John Menadue

  • John Menadue. MH17 – At last a thank-you to Malaysia may be on the cards.

    In ten days’ time, Tony Abbott will be visiting Malaysia and India.

    The visit to Kuala Lumpur will at last be an opportunity for him to thank on our behalf the Malaysian Government’s significant contribution to ‘Operation Bring them Home’.

    Without fanfare the Malaysian Prime Minister secured two key outcomes that have been of great benefit to Australia and others who suffered losses as a result of the shooting down of MH17. The first major outcome was the release from rebel territory of the refrigerated trains that carried over 200 bodies out of rebel territory. The second major outcome that the Malaysian prime Minister secured was the handover by the rebels to the Malaysian Government of the black boxes.

    Efforts of other parties particularly the Dutch Government and our own Australian Federal Police were helpful but the substantial breakthrough was organised by the Malaysian Government.

    Yet in his overseas travels to the ‘Anglosphere’ Tony Abbot has been almost everywhere except visiting the one country that has been of the greatest help to us. For all our talk about the importance of Asia out focus is almost always Europe. That has occurred also on the Russia/Ukraine confrontation which is overwhelmingly a European issue.

    Media headlines don’t necessarily make for a good foreign policy and particularly relations with countries in our region. And by the way, in that other diversion from the budget, nothing has yet been found of MH370 although Tony Abbott told us in April that he was confident that we had found the black boxes.

    In addition to acknowledging Malaysia’s major role in ‘bringing them home’, thanking the Malaysian Government will also be a useful way to put more ballast in the relationship with the Malaysian Government particularly after the intemperate remarks that Tony Abbott made about Malaysia’s human rights record.

    Justifying his opposition to the agreement with Malaysia over asylum seekers, Tony Abbott said in June 2011 in Parliament ‘Why would the Prime Minister send illegal arrivals to Malaysia where they could be detained and tagged, when she can’t guarantee the standard and accessibility of medical care and when she can’t guarantee the access to school for the children‘. Tony Abbott then went on ‘The one thing that is absolutely certain about this deal is that this Prime Minister, this Minister and this Government cannot be sure that boat people sent to Malaysia will be treated humanely.’

    A gracious and earlier thank you to Malaysia over MH17 would have been most appropriate and helpful in many ways. But better late than never.

     

  • Walter Hamilton. Copy and Paste

    The Japanese have coined a new word, kopipe, from the English phrase ‘copy and paste’. It featured, for instance, in recent reporting of the discredited stem-cell researcher caught out copying images and data from one research paper to another. But the word kopipe has many possible applications, such as in the ongoing debates about history and Japan’s expanding security alliance with the United States.

    On the matter of history, let me do some copying and pasting of my own from the text of the San Francisco Peace Treaty which Japan signed in 1951 to formally bring to an end the Second World War. Here is what it says in Article 11:

                Japan accepts the judgments of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East [IMTFE] and of other Allied War Crimes Courts both within and outside Japan, and will carry out the sentences imposed  thereby upon Japanese nationals imprisoned in Japan. The power to grant clemency, to reduce sentences and to parole with respect to such prisoners may not be exercised except on the decision of the Government or Governments which imposed the sentence in each instance, and on recommendation of Japan.

    What are we to make, then, of Japan’s current prime minister, Shinzo Abe, who patently does not accept the judgments of the war crimes tribunals? Abe, on the contrary, is a determined revisionist who apparently thinks that those responsible for making war on their neighbours and conducting or condoning systematic atrocities are worthy of celebration. (For the record, the President of the IMTFE was Justice William Webb of Australia.)

    During a parliamentary budget committee hearing last year Abe said the war crimes trials were a case of the Allies imposing their view of events on the Japanese. And in April this year Abe sent a message of support to a Buddhist event honouring Japanese who died after being convicted of war crimes. Abe wrote that they had ‘staked their souls to become the foundation of the fatherland,’ according to a report in the Asahi newspaper. The annual ceremony is held before a memorial statue that describes the war crimes tribunals conducted by the Allied powers as ‘retaliatory’ and calls executed Japanese war criminals ‘Showa Era (1926-1989) martyrs.’ Showa is the era name of the reign of Emperor Hirohito by whose authority Japan waged war in China and the Pacific. The memorial statue records the names of about 1,180 war criminals who were either executed or who died of illness or committed suicide in detention camps.

    It’s not the first time Abe has sent a message of encouragement to the event. Last year he wrote: ‘I want to establish the existence of a new Japan that would not be an embarrassment to the spirit of the war dead.’

    Abe’s maternal grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi, wartime Munitions Minister, was held as a suspected Class ‘A’ war criminal himself though never put on trial. He later made a political comeback and served as prime minister between 1957 and 1960. Abe could be described as a kopipe of his blood relation. But while Kishi’s unpopular policy of closer military co-operation with the United States eventually cost him the leadership, Abe’s pushing through of a new interpretation of Japan’s post-war constitution that effectively strips away its pacifist intention has come at little political cost. The Japan of 2014 is much less alert to its wartime responsibilities than the Japan of 1960. (It is worth noting that Abe’s language when addressing the subject during his speech to the Australian Parliament in July was not as conciliatory as that used by Kishi when he visited Australia in 1957.)

    The Japanese Government makes a lot of noise about the importance of observing international law­­­­ in its territorial disputes with China and South Korea, and over issues such as whaling. When convenient, however, it seems ready to bend or ignore laws and commitments. The official explanation that Abe was acting purely in a ‘private’ capacity when he honoured Japan’s war criminals is the usual ‘copy and paste’ for the double standard.

    Abe’s kopipe method was evident, too, during last month’s ceremonies marking the end of the war and the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The war dead would be more than embarrassed, one imagines, if they had been able to hear the Prime Minister read out a statement in Hiroshima that was, in large part, identical to the one he made at last year’s ceremony. Some official had simply copied and pasted from the old speech and so little concerned was Abe for reflecting sincerely on the past he read the whole thing without either noticing or caring.

    Finally, and probably most importantly, there is the continuing ‘copy-and-paste’ militarization of Okinawa, the island prefecture that occupies less than 1% of Japan’s landmass but plays host to 74% of its US-only military bases. For decades politicians have promised the people of Okinawa that their disproportionate share of the burden would be reduced. A primary focus of groups campaigning for the pledge to be fulfilled has been the Futenma Air Station operated by the US Marines in the centre of Ginowan City. The facility is an obstacle to local development and seriously affects the lives of nearby residents with its noise pollution and constant danger of aircraft accidents.

    In 1996, the US agreed to return the land––but only on condition that another location was found in Okinawa.  As a result, work preliminary to the construction of a new facility recently began in Oura Bay at Henoko, Nago city, near the existing American base Camp Schwab. The city’s mayor and many others are fiercely opposed to the project, so the Japanese coast guard has been mobilized to haul in any protestors trying to breach a large exclusion zone in the bay proclaimed under a little-used provision of the criminal law.

    According to Professor Gavan McCormack of the Australian National University, Oura Bay ‘happens to be one of the most bio-diverse and spectacularly beautiful coastal zones in all Japan. It hosts a cornucopia of life forms from blue––and many other species––of coral…through crustaceans, sea cucumbers and sea weeds and hundreds of species of shrimps, snails, fish, tortoise, snake, and mammal.’ McCormack goes on to say: ‘If the project proceeds, it will rival in scale Kansai International Airport in Osaka Bay, take a decade or more to complete and cost somewhere in the vicinity of $25 billion. Those [foreign leaders such as Tony Abbott] who believe they share values with [Shinzo Abe] should look carefully at the burgeoning confrontation in Oura Bay between the Abe state, with its monopoly of force, and local, non-violent, democratic citizens.’ 

    Kopipe, rather than original thinking and genuine engagement, seems to be the fashionable way in Japan these days.

    Walter Hamilton is the author of Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story.

     

  • Clare Condon SGS. Sanctioned Violence: What does it do to our society and relationships?

    Some violent acts, depending on where and how they were perpetrated, are regarded as criminal. Others, however, are sanctioned by society, even applauded and cheered. Some are blatant; others are covert and subtle. Some are justified by cultural norms, by the blind eye or the deaf ear; they happen behind closed doors. Others are justified by official permission and approval, or even by public opinion.

    I wish to highlight four areas of sanctioned violence which I believe impact adversely on society and relationships. 

    Australia’s response to asylum seekers and refugees

    Currently in the Australian community, the government is justifying the use of violence to stop the smuggling of asylum seekers. This inhumane approach has bipartisan political support; it is driven by public opinion and generated by the politics of the fear of the stranger. The government’s actions are hidden from the public’s eye through secrecy and by holding people in detention in remote areas of Australia, or offshore in developing countries, such as Nauru and Manus Island, Papua New Guinea.

    The government’s often-used mantra “Stop the boats” demonises desperate people fleeing violence and persecution. By using emotive language, this policy is justified in a subtle but no less sanctioned form of violence towards humans. In letters from the government justifying this behaviour, people seeking refugee protection have been called “illegal maritime arrivals”. Their identity as humans has been expunged.

    Such demonisation sanitizes the reality for the Australian public. As a consequence, our societal and racial relationships are diminished and subtly eroded. We can begin to believe that some humans are more worthy than others, and that such actions are justified and normal, when in fact the government of the nation is engaged in sanctioned violence.

    Children are being held in detention centres. ..These children are exposed to brutal, negative and neglectful modelling. The consequences of such detention are likely to breed a dissociative reality for these children, leading to a spiral of hatred and evil within their own life experiences.

    As citizens we must ask: what behaviour do we propose for the future human development and relationships for these innocent children? Is society encouraged to be vindictive, self-serving, aggressive in all its relationships with anyone who is identified as a stranger, rather than a society which is welcoming, other-centred, and compassionate, respecting the dignity of the other in those relationships? One response from the government stated it would not be involved in “misguided compassion”. True compassion is a strong virtue. It is the antithesis of violence. There is nothing weak and soft about a well-guided compassionate response. 

    Sanctioned violence in sport

    Sport is a feature of a nation’s life and culture, especially in Australia. It has an essential role to play in a healthy society. Violence on the playing field and amongst spectators not only sets a bad example to impressionable young people, it is destructive of basic civil relationships. It can instil fear and anxiety, especially in children. . There are significant vested interests to subvert any attempt to study the area in a serious manner.

    It seems that violence in contact sports has increased. I suspect that the introduction of high monetary stakes, as well as sports betting, has influenced this increase. Do the normal expectations of civil behaviour cease once players step onto the field? Does the constant replay of violence and thuggery seek to justify this behaviour?

    One is not a ‘real man’ unless he is like these highly paid, macho stars. Is it not time for some extensive research on the facts and some community discussion on the type of role modelling that sport ought to be portraying to young people, and what kind of relationships society might expect to support and sustain in an advanced civil democratic society? 

    Domestic violence – the hidden nightmare for many women and children

    You might think it odd that I have placed violence in sport before one of the most hidden and often sanctioned – violence of the household or domestic violence – which impacts mostly on women and children. It is often hidden, excused and justified from a male perspective. The macho image often promoted by sport can become the macho image for some men in their daily behaviour. Are they connected?

    Australian research[1] indicates that: 17% of women aged 18 and over have experienced sexual assault since the age of 15; 87% have a relationship with the perpetrator; only 1 in 7 who experienced violence from an intimate partner had reported the most recent incident to police; women with an intellectual disability are 90% more likely to be subjected to a sexual assault than women in the general population.[2] Between 2010-11 and 2012-13, there was a 29% increase in the number of children who were subjects of substantiations of sexual abuse, thereby reversing previous downward trends.[3] Most of these are from the lowest socio-economic areas.

    These statistics are chilling. Domestic violence often leads to homelessness, further abuse of children, significant health issues for the woman and her children, ongoing economic hardship, unemployment, and social, psychological and family isolation. Thus, the capacity for building strong, healthy and mutual relationships in the future is undermined and damaged severely.

    Does media violence have an impact on human behaviour?

    There would be some who would say the jury is still out. Conflict is what makes a good story! Violence has always been part of the movie world, but now violence in movies, TV shows and electronic games has become the norm. They are louder, bloodier and more vicious. Some US research suggests that by the time a child is 18, he or she has watched some 200,000[4] acts of violence.

    There have been hundreds of reports with diverse views on the impact of media violence, particularly on children. However, there is reasonable consensus that long exposure of children to violence portrayed in the mass media leads to long-term aggressive behaviour.[5]

    My concern is the impact sanctioned violence has on society and our relationships. Some of the consequences can be corrosive and long-term. Where violence is sanctioned and regarded as acceptable and routine, then societal norms are being established for the future. Such acts become embedded in the cultural fabric of society.

    If it is acceptable for a government to treat strangers in a cruel and demeaning manner, then it becomes acceptable for the citizen to treat the stranger in a similar manner. If it is acceptable to use excessive violence on a sports field, then why not off the field in school yards? If it is acceptable to exercise violence in the private space of home, then why not on the streets? If it is acceptable to spend hours watching real or virtual violence on a screen, why not activate the same violence in ordinary relationships?

    My congregation of religious women follows the fifth-century rule of St Benedict, a way of life which helped to civilise Europe after generations of wars. Benedict’s dictum for his followers was that all should be structured so “that the strong have something to strive for and that the weak have nothing to run from”.[6]

    In those areas of our society where violence is sanctioned, we citizens need to actively participate in social engagement and collective action. We need to say no more, we can do much better. “Compassion is the very final possibility for saving the human person in his or her naked existence in the face of the direct negation of this existence”.[7]

    This is an edited version of an address delivered by Sister Clare Condon SGS at the Australian Human Right Commission https://www.humanrights.gov.au on August 13, 2014.

    Sister Clare Condon is the Congregational Leader of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan of the Order of St Benedict, Australia’s first ‘home-grown’ congregation of Catholic Religious women www.goodsams.org.au


    [1] Cindy Tarczon and Antonia Quadara, The Nature and Extent of Sexual Assault and Abuse in Australia, December 2012, The Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault www.aifs.gov.au/acssa/statistics.html

    [2] CASA Forum 2014 Victorian Centres Against Sexual Assault

    [3] The Child Protection Australia Report 2012-13 of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

    [4] American Academy of Paediatrics, Media Violence, 19 October 2009 http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/124/5/1495.full

    [5] The Australian Psychological Society in 2013 updated its report: Media Representations and Responsibilities: Psychological Perspectives

    [6] Rule of Benedict, Chapter 64:19

    [7] Walter Kasper, Mercy, Paulist Press, New Jersey, 2013, p.29

     

     

  • John Menadue. Who owns Medibank Private (continued)

    In my blog of August 14 I examined the question of who owns Medibank Private (MBP) particularly in light of the Abbott Government proposal to privatise the business. This is not an idle question or an academic issue only. MBP has 3.5 million members and the government has estimated its sale value at $4 billion.

    The Government has now announced that MBP will be sold by Christmas

    It is clear that for many years it was assumed that the policy-holders/members owned MBP. That is clear from an examination of the accounts and the comments of a former chairman of MBP. John Deeble who was an architect of Medibank/Medicare and who was a director of the Health Insurance Commission which operated MBP put the issue as follows ‘The question of ownership in 1976 (when MBP was established) wasn’t raised because it was never considered that the government owned MBP.’

    The Commonwealth Government put $10 million as seed capital into MBP. This amount was repaid. The operating capital of MBP over the years was then contributed by the members through accumulated profits… No further capital contribution by the Commonwealth Government was made until 2005 when the Howard Government injected $85 million into the business. This amount has remained unchanged for nine years.  Last year MBP paid a dividend of $450m to the government. In one year the government received in a dividend more than five times what it had contributed in equity.

    In addition to the policy issues, it is also important to consider the legal advice which has been offered to the Commonwealth Government.

    In 1981 the Fraser Government considered selling MBP. According to Cabinet documents that have been released, the issue of selling MBP was considered by the Fraser Government’s Expenditure Review Committee – ‘the razor gang’. Members of this committee were Phillip Lynch, Margaret Guilfoyle and John Howard.

    The government’s legal adviser was the Attorney General’s Department which together with the Government Actuary and the Department of Health advised the ‘razor gang’ that the Commonwealth government did not own the assets of the Health Insurance Commission. We know from publically released Cabinet documents that on 19 March 1981 the Expenditure Review Committee decided that ‘the Commonwealth does not in any legal sense have equity in the Health Insurance Commission or its assets’.

    Three days later the Committee recommended to Cabinet that the proposed sale of MBP be abandoned. And it was abandoned.

    In 1988 the Hawke Government was contemplating the sale of MBP. The chairman of the Health Insurance Commission set out clearly in the authority’s annual report at that time that the Commonwealth had no beneficial rights in the fund’s assets.

    It is hard to see that anything has materially changed since 1981 when the clear view of the Fraser Government, based on legal advice was that MBP was owned by its members and not the Commonwealth government.

    The 3.5 million members of MBP have a major interest in this business which the Commonwealth Government now values at $4 billion.

    According to Peter Martin in the SMH today, policy holders are petitioning the government for ‘free shares’. This would seem essential but will it be fair? We know that there are a lot of hanger’s on clipping the ticket- co-lead managers, co-managers, brokers, advisers, lawyers and MBP executives. They will all be making a motza. But as for the members!!

    I am indebted to George Lekakis and The New Daily for the work they have undertaken on the ownership of MBP.

  • John Menadue. Refugees and asylum seekers..a re-think on Temporary Protection Visas.

    I have long argued that Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) should be rejected on the grounds that they don’t deter asylum seekers, people are left in limbo and because TPV holders could not sponsor family which resulted in risky boat journeys by women and children.

    It is time to think again about TPVs.

    At the present time there are over 30,000 asylum seekers in detention or in the community awaiting refugee assessment. That caseload is the result of the large influx of boat arrivals following the collapse of the Malaysian Agreement and the refusal of the Coalition and the Greens to agree to changes to the Migration Act which would have helped give effect to the agreement made with Malaysia.

    The current outstanding caseload is the highest I can recall. The previous highest number was 19,600 after Tiananmen which was a very homogeneous group.

    The large caseload of over 30,000 people from a variety of countries will take over three years to process, if all goes well!  We need to urgently consider ways to reduce this lengthy process. The introduction of TPV’s would help.

    Despite the often contentious debate on TPVs in Australia, giving a person a form of temporary protection, depending on the specifics of the arrangements, may be consistent with Australia’s obligations under the Refugee Convention. A number of countries provide some form of temporary protection alongside permanent protection arrangements. For example, people granted asylum in the US must wait one year before applying for permanent residence.

    The UNHCR acknowledges that, at times, temporary protection may be the most appropriate arrangement. For example, in circumstances where there are mass influxes (generally involving larger numbers than experienced by Australia), temporary protection may be a valid tool in ensuring protection is available for asylum seekers while allowing authorities the breathing space to more fully examine and determine the need for  permanent protection and stay in a country at a later stage.

    The Coalition Government had planned to reintroduce a form of TPV’s for irregular arrivals. But before the Senate changed on July 1, the ALP and the Greens defeated a proposal to reintroduce TPV’s. As a result of this political stalemate the government decided to use the existing Temporary Safe Haven (TSHV) and Temporary Humanitarian Concern (THCV) visa instead of TPVs.

    Asylum seekers for whom potential protection issues are identified (and satisfactory health and security checks completed) will be progressively placed on THSVs. They will then be granted a THCV for up to three years. If the assessment of protection claims does not identify any ‘potential protection issues’ asylum seekers will be placed on bridging visas. In this way the government has moved away from both the statutory and non-statutory protection visa assessment arrangement but has taken steps to ‘temporarily resolve’ cases quickly through the use of existing visa mechanisms. As the current arrangements apply, however, it would appear that many asylum seekers will remain in a state of limbo with neither a decision on their protection claim nor, if people are not refugees, on their removal. The consequences of this are that people could remain indefinitely on some form of temporary visa without a final determination of refugee status with the inevitable long-term impact this has on mental health. Extensive and expensive litigation is inevitable.

    This form of temporary status only delays a decision on the asylum claim for some time. Such an arrangement is not sustainable in the long term from the social wellbeing of asylum seekers, the cost involved as well as concerns of the broader community.

    At some point a final refugee determination needs to be made, whether it leads to temporary or permanent stay. It is quite unreasonable, where Australia has accepted that its protection obligations have been engaged, to allow people to remain in a state of limbo. It is cruel and destructive.

    In his evidence to the Human Rights Commission the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection said that asylum seekers would have trouble having their claims processed until he could offer a ‘visa product’ that only gave temporary residence. He added the absence of TPV’s at present ‘removes the possibility of considering alternative options for those currently on Christmas Island or elsewhere in Australia who arrived before July 19 2013’

    It is to be hoped that the ALP and possibly the Greens might sit down with the government and try to negotiate a satisfactory compromise.

    Negotiations to resolve this issue could include

    • The length of the visa (three to five years),
    • The assessment process at the end of that period.
    • What happens for people re-assessed and found to be refugees again?
    • Some sort of re-entry rights for TPV holders leaving the country for a short period.
    • The nature of benefits offered to people whilst on TPVs.

    The change of government and the large case load of 30,000 do require cooperation to obtain an acceptable compromise. TPVs are not ideal but they would be preferable to the present arrangements. Major effort is required to process the large caseload as quickly as possible.

  • John Menadue. The Iraq disaster – reaping what we have sown.

    The seeds of the disaster in Iraq were sown long ago. We are now reaping a very bitter harvest.

    A major contributor to the upsurge in violence, terrorism and extremism in Iraq is the sense of outrage that many young Muslim men feel about the invasion of their country by successive Western powers, including Australia.

    The Howard Government and News Corporation which supported our participation in the coalition of the willing must bear a heavy responsibility for the unfolding horror.

    I have set out below an article by Tony Walker in The Australian Financial Review of 29 March, 2003, headed ‘America’s hard history lesson’. I have also a link below to an editorial in the National Catholic Reporter of only a few days ago, entitled ‘Editorial: Path of destruction in Iraq began in 1991’

    Both articles draw attention to the futility of earlier Western interventions in Iraq.

    In 2004, Mick Keelty, the AFP Commissioner warned us that our involvement in Iraq made us a greater target for terrorism. In 2010, The Head of UK’s MI5, Baroness Manningham-Buller, told the Chilcott Inquiry that ‘ Our involvement in Iraq radicalised … a whole generation of young people, … who saw our involvement in Iraq, on top of our involvement in Afghanistan, as being an attack on Islam.’

    George Bush, Tony Blair and John Howard were obviously unaware of the history of Iraq. We are now seeing a catastrophe because of leaders who were unable to learn from history.

    John Menadue.

     

     

    AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW

    SAT 29 MAR 2003,

    AMERICA’S HARD HISTORY LESSON

     

    By: Story Tony Walker, DOHA    

    Through the centuries, the Middle East has proved hostile territory to invaders from the west and north. Even if the invaders won the battles, none, ultimately, won their particular war.

    ‘The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia [what is now Iraq] into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information … Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are today not far out from disaster.’

    That dispatch was written for The Sunday Times by its special correspondent T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia). It appeared on August 22, 1920. How extraordinary that the same words could be published today and seem almost contemporary, depending on your point of view.

    What Lawrence was talking about was the irredeemable arrogance of British colonial rule although he might just as easily have been referring to the consequences of a new American unilateralism. He was not talking about an all-out war, like the one we are witnessing now, but about the aftermath of conflict, namely World War I, in which the Ottoman empire crumbled and was replaced across the Middle East by Pax Britannica. In Mesopotamia it was no benevolent pax; far from it.

    As Iraq braces for a further intensification of a conflict whose aim is to rid the country of its leader and his regime, Iraqis must fear that the war itself will be only part of the horror. If history is a guide, war will be followed by an uncertain possibly bloody aftermath.

    Ten thousand Arabs were killed, according to Lawrence, by the British military governors in Baghdad in putting down an uprising in the summer of 1920, two years after the end of WWI.  ‘We said we went to Mesopotamia to defeat Turkey. We said we stayed to deliver the Arabs from the oppression of the Turkish government, and to make available for the world its resources of corn and oil … Our government is worse than the old Turkish system,’ Lawrence wrote.

    Britain’s occupation of Mesopotamia might not have ended in the disaster predicted by Lawrence, but the clumsy redrawing of the map of the Middle East under the Treaty of Sevres by the ‘Great Powers’ actually, the dividing up of WWI spoils contributed in no small way to the general volatility of and latest convulsion in the region.

    Whatever happens in Iraq over the next days, weeks, months and years, it requires a level of optimism to believe that good will necessarily come from the destruction that is being visited on Iraqis and their country.

    Baghdad’s bloody history is not encouraging. Built in 762AD by the Abbasids, it has endured war and conquest repeatedly. It was sacked by the Mongols in 1258, the streets turned into rivers of blood, the alleyways filled with corpses. It fell to Tamerlane in 1401. The Persians seized it in 1508, then it was captured by the Ottoman Turks in 1534. It was recaptured by the Persians in 1623, before the Ottomans regained control in 1638 for the next three centuries.

    While it might be argued that no fate is too dreadful for Saddam Hussein, to achieve such a desirable result as his demise it should not be necessary to raze cities. You shudder to think what Iraq and its people will look like if the bombing continues for a few more weeks, followed by an assault on Baghdad itself. The errant missiles that slammed into a suburban Baghdad market on Wednesday, killing 15 civilians and wounding many others, are unlikely to be an isolated tragedy, even though the US has said repeatedly wrongly, as it turns out that the precision of modern weaponry makes this strike the military equivalent of laser surgery: no blood, no scars. US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sounds more like Dr Strangelove every day.

    Speaking of Rumsfeld, his observation on Tuesday that the war was much closer to the beginning than the end was a belated nudge towards candour in light of the obvious that Iraqis, whatever they think of Hussein, are resisting more determinedly than expected.
    It’s interesting to note here that last week the Americans, repeating their mantra of ‘shock and awe’ to describe the initial bombing campaign, were telling people to stay in their homes and await further instructions while exhorting the Iraqi military to surrender. Now the message to people, especially in the southern city of Basra, is to rise up against their oppressors. Sceptics might conclude this is an admission that the undermanned invaders their supply lines stretched, their ability to secure their rear shaky need some help on the ground.

    If there is a querulousness in the latest statements by US officials it is quite simply because, whatever they pretend, things are not going according to the script. The regime has not imploded, the populace has not risen up, the liberators are not being welcomed with hearts and flowers. It is entirely possible that when the blowtorch is applied to Baghdad, a horrible regime will indeed collapse, or shrivel up in its burrows deep below the city. But on the evidence so far, it seems unlikely the Iraqi citadel will fall without a fight.
    In the meantime, George Bush, Tony Blair, John Howard and their advisers might reflect if it is not too late on some historical amber lights, starting with the Crusades, a campaign 900 years ago to liberate the heathen and enlighten them in the ways of Christianity (note that word: liberate). It failed.

    Lebanese writer Amin Maalouf remarks in his book The Crusades Through Arab Eyes that ‘the Arab world simultaneously fascinated and terrified by these Franj [Frankish invaders], whom they encountered as barbarians and defeated but who subsequently managed to dominate the earth cannot bring itself to consider the Crusades a mere episode in the bygone past. It is often surprising to discover the extent to which the attitude of the Arabs (and of Muslims in general) towards the West is still influenced, even today, by events that supposedly ended seven centuries ago.’

    Whether Westerners believe reference to the Crusades by Hussein or Osama bin Laden to bolster support to be legitimate, these historical events do resonate in the minds of many Arabs as if they happened yesterday.

    As the editor of the London-based Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat said in one of this week’s more acute observations: ‘I think this is an emotional time rather than a rational time.’

    Princeton University professor and Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis noted in a 1990 essay, ‘The Roots of Muslim Rage’, published in The Atlantic Monthly, that just as blind Arab prejudice about the West weighed heavily, so Americans functioned in a fog of ignorance about the Muslim world. When Lewis wrote then that American policy had not suffered disasters in the Middle East comparable with those in South-East Asia or Central America, he could not have imagined that things would change so dramatically in a decade or so.

    Regime change was but a twinkle in the eyes of Richard Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Donald Rumsfeld, and there was no sign of a malleable occupant in the White House.

    ‘There is no Cuba, no Vietnam, in the Muslim world, and no place where American forces are involved as combatants or even as “advisers”. But there is a Libya, and Iran, and a Lebanon, and a surge of hatred that distresses, alarms and above all baffles Americans,’ Lewis wrote.

    The bafflement is set to deepen in fact is deepening, as it seems that since September 11, 2001, Americans have lost a sense of proportion. Certainly normal prudence has been jettisoned.

    Among the more frequently cited historical lessons about the perils of Western hubris in the Middle East is the experience of Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon may have been the world’s most brilliant general, but he suffered his worst defeat in the Middle East when his forces were repelled in 1799 in a siege of a stronghold of the Ottoman Turks at Acre, in what is now Israel. Attack after attack failed, and hundreds of French soldiers died in the process. Napoleon eventually retreated to Cairo with a decimated army.

    Accounts of the siege of Acre are not recommended bed-time reading for Bush, Blair and Howard. Blair, whose troops are laying siege to Basra, may draw some encouragement from the British experience in Mesopotamia during WWI. British troops occupied Basra in 1915. By 1917, they had control of Baghdad, and a year later they took Mosul. By the end of the war they held the whole of Mesopotamia. That was when the real trouble began as nationalistic Arabs formed anti-British secret societies. Riots broke out in 1920.

    These are the events that Lawrence, doubling as journalist and agent for British military intelligence, described in his dispatch for The Sunday Times. His final paragraphs make interesting reading in light of current events, especially the need for the US to rush additional troops to the region to cope with nagging Iraqi resistance.

    ‘We have not reached the limit of our military commitments,’ Lawrence wrote. ‘Four weeks ago the staff in Mesopotamia drew up a memorandum asking for four more divisions. I believe it was forwarded to the War Office, which has now sent three brigades from India. If the North-West Frontier cannot be further denuded, where is the balance to come from? Meanwhile, our unfortunate troops, Indian and British, under hard conditions of climate and supply, are policing an immense area, paying dearly in lives for the wilfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad.’ And, in conclusion: ‘We say we are in Mesopotamia to develop it for the benefit of the world … How long will we permit millions of pounds, thousands of Imperial troops and tens of thousands of Arabs to be sacrificed on behalf of colonial administration which can benefit nobody but its administrators?’

    All this underlines just how complicated will be the task of pacifying Iraq and then reconstructing it, which is why there has been such a premium on a swift military victory causing minimum civilian casualties and avoiding large-scale destruction of infrastructure. That prospect has faded. A viper’s nest has been stirred. The legacy of bitter conflict will further contaminate what is in any case a poisonous cocktail dating back to the days of British rule.

    As a paper on regional fallout from a war in Iraq by the Middle East program at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) points out: ‘Iraqi politics, from the creation of the state in the aftermath of World War I, have been dominated by the deployment of organised violence by the state to dominate and shape society; the use by the state of oil revenue to give it autonomy from society; and the recreation of ethnic and communal divisions within Iraqi society. The degree to which these dynamics can be overcome will depend upon the extent and nature of external influence in the aftermath of regime change. This in turn is dependent on the way war is waged.’

    The signs at this early stage are not promising. These are worrying moments for members of the coalition of the willing, no matter what sort of face they seek to put on progress in the war. History is not necessarily a comforting guide.

     

    The National Catholic Reporter, editorial, August 25, 2014.

     http://ncronline.org/news/global/path-destruction-began-1991

  • John Menadue. Scott Morrison at the Human Rights Commission.

    Minister Morrison, assisted by the Secretary of his department, continued his aggressive ways at the hearing on August 22.

    He said that his policies discouraged asylum seekers risking their lives at sea. He described himself as the champion of the voiceless, ‘the ones that are at the bottom of the ocean’.  He clearly wants to occupy the high moral ground.

    But was it really concern about deaths at sea which motivated his campaign against asylum seekers arriving by boat? Wikileaks reported that ‘a key Liberal strategist told the US Embassy in November 2009 that the boats issue was “fantastic” for the Coalition and ‘the more that came the better’ (SMH 10 December 2010).

    In Opposition the Coalition did not want the boats to stop. It did its best to ensure that the Labor Government did not stop the boats. That is why the Coalition sided with the Greens to block the agreement with Malaysia. The collapse of that agreement set in motion a dramatic increase in boat arrivals that ultimately led to Manus and Nauru.

    Scott Morrison’s concern for deaths at sea was not reflected in numerous comments he made in opposition to demonise asylum seekers. He told us that asylum seekers bring ‘disease’, everything from TB and hepatitis C to chlamydia and syphilis. He told 2GB that boat arrivals bring ‘wads of cash’ and large displays of jewellery. He urged his parliamentary colleagues to ‘ramp up the question to … capitalise on the anti-Muslim sentiment’. He described as a ‘government-funded junket’ Commonwealth government assistance for an 8-year old boy whose parents had been drowned off Christmas Island. He complained about the cost of holding funerals in Sydney for asylum seekers who had died off Christmas Island.

    That was not the moral high ground. But If Scott Morrison now feels a sense of moral responsibility that is to be welcomed.

    At the Human Rights Commission Scott Morrison avoided answering the question whether detention of children, or adults for that matter, deterred boat arrivals. He should have said, but didn’t, that there is no evidence that mandatory detention deters boat arrivals. We now know very clearly that what has deterred boat arrivals was not mandatory detention but government policies denying resettlement in Australia for any person who come by boat. It was the Rudd Government that started taking us down this path. That is why boat arrivals stopped and not because of mandatory detention.

    Both Scott Morrison and the Secretary of his department took exception to the President of the Commission, Gillian Triggs characterising the detention centres as prisons. The detention centres may not have armed guards, but they are worse than prisons. First, the detainees are not convicted criminals and they are not illegals. They are overwhelmingly vulnerable people seeking freedom from persecution. Over 80% of boat arrivals have been found to be genuine refugees. But not being criminals or illegals, we put them in hell-holes where many of them go out of their minds.  For innocent people the result is worse than being in prison.

    Second, we locate these detention centres in remote places with the clear intention of making it very difficult for detainees to have contact with friends, family or advisers. We are frightened that if the community hears their true story, we will show more concern and compassion. So we lock them up in remote places where we cannot hear their cries. Inmates at Long Bay are treated better than that.

    There is a major problem when the Minister for Immigration is both gaoler and guardian of children. A sensible start to winding back this appalling situation in the detention of children is for the minister to separate his roles.

    More importantly we need to quickly wind back mandatory detention for almost all asylum seekers. It punishes but does not deter. The evidence is quite clear on that. Unfortunately a succession of Immigration Ministers have pretended they are political tough guys by locking up both adults and children.

    What is more there are large savings to be achieved in winding back mandatory detention. Immigration detention costs over $3b per annum. Over $2b could be saved instead of filling the pockets of Serco, Transfield, the Salvation Army and others. The Commission of Audit pointed to the enormous differences in the costs of detention. For offshore detention it was $440,000 per head in 2013-14.; for on shore detention it was $ 239,000 and for community detention it was$ 90,000.  The most cost effective and the most humane is release into the community on bridging visas which cost $22,000 per head. In 2013-14

    Humanity and cost saving points to ending mandatory detention. Few comparable countries mistreat asylum seekers the way we do.

    Just as we now have a Royal Commission on sexual abuse I am sure that down the track we will have a Royal Commission on our treatment of asylum seekers.

  • John Menadue. Keep trucking!

    At the hearings of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Melbourne last week, Cardinal George Pell is reported as saying that if the driver of a (trucking company) sexually assaulted a passenger they picked up along the way ‘I don’t think that it is appropriate for the .. leadership of that company be held responsible’.

    As a citizen I was angered as most people were by these comments. As a Catholic I was ashamed.

    If any trucking company, or indeed any organisation, had a record of sexual abuse like the Catholic Church I would expect that the leadership would either resign or be sacked. Responsibility cannot be avoided as Cardinal Pell suggests

    The Catholic Church faces a systemic problem that Cardinal Pell seems unable to come to grips with. In a submission with colleagues to the Royal Commission, we focused on that systemic problem, including the way bishops are chosen, church structures and an unaccountable male clerical culture. The problems go far beyond the individual truck driver or priest. This submission can be found by clicking on the website at the top left hand of this page, then clicking on religion, and then clicking on the submission of November 2013.

    It is hard going in the Catholic Church these days. For months the ugliness of the Church has been on display. But there is also great beauty, the saints, the art and particularly, the selfless service of the nuns day in and day out all around the world. The Catholic Church has kept the Christian faith alive despite its many blemishes. In my mind it is still the greatest influence for good in the world.

    Whilst the Catholic Church celebrates the Eucharist, I will be there.

     

  • Richard Woolcott. Indonesia under President Widodo.

    Australia will be dealing with a new Indonesian government in just two months. This will involve challenges and opportunities for both countries.

    The Constitutional Court in Jakarta has now confirmed the election of Joko Widodo as President-elect with 53.15% of the eligible vote. The Court’s decision is not appealable and he will be sworn in as President on the 20th of October.

    All Australians, especially our political leaders and senior officials, should be in no doubt that no bilateral relationship will be more important in the future than that with Indonesia.

    Indonesia stretches across our north, a distance from Broome in Western Australia to Christchurch in New Zealand. It is a country of some 250 million people, 81% of whom are Muslims. It has a literacy rate of 94%, an increasing middle class, and its economy is growing rapidly.

    Prime Minister Abbott has described the relationship with Indonesia as “our most important relationship” in many respects. His policy that his foreign affairs approach would be “more Jakarta and less Geneva” was shorthand for this approach.

    Our relations with the United States, China, and Japan, as well as neighbouring New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, are also of great importance to us. The future stability and prosperity of a democratic Indonesia is, however, of paramount importance to us.

    President-elect Joko Widodo, 53, represents a generational change and the potential for a significant shift away from established Indonesian politics. From central Java, he is a businessman who made furniture. He was the mayor of Solo, and then served 18 months as the Governor of Jakarta. He has a reputation of being a nationalist and a relaxed and friendly “man of the people”.

    While his experience of politics and of foreign policy issues is limited, he has indicated that he wants to unwind corruption and patronage in Indonesian politics and focus on raising the standard of living of the poor. His vice President, Yusuf Kalla, has more experience having been Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s first vice President for several years.

    Our government will need to discuss in depth with Widodo and Kalla, and the foreign minister when appointed, bilateral and wider foreign policy issues. Widodo has said that he is looking to make professional rather than political appointments, and it may be that Marty Natalegawa will be reappointed as foreign minister because of his wide knowledge and experience of foreign policy issues, with which Widodo is not familiar.

    Joko Widodo has said he wants good and consistent relations with Australia, but Indonesian sensitivities about territorial integrity and earlier allegations of phone tapping are seen as irritants in the relationship. Joko himself has referred to a “lack of trust” and he is aware that many Indonesian politicians and officials consider Australia as unpredictable and untrusting of Indonesia.

    The Joint Understanding on a Code of Conduct to manage more effectively the reaction to allegations that the Defence Signals Directorate was monitoring the phones of the President, his wife, and members of his staff is hopefully an important step forward if it is implemented to the satisfaction of both parties.

    The reason for the Indonesian reaction was that SBY had understood from his discussions with then Prime Minister Rudd that Australia was seriously seeking a closer, friendlier strategic relationship with Indonesia. Indonesia therefore saw the allegations as undermining trust. It was not, foreign minister Natalegawa argued, the way to treat a major neighbouring strategic good friend.

    It would be unwise not to acknowledge that the relationship has been damaged. In the 2014 Lowy Institute poll, 40% of Australians polled considered the relationship to be “worsening”. According to the Lowy institute the priorities on which Australia and Indonesia will need to consult most closely are asylum seekers, security, and terrorism. This will be a prickly task, calling for a courteous, culturally sensitive, sophisticated, and professional approach to restore and maintain the firmly based relationship we need.

    In our future relations with Indonesia Australia also will need to avoid several approaches, which have been disruptive in the past. One is “gesture politics” that is making statements and appointments that are insubstantial gestures in response to perceived public opinion.

    Australia should also avoid making statements on foreign policy issues which are essentially made for domestic political reasons but which are criticized by Indonesia, for example the suspension of live cattle exports without any prior consultation and towing boats back to Indonesian territorial waters.

    I believe we should listen more and lecture less. We also need to avoid making unnecessary statements that are seen as unbalanced in the region, for example alleged “assertiveness” by China and Japan are widely seen in Indonesia as responses to United States and Japanese assertiveness towards China.

    Joko Widodo is likely to make it clear that Indonesia will not take sides in China/US disputes, in China/Japan disputes, or on the South China Sea claims. Indonesia is not a claimant and has been assured by China that it does not claim any Indonesian territory. This underlines the desirability for Australia of a more nuanced focus on the region we share, and the regional problems that we need to manage.

    In this context I believe Australia does need a fundamental change to our national psyche, that would focus more on Asia than our traditional and well established links with the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada (collectively the “Anglosphere”), and Europe.

    We do need a continuous and sustained approach to the main countries of Asia. In this context a key task for the Australian government, when the new government is formed in Indonesia next October, will be to determine an appropriate and updated balance with our relationships with the United States, China, and Japan and to reinforce the government’s rhetoric about our role in the Asia-Pacific region with action and funding. We should consult Indonesia on a range of political issues, such as the Middle East for example, rather than limit our consultations to the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe.

    There will be a major role for public diplomacy in that Australians and Indonesians do need to know much more about each other. It is regrettable that many Australians still regard Indonesia as a mysterious, chaotic, and corrupt country in which the rule of law is weak.

    According to the Lowy institute polls many Indonesians still see Australia as a potential military threat. This is largely because of historic fears, Indonesia’s size, its proximity, and its presumed potential instability as well as the situation in West Papua.

    While Indonesia, like Australia, welcomes a constructive and continuing United States involvement in the Asia-Pacific there is concern in Indonesia about the so-called “pivot to Asia” – now referred to as “rebalancing”. Many Indonesians regard Australian policy as too closely tied to the United States.

    The incoming Indonesian government can be expected to be concerned, for example, about close cooperation on the reported use of US missiles by the Australian navy and the purposes of drone flights from Australia.

    Also there will be concern that the Cocos Islands, so close to Indonesia and Malaysia, yet now part of Western Australia, might be used for security purposes in South-East Asia and the South China region. Such activities would be seen as directed at the containment of China, notwithstanding rhetoric to the contrary.

    To conclude, the importance of our bilateral relations with Indonesia, and regionally in the context of the Asian century, cannot be overstated.  As a nation we need to be genuinely and continuously engaged with the incoming Widodo government of our very large neighbour of increasing global and regional importance.

     

    Richard Woolcott was formerly Head of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Australian Ambassador to Indonesia

  • John Menadue. The Bishop and the Prime Minister

    In August 1987 The Bulletin published an account by Tony Abbott of why he left the seminary. A link to Tony Abbott’s account is below.     Following Tony Abbott’s account, Fr Bill Wright on August 25, 1987, replied. He was a priest at that time in the Archdiocese of Sydney and Vice Rector of St Patrick’s College, Manly. He is currently Bishop of the Diocese of Maitland/Newcastle. He is mentioned as a possible successor to Cardinal George Pell in Sydney.

    http://nofibs.com.au/2013/03/28/tony-abbott-on-why-he-left-the-priesthood/

    Bill Wright’s Bulletin article ‘Abbott’s decision: the other side’ is published below.  John Menadue

     

    “Abbott’s Decision: the other side

    Bill Wright responds to Tony Abbott’s account last week of why he left the seminary.

    Tony Abbott came to St Patrick’s College, Manly, in 1984 after taking degrees in Economics and Law at Sydney University, tumultuous involvement in student politics – he was Students Representative Council president in 1979 – a Rhodes scholarship to study politics and philosophy at Oxford, a distinguished sporting career and a stint of journalism.

    Physically large, loud in argument or jest, with the exterior self-confidence or brashness of those who have survived some tough schools, his was a commanding presence in the college community. Some were captured by his spaciousness; his warm, hearty and loyal friendship; his candor; and the moving sense that he was a man who had given up much in life to serve his Church.  Others, however, found him just too formidable to talk to, unless to agree; overbearing and opinionated; and with his heart really still set on other things, in other places.

    His first year here was not happy. Manly is not Oxford, nor even the law school. Not only is there less brilliance, with and sparkle to the acre – we draw on a broader constituency – but here also one has not only to enjoy or admire one’s companions for some aspects of their character, one has also to strike some more fundamental chord of fellowship with them, to find that they satisfy some vision of what a man, a Christian and a priest should be. Only on the extreme Left of politics is there as much need to believe in each other’s selfless devotion to the cause: only there is there as much faction and disillusionment. Tony was not, on the whole, impressed by his companions. He was certainly not fired by the stimulation of life at Manly.

    Manly did its best for him according to its lights. He was accelerated through the first two years of study in 12 months. Law, politics and economics, however, count as well for studies in theology as they might for studies in medicine. Tony required three years’ further study in theology which meant for all practical purposes three years at Manly or at some other seminary.

    Dr Grove Johnson, the rector at Manly, liked and believed in Tony. He saw the difficulty Tony had settling down to the constraints of life in the college and he believed that Tony should be sent overseas to study, as he had been. No student had been sent away for undergraduate studies for the priesthood since 1968. It was unlikely to happen. Johnson, however, hoped to encourage Tony and mentioned the possibility to him. This was a chimera which Tony would pursue almost until the day he left.

    In 1985 Tony faced a new seminary rector and a new discipline, theology. One of the tragedies of this story is that the study of theology did not capture Tony’s imagination. He did passably: not as well as his academic background might have indicated. I do not recall that he ever talked about theology while at Manly. His concern – and it was a genuine one – was with practical churchmanship: how the Catholic Church could better commend itself to the hearts of Australians; how the individual priest could enliven and uplift those who were turning away from uninspired ministers.

    As well as finding little real engagement with theology, Tony in 1985 fell out with seminary authority. The present rector, Fr Gerry Iverson, is not a debater. What he says is what he means and, even more importantly, what he feels. Tony, on the other hand is inclined to come on strong, to score points, to skate over or hold back any reservations he might have about his case. There was ample scope for misunderstanding between these two, and misunderstanding there was.

    Iverson did his best for Tony. He tried to share his concerns with him; but Tony wanted tangible support, not an analysis of his difficulties and especially not an analysis couched in the terms of psychology. Iverson gave him a lot of time and a good measure of real support. He put to higher authority Tony’s case for some other arrangement of his studies, he urged patience on the bishops when they were irritated by Tony’s public pronouncements on the ills of the church or the seminary – an irritation which Iverson privately felt as least as much as they did. He risked the ire of the archbishop by granting Tony approval to speak on radio and finally he supported Tony, within the limits of honesty, as a candidate for priesthood before both Bishop Murphy and Bishop Heather as well as lending his support to my appeal to Heather that he consider making some rather special arrangements for Tony.

    In any case, 1985 passed and in 1986 Tony was placed in the parish of Emu Plains for 12 months. He was not happy to be in this position initially but it turned out to be, I think, the best of his three years as a seminarian. Emu Plains and places like Emu Plains are what diocesan priesthood is all about. Maybe it could or should be about many other things as well but the ministry of a priest to the people of a parish is the raison d’etre of the diocesan priesthood. It is significant that Tony comments that he could not imagine this to be his life.

    Finally we come to 1987. Heather agreed that Tony could live on in a parish and attend a theological college by day. I do not know of any similar arrangement ever having been made in Australia. I thought Tony had won as much as was winnable. There was still the soul-ache for the life of the university, still the chimera, perhaps, of studies overseas. Well, it was not to be. Tony quit, as he says, on March 27.

    Quit? The word suggests giving up a struggle. The struggle for what exactly? I no longer feel that I know. For a time I thought that it was the struggle to be accepted, the struggle to get authority to say, ‘Yes, we’re behind you’. But that struggle Tony surely won. Two years of study stood between him and diaconate without the inconvenience of seminary life, without the continual appraisal of his performance. He had only to do his own thing to be home and oiled.

    Another man, attempting to put his finger on the heart of Tony’s difficulties said that he had a developed inability to be really intimate and that ‘without the warmth and trust of real intimacy’ he would find ‘life in the celibate priesthood too frustrating and lacking in peace’. Tony himself, reflecting on that, feels that the issue of intimacy was in fact, ‘a symptom of a deeper difficulty, namely a growing fear that I was not, after all, suited for a priest’s work …’  Either way, it is tempting to consider the possibility that, once Tony had beaten the system and was no longer able to locate the ‘struggle’ as being between himself and authority, he had no one much else blocking his path but himself. For another to say this is, of course, too glib: especially if the other has a vested interest in absolving his church and his seminary from as much blame as possible. No decent historian, either, would reach such a conclusion without access to the letters and diaries. But it is the sort of working hypothesis that a reasonable historian might come to and seek to explore further.

    There are many faults in seminary training. There are faults in those who administer seminaries, too. And there are special difficulties connected with the remoteness of the final authorities from the scene. In every student’s story, the problems that should not have occurred loom large.

    How odd of Jesus to make Judas an Apostle! And to turn away the rich young man? How odd that Peter, and not someone more stable (James?), was chosen leader? How odd that Paul was first a persecuter? That Ignatius had to be struck by a cannon ball: that Aloysius died a scholastic; that Pius X is a saint? Why should a man such as Francis have lived to see the corruption of his work?

    I do not presume to think, Tony, that I understand the interplay of freedom and providence. Neither, I am sure, do you. I only know that we must try to make things come out right, in the full knowledge that it may serve some  higher purpose for them to come out wrong. Or it may not.”

     

     

  • John Menadue. Those pesky nuns.

    I was taken with an article by Nicholas Kristof. It was first published in the New York Times and yesterday in the SMH. The link to the article is below.

    In this article there is a quote from an American nun “Let me get this straight. Some priests committed sex abuse. Bishops covered it up. And so they are investigating nuns!’.

    If only the nuns were running the show, the Catholic Church would be in much better shape.

     

    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/superheroes-none-compare-to-our-heroic-nuns-the-first-frontline-feminists-20140819-105rfs.html

  • John Menadue. The ANZAC Myth.

    The four-year and well-funded carnival celebrating Anzac and WWI is now rolling. The carnival will depict WWI as the starting point of our nation, as our coming of age!

    It was nothing of the sort. It was a sign of our international immaturity and dependence on others. What was glorious about involving ourselves in the hatreds and rivalry of European powers that had wrought such carnage in Europe over centuries? Many of our forebears came to Australia to get away from this. But conservatives, our war historians and colonel blimps chose deliberately to draw us back to the stupidities and hatreds of Europe.

    It seems that the greater the political and military stupidity of wars that we have been involved in, the more we are encouraged to  hide behind the valour of our service people at Gallipoli, the Western Front and elsewhere.. The ‘leadership’ of Winston Churchill and General Ian Hamilton were catastrophic both for the British and for us. Australian and New Zealand forces at Gallipoli were commanded by a British General. No hiding behind the sacrifice of troops can avoid the facts. We should not have been there and it was a disaster.

    Unfortunately the more we ignore the political and military mistakes of the past, the more likely we are to make similar mistakes in the future. And we keep doing it. If we had a sense of our calamitous involvement in wars in the past like WW1 we would be less likely to make foolish decisions to involve ourselves in wars like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Our history is littered with tragic military adventures, being led by the nose by either the UK or the US.  And it goes on through the Boer War, the Sudan War and more recently, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. In all these cases, and just like WWI, we have desperately tried to hide behind the valour of our service people.

    The most important and justified war in which we have fought as a nation was WWII, in defence of our own people and land. But WWII is rated by the Australian War Memorial and so many others as of much less significance.  WW1 Is the Holy Grail.

    On April 25 each year we are told by tongue-tied people that the great sacrifice of WWI was in defence of freedom and the right. But I don’t think that they even believe it themselves. It just does not ring true. Tony Abbott says it was a ‘just war’. But he is yet to explain what was ‘just’ about it. It is claimed that it united this country, but it divided us in a way that we had never been divided before or since with Billy Hughes exploiting the anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiment in the country. Only 30% of eligible men chose to enlist. WWI was a great divider. It was not a unifier despite the platitudes of Anzac Day.

    Some claim that WWI was to bring peace to Europe. But the war and its aftermath laid the ground for even greater death and destruction in WWII.

    In relation to our population, our greatest loss of lives was in the Frontier Wars where over 30,000 indigenous people died in defence of their own land. But we ignore it in favour of the myths of Anzac. Best we forget the Frontier Wars.

    The first time Australians and New Zealanders fought together was against the Maoris in New Zealand in the 1850s and 1860s. The ANZAC connection was not forged at Gallipoli but half a century before in the Maori Wars.  It’s best that we forget that too. It doesn’t do our self-respect much good to recall that we fought together with New Zealanders in a race war to quell the Maori people.

    The early and remarkable achievements of this young country at the turn of the century and early in the 19th Century are blotted out by the blood and blather of WWI, ANZAC and Gallipoli.

    Federation in 1900 was a remarkable achievement, pulling together our six colonies into a nation. We led the world in universal suffrage, the rights of women, industrial democracy and the minimum wage. The ‘Australian ballot’ or secret ballot was progressively adopted in the Australian states in the latter half of the nineteenth century. We were a world leader. Our ballot was adopted in New Zealand, Canada, UK and US

    In 1904 we had not only Australia’s first Labor Government. It was the first in the world. The rights of working people as expressed in the Harvester Judgement of 1907 put Australia as a leader on the world stage. We were an advanced social laboratory. Before WWI there were two decades of remarkable nationhood and advancement for ordinary people.

    But conservatives were frightened of the future. They wanted to drag us back to the heart break of the past. And they succeeded with the help of Billy Hughes and other Labor renegades

    In the process we broke our own heart – or as Marilyn Lake has expressed in a blog on April 23 this year ‘WWI fractured the nation’s soul’.

    It is time we were honest with ourselves and discounted the myths of WWI, ANZAC and Gallipoli.

    Instead we should celebrate the two remarkable decades of progress before the catastrophe of WW1.

     

  • Elizabeth Elliott. Compassion goes missing on Christmas Island

    When it comes to children in need, most Australians feel compassion.

    Most will applaud today’s announcement that ‘Boat Kids’ will be released into the community. However this decision does not go far enough. It includes only kids aged less than 10 years (excluding many vulnerable teens); only those detained on the Australian mainland (excluding kids on Nauru, Manus and Christmas Islands); and only kids who arrived before July 19th 2013. Furthermore, the number to be released includes kids already living in community detention housing.  

    Christmas Island is a remote tropical ‘paradise’ in the Indian Ocean, over 2600 km from Perth or Darwin. When I visited with the Australian Human Rights Commission in July 2014, as part of their Inquiry into Children in Detention, it was ‘home’ to 174 children, including 26 unaccompanied minors – all boys aged between 14 and 17 years.  Australia continues to detain kids, despite the United Nations Guidelines on the Detention of Refugees that ‘Children should not be placed in detention’ and that ‘Minors who are asylum-seekers should not be detained’.

    Compassion, it seems, has gone missing on Christmas Island.

    ‘Home’ for families in these immigration detention centres consists of a small metal cabin, some 3 x 3 metres squared in one of two rows of similar cabins separated by a wooden walkway. Add a bunk bed and a cot to the rooms and there remains little space for a child to learn to crawl or walk, or for exploratory play. According to the father of a 2 year old boy “the housing is dirty, sub-standard, hard to be there. The child keeps hitting his head on items in the room – the bed, the shelf – because of the lack of space.”

    Cramped conditions, a punishing climate and overcrowded living in close proximity to scores of families make for little privacy and dire health consequences. Childhood infections spread quickly. When we were there many children had a respiratory virus and there had been outbreaks of gastroenteritis. We repeatedly heard the refrain “my kids are always sick.”

    The air-conditioned environment exacerbates symptoms in the many children with asthma. Others have medical conditions requiring assessment, medical or surgical treatment on the mainland – and for some the long wait for transfer had been intolerable.  A two and a half year old with no speech, a 6 year old with deafness requiring grommets for glue ear, a child with a facial abscess needing surgical drainage, a boy with an undescended testes, a child with rotten teeth, a girl with sleep apnoea….

    Of greater concern than signs of physical ill-health, however, are the psychological symptoms we heard of from many children.

    They reflect past and ongoing trauma, including the depression and self-harm many have witnessed in their own mothers. Stress in young children was manifest by onset, in detention, of bed-wetting, nightmares and defiant behaviour. In older children we heard of refusal to eat, separation anxiety, regression of speech, development of stutter, mutism and social withdrawal. Some expressed their stress through their art. A 10 year drew his ‘family home in jail’ and a six year old drew herself behind bars, with the caption ‘I want go out’ . Crying was ubiquitous in these images.

    Conversations with teenagers, who could articulate their predicament, were particularly poignant.

    They became distressed, describing flashbacks of trauma experienced at home, during harrowing boat trips to Australia, and during their time on Manus, where some were sent as a result of incorrect age determination. According to one boy who went to Manus, ‘I saw with my own eyes one boy hung himself in a cupboard – they were taken to hospital.’ They talked of their fear of being returned to Manus when they turned 18. 

    All spoke of feelings of hopelessness, sadness and lack of a future. They talked of frequent crying, families missed, lost expectations, lack of education and feelings of guilt because they had not fulfilled their family’s hopes after more than a year in ‘Australia.’  One boy summed this up as ‘a horrible situation. I feel depressed, preoccupied with my misfortune. I have not smiled or laughed the last few months. There is nothing to make me happy or to tell my family to make them happy.’  Some talked of self-harm and some spoke of death. In the words of one 12 year old girl ’My life is really deth. I don’t know why I’m in the jail realy. I don’t kill any body.’

    Detention of children for lengthy periods is in contravention to the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. This states that ‘The arrest, detention or imprisonment of a child shall be in conformity with the law and used only as a measure of last resort and for the shortest appropriate period of time.’ The UN Human Rights Committee reiterates this: ‘Asylum seekers who unlawfully enter a State party’s territory may only be detained for a brief initial period in order to document their entry, record their claims, and determine their identity.’  Most people have now been detained on Christmas Island for over a year and the anniversary of their arrival came as a bitter blow for many.  One man asked ‘Is it the Australian government’s aim to make us all go mad?’

    As victims of a policy that dictates that any arrival by boat after July 19th 2013 will never be settled in Australia, many have accepted their fate of settlement offshore. But their arbitrary detention without assessment for refugee status has left them in an intolerable limbo. One father said ‘If they won’t have us in Australia, find somewhere else for us to go. We can’t go home.’ A mother expressed her anguish, ‘The criminals, at least they know their sentence – we don’t.’ Many felt guilty for placing their children in such a predicament. As one mother said, ‘Even if I did something wrong, coming here, why ruin the life of our kids?’

    As a reflection of their increasing despair and frustration about the adverse conditions for their children, a group of young mothers with young infants resorted to self-harm.

    When we visited 10 such women – deemed at future risk – were under 24-hour surveillance by guards, not nurses. Despite this mental health crisis the centre has no resident psychiatrist. ‘I swear the physical health is not so much a problem. It is the stress and the psychological impact of the detention that is getting to us,’ said one mother of two.

    It is outrageous to keep asylum seekers in the limbo of uncertainty. It is unacceptable to keep children in detention on Christmas Island, and it is unjust to deny children optimal health care and education.  One mother said ‘one of the most important concerns for my baby is he has not received his BCG vaccine – when everyone in the world should receive it. They say ‘we don’t have it’ or ‘later’ – the story changes.’ In the words of one child, ‘I not want to sit in jail? I want to go school….in here no have school everyday. Please help me?’

    Australians might well ask ‘Where is the compassion on Christmas Island?’

    If we are to retain our international standing as a civilised society, we cannot continue to persecute children seeking asylum as a deterrent to others.

    Elizabeth Elliott AM, is the Professor of Paediatrics and Child Health, Sydney Medical School and Consultant Paediatrician at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead.

     

     

     

     

     

  • An abuse of power by the Israeli lobby.

    In 1967 the Israeli military attacked the USS Liberty, an American spy-ship which had been monitoring Israeli transmissions about the conflict during the Six-day War. Intercepted Israeli communications indicated that the goal was to sink the Liberty and leave no survivors. 

    As the story reveals, – see link below – both the US President Lyndon Johnson and the Secretary of Defence, Robert Macnamara, did their best to ensure that this action by the Israeli military – an attack on the US navy – never became public. 

    This story is written by Ray McGovern who works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. After serving as an army infantry/intelligence officer, he spent a 27-year career as a CIA analyst. He is co-founded of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

    During the tenure of President George Bush, he provided daily intelligence briefings to the Vice President and the Heads of National Security.   John Menadue

     

    http://consortiumnews.com/2014/08/17/a-uss-libertys-heros-passing/

  • John Menadue. Who triggered the disaster in Iraq?

    George Bush and his neocons must bear the principal responsibility for the disaster which is continuing to unfold in Iraq. In Australian terms, the most guilty partners are without doubt the Howard Government and News Corporation.

    The Howard Government’s decision to support the invasion of Iraq in 2002 was loudly supported by Tony Abbott. He said the invasion ‘was to liberate other people, to advance everyone’s interest and to uphold universal values that the coalition of the willing went to war in Iraq. If it’s possible to engage in an altruistic war, this was it.’

    The consequences of the war for Iraq have been almost unimaginable. Hundreds and thousands of Iraqis have died and been driven out of their homes. Genocide and ethnic cleansing is now widespread.

    We spent over $2 b on the Iraq war which the head of the AFP said made us less safe.

    We knew little and cared little about the history of Iraq and its people. Saddam Hussein was a tyrant, but he kept the clash between Shia and Sunni under some control. Christians and other minorities were tolerated. Islamic extremists did not get a foothold in Iraq. After Saddam was deposed and killed, Al-Queda grew in strength, which has now morphed into the murderous IS.  It is as if the heavens have really fallen in. Christians, minorities and moderate Sunni are being murdered.

    It is time John Howard and Tony Abbott really confessed that they made a terrible mistake in joining the coalition of the willing. They relied on dodgy intelligence information that was manipulated to support a previously determined political decision to invade Iraq. Our intelligence agencies, particularly the Defence Intelligence Organisation, were highly sceptical about alleged biological and chemical weapons.

    The best service we could have given to our US allies was to warn them against the course that they had determined to pursue.

    And there was News Corporation raucously calling for support for the war and doubting the patriotism of the war’s critics. The campaign by News Corporation in support of the Iraq war was as unscrupulous and dishonest as its campaign now in support of sceptics on climate change.

    In 2003, Rupert Murdoch said ‘We can’t back down now, where you hand over the whole of the Middle East to Saddam … I think Bush is acting very morally, very correctly … The greatest thing to come of this to the world economy … would be $US20 a barrel for oil.’ The next year, Rupert Murdoch told ABC Radio ‘There is tremendous progress in Iraq. All the kids are back at school, 10% more than when Saddam Hussein was there. There is 100% more fresh water … Most of Iraq is doing extremely well.’

    The Australian in an editorial mocked the critics of the war whom it described as ‘the coalition of the whining’. Greg Sheridan, the Foreign Editor of the Australian described George Bush as ‘a really modern Winston Churchill’. Three months after the invasion of Iraq, Sheridan still thought ‘weapons of mass destruction doubts are ludicrous’.

    Tony Abbott is now telling us of the appalling humanitarian plight of so many in Iraq. Yet he with John Howard and Rupert Murdoch, must bear a heavy responsibility for what has transpired.

  • Jennifer Chesters. Private schools, fees and longer term payoffs.

    In a recent article published by TheConversation, Barbara Preston examined the link between type of school attended and progress at university. Barbara concluded that after controlling for tertiary entrance score, university students from government schools outperformed students from private schools. This finding suggests that paying for an expensive private school education may not be the best preparation for university study. If this is the case, perhaps parents paying private school fees are looking for longer term pay-offs for their investment.

    In this paper, I analyse data from the 12th wave of the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) project to examine the longer term outcomes of attending private schools. For the analysis, I select one respondent aged between 25 and 34 years per household. The majority of young people have completed their education by the age of 25 years and are settled in their careers by the age of 34 years. The actual analyses that produced the findings discussed here is available (insert hyperlink to appendix here).

    Preliminary analysis shows that individuals who attended Catholic or independent schools were more likely to have completed Year 12 and to have graduated from university, after controlling for the effects of parents’ education, age and sex.

    But are there differences in labour market outcomes? Here the type of private school is important. Although those who attended a Catholic school were, on average, 1.3 times more likely to be employed on a full-time basis compared to those who attended a government school, former independent school students were no more likely to be employed on a full-time basis compared to those who attended a government school after controlling for the effects of level of education, sex and age.

    This result seems to suggest that paying private school fees is no guarantee of securing full-time employment. Given that women in this age cohort are in their prime child-bearing years, I also looked at the effect of interactions between sex and type of school attended; sex and age; and sex and level of education to determine whether there are differences between men and women. As expected, women were less likely than men to be employed on a full-time basis.

    Next, I examined the earnings of those employed on a full-time basis according to type of school attended controlling for the effects of sex, age and level of education. When it comes to weekly earnings, having attended a private school rather than a government school has no effect. So there would seem to be no return on the parents’ investment in terms of the earnings of their offspring.

    Perhaps parents were seeking to ensure that their offspring secured jobs with high levels of prestige in order to maintain their social status. After taking into account the effects of level of education, sex and age, having attended a Catholic school is associated with higher, on average, levels of occupational prestige than having attended a government school.  On average, attendance of an independent school is not associated with higher levels of occupational prestige.

    So why are parents choosing to send their children to independent schools?

    A closer examination of university graduates may shed some light on this paradox. Of the individuals who had completed a university-level qualification, those who had attended an independent school were more likely to have graduated from a Group of Eight (Go8) university compared to those who attended a government school. However, individuals who had attended a Catholic school were no more likely to have graduated from a Go8 university. Perhaps parents expect that graduation from an elite university would provide a pathway into a higher paying career.

    For university graduates employed on a full-time basis, graduation from a Go8 university had no effect on occupational prestige after taking into consideration the effects of sex, age and type of school attended. However, it is interesting to note that attendance of a Catholic school had a positive effect on occupational prestige. There was no pay off for graduation from a Go8 university in the form of increased earnings, nor did type of school attended have any effect, after controlling for the effects of age, sex and field of study.

     

    Summing up, these results call into question the wisdom of paying private school fees, particularly for independent schools. The massive growth in the number of private schools since the 1990s may be having the effect of diluting the advantages perceived to be attached to private schooling. If, as these results suggest, there is no long term advantage to be gained from paying to attend an independent school, why do parents stretch their family budgets to pay private school fees?

    Dr Jennifer Chesters is a Research Fellow at the University of Canberra. This article was first published in The Conversation on 13 August 2014. I also posted an article by Barbara Preston ‘State school kids do better at uni’ on August 13. This article was also first published in the The Conversation.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Saree Makdisi. The catastrophe inflicted on Gaza – and the costs to Israel’s standing.

    The Israeli public relations is almost as powerful as the Israeli military machine. An alternative view is expressed below by Saree Makdisi, a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA, and the author of ‘Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation’. This article was published in ‘Mondoweiss’ which describes itself as ‘a news website devoted to covering American foreign policy in the Middle East, chiefly from a progressive Jewish perspective’.  John Menadue

    http://mondoweiss.net/2014/08/catastrophe-inflicted-standing.html

  • John Menadue. Is there light at the end of the dark tunnel?

    In my blog of April 17 I outlined ways in which we might find a way out of the refugee quagmire. It is reposted below. 

    There is speculation that the government may announce an increase in the refugee intake to help the Christians and other minorities suffering dreadful persecution in Iraq and Syria. I hope this turns out to be the case and the beginning of a return to a more humane refugee policy.

    I could almost write Tony Abbott’s announcement. ‘Now that we have stopped the boats and put the people smugglers out of business, we can assist refugees in Iraq and Syria who are facing appalling persecution. By stopping the boats, we can increase our humanitarian intake in cooperation with UNHCR. This will be an orderly and regular program rather than allowing people smugglers to determine who comes to this country.’

    In my blog that I referred to, I suggested that the government should increase ‘regular arrivals from 13,750 to 20,000 per annum. This would be a useful start’.

    After the Howard Government’s pacific solution took effect, the refugee intake was increased from 7,642 in 2000-01, to 12,247 in 2006-07. In those same years, the settler/migrant intake was increased from 107,366 to 140,148.

    In that blog  of  April 17 I suggested  other actions that we could take which would be consistent with an ‘orderly’ refugee program – orderly departure arrangements with Afghanistan and Sri Lanka; alternate migration pathways and allowing asylum seekers on bridging visas in Australia to work.

    If Tony Abbott makes the announcement that I hope he will, it might be an opportunity to start rebuilding a bipartisan approach to refugee policy. 

    Even with the issue of boats off the political agenda, there are a lot of things that we can usefully do to protect the vulnerable and to restore our international reputation. John Menadue.

    Repost from April 17

    Is there a way we can turn this dross into gold, or if not gold, then a valuable metal? Is there a way through the present impasse that is both humane and practicable? I suggest there are some areas where we could have a broader discussion and decide what might be acceptable to the Coalition and the ALP. Surely some area of bipartisanship can be found. I suggest there are six areas which we should focus on.

    1. Action in the latter days of the Rudd Government followed by Operation Sovereign Borders has largely stopped boat arrivals. With so few ‘irregular’ arrivals, I suggest we should focus our attention on “regular arrivals” and increase the humanitarian program from 13,750 to 20,000 pa. This would be a useful start. It would demonstrate that the government is prepared to respond to asylum seekers and refugees in need provided they come through ‘regular channels’. (If today we took the same number of refugees that we took during the peak of the Indochina program and adjusted for population increase, our humanitarian/refugee intake would be about 35,000 p.a.)
      After the Howard Government’s Pacific Solution took effect, the refugee intake was increased from 7,642 in 2000/01 to 12,247 in 2006/07, the last year of the Howard Government. In those same years the settler/migrant intake was increased from 107,366 to 140,148.
      It is clear that having ‘stopped the boats’ as the Howard Government told us, they then considerably increased both the humanitarian and migrant intake. We should do the same again.
    2. Many Australians are concerned about the recent deaths and injuries on Manus and earlier on Nauru. It seems that asylum seekers where attacked by thugs within the Detention Centre on Manus. That is extraordinary and reflects on every Australian. A man has been killed in our name. We have a moral responsibility for any asylum seeker who comes to Australia and then is transferred to another country. To clarify the situation, I suggest that our moral responsibility should be strengthened by establishing a clear legal responsibility as well. We could do this by amending the Migration Act to ensure that there is ‘effective protection’ which is enforceable under Australian statute for any person that we transfer to another country. It would provide a discipline which is clearly lacking at the moment.‘Effective protection’ enforceable in Australian courts would need to be spelled out in the Migration Act to include such issues as non-refoulment, legal status when in another country, humane treatment consistent with the dignity and safety of the individual, and swift and efficient processing of claims. Surely the Coalition and the ALP could agree on ‘effective protection’ when asylum seekers are transferred to another country. The UNHCR should be asked to monitor ‘effective protection’.
    3. We need to address persecution and discrimination in source countries by negotiating Orderly Departure Arrangements with Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. Many asylum seekers coming to Australia come from these countries. We negotiated an ODA with Vietnam in 1983 whereby 100,000 Vietnamese came to Australia over many years instead of taking dangerous and irregular travel by land and sea. The Hazaras in Afghanistan and Pakistan desperately need our help through an ODA.
    4. We should consider other migration pathways that would reduce pressure on people to flee their countries. The largest number of asylum seekers coming by boat before the clamp down were Iranians.  I suggest that we should look at 457 visas or other migration pathways for young people from Iran. They would be great settlers.
    5. We need to address the issue of 30,000 asylum seekers in our detention centres and in the community whose refugee status has not yet been assessed. Immigration Detention Centres are very expensive and damaging to the individual. More asylum seekers should be carefully released into the community under bridging visas whilst their claims are being assessed. Most countries do this. In 2005 the Howard Government introduced the Community Care Pilot Scheme to assist asylum seekers in the community. Its focus was on case management. This pilot scheme became the Community Assistance Support (CAS) program and has worked well for asylum seekers in the community. Unfortunately a hostile political climate has made governments wary of developing the scheme. CAS should now be expanded.
      Further, as asylum seekers are released into the community, they should have the right to work. It is important both for their dignity as well as being in the interest of the Australian taxpayer. Surely the major political parties could agree on this. We have seen how country businesses like meatworks and fruit picking have welcomed asylum seekers.
    6. The only viable long term solution to desperate people taking risks in coming to Australia is through regional processing in transit countries and particularly in Indonesia with the cooperation of the UNHCR. We must bend our backs to do that. Julie Bishop would have an interest in this as it would help generate good will in our relations with Indonesia. We also need to build better relations with UNHCR.

    Surely we can find some bipartisan common ground in these six areas. Maybe we could find ways of turning dross into gold, or at least silver.

     

  • John Menadue. Who owns Medibank Private?

     The government has announced that it hopes to raise $4 billion from the sale of Medibank Private. But like many of its budget ‘savings’ it might find that it has to rely in this case  on the High Court rather than the Senate to decide if the $4 billion ‘saving’ can be realised.

    The case has been made by many people that the government is not the owner and certainly not the sole owner of Medibank Private. A view is strongly held that Medibank Private is owned by members/policy holders of Medibank Private. There are 3.8 million members. There is not much doubt that Medibank Private’s equity including accumulated reserves has come overwhelmingly from members’ contributions. At 30 June 2013 issued capital was $85m. Retained earnings were $1.3b. The market value of Medibank Private is estimated to be $4b by the government’s financial advisers.         .

    Medibank Private was first launched in 1976 with operations placed in the hands of the Health Insurance Commission (HIC).

    An examination of Medibank Private’s accounts by The New Daily (George Lekakis) reveals that before 1997

    • In 1988 the Chairman of Medibank Private, Fred Miller, wrote to Health Minister Neal Blewett that ‘Medibank Private is a non-profit organisation based solely on its contributors’ funds. The government has no financial interest in Medibank Private’s assets and reserves. Medibank Private’s assets and resources are the property of its contributors.’ This view by the Chairman was spelt out many times in statements and financial disclosures.
    • Members were officially recognised as ‘equity holders’ in the business from 1993 to 1996.
    • The balance sheets of Medibank Private before 1997 clearly show that the members owned the net assets of the company and not the government.

    The accounting treatment of Medibank Private was changed in 1997 by the Howard Government. This established government control and ownership of the fund.

    • In 1997 the term ‘members’ equity’ was removed from the balance sheet and replaced with a new concept of ‘fund equity’.
    • The Howard Government then directed the Health Insurance Commission to transfer equity of the fund to a new government-owned company known as Medibank Private.

    It would seem that the actions of the Howard Government and later the Rudd Government were designed to extinguish the rights of the members/contributors.

    The Australian Government can acquire the private assets of citizens under Section 51 of the Constitution but the acquisition must be on ‘just terms’. It is arguable that extinguishing completely the rights of contributors – the early ‘equity holders’ – can hardly be said to be on ‘just terms’.

    I must confess that I have a personal interest.  I have been a contributor/’equity-holder’ since 1976. I have contributed tens of thousands of dollars in premiums. Most of it has been a waste of money, but I suppose it gave me something called ‘peace of mind’ but not much more.

    Who owns Medibank Private? The High Court may be called upon to tell us.

     

    In my blog of March 26, 2014 ‘Privatising Medibank Private, who cares’ I argued the all health insurance, whether public or private is parasitical. Warren Buffett described PHI as the tapeworm that is destroying the US health system.

  • Peter Sivey. Health budget: GP care isn’t the problem, costly specialist care is.

    The opening of eight new medical schools in Australia in the past decade has seen a massive increase in the number of new doctors entering the workforce. The number of new junior doctors graduating in Australia doubled between 2004 and 2011. But while fears of an overall shortage of doctors seem assuaged, we don’t have the right mix of doctors.

    A recent trend is the increasing specialisation of the medical workforce. In 1999, 45% of Australian doctors were general practitioners (GPs) but this proportion had fallen to 38% by 2009. Similar trends can be observed in the United States and United Kingdom.

    This trend is concerning because primary care, provided by general practitioners, is the most efficient and equitable type of health care, particularly preventive care and the management of chronic disease. These components of GP-provided care have the potential to improve health outcomes, lower costs and reduce the need for future more costly interventions.

    In contrast, specialists tend to be reactive and expensive, seeing patients only when a health condition has taken a turn for the worse, when surgery, expensive pharmaceuticals, or other intensive treatments are required.

    Of course, a modern health-care system needs a high-quality specialist sector; specialists are the doctors patients rely on when they’re sickest. But workforce planners should strike the right balance between primary care and specialist physicians.

    So what is causing the growing imbalance towards specialism in medical career decision making?

    Our recent study asked junior doctors in Australia about their job preferences. We did this using a discrete-choice experiment, where respondents made hypothetical but realistic choices about their future career. By analysing their responses statistically, we could tell what factors drove their choices.

    Our results show a range of factors affect choice of speciality. Opportunity to practice procedural work and academic opportunities are some of the factors that drive junior doctors to specialise rather than choose general practice. But the elephant in the room is money.

    Specialists in Australia earn almost twice as much as GPs. Survey data shows average earnings in 2012 of $194,000 for GPs and $360,000 for specialists. Even when adjusted for the longer hours that they work, specialists’ hourly wages are still 60% higher than GPs.

    We found expected earnings have a large effect on choice of speciality. But lowering the income gap could redress the situation. Our modelling shows that increasing GPs’ earnings by A$50,000 per year (a 28% increase from 2008 levels) would increase the number of junior doctors choosing general practice by 11%, or 247 more trainee GPs per year.

    So, how can policymakers increase GPs earnings relative to specialists?

    The main policy tool available is Medicare. Medicare influences GPs’ earnings via rebates for the consultations they provide. Increasing Medicare rebates for GP services would therefore be a simple way of increasing their earnings. Of course, this is entirely the opposite of current government policies to introduce co-payments for bulk-billed consultations and reduce rebates.

    Innovative payment mechanisms may provide a more cost-effective way of increasing GPs’ relative earnings. Introducing additional funding sources using capitation (where doctors are paid for looking after enrolled patients for a whole year, not just per consultation) and pay-for-performance would allow earnings increases to be linked to higher quality of care, rather than just the number of consultations provided.

    Increased earnings for GPs needn’t blow a hole in the budget either. Offsetting savings could come from targeted reductions to Medicare rebates for specialist services, which would reduce the earning power of specialists, especially those working in private hospitals on privately-insured patients.

    In 2012/13, the government spent $3.9bn subsidising private specialist consultations. A proportion of these Medicare subsidies could be redirected to GP consultations.

    Together, these measures could reduce the relative earnings advantages of specialists over GPs, encouraging more junior doctors into general practice.

    Peter Sivey is Senior Lecturer, School of Economics at La Trobe University. This article was first published in The Conversation on 7 August 2014.

     

  • John Menadue. Missing in action when Kerry and Hagel come calling?

    I can understand Tony Abbott’s wish to direct attention away from the budget by going off to The Hague and London. But are Australia’s national and policy interests being served by his absence when John Kerry and Chuck Hegel visit us.

    In my blog of July 31 ‘Overplaying one’s hand’ I quoted Tony Abbott’s comments on MH370 in PNG. He said ‘Satellite footage shows what could be debris from the missing airline’s flight MH370’. But he was wrong.

    In Shanghai about two weeks later Tony Abbott said ‘We are confident that we know the position of the black box flight recorders to within some kilometres … we are very confident the signals we are detecting are from the black boxes on MH370’. On the same day Air Chief Marshall Angus Houston, who was in charge of the search, said ‘On the information that I have available … there has been no major breakthrough in the search for MH370’. What Angus Houston told us still stands. Apparently we are now to contract out the search for MH370 to a foreign company.

    Then Tony Abbott adopted what Paul McGeough in the SMH called ‘megaphone diplomacy’ on MH17. It has now become clear that it was the Malaysian Prime Minister who quietly contacted the rebels in Donetsk and secured the release of the refrigerated train with 200 bodies or more on board. The Malaysian Prime Minister also secured from the rebels the two black boxes of MH17. The role of the Malaysian Prime Minister clearly doesn’t suit Tony Abbott’s agenda. I have yet to hear him make any mention or thank the Malaysian Government for its role in what really mattered after the crash of MH17. Help from the Dutch and others has been helpful, but their contribution did not compare with what the Malaysian Prime Minister achieved. So Tony Abbott went to The Hague to thank the Dutch but there is still no sign of him dropping in to Kuala Lumpur to thank the Malaysian Government. Operation bring them home has become more like wait and see.

    Now Tony Abbott is on a side trip to London at the same time that the US Secretary of State, John Kerry, and the Secretary of Defence, Chuck Hagel, are in Australia. This is quite remarkable. After President Obama, John Kerry and Chuck Hagel are without doubt the two most important foreign visitors that could come to our shores at this time. But Tony Abbott was not here to discuss with them what more we might be doing in Iraq and Syria. Just imagine what News Corporation and other media might be saying if Prime Ministers Gillard and Rudd were absent at a time like this.

    Our national interest would be much better served with less grandstanding and less megaphone diplomacy.

     

  • Barbara Preston. State school kids do better at uni.

    State school graduates do better at university than private school graduates with the same end-of-school tertiary entrance score. That’s the clear finding in a number of Australian studies since the 1980s  and in England since the 1990s .

    The Australian research compared academic results at the end of first year at particular universities for cohorts whose entry was based on tertiary entrance scores (now ATAR) for the previous year in the same state. The most recent English research tracked all students who completed the end-of-school A-levels and went directly on to complete a full-time four-year degree course.

    The differences between graduates of state and private schools were substantial (though less pronounced among those who did very well at university). The Australian research found that, on average, graduates of state schools received the same marks at the end of first-year university as graduates of private schools who had tertiary entrance scores around three to six points higher.

    The English research found that at each A-level standard, on average around 7 percentage points more graduates of state schools than graduates of private schools received first or second-class, first division (upper second) honours.

    English results for graduates of independent schools and all categories of state schools, showing percentages that received an upper second or better degree by A-level achievement at the end of school.

    Research in both Australia and England also found that with the same tertiary entrance scores:

    • graduates of co-educational schools tend to do better than graduates of single-sex schools
    • graduates of lower-fee private schools (in Australia, Catholic schools) tend to do better than graduates of higher-fee private schools (in Australia, independent schools)
    • graduates of schools with lower average tertiary entrance scores tend to do better than graduates of schools with higher average tertiary entrance scores
    • graduates of (English) state comprehensive schools do better (to a small extent) than graduates of state selective schools.

    The general finding is that graduates of non-elite and co-educational schools do better at university than graduates of socially and academically elite and single-sex schools who achieved the same tertiary entrance score.

    Independent private schools have similar shares of enrolments in the final school year in Australia and the UK, but the state sector has a smaller share in Australia due to the large private Catholic sector (which at the secondary level has a socio-economic profile closer to the independent sector according to ABS Census data)

    So what can explain this difference?

    There are no definitive explanations for these findings, though there is some attempt in the literature, some indicative data, and much informed speculation. And there is, of course, great variation among individual students – and among schools, universities and university courses.

    Explanations tend to focus on aspects of secondary schooling and on students’ effort levels at university (associated with their cultures and aspirations), and any may be involved in particular cases:

    • Preparation for the end-of-school assessments in private schools, relative to state schools, boosts tertiary entrance results above “underlying ability”, and graduates regress to “underlying ability” level at university.
    • Preparation for life and learning beyond school in private schools (and single-sex schools) relative to state schools (and co-educational schools) is poor, resulting in university performance below “underlying ability”.
    • Graduates of private schools make less effort at university because of perceived long-term advantages of their secondary schooling and other socio-cultural reasons.

    It appears a reasonable assumption that tertiary entrance scores are boosted by a better quality of education at high fee private schools. Fee-based resources several times greater than those of state schools can fund smaller classes and other ways to enhance learning. In addition, selection and exclusion practices can ensure an academic atmosphere not disturbed by disruptive, difficult-to-teach students, or even students without high academic aspirations.

    However, there appears to be contrary evidence: state school students tend to do better in NAPLAN tests than private school students at schools of similar socio-economic status (especially at higher socio-economic levels), according to data on the My School website analysed by researchers Bernie Shepherd and Chris Bonnor for a forthcoming publication.

    Thus other explanations are likely. One involves a narrow focus on tertiary entrance results at many elite schools. Tertiary entrance results are a central aspect of the status and marketing of high-fee private schools – supported by high-visibility league tables and human interest stories in the media. High pressure, close supervision and narrowly defined learning leave little room for independent, self-motivated learning, and developing the personal and social skills required for success at university.

    Single-sex school cultures and practices may not prepare students well for university life. This is hinted at in the literature, but was “obvious” for a recent university graduate I spoke to who attended both single-sex and co-educational secondary schools and said many single-sex school graduates “do not learn to socialise at school, and when they get to uni they just party”.

    Other possible explanations relate to cultural class assumptions around success and entitlement. Some private school graduates may have an explicit belief (whether reasonable or not) that just having attended such an elite school will lead to employment advantages after university. Thus the incentive to work hard at university is diminished.

    Some may have a less conscious belief that they have innate superior intelligence that will get them though university without much additional effort. This sense is not properly tested in the “hothouse” atmosphere of closely supervised elite schooling, but is found wanting in the more open society of university.

    There may also be a lack of motivation for university among those from elite private schools where university is the norm. Those from state schools, where many different destinations are common, make a more deliberate choice for university.

    What are the implications?

    The government has set its sights on a highly differentiated fee and scholarship regime for higher education. Graduates of many universities are likely to have debts of over $100,000 for popular and socially important courses such as science, and debts of over $250,000 for longer courses such as veterinary science.

    Universities with high-demand courses and high fees will need fairer criteria for access to all courses and for the awarding of all scholarships based on entry-level academic merit. This is not just a matter of justice for individuals, but also for our future as a well-educated, productive and fair society.

    English education commentator Nick Morrison suggested that the disparity between state and private school graduates’ success at university ‘should provoke fee-paying schools to question whether they are doing all they can to equip students for university’.

    The Australian Financial Review recently urged people to “do the sums on the true cost of private schools”. It’s apparent that high private school fees may not be buying effective education. In the context of university debts upwards of $100,000, families should “do the sums” on comparable expenditure on schooling.

    Barbara Preston is an independent researcher and PhD candidate at the University of Canberra.

    This article was originally published in The Conversation on 17 July 2014 https://theconversation.com/state-school-kids-do-better-at-uni-29155. Full references are available in the original article.

     

  • David Zyngier. Senate committee backs Gonski.

    Gonski’s report on school funding has been backed by a senate committee even though the federal government isn’t backing it.

    (more…)

  • John Menadue. Will the new Colombo Plan work?

    Julie Bishop has announced a ‘signature initiative’ of the Australian government which aims to lift knowledge of the Indo-Pacific in Australia by supporting Australian undergraduates with internships in the region.

    This initiative is commendable but I hope it avoids the problem of earlier attempts to lift Australian understanding and skills for our region. The main problem before was that young Australians who committed themselves to skills about our region couldn’t get jobs in Australia. So they drifted away. Will we make the same mistake again?

    Let me give some background.

    The early Colombo Plan which was introduced by the Menzies Government in the 1950s brought thousands of young people from our region to study in Australia. At Adelaide University where I was educated there were hundreds of such Colombo Plan students. This earlier Colombo Plan built up not only the skills of these young people but it broadened and developed relationships between Australia and regional countries. Today there would be hundreds and perhaps thousands of former Colombo Plan students who now occupy senior government and diplomatic positions in the region.

    Now the government is proposing the reverse – providing scholarships for study by Australians for up to one year in the region with internships and mentoring backup. It is designed to deepen Australia’s relationship with the region, both at the individual level and through expanded links between universities and business. The Abbott Government has committed $100 million over five years for the new Colombo Plan.

    In the 1970s and 1980s there was a major upsurge in Asian language training in Australia. It followed the quite dramatic increase in trade in our region, particularly with Japan and later with Korea. But this upsurge in foreign language learning in Australia did not last. Our schools, colleges and universities gradually lost interest in equipping Australians with skills for the region. Our education system didn’t have resources or a long-term view to really embed Asian language training in our educational system.

    But it wasn’t just the fault of our education system. It turned out to be very difficult for Australian graduates with language skills to get employment with Australian companies. I spoke to hundreds of young graduates either individually or in groups over many years about the problem. I felt a bit responsible, along with Steve FitzGerald and others for encouraging young people to acquire Asian language skills. But it turned out to be a dead end as far as employment was concerned. These young graduates invariably told me that they had put five or more years into acquiring regional cultural or language skills but couldn’t find employers who were interested. Some obtained employment with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and Austrade, but many drifted overseas to work with foreign companies in, for example, Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo.

    Some of these young graduates may have had unreasonable expectations that a language skill would inevitably lead to employment. But I have no doubt that the lack of interest by corporate employers was a major problem.

    The lack of interest then by Australian companies continues today as far as I can tell. I have yet to learn of a single CEO or Director of our top 100 companies who can fluently speak any of our regional languages. They just don’t get it. The culture of most of their organisations is very parochial.

    It is also the experience that young Australian business people sent overseas to work in the region often resign on return to Australia because of an unsympathetic and sometimes hostile attitude to people who have worked in the region. I set this out in a blog of August 26 last year ‘Returning home can be the hard part’.

    At Qantas in the late 1980s we recruited a number of people with Asian skills. Some were given internships. But it didn’t last and within a few years most of them had left Qantas or worked in areas of Qantas where their Asian skills were not relevant. We recruited cabin crew with Japanese language skills, but it was a major problem overcoming the seniority rules for cabin crew which reserved the best routes, including the Sydney-Tokyo route for more senior cabin crew who didn’t have language skills.

    Because of the failure of previous attempts to educate young people for our region the government has now adopted a new approach in the new Colombo Plan. The government has come to the understandable view that galvanising our education system to respond to our region is very hard and that it might make more sense to send young Australians into the region to live and learn in that environment.

    My experience tells me that the experience of these young Australians in the region will be quite dramatic. It will be life-changing for many of them. But a key to the success will be the reception they get when they return to Australia. Will the business community respond in a better way than it did twenty years ago when it failed to employ so many young Australians who had acquired Asian skills in our universities?

    I hope we don’t make the same mistakes again because the new Colombo Plan is a very commendable initiative.

  • John Menadue. Diplomatic lessons for Canberra.

    In my blog of July 31 ‘Overplaying one’s hand’ I said that there were clear lessons to be learned from the disasters of MH370 and MH17. The lessons are – don’t overplay your hand or overstate your case for domestic political reasons.

    Today in the SMH, Paul McGeough, see link below, refers to the failure of megaphone diplomacy over the loss of MH17. He says ‘While Abbott and Bishop opted for megaphone diplomacy against the rebels’ sponsors in Moscow, Malaysian Prime Minister, Najib Razak, quietly made phone calls to the rebel leadership in Donetsk, in which he achieved essential outcomes – the release of the refrigerated train on which the rebels had stored the 200 or more bodies and the handling over to Malaysian officials of the Boeing 777’s black boxes, which are essential for crash investigators.’

    Now Tony Abbott is off to the Netherlands to thank the Dutch Prime Minister and  the AFP and other officials. But surely the priority call should be in Kuala Lumpur. It was the Malaysian Prime Minister who helped most of all on what really mattered. Why won’t Tony Abbott accept that? Perhaps he could make amends by dropping in to KL on his way home.

    In the same paper on the same day Peter Hartcher said that Abbott’s conduct over MH17 ‘has been impeccable’.Where has he been!

     http://www.smh.com.au/world/mh17-search-in-ukraine-turns-into-mission-impossible-20140808-101wxf.html

  • John Menadue. . Come by air – no problem!

    Many newspapers this morning are full of stories about fraud and bureaucratic negligence over air arrivals. The integrity of the visa system is being called into question.

    One June 20, last year, I posted an article ‘Come by air – no problem!’ It is reposted below. This blog highlighted the widespread preoccupation with boat arrivals.

    Other major issues have been overlooked,including the 50,000 plus in our community, who having overstayed their visa have ‘disappeared’

     

    Repost: Come by air – no problem!

    There is an easy way to solve the boat people “problem”. It is simply to get as many asylum seekers as possible to come by air. It would be a win/win for everyone. There are many reasons for proposing this.

    • The politicians and the media show no interest whatsoever in the asylum seekers who come by air. (In the last 10 years, over 78% of asylum seekers have come by air, although in the last two to three years, the proportions have changed in favour of boat arrivals.) But the fact remains, we are not concerned at all about air arrivals.
    •  This would solve the political problem We could also ignore the media misinformation
    • We don’t put many air arrivals into detention as we do boat people. So this could potentially save us up to $2 billion in detention costs.
    • Asylum seekers who come by air live freely in the community, and  are allowed to work. Boat people are not. So allowing more air arrivals to work saves the taxpayer and there is no need for asylum seekers to break the law and work in the grey economy.

    There are also good business opportunities here  for Qantas and other airlines. They need to set up joint ventures or appoint good agents to help as many asylum seekers to get visas to enter Australia  by air with Qantas or others. How can this be done?

    • Most asylum seekers who come by air promise that they are coming to Australia as a visitor, student or working holiday maker. Having got into Australia they then apply for refugee status and live happily in the community until their status is resolved.
    • So entrepreneurial agents can perform a personal and national service in helping asylum seekers come by air. We know there are some very efficient “agents” in southern China. China always tops the list for the number of asylum seekers who come by air. What a boon for both airlines and agents!
    • Clive Palmer has proposed that asylum seekers should fly to Australia. He said recently ‘All that needs to happen is that the government needs to stop telling airlines and other people not to give [asylum seekers] safe transport. If they come down here by air and if they are refugees that’s one thing. If they haven’t got a legitimate claim they can go right back on the plane the next day.’

    Clive Palmer clearly sees it as a win/win for everyone. As would other people.

    • Tony Abbott would surely applaud as it is an even better solution than his Pacific Solution to control our borders.  People smugglers would be put out of business
    • The media would obviously think it was good policy because it has shown very clearly that it is only concerned about boat people. Air arrivals are quite un-newsworthy.
    • Taxpayer money would be saved and airlines could make more money.

    But to disappoint Tony Abbott and the media, I must admit that some of the above is nonsense. You probably detected my tongue in cheek a few paragraphs ago!

    • Agents would need to encourage visa applicants to make false declarations about the reason for them coming to Australia.
    • It would be unfair to persons who genuinely faced persecution and who would have no way of getting a visa.
    • Asylum seekers who come by air, although many are quite deserving, have a success rate in refugee determination of just over 40%. For boat arrivals it is over 90%.

    Put simply, our preoccupation with boat people is a dishonest and misleading ploy. It is done deliberately to incite fear. For some reason boat people are a special threat. And Tony Abbott and the media play it for all it is worth. As reported by the SMH on 10 December 2010 “a key Liberal Party strategist told the US Embassy in 2009 that the more boats that come the better”

    The important issue is the total number of asylum seekers who come to Australia and not their mode of arrival. As an island continent we should not be surprised that really desperate people try to come by sea without a visa.

    The Coalition and the media have performed dishonestly over boat people. Following in John Howard’s footsteps, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison are deliberately inciting fear about boat people, yet show no interest at all in air arrivals. Where is the consistency in this?  For the media it is partly political partisanship, as with The Australian, but for most others it is laziness.  Pictures of unkempt bearded men on boats are so much more newsworthy. It is much harder to get pictures and stories of asylum seekers dressed in suits who come by air every day and all day through our airports. And no group exhibits more laziness  on this issue than the ABC, particularly its Canberra correspondents.

    Why do we continue to beat ourselves up only about asylum seekers who come by boat but ignore those who come by air and treat the latter much more generously particularly as the have a much lower success rate in refugee determination?

    John Menadue

     

     

     

     

  • Kerry Murphy. The persecutions.

    In March 2001, the Taliban dynamited the ancient Buddha statues of Bamian because the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, claimed they were ‘idolatrous’ and idolatry is banned in Islam.  In July 2014, ISIL destroyed the ancient tomb of the prophet Jonah in Mosul for the same reason.[1]  This site was considered a sacred site for Jews, Christians and Muslims for centuries.  Tragically it is not just ancient cultural monuments that are being destroyed by ISIL.  Other accounts refer to smashing of statues in churches and the looting of churches.  What is especially worrying and amazing is their willingness to publicise their war crimes and not merely claim them for themselves, but boast about it.

    There have been Christian communities in the Nineveh plain of northern Iraq for possibly 1700-1800 years.  Some of the Christian communities in Syria and northern Iraq can trace their origins to the early spread of Christianity throughout the Middle East and then Roman Empire.  For nearly two millennia they have survived but ISIL is possibly the most dramatic threat they have faced.[2]

    Initially Christians in Mosul hoped they might be spared the sectarian attacks on Shia by ISIL.  Then on July 14, they noticed the Arabic letter ‘nuun’ ( ن ) for Nasriya (Christian) was daubed outside their properties.  Then ISIL gave the estimated 35,000 Christians an ultimatum to 19 July – convert, pay the jizya tax, or be killed.

    The jizya is a tax levied on non-Muslims in Sharia law.  In ISIL’s case, the jizya was clearly protection money mafia style, and its onerous level was beyond the capacity of many.  This left the Christians with no real option but to flee their homes and abandon their goods.  Some claim they were robbed by militants as they fled, an added indignity.

    ISIL also daubed the Arabic R ( ر ) for rafidah or ‘rejectors’ on the homes of Shia and minorities such as Shabaks and Yazdis and Turkman Shia.  This is a Sunni term used to denigrate those who do not follow their particular religious interpretation.

    More reports are coming out of stoning for adultery, beheading of Shia prisoners (often from the Iraqi or Syrian militaries) and even the execution of the Sunni imams in the main mosque in Mosul, who were seen to be not teaching ‘correct Islam’ and so had to be killed.  One ISIL posting bragged about the execution of ‘rafideh’ for Eid – with horrific pictures of the terrified men in trucks, then kneeling before open pits to be executed.[3]

    It was these type of extremist actions that alienated the Sunni tribes from Al Qaeda in 2007 and lead to the ‘Awakening’ movement whereby Sunni tribal leaders supported the US against Al Qaeda.  It is a disaster for Iraqis that the Iraqi Prime Minister al Maliki has become so sectarian in his policies and actions that the Sunnis feel they are better protected by supporting the Salafist extremists in ISIL than their own Government.  Some Sunnis see Maliki as an ‘Iranian’ and others refer to the ‘good old days under Saddam’.

    The willingness of ISIL to publicise their war crimes – beheading prisoners, shooting prisoners kneeling before ditches and smashing religious icons and statues – is extremely worrying.  They obviously are not afraid of facing war crimes trials for their actions and probably they assumed they are immune from such prosecution may well be sadly right.

    Sadly for the Christians and other minorities of Iraq and Syria, they will not be able to return to their homes for some time, if at all.  The fact that many Palestinians still have their house keys from their homes in Israel which they fled in what they call the ‘Naqba’(catastrophe) of 1948 gives no hope to yet another group of refugees from the Middle East.

    Iraqis tell me that this focus on religion and sect is new in Iraq.  Baghdadi Christians and Muslims would celebrate each other’s religious holidays and exchange greetings and presents for Christmas and Eid.  Intermarriage between Sunni and Shia families was not uncommon, especially in Baghdad.  Now the situation has changed dramatically and sectarianism dominates.  Militias are forcing out such Sunni/Shia couples from their homes, others are being forced to separate just because their spouse is a different sect.[4]

    The labelling of communities with letters designating their status will immediately create fears in our post holocaust world.  We have seen this before.  In an inversion of this, Iraqis in Baghdad and Irbil protested in the streets holding up signs saying things like ‘I am Iraqi and I am a Nasriyan’ or others said ‘We are all Nasriyans’.  There were also protests in London and Paris with people wearing T-Shirts with just the Arabic letter on them, just as it has been seen in the graffiti daubed on homes in Mosul. On Lebanese TV a well-known TV personality wore a T-Shirt with the letter ‘nuun’ ( ن ) and said ‘We are all Nuun’. Others are putting the symbol and letter on Facebook in solidarity with the persecuted. [5]

    Hopefully such intercommunal and intercultural/religious stands will become possible again in Iraq and Syria, though I fear it will take a long time before there is much progress and the extremists are isolated and disempowered.

    Kerry Murphy is a Sydney solicitor who practices in immigration and refugee law.

  • ‘The real danger to Israel comes from within’ interview with Eva Illouz and De Spiegal.

    This interview in De Spiegal is of interest and merit on the Gaza crisis. See link below.  John Menadue.

    http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-with-sociologist-eva-illouz-about-gaza-and-israeli-society-a-984536.html

  • Lisa Petheram. Listening to young people’s voices on Refugee and Asylum Seeker Policy

    “They are playing with our lives…every year I get older
    …I want to start a family but I can’t    ”.

    What are young people in Australia thinking about refugee and asylum seeker policy?
    Two youth roundtables recently held by Australia21 have given some insight into the ways that young Australians think about these issues, and their visions for the future. The youth roundtables were held as part of a broader project Australia21 has been undertaking in collaboration with other groups – Asylum Seeker Policy: A fair, just and effective approach. As part of this project, a collection of short essays and a discussion paper on the options have been compiled. Also, on the 11th of July, Australia21 co-hosted an expert roundtable on this topic at Parliament House, with the Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Law (UNSW) and the Centre for Policy Development.

    The first youth roundtable was held in Canberra with support from the Crawford School at ANU, with 38 young people aged 18-30 from the public. The second youth roundtable was held with Settlement Services International (SSI) in Sydney with 35 young people of the same age group, specifically of refugee and asylum seeker background. In both workshops a rich picture diagramming approach was used—to understand participants preferred futures around refugee and asylum seeker policy. Discussions from both roundtables were remarkably wide- ranging and insightful and had much overlap in content and opinion, despite participants being from very different experiential and cultural backgrounds. Conversations reflected a strong desire for change in policy and practice in Australia, and a sense of disillusionment and disappointment about public perceptions and treatment of refugee and asylum seekers.

    At the Sydney roundtable, the overarching message was that the refugee journey is long and difficult. “I thought when I got to Australia the hard part was over, but now I have to start again from nothing. It is hard in a different way. I can’t seem to get a start anywhere and it is hard to have hope until I can.” After arriving in the settlement country most people need a range of personally targeted supports to settle successfully, particularly in communities where refugee status carries stigma. Some of the current policy settings seem designed to frustrate that journey rather than support it, and to waste human potential. People appeared to be resilient and energetic but sorely tried.

    Participants commonly expressed strong frustration at the inhumane ways refugee and asylum seekers are treated through restrictive policies, as well as the way they are often stigmatized in the media and by the general public. “We are not animals, we are human”. There was a strong yearning to be treated and to live like others. It was suggested there needs to be strong, empathetic leadership and programs to address stigma and encourage community engagement. “I want to live in an Australia where the Prime Minister has been a detainee and knows what it’s like”. Another participant used a picture of birds being fed, to communicate her hope that if Tony Abbott fed the birds he may develop empathy. One said he would say to the Government “Please make decisions like you are deciding about someone from your own family

    There was much disappointment about new policies that create more uncertainty and fear.  Many were frustrated by being unable to plan or make any goals and being in “limbo land”, especially around study, work and family. “I don’t have anything good to tell myself in in the mirror in the morning. I want to build my life in Australia, but I can’t…How can I ever ask anyone for their daughter’s hand in marriage?”. In particular the inability to work while being processed is excruciating for many of the participants. They talked of having much passion, experience and qualifications and wanting to contribute in Australia by working, but losing resilience and hope. There was also frustration by those that were allowed to work, where time and energy put into gaining qualifications and experience were not recognized “I want to share my skills with Australia”

    At the Canberra roundtable sadness and anger was expressed about the treatment of refugee and asylum seekers. There was much concern particularly around mental health of people in detention and in communities. It was emphasised that policy makers and public should be strongly encouraged to reframe their current ways of thinking about refugee and asylum seekers, and be more open, sincere and unprejudiced in their discourse on the topic. Calls were also made for ‘grown up’ and progressive leadership, and for Australia as a nation to be more cognizant of equality under the law, and our moral and international obligations.

    It was argued that refugee and asylum seekers are often dehumanised in these debates; they are generally not seen by the general public and policy makers as ‘real people’, but as statistics, or criminals who should be behind bars. It was suggested that greater attention needs to be placed on more appropriate and creative solutions to domestic processing, especially in terms of the location and speed of processing. In an ideal future, Christmas Island and Nauru would be closed, and the money saved could be directed towards supporting communities to be involved in the processing and resettlement of refugee and asylum seekers. There were also strong calls for policy modification to ensure that people can have opportunities to contribute more fully to society (e.g. allowing people working rights while being processed).

    Young people have been engaged by Australia21 as part of this project as it is believed they can offer fresh thinking and innovative solutions that are valuable contributions to the policy making process. The outcome from the youth roundtables was reported on at the expert roundtable by a youth representative and will also be incorporated into a full report that will be released later in 2014.

    For more information about Australia21’s project on refugee and asylum seekers and youth engagement, please see www.australia21.org.au

  • Mike Steketee. Mandatory detention punishes but it does not deter.

    “It has not been easy for organised world opinion in the United Nations or elsewhere to act directly in respect of some of the dreadful events which have driven so many people from their own homes and their own fatherland but at least we can in the most practical fashion show our sympathy for those less fortunate than ourselves who have been the innocent victims of conflicts and upheavals of which in our own land we have been happy enough to know nothing” – Robert Menzies, Prime Minister, broadcast for the opening of World Refugee Year, September, 1959.

    Even some of the strongest supporters of the Liberal party and its policy of turning back the boats   cannot feel comfortable about many of the actions being taken in the name of securing our sovereign borders.

    They do not fit easily with the small “l” liberal philosophy that was an important part of the big “l” Liberal party that Menzies founded – beliefs that have been muted but not eradicated under successive conservative Liberal prime ministers in John Howard and Tony Abbott.

    In waging war against people smugglers, we are punishing their clients, who have turned to us for help – help that we have offered through our membership of the Refugee Convention. The armoury directed at deterring asylum seekers from coming by boat, implemented by Labor and Liberal governments, is astonishing in its extent and ferocity.

    Most of it achieves nothing other than degrading and in some cases ultimately destroying people’s lives. It is all the more pointless now that the one deterrent that has been effective – turning around the boats – has been implemented. As explored further later, a group of Australian experts on refugee policy believe there is a better way, even working within the present political constraints.

    We should do all we can to discourage people from taking dangerous sea journeys but we should also ensure there are alternatives for genuine refugees. The gold standard was achieved under the Fraser government.

    Deaths at sea have always been a feature of refugee flows. A document prepared for the Australian Cabinet in 1979 estimated that between 50 per cent and 70 per cent of those fleeing in the wake of the Vietnam War drowned.

    Then, as now, people driven by sheer desperation continued to get on boats. Then, as now, government action stopped the boats. Then, unlike now, people were given an alternative: Australia joined the US, China and Canada to reach an agreement under which each country took substantial numbers of Vietnamese and Vietnam agreed to stop pushing people out of the country. Australian officials, together with those from other countries, processed people in camps in Malaysia and other South-east Asian countries and flew the successful applicants to Australia.

    Without the same sense of crisis and with refugees fleeing from many different countries, it has been impossible to replicate such an arrangement. Instead, successive Australian governments have chosen other options, all  specifically rejected by the Fraser cabinet, like turning back boats – which then Foreign Minister Andrew Peacock told Cabinet, prophetically as it turned out, “would be courting international pariah status” – offshore processing, Australian detention centres and temporary protection visas.

    Turning back boats is the one policy that has unambiguously achieved its objective of stemming the flow of boat people. But it comes with costs. For some, the danger at sea has been replaced by the risk of forced return to the country from which they fled – like the 41 asylum seekers Australia sent back to Sri Lanka, a country which, assurances of a peaceful nation to the contrary, continues to persecute Tamils, including through torture and sexual violence, according to the US State Department, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and Amnesty International, among others. There is the farcical saga of the 157 asylum seekers kept on a floating Australian prison on the high seas to ensure there is no blemish on Immigration Minister Scott Morrison’s record of stopping the boats. There is the damage to the relationship with Indonesia, including the likely long-term consequences for co-operation on refugee issues.

    Stopping the boats may solve a political problem in Australia but it does so by dumping the issue into other country’s laps. People smugglers will look for other countries to which to send their clients. Genuine refugees who are deterred from fleeing by Australia’s tough policy run the risk of persecution and worse.

    The other policies of deterrence in Australia have not worked. The two big flows of boat people – between 1999 and 2001 and between 2009 and 2012 – occurred after the introduction of mandatory detention as a blanket policy in 1994.

    Not only has it failed to stop asylum seekers coming by boat but it has inflicted untold damage on their lives. The evidence is consistent and unambiguous, most recently from the Human Rights Commission’s visit to Christmas Island – that people left in limbo, with no guarantee of an end point,   despair over their future and can bear the mental health scars for the rest of their lives. The effects on children, 983 who remained in detention centres at the end of May, are particularly rapid and severe.

    At least most of the people who made it to Australia by boat before the gates slammed shut are now either living in the community on bridging visas or in community detention. Immigration Minister Scott Morrison wants to implement a form of temporary protection visas for those found to be refugees.  With no commitment that the visas will be renewed or that they will not be sent back, it is another form of enforced limbo, leading to the same spiral of despair and mental illness. Most of them have been denied the right to work, creating yet another source of despair. Jane McAdam, professor in international refugee law at the University of NSW, describes it to The Drum as “creating a broken future citizenry”.

    Legislation introduced last month by Immigration Minister Scott Morrison sets up yet more hurdles for asylum seekers. One measure lifts the threshold for people at risk of torture applying for so called complementary protection (an alternative to refugee status) to 50 per cent. “In reality it means that if even an asylum seeker has a 49 per cent chance of being tortured, Australia will still send them home,” says McAdam.

    She was one of 35 experts from diverse backgrounds and perspectives, together with federal MPs who met a fortnight ago to look at future policy. The details of their discussions are confidential until a report is released later this year but a discussion paper http://cpd.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Final-Policy-Paper-Beyond-Operation-Sovereign-Borders-03.06.14.pdf that was fed into the process points to a better way forward.

    It suggests detention should be kept to an absolute minimum, given the harm it causes. Asylum seekers should be given firm timelines for processing their claims, even though it might take three years to make decisions, given the large numbers involved. In the meantime, they should have work rights and health and welfare safety nets. If those found to be refugees are granted only temporary protection initially, there should be a defined process leading to permanent residence. Those not found to be refugees should receive reintegration help when returned to their countries.

    Because of the harsh condition in Nauru and ManusIsland, claims there should be processed within a year. As well, asylum seekers should be allowed some freedom of movement outside the detention centres. Better co-operation with other countries in the region should include more funding to help other governments support asylum seekers.

    These and other proposals would be steps towards restoring our standing as a nation to which many Australians, including Liberals, aspire – one that was among the first under the Menzies government to adopt the Refugee Convention and that Menzies described in the same broadcast in 1959: “It is a good thing that Australia should have earned a reputation for a sensitive understanding of the problems of people in other lands; that we should not come to be regarded as people who are detached from the miseries of the world.”