without a ground force and an end point, the war against ISIS will be a farce.

    In The Guardian, Malcolm Fraser has said ‘Air power alone will not make a difference in Iraq. Barack Obama and his allies have the worst strategic understanding possible of what they claim is an existential threat ‘  See link to article below

    http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/08/without-a-ground-force-and-an-end-point-the-war-against-isis-will-be-a-farce

  • Understanding the goals of Hamas and Israel.

    Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic on 4 October 2014 said ‘I remain partial to the view that American Jewry is threatened more by its own ignorance than by anything that may happen in the Middle East. But if Rabbis are going to speak about Israel, then they should speak with clarity …’ The article is available online below:

    http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/10/understanding-the-goals-of-hamas-and-israel/381048/

  • 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.