John Menadue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

     

     

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

    You may be interested in this repost.  John Menadue.

     

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

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

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

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

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

    No government will lightly challenge the AMA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    What do they know of health who only health knows?

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

     

     

  • Kerry Murphy. Kurds in the way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Kerry Murphy is a Sydney solicitor who specialises in Immigration Law

     

  • Walter Hamilton. A paranoid state?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    It would be a good beginning to a sounder dialogue.

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

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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

    You may be interested in this repost. John Menadue

     

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Democratic Renewal

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

  • Peter Day. An Open Letter to Cardinal Pell

    Dear Cardinal Pell,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Peace and regards,

    Fr Peter Day, Parish Priest, Corpus Christi

    Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn, Australia

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

    Ethical responsibility

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

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

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

    Areas where we fall short in ethical responsibility include

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

  • Gaza, Israel and Palestine.

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

     

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

  • John Menadue. What does Labor stand for Part 3

    Citizenship

    We are more than individuals linked by market transactions.

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

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

    Areas where we fall short in citizenship include

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

    Stewardship

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

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

    Areas where we fall short in stewardship include

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

     

     

  • Will we ever learn?

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

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

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

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

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

  • Secrecy and Propaganda.

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

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

    John Menadue.

     

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

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

    From values to principles

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

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

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

    Fairness or equity

    A ‘fair go’ is primarily about economic opportunity.

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

    Fairness promotes social mobility and limits division and resentment.

    Fairness should not be restricted to education.

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

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

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

    Areas where we fall short in fairness include

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

    Freedom

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

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

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

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

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

    Areas where we fall short in freedom include

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

     

     

  • Richard Norman, Suzanne Robinson. Health lessons from England.

     

    While Australia and England share much of their cultural heritage, the countries have answered the challenge of funding health care in quite different ways.

    The Australian Medicare system is predominantly based around private practice and fee-for-service. The English National Health System (NHS) is based on capitation, in which doctors are paid a fixed amount to manage a group of potential patients irrespective of the actual level of care.

    Neither system is perfect, but each can learn from the other; after all, they both aim to achieve efficient, equitable, high-quality health services is the same.

    Fee-for-service vs capitation

    Australia’s emphasis on fee-for-service funding reflects both a strength and weakness. Paying for each consultation or service, mainly through the Medical Benefits Schedule, incentivises doctors to do more.

    But it can also lead to over-provision of care. Most of us have anecdotes about returning to the doctor for procedural issues, such as renewing prescriptions, or receiving test results, which might be more efficiently done over the phone, or by a nurse or pharmacist.

    The English system, with its focus on capitation, may be too far in the opposite direction. Under capitation, doctors are paid an amount to manage a set of patients, this amount usually determined by estimates of need.

    If doctors are effectively paid no extra for providing additional care to a patient, then you can reasonably expect an average level of service below what is optimal.

    Both the English and Australian systems have tried various ways of blending fee-for-service and capitation, but the two systems continue to sit some distance apart.

    Pay for performance

    One possible way out of this impasse is to move towards a system in which doctors are paid for results, rather than activity.

    The English system has considerable experience in this area – good and bad – with its Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF), which attempts to pay doctors directly for their patients’ health outcomes.

    Under this system, surgeries are awarded points for a range of outcomes including chronic disease management, practice organisation, positive patient experience, and the provision of extra services such as child health and maternity services. These points are then translated into a financial payment for the surgery.

    In England, there is mixed evidence about the appropriateness of this system. Design has proven a major challenge; in the first year, there was a cost blowout as surgeries achieved a much higher proportion of points than was expected.

    So, could such an approach be taken in Australia?

    The answer is that it would be difficult. Patients are registered to surgeries in England, meaning it’s easier to link clinical outcomes with the activity of particular doctors.

    But Medicare data does show us which patients see which doctors, so linking to outcomes might be feasible in Australia.

    However, as with much of the area of international transferability of health policy, the basic policy idea would need to be adapted to reflect the existing health system architecture.

    Keeping people out of hospitals

    Over the past decade, the English health system has pursued a policy of local commissioning of services. Led by local GPs, Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) are responsible for allocating their local community’s health budget on emergency care, elective hospital care, maternity services and community mental health services.

    CCGs place general practitioners at the heart of health care funding decisions, giving them a role previously undertaken by lay managers in primary care.

    The aim is to strengthen primary care and keep people out of hospitals. If you make one body responsible for purchasing primary care (such as GPs) and secondary care (predominantly hospitals), you’re likely to make better use intensive GP interventions that would reduce the use of considerably more expensive hospital care.

    In the 2012 Health and Social Care Act, the Conservative-led coalition placed £65 Billion into the hands of 211 newly-formed CCGs, 65% of a total NHS budget of £95 Billion. The English experience of commissioning is still a developing story. It appears to offer benefit, but the design of the system is crucial. Those doing the local commissioning must be supported both logistically and financially, so they have the time to dedicate to this work and it isn’t just passed on to bureaucrats.

    Australia’s fragmented system

    Our health system is funded from a mixture of state/territory and federal money. Primary care is predominantly paid for by Medicare, while much of the financial cost of providing hospital care is met by the states and territories.

    This poses a major problem for health-care reform. There is an incentive for both the states and the federal government to shift costs towards the other, which can be easily done by moving patients between primary and secondary care.

    Further, the incentive to keep people out of hospital by providing more high-quality primary care is weak, because the government level responsible for primary care (federal) does not reap any savings from this extra investment.

    Community-level organisations such as Medicare Locals are being given small pockets of funding to commission locally, and it is likely that this role will be included in the new Primary Health Networks (PHNs) when they replace Medicare Locals.

    One option is to give local commissioners more power through the PHNs and redirect some state government funding directly to the community-based organisations.

    But caution is required, as English history demonstrates high-quality commissioning requires substantial time and financial investment, as well as effective leadership and the willingness of clinicians to engage.

    Designing a better health system

    Like most other countries, Australia cannot continue to fund the increasing demand for health care, and we need to look for ways to strengthen the role of primary care and keep people out of hospital.

    In the endless debate around how to pay doctors in a way that doesn’t cause over- or under-servicing, adding payments for keeping people healthy is one possibility Australia should consider. But we need to keep in mind the possible negative consequences of such a policy.

    Similarly, Australia should consider supporting local clinicians to make decisions that benefit their community. But because our health systems are so structurally different, the design of such a system for Australia would be a challenge requiring considerable thought.

    This article was first published in The Conversation on 4 September 2014. Richard Norman is Senior Research Fellow in Health Economics at Curtin University, Suzanne Robinson is Associate Professor of Health Policy and Management at Curtin University.

     

  • Philip Kokic, Mark Howden, Steven Crimp. 99.999% certainty humans are driving global warming.

    There is less than 1 chance in 100,000 that global average temperature over the past 60 years would have been as high without human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, our new research shows.

    Published in the journal Climate Risk Management today, our research is the first to quantify the probability of historical changes in global temperatures and examines the links to greenhouse gas emissions using rigorous statistical techniques.

    Our new CSIRO work provides an objective assessment linking global temperature increases to human activity, which points to a close to certain probability exceeding 99.999%.

    Our work extends existing approaches undertaken internationally to detect climate change and attribute it to human or natural causes. The 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report provided an expert consensus that:

    It is extremely likely [defined as 95-100% certainty] that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic [human-caused] increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together.

    Decades of extraordinary temperatures

    July 2014 was the 353rd consecutive month in which global land and ocean average surface temperature exceeded the 20th-century monthly average. The last time the global average surface temperature fell below that 20th-century monthly average was in February 1985, as reported by the US-based National Climate Data Center.

    This means that anyone born after February 1985 has not lived a single month where the global temperature was below the long-term average for that month.

    We developed a statistical model that related global temperature to various well-known drivers of temperature variation, including El Niño, solar radiation, volcanic aerosols andgreenhouse gas concentrations. We tested it to make sure it worked on the historical record and then re-ran it with and without the human influence of greenhouse gas emissions.

    Our analysis showed that the probability of getting the same run of warmer-than-average months without the human influence was less than 1 chance in 100,000.

    We do not use physical models of Earth’s climate, but observational data and rigorous statistical analysis, which has the advantage that it provides independent validation of the results.

    Detecting and measuring human influence

    Our research team also explored the chance of relatively short periods of declining global temperature. We found that rather than being an indicator that global warming is not occurring, the observed number of cooling periods in the past 60 years strongly reinforces the case for human influence.

    We identified periods of declining temperature by using a moving 10-year window (1950 to 1959, 1951 to 1960, 1952 to 1961, etc.) through the entire 60-year record. We identified 11 such short time periods where global temperatures declined.

    Our analysis showed that in the absence of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions, there would have been more than twice as many periods of short-term cooling than are found in the observed data.

    There was less than 1 chance in 100,000 of observing 11 or fewer such events without the effects of human greenhouse gas emissions.

     The problem and the solution

    Why is this research important? For a start, it might help put to rest some common misunderstandings about there being no link between human activity and the observed, long-term trend of increasing global temperatures.

    Our analysis – as well as the work of many others – shows beyond reasonable doubt that humans are contributing to significant changes in our climate.

    Good risk management is all about identifying the most likely causes of a problem, and then acting to reduce those risks. Some of the projected impacts of climate change can be avoided, reduced or delayed by effective reduction in global net greenhouse gas emissions and by effective adaptation to the changing climate.

    Ignoring the problem is no longer an option. If we are thinking about action to respond to climate change or doing nothing, with a probability exceeding 99.999% that the warming we are seeing is human-induced, we certainly shouldn’t be taking the chance of doing nothing.

    This article was first published in The Conversation on 4 September 2014.

    Philip Kokic is the Senior Statistician at CSIRO, Mark Howden is the Research Scientist, Agriculture Flagship at CSIRO, Steven Crimp is the Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO.

     

  • John Menadue. The Great Complacency

    Professor Ross Garnaut has spoken many times about our great complacency and our unwillingness to undertake the types of economic and social reform that we saw in the Hawke/Keating periods and in the early days of the Howard Government – think, GST.

    Have the golden days of reform gone forever?

    The former head of Treasury Ken Henry said that he has never known a period in which the standard of public debate on important issues is as bad as it is today. Ross Garnaut has spoken with obvious frustration about the ‘diabolical problem’ of sensible policies on climate change.

    In April 2012 Greg Dodds and I posted an article on this blog ’The Asian Century and the Australian smoko’. We argued that whilst we responded well to the opportunities in Asia for over a decade we went on ‘smoko’ from the mid-1990s. Our Anglo-Celtic both enriched and trapped us. Fear of Asia was promoted.  John Horward gave us permission to be ‘relaxed and comfortable’ again, to have a break from the Asian challenge and opportunities. The result was two decades of drift by business, universities, schools and the media in equipping ourselves for the region .Complacency set in.

    Ross Garnaut poses questions for us again…

    ‘Do we have a problem that requires business adjustment, income restraint and new reforms to lift productivity? Or is the Australian ‘she’ll be right’ approach to economic policy in the early 21st Century good enough? Economic modelling for today’s Forum by Victoria University’s Centre of Policy Studies suggests that Australia does indeed have a sizeable problem with the real prospect of falling living standards to 2020 if nothing is done to avert it.’

    Can we counter those vested interests in the community, those ‘diabolical problems’ that consistently run good policies off the rails? And there are serious obstacles to address. There are powerful vested interests that are hostile to risk taking and want to hold on to privileged positions. They don’t want reform and change.

    Media

    In our 24/7 media cycle the short-term, the partisan, the confrontational and personalities dominate. The attention span of the media on important policy issues is very short. Our Canberra press gallery, including the ABC, is more concerned about politics than policy. News Corporation, which controls 70% of the metropolitan newspaper circulation, runs a partisan agenda that is unprofessional and self-serving. Just look at its denialism on climate change. News Corp distorts and debases almost every public policy issue it touches. What an awful legacy Rupert Murdoch will leave!

    The mainstream media is a serious problem not only because of concentration of power but it still influences the agenda in other under resourced media. Social media, even bloggers are filling some of the vacuum but it is nowhere near enough.  Why doesn’t the ABC establish a high quality online policy portal committed to articulating the key issues that we face?

    Lobbying

    The World Economic Forum in its 2013/4 Global Competitiveness Report on ‘favouritism in decisions of government officials’ ranked Australia poorly, well behind such countries as Singapore,Sweden,Netherlands, ,Norway,Japan, Germany and the UK. In transparency in government decision making we also ranked poorly.

    So much of the influence on governments is not exercised in public and contested discussion. The secret lobbying in Canberra and the state capitals has shown how lobbyists can effectively twist the arms of ministers. Lobbyists know that they cannot win an open debate with the public, so they exercise their enormous influence in secret. Think of what the Australian Minerals Council has done to corrupt good public policy in the resources sector. Consider what happens in the health field with the secret influence of the AMA, the Australian Pharmacy Guild, the Private Health Insurance funds and Medicines Australia. We will never get worthwhile health reform until these secretive and powerful vested interests are publicly confronted and forced to publicly defend their positions. And beyond these few examples there is the influence of the Australian Hotels Association in promoting the scourge of alcohol. We need to address the destructive power of the lobbying industry and its corruption of the public interest and public debate. Favouritism in government decision making and a lack of transparency is a major obstacle to good policy making.

    Political donations

    Associated with the corrupting power of both in house and third party lobbyists is the ability of powerful and wealthy groups to win favours from politcians with political donations. The NSW ICAC inquiry has shown what charade donations have made of any sense of an open and honest public discourse. We need to consider the banning of all donations at both national and state levels. Our political system is being bought by wealthy vested interests.

    Think Tanks

    Think tanks should be providing us with independent and public advice on important public issues. But the most influential ‘think tank’ is the Institute of Public Affairs, which is secretly funded by wealthy companies like big tobacco and the mining sector. It runs phoney campaigns in service of wealthy private and secret funders. The Sydney Institute pretends that it is an independent forum, but never discloses the sources of its funding. These ‘think tanks’ that refuse to disclose their donors should be refused media access, certainly by the ABC, and denied tax deductibility for donations. If we are to have an honest and transparent public debate action must be taken against these phoney think tanks.

    Business Economists

    Most of the business economists that we see so regularly on TV or read in our newspapers are employed by the banks. The 19 member Committee of Australian Business Economists is dominated by bank and financial service employees. Some of these business economists make an important contribution to public debate on broad economic issues, but how often do they challenge the power of their employers who increasingly dominate our economy, particularly in the fast-growing area of superannuation and funds management.

    We used to have a number of independent “public intellectuals” usually from the universities. But with the exception of a few university people such as Professor Ross Garnaut, Professor Bob Gregory and Ian McAuley, these public commentators are few.

    With a few notable exceptions our climate scientists are remarkably tongue tired in the face of so much self-interest and crude ideology. Don’t they care about climate change? Do they feel that politics is beneath them?

    Dubious ‘contributors’ to this public debate are the large number of accounting and consulting firms who undertake ‘modelling’ to produce what their clients want. I am not sure how professional and independent some of this modelling is. Ross Gittins has described the problem of recent modelling on the effect on electricity prices if the Renewable Energy Target is abolished. He said ‘regrettably economic modelling has degenerated into a device for bamboozling the public’

    Leadership

    A key to the earlier periods of policy reform was political leadership supported broadly by business and the trade unions. I do think that we respond to strong leadership if we feel that the sacrifice is worth it in the national interest and that it is fair. Unfortunately today we so often have a lack of leadership and a partisan and coarse public dialogue.

    Strong and capable leaders will help to outflank the obstacles I have mentioned. But the obstacles are major reasons why complacency is winning the day.

    We are still enjoying the benefits of the reforms of the 1980s and 1990s. Can we shake ourselves free of our complacency and partisanship and stop fooling ourselves that ‘she’ll be right’.

  • Rod Tucker. Broadband projects fail reality test.

    In an article in The Conversation on 8 September 2014, Rod Tucker points out that the broadband projections will fail a reality test.  He said ‘If they [the Vertigan report] had used realistic data for growth in demand, their cost benefit analysis may well have shown that a FTTP network will provide Australia with the best long term value for money.’  Rod Tucker is Laureate Emeritus Professor at University of Melbourne.  See link to full article below.

    http://theconversation.com/broadband-projections-fail-reality-test-31341

  • Gavan McCormack. Disturbing trends in Japan Part 4

    Friendship, states, peoples and Australia

    The government of Japan struggles to reconcile servile incorporation in today’s US hegemonic project with Japan’s own nationalism, but the circle is not easily to be squared. Nationalism is distorted, denied and channeled into a ‘correct history’ movement, beautiful Japan campaigns, and antagonism to China and Korea. The wave of xenophobic abuse of China and Korea, speculation about a possible war, and ‘hate speech’ bullying of Zainichi resident Koreans, helps consolidate Abe’s support base and justify frontier militarisation. It constitutes the reverse side of his stealth revision of the constitution and promotion of military-first, US-serving priorities. Furthermore, basic insecurity is exacerbated by neoliberal policies that for more than a decade now have functioned to replace regular jobs with part-time, temporary or other non-regular ones (now accounting for 19 million people, or 38 per cent of the total workforce).

    It is not as though the Abe agenda has widespread national support. He took office after the lower-house election in December 2012 delivered his party a substantial majority on the basis of 27.6 per cent of the vote in the national ‘bloc’ component (hardly different from 2009, when it took 26.7 per cent and suffered a humiliating defeat), and 16.62 million votes in the small electorate seats, more than two million fewer than the 18.81 million it took on the occasion of its 2009 defeat. Since then support levels have wavered, kept high through his first year of government by the rhetoric of Abenomics but suddenly dropping below 50 per cent (from 54 to 47 per cent] in July 2014 as the ‘collective self-defence’ doctrine was adopted.

    There is now a thick fabric of cooperation and exchange between Australia and Japan. In both countries, the image of the other is generally positive, and they are urged to the embrace by their key security partner and ally, the United States. However, official Australia has a distinctive agenda not necessarily widely shared or understood in the community. It has long favoured Japanese constitutional revision and showed no sign in 2014 of concern at the way the Abe government was going about accomplishing it. It also favours an expanded Japanese regional military role and closer integration of Australian, Japanese and American forces. Official Australia is not known to have any reservations about the way the government of Japan has gone about constructing a new facility on Okinawa for the US Marine Corps or to have any apparent qualms about moves to switch the Japanese nuclear power grid (frozen in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima disaster) back on and promote the export of nuclear-power-generation systems as a core sector of the Japanese economy. Australian silence on issues such as Yasukuni and the ‘comfort women’ is also appreciated in Tokyo, and naturally taken to signify agreement, or ‘shared’ values.

    In short, Australia has yet to disentangle affection and respect for the Japanese people from identification with the values and policies of the Abe government. For the moment, few seem conscious of the distinction and so support for the Abe government and its agenda is scarcely challenged. However, those who believe they share values with the Abe government should look carefully at contemporary Japan’s complex crisis of identity, history and role; at the radical but contradictory agenda pursued by Prime Minister Abe; and not least at the burgeoning confrontation in Oura Bay in Okinawa, where the juggernaut of the state, with its monopoly of force and readiness to sacrifice nature to military ends threatens the local, non-violent, democratic and fundamentally ‘conservative’ citizenry.

  • Jane Tolman. I don’t want to get Dementia.

    Dementia is what many of us fear most, and the effective risk is largely related to age.   The statistics say that at 65 years of age, only 2% have dementia.  But this figure doubles with the passage of each five year period.  By 90, the risk of having dementia is about one in four.  Because of the “survivor effect” (those with the fewest risks will live to old age), the subsequent risk no longer increases at this rate.

    There is no guarantee that dementia can be avoided, whatever we do.  But what does the evidence say about what strategies can reduce the risk? Genes account for only a small percentage of those with dementia, especially among the elderly.

    There is now evidence that the risk can be reduced, and that this will lead to fewer people with dementia.  In fact, we think that if the onset of dementia could be delayed by five years, then the numbers would be halved (Dementia Risk Reduction, prepared for Alzheimer’s Australia, 2007).

    Despite much controversy in recent years about the exact cause of Alzheimer’s disease- the most common form of dementia in the western world- it turns out that the factors which protect against heart disease also protect against dementia. The UK Blackfriars consensus produced this year suggested that within two decades up to 20% of predicted new cases of dementia could be prevented with lifestyle alterations designed to reduce blood pressure, obesity, cholesterol and diabetes.

    So what can we do to minimise the risk of developing dementia?

    The brain is arguably the most important organ and should be treated with respect at all times. “Getting knocked out” sounds bad, and it is. We are now aware that episodes of concussion are bad for the brain and there are reports that head injuries contribute to dementia.  Protect your brain, and not just from toxic substances.

    It’s never too early to start with life style changes. Both physical and mental activity are critical, and the earlier they start, the better. Regular is good- say 30 minutes every day of sustained physical exercise.  Patterns established in youth are harder to break in old age.  When it comes to mental exercise, repetition of familiar tasks is not particularly useful (such as Sudoku or crosswords); there must be real stimulation and challenging to the brain. Learning a language or taking a university course in a new field is what’s needed.

    Connectivity is the new buzz word for dementia.  This relates to the structure of the brain (how nerves connect with each other) and the disruption of neuronal connectivity is emerging as a key component in the impairment of brain function. But it also relates to social connections. People don’t thrive in isolation and neither do brains. As we age, we lose social connections (people die) so it’s necessary to have a large social network when we are younger. Being with people- having relationships, joining groups, developing interests which involve human contact- these will all improve brain function and help to reduce the dementia risk.  Ideally, you should have friends who are younger than you are, but at least a mixture of ages.

    Nurturing the senses is about maximising the inputs to the brain.  Good vision and hearing are among the important predictive factors for a good memory in old age.  Fifty percent of older people have an incorrect prescription for their spectacles, and while most very elderly people have some deafness, hearing aids are often not worn. Now is the time- however young or old you are- to have a check and correct any sensory deficits as soon as possible.

    What should you eat? Moderation and balance will usually do the trick.    Having a healthy weight before old age is critical: in older age weight loss means losing muscle, and this is a sure way of triggering falls, impairing the circulation and immune function. For most older people, care needs to be taken to maintain weight, and to have protein at the centre of every meal.  Salt is bad for the brain as it contributes to hypertension which itself causes damage.  Fats are essential, but are best in balance; avoid saturated fats as these may double the risk of dementia.  Fruits and vegetables are associated with longevity, but also promote good bowel function.  Constipation in old age is the enemy of health, happiness and functioning well, each of which helps us to live the dementia journey better. Broccoli and cauliflower also contain Vitamin E which is thought to be protective against dementia. If you need more guidance, the Mediterranean diet has recognised benefits.

    Alcohol in moderation may be protective, but with excessive amounts (regular consumption in excess of two drinks a day or four in a single session) come increased risks for hypertension, cardiovascular disease and dementia.  Binge drinking may increase the risk of dementia three fold after 65.

    Smoking is a serious risk for a range of illnesses, and if you survive cancers, chronic lung diseases (especially emphysema) and vascular disease (heart attacks and strokes) then dementia is also more likely in your old age.

    Regular blood pressure checks and careful control are essential, as hypertension is the enemy of brain health. Avoiding diabetes, similarly dangerous for brains, means a healthy diet, weight control and regular screens.  See your doctor if there are any new symptoms, especially lethargy, blurred vision, increased hunger, unexplained weight loss or increased thirst.  If you have diabetes, keep the sugars under control.

    Your psyche should be as important to you as your physical health. The responsibility for your state of mind rests with you, and while stress might not be avoidable, how you deal with it is up to you.  If you need help, get it.  Whether you get dementia is not up to you.  But there are ways to reduce the risk, and to make the journey less traumatic if you are unlucky.  What is up to you, is what you know (keep up to date) and your attitude to your health (be positive).  Reducing your risks for dementia is a lifelong undertaking and will make you a happier and healthier person.

     

    Jane Tolman is Director of Aged Care, Royal Hobart Hospital.

     

     

  • Gavan McCormack. Disturbing trends in Japan (Part 3 of 4)

    Abe, the radical

    Nominally conservative, Abe’s political career has been devoted to an extraordinarily radical agenda, nothing less than revision of all three of the country’s basic charters: the Constitution (1946), the Fundamental Law of Education (1947) and Ampo (the 1951/1960 security treaty with the United States). He aspires to ‘liquidate the post-war regime’ and replace it with a ‘new’ and ‘beautiful’ Japan.

    Abe’s party has from its inception in 1955 been committed to revising the constitution, especially Article 9, the declaration of state pacifism. The current LDP draft constitution (of 2012) widens state prerogatives while narrowing citizen rights and transforms the existing Self-Defense Forces into a ‘national defence army’. But overt revision has never been politically feasible given the strength of public opposition. Abe has chafed especially under the constraint that all previous governments had accepted—that Japan might possess an ‘inherent’ right to collective self-defence, but the constitution ruled out its exercise. On the eve of his Australian visit Abe’s cabinet disposed of this problem by simply adopting a new interpretation, reversing the restrictive interpretation and freeing Japan’s forces for future global missions. The Japan that under its constitution from 1947 to 2014 could not go to war now can.

    The evasion of constitutional principle by the simple device of reinterpretation, praised by Abbott and by the Obama government, was widely seen in Japan as a constitutional coup-d‘etat. It was in keeping with Deputy Prime Minister Aso Taro’s encomium (in a speech to party faithful on 29 July 2013) that Japan should learn from the Hitler example, the people in Germany simply waking one morning to find that their constitution no longer meant what they had thought it did. The New York Times editorialised that Japan was ‘facing a genuine test of its democracy’.

    As for education, in his first term Abe succeeded in revising the Fundamental Law of Education, making it an educational requirement that schools promote ‘love of country’. Early in 2014, Abe’s Education Ministry announced that moral education was henceforth to be given a core part in the school curriculum and that history, geography and civics texts for junior and senior high schools would, from April 2016, have to ‘reflect the government’s official position on contentious historical issues’.

    As for the security treaty with the United States, revision in 1960 caused such political turmoil that it has not been formally revised since then. Instead, however, de facto revision has been unceasing and fundamental, in accord with high-level governmental and inter-governmental understandings, including the National Defense Guidelines (1978, 1997 and forthcoming 2014) and the 2005–06 Agreements on ‘Transformation and Realignment’ of US forces in Japan. The fullest expression of the Abe security stance is expected to come in the late-2014 National Security Guidelines, but it is indicative that he has already opened the door to the export of Japanese weapons, established a National Security Council that concentrates power in his office, passed a ‘secrets protection’ law that prescribes draconian penalties for whistleblowers and investigative journalists and reminds some of the infamous 1925 ‘Peace Preservation Law’, is planning or constructing new Japanese bases in the far-southwestern islands of Amami, Miyako, Ishigaki and Yonaguni, and is working on plans to establish Japanese versions of the CIA and the US Marine Corps.

    Australia has no known stance on educational policy, but it has long favoured constitutional revision and a ‘normal state’ (‘strong’ and war capable) agenda for Japan. The fact that Abe takes aim in particular at Japan’s democratic, citizen-based and anti-militarist elements, preferring instead a paradoxical mix of the Shintoist, the American, the beautiful and the new, seems not to have registered in the Australian consciousness.

    Though Abe offends and worries the United States on many fronts, his redeeming quality is the enthusiasm he brings to the security agenda, implementing a substantial military build-up, merging with and functionally subordinating Japan’s military to that of the United States and building major new facilities for the Marine Corps in Northern Okinawa (as well as, more recently, in US territory (Guam and the Marianas)). For the cash-strapped Pentagon the prospect of such largesse,and of a 225,000-person subsidiary force, all costs met by Japan, well-trained and -equipped and ready for action on the Pentagon’s behalf under ‘collective self-defence’ principles in future wars, is irresistible.

  • Mike Steketee. Politics vs Science.

    “THE laws of physics are non-negotiable,” observed Michel Jarraud, secretary-general of the World Meteorological Organisation, this week. https://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/pr_1002_en.html

    You wouldn’t think so listening to the often frenzied debate about global warming or, according to Tony Abbott’s senior business adviser Maurice Newman, what is really global cooling http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/were-illprepared-if-the-iceman-cometh/story-e6frg6zo-1227023489894 .

    Jarraud was commenting on the release of the WMO’s annual greenhouse gas bulletin https://www.wmo.int/pages/mediacentre/press_releases/documents/1002_GHG_Bulletin.pdf  , based mainly on data collected by 50 countries. It shows a 34 per cent increase in the warming effect of greenhouse gases between 1990 and 2013. Most of this is attributable to carbon dioxide, atmospheric concentrations of which have risen by 142 per cent since the start of industrialisation in the 18th century, “primarily because of emissions from combustion of fossil fuels and cement production”. The WMO recorded an increase of 2.9 parts per million in 2013 – the largest rise since 1984 – although it added the figure was subject to seasonal and regional variations, such as a changing balance between photosynthesis and respiration or the amount of biomass burned.

    The figures put the best face on things, more or less. The WMO’s bulletin reports on concentrations of greenhouse gases rather than emissions – that is, what remains in the atmosphere after the estimated 25 per cent of emissions that are absorbed by the oceans and a similar amount by the biosphere, particularly plants. That means we are producing around twice as much long-lived greenhouse gases than can be taken up by the earth and the oceans. Moreover, the increasing amounts of CO2 going into the ocean is causing acidification at a rate that “appears unprecedented at least over the last 300 million years”. The consequences are not fully known but include reduced calcification, relied on by corals, molluscs and other organisms.

    Jarraud said the bulletin “provides a scientific base for decision-making. …Pleading ignorance can no longer be an excuse for not acting.”

    So much for the science. Back in the world of politics, where just about anything is negotiable, apparently including the future of the planet, Australia has decided that it has been doing far too much to deal with global warming. The price on carbon emissions has been removed, despite the evidence, both direct and indirect, that it worked. Most of the sharp increase in electricity prices in recent years has been due not to the carbon tax but the cost of upgrading infrastructure – the poles and wires – often unnecessarily because of perverse incentives. But the response from consumers has been exactly what you would expect from a price rise, whatever its origins – they have reduced their demand for electricity. This has been one of the factors in the break since 2010 in the long-term trend towards rising electricity demand. file:///C:/Documents%20and%20Settings/Kate/My%20Documents/Downloads/IP%2014%20Power%20down_0.pdf

    Prices in the electricity market have responded in another way. In the words of the report https://retreview.dpmc.gov.au/ret-review-report-0 of the inquiry established by the Abbott government into the renewable energy target, “analyses suggest that, overall, the RET is exerting some downward pressure on wholesale electricity prices. This is not surprising, given that the RET is increasing the supply of electricity when electricity demand has been falling”.

    Indeed, if the reduction is passed on in lower retail prices, as it should be in a competitive market, and offsets the higher cost of producing renewables, it might be thought of as a positive outcome by a government that hails the reduction in electricity prices brought about by the abolition of the carbon tax. However, the inquiry into the RET, headed by businessman and climate change sceptic Dick Warburton, had another purpose: to find a way of scaling back or eliminating the RET. As a result, the report argued that “artificially” low wholesale electricity prices could distort investment decisions.

    Thankfully, the report did not ignore some other facts, even if it put its own peculiar interpretation on them. Modelling it commissioned found the net impact of the RET on retail prices was small, including into the future. It concluded that the scheme had broadly met its objectives, with output from large scale renewable generators, mainly wind farms, almost doubling and that from small scale systems, mainly solar, already exceeding levels forecast for 2020. The cost of renewables had fallen, particularly for rooftop solar and the small scale renewable industry was becoming commercially viable.

    All this might sound like good news but the report thought otherwise. It found the RET to be a high cost approach to reducing CO2 emissions – $35 to $68 a tonne and $100 to $200 a tonne for small-scale renewables.

    So it is but it depends on the alternatives. At the moment there are none. The Gillard government set the carbon price at $23 a tonne and the international market price has moved much lower since. The report suggests the Abbott government’s direct action policy would produce cheaper abatement than renewables. But that remains to be seen – that is, if the policy is ever implemented in a viable form, given that it currently is blocked in the Senate.

    The government says it remains committed to reducing emissions by 5 per cent from 2000 levels by 2020, although the Climate Change Authority, among others, argues that this is less than required for Australia to meet its fair share of the international effort. The RET is the only remaining significant mechanism for at least heading in the right direction. Its role is to increase the share of emissions-free electricity, not, as the Warburton report argues, to solve the problems facing fossil fuel generators because of falling demand by winding back the RET.

    According to Andrew Blakers, director of the Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems at the Australian Natonal University, Australia could achieve 90 per cent renewable energy by 2040 by replacing coal and gas fired stations that are due to be retired over the coming decades http://theconversation.com/renewable-energy-target-review-experts-respond-31050 . Solutions would need to be found for storing power from wind and solar, given their intermittent nature, but developments in battery technology suggest that this is in prospect. Blakers offers another option that he says would be cheaper: “pumped hydro”, under which water is pumped up to a reservoir when there is spare electricity from renewables and then run downhill through a turbine when needed. http://theconversation.com/how-pushing-water-uphill-can-solve-our-renewable-energy-issues-28196

    In a world that gradually is doing more to address climate change but still not enough to meet the target of limiting warming to 2C, Australia  has become the international laggard, despite being one of the highest producers of greenhouse gases per capita in the world. The International Energy Agency has estimated http://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/25recom_2011.pdf  that taking a range of measures merely to improve the efficiency with which we use energy can reduce total global energy consumption by 17 per cent by 2030, making a big contribution towards cutting greenhouse gases.

    But according to an American study http://aceee.org/portal/national-policy/international-scorecard , Australia ranks 10th out of 16 OECD countries in overall energy efficiency and last in transport. Under the Abbott government, it “has dramatically reduced its investment in efficiency and has rolled back its efficiency incentive programs, causing its score to decline.” An example is this year’s budget, which withdrew commonwealth funding of public transport projects and increased it for roads.

    Given the relentless long-term trend towards global warming (memo Maurice Newman: periods of short-term cooling have been declining http://theconversation.com/99-999-certainty-humans-are-driving-global-warming-new-study-29911?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%201899&utm_content=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%201899+CID_02ac31e1fe595615139d593549d1aefb&utm_source=campaign_monitor&utm_term=99999%20certainty%20humans%20are%20driving%20global%20warming%20new%20study ), it should be a case of all hands on deck. The opposition already has voted against direct action legislation in the House of Representatives on the grounds that it is a poor substitute for an emissions trading scheme. Perhaps it is but that does not mean the kind of projects that could attract funding under direct action, such as for increased energy efficiency in commercial buildings and industry, reafforestation and improved soil carbon, are not worth doing.  Labor should reverse its position and support the legislation in the Senate.

    As the WMO’s Michel Jarraud put it this week, “we are runnning out of time”.

    This article was first published in The Drum on 12 September, 2014.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Gavan McCormack. Disturbing trends in Japan (Part 2 of 4)

    Shared values

    Much was made during the visit of the ‘shared values’ that unite Australia and Japan. But are the values of Abe or his government really widely shared? From the time of his entry into the national Diet in 1993, Abe immersed himself in the historical revisionist cause, resisting moves towards formal apology for the war and compensation for war victims and objecting to what he and his colleagues refer to scathingly as a ‘Tokyo Tribunal view of history’. He believes Japan was unjustly blamed for the China and Pacific wars of 1931 to 1945. As his friend Hyakuta Naoki, Abe-appointed director of national broadcaster NHK, put it earlier this year, the Nanjing massacre of 1937 never occurred and Americans had ‘fabricated war crimes against Japanese leaders in order to cover up American atrocities’. He and most of his cabinet today belong to organisations that look back to wartime Japan for inspiration, with names such as Dietmembers Associations ‘for the Passing on of a Correct History’, for a ‘Bright Japan’ and ‘Reflection on Japan’s Future and History Education’, and the ‘Shinto Politics League’. The basic principle of Shinto politics was articulated in January 2000 by then prime minister Mori Yoshiro, who referred to Japan as an ‘emperor-centred country of the gods’—precisely the view held by those who led Japan to the disastrous wars of the 1930s and 1940s.

    The politician Abe professes to admire most is his own (maternal) grandfather, Kishi Nobusuke (1896–1987). Kishi was economic czar of Manchuria (Northeast China) in the 1930s, became minister for trade and industry in the Tojo Hideki cabinet from 1941 and signed the declaration of war against the United States, holding office in the wartime government till shortly before war’s end and being then held for three years as a suspected Class ‘A’ war criminal. Released, however, in December 1948, he became prime minister from 1957 (in which capacity he first visited Australia) to 1960. Tim Weiner’s History of the CIA refers to him as ‘one of the two most influential agents the United States ever recruited … [and who] helped carry out the CIA mission to control the government’ (which continued up to the 1970s). Commonly seen as nationalists, Abe and his grandfather are both better seen as servants of the United States posing as nationalists.

    Unlike Australia, in the United States it is clear some harbour serious doubts over what values are shared with Japan. When Tony Abbott extended the invitation to Mr Abe to address a joint sitting of the Australian parliament, one wonders whether he was aware:

    • that the US government has consistently denied the honour of a formal congressional address to Japan’s leaders, even though it has extended such an honour to successive Korean presidents (five in all).
    • that Abe in his first spell in government (2006–07) had been subject to formal rebuke by the United States on human-rights grounds (House of Representatives Resolution 101 of 2007) for failure to acknowledge and compensate the victims of the wartime ‘comfort women’ system, and that similar resolutions had also been adopted by Canada and the EU.
    • that while Abe in 2013 had to be satisfied with a businesslike White House lunch with President Obama, with no shared press conference, Chinese president Xi Jinping shortly afterwards got a respectful reception and spent a couple of days with Obama on a California ranch.
    • that, when Abe brushed off strong US objections and in December 2013 visited Yasukuni Shrine, the US embassy in Tokyo released a statement that ‘the United States is disappointed [sic.] that Japan’s leadership has taken an action that will exacerbate tensions with Japan’s neighbours’, and ordered him not to repeat it.
    • that President Obama himself directly rebuked Abe (in reference to his China policy) in front of a Tokyo press conference in April 2014. 

    In short, the present government of the United States has serious differences with the Abe Japanese government on both war memory and China (and Korea) policy. Japanese governments have striven desperately to secure from Washington the sort of honour bestowed on them in July 2014 by Canberra. Indeed it may well be that it was Washington’s ‘Japan handlers’—some at least of them also its ‘Australia handlers’—who put together the Australia honour. Much as the George W. Bush administration put together a visit by Prime Minister Koizumi in 2007 to the Elvis Presley shrine in Memphis to compensate him for the invitation to Congress he too desired but could not be granted, so for Abe Canberra would substitute for Washington. In its apparently unlimited enthusiasm over its new ‘special relationship’, Australia now is notably out of step with Washington, and Abe’s uncritical and extravagant Australian reception must have delighted him.

     

  • John Menadue. NATO, Ukraine and Russia.

    Nato,Ukraine and Russia…Katrina vanden Heuvel Washington Post 10 September 2014

    If the United States and Europe were thinking rationally, the NATO summit in Wales last week would have been an opportunity to discuss a lasting resolution to the violent crisis in Ukraine, which has claimed thousands of lives and crippled the country’s economy. Instead, amid a fragile cease-fire agreement between Kiev and pro-Russian rebels in the east, the assembled world leaders used the summit for more belligerent talk and reckless saber-rattling, with their ultimate goal increasingly unclear. The goal seemed more preparing the NATO alliance for a new Cold War with Russia than exploring how to make peace, even as Moscow was helping to bring about the cease-fire agreement.

    The meeting was just the most recent disturbing example of how cavalierly and cynically the NATO leaders — including President Obama — have escalated tensions, while dismissing opportunities to bring the conflict to a reasonable conclusion quickly. Absent from the discussion in Wales, among other things, was any recognition of NATO members’ own roles in triggering the crisis. Despite the dominant narrative that Russia is to blame for Ukraine’s uncertain future, history tells a different story — one in which the West’s provocative behavior has had predictable repercussions.

    There would have been no civil war if the European Union’s leadership had not insisted on an exclusive association agreement that prejudiced Ukrainian industry in the east and trade with Russia, or if the United States and European nations had used their influence with the demonstrators to abide by the Feb. 21 agreement then-President Viktor Yanukovych signed, which would have handed more power to parliament and called for elections in December, or if the United States and Europe had been willing to work with Russia to restore the Feb. 21 agreement and calm worries in Crimea and the east about the rights of Russian-speaking Ukrainians.

    Instead the U.S. and E.U. have encouraged the most radical elements in the Kiev government in their campaign to subjugate the east with military force — to seek a military solution to what is essentially a political problem in a deeply divided and economically fragile Ukraine.

    Our responsibility goes beyond the immediate crisis, too. There would not have been such a concerted Russian nationalist response to the crisis had the West not sowed the seeds of suspicion and mistrust over the past 18 years by growing NATO’s presence in Eastern Europe, in spite of the assurances that Russia ostensibly received from the George H.W. Bush administration that “NATO will not expand one inch to the east.” Russia clearly views NATO expansion not only as provocative but also as a betrayal of an agreement, and it perceives NATO’s push toward its borders as an act of aggression — and Western leaders know it.

    In this sense, NATO expansion is not a consequence of tension with Russia; it is the cause. As George Kennan, known as the “father of containment,” warned some 16 years ago, NATO’s willful expansion would create lasting tension. “I think it is the beginning of a new cold war,” Kennan said in a 1998 interview with Thomas Friedman, reacting to the alliance’s pending additions of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. “I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake.”

    In 2004, NATO admitted seven new members, including the Baltic States along the Russian border. Four years later, the George W. Bush administration failed to win acceptance for Georgia and Ukraine — a bid that faced significant opposition from Germany and France — but the alliance symbolically declared that the countries “will become members of NATO.”  Those actions have inevitably colored any developments.

    While there is no question that Russia at times has contributed to tensions in the region, what has unfolded was predictable and preventable. The West should have understood that an attempt to bring Ukraine into an exclusive arrangement with the European Union would spark deep, historical divisions within the country and itself, and raise Russian concerns. After all, we have seen this before.

    “Logic aside,” writes John Mearsheimer in Foreign Affairs, “Russian leaders have told their Western counterparts on many occasions that they consider NATO expansion into Georgia and Ukraine unacceptable, along with any effort to turn those countries against Russia — a message that the 2008 Russian-Georgian war also made crystal. Yet the hawkish outcry for a more confrontational stance toward Putin has yet to give way to common sense. Across the political spectrum, prominent figures are demanding harsher sanctions targeting Russia, as well as military assistance and NATO membership for Ukraine. These demands seem to increase regardless of what Moscow does and regardless of the fact that Russian cooperation is essential for the stabilization and rebuilding of the shattered Ukrainian economy. Never mind that Putin has just helped broker a long-sought cease-fire; sanctions, we are told, must be broadened and deepened. Punishing Russia is far more important than a political settlement in Ukraine.

    It is long past time for sober reasoning and comprehensive negotiations to end the bloody conflict. Fortunately, the parameters of a peaceful resolution are well established, and we have the cease-fire to build on.

    First and foremost, any possible membership of Ukraine in NATO or the stationing of NATO forces on Ukrainian territory must be firmly excluded. As I have written before, Ukraine’s chances for recovery depend on positive relationships with both Europe and Russia. There is only one way for Ukraine to stabilize, and that is as a bridge between Russia and the West, not a champion of either.

    Second, Ukraine should adopt a federal system that provides more autonomy for the eastern region and protects the rights of its Russian-speaking population. The E.U., Russia, and the United States should devise a joint plan to rescue the rapidly shrinking Ukrainian economy.

    Finally, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe should place observers and peacekeepers to monitor progress in the war-ravaged east.This is a fateful moment. The cease-fire is a positive step, but it may well be short-lived. For now, with NATO and Russia both preparing for the worst-case scenario, it is more important than ever to stop the triumphalist rhetoric and refocus our efforts on ending the conflict, not escalating. Make no mistake: there is no military solution to this challenge. Only a reasoned dialogue and political settlement can put Ukraine on the path to long-term stability and progress.

  • Gavan McCormack Disturbing trends in Japan (Part 1 of 4)

    These posts (published over 4 days) are extracts from an article by Gavan McCormack, entitled ‘Partnership 135 Degrees East’ which will be published in Arena.org.au. 

     

    Our best friend

    The current Japanese and Australian governments came into being in December 2012 and September 2013 respectively. Both are headed by conservative, neoliberal, climate-denialist, pro-American leaders, of similar age, who quickly established a close rapport. Following their first meeting, at an ASEAN summit in October 2013, Abbott declared Abe Australia’s ‘best friend in Asia’. In meetings that followed, in Tokyo in April and Canberra in July 2014, they resolved to transform the ‘strategic partnership’ into a new ‘special relationship.’ Both made unprecedented invited appearances at the highest-level national-security-council meeting of their counterpart country, and signed agreements for free trade and defence cooperation (including ‘trilateral security cooperation with the United States’) and closer scientific and academic links.

    Before the national parliament, Prime Minister Abbott delighted his guest and astonished many Australians by referring to the ‘skill and sense of honour’ of the imperial Japanese soldiers of seventy years ago. For his part, Abe resolved to ‘stay humble against the evils and horrors of history’, offering ‘sincere condolences towards the many who lost their lives’ and expressing his determination to do more to enhance peace.

    The Murdoch press waxed hot with excitement. The Australian’s Greg Sheridan declared the Abe performance ‘masterful … as intricate as a fine Noritake pottery work, with as many moving parts seamlessly working together as the robotics of a Nagoya car plant’, signifying ‘nothing less than the birth of a new Japan’.

    Abe’s expression of ‘condolences’ and his resolve to further the cause of peace were widely praised. Yet his ‘condolences’ were calibrated to convey sympathy while avoiding responsibility, and the greatest Japanese crimes—of Nanjing, Unit 731, and the sexual enslavement of hundreds of thousands of women across Asia—went unmentioned. It was as if those who ‘lost’ their lives at Kokoda and Sandakan had fallen victim to some mysterious ailment. Furthermore, by his references to peace, Abe plainly meant shedding the shackles of post-war constitutional pacifism and joining the United States in future wars because he sees it as heading the cause of global peace. Peace, in short, calls for war. It is a proposition worthy of Orwell.

    As for his professed commitment to settling disputes by dialogue and the rule of law, Abe in fact has ruled out discussion with China on the territorial issue that China sees as critical (contested sovereignty over the uninhabited islets known in China as Diaoyu and in Japan as Senkaku). There is, he insists, no dispute, no room for discussion or negotiation. What is called for is ‘not negotiation but physical force incapable of being misunderstood’ (brute force, in other words).

    Gavan McCormack is emeritus professor of the Australian National University, coordinator of The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus (http://japanfocus.org), and author of many books and articles on modern and contemporary Japan and East Asia.

  • John Menadue The Royal Commission into the Home Insulation Program – ’a dog’s breakfast.’

    In an article in Eureka Street on 8 September, Fr Frank Brennan described the Royal Commission report into the HIP as a ‘dog’s breakfast’. He described the reasoning behind Mr Hanger’s conclusion on commonwealth responsibility as ‘bizarre’. He added that the report was ‘inadequate and flawed’.

    See Frank Brennan’s comments at the end of this post.

    The pink batts issue has been dominated by party politicking, a relentless campaign by News Ltd and lazy journalism. The problems with the program were seized on at every opportunity to discredit the Rudd Government.

    I have long contended that the regulation of the home insulation industry is the responsibility, without any doubt, of state governments. (See my Blog of January 3, 2014 ‘Pink Batts – fact and fiction’). The states were and still are responsible for safety, however much the Royal Commissioner tried to shift the responsibility. He in effect said that the commonwealth should not have relied on the states to implement their own occupation and health safety laws, their own employment training programs, or their own building regulations. He said ‘To rely on the state and territory regimes to police their own respective workplace health and safety laws seems to me to have been misguided. ….’

    What an extraordinary thing to say. Any student of Economics I, Law 1 or Politics 1 would know that the states have clear responsibility in this area and that they jealously guard their territory. To say nothing of the responsibilities of employers!

    In all this misguided heaping of responsibility onto the commonwealth government, including the four deaths, we should also remind ourselves of issues that Michael Keating, Ian McAuley and I have raised in this blog.

    • There were 1.1 million installations completed under this program.
    • A CSIRO analysis found that the rate of fires (not deaths) under HIP was lower than previously.
    • 7% of installations had to be rectified which doesn’t seem a particularly high rate for the building industry.
    • One fatality was caused by a pre-existing fault; another electrocuted installer was employed by an electrician and the third death occurred when a contractor elected to work in oppressive heat.
    • It is suggested that the deaths occurred because the HIP was rushed. There certainly was a compelling reason for speedy implementation, but it is very problematical whether the four deaths would have been avoided if the commonwealth had taken more time.

    This has been a high politicised issue from the beginning. The Royal Commission report – the ‘dog’s breakfast’ – has not helped.It is reported to have cost $25m. It is one of the few promises that Prime Minister Abbott has actually kept!

    For the future a scheme like this might be better implemented if the program funds were paid directly to the homeowner as a reimbursement/subsidy after the insulation work was completed. This would have been much more likely to have avoided the commonwealth ever accepting responsibility for situations that it could never have prevented. But reimbursing the home owner would have been no more likely to have prevented those four deaths, assuming the relevant homeowners used the same contractors.

     

    Pink Batts – Frank Brennan – extracts from Eureka Street, 8 September 2014.

    This last week, we have seen the disastrous consequences with another royal commission which failed to take account of the role of state governments. The Royal Commission into the Home Insulation Program produced a report which is a dog’s breakfast. The mainstream media has been oblivious to the report’s glaring shortcomings, focusing more on the party politics of the blame game.

    That royal commission concluded that the Commonwealth when administering the program should not have relied on the states to implement their own occupational health and safety laws, their own employment training requirements or their own building regulations.

    The Commissioner, Mr Ian Hanger QC, reported, ‘To rely on the State and Territory regimes to police their respective workplace health and safety laws seems to me to have been misguided, as those regimes are largely reactive. That is, when an incident happens the workplace health and safety regulators or electrical safety regulators investigate, report and, if appropriate, take enforcement action. What was, in my view, required of the Australian Government with the HIP (Home Insulation Program) was the provision of some preventative measures to attempt to mitigate some of the obvious workplace health and safety risks endemic to the HIP.’

    And yet, the Commission went on to suggest that the Commonwealth should have considered having the states, rather than the Commonwealth, implement the whole program.

    The regrettable deaths of the four young men working on the Home Insulation Program were the result of problems in administration at the Commonwealth and State levels and in delayed, poor communication between Commonwealth and State officials, especially in Queensland where three of the four men worked and died.

    In reaching his bizarre conclusions, the royal commissioner received little help from government. He observed: ‘With very few exceptions, the public servant witnesses chose not to make any submissions. Quite extraordinarily, in my view, the Commonwealth chose not to make submissions when given the opportunity to do so. It made some desultory submissions in reply to the submissions of the pre-existing insulation business owners and the State of Queensland.’ A royal commission set up to investigate only the Commonwealth Government, especially when receiving inadequate co-operation from the Commonwealth Government, was bound to provide an inadequate and flawed report.

     

     

     

  • John Menadue. We ‘warn the Tsar of Russia’.

    In September 1892, the headline ‘The Hobart Mercury warns the Tsar’ did not threaten Russia sufficiently to attract a response or change its belligerent behaviour. I don’t think the Tsar thought it necessary to respond to people who have an exaggerated view of their own importance

    The Hobart Mercury over-reached itself. Australian Prime Ministers, particularly when they need a diversion from domestic issues, often do the same. There has been a lot of beating the drums of war and macho posturing lately. Perhaps we will soon see Putin-esque photos of a shirtless rider on his bare-backed horse.

    Despite all the international posturing what has really been achieved?

    • MH350 has still not been found, despite the Prime Minister telling us months ago that we had almost certainly found the black box. We have now decided to fund and contract out the further search for MH350. Why?
    • We projected ourselves quite naturally into the recovery of MH17, but it was the Malaysian Government and not the European governments that really delivered for us in the removal of 200 bodies by train and the retrieval of the black boxes. Thanking the Malaysians has been an afterthought.
    • We sent the AFP to Ukraine and the Netherlands to secure the crash site. They failed and had to be withdrawn.
    • We have become an ‘enhanced party’ in NATO.  What national interest is there in that?
    • By siding so deliberately with Japan in its dispute with China we have antagonised China, our ally in WW2
    • Now we seem exceptionally eager to commit Hornet aircraft to the war against IS in Iraq.  We don’t seem to learn from our mistakes and Tony Abbott now suggests that the failure of the Western involvement in Iraq from 2003 was the prosecution of the war rather than its flawed policy in the first place.

     

    As in the Hobart Mercury in 1892, our over-reach in foreign policy has led to extremist language. The Prime Minister has described the Islamic State (IS) as a ‘death cult’ and please ‘we should not give credence to people who are pure evil, pure evil’.  He added ‘people have been radicalised and brutalised through contact with this death cult’. He added further ‘this mob, as soon as they have done something gruesome and ghastly and unspeakable, they are advertising it on the internet’.

    Nothing could justify the barbarism that we have seen from IS in Northern Iraq, but Muslims would remember, even if Tony Abbott does not, the centuries of barbarism against Muslims.

    • In 1099 the first Christian crusaders stood ‘knee deep in blood’ of Muslims and Jews after the capture of Jerusalem.
    • The Muslim expulsion from Andalusia.
    • Tens of thousands of Muslim women were raped in Bosnia 20 years ago
    • We stood aside in 1995 from the massacre of Muslim men in Srebrenica.
    • Ethnic cleansing went on in Bosnia for years before the West intervened.
    • We cooperated in the invasion of Iraq in 2003 which George Bush called the new crusade. It resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people and the break-up of their country which has helped spawn IS.
    • More recently have we really expressed sympathy for the death of over 2,000 Palestinians, mainly civilians in Gaza? Israelis, yes. But Palestinians!
    • CIA officers in control rooms in Langley, press buttons for predator drones to kill insurgents and many civilians in Pakistan and Yemen. There is no blood on their hands like we have seen on the hands of IS killers. But is mechanised killing OK?
    • We did nothing for years about our good friends in Saudi Arabia and other Middle East countries who funded the Sunni rebels.
    • For the best part of a century foreign companies have exploited the vast oil resources of the Middle East.
    • We have been invited to join ‘team Australia’ but many Muslims feel it is directed against  them and  casts doubts on their patriotism

    We should not be surprised that some young Muslim men have been radicalised. In 2004 after the train bombing in Madrid the Commissioner of the AFP warned us and said ‘If this turns out to be Islamic extremists responsible for this bombing in Spain, it’s more likely to be linked to the position that Spain and other allies took on issues such as Iraq’.

    To avoid responsibility for the response of young Muslim men, John Howard and now Tony Abbott are repeating at almost every opportunity that ‘would-be terrorists don’t hate us for what we do but for who we are and how we live’. What tosh. They will judge us by our actions…what we do.

    Some young Muslim men are responding to the humiliation of centuries in unacceptable brutality. Yet when ethnic cleansing of Christians and Yaziidis occurred in Iraq and when American hostages were murdered in Syria, our response was immediate.

    Where is our even-handedness in resisting violence and injustice in all its forms against all people? It is time our leaders looked at the history of foreign intervention in the Middle East and the great injustice that has been done. We are now reaping the harvest of what we have sown.

    Overreach, like the Hobart Mercury’s posturing 120 years, ago is not serving us well.

  • David Isaacs and Ian Kerridge. Asylum seeker’s ‘brain death’ shows failure of care and of democracy.

    The news that Hamid Kehazaei, a 24-year-old Iranian asylum seeker detained on Manus Island, has been diagnosed as brain dead following his transfer to the Mater Hospital in Brisbane is a tragedy. That it is a tragedy for this young man and his family is unquestionable The news – but the extent of this tragedy may be much more pervasive than we realise.

    If the emerging details of his case are correct, Kehazaei developed septicaemia as a complication of cellulitis (skin and soft-tissue infection) arising from a cut in his foot. This, in itself, is disturbing.

    Severe infection can result in brain death – either from infection of the brain itself (meningitis, encephalitis or brain abscess), or from brain injury due to a lack of oxygen resulting from cardiac arrest (as appears to be the case here), or from reduced blood supply to the brain. Yet it is very uncommon, especially in a young, previously healthy man.

    Such a case could occur in Australia and has been described in 2012 in young Indigenous adults in Central Australia. Nevertheless, severe sepsis resulting from a foot infection is preventable. And a case like this occurring in an Australian national would raise serious questions about the appropriateness of the antibiotics used and the timeliness of care.

    Most cases of brain death result from traumatic brain injury, stroke or lack of oxygen to the brain following asphyxia, near-drowning, or prolonged cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

    What happened to Hamid Kehazaei raises concerns about the adequacy of care provided to him during initial treatment, including wound care and antibiotics, and how soon he was transferred to expert medical care, first to Port Moresby and subsequently to Brisbane.

    If this young man became ill and had his brain die while seeking asylum in Australia and while in our care, then we must examine the details of his case and ask ourselves not only whether it was preventable but whether our policies and processes actually contributed to his death.

    But how can we even begin to ask these types of questions when we know so little about the circumstances in which he became ill, and his subsequent care?

    Protestations that this is due to the necessity of respecting privacy and confidentiality, ethical principles that are core to the health professional-patient relationship, are to some extent correct. But they also obscure important features of this case.

    The government is simply wrong to claim that this issue should not be “politicised”. What is ultimately at issue here is the way in which domestic politics and border policy impose norms (rules of behaviour) that are antithetical to medicine and health care and, fundamentally, to democracy.

    Medicine, like biomedical science, requires transparency and honesty to be clinically and ethically sound. Peer review, clinical audit, root-cause analysis, family conferences, conflict-resolution strategies, case consultation, multidisciplinary team meetings, mortality and morbidity meetings, open disclosure policies: all rest on the importance of transparency and respect.

    In contrast, we know very little about the people who seek asylum in Australia. Everything is secret – their arrival, their situation, their medical need, their illnesses, and their death.

    This requirement for secrecy has largely overwhelmed efforts by many good people – legislators, human rights lawyers, refugee advocates, health workers, politicians and ordinary citizens – to shine a light on what is happening to people in detention.

    The Immigration Health Advisory Group has been disbanded, restricting the degree to which the health professions can critique the care available to asylum seekers. And even those tasked with providing medical care to asylum-seekers struggle to advocate for the people under their care.

    Policies restrict the degree to which they can care for their patients or refer them for specialist care not available in the detention centres. Contracts bind them to secrecy and many, often shocked by what they have seen, are prevented from speaking out by legal threats and intimidation long after they’ve returned to the mainland.

    The language of “border control” has been used to excuse political secrecy. But such secrecy is what we usually associate with autocratic governments and is the antithesis of democratic ideals.

    What this case illustrates, yet again, is that the asylum seekers detained on Manus and Christmas Islands and Nauru have been excised not only from the laws that determine access to Australia but from the care we should provide any vulnerable person for whom we are responsible. And from the ethical principles upon which medicine and our health system are based.

    If we care about these people, and if we truly believe in the humane values that ground medicine and the moral principles that ground democracy, then we need to do two things. The first is to hold a truly independent inquiry into the care of people in detention. And the second is to end off-shore processing.

    David Isaacs is Professor of Pediatric Infectious Diseases at University of Sydney.

    Ian Kerridge is Associate Professor in Bioethics & Director, Centre for Values and Ethics and the Law in Medicine at University of Sydney. 

    This article was first published in ‘The Conversation’. 

  • Annette Brownlie. No new war in Iraq.

    Both major political parties are once again standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the US, in support of what amounts to a new military intervention in Iraq.

    The process began with the dropping of humanitarian aid supplies to the Yezidi. It has now moved on to the delivery of weapons and munitions to Kurdish Peshmerga forces. Meanwhile, Defence Minister David Johnston has indicated that Australian armed forces (Super Hornet warplanes and C130s) are to be made available to support whatever action the US decides upon.

    All of this has happened with scarcely any discussion – in or outside of the parliament. No questioning or dissent has been heard in this drive towards intervention and, possibly, eventual war. (However, a recent poll shows that 78% of the population opposes having Australian ‘boots on the ground’ in Iraq.)

    Even the proposal that there be a parliamentary debate about the intervention, so that the government could make its case to the Australian people, has been opposed by both major parties. There is no possibility for the parliament to take any part in the decision to send Australian forces overseas.  Nor has the Abbott government explained the sudden need to switch from aid to arms. And it has certainly not explained what Australia hopes to achieve.

    The horror in Iraq today is a direct consequence of the war on that began with the invasion of 2003. John Howard’s government joined that invasion on the basis of falsehoods and against the opinion of the majority of the population. It appears that the present government is eagerly waiting for a request to follow the US once again.

    The massive “shock and awe” bombing and the 11-year occupation of Iraq created huge numbers of civilian casualties – including more than 1 million dead – and massive internal displacement of people. The West’s propping up of the repressive regime that followed, laid the basis for the emergence of the Islamic State (IS) fundamentalists. IS has become the latest reason for intervention. Ironically, it is using weapons captured from the Iraqi army and originally supplied by the US.

    The lesson that should have been learnt from Iraq is that military meddling in the affairs of the Middle East does not work. There was a disastrous outcome last time and no evidence to indicate anything different this time.

    Australia and the US do not recognise Kurdistan as an independent state. Sending arms to the Kurds means that Australia is continuing to meddle – in this case within the movement for Kurdish self-determination.

    If the Australian government was serious about helping the Iraqi minorities, rather than following the US into military intervention, it would immediately:

    • Expand the refugee program and offer sanctuary to the displaced and traumatised
    • Send humanitarian aid – food; engineers; doctors and constructions workers. 

    Sending yet more armaments to the area, which is already wracked by years of warfare, will not reduce the level of violence it is experiencing. The area needs less weaponry, not more.

    Annett Brownlie is a member of IPAN (The Independent and Peaceful Australia Network)

  • Ben Lewis. The false advertising of mandatory detention and “Stopping the Boats”

    Spend any amount of time listening to Australian policy makers or reading Australian media and you’re certain to hear a familiar phrase: “Stop the Boats”. It has become such a political imperative within the Australian asylum seeker debate that “Stop the Boats” is rarely even challenged.  But putting aside the question of whether Australia should (or even can) “Stop the Boats”, there is a fundamental flaw in the logic . . . the key policy which underpins the “Stop the Boats” thinking—namely mandatory detention—has been shown to be false advertising.

    The truth is that there is no empirical evidence to suggest that harsh immigration policies such as mandatory detention deter irregular migration. That’s because, when it comes to human migration, countries by and large don’t have control over who leaves a territory or to where they are headed. Empirical research for decades has shown that immigration policies are predominantly responsive to, not determinative of human movement.

    According to a 2011 study conducted by UNHCR’s chief detention researcher, Alice Edwards:

    “Pragmatically, there is no empirical evidence that the prospect of being detained deters irregular migration, or discourages persons from seeking asylum. In fact, as the detention of migrants and asylum-seekers has increased in a number of countries, the number of individuals seeking to enter such territories has also risen, or has remained constant.” 

    For example, over the past three decades, many Europe countries have significantly expanded their use of detention in response to irregular asylum seeker and migrant arrivals.  The result?  European migration figures have increased from an estimated 49 million in 1990 to 58 million in 2000 to 70 million in 2010. The same can be shown in the United States. Despite decades of “tough on immigration” policies, including annual detention figures approaching half a million, and a Congressional “bed mandate” requiring 34,000 migrants to be in detention every single day, the period from 2000-2010 was “a record setting decade of immigration” in the United States.

    Detention policies don’t deter. So why then do Australian policy makers stubbornly cling to the assertion that mandatory detention of asylum seekers and irregular migrants isn’t simply good policy, but is actually necessary to curb irregular migration when it’s clear the facts don’t support it?

    Part of the blame undoubtedly lies with the Australian public. The Australian policy of mandatory detention—roundly criticized outside of Australia—remains overwhelmingly popular within. Even as recently as last week, Australian Immigration Minister Scott Morrison defended the practice of detaining asylum seeking children using the staid “stop the boats” rhetoric, and with the legitimacy of broad public support for the country’s mandatory detention policy.

    Part of the blame also lies with Australian policy makers for continuing to use anecdotal rather than empirical evidence to justify the mandatory detention policy. As the editor of this blog has rightly pointed out, this is “sloppy policy evaluation” at best. Experts are in agreement that mandatory detention policies have no measurable impact on the number of irregularly arriving asylum seekers and migrants. There are a number of common sense—and empirically established—reasons for this.  According to Robyn Sampson, a leading researcher from Swinburne University:

    “Several studies have been undertaken to establish which factors most impact the choice of destination of asylum seekers and refugees and irregular migrants.  According to this body of research, the principal aim of asylum seekers and irregular migrants is to reach a place of safety. Asylum seekers and irregular migrants often have very limited understanding of the migration policies of destination countries before arrival and rely on people smugglers to choose their destination. Rather than being influenced primarily by immigration policies such as detention, most refugees and irregular migrants choose destinations where they will be reunited with family or friends; where they believe they will be in a safe, tolerant and democratic society; where there are historical links between their country and the destination country; where they can already speak the language of the destination country; or where they believe they will be able to find secure work quickly due to a perception of the country as one of wealth and prosperity.” 

    So to recap—the principle determinants of the choice of destination country for asylum seekers and irregular migrants are:

    1. Safety;
    2. Family;
    3. Perceptions of democracy;
    4. Historical links;
    5. Common language; and
    6. Perceptions of wealth/prosperity. 

    Most migrants, it turns out, are just the same as you and I.  They want to go to the nearest safe place where they can be together with their families and not be persecuted—bonus points for a common language, culture, or job opportunities. A policy of mandatory detention fails to address any of these; it merely punishes those who arrive in the false belief that if asylum seekers and irregular migrants are punished badly enough, they’ll simply stop coming.

    To an outsider, the irrationality of the mandatory detention policy would be comical if not for all of the pain and suffering it is causing. You may be able to “Stop the Boats” by physically restraining asylum seeking children and families before they reach you, but you certainly won’t deter future arrivals by punishing them once they get here. And why would you want to—especially when the overwhelming majority have been shown to be legitimate refugees, fleeing for their lives? (By the government’s own statistics, since 2008, 92% of all asylum seekers arriving by boat have been granted refugee status.)

    What are needed are not more “tough” immigration policies, but comprehensive regional solutions that attempt to address the root causes of insecurity that prompt human movement. The good news is that better policies do exist; policies that can be supported by empirical evidence and that respect international human rights obligations. But one thing is clear: better policy making won’t be built on the continued justification of mandatory detention as a deterrent. Detention as a deterrent is just false advertising.

    Ben Lewis is the Advocacy Coordinator of the International Detention Coalition (IDC). He is an international human rights lawyer with extensive advocacy experience working with irregular migrant populations in the US and Latin America. The views in this blog are his own.