John Menadue

  • John Menadue. The war on asylum seekers

    For political purposes the government has deliberately embarked on a policy and a language to militarise the asylum seeker issue in the same way the Howard Government did in the “war on terror”. It is designed to highlight the government’s resolve, to play to our fears about a threat and to lessen our rights to be informed. Failure to disclose is justified because we are ‘at war’.

    But the ‘war on terror’ and the so-called ‘war on asylum seekers’ would in fact be much better conducted by police, customs and our intelligence services.

    In this misuse of the military and language for political purposes we should not be surprised if a two-star military general is drawn into the political fray. Neither should he or his colleagues be surprised if they also get caught in political flack.  If they are in the kitchen, they can’t complain about the heat!  The military has crossed the line before. General Cosgrave showed that he was an enthusiastic supporter of the Howard Government in forcing Tampa to transfer the asylum seekers on board. He will now be our Governor General.

    Senator Conroy has been criticised for saying that General Angus Campbell, the Head of Operation Sovereign Borders, has participated in a ‘political cover-up’. In my view that is precisely what the Government and General Campbell have done. The military has been manoeuvred by the government into a role in the coordination of government agencies, most of them civil agencies like immigration and customs. To avoid public examination, the Minister Scott Morrison and General Campbell keep hiding behind the parroted phrase ‘on-water matters’. This is a political cover-up in which the military has become involved. That cover-up should be called as such.

    The Coalition has been quite clear in its language that it is at war with asylum seekers and people smugglers. Scott Morrison has described Operation Sovereign Borders as ‘a military led border security operation’. Tony Abbott has spoken of a war against people smugglers. In the first week of parliament Scott Morrison said that ‘The battle [against people smugglers] is being fought using the full arsenal of measures’.

    In war situations, the withholding of information can be justified. But surely we are not at war against unarmed people in rickety boats.

    Just consider what we heard last week in Senate Estimates about Operation Sovereign Borders and the cover ups.

    • Under the charade of ‘operational security’ the Defence Force Chief, General David Hurley would not confirm that orange lifeboats had been used. He replied ‘That is an on-water issue’. Yet we have all seen the orange boats on TV time and time again.
    • Asked if the lifeboats were Australian-flagged, Hurley responded ‘We can’t comment on on-water issues’.
    • Asked if the lifeboats were navy assets, Hurley replied ‘They are an on-water issue’.
    • Asked if there was general training for navy personnel in the handling of the lifeboats, the Chief of the Navy, Ray Griggs, said ‘If I talk about training then I would be going to “on-water matters”’.
    • How at least six Australian navy vessels intruded into Indonesian waters was a matter of ‘on-water operations’. Undoubtedly the crew of the navy vessels will be censured, but not General Angus Campbell who is in charge of OSB. That would be politically embarrassing because he has become the point man in the government’s cruel policies and the cover up.

    When public policy becomes militarised like this, no-one, including the military, can hide behind trumped up excuses, time and time again about ‘on-water issues’.

    How out of proportion this has all become. The plight of vulnerable people has become a highly politicised and military issue. This is a humanitarian issue which must be handled with firmness, but that does not mean that the military should be leading it. We also need the truth rather than senior officers and military leaders using lame excuses. We have seen too many other instances where the performance of the military, particularly at the Australian Defence Force Academy leaves a lot to be desired.

    Senator Conroy was much closer to the truth than his critics in the Canberra press gallery who so often see parliamentary events through a party political prism only and seems oblivious to the wider and more important issues of policy and principle.

  • John Menadue. The Carbon Tax and Flat-Earthers.

    Despite all the political rhetoric and hysteria, the evidence is mounting almost daily that the carbon tax is largely working as planned and that its impact on electricity prices is quite small, particularly compared with the ‘network costs’, the poles and wires, which have been the main drivers of increased electricity prices.

    But the flat-earthers in the government and News Ltd refuse to face the facts. They have run one dishonest campaign after another on the carbon tax, then pink batts and then the education revolution. We are paying an extraordinarily heavy price for the abuse of power by the Murdoch media in the dishonest and partisan campaigns they run. Are they all as ignorant as Rupert Murdoch’s favourite editor Rebekah Brooks who told a London court this week that she didn’t know that phone tapping was illegal!

    Just recall the extremist and exaggerated language of Tony Abbott in association with News Ltd on the carbon tax.

    • Whyalla will be wiped off the map.
    • Julia Gillard is trying to close down Gladstone.
    • The carbon tax is socialism masquerading as environmentalism.
    • It is a ‘great new tax on everything’.
    • The impact of the tax will be ‘almost unimaginable’

    It says something about the corruption of public debate that Tony Abbott’s campaign with News Ltd’s backing was successful. It was based on fiction and not fact.

    In October last year, one year after the introduction of the carbon tax, the impact on the CPI was almost undetectable. Treasury had estimated that a $23 per tonne emission tax would result in an increase of $9.90 in the cost of living for an average household. It turned out that the impact was even less than the Treasury has forecast.

    Earlier this week Michael West in the SMH on February 24 drew attention to the work of the Energy, Economics and Management Group at the University of Qld. These researchers found that network costs and retail costs which included the profit margin of energy retailers made up 62% of NSW residential electricity prices in 2013. The carbon tax made up only 10% of prices.

    In comparing increases in electricity prices in NSW and Qld between 2007 and 2013, the University of Qld Group found that price increases per kWh were due to the following.

    • Network costs – +7c
    • Retail costs, including profit margin – +2/3c
    • Green schemes, including carbon tax and renewable energy target, – less than 3C

    Generating costs were relatively stable over the period.

    The main increase in prices has been due to the ‘gold plating’ of the networks and the price-gouging by retailers along with large executive bonuses. Green schemes including the carbon tax have a much smaller impact – about 25% of the total increase in prices.

    Michael West put it this way. ‘Tony Abbott [must recognise] that it is not the carbon tax and renewable energy costs that are primarily responsible for energy hikes. The culprit is network costs and state governments that are making a killing’.

    Last week in Sydney the IMF chief, Christine Lagard, said that ‘environmental degradation’ [carbon pollution] was an external cost to the economy that had to be priced. She said that these ‘externalities’ must have a price. Almost every economist will tell us that a tax on ‘externalities’ like a carbon tax is much preferred to Direct Action that the Abbott Government is adopting.

    Tony Abbott has done enormous damage to good policy making to curb carbon pollution and global warming. The flat-earthers have so far won the day in Australia. But surely it cannot last. Is the Australian public so gullible to put up with these scare campaigns on the carbon tax? The flat-earthers in the coalition and News Ltd have done a great disservice to Australia.

    On top of this Tony Abbott is now hemming himself in with people who reject the overwhelming scientific evidence. The head of Tony Abbott’s business advisory group Maurice Newman and Dick Warburton the head of the review of the Renewable Energy Target both think that climate science is “group think”. Newman goes even further and describes climate science as a “scientific delusion”

    When will all this nonsense stop?

    For the sake of our children and grandchildren the flat-earthers must be strongly opposed

     

  • Daniel Brammall. Financial advisers and the conflict of interest.

    In December last year the new government announced how it was going to ‘make financial advice more affordable’ by amending the previous government’s ‘Future of Financial Advice’ (FOFA) proposals (1).

    Recall that the FOFA legislation was introduced in response to hundreds of millions of dollars of Australians’ savings  being lost in the corporate collapses of investments like Opes Prime and Westpoint, as well as financial planners like Storm Financial. These spectacular corporate implosions and the actions of incentivised planners largely took place between 2005 and 2007 — in what we now remember as the good times, before the GFC. Of the nearly $400m invested in the Westpoint group of companies, nearly half was recommended by financial planners (2).

    Given that financial planners propose to advise us on the $1.5 trillion we have in superannuation (4), what do we do about the Financial Services industry’s pink elephant: is this a sales or advice industry?

    In 2009 this prompted an investigation into the Financial Services industry by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services (3) which asked the question “what is the role of financial advisers in this country?”.

    The answer was unambiguous: “On the one hand, clients seek out financial advisers to obtain professional guidance on the investment decisions that will serve their interest, particularly with a view to maximising retirement income. On the other hand, financial advisers act as a critical distribution channel for financial product manufacturers, often through vertically integrated business models or the payment of commissions and other remuneration-based incentives” (3). The ASIC, as Financial Services watchdog, was more strident: “Remuneration structures used in the financial advice industry create real and potential conflicts of interest that can distort the quality of advice (5).” The ASIC says that not only are conflicts of interest inconsistent with providing quality advice but they are often not evident to consumers. It believes the most effective way to deal with this is to remove the remuneration structures that give rise to these conflicts.

    What could that look like? Simple: to hold yourself out to be a financial adviser, you must be impartial. This means no links to product manufacturers, no commissions and no ‘asset fees’ (commissions by another name). This doesn’t necessarily mean that no one can work for a bank or insurer anymore. It just means that you can’t hold yourself out to be giving impartial advice.

    However on the whole the Financial Services industry is not set up that way. Of the 18,000 financial planners in this country, four out of five are owned by a bank or insurance company. Of the remainder, virtually all of them receive commissions or charge fees calculated on the size of your wallet. In fact, fewer than 30 advisers Australia-wide appear to meet these criteria (8). A small band of independents is gathering under the brand of the Independent Financial Advisers Association of Australia (IFAAA) which last year trademarked a ‘Gold Standard of Independence’, specifically forbidding these three conflicts.

    The big end of town, though, has influenced the new government to the extent that the issue of conflicts has been quietly brushed under the carpet. Last week the Assistant Treasurer said: “The current ban on conflicted remuneration captures a far wider range of circumstances than was originally intended and has resulted in significant compliance costs for industry” (7).

    Here’s the point …

    Many thousands of Australians collectively lost hundreds of millions of dollars – some of them their life savings – in collapses like Westpoint. Conflicts of interest was primarily behind it and the intention of FOFA was to avoid this ever happening again. However the new government is dismantling the reforms because industry has convinced them it costs too much. In doing so industry has successfully transferred the cost to the consumer because without reforms that squarely address conflicts of interest, Westpoint will most certainly happen again.

    — Daniel Brammall, Brocktons Independent Advisory

    References:

    (1)   http://axs.ministers.treasury.gov.au/media-release/011-2013/

    (2)   https://westpoint.asic.gov.au/wstpoint/wstpoint.nsf/byheadline/Actions+against+financial+planners?opendocument

    (3)   http://www.aph.gov.au/binaries/senate/committee/corporations_ctte/fps/report/report.pdf

    (4)   http://www.superannuation.asn.au/resources/superannuation-statistics/

    (5)   http://www.apesb.org.au/uploads/attachment-4-c-asic-submission-to-pjc-inquiry.pdf

    (6)   http://www.smh.com.au/business/profit-above-all-else-how-cba-lost-savings-and-hid-its-tracks-20130531-2nhde.html

    (7)   “Retreat on planners to hit investors”, AFR 8 February 2014.

    (8)   http://www.superguide.com.au/how-super-works/truly-independent-financial-advisers-in-australia

     

  • Arja Keski-Nummi. Offshore Processing in Cambodia – Really?

    The idea of Cambodia as a so-called offshore processing centre is not new. For a nanosecond I recalled the former government contemplated Cambodia as a likely candidate for an offshore processing centre. Thankfully saner heads prevailed, although to their discredit they did also contemplate East Timor.

    The scramble to avoid doing the decent thing and accept our responsibility to process asylum seekers quickly and fairly is mind-boggling.  This government is following in the questionable footsteps of the former government in shirking decency for short-term political gain.

    Just consider the countries we are using for off shore processing or the one, Cambodia, now being considered.

    According to the CIA publication The World Fact Book 2013, Australia’s population of 22.2million has a life expectancy of close to 83 years, a GDP per head of $US 42 000  We have 3.85 doctors available for each 1000 people and by international comparisons negligible poverty. Compare this with PNG which has a GDP per head of $US 2700, a life expectancy of 66 years, where 37% of the population live below the poverty line and where there are only 0.05 doctors per 1000 .In Cambodia the statistics show the following for a population of 15.2milllion: life expectancy 63 years, GDP per head $US 2400, and where there are 0.23 doctors per 1 000 population and where 20% of the population live below the poverty line.

    We live in different worlds. Not only should we be embarrassed.  We should be ashamed to think that this is even considered.

    If we were truly serious about regional security and building a sustainable and dynamic regional economy and societies then we would not be offshoring our responsibilities for a small proportion of the world’s asylum seekers. We would not be decreasing our aid efforts in poverty alleviation, health and education as we have done to the tune of $250 million in the Asia Pacific region while “bribing” poor, politically unstable countries to take asylum seekers for an unknown number of years.

    The Foreign Minister cited the Bali Process as justification for the approach to Cambodia. It is a disingenuous characterization of the Bali Process to see an arrangement with Cambodia as consistent with recent Bali Ministerial communiqués that endorsed the concept of regional processing centres. It would do the government well to know how such arrangements worked in the Comprehensive Plan of Action under the Indo China program to understand how regional governments might view such arrangements now.

    It would also diminish the Bali Process if the Government uses it as merely a people smuggling forum and not actively support the development of the broader regional arrangements that Bali Process governments have endorsed in recent years and which address in a more holistic way both the people smuggling dimensions of population movements as well as protection and support arrangements for displaced people.  Admittedly such arrangements are not “quick fixes” but in the long run are more sustainable and realistic.  The pity is that Australian governments seldom have a long-term strategy in mind and are limited by their lack of imagination, the political cycle and fear of an electoral backlash.

    In 2012 there was an answer in the proposed arrangement with Malaysia that the Abbott Opposition rejected because it suited them, not because they really believed it was wrong but because they did not want the former government to succeed in “stopping the boats”.  Well, now that the Abbott Government has succeeded in that they should be big enough to revisit the Malaysia arrangement. It should see if it can be salvaged, make the necessary legislative changes and get on with the job. That arrangement was sound, it was humane, it was supported by the UNHCR and importantly it addressed the issue of displacement “in situ” unlike the arrangements on Nauru, PNG or indeed if it happens Cambodia. None of these are countries of transit or in any appreciable way countries of first asylum. Indeed with the current arrangements we are exporting those problems to them!

    If the two parties were really serious they would do what two previous Governments, the Fraser and Hawke governments did when faced with similar issues and talk to each other, agree on a way forward and show leadership by dealing with these issues not as a political free for all that creates social disharmony but rather as a responsible and humane approach to address the circumstance of vulnerable people displaced by war and civil unrest.

    Arja Keski-Nummi was First Assistant Secretary of the Refugee, Humanitarian and International Division of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship from 2007 to 2010.

     

  • John Menadue. Patriots and scoundrels.

    Samuel Johnson in 1775 said that ‘patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel’. That brings to mind the “patriotic” politics that both PM Abbott and the PM of Japan, Shinzo Abe, are playing. In this Tony Abbott will find more confirmation that “Japan is Australia’s best friend in Asia”, a term that irritates the Chinese.

    I am sure that Samuel Johnson was referring to false patriotism, but that is just what Tony Abbott and Shinzo Abe are appealing to in trying to reshape education and public broadcasting in both countries.

    Teaching children patriotism

    In October last year, Shinzo Abe’s education minister ordered the school board in Taketomi in Okinawa to use a text book that the school board has previously rejected. The school board refused because it included a nationalistic view of WWII history, particularly denial of the Nanjing massacre and comfort women. This order by the Abe Government was the first such order by a national government. It was not surprising that it was rejected in Okinawa which suffered enormously in WWII and continues to hold strong anti-war sentiments.

    Then in December last year, a carefully and politically appointed government committee suggested a change to more ‘patriotic teaching’ in Japan by putting local mayors in charge of their local school districts. Many people believe that this would increase political interference in text books and teaching.

    Shinzo Abe has long attempted to force Japan’s education system to be more patriotic. The word that he and his colleagues use is ‘balance’.

    The view of the Japanese people is clearly against giving more authority to local boards of education and to local Mayors. According to an Asahi poll published on February 18 this year, 59% of Japanese preferred a ‘system that is not dictated’ by local political leaders”. The Japanese people are clearly wary about ‘patriotic education’. Despite the clear view of the Japanese people, Shinzo Abe is continuing his cultural war.

    In Australia, Tony Abbott’s education minister, Christopher Pyne, is on the same track as the Japanese Government in promoting patriotic education. Christopher Pyne has appointed a politically biased curriculum review committee which is clearly designed to shape Australian education in ways that the Coalition Government wishes. Christopher Pyne says

    • Our schools curriculum should have ‘a greater focus on the benefits of Western civilisation’.
    • He wants the curriculum to ‘celebrate Australia’.
    • He would like to see ‘more of a focus on Anzac Day (he would presumably like us to ignore the frontier wars in which  30,000 indigenous  Australians were killed and the fact that Australians and New Zealanders did not first fight at Gallipoli, but in the Maori Wars in New Zealand in the 1850s and 1860s).

    In the name of ‘balance’ Tony Abbott and Christopher Pyne are waging their cultural war in education in favour of a false patriotism in the same way that Shinzo Abe is doing in Japan.

    Public Broadcasting

    Tony Abbott is also following in the footsteps of Shinzo Abe in his attacks on our own public broadcaster, the ABC.

    In my blog of February 12 this year, I pointed out how Shinzo Abe has stacked the board of NHK, Japan’s esteemed public broadcaster. PM Abe has just appointed five new members out of twelve to the NHK board. The new managing director of NHK, Katsuto Momii, and another board member, Naoki Hyakuta, have spelled out the way that NHK should pursue a more patriotic agenda. They have separately

    • Endorsed Shinzo Abe’s visit to Yasukuni Shrine.
    • Described the Tokyo War Crimes Trials as designed to fool the Japanese people.
    • The recruitment of comfort women was not peculiar to Japan.
    • The Nanjing massacre was a fiction.

    Not content with the drooling support of the entire Murdoch media, Tony Abbott complains about our public broadcaster, the ABC. He has said the ABC.

    •  Was ‘unpatriotic’ in the news coverage of the Snowden leaks.
    •  ‘Lacks affection’ for the home team.
    • ‘Instinctively, it takes everyone’s side but not Australia’s’.

    Tony Abbott has not yet had a chance to stack the ABC board but it is only a matter of time. Shinzo Abe has shown him how to do it.

    The public broadcasters in Japan and Australia are greatly admired for their professionalism and independence. The latest Nielsen Poll (17 February 2014) reveals that 59% of Australians do not believe that the ABC is biased. 67% felt that the ABC provided more balanced news and current affairs than commercial TV. Only 15% trusted commercial TV ahead of the ABC. Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph is the least trusted metropolitan newspaper in the country.

    The cultural warriors Shinzo Abe and Tony Abbott are on a unity ticket to try and force more patriotism from our education systems and public broadcasting.

    Neither PM is showing a sense of realism or integrity. They tell those close to them that they are right and much better than the rest of us. They are suggesting that they are patriotic and their opponents are not. They hold to a false and dangerous view of what it is to be a patriot.

    I have one qualification to the above.  I am less concerned about the swing to the right in Australia with its false patriotism baggage than I am about what I see stirring in Japan. In earlier decades the nationalist right was a silly and really harmless fringe parading around Japanese cities in grey vans with loud speakers. The patriotic and nationalist right is now occupying the centre of Japanese political life. The mood is changing after almost two decades of economic stagnation and frustration and now the rise of China. Shinzo Abe is facilitating this upsurge of patriotism and ultra-nationalism. There is a history he is drawing on, a history that brought tragedy to so many, including the Japanese people.

  • John Menadue. Manus and Nauru and Australia’s responsibility in regional processing.

    An asylum seeker who comes to our shores must be protected. We cannot offload that responsibility onto another country. We continue to carry a responsibility for that asylum seeker whatever happens in Manus, Nauru or even Malaysia.

    I have not always held the view that those who come to Australia could be transferred and processed in another country. I changed my mind on that partly because of the rapid increase in boat arrivals after the Agreement with Malaysia fell over in2011. The large number of boat arrivals was reducing public support for a generous and humane refugee program. I came to the view that what was important is that asylum seekers are treated with humanity and that the process is fair and just. The issue of where that processing occurred was a secondary issue.

    I also supported the proposed Malaysian Agreement for two other reasons. I saw it as part of an important building block in regional cooperation. Secondly, the UNHCR was actively supporting the proposed arrangement with Malaysia. The UNHCR does not support the transfers to Manus (PNG) and Nauru and the processing in those countries.

    Unfortunately the agreement with Malaysia was made impossible by the combined support of the Greens and the Coalition in the Senate to block amendments to the Migration Act. The action of the Coalition in the Senate was supported by refugee advocates across Australia. It was quite extraordinary to hear Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison along with refugee advocates criticising human rights abuses in Malaysia. No country is perfect, including Australia in mandatory detention, but the position of asylum seekers in Malaysia would have been a long way ahead of what is now unfolding in Manus and Nauru.

    The collapse of the Malaysian arrangement was the turning point. We have been on a slippery slide ever since. Boat arrivals quadrupled as a result of the High Court decision and the collapse of the Malaysian arrangement. Policies by the Labor Government and the Coalition since then have been punitive and cruel. The result has been Manus and Nauru.

    In my blog of January 14, I pointed out that the UNHCR has a long history of support for the transfer of asylum seekers in appropriate circumstances. Late last year the UNHCR issued a ‘Guidance Note on Bilateral and Multilateral Transfer Arrangements of Asylum Seekers’. It set out clear conditions, including important issues of non-refoulment and protection of the rights and the safety of asylum seekers in the country to which they were to be transferred.

    In the Melbourne Age on 13 December last year, Arja Keski-Nummi and I outlined a system of ‘effective protection’ that should govern any transfers of asylum seekers in our region. We set down several important criteria.

    • All countries should commit to the principle of non-refoulment.
    • Provide asylum seekers with a legal status and access to work and education.
    • Work to help not only displaced people but also host communities.
    • Increase our refugee intake from our region.
    • Work with partners in the region in association with UNHCR to create an atmosphere of safety and trust.
    • Amend the Migration Act to assert the principle of ‘effective protection’ and bind governments to that principle in any transfers of asylum seekers.

    Clearly few of the conditions have been met in the arrangements with PNG and Nauru. Importantly, the UNHCR does not support our arrangements with either country.

    Just as importantly, the Australian Government is failing to accept its responsibilities to asylum seekers that we have transferred to PNG and Nauru. We cannot offshore our responsibilities for ensuring effective protection and safety for asylum seekers. After demonizing asylum seekers for so long I don’t think the Coalition Government cares about the human rights of asylum seekers. Their rights, even their lives are just unfortunate and embarrassing collateral damage

    The horror on Manus is only one part of the havoc that Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison have wrought. They have badly damaged our relations with Indonesia. Their actions have resulted in the collapse of the rule of law in Nauru. And they are responsible for the release of details of 10,000 asylum seekers that will now be eagerly accessed by security agencies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. What an opportunity it will be for those security agencies to now hunt down the families of asylum seekers who have fled to Australia from oppressive regimes in those countries.

    How ironic it now is that China is rebuking us for our abuse of the human rights of asylum seekers.

    One thing the ALP in Parliament should do immediately  is move to incorporate the principle of “effective protection ” in the Migration Act. It would clearly express the responsibility we have for persons transferred to another jurisdiction. We could then not shirk our responsibility by  passing the buck to others.

  • John Menadue. Cutting waste and costs in health.

    Last night on lateline, the Minister for Health Peter Dutton called for a public debate on health reform. I therefore have taken the liberty of reposting a blog of February 3 on ‘Cutting waste and costs in health’.

    The Minister for Health, Peter Dutton, has said that we must reduce waste and reduce costs in health. I agree. In 2011/12 total health expenditure in Australia was $140b up from $83b in 2001/2. Costs are rising rapidly, partly due to population increase.

    In a paper in July 2007 I estimated that there was at least $10 billion in possible savings and productivity improvements in health. That represented about 10% of our total health costs in that year. I have spoken and written extensively on the matter. See my web site.

    It is important however that as we work to reduce waste and costs we do it in a way that is fair to all and does not prejudice quality care.

    But to reduce waste and costs requires political will to stare down the powerful interests and rent seekers that are determined to protect their territory and their high costs –e.g.  the AMA, the Private Health Insurance firms, the Pharmacy Guild of Australia and Medicines Australia. In the past no governments has been game to tackle these vested interests.

    The lack of accountability in health

    Despite the rapid increases in costs and escalating demand in the healthcare industry, there is no accountability in any meaningful way for what the health industry produces. Doctors are accountable for malpractice but not for their overall performance particularly in general practise. This is despite the fact that taxpayers pay 80% of doctors’ incomes. Taxpayers have a legitimate reason to ask – ‘Are we getting value for money?’  In a survey a couple of years ago by the Health Council of Canada, 97% of over 1,800 senior respondents said that healthcare providers should be required by law to reach certain service benchmarks in such areas as patient outcomes , the use of preventive strategies like screening and waiting times.

    The Council also asked the group ‘Do you believe healthcare in Canada will improve if the government spends more money on healthcare?’  58% said ‘no’. There is the same lack of accountability in Australia.

    Managing the demand for health services

    The demand for health services is increasing rapidly across all age groups and not just among the old. We are over-diagnosed and over-treated. In 1984-85, medical services per head were 7.1 per annum. In 2007-08 they were 13.1 per annum – about double. The trend continues. We need to address this over servicing particularly by GPs and specialists such as pathologists and radiologists.

    • We must accept that we cannot have all that we want in health and that governments, in consultation with the community, have to set priorities. Can we afford continuing existing levels of funding for IVF and end-of-life treatments at the expense of funding for mental health and indigenous health?
    • We need to rationalise our co-payments to make them efficient and equitable. We all should take more responsibility for the way we use health services, particularly as we are now much wealthier than we were 30 years ago when Medicare was introduced. A universal health scheme does not have to be free. But it must be fair and efficient. But co-payments are a dog’s breakfast! We pay about 18% of health costs out of our own pockets, but there is very little rhyme or reason in how this is done. The $6 GP levy would make the confused situation worse.
    • We need to change the perverse incentives, such as fee-for-service, which is associated with bulk-billing. Clinicians are rewarded by the number of transactions rather than health outcomes. FFS is particularly inappropriate for chronic care like mental health and services with high fixed costs and low variable costs, such as imaging. The government should move away from fee for service and set budgets for general practitioners when they prescribe drugs, order pathology tests or imaging services. We need more doctors on salaries and capitation payments for caring for patients-not on a service by service basis.
    • We need to tackle the wide variations in the incidence of clinical practice across the country, e.g. caesarean sections and cataracts. Medicare should be much more proactive in exposing and limiting very expensive and inexplicable variations in clinical practice.

    Getting costs down

    •  The government should abolish the subsidy for private health insurance which costs all up about $6-7 billion p.a. This subsidy favours the wealthy, is inefficient, has underwritten rising specialist fees through gap insurance, has not taken the pressure off public hospitals and has weakened Medicare’s ability to control costs. The immediate abolition of this subsidy would do more to improve our health system than almost anything else. This is corporate welfare big time-more even the welfare to the motor industry.
    • We need a more productive workforce. Health is the largest and fastest growing sector in the Australian economy. Despite all the talk of improving productivity in Australia no-one has been game to take on the entrenched privileges in the health workforce.Where is the honesty and consistency here? The blue collar workforce is fair game but not doctors and lawyers. We need expanded roles across the board particularly for nurses, pharmacists, allied health workers and ambulance officers. The Productivity Commission in its February 2007 report estimated that a 5% improvement in the productivity of health services would deliver savings of about $3 billion p.a. This is a very conservative estimate. The health sector in Australia is rife with demarcations and restrictive work practices. eg 5 % of normal births in Australia are delivered by mid wives. In the Netherlands it is 70%, in the UK 50% and in NZ 95%. We have a few hundred nurse practitioners when there should be thousands. The work practices at Holden, Toyota and Ardmona are light years ahead of the work practices in the health sector.
    • We could save about $2 billion p.a. in drug costs if we paid drug suppliers the same prices that are paid in NZ. See my blog of January 17.We also pay a high price for the protection of  pharmacists through the 5000 limit on the number of community pharmacies and the restrictions on where new pharmacies can be located. Pharmacies cannot be established in supermarkets.
    • We need to raise productivity in our hospitals. The Productivity Commission suggests that the productivity gap from best practice in public hospitals ranges from 3% to 89%. In private hospitals the range is 22% to 37%.  There is major governance problems in many hospitals with a dis- connect between management and clinical functions. Running hospitals is very difficult with clinicians coming and going from private practise like the cottage industries of old.
    • The Commonwealth/State fragmentation in healthcare results in blame-shifting, the evasion of responsibility and higher costs. If for example the Commonwealth Government or a joint Commonwealth/State body had responsibility for all health care in a state, there would be a clear incentive for focus on treatment in the community and in homes to ensure that the high cost hospitals are really a last resort. They are now often a first resort.
    • The real elephant in the room in health care cost reduction is avoidable mistakes, including deaths. They are euphemistically called “adverse events”. But Ministers, clinicians and managers do their best to avoid the issue. Based on earlier surveys in NSW and SA I estimated, very conservatively the cost of avoidable mistakes in our health sector at $5b pa (see my blog of June14, 2013). Despite a great deal of money and effort there is no sign of improvement. Insiders won’t solve the problem Good people are caught in a bad system

    We need to address waste and cost-cutting in a measured way. We should not panic, but we should get it done.  Australian healthcare costs are 9-10% of GDP. This is not high by world standards. It is below the OECD average. A major reason why we have been able to do better than others is that we have Medicare as a public insurer. One lesson is clear all around the world. The countries that have high levels of private health insurance, like the US, have high costs.

     

  • John Menadue. Opinion and fact on climate change.

    Tony Abbott keeps telling us that climate change is not a factor in the current drought in eastern Australia. Last October he ruled out climate change as a factor in October’s early season bushfires in the Blue Mountains.

    He keeps giving us opinions when the facts, supported by overwhelming scientific research, tell us that Australia is already experiencing more frequent and more intensive heatwaves, and that we can expect the number of hot days to continue to increase. He said that the climate change will not be a factor in the drought aid package he will announce soon. That aid package should take into account climate change and the necessity for marginal farmers on marginal land to find other occupations.

    Tony Abbott’s confusion of opinion and fact reminds me of the comment made by the late Senator Daniel Moynihan that ‘Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but no-one is entitled to their own facts’.

    Reputable people and reliable organisations are all pointing to the challenge that climate change presents to Australian agriculture.

    CSIRO says ‘forecasts show Australia will have to cope with less rainfall, longer dry periods and struggling crops’. (ABC News 15 January 2013). Mark Howden from CSIRO’s Climate Adaption Flagship Program tells us that ‘Increases in temperature … and decreases in rainfall will increase drought periods and increase dry spells’. (ABC News 3 February 2013). Steve Crimp, a Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO says that southern Australia faces ‘warmer and dryer conditions’. (ABC 3 February 2013).

    The Garnaut Climate Change Review said ‘Climate change is likely to affect agricultural production through changes in water availability, water quality and temperatures. Crop production is likely to be affected directly by changes in average rainfall and temperatures, in distribution of rainfall during the year and in rainfall variability. The productivity of livestock industries will be influenced by the changes in the quantity and quality of available pasture, as well as by the effects of temperature increases on livestock. … A range of studies indicate that grain protein contents are likely to fall in response to combined climate and carbon dioxide changes. There could be substantial protein losses … which would lower prices.’(p129)

    The Department of Environment of the Australian Government reported last year on “Climate Change Impacts in Australia” which included the impact on agriculture.

    • For NSW it said that ‘potential changes in climate may reduce productivity and output in agricultural industries in the medium to long term through higher temperatures, reduced rainfall and extreme weather events.’ It predicts possible falls in agricultural production in NSW by 2030 of 8.4% for wheat, 8.1% for sheep meat and 5.5% for dairy.(p35)
    • In respect of Queensland this report says ‘Future productivity growth in agriculture may be affected by climate change in the medium to long term…’ It mentions that ABARE estimates possible production declines by 2030 of 19% for beef and 12% for sugar (p45).
    • The report says in respect of WA, ‘By 2070 south-west WA is likely to experience yield reductions in wheat. Cropping may become non-viable at the dry margins with strong warming and significant reductions in rainfall.’ The report highlights that wheat production could decline by 9% by 2030 with similar declines for sheep meat.(p34)
    • For SA the report says ‘Since 1997 SA’s agricultural regions have experienced a marked decline in growing season rainfall. This decline is mostly due to a drying trend in autumn and to a lesser extent in winter. … Overall the trend in annual rainfall since 1950 shows a decline across the agricultural region. … Rising temperatures are likely to have a major influence on wine grapes bringing the harvest forward by a month and yielding lower quality grapes. … ‘(p35)

    In 2011 CSIRO published a report by Chris Stokes and Mark Howden on “Adapting agriculture to climate change” They say ‘The Australian climate is already changing and these changes have a measurable impact on primary production as the drying of the Murray Darling basin and the wheat belt bear witness” (p85) They add “ areas of farming that are economically marginal today are among the most vulnerable to climate change; here impacts are most likely to exceed the regions adaptive capacity, stressing their communities, farming systems and natural resources. Such areas include outer wheat belt zones subject to drying, warmer dairying or fruit growing areas, or irrigation communities whose water resources are in decline-all areas where quite small changes in climate can have quite large economic and social consequences”

    Tony Abbott refuses to face these facts.

    At the same time US Secretary of State John Kerry calls climate change “a weapon of mass destruction” and the IMF calls on Australia as the Chair of the G20 to show leadership on the issue

    What is just as remarkable is that the National Party which claims to represent farmers and country people is as quiet as mice in the haystack on climate change. The National Party relies on people like Gina Reinhart for financial support. It ignores the long-term interests of its own farming constituency by following the climate sceptics in the Liberal Party.

    No group in Australia is as vulnerable to climate change as Australian farmers. Historically they have shown themselves very good at adapting to change but they are not helped by the lack of leadership by the National Party.

  • John Menadue. The squandered mining boom.

    We are now paying a heavy price for our failure to manage the mining boom. The consequences are all too clear, particularly in the manufacturing sector. The mining boom drove up our exchange rate and wage costs. A Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) and the Resource Super Profits Tax (RSPT) would have minimised the problems. However, few seriously proposed a SWF. The Coalition and the powerful mining companies did everything possible to destroy the RSPT.

    The squandering of the benefits and opportunities of the mining boom is causing major disruption across the economy. What have we really got to show for the national treasure that we have squandered?

    We can take some late remedial action by cutting back on business and middle class welfare which I have written about. We should also increase our very low levels of taxation, particularly to fund our long term infrastructure needs, both physical and human.

    The Norwegians point the way for us in their establishment of a SWF in 1990. It was called the Government Pension Fund Global.

    • Last month each Norwegian became a theoretical millionaire through ownership in the Fund, but they would not have been able to spend the money. It was saved and invested for future generations.
    • The fund was set up to avoid the temptation by governments and the public to splurge the windfall returns following the discovery of oil and gas in the North Sea in 1969.
    • The funds the government receives in oil and gas revenue are invested almost exclusively abroad, rather than in Norway.
    • Exchange rate remained relatively stable and cost rises were checked. Unemployment has been kept low.
    • The Norwegian Finance Minister in January this year said “Many countries have found that temporary large revenues from natural resource exploitation produce relatively short-lived booms that are followed by difficult adjustments”.

    This is not to say that Norway doesn’t have problems but the fund has helped iron out big swings in oil and gas prices, stabilised the economy and allowed Norwegians to invest for the future rather than squandering money in the boom times

    We should have done the same. But at least we can be ready for the next mining boom which will inevitably come. Will it be in gas?

    Our Futures Fund just does not cut it alongside the successful funds established in Norway and elsewhere. Large SWFs operate in Saudi Arabia, UAE, China, Kuwait, Hong Kong, Singapore and many other countries.

    Instead of a SWF, we could have run much larger budget surpluses from 2003 onwards when the China boom kicked in. But there was always a political temptation of the Howard Government followed by the Rudd and Gillard Governments to win political popularity by spending the revenue from the mining boom. An SWF would have made it much easier to persuade Australians that we needed to save for the future and invest in key infrastructure. We showed that in our political support for the Disability Scheme. We were willing to pay the tax levy for the scheme because we agreed with the objectives of the scheme.

    The mining boom produced enormous profits for the mining industry. The industry squandered a great deal of it in foolish investments and wage increases that flowed through to other parts of the economy. The miners acted as if they were playing with monopoly money. Rio Tinto alone had to write off $35 billion in failed investments. Its business management in China was a debacle. With so much money flowing through its hands it lost any sense of rigor and discipline. Just imagine what the Institute of Public Affairs and its bulletin board the Australian Financial Review would say if any government in Australia lost money on such a grand scale.

    In addition to their foolish investments, they paid extremely high wage rates to attract skilled staff to the mining areas. In the five years to June 2013 hourly rates of pay in the mining sector increased by 24%, excluding bonuses. These pace-setting wages dragged up wages in other sectors – manufacturing up 17%, construction up 20% and retail trade up 16%.

    With so much income flushing through the mining companies a Resources Super Profits Tax (RSPT) would have helped average out mining company profits with high taxes in boom times and lower taxes during periods of lower prices. Paul Keating would have called it an automatic stabiliser. It was just what we needed in terms of equity in sharing the benefits of the mining boom, but it was also desirable for good economic management to slow down the boom and force companies to be more realistic about spending “monopoly” money. The RSPT would have better secured our future, bringing the budget into surplus much earlier.  We also know that taxing profits is a better means of raising revenue than through royalties based on production.

    We also know that the Rudd/Gillard Governments made a political mess of the RSPT.And in taking advantage of this mess the Coalition sided with the powerful mining lobby which was very good at engineering and protection of its narrow interests but not very good in prudent investments for the future.

    There is a painful adjustment ahead. We should make sure we learn from the failures of our last squandered mining boom.

     

  • Andrew Babkoff. The human side of refugees.

    (*names have been changed to maintain privacy)

    There is a significant amount of misinformation and misunderstanding surrounding asylum seekers (in particular ‘boat people’) and refugees in Australia. In response, a number of people outside of the mainstream media have highlighted the need for refugees’ stories to be presented through mainstream outlets. My personal experience as a teacher of refugees and migrants has allowed me to see the human side of the refugee issue by hearing about the stories of people who have been granted asylum in Australia.

    Below is a reflection I wrote after a numeracy class I had with a group of refugees and migrants in Brisbane in 2013.

    We had our tests today in numeracy. I gave them the shopping docket test and the one on the ANZAC biscuits recipe. Attendance was good. I spent the first twenty minutes pre-teaching vocabulary and reminding the students to show their working on the test paper. When they started the test, a hush of concentration fell over the room, and I kept a lookout for anyone who needed help. Some students, especially the younger ones, worked quickly, only needing a little help with concepts and the wording of questions. A couple of the mature age students, Afghan men, lagged behind and needed a lot of explaining, although their maths skills were quite good. Hassan, who seems around seventy, laboured faithfully over his paper, scribing his working and answers methodically and accurately. Several times, when they were speaking to each other in Dari, I had to remind Hassan and Mustafa, a man in his late forties, to ask only me if they had any problems, as it was a test. I sensed their frustration building, but I had to keep it fair for all students and maintain the standards of the process.

    I ended up spending another half an hour with Hassan after class. Apologetic and grateful for my help, he felt compelled to explain his slowness. His wife, in a beginner English class, came in and, after seeing us talking, sat down at the front of the room facing us. In what most people would call broken English (which was a huge improvement from when I first met him), Hassan recounted to me how he’d been denied the opportunity of an education in Afghanistan. He said, “I couldn’t have an education. Neither could my wife. Many times I’ve thought, ‘Why am I alive? What am I living for? Wouldn’t I be better off dead?’”

    For many years, he had done business in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan and Iran, so spoke five languages fluently, but he lacked the English to be able to work and support his family in Australia. He told me, with heartbreak on his weathered face, how in Afghanistan he and his sons had run a successful used car business and that, when he had refused to share his profits with the Taliban, they had killed two of his sons. As he spoke, tears ran down his face and his wife wept silently. Despite her very limited English, I felt she knew what her husband was talking about. After he told me they had brought their three daughters to Australia, he and his wife lit up with joy as they expressed their gratitude at being given a second chance at life.

    Hassan came to Australia by boat with his wife and three daughters. Sadly, his third son and daughter-in-law died en route to Australia.

    Many refugees have similar stories of escaping horrors such as the torture, rape and murder of people in their family or community. In many cases, the journey to asylum is long and painful. It can also include years enduring the conditions of overcrowded refugee camps. In some cases, mothers even resort to prostitution to attain limited food for their children while staying in a camp. Some asylum seekers have to go to several different countries before they are finally granted refugee status. For some, getting on an old boat to come to Australia is the last option for survival, not an easy way to a better life by ‘cutting the queue’. If someone is willing to leave their home country and give AUD20, 000 or more to a ‘people smuggler’ to make the perilous journey across the sea to Australia, then it must be an act of extreme desperation to escape a situation that promises dangers such as persecution, even death. Some families send their eldest son with all their savings, a gamble for safety.

    In my nine years of teaching, I have never seen such determination to learn as I see among my refugee students. People like Hassan have rescued their families from imminent danger, giving them the chance to have a full and productive life. Though they may have experienced or witnessed horrific abuse, they live with a spirit of resilience and profound gratitude.

    As Hassan told me, “Here, in Australia, I feel for the first time I am free. I have started to live here. I and my family are very happy here.”

    Andrew Babkoff was an English language teacher in Seoul for five years. He is now an ESL teacher in Brisbane.

     

     

  • John Menadue-Refugees – the demographic dividend.

    As responsible members of the human family, we have a strong moral case to provide protection for the victims of persecution and violence.

    There is also a strong case in our own self-interest – that refugees almost by definition are risk-takers and entrepreneurial. It can be argued that they are amongst the most highly motivated and determined in the Australian community.

    Most importantly if we want to see economic growth and rising productivity we need young people. Even the hard headed economists know that it is people that matter and not how they have come here. We need to open our minds as well as our hearts.   Let’s look at asylum seekers and refugees from an economic perspective as well as a humanitarian perspective.

    Along with many other developed countries, Australia has a problem with its rapidly ageing population. Treasury and others have pointed out that in the future there will be many more old Australians than there are today. The number of Australians 65 and over is expected to increase rapidly from around 2.5 million in 2002 to 6.2 million in 2042. That is, from around 13% of the population to around 25%. For Australians aged 85 and over, the growth is even more rapid from around 300,000 in 2002 to 1.1 million in 2042. In 2002 there were more than 5 people of working age to support every person aged over 65. By 2042 there will only be 2.5 people of working age supporting each person aged over 65.

    Data published by Professor Graeme Hugo at the University of Adelaide has highlighted the much younger age structure of refugees. Refugees are not only younger than the Australian population, but also younger than migrants. Migrants and refugees will not be a silver bullet. We need to respond in many wages including lifting the retirement age, but refugees can make a significant contribution to slowing down the ageing of the Australian population. In his report published in May 2011, Professor Hugo pointed out the following:

    • ‘An important characteristic of the contemporary refugee/humanitarian intake … is that it is substantially younger than the national Australian population. … The medium age of the refugee/humanitarian intake over the 2003-09 period was 31.8 years compared with the medium age of 42.9 years in the population.’
    • ‘Not only is the refugee intake young when compared to the national resident population, it is very young when compared with the total immigration intake. … Dependent aged children and young adults aged 15-24(from a refugee background) are significantly over-represented compared with all migrants, while the middle and older working aged group (25-49) (of refugees) are significantly under-represented.’
    • ‘Refugee/humanitarian entrants… are disproportionately concentrated in the age groups which contribute towards a demographic dividend.’

    There has been recent comment about the increased number of Iranian asylum seekers. There is a debate whether they are really asylum seekers or economic migrants. There is no doubt however that they are young, well-educated and very determined. Most would make excellent settlers and are a very good example of how young migrants and refugees can lower our age profile. We need to open more migration pathways for young people who face discrimination within their own country but cannot be regarded as refugees as they have not fled their country.

    But an expanded refugee intake would not only deliver us a “demographic dividend”. Refugees make other important contributions as outlined by Professor Hugo

    • They are increasingly settling in regional Australia.
    • They place a high store on education for their children. 48% of second generation people who are Australian born have post-school qualifications. For the total refugee groups, the percentage is much high at 59%, with some refugee groups showing remarkably high levels of post-school qualifications, e.g. Estonia 65%, Latvia 65%, Slovakia 65%, Sri Lanka 61%.
    • Refugees are more likely to demonstrate entrepreneurial and risk-taking attributes than the Australian community as a whole. They have a higher incidence of owning their own businesses than other migrant groups.
    • The second generation of refugee settlers have a much higher level of labour force engagement than the first generation and in many cases, the level is higher than for second generation Australians.

    Their commitment to Australia is also shown in their uptake of citizenship.  A study prepared for OECD by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (October 2010) reveals that the naturalisation rate by birthplace for all foreign-born is 80%. For significant refugee groups it is much higher – Croatia 97%, Poland 96% and Vietnam 97%. For New Zealand it is 45%, for the United Kingdom 71% and the United States 70%.

    Not surprisingly, refugees in their early years are ‘takers’ of Australian generosity. But year by year they increasingly become great contributors. They pay back many times the generosity they initially receive. They contribute to Australia out of all proportion to their number. It is a great success story for all Australians.

    We can draw inspiration from the very successful refugee programs of the past. Australian business and society generally have been great beneficiaries. It is in our self-interest, as well as for sound moral reasons that we need to break with the stalemate and toxic debate that surrounds refugees. Doing the right thing really pays off.

    Refugees deliver many dividends including a “demographic dividend”. They are much younger than the Australian population and migrants.

  • Mark Gregory. NBN – ageing copper network and structural separation.

    The Australian telecommunication industry is in crisis and centre stage is an ageing copper network that some would have you believe is good for another hundred years and others argue it is time to move to an all fibre access network.

    But the problems extend far beyond copper versus fibre and go to the heart of what an industry needs if it is to be a successful contributor to the Australian economy. As Australia struggles to find out how this sorry saga will end, questions should be asked of our politicians and telecommunication industry leaders why there is no plan for the future.

    To understand why criticism can be levelled at the development of one of Australia’s most important industries it is necessary to wind back the clock to 1982 when the Davidson Enquiry recommended the introduction of a competitive telecommunications industry.

    At the time Australia had three telecommunication organisations. The Australian Telecommunications Commission (ATC), trading as Telecom Australia, was responsible for the provision of terrestrial telecommunication services within Australia. Aussat Pty Ltd was responsible for satellite telecommunication and broadcasting services within Australia, and the Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC) was responsible for the provision of international telecommunication services. Aussat was established with a restrictive license that prevented competition with Telecom Australia, and to ensure this was adhered to, Aussat was effectively prevented from raising the capital it needed to flourish and two directors of Telecom were appointed to the Aussat Board.

    The Davidson Enquiry’s recommendation was timely and if it was implemented carefully the Australian telecommunications industry could have entered a period of expansion, competition and prosperity. So what went wrong? Everything.

    The first mistake, which has never been corrected, was a failure to map out the future of the fixed infrastructure, which at the time was largely copper in the access network and coaxial cable, microwave radio or copper pairs in the transit links.

    Optical fibre was new in 1982 and the Telecom Research Labs had started the process of introducing optical links into the Australian telecommunications network. Enough was known about the potential future capabilities of optical fibre for forward network planning to incorporate it into all major trunk routes by year 2000 and access networks thereafter.

    During the 1950s the then Postmaster General’s Department expanded the copper network beyond urban areas and commenced an ongoing maintenance and upgrade program. A key reason the copper network expanded beyond the urban areas was the recently adopted universal service principal by government that resulted after a robust campaign by regional and remote Australians for telephone services.

    The modern Australian copper network was progressively rolled out in the 1950s, first in urban areas and then to regional areas, with an anticipated lifetime of 50 years. In some areas the copper network is now more than 10 years beyond the anticipated lifetime. Copper networks do degrade over time, due to the effects of water leakage, the environment and mechanical damage. Over the decades the cost of maintaining the copper network has been steadily climbing.

    In the period 1982 to 1992 the fate of the three monopoly telecommunications providers was debated within the federal government, and initially the focus appeared to be on how to ensure each organisation remained viable rather than how to promote competition. For example, proposals for Aussat and OTC to merge were rejected in favour of OTC being merged with the ATC which was renamed AOTC in 1991 and finally became Telstra Corporation in 1993. Aussat was sold to a new entrant, Optus, as part of a deal enabling it to share a duopoly with Telstra in 1991-97 as a first step towards national infrastructure competition.

    Guidance on how the fixed infrastructure network could be expected to change over the next 50 years was not provided and was put into the hands of the telecommunications market to best determine, within the constraints of an amended Trade Practices Act (1997). But the reality was and remains that the future of the fixed infrastructure remained largely in Telstra’s hands until the advent of the 2009 National Broadband Network (NBN) policy, though this policy was flawed and Telstra retained ownership of exchanges, pits, ducts, traps and other infrastructure to be utilized by the NBN.

    In 1997 the government made extensions to the Trade Practices Act 1974 that guaranteed access to Telecom (Telstra) infrastructure on terms that were to be negotiated and ultimately regulated by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). In 1997 the Australian telecommunications market was formally opened to full competition in accordance with the Telecommunications Act 1997.

    Or so the government would have us believe, because by carefully restructuring the existing incumbents the government created two monopolies that remain today: Telstra (national copper access network) and Aussat (later Optus – satellite broadcasting).

    Whilst other companies have launched satellites, installed undersea cables, installed fibre networks and built mobile cellular networks, Telstra and Optus remain dominant because each was provided with public infrastructure and in Telstra’s case the public infrastructure included the thousands of telephone exchanges and tens of thousands of kilometres of pits, ducts and traps that house the copper network.

    So Australia slipped into a regime where “competitors” would pay Telstra and Optus to utilise their infrastructure at rates negotiated or set by the ACCC, which ultimately include a profit component that ensures Telstra and Optus remain viable. The degree to which Optus retains an anti-competitive advantage has diminished more than Telstra’s anti-competitive advantage.

    Telstra in particular has taken every opportunity to leverage its infrastructure to optimise profit, often arguably at the expense of competition. As mobile telephone networks became more prevalent Telstra was able to convince the government that the mobile network should be used to provide aspects of black spot remediation, provision of emergency information and services that might be considered to be better provided under the universal service for which Telstra was most recently awarded another contract for 20 years in 2012.

    What this means is that Telstra has been able to draw on local, state and federal government funds to assist in the build out of the Telstra mobile cellular network. The extent of public funding received by Telstra for mobile network expansion has been difficult to quantify.

    At the last election the government announced that $100 million would be provided to assist with mobile cellular network expansion and black spot remediation. Telstra will argue that its network is best placed to facilitate the government’s aims, but only if all the money or the greater proportion goes its way.

    By the early 2000s Telstra found itself with two infrastructure competitors in the mobile cellular market and about 10 infrastructure competitors in the provision of DSL over the copper network. Prior to 2008 Telstra charged DSL providers for fixed telephone connection line rental in conjunction with a line rental cost for the provision of DSL. Effectively for every DSL provider customer Telstra would benefit through the provision of a fixed telephone service ensuring Telstra’s profit related to the copper network remained high.

    The decision by the ACCC, which Telstra fought all the way to the High Court in 2008, to introduce unconditioned local loop provisions effectively ended Telstra’s ability to force DSL providers to include fixed telephone connections with DSL.

    The loss of this income and the ACCC’s ongoing review of the charges that Telstra could levy DSL providers for DSL only connections meant that Telstra put the fixed network infrastructure into a holding pattern whilst Telstra focused its investment on expanding and upgrading its mobile cellular network.

    In the Howard government years between 1996 and 2007 questions were asked of Telstra about upgrading the copper network to FTTN for broadband delivery, and as time progressed the FTTP option was also discussed. The Rudd government asked the same questions and received the same answers, which amounted to Telstra asking for a government handout to upgrade to FTTN or overbuild to FTTP.

    By the 2000s there was a dawning realisation that effective competition would only flourish if there was a way to do what should have been done in the mid-1980s and that was to split Telstra into retail and wholesale organisations, so that future privatisation would facilitate effective retail growth whilst ensuring the wholesale organisation could go to the market when demand dictated to upgrade or overbuild infrastructure.

    In the Australian context this means upgrading or overbuilding the entire network, no piecemeal approach, no urban cherry picking of high value areas, because the universal service legislation effectively enshrines the right of every Australian to fair and equal access to a standard telephone service (it does not dictate fair and equal access to broadband or mobile services, which are left to the market). The 2012 government review and update of the universal service obligation did not include the provision of data services in the legislation and for this reason the outcome was flawed. Any thought that regional and remote Australia would accept anything less than a socially acceptable national outcome would return us to the robust campaign days of the early 1950s that led to the universal service in the first place.

    Whilst not discussing the national broadband network at this point, but staying focused on the reasons why the Australian telecommunications industry is not truly open and competitive, it needs to be pointed out that by “leasing” access to Telstra’s infrastructure for the national broadband network the government has effectively ensured that Telstra will retain its market dominance, because it can undercut any provider using the national broadband network knowing that it can make up the income shortfall through the profit it receives through the infrastructure lease agreement and maintenance arrangements.

    So where to from here? Australia is long overdue for a non-political rethink of how to facilitate an open and competitive telecommunications industry that results in effective structural change that includes Telstra’s separation into retail and wholesale organisations and also provides forward looking guidance on what the industry’s infrastructures needs will be over the next millennium.

     

    Mark Gregory is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at RMIT University. His blog can be found here.

     

  • John Menadue. Pink batts and the Royal Commission – a bridge too far.

    There are good grounds for Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard to refuse to provide documents to the Royal Commission on Pink Batts. The Royal Commission is a very vindictive act by the Abbott Government. And the government looks like continuing to use other Royal Commissions for political purposes!

    In separate blogs by Michael Keating on January 8, 2014 and by me on July 11, 2013, we have pointed out the following.

    • 1.1 million installations were completed under the Home Insulation Scheme (HIS) – a considerable achievement.
    • The rate of fires during this scheme was three times less than prior to the HIS.
    • The regulation of programs such as this, including safety, is clearly in the hands of state governments, not the Commonwealth.
    • Only 7% of installations had to be rectified – a quite low figure.
    • One fatality was caused by a pre-existing fault; another was caused when an electrical installer was employed by another electrician, and a third death occurred when a contractor elected to work in oppressive heat.

    But beyond these issues which the media and The Australian in particular, ignored, there is an important issue of whether the Royal Commission should have access to Cabinet documents. Media reports suggest that Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard may refuse to provide Cabinet documents.

    There is an important principle in the Westminster parliamentary tradition that new governments do not rifle through the documents of a previous government. This is set out very clearly in the Cabinet Handbook issued by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet in the name of the Australian Government. (7th edition, 2012). Paragraphs 17 to 19 say the following:

    • Cabinet records (files) are held on behalf of a government in the care and control of the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM & C) and are issued to ministers and departments on a need-to-know basis. Once a minister or department no longer has any immediate need of them, and, in any event, when the minister vacates office or a change of government occurs, any copies of Cabinet documents must be returned to the Cabinet Secretariat or destroyed.
    • The convention is that Cabinet documents are confidential to the government that created them and not the property of the sponsoring minister or department. Access to them by succeeding governments is not granted without the approval of the current parliamentary leader of the appropriate political party.
    • Cabinet records and cabinet notebooks are accessible to the public through the National Archives of Australia after the expiration of the statutory closed period. The closed period, which for Cabinet documents currently varies between 20 to 30 years, seeks to provide the best balance between the competing priorities of, on the one hand, the need to safeguard privacy, security and confidentiality of the Cabinet, and to use available resources to best effect, on the other hand, maximising public access to records.

    I would expect that the Secretary of PM & C would now be advising the Abbott Government that the Cabinet documents relating to the Home Insulation Scheme (pink batts) should not be released.

    When Malcolm Fraser became Prime Minister at the end of 1975 he was being urged by party colleagues to release documents of the Whitlam Government relating to the ‘loans affair’ – a matter of far greater moment than pink batts. Some members or supporters of the Liberal Party had commenced legal action in the court in Queanbeyan against the former PM and and former senior ministers. Despite the opportunity to make more political mischief, Malcolm Fraser refused to have the documents released.  In my autobiography ‘Things you learn along the way’, page 173, I wrote ‘[Malcolm Fraser] was … persuaded that it was unwise for one government to be raking through the documents of another government and that if the matter came to court the Commonwealth Government should refuse to release them’. I was Secretary of PM & C at the time.

    It is one thing for parties to make political mischief in Opposition. In Government, they need to act more responsibly and with due regard to the established government and parliamentary conventions that have stood the test of time.

    Where there was a good case for a Royal Commission would have been for the Rudd and Gillard Governments to initiate a Royal Commission into how Australia became involved in the disastrous Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Fortunately, neither Kevin Rudd nor Julia Gillard chose a Royal Commission to settle a political score.

     

     

  • John Menadue. Cutting back government spending – does it include middle-class and corporate welfare?

    Tony Abbott told his listeners recently at Davos that small government was the best form of government.

    The Minister for Health, Peter Dutton, has said that waste must be reduced in our health sector.

    The Minister for Social Services, Kevin Andrews, has told us that our welfare system is unsustainable and has appointed Patrick McClure to review welfare in Australia.

    And the Treasurer, Joe Hockey, has established a Commission of Audit to look at ways to reduce ‘big government’ with priority to reducing government outlays. He said that the age of entitlement had to end. But for whom! He said ‘it is .. essential that the Commonwealth government lives within its means and begins to pay down its debt’. We know of course that by any international measure we do not have a debt problem but let us pass on that for the moment.

    Before we look at fair and efficient ways to improve our public finances, there are a few broad issues to be considered.

    First, we do have a long term ‘structural deficit’ of about $60 billion p.a. The IMF has told us that the most recent culprits were the Howard/Costello governments that reduced tax rates year after year when we were flush with revenue from the mining boom. The Gillard and Rudd governments did face the GFC and sensibly increased government spending. They made some attempt to reduce middle class welfare, but they failed to grasp the major recommendations of the Henry Review to reform our tax system.

    Second, Australia does not have a growing public sector. As Ian McAuley, Jennifer Doggett and I have set out in our submission to the Senate Select Committee on the Commission of Audit, there is no evidence of any sustained increase in government spending (see my website by clicking on at top left of this blog). In fact, outlays have been trending downwards since the mid-1980s. Andrew Podger, who is Professor of Public Policy at the ANU and former Secretary of the Department of Health and Ageing, said on January 22 in the AFR, ‘The claim that Australia’s welfare system is unsustainable would surprise observers in most other OECD nations which spend a much higher percentage of their GDP on social security payments. Our emphasis on flat rate, means-tested payments rather than earnings-related social insurance has limited the burden on Australian taxpayers.”

    Third, our tax as a percentage of GDP has fallen steadily since 2002 from 30% to 28%, well below the OECD average of 34%.

    Fourth, our health expenditure runs at about 9% to 10% of GDP which is much the same as the OECD average, mainly because of the efficiency of our public insurer, Medicare. We could save substantial amounts in the health sector however if the government would confront the vested interests in health that force up government spending – the AMA, the Private Health Insurance firms, Medicines Australia and the Pharmacy Guild of Australia.

    The issue that stands out is that we need to improve our revenue base. This is where middle class and business welfare is a major problem – the tax-deductions or ‘tax expenditures’ that reduce the effective level of tax and provides disproportionate benefits to the well-off in the community. FlagPost, published by the Australian Parliamentary Library noted on January 29 2014 that Australia has the highest level of tax deductions in the OECD

    • Treasury estimate that the concessions for super contributions and tax-free payments of superannuation to persons over 60 years of age, like me, costs about $32 billion p.a. A phase-in of a 15% tax on superannuation draw-downs would quickly raise $5 billion p.a.
    • The Grattan Institute estimates that property investors get a benefit of about $7 billion p.a. through negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount. These concessions help inflate property prices and push home ownership out of the reach of young people.
    • The Grattan Institute also estimate that the government provides about $36 billion p.a. in benefits to home owners through exempting the principal house of residence from capital gains tax and aged pension entitlements. The aged pension is asset-tested, but that test excludes the principal residence. The Minister for Social Services is not prepared to address this issue. The aged pension is excluded from his review. Yet the aged pension costs $36 billion p.a. and accounts for roughly half of the welfare budget. If the government was serious about winding back welfare it would not exclude the aged pension from any review.
    • The government has also excluded from the McClure Review Tony Abbott’s $5.5 billion pa parental leave scheme in which the baby’s primary carer would receive six months leave on full pay up to a maximum of $75,000 p.a. This is middle class welfare in neon lights.

    There are also large hand-outs to the corporate sector, particularly the finance sector

    • There is a subsidy of $6 billion to $7 billion p.a to the high cost Private Health Insurance companies who keep pushing up their premiums which are really private taxes.
    • If we had blinked just before Christmas, we would have missed the largesse that Assistant Treasurer Sinodinos handed out to the financial services industry. The previous government took action to stop superannuation advisers automatically collecting commissions year after year – trailing commissions. It was estimated by the Industry Super Network that this reform by the previous government in stopping these commissions would add $144 billion to private savings by 2027. But Arthur Sinodinos has announced that the Abbott Government will roll back this reform and give financial advisers a chance to plunder our superannuation savings again. The government has given the all clear to the financial advising industry to re impose a private tax on superannuation contributors. There is also no sign that the government is acting to stop the super funds owned by the big banks funnelling their cash exclusively into their parent banks for relatively low returns. It is a private tax on super contributors. That is surely abuse of power or worse but neither ACCC nor APRA seems concerned!
    • The Abbott Government has announced that it will retain the fringe benefits salary packaging for expensive, mainly foreign cars at a cost of almost $2 over four years.
    • The government shows no interest in saving $2 billion pa in drug costs by being as rigorous as New Zealand in negotiating drug prices with suppliers in Australia.
    • Large polluters will be subsidised by removing the market discipline of a price on the carbon that they emit.

    There are also other ways that the Commonwealth Government could address the structural deficit. It should expand the GST to include food, education, health and financial products. Most countries do not have the exclusions that we have. The extension of the GST would raise about $16 billion this year and $70 billion by 2016-17.

    In short, we need to lift taxation. Taxes in Australia are too low. It is the truth we refuse to name.

    In global terms we don’t have a government expenditure problem, although a great deal of middle class and business welfare should be rolled back.

    We also need to look urgently at areas of real need, particularly the disabled, those in need of special help in social housing, those who receive meagre benefits in Newstart (the dole) and refugees.

    We should all share the pain in getting our budget into shape, even though the problem is nowhere as severe as we were told in the election. My concern is that so-called “dole-bludgers “of talk back fame will be the target and the wealthy and politically powerful will be largely exempt. The government has already cut aid to the poor in developing countries.

    I live in hope but I am not expecting an end to the age of entitlement for the rich and powerful. Just think executive salaries, transfer pricing and tax havens! But maybe Joe Hockey has something up his sleeve!.

    Given the present weakness in the Australian economy it is also  important that the reduction in our structural budget deficit is done carefully and not in the drastic way that brought so many problems in Europe.

  • John Menadue. Sharks and asylum seekers

    Over the weekend we have seen thousands of people crowding onto our beaches on both sides of the country to protest against the culling of sharks in Western Australia.  I happen to think that the protesters are right, that people who swim in dangerous seas know the risks but are prepared to take them. Compared with the carnage on our roads, the number who die from shark attacks is quite minor.

    But the protests made me ask why we do not see the same protests supporting asylum seekers, fellow human beings fleeing terror of a different sort.

    Why are we so exhausted in defending the rights of asylum seekers? Maybe it is because the problem is so large, it’s long-term and seems to be intractable. What can we do to make a difference?

    I think our willingness to “pass by on the other side” is because for over a long period deliberate and successful attempts have been made to anaesthatise our consciences to the plight of asylum seekers and refugees. We have become numb to the tragedy that we have allowed to happen in our name.

    I suggest that there are a string of events and actions that have made us less sensitive.

    • John Howard was the first Prime Minister in Australia since the war to show us the great political benefit in appealing to our fear and our worst instincts. Tony Abbott has followed in the same path.
    • We were told at the time of the ‘children overboard’ event that asylum seekers were so inhuman and degraded that they would even throw their children overboard.
    • Tony Abbott continues to call boat people ‘illegals’, akin to criminals, when they are not. As a colleague of Tony Abbott’s at a Jesuit college put it ‘They are not illegals, they are our brothers and sisters’.
    • Scott Morrison told the Coalition Caucus that most people believe that asylum seekers are Muslims and that that should be exploited.
    • He later told us that asylum seekers bring disease and wads of money.
    • The new Member for Lindsay at the last election told us that asylum seekers are blocking the M4 in Sydney.
    • Eric Abetz in Opposition told us that asylum seekers in the community who offended, even in a trivial way, should be treated like paedophiles.

    The demonization of asylum seekers and refugees continues almost daily. The media is largely silent. Its major interest is the politics of boat arrivals, not the plight of the persecuted. The leadership of our churches, synagogues and mosques is scarcely heard. The Vietnamese community that was given a haven in Australia more than 30 years ago is silent. The Labor Party is largely silent as are many members of the Coalition who I know are privately very concerned about what is happening.

    What is it that sharks have that seems to make their plight more important than that of asylum seekers and refugees? Our consciences have become numb. The demonization of asylum seekers is proving to be a political winner.

    It seems to be worth making the effort to save sharks but not human beings also fleeing terror.

     

  • Walter Hamilton. The ABC and its Japanese Cousin.

    If the board and management of the ABC need to firm up their ideas about the proper relationship between a public broadcaster and the government of the day they might consider what is happening in Japan.

    NHK, that nation’s public broadcaster, is a $7bn enterprise largely funded from television licence fees, with a board of governors appointed by the prime minister. It exerts enormous influence through its highly rating news and information programs, but the situation in which it now finds itself––criticised for being a mouthpiece for the conservative national government––is in sharp contrast to the ABC’s predicament. In thinking about how to respond to the attacks of Tony Abbott and others, managing director Mark Scott and chairman Jim Spigelman might reflect on their Japanese cousin.

    There are direct parallels. The ABC has an international service that must report on controversial issues such as the Navy’s involvement in forcing back boats of asylum seekers from Indonesia. NHK has an international service that must report on issues just as touchy, including the territorial disputes Japan has with China and South Korea.

    On 25 January, at his first news conference after being appointed NHK president, Katsuto Momii (a former business executive with no background in broadcasting) was asked how the organisation should approach the subject of the Senkaku (Diaoyu) islands. He replied: ‘International broadcasting will be different from domestic programs. Regarding the territorial issue, it will only be natural to clearly present Japan’s position. It would not do for us to say “left” when the government is saying “right”’. In responses to other questions, he effectively endorsed the Abe government’s position on visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, the use of ‘comfort women’ during the war and the necessity of a new state secrets law.

    Though clearly embarrassed by this kowtowing performance, the government’s chief spokesman later excused Momii’s remarks on the basis that he was expressing his ‘personal views’––as if that made them irrelevant. (Former ABC chairman, Donald McDonald, while still in that position, continued his fund-raising activities for the Liberal Party according to the same logic, so there is an Australian precedent.) On Friday, summoned before a parliamentary committee, a nervous Momii heard an opposition member express the concern of some that NHK was becoming ‘the public relations department of the government’. Also last week, an economics professor quit an NHK radio program, on which he’d been a commentator for 20 years, after being told to refrain from criticising the nuclear power industry during the current Tokyo gubernatorial election. Keeping silent on the election issue, he was advised, was NHK’s way of maintaining balance.

    By some accounts, the man that Momii replaced at the top of NHK, Masayuki Matsumoto, decided not to seek a second term because of complaints from within Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party that NHK gave too much prominence to critics of nuclear power and the American military bases in Japan. It must be said, however, Matsumoto’s presidency was marked by other scandals and for most of his three years the now-opposition DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan) was in office.

    Nevertheless, for someone who watches NHK daily (via satellite) a change in tone and content of its news and current affairs programs has become more apparent since the Abe government returned to power. Conspicuous has been the switch from prominent coverage of anti-bases activities in Okinawa to muted and irregular coverage of this issue. For such a thing to be apparent is significant because, for as long as I can remember, NHK’s news product has been predictably middle-of-the-road. Never flamboyant or opinionated, its programs could be boring through avoidance of controversy, and thus culturally conservative, but rarely did they carry political bias on their sleeve. Now, according to Momii, the policy is: what’s right for the LDP government is right for NHK.

    How this will play out with the Japanese public remains to be seen. Already one in four television owners is refusing to pay the NHK licence fee, for whatever reason. In this respect, NHK is more exposed to the public mood than the ABC, which is funded directly by parliament. It is easier for the Abbott government to punish the ABC by, for instance, taking away the Australia Network (which is funded separately through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade).

    There are some within the ABC who would welcome this step. They have always felt the international service sapped resources from the corporation’s primary, domestic functions and would rather have the battle-lines with the Coalition drawn along the issue of how the ABC serves its Australian audience.

    But this would be risky and shortsighted. Australia Network, if it is to project the nation’s values to the world, must be able to report without fear or favour, a core value in a society that embraces free speech. Here and now is the place to stand up and be heard. Secondly, the ABC’s critics obviously believe it is easier to make the case that the corporation has grown ‘too big’ than it is to win the ‘bias’ argument. (Donald McDonald himself took this line during a recent appearance on the ABC, though when asked for examples to prove the ABC was overstretched only mentioned seeing errors in Supers, the text that appears on screen identifying people during news items.) Chopping off the Australia Network, if achieved without great political cost, could embolden more and deeper cuts aimed at specific domestic services.

    In making a defence for the role of a vigorous public broadcaster the ABC’s bosses might look down the path NHK is sliding and take heart from the alarm being raised in Japan. The ABC’s journalists and other program-makers, meanwhile, though understandably eager to rush to the barricades to counter the apparent threat from the conservative side of politics should think again. It would be much better for them and for their organisation not to treat this as a partisan cause (Labor, when in power, also wants a co-operative ABC) and avoid openly siding with critics on the left (including on Facebook). The principles of free speech and openness that form part of the fabric of our democracy are, and must remain, above party politics. If the ABC, in upholding the highest standards of professional journalism, must sometimes say ‘right’ when the government says ‘left’, then the Australian public can be relied upon to know and respect the difference.

    Walter Hamilton, a former Tokyo correspondent, worked at the ABC for 33 years.

     

  • Walter Hamilton. A Strategy Less Than Grand: Where the ‘New Japan’ Goes Wrong.

    In a commentary published by the Lowy Institute entitled “Japan is Back: Unbundling Abe’s Grand Strategy*, Dr. Michael Green (Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic International Studies in Washington, DC) analyses the political and economic policies of Japan’s conservative government under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and concludes that “the overall strategy could be quite effective” in enhancing Japan’s prestige and forcing the cooperation of China.

    The article is detailed, wide-ranging and informed by high-level contacts within Japan. The credentials of the author and the forum in which his views were aired suggest they are likely to be consonant with advice that Prime Minister Tony Abbott is receiving from his foreign affairs advisers. The article deserves a close reading because Green’s attempt to give Abe’s policies the status of a “grand strategy” unintentionally exposes their underlying contradictions.

    The author begins by arguing that Abe’s strategy does not represent a break with the past: “[His] national security agenda is not, in fact, a departure from the general trajectory established by his predecessors in the post-Cold War era.” Elsewhere, he asserts, “While scholars have emphasised the debate among different strategic schools in Japan, the real debates now are mostly about the timing and scope of change – not its direction.” Green wants to counter any suggestion that Abe is an extremist or maverick politician acting out of step with popular opinion. Later in the article, however, he states: “The policy and legal obstacles that Abe is now busy removing as part of his internal balancing strategy were erected by previous Japanese governments eager to build a buffer against involvement in US military plans in the Pacific.” There is an obvious contradiction. Is Abe building on existing policy frameworks or dismantling them?

    Green’s case that Abe’s policies are continuous with the past, on closer examination, is based mainly on the claim that “[his immediate predecessor, Prime Minister] Yoshihiko Noda…began the push for most of the key elements of Abe’s security agenda.” In other words, by “predecessors” he means principally Noda. While it is true the Noda government sought to shore up Japan’s alliance with the United States, this represented a swing of the pendulum back from the failed attempt of a former leader of his ruling Democratic Party of Japan, Yukio Hatoyama, to put a distance between Tokyo and Washington. Noda gave expression to one side of the historical “bi-polar” complex that has characterised Japan’s postwar relationship with the US. Furthermore, the Noda government––deeply unpopular because of its perceived incompetence––took strategic decisions (notably the purchase of the three Senkaku/Diaoyu islands that so enraged China) reactively, under duress and without a clearly articulated policy agenda. To posit a continuum between Abe and the panicked previous administration is curious, to say the least.

    Green refers to a former “left-leaning” Prime Minister Takeo Miki’s opposition to arms exports, without identifying him as a leader of the same Liberal Democratic Party Abe now heads. The LDP, like the DJP, has always contained competing views on whether rearmament or disarmament best serves Japan’s national interest, whether a look-to Beijing or a look-to-Washington posture is preferable. The current ascendency of the pro-Washington hawks within the LDP is just that: a phase in a cyclical power play. To suggest, as Green does, that a single continuity of views has existed within Japan’s leadership since the breakup of the Soviet Union is unsupportable. (The recent about-face by former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, coming out against nuclear power and backing a rival to the LDP’s candidate in Tokyo’s gubernatorial election, is a further example of the volatility of Japan’s conservative mainstream.) While it is true that Abe enjoys a high level of support within the electorate––anything over 50% is extraordinary by recent standards––there is little evidence that the so-called “grand strategy” (which Green invests with a spurious coherence) goes more than slogan-deep in terms of public understanding. Indeed it is incapable of being comprehended, I submit, because of its internal contradictions.

    Another of the contradictions emerges when Green discusses regional responses to Abe’s policies. He states that the Abe Government “is pursuing foreign and security policies that are welcomed…by most governments in the region.” Yet he also says, correctly, that “the most striking thing about his diplomacy is that it has been focused on the near and far abroad rather than the immediate neighbours South Korea and China.” Given that the other key players in Japan’s region are, of course, China and South Korea, how does Green’s first statement stack up? He seems to believe that Australia, the US and other like-minded nations should support Japan in a diplomacy conducted over the heads of its nearest neighbours: “Abe’s preference for diplomacy with the states around China’s periphery also reflects his view that Japan’s natural partners are the democratic maritime states.” For Australia to automatically support Japan against its neighbours, rather than urge Tokyo to seek an accommodation with nations of vital interest to us, would be foolhardy.

    Green identifies within Abe’s diplomacy (correctly, as far as it goes) an attempt to present Japan as a bastion of freedom, rule of law and transparency, and thus a defender of “Western” values, as opposed to the alternative “Pan-Asian” version that defines Japan by cultural and ethnic affinities. Japan, however, has been down a similar path before, in the period 1900-1925, and that, as we know, proved unsustainable. Green concedes that “tensions between Seoul and Tokyo are indirectly hurting broader Japanese influence in Asia and even in Washington” but does not explain how, by facilitating a diplomacy that overlooks South Korea, the US or Australia would benefit. Green treats the disagreements over historical accountability, so damaging to regional relations, as “complications.” This happens to be the prevailing Japanese attitude, based on the calculation that since China and South Korea have not always been as strident about such matters in the past, they can be waited out. The danger of inaction, however, was underlined again recently when the new president of NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster, made light of the “comfort women” issue during a news conference. Every time the Japanese Establishment’s complacency and recalcitrance are exposed, the gulf widens. If Abe wishes to lead a credible world power he must embrace a credible and candid accounting for the nation’s past. More than a complication, right now it is the spanner in the works.

    In his discussion of Japan’s defence needs, Greens starts from the proposition that “China’s coercive pressure in the East China Sea…is most likely to spark a larger confrontation.” No evidence is offered for this one-sided view. He considers an increased Japanese military capability, including counterstrike deterrence, the sine qua non of a strategy to prevent Chinese coercion. Green’s account of why the country has lived for so long with a limited military capability is pure revisionism: “Japan’s deterrent capabilities are significantly less efficient and credible because of the numerous legal and bureaucratic constraints that have accumulated in the post-war period.” The language suggests that red tape, rather than a popular aversion to military adventures, has been the main constraint on Japan since 1945. The opposite is true. Japan’s war-renouncing constitution has been the central pillar of the nation’s postwar prosperity, and to dismiss it as a “bureaucratic” encumbrance is quite perverse. Certainly, various governments over the years have reinterpreted the basic law to enable Japan to maintain a modern military establishment but each step on that journey has kept intact a credible commitment to the principle of non-belligerence (though critics of Japan’s support for American military engagements in Asia and elsewhere would, of course, disagree). This is a whole-of-state issue, not a matter for backroom tinkering.

    Green reports a “growing interest in Tokyo in the concept that Japan might use the development of counterstrike capability as a source of leverage vis-à-vis the United States.” He argues that as a result of Japan embracing a broader definition of its right to collective self-defense “the SDF will be seen by allies, partners, and potential adversaries as a more effective fighting force within the confines of Japan’s renunciation of war as a means to settle international disputes.” A more effective fighting force, I suggest, is not necessarily the best advertisement for the renunciation of war. For the two to be possibly compatible would require a style of leadership––inclusive, disposed to listen rather than dictate, and sensitive to the concerns of neighbours––that Abe so far has not displayed.

    Green describes a view taking shape within the LDP that the government need not move immediately to revise Article 9 of the constitution in order to achieve its military-strategic objectives; it can do so through an administrative measure. But a change to Japan’s military posture to include a significant counterstrike capability, without a full airing of the issues that a debate on the constitution would enable, is not a development Australia should welcome. It runs counter to the very democratic values Abe insists link his nation to “natural partners” like Australia. The centralisation of power under Abe that Green identifies (and approves of), including the creation of supra-parliamentary organs, such as the new National Security Council and National Security Bureau, and the enactment of a wide-ranging state secrets law, might, to some, make Japan a “normal” country, but they seem unlikely to cast more light on the murky process of Japanese policy formation––quite the reverse.

    A final contradiction arises in Green’s discussion of the support he says the US, Australia and others should lend Japan in its confrontation with China: “The United States, Australia, and all maritime nations have a stake in Japan not backing down under Chinese military pressure. Ultimately, a modus vivendi might be reached in which Japan finds a way to acknowledge officially that there is a de jure dispute [over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands].” For Japan to acknowledge that a de jure territorial dispute exists, as Green surely knows, would to Abe and his supporters constitute a back down. Such a concession might be desirable; but to argue against backing down to China and, in the same breath, to advocate it is peculiar. Green gets into this pickle by failing to adequately acknowledge that Japan’s actions have contributed to the impasse with China. Japan’s friends would do better to denounce the hardliners on both sides and propose solutions that get beyond fixed positions implied by the term “back down.” Green’s proposal would lead to an untenable situation in which anything Japan says or does must be approved, or else. He writes: “Resisting Japanese requests for joint contingency planning or pressuring Tokyo to compromise in the face of Chinese coercion would do fundamental damage to the credibility of the [US-Japan] alliance and lead to more pronounced hedging by Japan. The result would be less US control over escalation in a crisis in the East China Sea and weakened dissuasion and deterrence all along the offshore island chain.” You can’t have it both ways. Either Japan is a partner who can be resisted and corrected, as well as supported, or it is a liability. The same goes for China.

    Green performs a valuable service by articulating issues that Australians should be considering as a matter of urgency. Without a doubt, Abe (who has compared current relations between China and Japan to those between Germany and Britain in 1914) is the strongest, most belligerent Japanese leader to emerge for decades. There are, however, flaws in his “grand strategy.” Diplomacy conducted over the heads of China and South Korea to engage supposedly like-minded democratic maritime partners such as Australia should make any modern Bismarck quaver. Resolving the historical grievances between Japan and its former colonial underlings is essential to future regional security. They will not fix themselves. To demonstrate its commitment to democratic values Japan needs a full-blown debate about the role of its defence forces within the constitution rather than increasingly centralised and elitist decision-making. Australia’s interest in a vibrant and peaceful Japan requires our leaders to oppose all measures that heighten regional tensions and undermine longer-term stability.

    * http://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/japan-back-unbundling-abes-grand-strategy

    Walter Hamilton reported from Japan for the ABC for eleven years. He is the author of “Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story”.

     

  • John Menadue. Alcohol and violence on the streets — the tip of the iceberg.

    In recent weeks public attention has been focused on alcohol fuelled violence in Sydney streets and the very slow response of the NSW government. But the response when it did come really only addressed the ugly tip of the iceberg. the violence on the streets. The government response was superficial – minimum mandatory sentencing, greater powers for the police, special licence conditions and lockouts and closures.

    Very little attention was given to prevention and remedial action – the widespread social and economic cost of alcohol misuse across Australia as revealed in our workplaces, roads, and criminal justice and health systems.

    We focus on cannabis, but compared with alcohol, it is a much less potent and dangerous drug. Only a week or so ago, President Obama said ‘I don’t think that cannabis is more dangerous than alcohol’. He was right.

    The long-term effects of alcohol are well-known as outlined by the University of NSW Drug and Alcohol Research Centre– cancer of the mouth, brain injury, high blood pressure, weakness and loss of muscle tissue, inflamed stomach lining, increased risk of lung infections, severe swelling of the liver, inflamed pancreas, and other dangerous consequences. Street violence in Kings Cross is really only a small part of a much larger problem.

    The Australian Institute of Criminology, in April 2013, set out the cost of alcohol misuse in 2010.  The costs were estimated at $14.4 billion which is about double the revenue the Commonwealth government receives from alcohol taxes. That estimated $14.4 billion cost four years ago was made up as follows:

    • Criminal justice system- $3 billion, police, courts, prisons, child-protection, etc.
    • Health system – $1.7 billion in hospital, nursing home, ambulance and other areas.
    • Productivity – $6 billion, mainly losses of production through impaired work and imprisonment of large numbers of people.
    • Traffic accidents – $3.7 billion.

    This study commented that its finding of about $14.4 billion of alcohol costs in 2010 was conservative. Furthermore the figure does not include the negative effects of alcohol on others, estimated to be $6.8 billion in 2010.

    There is clearly an enormous problem just below the surface of street violence. We are concentrating our attention on the streets when there are other major problems below the surface.

    The study of the Australian Institute of Criminology points to the need for prevention and diversion strategies. That really means breaking the booze culture.

    I suggest a major diversion strategy should be the review alcohol advertising in association with sport. It is surely an obvious contradiction to be promoting a healthy life style through sport and promoting alcohol at the same time. In my blog of January 4 ‘Cricket – junk food and alcohol’, I drew attention to the saturation advertising of alcohol during the Ashes Tests. It now continues in the One Day Series. It is unremitting. The alcohol advertising is on the scoreboard, the ground, the shirt fronts, the sleeves the caps, boundary fences, stumps and sight-boards. So far the ‘baggy green’ cap does not carry alcohol advertising but surely it won’t be long before it is carrying a beer logo!. With almost all points covered with alcohol advertising how about Carlton Mid tattoos!  The victorious Australian team poured Victorian Bitter all over each other in the dressing room after the series win. The Australian coach and captain, with one arm around each other and holding beers aloft meandered around the Sydney Cricket Ground. It was tacky. It sent a poor message to young people.

    To protect children, the advertising of alcohol on television is banned before 8.30 pm. But because of the power of the alcohol lobby, advertising is on full display almost all day at most of our major sporting events.  To start winding back the enormous cost of alcohol abuse, we should start by prohibiting alcohol advertising on television and radio at all sporting events, just as we did years ago with tobacco advertising. For the sake of young sports fans our major sporting bodies need to break free from the grip of the alcohol lobby.  Our sporting heroes, the role models for the young should also think carefully about filling their pockets with money from the promotion of alcohol. Who will be the first to make a stand? Australian young people would be particularly well served by such leadership.

    Violence in Kings Cross after midnight is just the tip of the iceberg.

  • John Menadue. Our lack of business and political skills in Asia.

    The Business Council of Australia and business executives keep reminding us of the need to increase our productivity by up-skilling and better use of our labour resources. Unfortunately the business sector is spectacularly lagging in equipping itself for opportunities in Asia.

    Last week The Australian Financial Review surveyed the schools and educational backgrounds of the CEOs of our top ASX100 firms. It found that one third of these CEOs went to secondary schools outside Australia. But not one of them had spent their formative schooling years in Asia.

    This confirms the dismal record of Australian business in Asia.

    • I have yet to learn of a single chairperson or CEO of any of our major companies who can fluently speak any of the key Asian languages.
    • A recent survey by the Business Alliance for Asian Literacy, which represents 400,000 businesses in Australia, found that ‘More than half of Australian businesses operating in Asia had little board and senior management experience of Asia and/or Asian skills or languages’.
    • Because of the lack of integration of human resources and business strategy in Australian firms, many executives who are posted to Asia leave within a few years of their return.  They find the culture in the Australian head office quite unsympathetic to Asia and the experience that they have gained.
    • Australian firms do recruit Australian-born citizens of Asian descent, but they are more likely to be recruited for their good grades and work ethic than future leadership potential. It is hard to break into the Anglo clubs that dominate so many of our large companies.

    Equipping ourselves for Asia has been on and off our agenda for many years. In 1989 the Garnaut Report pointed the way that Australia should respond to the North East Asian Ascendancy.  Through the Hawke/Keating Government periods we responded. We opened up our economy. More skilled people began working in the region. The media became more interested in Asia and exchange programs were established.

    And then in the Howard years we went on smoko. We were encouraged to be relaxed and comfortable and not get too excited about equipping ourselves for Asia.

    The Rudd and Gillard Governments slowly tried to get us back on track. Ken Henry reported in 2012 on Australia and the Asian Century, and how we should respond. A few targets were suggested, but little was really done before the September 2013 elections. The Rudd/Gillard Governments were distracted by other issues.

    The Abbott Government shows signs of pushing us off track again with its clumsy handling of our relations with China and Indonesia. Tony Abbott talks about his belief in the “Anglosphere”. It is not clear what he really means but most observers would conclude that it excludes Asia

    Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop is now telling us that ‘our single most important economic partner is in fact the United States’. The blinding and obvious fact is that the two-way trade between Australia and China is $130 billion p.a. compared with $60 billion p.a. between Australia and the US. To bolster her amazing assertion, Julie Bishop adds in US investment in Australia. Where is she getting this US-centric nonsense from?  It is trade flows that traditionally determine economic relationships, not investment. To top it off Julie Bishop then added that the US is our ‘best friend in economic terms’ when clearly it isn’t.  For the second time in three weeks we have gone out of our way to offend China.

    At least the Gillard/Rudd Governments pointed to the direction we had to head – Asia. Now the Abbott Government seems to be suggesting that Asia could be the wrong direction.

    Our business sector seems to be in agreement with the Abbott Government that Asia is not as important to our future as we all thought

  • Pope Francis – Message on Migrants and Refugees. January 2014

    ‘Migrants and refugees are not pawns on the chessboard of humanity.

    They are children, women and men who leave or who are forced to leave their

    homes for various reasons, who share a legitimate desire for knowing and having,

    but above all for being more.

    Contemporary movements of migration represent the largest movement of

    Individuals, if not of peoples, in history.

    As the Church accompanies migrants and refugees on their journey,

    she seeks to understand the causes of migration,

    but she also works to overcome its negative effects,

    and to maximize its positive influence on the communities of origin, transit and

    destination.
    While encouraging the development of a better world,

    we cannot remain silent about the scandal of poverty in its various forms.

    Violence, exploitation, discrimination, marginalization, restrictive approaches to

    fundamental freedoms,

    whether of individuals or of groups:

    these are some of the chief elements of poverty which need to be overcome.

    Often these are precisely the elements which mark migratory movements,

    thus linking migration to poverty.

    Fleeing from situations of extreme poverty or persecution in the hope of a better

    future, or simply to save their own lives,

    millions of persons choose to migrate.
    A change of attitude towards migrants and refugees

    is needed on the part of everyone, moving away from attitudes

    of defensiveness and fear,

    indifference and marginalization – all typical of a throwaway culture —

    towards attitudes based on a culture of encounter,

    the only culture capable of building a better, more just and fraternal world.

     

     

  • Arja Keski-Nummi. They are us … and the language of war!

    Why are we using the language and methods of war against civilians fleeing war and persecution?  Asylum seekers are not our enemies. Our real enemies are our complacency and a willingness to turn a blind eye to the spin we are getting. This reflects the Abbott government’s ability to drill deep into our collective psyche of fear with our settler past. What if we lose it all?

    It conflicts so dramatically with our other self-image of an open, caring and welcoming society.

    This debate is about much more than people arriving by boat, it is about reshaping an Australian narrative that excludes and rejects difference. “In our image or no image” is the message. The High Court action against the ACT legislation on same sex marriages and Christopher Pyne’s curriculum review are part of that same agenda.

    In trying to turn the page back to an Australia that no longer exists and never in reality existed the Abbott government is using the asylum debate to send a message of “them and us”.  At best it is elitist. At worst it is narrow minded, bigoted and opportunistic. The problem is that the “them” eventually become “us” as over 200 years of migration – illegal and legal – has proven.

    Governments and politicians carry an enormous burden of responsibility in helping shape how we react and welcome the stranger.  We are the community and society we are because by and large governments understood that most people did not feel comfortable with immigration but if we were to grow and develop and be prosperous we needed people. Nothing has changed.

    The language used about asylum seekers by both the previous government and the current one however has sought to divide our communities. Little compassion is shown or expressed to the plight of people displaced by war and human rights abuses. Rather the language is about people cheating a system and a vow to not “let them get their way”. Disturbingly in the last few months the language of war has started to be used with greater frequency.

    While this may be playing out well in the polling of today, we will pay a price for such demonization. A cornerstone of our success in settling millions of people in Australia over the past 70 years, irrespective of how they may have arrived in this country has been that we have genuinely subscribed to the ethos of a “a fair go”, helping create the opportunities for people to establish new lives and participate in the broader Australian community while at the same time valuing and cherishing their cultural heritage and giving some of it to our own uniquely Australian society. We don’t have an underclass at risk of exploitation nor do we have ethnic ghettoes. Our settlement programs have helped avoid that.

    We do have vibrant culturally diverse suburbs that reflect our cultural make up. It is true that for some the process of settlement is difficult and not trouble free and will be so for a long time but a generation on the children of those arrivals are politicians and in professions creating new wealth and opportunities for all Australians. They are us. That is the time when we need to measure how successful we have been in welcoming the stranger, and by any measure we have been truly successful.

    The previous government’s decisions to lock asylum seekers out of work and the continuation of this policy by the current government will have consequences. We are creating a new underclass. People will have to survive and it is disturbing to contemplate where this may lead and not just into a thriving black economy. It is an own goal we could well avoid if we just recognized and capitalized on the resilience, toughness and determination to succeed that asylum seekers bring with them.   It is on these qualities that Australia’s wealth has been built.  Rather than spending billions of dollars on detention centres and offshore processing centres (where is the budget emergency now?) a little helping hand will in the long run be rewarded a hundred times over. We have two hundred years of evidence to prove that.

    Our problem today therefore has been of our own making. Currently there are no formulated political structures to counter the governments’ opportunistic and increasingly militaristic approach. The Opposition is caught in its own appalling policy paradigm, one which cleared the way for the Abbott government when they reopened Nauru and Manus Island and went still further to announce that no people detained in those centres would be resettled in Australia.   They seem to have forgotten what they stand for!

    Likewise the Greens show no great policy nous in this area having a simplistic, emotive response that ignores the reality of multiple issues colliding with each other including the very difficult issues of how to manage mixed migration flows, return of non refugees, countering people smuggling and support for refugees. Their starting off point is that everyone is a refugee. It leaves no space to contemplate the harder elements of a refugee and asylum policy.

    Emotionalism is not a substitute for a good political strategy.  We cannot turn back the clock and bemoan missed opportunities but nor should we simply accept the mantra of war. It is disrespectful to survivors of wars and betrays the shallowness of politicians who have turned civilians, seeking sanctuary, into enemies.

    What we need is an approach that engages our international partners and regional governments in finding genuine regional solutions and not the Orwellian ones of Manus Island and Nauru). We need to recognize the humanity of people seeking asylum but we also need to have a process that quickly identifies who is and  who is not a refugee and be able to resolve the immigration status of a person who is not a refugee quickly and with dignity even if this means return to their country of origin. To do anything less undermines our obligations under the Refugee Convention, a protection tool that has withstood the test of time. We must compromise the system of international protection that we as a country have worked so hard to shape.

    We have done it before. We can do it again and we can be true to our own self image of a caring and open society.

    Arja Keski-Nummi was First Assistant Secretary of the Refugee, Humanitarian and International Division of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, 2007-2010.

  • Pearls and Irritations – one year on. John Menadue

    I launched this blog in January last year. To date there have been 285 posts, just over 5 a week.

    I hope you have found some ‘pearls’ and been ‘irritated’ from time to time. Thank you for your support.

    I have enjoyed putting together stories that I believe are important for Australia’s future.

    I now prefer blogging to speeches and interviews.

    A feature of the blog has been the support of guest bloggers. This has introduced a range of people with interesting ideas and views. As a result, the blog is becoming more like an e-magazine.

    I am a beginner in blogging, as you will have noticed, but Susie has been a great help. We have made changes, including a better weekly summary with lists of posts. Much remains to be done.

    We have appointed a blog manager which will leave me with more time to work on content.

    The traffic is increasing steadily. In February last year, the first full month of the blog,  the number of ‘visits’ (not hits) to the blog was 7063  In December last year “visits” had increased to 33,539. In February last year 14,132 ‘pages’ were read. This has increased to 84,873 in December. The increase has been steady with almost 1,200 readers of the blog each day this month despite the holidays. Many of the readers are friends and contacts but include a considerable number in the media, churches and NGO communities.

    I hope we can be more influential in the years ahead. Your help in suggestions and passing posts and emails to friends is much appreciated.

     

  • Could we do more to offend the Indonesians? John Menadue

    Could we do more to offend the Indonesians? Yes, I think we could by appointing, as has been suggested, Peter Cosgrove as our next Governor General. He was the military Commander who led the INTERFET forces against the Indonesian military in East Timor in 1999.  This was much more than just a military defeat for the Indonesians. It resulted in Indonesia’s political humiliation in the eyes of the world. Indonesia had to withdraw from East Timor with loss of face.  I don’t think that Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison, in their reading of the Lonely Planet Guide to international relations would be aware of this. Stopping the boats is everything regardless of the human beings involved or our relations with Indonesia.

    I believe the Australian-led intervention in East Timor was justified and in normal times the appointment of a former military opponent of the Indonesians would largely go unnoticed. But because of the Abbott Government we are not in normal times in our present dealings with Indonesia; the country that is more important to us strategically than any other.

    The Abbott Government has trod clumsily and provocatively in our relations with Indonesia. It should not add to the problem.

    The phone-tapping of the Indonesian President, his wife and senior colleagues by an Australian security agency occurred before the Abbott Government came to power. But the insensitivity and amateurish response by the Abbott Government really caused annoyance in Indonesia.

    More unfortunately there has been our provocative policy of turn back of asylum boats to Indonesia. There is no doubt that the Indonesian Government feels quite strongly that this action has breached and continues to breach its sovereignty. In the ‘war’ on boat arrivals, the Abbott Government has ignored the collateral damage it has done to our relations with Indonesia.

    The Abbott Government has portrayed the humanitarian issue of asylum seekers and refugees almost entirely in the vocabulary of war. It has established Operation Sovereign Borders, a military operation led by the military.  To justify secrecy Tony Abbott says “if we were at war we wouldn’t be giving out information that is of use to the enemy” Scott Morrison says “this battle (against boat arrivals) is being fought using the full arsenal of messages..” With this sort of terminology it is not surprising that the Indonesians are alert to crossings of their borders by Australian warships. This unfortunate militarisation and vocabulary of war would also be exacerbated by appointing a former senior Australian General as our next Governor General.

    Discretion is important particularly when diplomatic relations become fragile. Discretion suggests that the Abbott Government should not worsen the situation by appointing a former military opponent of Indonesia as our next Governor General. In the Javanese way, the Indonesian Government may be polite on the subject. But it would be wise to avoid more potential damage particularly as the anti-Australian drum is likely to beat louder in this Indonesian Presidential election year.

    It should be recalled that in his military career, Peter Cosgrove in 2001 was the Chief of the Army when the Howard Government put SAS troops on board the Tampa to stop asylum seekers coming to Australia. I thought at the time that this was a highly political and partisan act to use the military in this way and that when matters had cooled General Cosgrove would stand down. But not so.

  • The power of vested interests and why drugs cost so much in Australia. John Menadue

    Why does the widely used cholesterol reducing drug Atorvastatin cost $A19 in Australia and $A2 for the same package in NZ? Why does the widely used cancer drug Anastrozole cost $A92 in Australia when the equivalent drug in the UK costs $A3.30. The answer is the political power of Medicines Australia and how it twists the arm of governments.

    In a blog on January 7, I drew attention to the political power of vested interests to undermine the public interest and good policy development in Australia. I referred  particularly to the miners and their role in destroying the super profits tax, the polluters’ opposition to the carbon tax, the hotel and liquor industry which is responsible for violence on our streets and poor health in the community, and the gambling industry particularly Clubs Australia, that successfully opposed proposals to shield problem gamblers. Just consider how James Packer has been able, so easily, to use his political power to avoid any public process in obtaining a licence for his “high-rollers” casino in Sydney.

    What makes these vested interests so dangerous is their power to persuade or threaten politicians. The media is ill-equipped to contest their power. In some cases, The Australian and the Australian Financial Review newspapers become outlets for these vested interests.

    Medicines Australia (MA) is a classic case. It represents the pharmaceutical industry in Australia. Its members supply 86% of the medicines that are available in Australia under the Pharmaceuticals Benefits Scheme. (PBS)

    The Grattan Institute has pointed out how, with the cooperation of pliant governments, MA has been able to exploit Australian consumers and taxpayers. The facts are quite clear. For March last year, the Grattan Institute reported as follows:

    • For Atorvastatin, the cholesterol reducing drug, the PBS in Australia paid more than $51 for a box of 30 tablets. NZ paid $A5.80 for a box of 90 tablets.
    • Grattan also looked at the ‘top 73 doses that are prescribed most often in Australia’. It found that Australian wholesale prices were eight times higher than NZ’s. For identical drugs, NZ prices were six times cheaper than in Australia.
    • Grattan also compared prices in some public hospitals in Australia who buy drugs outside the PBS. It found that on average these hospitals obtained drugs eight times lower than the prices under the PBS.

    Those comparisons where for March last year. In December last year, under what is called ‘price disclosure’ arrangements, prices were reduced.  However, the Grattan Institute found that even with these reductions, Australia was still paying sixteen times more than the UK and NZ for seven key drugs. For example the cost of Atorvastatin dropped from $A30 to $A19 for a pack in Australia. The same pack sold for the equivalent of $A2.84 in UK and $A2.01 in NZ. For Anastrozole, the cancer drug, the wholesale price in Australia is $A92 and in the UK $A3.30.

    How can these outrageous differences occur?

    Before a drug can be registered on the PBS it has to be cleared by the Therapeutic Goods Administration for safety and efficacy. Then it is assessed by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee for cost effectiveness and clinical benefit. The Pharmaceutical Benefits Pricing Authority (the Pricing Authority) then determines the maximum price that can be charged and how much the Government will pay manufactures or importers under the PBS.

    The Pricing Authority, a non statutory body is set up by the Minister and is within the Department of Health and Aging. The Authority includes, amongst its six members, two representatives of drug companies. That is extraordinary-building vested interests into the price setting process. They should be excluded completely.  The whole process is opaque, and political. It is ready made for manipulation by vested interests.

    In NZ, politicians decide how much is spent by the government on drugs and an independent and professional expert panel sets prices. In Australia we have the process the other way round. Our politicians should determine the budget for drugs at the beginning of the process and then get out of the way and let market competition work and leave final price decisions to independent experts.

    The vested interests get their fingers all over the price of drugs on the PBS. In NZ they are excluded from the process.

    Grattan Institute estimates that Australia’s wholesale prices for identical drugs are now six times the prices paid in NZ. In some cases they are as much as twenty times higher. Grattan Institute estimates a saving of almost $A2 billion p.a. if we paid the same price as in other relevant jurisdictions.

    The Chief Executive of MA is Brendan Shaw. He was formerly a staffer for Dr Craig Emmerson. It is typical of the pedigree of vested-interests and their political lobby that they choose persons well-known and influential in the political corridors of power in Canberra. .

    In response to Grattan’s findings, Brendan Shaw in the Australian Financial Review made an irrelevant point that because of budget restraints in NZ, fewer new medicines were available in that country. He avoided completely the issue of price comparisons. I would rather rely on the professional advice of independent experts on what drugs should be on the PBS and the prices we pay.

    When will we seriously tackle the exploitation of the public that Medicines Australia inflicts upon us?

    The Department of Health and Ageing should be spending its time developing and implementing improved health policies. Instead it spends its energy and time placating the powerful rent-seeking vested interests in our health services – Medicines Australia, the AMA, the Pharmaceutical Guild of Australia and the Private Health Insurance companies.

    The Rudd and Gillard Governments did little to curb the abuse of political power by these groups in the health field. In fact they made the situation worse. The Rudd Government appointed a senior executive of BUPA, the second largest private health insurance firm in Australia, to head the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission enquiry.

    Ross Garnaut described the power of vested interests in Australia as a ‘diabolical problem’.  He is right. If the Commission of Audit wants to save some real money and curb rent seeking it could start with vested interests like Medicines Australia.

    Governments and particularly conservative ones extol the virtues of markets. But all too often this is a diversion, designed to advantage corporations, like the members of Medicines Australia, rather than letting markets work and promote competition and lower prices.

  • Violence is on the decline. John Menadue

    If you watch the tabloid television and the Murdoch press, you would certainly believe that violence is increasing. It seems counter-intuitive to suggest that we are moving away from violence.

    Over the holidays I have been reading ‘The Better Angels of our Nature – the Decline of Violence in History and its Causes’. It focuses particularly on the West. The book was written by Steven Pinker (Penguin 2011). Pinker is an experimental psychologist and cognitive scientist. He is a Harvard College professor

    It is a long read, but I found it encouraging.

    He examines violence in its worst manifestations in war, murder, rape and domestic violence, racism and hate speech. He argues that we are more aware of violence because of modern communications. That is why we aren’t so aware of the global decline in violence.

    In his preface, Pinker states his thesis

    This book is about what may be the most important thing that has ever happened in human history. Believe it or not – and I know that most people do not – violence has declined over long stretches of time and today we may be living in the most peaceable era in our species’ existence. The decline, to be sure, has not been smooth; it has not brought violence down to zero; and it is not guaranteed to continue. But it is an unmistakeable development, visible on scales from millennia to years, from the waging of wars to the spanking of children.

    The book’s essential message is that over thousands of years, despite the setbacks of  eg WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, tribalism has given way to expanded and inclusive relationships and that we have developed more appropriate and effective institutions to contain violence, despite their shortcomings.

    Pinker gives us a glimpse into the viciousness of the cultures and customs from 8000 BCE to the 1970s.

    In human pre-history we find graves and prehistoric remains that reveal people ‘strangled, bludgeoned, stabbed or tortured’. In this period he says that a person had a high chance of coming to bodily harm.

    In Homeric Greece, war was waged against the entire population. For the heroes of the Illiad, female flesh was a legitimate spoil of war. Achilles ‘spent many sleepless nights and bloody days in battle, fighting men for their women’.

    Pinker describes the Hebrew Bible as ‘one long elaboration of violence’. Cain slew Abel. Noah’s ark saved only a select few. The Israelites were enslaved in Egypt and the Egyptian army was drowned in the Red Sea. Samson became a hero in slaughtering 1,000 Philistines and killed over 1,000 with the jawbone of an ass. Captured, his eyes were burnt out and in revenge he crushes a building and kills 3,000 men and women. The warrior Saul’s Court sings that ‘Saul has killed by the thousands, but David by the tens of thousands’. Fortunately a lot of this never happened, but it offers a window into the lives and values of the civilisation in the first millennium BCE.

    An architectural symbol of the Roman Empire was the Colosseum. Gladiators fought others to death for public amusement. Animals tore flesh from humans. The most frequent means of Roman execution was crucifixion. It was an orgy of sadism. Saints were put to death by barbaric means.

    Infidels were put to death in the Spanish inquisition by burning at the stake and drawing and quartering.

    The medieval Christian knights may have treated the ladies well, but their intervention in the Crusades resulted in probably 1.5 million deaths, particularly of the Saracens. Jerusalem was allegedly left “knee deep in blood.”

    In early modern Europe Henry VIII had two wives beheaded. Bloody Mary had 300 religious dissenters burnt at the stake. Elizabeth I had 123 priests drawn and quartered.

    Despite the awful events in recent centuries, Pinker commented that the declines in violence unfolded over vastly different scales of time.

    ‘The taming of chronic raiding and feuding, the reduction of vicious interpersonal violence, such as cutting off noses, the elimination of cruel practices like human sacrifice, torture-executions and flogging, the abolition of institutions such as slavery and debt-bondage, the falling out of fashion of blood sports and duelling, the eroding of political murder and despotism, the recent decline of wars, pogroms and genocides, the reduction of violence against women… the protection of children …’  all point to a reduction in endemic violence.

    Pinker describes the factors that have not helped the decline in violence. These include technology and weaponry, the quest for power and resources, affluence and religion.

    In a chapter entitled ‘On Angels’ Wings’, Pinker describes the pacifying process. He says ‘Declines of violence are a product of social, cultural and material conditions’. He describes certain broad forces that have pushed violence down. These include the civilising process with the consolidation of law enforcement; the humanitarian revolution with improved literacy, urbanisation and access to mass media; the ‘rights revolution’ away from tribalism to national authority and freedom of speech; the benefits of international commerce and feminisation.

    Pinker concludes:

    Yet while this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, the [human] species has also found ways to bring the numbers and incidence of violence] down and allow a greater and greater proportion of humanity to live in peace and die of natural causes. For all the tribulations in our lives, for all the troubles that remain in the world, the decline of violence is an accomplishment we can savour and an impetus to cherish the forces of civilisation and enlightenment that made it possible’.

    I found the book encouraging- to think that our struggle against violence, war and denial of human dignity is worth the effort, despite the doomsayers and what our 24/7 media keep telling us.

  • Mission accomplished? Be careful which war you wish for. Travers McLeod

    “We are going to hold the line, we are going to protect the borders”, Scott Morrison, Federal Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, told the 44th Federal Parliament in its first sitting week. “This battle is being fought using the full arsenal of measures”, he wrote elsewhere. Last week, the Prime Minister defended the secrecy of the ‘battle’, saying, “if we were at war we wouldn’t be giving out information that is of use to the enemy just because we might have an idle curiosity about it ourselves”.

    Whatever the wisdom of Operation Sovereign Borders, Australia’s “military-led, border security operation”, if it is going be described as a military campaign we should assess it like one. When we examine military campaigns we often reflect on two interrelated questions: what is the strategy, and are the tactics appropriate and adapted to achieve that strategy? Strategy is important because it declares the intent and links ends and means. Tactics are also important. As the military theorist, Carl von Clausewitz, explained, “only great tactical successes can lead to strategic ones”.

    On strategy, Operation Sovereign Borders has been explicit: “We are going to stop the boats.” In the first of the now discontinued weekly briefings, the Minister said “those seeking to come on boats” would be “met by a broad chain of measures end to end that are designed to deter, to disrupt, to prevent their entry” and “to ensure that they are not settled in Australia”.

    The tactical waters have been muddied. One tactic offered but discarded was to buy the boats. Another tactic, begun by the former Government, is to ensure certain persons arriving by boat cannot be settled in Australia. A new tactic – gifting patrol boats to Sri Lanka – was announced last year. The tactic most discussed has been to turn or tow back the boats.

    Determination not to comment on “on water” matters has marked the campaign. This approach, too, can be evaluated from the perspective of a military campaign. The Australian Defence Force (“ADF”) has defined information operations (“IO”) as “the coordination of information effects to influence the decision making and actions of a target audience and to protect and enhance our decision making and actions in support of national interests”.

    Can this campaign be won in part through an absence of information? In 2007, Lieutenant Commander Chris Watson wrote “the key for IO is choosing to release information to the media on one’s own terms, for example as regards the timing and quantity of material released”. He described IO and “Shaping and Influencing” as “potent but underutilised tools available to government” during peacetime. The Minister appears to share this view.

    One difficulty for Operation Sovereign Borders is multiple target audiences: Australians, regional governments (not least Indonesia’s), asylum seekers and people smugglers. A lack of footage from the High Seas and detention facilities also makes it problematic for actions to articulate a message in and of themselves. Those in charge would prefer no boats, and therefore no actions. No information means no boats. No boats means mission accomplished.

    It is worth recalling debates in the United States during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. In 2006, then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld conceded the U.S. deserved a “D” or “D+” for its job in the “battle of ideas”. What became apparent was the moral dimension of the information battlespace. The need for accurate, regular information became paramount, informing the directive given to commanders not to put “lipstick on pigs”.

    Taking stock, one might observe Australia has a strategy supported by at least one tactic, and that its information operations are under siege. This observation is made without considering whether the current strategy is the ‘correct’ one. The Jakarta Declaration on Addressing Irregular Movement of Persons, signed by Australia and 12 other countries from the region last August, and endorsed by the UN Refugee Agency, offers other approaches.

    Tellingly, new members of Parliament have cautioned against ‘Fortress Australia’ in their maiden speeches, making the case for new arrivals and new markets. Clare O’Neil, Labor Member for Hotham, described how immigration has “brought more than 150 cultures” to Australia peacefully. Angus Taylor, Liberal Member for Hume, said Australia “must boldly expound and stay true to a narrative that explains the benefits of openness”, which includes a “generous humanitarian program”.

    Clearly, ‘Fortress Australia’ bears multiple meanings, whether we think about trade, immigration, or border protection. But they are all related. Militarising some of the issues and some of the discourse may not be a constructive development. It may not help Australia’s diplomatic and civil-military relations. It may not help Australia’s openness to trade and immigration, which is vital to continued competitive advantage in the global economy. But as long as any government continues to treat Operation Sovereign Borders as a military campaign, we should continue to assess its strengths and failures as such.

    One would hope militarisation has not been pursued in order to control the flow of information. At the end of the day there are human beings on these boats. Their “on water” stories will emerge. It just might be that many have fled countries undeniably at war to join the long list of migrants who have helped build and shape Australia for the long term.

    Travers McLeod is the Chief Executive Officer of the Centre for Policy Development. He holds a DPhil in International Relations from the University of Oxford.

    An edited version of this article was published in the Melbourne Age on January 14, 2014.

     

     

  • Health workforce reform. Prof Peter Brooks

    As we draw to the end of the holiday period and contemplate the challenges for us in 2014 we might take a moment to think about the big questions in health. We are continually reminded by politicians,  media and other  (self)  interested groups  about the cost of health care, the need for more doctors and  nurses, more  beds, more money -all of which will blow out the health budget even more . We are told that patients will have to pay more (the proposed $6 fee for GP visits) but rarely do we look at what are the real ‘drivers‘ in the costs of health care. Doctors have a very privileged position in society but we are responsible for generating the bulk of costs of healthcare – every time we order a test, prescribe a medication, recommend a procedure, and admit a patient to hospital costs are generated, so surely we need to look at this side of the equation.  This is particularly so in the context of the Australian health system which is based on fee for service – every time there is an interaction with the medical profession the cash register tinkles!

    So overall doctor numbers are important – because we –the doctors – generate the bulk of these costs. The ‘system’ is set up so that many things that doctors do which could be done by someone else at less cost – pharmacist/nurse practitioners writing repeat prescriptions, doing vaccinations  and other minor procedures are not well  supported. The most recent data from Health Workforce Australia present a number of scenarios on doctor numbers from having 2,700 too few in 2025 if we make no change in how we deliver health services (we couldn’t be that silly) to having 2,800 too many if we make a modest improvement in doctor ‘productivity’. This could be  easily achieved  by transferring some tasks to other members of the health care team and  better utilising  telehealth and other communication technologies. If we really got serious about health promotion and disease prevention (now that is a novel thought) and reduced demand by just 2% (which is really not very much) we would have a surplus of over 18,000 doctors in 2025- what a waste of talent.

    Now proponents for having more doctors say – “but it is so hard to see a GP when I need one” and rural general practice is still undersupplied – true – but there may be other ways of incentivising doctors to work in rural areas or using different models of care – linking local nurse practitioners or physician assistants with GPs /Specialists in regional centres to provide appropriate geographical coverage across this wide brown land.   Health care is very complex – we don’t think about it till we need care and then it is often too late to even think about choice. With the ageing population all of whom will have chronic disease we have a great opportunity to plan better than we have up until now – to think about a health system that is fair and  equable not just for those who can afford it but for all.

    We also (and the medical profession needs to be at the for front of this particular issue ) need to clearly evaluate what should  be provided for an individual patient – not just because the procedure or intervention is available – but ask if it will really improve that patients health – and ensure that the patient can be involved in that decision.

    But fundamental to the future of the health system in Australia is how we pay for health services – fee for service needs to be reviewed since it is not sustainable in the medium to long term. There are many other systems we might consider – salaried (and interestingly America now has more salaried doctors than non-salaried), a variety of insurance schemes including health savings accounts, capping fees in some form – so why don’t we talk about this in a serious way?

    Tinkering around the edges in the form of a $6 payment for GP visits which is estimated to save around $700 million over a 4 year period out of a $130 million annual health budget and creating real pain for many less well-off Australians is a bad idea – but it does provide an opportunity to start a real community debate on what the other alternatives are – and there are many. This should be about real change in the health system – to ensure one of the better health systems in the world remains accessible to ALL Australians and that patients are fully informed of their health options and are engaged in those individual health decisions.

    Peter Brooks MD FRACP – Professorial Fellow, School of Population and Global Health University of Melbourne

     

  • Repost. Refugee advocates and offshore processing. John Menadue

    This is a repost from 23 September, 2013. 

    The insistence on onshore processing for all asylum seekers is damaging the case for humane and sensible refugee policies.

    The blanket opposition to any offshore processing is understandable but it is just not working. Just look at the election result on September 7. The important issue is not where processing occurs but whether it is just, fair and efficient. Many of the asylum seekers who claim protection in Australia are not in direct flight from persecution. Most transit Malaysia and Indonesia. Some are asylum shopping.

    The major political parties  now compete with each other to deter and punish boat arrivals. In the public debate the preoccupation with boat arrivals by both politicians and the media has dramatically reduced support for an increased humanitarian intake and the end of mandatory detention.

    For many years I was a strong supporter of all asylum seekers coming to Australia  being processed in Australia. But I have changed my mind as the facts have changed, with over 17,000 boat arrivals in the six months to June this year. In world terms the numbers are small but the political mood has gone very sour which is threating the humanitarian case for generosity. Before the High Court decision on the Malaysian Agreement boat arrivals were about 300 people per month. They quickly quadrupled after the High Court decision and have continued to increase ever since. The High Court decision striking down the Malaysia Agreement undoubtedly gave oxygen to people-smugglers and many desperate people who were prepared to risk dangerous sea voyages. We cannot ignore their human rights.

    We need to urgently think again about transfers and regional processing.

    The UNHCR in a statement to the Australian Parliament on 30 September 2011 welcomed the transfer and regional arrangements with Malaysia. The Greens and refugee advocates cooperated with Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison to reject amendments to the Migration Act to allow the Malaysian Agreement to proceed. Asylum seekers are paying a heavy price for this unity ticket between the coalition, refugee advocates and the Greens

    There is a long history of UNHCR support for transfer of asylum seekers in appropriate circumstances. In 1998, the executive committee of UNHCR recognised that irregular migration, people smuggling and asylum flows are complex matters but concluded that a return to a transit country like Malaysia may occur provided there are appropriate safeguards, accepted international standards and effective protection against refoulement. Whilst such conclusions are not binding in law they do guide the work of the UNHCR and governments in what are acceptable international standards of behaviour towards asylum seekers.

    The UNHCR in Australia has just issued a ‘Guidance Note on bilateral and/or multilateral transfer arrangements of asylum-seekers’. It can be found on its website.

    Paragraphs 1 and 2,  say ‘It is UNHCR’s position that asylum seekers and refugees should ordinarily be processed in the territory of the state where they arrive or which otherwise has jurisdiction over them. This is also in line with general state practice. The primary responsibility to provide protection rests with the state where asylum is sought. Nevertheless there are an increasing number of initiatives in various regions involving the transfer of asylum seekers from one country to another for the purpose of processing their asylum claims. Such arrangements have typically involved the transfer of asylum seekers either (a) to the state where they first sought (or could have sought) asylum; or (b) to other countries with which the asylum seeker has no previous links. They have also involved both bilateral and/or multilateral (regional) arrangements.’

    The Guidance Note then went on to outline the principles against which any transfer arrangements should be assessed.

    In a joint article with Arja Keski- Nummi, published in the Melbourne Age on 13 December last year, we outlined a system of ‘practical protection’ that should apply to any transfer arrangements in our region. We set down several steps.

    • All countries should commit to the principle of non-refoulement.
    • Provide people with a legal status and access to work and education.
    • Work to help not only displaced people but also host communities.
    • Increase our refugee intake from our region.
    • Work with partners in the region in association with UNHCR to create an atmosphere of safety and trust.
    • Amend the Migration Act to assert the principle of ‘effective protection’ as outlined above.

    We badly need a political compromise based on effective processing whether onshore or offshore. This is necessary if we are to put an end to the political poisoning of the well of public support for asylum seekers and refugees, and to discourage desperate people making dangerous and fatal sea voyages.

    We need to rethink our blanket opposition to offshore processing. It is not helping the people most in need of our help. It has played into the hands of those, who for political reasons want the boats to keep coming as thick and fast as possible and in the process encourage us to fear and even hate asylum seekers.

    We need to fight harder and more astutely to help those in need of our protection. This is not the time to throw in the towel.

     

  • Asylum seekers – Tony Abbott and I share a Jesuit education. John O’Mara

    Like many Australians, I look on the way the Abbott government is handling the matter of asylum seekers with ever increasing dismay. Tony Abbott’s mantra “stop the boats”, is unprincipled, contrary to signed UN agreements and impractical. It is hard to erase the pre-election memory of the Western Sydney interviewee..”I’m going to vote for Abbott, because he’ll stop the boats “.

    What dismays me most is that Tony and I shared an educational experience at the hands of the Jesuits and then a friendship that reaches back almost 40 years.

    Like Tony, I’m very grateful for my time at a Jesuit school. In our day a substantial number of our teachers were Jesuits and we had the benefit of their highly trained minds, sharp moral sensitivities and educational method that always emphasized evidence over rhetoric. Even though the Jesuits were strong on presentation skills in argument, the argument had to have substance.

    Their clarity of thought and pursuit of learning for its own sake sets them apart from all other educators especially those I encountered at Sydney University. Their ability to look at all sides of an argument prior to coming to a conclusion was both stunningly simple, and at the same time extremely thought provoking.

    Surprisingly, our religious education in latter years included a look at many religions…Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Taoism, Protestantism and others. We were shown the merits of these religions and taught an all encompassing view of life and peoples.

    We were taught quite simply that the major requisites of Catholicism were: love, inclusion, and protecting or looking after those more needy…of any denomination. Fr Gerald Drumm went further, stating that as we were boys starting life from a privileged position in a Jesuit School, we owed it to our God, the Jesuits and ourselves to put our teachings in to practical effect if we were ever in a position to do so. It was as black and white as that!

    Tony and I were, from our earliest days taught people had an inherent dignity and to use them as a means to an end is the antithesis of anything the Jesuits taught us.

    Tony and I were both members of the SRC and had many battles with “the lefties”, both verbal and physical. We both enjoyed playing Rugby for Sydney Uni, if not for Australia. It was a time of great frivolity and for forging life-long friendships. But those playful undergraduate days are long gone. And now in government, the play is for real.

    Instrumentalizing desperate human beings for political advantage is absolutely unacceptable. As I said to Tony a couple of years ago over dinner…”Mate, you and I would be the first in a boat with our families were we to encounter the atrocities they have had to face“.

    The solution is again very simple. We must embrace these poor desperate souls, get them in to our communities and enrich our lives, and theirs. Give them the dignity to live without fear, give them the dignity to work and pay tax. Let us take the lead in a regional resettlement program to accommodate these people. No more detention centres, political bottom feeding, refugee camps or queues. Let’s get the Australian psyche back to where it should be.

    As Tony should know, playing to the xenophobes in Australia just flies in the face of well known facts about people movement and its cause in our region.

    Asylum seekers ARE NOT ‘ILLEGALS” they are our brothers and sisters.

    Tony’s and my Jesuit teachers are turning in the graves for the lack of logic, human sympathy and compassion let alone any reflection of what Jesus had to say about welcoming the stranger and going the extra mile. Bad luck for the Good Samaritan. He was a mug and would never get endorsement as a Coalition candidate.

    John O’Mara is Managing Director of Big Image Sydney Pty Ltd

  • Journalists are not welcome in Nauru. Elaine Pearson

    Dramatically increasing the cost of visas to enter Nauru places severe restrictions from the ability of journalists and others to let us know the truth about asylum seekers being held there. John Menadue

    Here’s an innovative way to discourage foreign media scrutiny of a touchy human rights issue: jack-up the cost of a journalist visa 40-fold, from A$200 to A$8000 (US$178 to US$7108). That’s precisely what the government of the small Pacific nation of Nauru has done, dressing up that skyrocketing increase as a means to “increase revenue.”  The fee is non-refundable even if the visa application is rejected.

    The real impact of the visa gouging will be to deter foreign media outlets and freelance journalists from seeking to report on Nauru’s main story of foreign interest – its treatment of asylum seekers. Currently, there are more than 700 people including pregnant women and dozens of children detained on the island, transferred from Australia in an offshore processing arrangement paid for by the Australian government.

    So what might Nauru have to hide? Poor conditions at the detention facilities, for starters. Asylum seekers are housed in tents, often with inadequate ventilation. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is unequivocal, stating that the “harsh physical conditions… not only do not meet international standards – they also have a profound impact on the men, women and children housed there.” Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has praised the conditions in the detention camp in Nauru as “certainly better than in Australian mining camps.”

    So far the Australian government has refrained from commenting on the move, with an immigration official saying “This is a matter for the government of Nauru.” But Nauru’s new measure is in line with Australia’s secrecy about asylum seeker policy and information on boat arrivals, claiming that national security permits its broad restrictions on access to information. It has been politically convenient to ship asylum seekers to isolated Nauru, far from the public view, where Australian media and voters can ignore their plight. It’s time for that approach to end.

    The new fees are nothing less than an attack on media freedom, intended to leave the world, and Australians in particular, with little way of holding the government of Prime Minister Tony Abbott accountable for its refugee policies. With no stories or pictures to present factual accounts of their treatment, the Australian government can continue to demonize those who seek asylum there. The Abbott government needs to make clear that it’s not a party to this outrageous infringement on the right to freedom of expression, by publicly demanding that Nauru drop this fee so that the world can know what is happening there.

    Elaine Pearson is the Australian Director of Human Rights Watch. HRW has just opened an office in Australia. See HRW.org.