John Menadue

  • Andrew Leigh. The remarkable persistence of power and privilege.

    If you want to know who made up Australia’s elite in the nineteenth century, a useful place to look is the Australian Dictionary of Biography. In its many volumes, you’ll find business leaders, scientists, media barons and politicians who have featured among the upper echelons of Australian society.

    Now, suppose we take the first cohort of significant Australians – those who died before 1880 – and identify those with unusual surnames like Ebden orMaconochie. People with those names were overrepresented among the elite in the nineteenth century. Are they still at the top of society, or are they mixed through?

    The answer to this question will depend on the level of social mobility we have in Australia. In a very mobile society, privilege dissipates quickly. Children of doctors become labourers, and children of cleaners become lawyers. “Class-jumping” is the norm. Conversely, in an immobile society, we should expect to see privilege perpetuated across generations. If wealth can easily be passed down to one’s children, if education is costly, and if jobs are based on old school ties rather than ability, then the same surnames will stay at the top across generations.

    For Australia, it turns out that if we look at the register of modern-day medical practitioners, we find the privileged names of the nineteenth century overrepresented by a factor of nearly three. In other words, if your ancestor was at the top of Australian society six generations ago, you are three times more likely than the average Australian to be a doctor today.

    In The Son Also Rises: Surnames and the History of Social Mobility, economist Gregory Clark uses rare surnames to learn more about the extent to which societies are fluid or static. Take the case of Samuel Pepys (1633–1703), the famous diarist who was secretary of the English Admiralty. Pepys has been a rare name since it entered the ranks of the elite in the late 1400s. And yet in the past 500 years, Pepyses have attended Oxford or Cambridge universities at a rate at least twenty times that of the general population. On average, those of them who’ve died over the past decade left wealth of at least five times the British average. Four of the eighteen living Pepyses are medical doctors. Only in a society with extremely low levels of social mobility would we expect a name to persist among the elites in this way.

    Analysing mobility in medieval England, Clark finds that people with names derived from jobs (Cook, Butler, Thatcher and so on) were more likely to move upwards, while those with names that derive from towns (including Baskerville, Pakenham and Walton) tended to move downwards. And not much changed after the industrial revolution. Surnames of Oxbridge graduates in the early 1800s, for instance, are three times as common among British MPs in the late 1900s.

    In the United States, tax return data for the top taxpayers was publicly reported in 1923–24. Nearly a century later, people with the same surnames as those who featured on the list are three to four times as likely to be doctors or lawyers, while those with lower-status names are underrepresented. People with the high-status surname Katz are twelve times as likely to be doctors and lawyers as those with the low-status surname Washington.

    In Japan, samurai surnames date back to before the 1868 Meiji restoration. Even today, they are overrepresented at least fourfold among doctors, lawyers, professors and writers. In China, Qing surnames overrepresented among the nineteenth-century elite are overrepresented among today’s corporate board chairs and government officials. In Chile, surnames overrepresented among landowners in the 1850s are still overrepresented among high-earning occupations.

    Strikingly, Clark finds persistence even in Sweden, one of the world’s most egalitarian societies. The 1600s and 1700s saw the creation of a set of “noble surnames,” which today have twice their expected share of doctors, five times their expected share of lawyers, and three times their share of members of the top 1 per cent of income earners. This degree of persistence of status across ten generations demonstrates the power of inherited privilege.

    GREGORY CLARK’s analysis of intergenerational mobility signals a marked shift in the way economists think about social mobility. In his 1988 presidential address to the American Economic Association, Gary Becker argued that “earnings are not strongly transmitted from fathers to sons.” Four years later, Gary Solon showed that prior researchers had been overestimating the degree of social mobility because they were using just a single year of data.

    To see how this happens, imagine a high-earning barrister who happens to take six months off work in the year of the survey. Now suppose his son becomes a high-earning barrister too. A study that used just one year of data might wrongly assume that this was a case of someone moving from rags to riches. But a study that used several years of data would see that both father and son were well-off.

    At this point, I need to introduce a few numbers. The standard measure of mobility across generations is the “elasticity” of children’s earnings with respect to their parents’ earnings – in other words, how closely the former reflects the latter. Because women have tended to have much lower rates of paid work, researchers have focused on the father–son earnings elasticity. An elasticity of zero means there was no relationship between the earnings of fathers and sons, while an elasticity of one would mean that a 10 per cent rise in fathers’ earnings was associated with a 10 per cent rise in sons’ earnings. The closer the elasticity gets to one, the less mobile the society.

    Elasticity measures aren’t confined to income. The elasticity of height, for example, is about 0.5, which means that if a father is ten centimetres taller than average then we expect his sons to be five centimetres taller than average. Sure, there are tall fathers with short sons (and vice versa), but basketball dads are generally taller than gymnast dads.

    In the case of earnings, economists’ best estimate of intergenerational elasticity went from 0.2 when they used a single year of earnings (as did the studies Gary Becker was relying on) to 0.4 when they used a few years of earnings (Gary Solon’s approach). Over the next decade, US researchers threw better and better data at the problem, and each time they found less and less mobility. Using more than a decade of earnings data, Bhashkar Mazumder estimated in 2005 that the intergenerational earnings elasticity for the United States was 0.6. That would put it higher than the father–son height elasticity. Among American sons, fathers had a larger impact on their earnings than on their stature.

    Using similar techniques, researchers began estimating father–son earnings elasticities for other countries. As one survey showed, Scandinavian nations tended to be extremely mobile, with elasticities below 0.2. In Latin America, there was much less class-jumping, with elasticities over 0.5. Compared with other nations, the United States is extremely immobile, a fact that Barack Obama has thankfully switched from denying (“In no other country on earth is my story even possible”) to decrying (“It is harder today for a child born here in America to improve her station in life than it is for children in most of our wealthy allies”).

    In 2006, while I was working as an economist at the Australian National University, I produced the first (and so far, only) estimates of the father–son earnings elasticity in Australia, putting the intergenerational elasticity at around 0.25. This means that a 10 per cent increase in a father’s earnings translates to a 2.5 per cent increase in his son’s earnings. My estimate implied that we are more socially mobile than the United States but not as mobile as Scandinavia. Looking back through the twentieth century, I found no evidence that we had become markedly more or less mobile.

    So what does the surname approach add to our understanding of mobility? Simply put, there are two reasons for using surnames. The first is that we only have good data on earnings (from surveys or administrative records) for the relatively recent past. If we want to understand mobility in centuries gone by, surnames may be the best torch for seeing into an otherwise dark statistical corner.

    The second, and more important, reason for using surnames is that they may help to take out some of the transitory fluctuations. Recall how we got more precise estimates of the intergenerational earnings elasticity when we used data that smoothed out the fluctuations in an individual’s earnings over a career? Call it the “odd year” problem. Now let’s think about a different problem: a family where the social status dips down for one generation, before reverting to the long-run average. You might call this the “black sheep” problem. By looking at surnames, we are able to look not just at single father–son pairs, but also at patterns for entire lineages.

    So once we take out the odd years and black sheep, how easy is it to jump between classes? Several assumptions need to be made in order to estimate an intergenerational elasticity from surnames. But if we accept Gregory Clark’s methodology, his results imply a very static society. For Britain, the United States, India, Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Chile and even Sweden, he concludes that the intergenerational elasticity is between 0.7 and 0.9. This would mean that social status is at least as hereditable as height. It suggests that while the ruling class and the underclass are not permanent, they are extremely long-lasting. Erasing privilege takes not two or three generations, but ten to fifteen generations. If you cherish the notion of a society where anyone can make it, these results are disturbing.

    How do we break the pattern? Part of the answer must lie in a fair tax system, a targeted social welfare system, effective early childhood programs, and getting great teachers in front of disadvantaged classrooms. We need banks willing to take a chance on funding an outsider, and it doesn’t hurt to maintain a healthy Aussie scepticism about inherited privilege.

    Yet Gregory Clark’s results also remind policy-makers that this is no easy nut to crack. Part of the transmission of social status occurs through genes. On top of this, people tend to marry those with similar levels of education; and researchers have also documented significant differences in parenting approaches among different social groups. Making the system a bit fairer is within our reach – but a complete transformation may prove elusive.

    Andrew Leigh is the Federal Member for Fraser and the Shadow Assistant Treasurer.  This article was published in Inside Story.

  • Stuart Harris. China is not seeking to break the rules of global order.

    Australia’s foreign policy, and notably its relations with the US and China, has been a mix of positives and negatives under the Coalition government, as was true of the previous Labor government.

    This reflects the lack of a broad strategic vision of Australia’s geographic realities and the evolving relationships involved.

    Former prime ministers, Gough Whitlam and Bob Hawke recognised the need for Australia to think strategically about future regional developments, and John Howard‘s thinking gradually moved in that direction. Such long term strategic thinking is more urgently needed today.

    The Asian region is changing, as are its regional dynamics. While the US is a Pacific power, it comes to Asia from outside. To complicate the picture, this is a region not only featuring China, but a China which is the largest trading partner with all Asian nations, including Australia. Our future relations with the region, in Northeast Asia and with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) particularly, will depend upon our relations with China as well as with the US.

    A coherent strategy needs to reflect the reality that we are linked to Asia from within the region. It needs to reflect the growing importance of China globally and to Australia, and to develop a political depth with that country similar to that with the US. And it will be increasingly difficult to continue separating economic and strategic issues (paralleling, as we do, the divide between engagers and confronters in US policy). Consequently, adapting historian Michael Howard’s injunction, we need greater understanding of China’s environment, history, and culture, including its political system; that understanding does not imply that we like that system, but that we are able to work effectively with it.

    The dominant and often one-sided Western perspective is not always helpful when judging whether China will be aggressive and expansionist, or whether it will live more or less peaceably with the rest of the world. We assume that terms like ‘international rules’, ‘global order’ and what constitutes ‘responsible behaviour’ are understood and accepted by all others. Yet for China, these terms have emerged from a different culture and historical experience. These differences in vision affect China’s foreign policy. Even so, despite obvious exceptions, such as human rights, in practice China is well integrated into the international system as we know it and largely complies with international rules – probably at least as well as other major powers. Despite criticism of China’s reluctance to lead internationally, that approach might suggest not just free-riding, but reluctance to challenge the existing global order.

    When China opened up under Deng Xiao-ping, it joined an international order that reflected a pluralistic view of the international community, that acknowledged differences in political and domestic value systems, and that pursued mutually acceptable global rules and geopolitical equilibrium. Then the common vision shifted and the membership bar was raised.

    Ultimately, a US led international system emerged that involved an agenda of good governance, ‘free’ markets and ‘democracy’ (usually just elections). These aimed to advance US security and its other interests. The objective of regime change under this agenda in Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Syria and perhaps Ukraine suggests we should be cautious about what we wish for. For China, in any case, it implies regime change, social instability, and the end of the Party/state.

    Of course, China has regional and global ambitions and China’s relative military and other capacities will grow, probably substantially. China wants a role that commands attention and respect from its neighbours, particularly in its ‘near abroad’, and we may not always like what it or others do. So a continued US presence in the region is critical; it needs, however, to manage relations between states rather than just pursue political change or impose views of complex issues that then become part of the problem.

    China feels internationally vulnerable and, as with the US, domestic nationalism influences its policies. Internally, China’s leaders fear fragmentation, instability and, after Bo Xilai, competition for power. China has major problems: corruption, inequalities, pollution, resource shortages, an aging population, and an economy that needs structural reform. Consequently, with domestic issues as its main priority, its foreign policies will remain largely defensive and reactive to external influences, rather than offensive and expansive. Moreover, it knows it needs stable relations with the US and its neighbours in order to sustain its development. It will seek changes to the rules by basically working within the existing framework.

    Obviously, maritime disputes are worrying but hardly central to Australia’s strategic interests. Sovereignty claims by all parties in the South China and East China Seas are unhelpful and pose serious risks of miscalculation. Outcomes that reflect resolution of sovereignty claims are unlikely. Our attention is understandably focused on China, but the historical context needs to be understood including China’s ‘missing out’ on territory in the 1960s/1970s regional ‘island grab’. Provocations and efforts to change the status quo are not limited to China or unconnected to the US pivot and the regionally divisive Trans Pacific Partnership.

    A US regional presence remains strategically important; our values, however, are often different, as at times are our vital interests, and we need to re-examine our concepts of regional order. There are considerable risks in Australia’s growing enmeshment in the US regional security system to where our security policy is increasingly a function of that of the US, and an independent Australian position difficult to maintain.

    These issues will become important in the future, possibly with long term potential dangers in adverse regional developments, notably potentially over Taiwan. US diplomatic management of such problems will remain critical, but history will treat unkindly any Australian political leader who, consciously or inadvertently, commits Australia to military conflict involving China without clear public support and a full parliamentary debate for which an explicit strategic assessment of Australia’s long term vital interests would be a prerequisite.

    Stuard Harris is emeritus professor in the Department O International Relations at the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific. 

    This article was also published by the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific website: http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/

    – See more at: http://www.policyforum.net/playing-by-rules/#sthash.ad9r7c6b.dpuf

  • Denis Muller. The stitch-up by The Australian.

    It is an ugly spectacle when a newspaper aligns itself with the executive government in an attempt to hound from office someone who can otherwise be removed only by the Governor-General. This is what The Australian is doing, in concert with Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Attorney-General George Brandis, to Australian Human Rights Commission President Gillian Triggs.

    It is the latest in a series of campaigns the newspaper has waged against those in public life with whom it disagrees or against whom it has a grievance.

    However, these campaigns have usually had the advancement of The Australian’s own self-interest or the settling of personal scores as their originating motivation.

    For example, it was aggrieved by its treatment at the hands of former Victoria Police chief commissioner Simon Overland. To settle the score, The Australian waged a sustained campaign for his removal. In the end, Overland resigned in messy political circumstances to which The Australian made a contribution by giving the then-Victorian Coalition government the strength of the newspaper’s convictions.

    More recently, The Australian waged a similar campaign against the then-chair of the Australian Press Council, Julian Disney, whose reforms to stiffen the effectiveness of the council the newspaper opposed. Disney served out his full term, which came to an end this month, but the campaign diverted energy and resources from the reform effort.

    However, in Triggs’ case, the originating motivation looks different. This time the motive appears to be purely ideological. The campaign is clearly designed to play into the political process in a way that is closely aligned with the political interests and strategy of the executive government.

    The contours of this strategy can be discerned from a statement by Brandis, reported in The Australian on Wednesday. Brandis is reported as saying that:

    … anger within the government intensified amid “very savage attacks” on Professor Triggs from MPs including the Prime Minister and “strongly expressed” criticism in the media, including in The Australian.

    It might well have read “principally The Australian”.

    Neat, isn’t it? Your media allies lend their platforms to help you advance your political objectives, and their coverage is then cited as a ground for legitimising those objectives.

    In our democracy, the media are meant to act as the “fourth estate” – the institution that holds to account the other three. It is a betrayal of this function to become enmeshed with the executive’s political strategy, as The Australian has done in the Triggs case.

    It is, of course, a matter of degrees. Clearly, the Coalition government and The Australian have a shared conservative ideology. It is well within their rights to share it. They are both affronted by what they say is anti-government partisanship on Triggs’ part, as they are obviously entitled to be.

    However, the point where shared ideology, shared political interests and shared opinions shade into betrayal of fourth-estate independence is difficult to define with precision. Some markers might be these:

    • To what extent and with what prominence does the newspaper publish material that is contrary to the shared political interest? For instance, what attention was paid, and with what prominence, to the offer of an alternative job said by Triggs to have been made to her in circumstances that suggested to her that it was an attempt to procure her resignation? This is a serious matter and it has been referred by shadow attorney-general Mark Drefyus to the Australian Federal Police for investigation.
    • What spectrum of opinion has been represented in the newspaper’s opinion pages on this matter?
    • What has been the tone of the news reportage?
    • To what extent is there evidence of interplay between government MPs and the newspaper in the way the story has developed? For instance, how much of the coverage is based on government backgrounding of the newspaper?

    So far, there is scant evidence of this last factor. But on the remaining three we can make some observations. The issue of a possible inducement received a very low level of attention; the spectrum of opinion has been all against Triggs; and the tone of reporting has been unmistakably hostile to her, as have the headlines.

    If it was just a one-off case, The Australian’s conduct would perhaps not merit such attention, but it is part of a pattern that ill-serves the public interest. There is a due process for removing statutory office-holders. The grounds for removing a member of the Human Rights Commission are confined to misbehaviour or physical or mental incapacity. Nothing Triggs has done has triggered that process.

    Triggs may have lost the confidence of Abbott and Brandis, but that is not a ground for removing her. As The Australian itself has said, she is on political trial and Abbott has delivered his verdict. In doing so, he spoke of a “stitch-up”.

    But if there is a stitch-up going on here, it is what the government and The Australian are joined in doing to Triggs.

    Denis Muller is Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism at University of Melbourne. This article first appeared in The Conversation on 25 February 2015.

  • Intergenerational Report and Australia’s future.

    In The Age on February 23, Sam Hurley from the Centre for Policy Development highlighted the importance of long-term policy priorities that will support people across all generations. He refers to the crucial issues that we must face that go beyond the one-liners about debt and deficit. See link to article below.  John Menadue.

    http://www.theage.com.au/comment/the-intergenerational-report-should-be-the-time-for-a-conversation-about-australias-future-20150223-13m59i.html

  • The economic potential of older people.

    In the SMH on February 22, Susan Ryan, the Age Discrimination Commissioner, described how many older workers are being ignored , yet they could be making a more significant contribution to the economy and society. For article, see link below. John Menadue

    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-economic-potential-of-older-people-is-being-ignored-20150222-13lfgt.html

  • The frontier wars – best we forget.

     

    I have posted many blogs about our refusal to acknowledge the frontier wars,  when we suffered the largest death toll in war in our history in relation to our population at the time. In the SMH on February 12, see link below, Tim Flannery draws our attention to the valour of 52 indigenous people who were killed near Casterton, Victoria, in the 1840s. The victors write history! These heroes have been largely expunged from our history. There were no rewards for those who were defending their homelands in the battle known as ‘Fighting Hills’. John Menadue

    http://www.smh.com.au/comment/we-shouldn8217t-forget-the-sacrifice-of-our-aboriginal-warriors-20150212-13bzib.html

  • Mark Triffitt and Travers McLeod. Don’t blame micro-parties or the Senate.

    Paul Keating famously labelled the Senate “unrepresentative swill”. Similar sentiments – while not as colourful – are being voiced by those frustrated with the blocking power of the Senate’s micro-parties.

    In a recent Australian Financial Review survey, leading corporate CEOs called for major reform to the Senate.

    At one level it is not hard to understand why. The Senate in general, and the minor and micro-parties that hold the balance of power in particular, were instrumental in gutting the Abbott government’s budget at a time when reform is pressing.

    Criticism of their power over policy will likely grow as the Senate casts a critical eye this year over the government’s attempts to reshape the budget and fix Australia’s tax system.

    But behind the singular criticisms of the Senate is a bigger picture of deeper dysfunction. It’s a picture that suggests the Senate is not a root cause, but part of a long list of symptoms that indicate our political system is increasingly unfit for purpose in the 21st century.

    Excluding micro-parties is not reform

    A clue to understanding these deeper problems lies in the complaints these business figures make. In essence, they lament how micro-parties are an increasingly powerful phenomenon, gaining outsized power compared to their meagre vote in elections.

    Many of the CEOs surveyed proposed that, in response, the Senate’s proportional voting system should be abolished. Or, at least, the system of preferential voting should be changed to stamp out the micro-party phenomenon.

    This would allow major parties to pass legislation with greater certainty and reduce the range of political parties able to hold the balance of power. It would also restore “representativeness” to our democratic system by ridding it of what one CEO described as “a disparate bunch of single-issue politicians”.

    On a superficial level, these and other proposals aimed at restoring the primacy of major parties seem to have merit. But these complaints overlook what is occurring within our political system, and the political arena more generally.

    On the face of it, democratic systems like Australia’s look the same as 20 or 30 years ago. Major parties dominate the day-to-day political process, presenting their policy programs at general elections as they vie to form government and represent the general public.

    But beneath the surface the relationship between citizens and these parties has been fundamentally and irreversibly weakened. This is reflected in membership and support for major political parties, which have fallen across the Western world.

    In contrast, support for smaller parties has risen sharply, albeit from low bases.

    Why?

    Because voter preferences are no longer shaped predominantly by class, ideology, ethnicity and geography. And it is to these catch-all attributes that major political parties traditionally appealed.

    19th-century model is showing its age

    In a 21st-century internet-driven, globalised world, the array of political choices and identities available to voters are increasing and fragmenting.

    This reflects broader changes in a society in which choices – political, social or economic – are influenced by a widening collection of complex factors.

    Major parties are finding it increasingly difficult to develop a coherent overarching narrative for what they seek in government and why it benefits the community as well as the individual over the long term.

    In contrast, voter fragmentation suits micro and minor parties. With their single or limited issues campaigns they can cut through the political noise with more succinct appeals and arguments. They offer retail politics in a wholesale world.

    Informal groupings and alliances of micro-parties likewise can respond more nimbly to the flux of 21st-century voter sentiment.

    In addition to the splintering of traditional voter blocs, voter choices are rarely static. Our democratic system is now characterised by larger and unpredictable cohorts of “swinging” voters. Their political preferences and voting intentions constantly change, often heavily influenced by a single issue or narrower policy platform.

    The major parties, as a result, become less flexible and responsive. Their feedback mechanisms are often stilted. They can be held up by procedural delays, adherence to party rules or structures, and even the “need” for cabinet solidarity.

    All this suggests micro-parties may not be some kind of unwelcome or unrepresentative intrusion into our democratic system, as conventional views would have it. Whether by accident or design, they have allied themselves with the way the 21st-century political world is being restructured.

    In short, all this should signal that new political configurations like micro-parties need to be accommodated, not curtailed.

    However, advocating more collaborative attitudes to politics and policy-making can only get us so far, particularly if major parties won’t work together on long-term reform.

    Our democracy needs new organising principles

    Ultimately the micro-party issue should begin to highlight how our political system is predicated on many organising principles that no longer apply.

    The system requires functional majorities – built on major parties achieving stable blocs of voter support – to get anything major done. This is a system where the languid decision-making processes of parliament are increasingly left behind by a super-speed 21st century.

    This is a system that seems unable to acknowledge what many citizens already know: that so much going on in our globalised and interdependent world escapes the control of territorially based parties and parliaments.

    Broader, progressive reforms to our democratic institutions are urgently needed to reflect the realities of a new political and policy world.

    We need to have a conversation about managing this world more effectively with more inclusive structures of policy-making and more innovative systems of voter input. The conversation needs to tackle some weighty issues, namely:

    • What is the role of political parties, both large and small, in this system and what processes might encourage more effective political and policy collaboration?
    • What sort of voting and electoral systems best capture and reflect the kaleidoscopic nature of today’s citizenry?
    • What reforms do our democratic institutions require so they can develop the policies Australia needs to thrive over the long term, beyond short-term political cycles that can turn in days?

    It is this path – not attempts to restore a world that no longer exists through piecemeal changes to a single part of the system – that will give our democracy the new lease of life it sorely needs.

    Mark Triffitt is Lecturer, Public Policy at University of Melbourne.

    Travers McLeod is Honorary Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at University of Melbourne.

    This article was first published in The Conversation on 23 February 2015.

     

     

  • Brian Johnstone. The forgotten children. The ethical dimension.

    Professor Gillian Triggs, president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, has found that by reason of its policy of the continued retention of children of asylum seekers, Australia has been and remains in breach of its international obligations. This applies to both major political parties. The legal argument is clear and has not been refuted. The best the Prime Minister could offer was bluster, condemning the report as a “transparent stitch-up.” Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson conceded that retaining children in detention was not in anyone’s interest, but provided no justification for continuing the detention.

    The Report of the Commission argues that asylum seeker families and children have been left “. . . [i]n a legal black hole in which their rights and dignity have been denied.” This ethical claim needs supporting argument.

    Contemporary philosophers and lawyers have been working to clarify the notion of dignity. A leading exponent is Charles Foster, Fellow of Green Templeton College, and University of Oxford in Human Dignity in Bioethics and Law (2011).

    Foster cites Christopher McCrudden’s summary of the basic, minimal agreed content of the notion of dignity drawn from international human rights texts; there are three points. The first is that “Every human being possesses an intrinsic worth merely by being human.” The second is that “This intrinsic worth should be recognised and respected by others;” it follows that some ways of treating others are inconsistent with this dignity or required by this dignity. The third is that the state exists for the sake of the individual person and not vice versa.   The first point is ‘ontological;’ it refers to the being of the person. The second is relational; it concerns ways in which persons connect with each other. The third is political; it expresses the basic priorities that should govern political judgments and activities.

    Foster begins his account with a question: “What makes humans thrive?” This was expressed in traditional philosophy drawing on Aristotle as “flourishing.” We can clarify what dignity requires and what violates dignity by asking what enables people to thrive. It is important for Foster’s argument that we can meaningfully ask this question not only of mature individuals, who we may presume are fully rational and free, but of the youngest children and of the most disabled. Foster argues that to make sound ethical and legal decisions we have to inquire empirically what is good for us.

    We can connect Foster’s arguments with the present debates in Australia. As cited by Kim Oates in his recent contribution, the Australian Government’s own Early Years Learning Framework describes three foundations as the basis for healthy childhood growth and progress for pre-schoolers: “Belonging, being and becoming.” We can adopt the same three points to develop an account of dignity that is more specifically related to the present Australian situation.

    To thrive, a human person needs to belong, that is to be part of a human community; this is the relational aspect of dignity. This community will normally be a family, but it could also be, of course, another group that takes over the role of the family. A family gives to its members and in particular to children what they need to thrive; food, clothing, affection, education. Children need to form relationships so as to establish a secure sense of themselves. Children characteristically achieve this by play-based behaviour. Learning to be themselves corresponds to the ‘ontological’ element of dignity.

    They are enabled to become more fully themselves by engaging their capacities to learn and develop. Becoming is another word for thriving. The adults who are responsible for the children themselves thrive by engaging in these processes on behalf of children.

    Thriving is the basis of dignity. But dignity entails more than this; it requires recognition. A parent or responsible adult recognizes the child as one who has inherent worth and enables a child to thrive. But the parent or adult who acts in such a way receives recognition also, recognition as a person of dignity.

    Dignity is always a two-way notion; when one person recognises the dignity of another, the other accepts that recognition and in so doing recognises the dignity of the first. When the first receives that recognition she can then recognise her own dignity.   I cannot recognise dignity in myself while I act in such a way as to refuse to recognise the dignity of the other.

    Dignity in one important aspect entails recognition of self, of one’s own inherent worth. But the individual cannot recognise her or his own worth, without recognising the worth of those others with whom they are engaged. An adult who denies to a child for whom she or he is responsible what the child needs to thrive is denying to himself what that adult needs to thrive, namely recognition of his own inherent worth. A community of persons who recognize their own inherent worth or dignity will want to protect others whose dignity they recognize, especially when that dignity is being violated. Such protection is a requirement of justice which is the basis of rights.

    Finally, the third element of the generally accepted notion of dignity also applies: the state exists for the sake of persons; persons may not be used as means for the benefit of the state and much less for keeping a political party in power.

    We can now return to the empirical investigation that Charles Foster requires. The report of the Australian Human Rights Commission on Children in Detention, “The Forgotten Children” clearly provides ample empirical evidence that the children in detention are not being adequately provided with the support that would enable them to thrive. Rather, the contrary is the case: they are being treated in ways that seriously damage their thriving.

    The case against the present policy of the Australian government regarding the detention of children can be summed up as follows:

    • The government is in violation of its international treaty obligations.
    • It is using the children as means to support its policies on refugees so as to remain in power, thus violating the due relationships between the state and individual persons.
    • Finally, those who support and implement these policies are violating the dignity of the children. In so doing they are denying their own dignity.   They make it impossible for themselves to recognise their own dignity. They also make it impossible for us, the citizens of Australia, to recognise their dignity.

  • Tony Kevin, Tony Abbott’s crassness could cost the Bali duo their lives.

     

    Let me first declare my biases. I believe that I honour and respect Indonesia’s values and culture. I oppose the death penalty in general. In this case, I would welcome an outcome that saved the lives of the last two members of the Bali Nine who now face execution In Indonesia, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, for the offence of smuggling drugs out of Indonesia in 2005. I believe every life saved from deliberate violent death affirms and enriches our collective humanity; and that the quest for consistency of action is the enemy of mercy. I also believe the murky AFP role in the history of the Bali Nine’s arrest as they were leaving Indonesia imposes a special moral obligation on Australia to do everything possible to try to save these two men’s’ lives now.

    Now let me comment on the Australian diplomacy surrounding this, as neutrally as I can. Over the years, Australian representations have had much success in securing commutation of sentences of many Australians accused of serious drug offences in Indonesia: most famously Schiapelle Corby, but also (in a very complex legal history – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bali_Nine) the other seven members of the Bali Nine. Andrew and Myuran are the last two, and it is their tragedy that their sentences could not be commuted in time under the former President Yudhoyono.

    Under President Jokowi, lines have been drawn in the sand. Indonesia’s national honour is now strongly engaged. And Tony Abbott’s ill-judged recent public diplomacy, if it can be called that, has made matters far worse. Abbott has possibly doomed the two men, though I still hope not.

    For an informed current Indonesian elite perspective, I turned to Yohanes Sulaiman’s piece in The Conversation yesterday   https://theconversation.com/why-indonesia-is-likely-to-ignore-protests-and-execute-bali-nine-duo-37645. Sulaiman expects Indonesia to ignore protests and execute the two men, because the domestic political costs for Jokowi of granting pardon is too great;   because there is strong elite Indonesian support for the death penalty in major drug cases; and because of a strong nationalist backlash against foreign pressure. Tellingly, Sulaiman cites an Indonesian Professor of International Law’s critique of UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon’s appeal in this case: where, he asks, was Ban when Indonesian migrant workers were executed in Saudi Arabia?

    The separate but coordinated appeals on 17 February by all six living former Australian prime ministers might of themselves have had some positive impact on President Jokowi, in light of the drama of the gesture and of Indonesian values of respect for age, wisdom and political seniority. The delay in taking the men to the execution island may have been a guarded initial response to those powerful appeals, from which I recall key words here:

    Kevin Rudd – “As a deep, long-standing friend of Indonesia, I would respectfully request an act of clemency.”

    Julia Gillard –   “I would find it heartbreaking if such extraordinary efforts to become of good character were not met with an act of mercy.”

    John Howard – “Mercy being shown in such circumstances would not weaken the deterrent effect of Indonesia’s strong anti-drug laws.”

    Paul Keating – “In this case, the penalty is out of all proportion to the crime.”

    Bob Hawke – “I call on the Indonesian government to show mercy and clemency … Justice should be based on human understanding… ”

    Malcolm Fraser – “We are very much opposed to the death penalty in Australia.”

    Unfortunately, Abbott may have the very next day, 18 February, destroyed this glimmer of hope by his crass and over-the-top linking of past Australian generous disaster relief aid to Indonesia to the fate of the two men. As in the presidential eavesdropping episode, well remembered by Indonesians, he compounded the error by his defiant refusal to admit afterwards that his linkage had been a threat: “No, I was just stating facts”.

    Abbott has now left Jokowi in the unpalatable position that any act of clemency could be seen as succumbing to Abbott’s thinly veiled blackmail.

    And where does this leave Abbott if Indonesia does execute the men? If Indonesia then experiences a major natural disaster while Abbott is still our PM, will he really announce: ‘No, we won’t help you, because you executed Chan and Sukamaran.”? I don’t think so: Abbott’s veiled threat is actually hollow. But it will nevertheless be long remembered in Jakarta as another notorious example of Australian arrogance and lack of manners. It may have spoiled whatever good the intervention of the six former prime ministers might have done.

    Chan and Sukamaran’s best hope now is for Abbott and his ministers – indeed, for any Australian politician – to say nothing more in public on the matter. Let Jakarta try if it can to find a way over coming weeks to deal with this further damaging episode in Australian –Indonesian relations: hopefully, in a way that spares these two last Bali Nine members’ lives.

     

  • Peter Day. Life is sacred, but ….

    The “other” is no longer a brother or sister to be loved, but simply someone who disturbs my life and my comfort … In this globalized world, we have fallen into globalized indifference.  We have become used to the suffering of others: it doesn’t affect me; it doesn’t concern me; it’s none of my business!      (Pope Francis)

    I had the misfortune recently of watching the Four Corners investigation into live-baiting in the greyhound industry – trainers were filmed using live rabbits, piglets and possums to instil the blood lust in dogs in order to improve their chasing/racing skills.

    I imagine there will be – it’s already started – an almighty avalanche of anger directed towards those who pursue cruelty in order to benefit financially – and justifiably so.

    Life is sacred – even the lives of rabbits, possums, and piglets.

    Similarly, there is an almighty howl of protest concerning the pending executions of drug traffickers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran – and justifiably so.

    Life is sacred – even the lives of drug traffickers.

    And, what of those forgotten children in Australian immigration detention centres: again, much angst and chest beating – and justifiably so.

    Life is sacred – even the lives of ‘illegals’ and strangers and ‘queue jumpers’.

    Perhaps one day the mainstream media and the public might dare to pursue, also with moral courage, the plight of the unborn; tens of thousands of whom disappear without trace each year – I’m especially concerned for those victims of late-term abortions (i.e. 16 weeks and beyond).

    Life is sacred – even the lives of the tiny and ‘unseen’.

    In regards to the latter, a notoriously emotive and neuralgic issue, it is vital that we do not allow the bullying of religious nutters and moralists to justify a “we cannot afford to go there” approach – to justify shutting down debate.

    Indeed, is it not the case that in order to counter this rigid and unattractive polemic, and to ensure I am not seen to be in their camp; we have, as a collective, tended to gravitate towards the more comfortable and acceptable narrative of the so called ‘social progressives’; the one that espouses tolerance and individual freedom; the one that encourages a polite acquiescence – but at what price and at whose expense?

    Surely, in a world where whales and rabbits and old trees and heritage buildings are treated as precious, as of significant value – and rightly so, there is room for a mainstream and adult conversation about those other forgotten children.

    I am not in any way suggesting yet another unseemly finger-pointing exercise, nor am I advocating criminalisation. Indeed, compassion compels one to want to walk alongside a woman confronting such a choice, even to cry with her.

    Further, this issue cannot be reduced to simplistic labelling – i.e.  you’re either pro-abortion or anti-abortion, pro-life or pro-choice – left v right etc. It’s far more complex and layered than that.

    What I am advocating is a robust and reasoned, if sometimes heated, public conversation like those we have around those other conservation issues alluded to above.

    Perhaps such a conversation might begin with a question: “What does it mean to be human?”

    For now, at least, we seem to be mired in more of that globalised indifference which insists upon silence.

    Peter Day is a Catholic parish priest in Canberra.

     

     

  • Mary Chiarella. Luke Foley – Nurse-led clinics and primary health care.

    In 2011 I gave the last Oration for what was originally the NSW College of Nursing in the Great Hall of Sydney University. In it I advocated for nurses to be able to work to full scope of practice, particularly in the area of primary and preventive health care, in order to alleviate demands on our overstretched hospital systems. Given we currently have a significant oversupply of nurses in this country, especially in our new graduate population, this seems like an excellent time to deploy nurses into some of these roles, long overdue in Australia but commonplace in other parts of the world. . The first ever NSW College of Nursing Oration was given on the 15th September 1953 by M.I. Lambie, who was not only the first Orator for the College, but the first woman to give an Oration in the Great Hall of Australia’s oldest university. Miss Lambie was the New Zealand Nursing Adviser to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Chair of the Expert Nursing Committee of WHO. Let me read to you her introductory words as she talks of the problems in health care in the developed world:

    These facts have caused increasing demands on hospitals; the rapid turnover in surgical beds together with the larger numbers of elderly and chronic patients has forced consideration to be given to the whole problem of hospitalisation by many authorities. The increased use of hospitals means automatically more staff or the better use of existing staff”[1]. 

    Plus ca change, plus la meme chose. She goes on to advocate for the growth in primary health care that is occurring in developing countries “putting more emphasis on the preventive aspect, which in turn will set an example to many of the older countries”. Well sadly not much yet, Miss Lambie, not much yet. I’m afraid the people you were advising didn’t take your excellent advice. Lots of us have been there.

    She goes on to say

    These are examples whereby preventive means, home education and treatment have reduced the demands for hospital beds. In fact it would not have been possible to treat in this mass way in an institution. The education of the home for this kind of treatment means, however, the preparation of a worker to carry out the program. Funnily we speak of this NEW approach to medicine, and yet in her Notes on Nursing, Florence Nightingale speaks of “the need to nurse the home as well as the family[2]. 

    So we come full circle in what is needed for health care in Australia, advocated by Florence Nightingale in the 19th century, advocated by the first NSW College of Nursing Orator, Miss Lambie in the 20th century, and advocated in the 21st century by the (then) Australian Nursing Federation[3]. Let us hope, in the promises of Luke Foley to introduce four nurse-led clinics in NSW should Labor win the next election, that the wise words of our nursing forebears do not have to wait another 62 years before somebody decides to act on them. This is so obvious a solution that one wonders why it is not commonplace, rather than tentative.

    Mary Chiarella is Professor of Nursing, Sydney Nursing School, University of Sydney.

    [1] Lambie IM (1953) First Annual Oration The changing scene in health work throughout the world in The 50th Anniversary Annual Orations Vol I NSW College of Nursing: Sydney, p.9

    [2]  Ibid, p.10

    [3] Australian Nursing Federation (2009) Primary health care in Australia: a nursing and midwifery consensus view ANF: Canberra

  • Warwick Elsche. Abbott and Credlin.

    It was on again – all last week. Apart from the uncertain future of Prime Minister Tony Abbott, all political talk was of Peta Credlin his Chief of Staff and unquestionably the most talked of, written about, high profile staffer in living memory – maybe ever.

    Over more than five years in Opposition and Government, the Prime Minister himself has lauded her importance in his office and the influence she wields on him and his decision making. Apart from normal duties she has been rewarded with the role of vetting Cabinet Papers from all Ministers, unheard of in previous administrations. Equally unprecedented is the place she has taken at the Cabinet table, where she reportedly feels free to speak if so moved.

    She had the power to vet and reject staff appointments by even the most senior Ministers and to determine what staff may travel overseas with Ministers.

    Such was her profile that Australia’s Security Organisation, ASIO, – not famous for its assessments – warned her to be more cautious with her own travel arrangements because of the vital role she played in Government. No shrinking violet, Credlin seems to share this view, having reportedly described herself as the girl who nearly won the 2010 election and did win in 2013.

    She is, say some, the brains behind the PM; others that she is merely a major influence on him. And “no” say more, who seem to share her assessment of herself. She is, to them, a key figure across the entire operations of the Government. Abbott, whose political judgement is currently under heavy questioning from both colleagues and the electorate, has added to the legend with paeans of praise both in public and private.

    The current hubbub over Credlin however is somewhat on a different note. Far from currently being seen as an ongoing Liberal celebrity, a significant majority of her former admirers are now viewing her in a different light. To them she is now viewed as a villain, a liability and a scapegoat for the Government’s current failings. At a time when her supposed talents for both boss and government are most in demand, she seems, despite the lofty reputation, to be coming up seriously short. And if Tony’s political instincts are so blunted as to leave him unaware of this, those of his colleagues do not appear to be. They now want her gone – a desire being expressed embarrassingly openly – NOW.

    Abbott’s own performance and fortunes from the time he took the Liberal leadership have been, on his own admission, linked almost totally with Credlin. Now, for the first time, the lofty reputation associated with Credlin is being questioned where it most matters – in the ranks of the Government itself. Her real worth to the Prime Minister is under close examination. After all, despite her vaulted influence, Abbott was left for more than four years pushing his universally unpopular Paid Parental Leave scheme. It was finally dumped when rejected by business, the electorate and his own Party. She argued with, not against, her boss against senior Ministers on the introduction of a six month initial ban on dole payments to the unemployed – a policy virtually guaranteed to get negative votes from every under -25 in the country and many others closer to the problem than are the comfortable Northern Sydney home environs of Abbott and his Treasurer Joe Hockey.

    Her reputed sharp political instincts failed to prevent his ludicrous decision to bestow a knighthood on Prince Phillip. In 18 months of Government she seems to have been unable to move the Prime Minister from his pathetic claims of achievement for his Government based on killing the Carbon Tax and the Mining Tax and stopping the boats. The last two of these accomplishments make no difference whatever to the everyday lives of any Australians.  On the Carbon Tax a more lively Opposition might pressure the PM to produce a single Australian family which has benefitted from Abbott’s promise of $11.00 a week once the tax was gone. This promised benefit is a theme Credlin allows him to continue although power bills nationwide show the $11.00 a week to be another Abbott fiction.

    Credlin, it seems, has also failed to appreciate that continued criticism of the previous Labor Government is neither some form of Government action – nor an excuse for inaction. At a time when polls are showing critical lows for both Abbott and his Government it is obvious this line is not working. Abbott badly needs something newer, something better. The electorate demands it and his parliamentary colleagues are joining in the push. But, between them, Abbott and his supposedly gifted lieutenant have been unable to produce anything to replace the whinge against Labor that he adopted from day one of his prime ministry. That theme, boringly overworked as it is, no longer works – look again at the polls.

    Given the dire poll position of both Abbott and Government and the growing threats to his leadership we would perhaps have expected to see Credlin at her best in the last couple of weeks. Tony and everybody else saw last week’s Press Club Address as an opportunity to suppress the growing dissatisfaction with his leadership and to reassure the country that he knew how to secure its future. But Abbott was provided with no inspiring message, no vision for the future, which might calm those now anxious about his leadership. Several times he told us Australia needed “a strong economy”. There was talk of “more jobs” but there was no outline whatever of how either of these might be achieved. There was much ”where to go” but no idea how to get there. Otherwise there was a jot of xenophobia and much more of the by now predictable overdose of criticism of his Labor predecessors.

    Is Credlin slow or is it Tony? Following his “near death experience” and promise to change and to listen, having refused requests (demands) for Peta’s dismissal, he must surely have employed his best resources on his road to recovery. But what have we seen? A continuation of his series of stumbles headed by a very unimpressive speech informing us of his narrow victory in which he included the very dubious assertion that there was no future threat to his leadership. This was followed by a stuff-up – bordering on deception – about the process to be followed in procuring Australia’s next submarine fleet when it is highly likely that in a matter of days it will be revealed that a Japanese submarine deal was a condition of the final signing of the Free Trade Agreement. Then he further isolated himself in his Party with the sacking of the insignificant but respected Philip Ruddock as the Chief Government Whip. Abbott claimed Ruddock had failed to inform him of the strength of back bench feeling about his leadership. No one wanted him removed. Credlin similarly failed to assess for Abbott the extent of the threat (doesn’t anyone in the PM’s supposedly efficient office read newspapers or watch TV)? Unlike with Ruddock there was a clamour for her removal. In what may prove another error of judgement, Ruddock went and Credlin stays. Then there was his inept disclosure in Parliament of evidence which would almost certainly be used in an upcoming terrorist trial. Then he put his popularity further at risk with an extraordinary attack on the internationally respected Human Rights Commissioner, Gillian Triggs.

    NOT A GREAT FIRST WEEK OF A REVITALISED PRIME MINISTER AND THE START OF “GOOD GOVERNMENT”.

    Under pressure, where is the evidence of the genius we have been told is running his office and where has this guidance taken the Prime Minister and his troubled Government in its first 18 months. We have a Prime Minister who, according to Newspoll, the poll most respected by both major parties, with a near record low approval rating of 24% and a record high disapproval rating of 68%. And what about the Government that Credlin and others have claimed she influences. The same respected poll has it trailing a rather colourless Opposition 57% to 43% – landslide territory – with a Primary vote at a Rudd-like level of 35%.

    If Peta Credlin, with her reputed influence and control of both PM and Government generally, has contributed in any way to the dire position in which both PM and Party find themselves, calls for her replacement can hardly be seen as unreasonable. If, on the other hand, she, is advising otherwise and being ignored, one can only wonder at the lofty reputation of control and influence and there would appear to be little reason for the PM not to appease his critical backbench by allowing her to go.

    But Abbott, in the old schoolboy marbles term, has chosen to “stick fats” with Credlin. Are we seeing yet another example of the Prime Minister’s poor political judgement?

    Warwick Elsche is Pearls and Irritations’ Canberra correspondent.

  • The Forgotten Children.

     

  • Jill White. Nurse Led Clinics for NSW.

    Luke Foley – great!

    Congratulations on committing to nurse led clinics as part of to a primary health care strategy to increase access to community based health care. The four nurse led clinics promised last week are a welcome adjunct to the current but often overstretched GP services.

    The ACT has led the way in nurse led clinics with the first, based in an emergency department, being evaluated as providing high quality safe and appropriate care; however where there was also easy access to medical care there was the risk of over-servicing lessening the cost effectiveness.  So with lesson learned the two new ACT services are in underserviced areas and are providing high quality care to a population which otherwise would have had difficulty in quick and affordable access to health care. Information on these services is available through ACT Health. It is a success story, ask the people of Belconnen and Tuggeranong.

    Our current NSW Minister for Health, Jillian Skinner, also has a public track record of commitment to improving community based services. So come on Jillian, match this promise and let’s not let party politics and election posturing get in the way of a really good idea for the health of the public.

    The past few weeks has clearly demonstrated that we are heartily sick of party based oppositional politics and if NSW does not want to risk going down the same path as Queensland or suffering the public disenchantment experienced by the Prime Minister this is the moment and this is the issue to demonstrate that the health of the public is a genuine bipartisan concern and that this is an excellent strategy. Let’s make these clinics a reality irrespective of any election and have a public commitment from both sides of politics NOW.

    I can’t let this topic go however without addressing Saxon Smith’s comment on behalf of the AMA in the SMH yesterday. He is quoted as saying “There is actually evidence suggesting nurse-led clinics can make the quality of the care worse”. What research? Conducted how and where and published in what peer reviewed journal? It is a glib and easy thing to say but where is the evidence? How does it stack up against the 20 years of rigorous, published, Australian based research which clearly demonstrates the safety and quality of the work of Nurse Practitioners?

    It’s always worth reminding ourselves  that the AMA is not only a professional body but it is also the doctor’s union and protecting income and turf is its job. We have 25 years of documented AMA opposition and scare tactics about nurses being able to work to their full scope of practice and making a broader contribution to community health.

    The vast majority of doctors in practice with whom I speak fully support an extension of the role of nurses in primary health care/ community care. They particularly understand the need to provide better access to underserved communities. This is work nurses want to do, are educated to do, and have the skills to do. Luke and Jillian please bring it on, make the commitment and don’t let better healthcare become a political football.

    Jill White was formerly the Dean of the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at Sydney University. 

  • Marie Coleman. Human Rights Commission and the forgotten children.

    In February 2015 the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse found that Cardinal George Pell, the former Archbishop of Sydney, had placed the church’s financial interests above his obligation to a victim of childhood sexual abuse.

    In February 2015 the Prime Minister of Australia, supported by his Ministers, has launched a blistering attack on a distinguished legal scholar and President of the independent statutory Australian Rights Commission, for a report which has found that both the Labor and Coalition Governments have failed to protect children in mandatory detention from abuse and mental and physical harm.

    Professor Gillian Triggs has found that Australia has been and remains in breach of its international obligations- under both parties. Among other straightforward and completely nonpartisan recommendations she has recommended that “An independent guardian be appointed for unaccompanied children seeking asylum in Australia” rather than the current position of the Minister for Immigration being both the guardian of such children, and the Minister responsible for their mandatory detention.

    The Royal Commission has been investigating historic instances of abuse, exploring the approaches which institutions responsible for such abuse have responded to reports of individual cases, as well as options for reparations.

    The thrust of the AHRC Report, The Forgotten Children, is to explore and document what have been the outcomes for children placed in mandatory detention, and to develop future policies and legislation which will prevent such dreadful outcomes ever again being visited on children.

    The Minister for Immigration, Peter Dutton MP, has asserted that the AHRC Report is irrelevant because any instances of maltreatment of children have been historical. The second leg of the Government’s response to the AHRC report seems to be that because Labor did it, then the Coalition’s actions, if harm has been done, are justifiable.

    The Opposition has essentially mumbled.

    The unpalatable situation is that neither Labor nor the Coalition has any way to escape from the fact that one outcome of their policies on immigration and refugees (stopping the boats) has been to put children through hell, and put Australia in breach of its obligations under international law.

    No equivocations about whether for an adolescent girl to go mad and cut herself on Nauru is better than drowning at sea, no claiming that this wouldn’t have happened if the Coalition had allowed Labor to send refugees to Malaysia, will alter the fact that neither Labor nor the Coalition has been able to articulate an acceptable , transparent and  legal method of dealing with the inevitable pressures from populations moving from political anarchy, oppression, assassinations and starvation in home countries.

    The cost of current off shore detention of refugees in 2014-15 was estimated by an Immigration Department official as $1 billion. Running the detention centre on Manus Island has cost taxpayers $632.3 million, and the operational cost of Nauru was $582.4 million, a Senate estimates hearing was told. That’s a billion dollars a year for the foreseeable future…without giving thought to the ultimate health costs for the treatment of health and psychological damages to the refugees. It doesn’t include other costs such as the role of the Australian Navy and Customs in ‘on water’ activities.

    Surely it isn’t beyond the capacity of this nation’s leaders to develop alternative strategies?

    Former NSW Premier Nick Greiner described as “awful” the fact that Australia was the only nation in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development that indefinitely detained children in mandatory detention.

    “The principle that Australia … finds it necessary to be virtually the only civilised nation that does this, I think is just abhorrent,” he said….”we now ought to look at the humanity of what we do”, he said.

    Last month NSW Premier Baird called on Mr Abbott, a close friend, to do more to accept refugees. Asked if children should be released from immigration detention, Mr Baird said “that’s something I’ve supported for a long time”.

    In an interview with 3AW, Mr Abbott said the commission should be ashamed of itself and that its report was a “blatantly partisan” and political exercise.

    He said the commission should acknowledge the government for stopping the flow of asylum seeker boats and dramatically reducing the number of children in detention.

    “I reckon the human rights commission ought to be sending a note of congratulations to Scott Morrison saying well done, mate,” Mr Abbott said, referring to the former immigration minister.

    Asked if he felt any guilt about the remaining 200 children still in detention, Mr Abbott was blunt: “None whatsoever.”

    “The most compassionate thing you can do is stop the boats,” he said.

    He said the only way to ensure there were no children in detention was to ensure there were no boats arriving.

    Numbers of children in immigration detention peaked at nearly 2000 in mid-2013 under Labor. There are now only about 200 children still detained.

    The Australian Human Rights Commission report wants actions taken to prevent such a situation ever developing again.

    “The human rights commission ought to be ashamed of itself,” Mr Abbott said, when asked about the report.

    So that’s all right. The Prime Minister thinks his policy is tops. A great policy in fact.

    As the distinguished PUP Senator for Queensland, Glenn Lazarus might put it ‘you can polish a turd, but it’s still a turd’.

    Marie Coleman AO PSM is a former senior Commonwealth Public Servant with a background in social policy.

  • Climate change – If only!

    Last Saturday David Cameron, the British PM, Nick Clegg, the Deputy PM and Leader of the Liberal Democrats, and Ed Milliband, Leader of the British Labour Party, signed a joint pledge on climate change.

    The three leaders agreed on three particular pledges

    • ‘To seek a fair, strong, legally binding, global climate deal which limits temperature rises to below 2 degrees centigrade.’
    • ‘To work together, across party lines to agree carbon budgets’
    • ‘To accelerate the transition to a competitive, energy efficient low carbon economy and to end the use of unabated coal for power generation.’

    If only Tony Abbott, Bill Shorten, Christine Milne and Clive Palmer could come to a similar deal!

    I have not seen this reported in any Australian mainstream media.

    For more information on this encouraging deal in the UK see link to the Guardian below.

    http://gu.com/p/45ng5/sbl

  • Don’t arm Ukraine.

    In July last year, Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop were eager to commit Australian police and Australian troops to Ukraine in the aftermath of the shooting down of MH17 by Russian separatists. Their plan didn’t work out as they hoped.

    I have carried blogs by Richard Butler and Cavan Hogue about the geopolitical risks of NATO and the West expanding to the border of Russia.

    As the war in Ukraine is now escalating, there have been increasing calls within the US for the arming of the Ukraine. John Mearsheimer in the New York Times of February 8 presents a compelling case for not arming Ukraine. He urges that the best outcome would be a neutral Ukraine. For NY Times article see link below.  John Menadue

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/09/opinion/dont-arm-ukraine.html?_r=0

  • Peter Day. The Lucky Country

    Beneath our radiant Southern Cross,

     We’ll toil with hearts and hands
    To make this Commonwealth of ours
    Renowned of all the lands.
    For those who’ve come across the seas,
    We’ve boundless plains to share.

    With courage let us all combine
    To advance Australia fair.     

                  (Our National Anthem, Verse 2)

    The nature of politics these past few years, especially that practiced by the two main parties, reminds one of a bitter marriage struggle – one destined for the courts. So consumed have ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ been by their anger, by their need for revenge, and by their need to win at all costs, they’ve forgotten the ‘children’.

    This toxic process, and breakdown of civility, leaves little room for those who cannot compete. So the children get pushed aside as the bickering gets louder, as pettiness replaces depth, and as power and fear leave love and compassion in their wake.

    This appears particularly pertinent in regard to those seeking asylum – especially children. Too often their voices are drowned-out by the self-centered tantrums and fear-mongering of our political parents.

    Such leadership is disappointing because it undermines sensible and reasoned public discourse. We become wedged by emotive opposites: It’s left versus right, bleeding hearts v cold hearts, queue-jumpers versus the desperate, “stop the boats” v ”let them come”.

    Beneath this canopy of emotion and fear, people tend to become more tribal than usual – more susceptible to propaganda as well. Thus, when we are told that our borders and lifestyle are threatened; our natural response is to build a wall to keep the ‘enemy’ out. Before we know it, we find ourselves living in a sort of gated community: one that covets security, prosperity and the status quo.  And anyone who threatens this way of life, “this tribe of mine”, is either refused entry or banished. 

    A Parable

        There was a Lucky Country that enjoyed freedom and prosperity, and lived in luxury every day.  At its doorstep arrived a fearful beggar; hungry and frightened after a long journey; covered with sores, and longing to eat what fell from the Lucky Country’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

        The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The Lucky Country also lost its life and was buried.

        In its torment, it looked up and saw Abraham far away with the beggar by his side. The Lucky Country called out to Abraham, ‘Father, have pity on me and send the beggar to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this torment.’

        But Abraham replied, ‘Remember, in your lifetime you received many good things: freedom, prosperity, comfort; while this poor beggar received bad things: political oppression, poverty, abandonment. Now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 

        ‘And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

        The Lucky Country answered, ‘Then I beg you, Abraham, send the beggar to my family, for I have 22 million brothers and sisters. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

        Abraham replied, ‘They hear the stories, they hear the cries, they even hear the Word; let them listen to these.’

        ‘No, father Abraham,’ said the Lucky Country, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will change their minds and hearts.’

        Abraham said to the Lucky Country, ‘If they do not listen to all that is before them, they will not be convinced even if their Christ, who has Risen from the dead, speaks to them.’

    (Adapted from Luke 16:19-31)

    Of course, as a nation, we cannot simply say, “Everyone welcome, no matter what.” We do need an orderly migration process. We do have a moral responsibility to bankrupt the people-smuggling trade. We do need to make some tough calls. But we also need to ensure that the response to the ‘Lazaruses’ at our feet is not shaped by silly slogans and a kind of small-minded nationalism.

    And, while some have tried, none of us is in a position to take the moral high ground either. This is too complex an issue to be hijacked by the self-righteous.

    We are mostly a generous nation. We are mostly a fair nation. We are a Lucky nation. It behoves us, then, to reflect deeply, and humbly, about our obligations to the ‘beggars’ at our feet.

    It prompts the question: Can I forgo a little personal comfort in order to comfort someone else?

    Fr Peter Day is the Parish Priest, Corpus Christi, Archdiocese of Canberra and Goulburn.

     

  • Mercy, judgement, confession and reconciliation.

    In the Australian Parliament debate concerning possible executions in Bali, Shadow Foreign Minister, Tanya Plibersek, spoke about the second chance that her husband had received. Her husband, Michael Coutts-Trotter, is now a senior NSW public servant. He had been a drug dealer in the early 1980s. Tany Plibersek commented ‘I imagine what would have happened if he had been caught in Thailand instead of Australia where the crime was committeed.  … What would the world have missed out on? They would have missed out on the three most beautiful children we had together. They would have missed out on a man that spent the rest of his life making amends for the crime that he committed. ‘  Her husband commented, ‘I was afforded a second chance by our Australian justice system. I remain grateful for that every day.’

    In the US there has also been discussion about mistakes and recovery. The NBC News anchor Brian Williams stepped down from his post after he admitted that he had exaggerated a story from his coverage of the Iraq invasion.

    David Brooks, in the NY Times – see link below – has written what I sense is one of the most insightful articles about mercy, judgement, confession and reconciliation. Christians and particularly Catholics speak a lot about confession and reconciliation. But David Brooks in his article The Act of Rigorous Forgiving gives the best account that I can remember on this delicate but critical subject. David Brooks is not a Christian. He is Jewish.  John Menadue

    http://nyti.ms/1IJuwHo

  • Melanie Noden. The Forgotten Children.

    Earlier this week, a damning report by the Australian Human Rights Commission into children in detention was tabled, alleging extensive human rights violations. The Report clearly spells out the negative physical and psychological impact that policies of indefinite detention have on children and brings to light the concerns that many people already have about the treatment of asylum seeker children in Australia’s care.

    The Report recommends that a royal commission needs to be established to  examine the breach of the Commonwealth’s duty of care, focussing in particular on the use of force against children in detention, and allegations of sexual assault.

    Gillian Triggs, President of the Australian Human Rights Commission said,“It is troubling that members of the Government and Parliament and Departmental officials are either uninformed, or choose to ignore, the human rights treaties to which Australia is a party”.  

    The Report was issued after 1,129 children in detention were interviewed. It shows there were 233 recorded assaults involving children and 33 incidents of reported sexual assaults.

    The Report alleges human rights violations and says that children being detained indefinitely on Nauru are “suffering from extreme levels of physical, emotional, psychological and developmental distress“.

    Recommendations of the report are as follows:

    • all children to be released from Australian mainland detention and from detention centres on Nauru
    • laws be introduced to make sure children are not detained beyond health, identity and security checks
    • laws be introduced to give effect to the Convention on the Rights of the Child
    • No child to be sent offshore for processing unless it is clear that their human rights will be respected
    • An independent guardian be appointed for unaccompanied children on Christmas Island

    It is Gillian Triggs’ hope that the Report will, “…prompt fair-minded Australians, Members of Parliament and the Federal Government to reconsider our asylum seeker policies and to release all children and their families immediately”

    She also stated that, “It is imperative that Australian governments never again use the lives of children to achieve political or strategic advantage. The aims of stopping people smugglers and deaths at sea do not justify the cruel and illegal means adopted. Australia is better than this.”

    I and my colleagues in the sector welcome the recommendation to establish a royal commission to investigate what has been happening behind the closed gates of the detention centres to ensure clear parameters are established for future policy.

    To this effect, The Asylum Seekers Centre has joined the Refugee Council of Australia and other agencies in signing a joint statement calling for legislative change to ensure that children are not subject to immigration detention in the future.

    Melanie Noden is the CEO of the Asylum Seekers Centre, Sydney.

    The report can be found here:https://humanrights.gov.au/publications/forgotten-children-national-inquiry-children-immigration-detention-2014

     

  • David M Neuhaus SJ. The Future of Christians in the Middle East. Part 2.

    Christian institutions and discourse

    In the Exhortation of Pope Benedict XVI, ‘The Church in the Middle East,’ the Pope pointed to the preeminent role of the Christian institutions in the mission of the Christians in the Middle East.

    “For many years, the Catholic Church in the Middle East has carried out her mission through a network of educational, social and charitable institutions. She has taken to heart the words of Jesus: ‘As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me’ (Mt 25:40). The proclamation of the Gospel has been accompanied by works of charity, since it is of the very nature of Christian charity to respond to the immediate needs of all, whatever their religion and regardless of factions or ideologies, for the sole purpose of making present on earth God’s love for humanity.[iii]”

    Hundreds of Christian institutions are spread across the face of the Middle East: schools and universities; institutes for the frail, the elderly and the handicapped; hospitals; and other institutions that offer social and educational services. Almost all of them are characterised by their devoted service to the societies in which they were established and by their openness to all: Muslim and Christian, as well as other minorities. These institutions reveal the face of a Christian presence that seeks to serve not only Christians but society at large.

    These institutions represent a very important Christian outreach beyond the hold of fear and isolation. Particularly notable are those institutions that serve almost entirely Muslim populations, showing the face of a Church that seeks to contribute to building up a society based upon conviviality and respect. In the Gaza Strip, 98% of the pupils in the Christian schools are Muslims. It is significant to note that after the Ba’athi revolutions in Iraq and in Syria, almost all the Christian institutions were nationalised, leading to the disappearance of this form of Christian presence in society. Perhaps the present catastrophe is related to this fact.

    Christian institutions, particularly schools, universities and hospitals, are often places where Christians and Muslims not only rub shoulders but where relationships are established and discourse on diversity and respect is developed. It is through these institutions that the Christians can and do leave their mark on society.

    The continued promotion of Christian institutions at the service of the entire population must go hand in hand with the development of an appropriate Christian discourse about the world in which Christians live. It is this discourse that must also distinguish the Christian as a voice for justice, peace, pardon, reconciliation and selfless love. Fear often provokes the development of a discourse that is reactive and insular, closing Christians off from their neighbours. The support and development of the Christian institutions which are at the service of all must be accompanied by the cultivation of a language spoken by Christians which opens them up to those with whom they share their daily lives. Faced with Muslim extremism, the Christian is called to discern, making distinctions between Muslim extremists and those Muslims who are friends, neighbours and compatriots, between extremism and those manipulated by the extremists. The Christian is also called to remember that Christians are no strangers to extremism, the toxic confusion of religion with political interests and the manipulation of God-talk in order to justify self-interest and greed.

    The Christian presence in the Middle East is not and will not be measured by its statistical importance but rather by the significance of its contribution to society, particularly in its service of education, health and relief work and in its language of love.

    Faith against fear

    In the face of fears that Christians will continue to suffer as the Middle East continues to be shaken by instability and chaos, the only Christian antidote is faith. Christians are named for their Master who did not promise a bed of roses. Christ said to his followers: ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it’ (Mark 8:34-35). These are words that have guided generations of Christians who have laid down their lives in faithful witness to the Gospel. It is perfectly understandable that many balk at these words, preferring to guarantee a better future for their children in a world that seems more secure in Europe, the United States or Australia. A Middle Eastern Christian diaspora can even be a support for those who consciously choose to stay behind as well as those who simply have no possibility to leave.

    However, those that inspire by their courage, determination and faith are the ones who, despite everything, stay in their ancestral homelands because they know that it is their vocation and mission to bear witness to Christ in the lands he knew best. These are the Christians whose sense of mission secures the future of the Church in the Middle East. They have put their hand to the plough and do not look back, nor do they flee. They do not fear nor do they accuse, they do not isolate themselves behind denominational walls, they do not remain paralysed in bitterness, but rather they look ahead, attempting to discern the way forward. Faith is the only sure way beyond fear and isolation to openness and service, seeking Christ and following him as he goes out in ever-widening circles. Faith is the deep-rooted sense that the victory has already been won in the resurrection, and that no matter what crosses are encountered on the way – extremism, hatred and rejection – the forces of death have been overcome in Christ’s Cross and life reigns supreme.

    The renewal of faith in the Middle East among sorely tired Christians surely brings about a greater sense of Christian unity, overcoming the divisions of the past. Pope Francis has pointed repeatedly to the ‘ecumenism of blood’, as he did in his discourse in front of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, flanked by Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Constantinople Bartholomew.

    “When Christians of different confessions suffer together, side by side, and assist one another with fraternal charity, there is born an ecumenism of suffering, an ecumenism of blood, which proves particularly powerful not only for those situations in which it occurs, but also, by virtue of the communion of the saints, for the whole Church as well. Those who kill, persecute Christians out of hatred, do not ask if they are Orthodox or Catholics: they are Christians. The blood of Christians is the same.[iv]”

    This renewal of faith likewise brings a commitment to dialogue with Muslims (and Jews in the Israel-Palestine arena) in a frank and honest call to mutual respect and shared labour in building up a society free from oppression, ignorance and fear. It also strengthens the demand to be equal citizens, fully enfranchised and willing to bear the same obligations.

    It is this voice of faith that is heard in the statement of the Holy Land Commission for Justice and Peace when they say:

    “We pray for all, for those who join their efforts to ours, and for those who are harming us now or even killing us. We pray that God may allow them to see the goodness He has put in the heart of each one. May God transform every human being from the depth of his or her heart, enabling them to love every human being as God does, He who is the Creator and Lover of all. Our only protection is in our Lord and like Him we offer our lives for those who persecute us as well as for those who, with us, stand in defense of love, truth and dignity.[v]”

     

    Fr David M. Neuhaus SJ serves as Latin Patriarchal Vicar within the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem. He is responsible for Hebrew-speaking Catholics in Israel as well as the Catholic migrant populations. He teaches Holy Scripture at the Latin Patriarchate Seminary and at the Salesian Theological Institute in Jerusalem and also lectures at Yad Ben Zvi.

    This article has been published in Études and La Civiltà Cattolica.

    [i] Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, ‘Pray for Peace in Jerusalem’ (1990), §51.

    [ii] Communiqué of the Catholic Ordinaries in the Holy Land and Justice and Peace Committee,‘Are Christians being persecuted in the Middle East?’ (2 April 2014).

    [iii] Pope Benedict XVI, ‘The Church in the Middle East’, (2012), §89.

    [iv] Address of Pope Francis, Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, 25 May 2014.

    [v] ‘Are Christians being persecuted in the Middle East?’

     

     

  • David Neuhaus SJ. The future of Christians in the Middle East. Part 1.

    Christians in the Middle East must be a voice for justice, peace, pardon, reconciliation and selfless love. The fear that dominates the experience of many Christian communities can only be overcome by understanding, dialogue and faith, all of which are necessary to maintain the Christian presence in the Middle East.

    In one of his pastoral letters to the Christian faithful in the Holy Land, Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Michel Sabbah wrote:

    “Your first duty is to be equal to the situation. However complicated or difficult it is, you should try to understand it. Take all the facts into account. Consider them objectively, calmly but courageously, and resist any temptation to fear and despair.[i]”

    Fear

    Any discussion of the situation of Christians in the Middle East today must begin with the reality of the fear that has gripped Christian communities as they watch the horrific scenes broadcast from Iraq and Syria. It is not insignificant that on 31 October 2010, a few days after the closure of the Extraordinary Synod on the Church in the Middle East, convened by Pope Benedict XVI in the Vatican, an attack on a Syrian Catholic church in Baghdad left 58 dead. The subsequent surge in acts of violence directed against various ethnic and religious minorities in different regions of the Middle East is one result of the toppling or destabilising of regimes that kept the Arab world in an iron grip for decades. In Egypt, Iraq and Syria, Christians watched in horror as the authentic and deep-rooted desires for human dignity, democracy and freedom that took shape in what became known as the ‘Arab Spring’, were transformed into a chaotic and mostly brutal struggle for power. Diverse extremists, freed from decades of forceful suppression by secular dictators, emerged from the underground into the light of day.

    Since 2010, thousands of Christians have been driven out of their homes in Iraq and Syria. Christian roots and heritage have been wiped out by hooded terrorists speaking in the name of Islam and calling for the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate in the lands that have been home to Christians since the very beginning of the Christian faith. Hundreds of thousands of Christians have left behind their homelands not only in Iraq and Syria, but also in Egypt, Palestine, Israel and elsewhere, and emigrated to the West, to the New World, to more welcoming Arab countries like Jordan and Lebanon, in the wake of the collapse of a known political order.

    Fear is linked to a term on the lips of many who observe what is happening: persecution of Christians. There is no doubt that some Christians have been killed because their Muslim extremist executors see them as infidels, polytheists or Western spies. However, as the Justice and Peace Commission of the Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries in the Holy Land pointed out:

    “In the name of truth, we must point out that Christians are not the only victims of this violence and savagery. Secular Muslims, all those defined as ‘heretic’, ‘schismatic’ or simply ‘non-conformist’ are being attacked and murdered in the prevailing chaos. In areas where Sunni extremists dominate, Shiites are being slaughtered. In areas where Shiite extremists dominate, Sunnis are being killed. Yes, the Christians are at times targeted precisely because they are Christians, having a different set of beliefs and unprotected. However they fall victim alongside many others who are suffering and dying in these times of death and destruction. They are driven from their homes alongside many others and together they become refugees, in total destitution.[ii]”

    It is also true that the term ‘persecution’, when it is used uniquely to describe Christian suffering in the contemporary Middle East, is often being manipulated within the context of a particular political agenda whose aim is to sow prejudice and hatred, setting Christians against Muslims.

    Fear of what?

    Fear is a bad teacher. In order to face fear and overcome it, it needs to be understood. Christians are a particularly vulnerable sector in the Arab world as for the most part they have consistently refused to organise themselves along denominational lines as political parties or militias. For decades (since the end of the nineteenth century), the Christians who were politically and socially motivated invested their energies in the development of Arab secular nationalism in various forms. In this project, they worked alongside similarly motivated Muslims and members of other minority communities. What came to be known as the ‘Arab awakening’ was successful as Arabs developed a sense of their identity, based upon the Arabic language, the Arab-Muslim civilisation and a vast geographical region that served as a centre for the ancient civilisations that gave the world Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In the wake of the 1948 War in Israel/Palestine, in many parts of the Arab world, the monarchic regimes were toppled by Arab nationalist revolutions. Subsequently, however, these nationalist regimes, often strongly supported by the army and the police, were transformed into dictatorships that used systems of control that brutally suffocated any opposition. Among the victims of these regimes were the members of movements that sought to strengthen Muslim identity and develop anti-Western, Islamic models of government.

    The Holy Land Justice and Peace Commission document, formerly cited, stated:

    “Christians had lived in relative security under these dictatorial regimes. They feared that, if this strong authority disappeared, chaos and extremist groups would take over, seizing power and bringing about violence and persecution. Therefore some Christians tended to defend these regimes. Instead, loyalty to their faith and concern for the good of their country, should perhaps have led them to speak out much earlier, telling the truth and calling for necessary reforms, in view of more justice and respect of human rights, standing alongside both many courageous Christians and Muslims who did speak out.”

    It seems the worst Christian nightmares have become reality as the relatively secular dictatorial regimes were challenged by political Islam. The emergence of political Islam provokes a legitimate fear on the part of Christians who, at best, would be marginalised in a political system that insists on denominational identity and defines society in denominational vocabulary. At worst, Christians have been murdered, displaced from their homes, deprived of their rights, forced to submit to extortion and humiliation.

    Fear does not know fine distinctions, however. It is essential that Christians study each current of political Islam in detail. The Islamic movements in Iraq and Syria are diverse and divided; these movements cannot be simply assimilated to the Islamic movements in Egypt and Palestine. Murder and programmatic displacement of Christians cannot be assimilated to demands that Islamic symbols be respected and prioritised; emptying Mosul and the plain of Nineveh of Christians is not the same as Muslims demanding that their daughters be allowed to wear a head covering (hijab) in Christian schools in Jerusalem. Fear must be overcome as Christians not only address directly the leaders of the diversity of currents of political Islam but also challenge them to reflect on the consequences of their ideologies and visions. In fact, some Islamic currents have begun to reflect on the challenge of denominational diversity and have begun a dialogue with Christians. Fear motivates a perception that all Muslims are partisans of one vision in which Christians have no place, but overcoming fear means seeing the diversity and complexity within the complex world of Islamic resurgence.

    Overcoming fear and isolation

    A first fruit of fear is the tendency to isolation. A visible tendency among Christians in the Middle East is to isolate themselves in their own neighbourhoods, institutions and clubs. After decades of refusing isolationist tendencies in politics, some Christians are now proposing that Christians need their own political parties. More extremist Christians are proposing a Christian identity that no longer includes the Arab component, its language and civilisation. According to this view, Christians are Arameans, Phoenicians, Copts or Chaldeans, but not Arabs.

    Overcoming fear and its offspring, isolation, must take the Christians out of their self- imposed ghettoes in order to discover all those within the larger Arab world that are similarly threatened by monolithic Islamic visions that threaten the very composition of Middle Eastern society. First and foremost, it must be recognised that the first victims of Islamic extremism are Muslims who do not agree with the vision of the extremists. More Muslims than Christians have been murdered by the extremists; more Muslims have fled in fear. Secondly, other minorities, for example Yazidis, Druze and Alawis, are at greater risk than Christians because their religious faith and practice are seen as beyond any acceptable Muslim vision of diversity. Thirdly, the various currents within political Islam are far from united by a singular vision of relations with non-Muslims, and Christians must seek out those within these currents who are willing to engage and dialogue.

    A national dialogue based upon shared visions of society and its future opens up communities to interact. The Holy Land Commission for Justice and Peace proposed in its recent document:

    “Christians and Muslims need to stand together against the new forces of extremism and destruction. All Christians and many Muslims are threatened by these forces that seek to create a society devoid of Christians and where only very few Muslims will be at home. All those who seek dignity, democracy, freedom and prosperity are under attack. We must stand together and speak out in truth and freedom (…) We, alone, can build a common future together. We have to adapt ourselves to our realities, even realities of death, and must learn together how to emerge from persecution and destruction into a new dignified life in our own countries.”

    Christians, in overcoming their fear, reawaken to a sense of solidarity with their compatriots in the broader Arab world. Whereas many are inviting them to abandon their homes and their identity in this time of crisis, church and civil leaders are inviting them to remain faithful to their homeland and national identity, and to be a leaven of hope amidst the tragic dramas of today.

    Fr David M Neuhaus SJ serves as Latin Patriarchal Vicar within the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.  He is responsible for Hebrew-speaking Catholics in Israel as well as the Catholic migrant populations. He teaches Holy Scripture at the Latin Patriarchate Seminary and at the Salesian Theological Institue in Jerusalem and also lectures at Yad Ben Zvi.

    This article has been published in Etudes and La Civilta Cattolica. 

    Part 2 will be posted tomorrow.

     

  • Walter Hamilton. Ships and Boats and Please Explains

    If the main aim of building ships in Australia for the Royal Australian Navy were to keep locals in work, then the South Australian-based Australian Submarine Corporation (ASC) would be a pretty good model. It spent around $400 million on salaries last year, about half its budget. If the aim, however, is to build on time, on budget, and to obtain value for money for Australian taxpayers, ASC would be a terrible model.

    South Australian spruiker Senator Nick Xenophon and others are on the warpath against competition from Japan, ahead of the long-delayed decision on supplying the next generation of submarines for the RAN. Xenophon thinks the government-owned ASC (formerly Australian Submarine Corporation) is the ticket. He claims the ASC-built Collins-class subs are now “very good” at what they do­­––proof that local know-how is perfectly able to meet the Navy’s future requirements.

    Defence Minister David Johnston intemperately (though not unreasonably) claimed last year that ASC couldn’t be trusted to “build a canoe”––and lost his job for saying so.

    Who is right?

    ASC exists to fulfill two major defence contracts: for the 6 Collins-class submarines currently (or at least sometimes) in service and the 3 Air Warfare Destroyers (AWD) now under construction.

    The company’s performance delivering and maintaining the Collins submarines was, until recently, woeful. The final report of the Coles Inquiry into the debacle, issued last year, said there had been “remarkable progress” in several areas, with reduced breakdowns and speedier maintenance. The Navy was pleased to say now that 2, and often 3, of its 6 subs were available to put to sea at any time. If that sounds less than spectacular, consider this: there were times after the Collins-class subs came into service when none was available to defend the country.

    The first subs ASC built were too noisy to avoid detection and so prone to engine failure due, among other things, to “poor design and manufacture”, it was felt in 1999 they would never meet the standard for military operations. Retrofits and redesigns have brought the subs up to scratch, but this laborious process (“ASC is a learning organisation” says the company’s annual report) has taken 27 years of a 35-year life of project, i.e. from contract-signing to when the subs will have to be replaced. The Navy began its search for a replacement submarine several years before the Collins class started delivering on its original promises.

    Now, if ASC is, at it says, a “learning organisation”, given the experience with the Collins project, one might expect it to do a lot better with the more recent AWD project. Unfortunately it has not. The first of the destroyers was due for delivery last December. The deadline came and went unfulfilled. The project is running 3 years late (for the 3rd ship) and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. In 2013-14 the project crawled from 70% complete to 73% complete. ASC admitted to “significant challenges” in the program. Once again, the government has had to devise a rescue plan for ASC in a bid to prevent another gap opening in the country’s defence capability. This is not the “old story” of the Collins debacle, that defenders of ASC would have us discount; it is the current state of affairs in the biggest naval project Australia has ever undertaken. Who would not wish that things were different, and we were able to sing the praises of an Australian success, but nothing is gained by hoodwinking public opinion with cheap, unsubstantiated claims of a “secret” Abbott-Abe deal to give the next submarine project to Japan.

    I am, of course, not privy to the discussions taking place, though I have written here before about the close interest shown by both Tony Abbott and the now former Defence Minister Johnston in Japan’s submarine capability and, therefore, I have no doubt that Canberra would be well disposed to such a result, if it happened. But this is a far cry from the uninformed, jingoistic claptrap that is overtaking the debate on radio talkback, etc.

    Here are some facts to consider.

    The Defence Department and the RAN began scouting for Australia’s next generation submarine in 2007 and continued the process under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd governments.

    One of the major lessons the Navy learnt from the selection process used for the Collins contract was that an open tender proved more open to political influence and fudged specifications than to public, or even departmental, scrutiny. The term “open tender” was a misnomer. European consortiums either joined the bidding with designs for “export only” submarines they had never ordered for their own navies or with designs that required significant modifications to meet Australian requirements. This flawed process greatly contributed to the project’s chronic problems.

    Navy and Defence decided that a better approach would be to survey what capabilities existed here and overseas to actually deliver to performance specifications that, on this occasion, would be defined more precisely than they were for the Collins project. They did not want to invest in another unpredictable and costly “learning curve”. Time went by, governments came and went, and by 2014, seven years into the study program, it became apparent that, at this rate, there was a risk the Collins-class subs would be obsolete and unserviceable before a replacement could be delivered––especially if a design were chosen that required major modifications and the fitting out of a completely new manufacturing operation.

    From the beginning, the Japanese were in the periscope sights of the RAN, because of the widely held opinion in international defence circles that their non-nuclear powered submarines are second to none. They are reliable and run almost noiselessly: two key requirements. Back when the Collins project was being tendered, Japan was not in the business of exporting military technology. Once that changed the Japanese automatically became front-runners. It did not take any “secret deal” to bring this about. The Sōryū-class diesel/electric submarine is the model being assessed. A sale to Australia––which could easily involve a major component of local manufacture and maintenance––would undoubtedly be a feather in the cap for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a proponent of a greater Japanese defence capability, but news reports this week that Japan’s Defence Ministry was thrown into confusion by the Abbott leadership challenge were sheer hyperbole, presumably intended to bolster conspiracy theorists like Xenophon and his ilk.

    It reminds me of the way the Japanese proposal for a Multifunction Polis in the 1980s was exploited by an ignorant commentariat––until the controversy, among other things, derailed the 1990 election campaign of Andrew Peacock (who fell for the “Japanese invasion” rhetoric). If the submarine project is swept up into the maelstrom of Liberal Party politics once more, with the enthusiastic encouragement of Labor and the Greens, etc., a rational decision-making process may prove to be impossible. Better to scrap the whole project if it means building subs that arrive late and incapable to a future conflict.

    Walter Hamilton is the author of “Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story” and “Serendipity City: Australia, Japan and the Multifunction Polis”.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Feathers ruffled in the Department of Immigration nest.

    In the e-magazine, The Mandarin, Stephen Easton has reported that ‘highly experienced bureaucrats have vacated the Department of Immigration and Border Protection since its amalgamation with Customs began last year. … There are signs confidence in the Department is low among Immigration bureaucrats, including some of Australia’s most committed and experienced experts. Deputy secretaries Liz Cosson, Wendy Southern and Mark Cormack have all handed in their resignations. … At least two First Assistant Secretaries have also jumped ship.’ This story can be found by clicking on the link below.

    http://www.themandarin.com.au/21226-feathers-ruffled-hawks-take-immigration-nest/

  • Greece didn’t fail, but the EU’s debt moralising did.

    It is often said that if you owe the bank $1 million you have a problem.  But if you owe the bank $1 billion, the bank has a problem!  The EU has that sort of problem with Greece. Joseph Stiglitz, in a recent article (see link below) sets out the problems which the EU now faces. This article was originally published in AlterNet.   John Menadue

  • John Attia, John Duggan. Why the government would have us pay more for poorer health.

    The Coalition government has been claiming that Australia’s public health system is unsustainable since the 2014 budget. But its plans for the health system actually reflect the underlying belief that user-pays health systems are better – despite evidence to the contrary.

    Less than a year and a half into the Abbott government’s first term, we’re on our second health minister and the third iteration of some kind of plan to introduce a co-payment for seeing a doctor. Despite widespread and vocal opposition to its plans, the government remains committed to introducing this price signal into the public health system.

    Underpinning this move is the government’s commitment to a user-pays health system. But there’s now a large body of evidence showing such systems not necessarily great for the nation’s health. Here are four common ideas about market-based health systems and why they are not true.

    Myth one: market forces increase efficiency

    The administrative costs of Australia’s public health system are considerably lower than that of the private health insurance sector. So while this cost for Medicare is around 6% per year, the 2012-13 private health insurers’ annual report estimates that 15% to 18% of private health insurance premiums go towards administration.

    Both these figures are similar to those in the United States, the country with the most expensive health-care system in the world. Figures from the OECD estimate that, in 2011, the per capita health cost in the US was US$8,508 (A$10,912) per head or 17.7% of GDP, compared to Australia, where the figure was US$3,800 (A$4,875) per head or 8.9% of GDP.

    But the US figure quoted above is effectively still an underestimate. The premiums for about half the Americans who have health insurance are paid by their employer; they are essentially a business deduction underwritten by the taxpayer.

    The inefficiencies of the market-based system are also apparent when comparing costs for similar conditions. Health insurance industry figures from a 2013 report show the average total reimbursement for a private hospital appendectomy in the United States is A$17,770 (US$13,851), while the cost for the same procedure in Australia is A$5,467.

    Both the former and current Coalition health ministers – Peter Dutton and Sussan Ley – have insisted on introducing a price signal for GP visits. Gary Schafer/Alan Porritt

    Myth two: market forces increase quality

    There’s no lack of evidence showing the market forces operating par excellence in the United States offer inferior health care when compared with public health systems. OECD data comparing mortality rates in member countries between 1980 and 2005, for instance, show only Portugal has had a smaller fall in adult mortality rates than the United States.

    And although it spends the highest proportion of GDP on health internationally, the United States ranks 19th in infant mortality, 43rd in female mortality and 36th for life expectancy.

    This is not to say that US health care cannot be outstanding; it just comes at a price rendering it grossly inequitable. Consider this 2008 study of 121,092 Americans admitted to hospital with bleeding from liver cirrhosis. It found likelihood of death was significantly higher for certain groups.

    By contrast, a 2011 English study of gastric bleeding in 245,438 patients found that, once hospitalised, the risk of bleeding and mortality was independent of social class. So in England, an unemployed street sweeper with gastric bleeding faces a similar risk of death in hospital as a stockbroker. But the stockbroker would have a much better outcome in the United States.

    It’s also important to remember that more care does not necessarily equate to better quality care. The Institute of Medicine recently estimated the excessive annual cost of systemic waste in the US health-care system at US$765 billion. This is almost 30% of total health expenditures.

    Over-servicing is a big problem in private health-care systems, where profits can create a perverse incentive to treat. Indeed, they potentially create a conflict with purely medical reasons for treatment.

    A landmark 1970 analysis (not available online) comparing surgery and surgeons in the United States and in England and Wales showed that the former, with its fee-for-service system, had twice as many surgical procedures as the latter places, both of which have public health systems. A 1973 analysis found a similar doubling of discretionary surgical rates in fee-for-service Canada compared to the United Kingdom.

    Myth three: public health care is unaffordable

    A number of studies indicate that it is actually private health care that’s unaffordable. It’s estimated that almost two million people in the United States declared bankruptcy due to medical bills or conditions in 2013.

    Despite widespread and vocal opposition to its plans, the government remains committed to a price signal for GP visits.NEWZULU/PETER BOYLE

    That makes health care one of the biggest issues affecting bankruptcy in that country. Worse still, the majority of these bankruptcies were expected to affect people in the prime of their working lives, between the ages of 35 and 55.

    Worse still, the problem may be snowballing: a 2009 study found medical reasons for bankruptcies had increased from 46.2% in 2001 to 69.1% in 2007. Most medical debtors were well educated, owned homes and had middle-class occupations, and 75% had health insurance.

    Despite the Coalition government’s warnings to the contrary, health-care costs are not spiralling out of control. According to an Australian Institute of Health and Welfare report on health spending for 2012-13, growth in health expenditure was the lowest since the mid-1980s.

    In fact, the average health expenditure per person fell from A$6,447 in 2011-12 to A$6,430 in 2012-13. This puts Australia’s health spending as a proportion of gross domestic product at 9.4% in 2012, just above the OECD average of 9.2% – and much lower than the cost of the US market-based system.

    Myth four: price signals work

    Indeed, the government’s commitment to price signals is itself rather problematic. Price signals temper consumption by making people consider whether what they are about to buy is worth the cost. This makes them ill-fitted to the health-care sector, which is not an optional commodity subject to the same thinking that influences decisions to buy a television or a pizza.

    The latest evidence about co-payments comes from the introduction of the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act in the United States, which allowed states to introduce emergency department co-payments for non-urgent visits. A very recently published analysis of figures from eight states that charged a co-payment and ten states that didn’t showed no difference in annual number of emergency department admissions, visits, or inpatient days.

    Evidence to date is overwhelmingly against the privatisation of medicine. By pulling together in a public system, citizens get better value and the government gets better outcomes.

    Along with education, health is a basic pillar of a just society. It represents government investment in the country’s social capital – its people. Failing to provide these adequately and equitably will reduce Australia’s productivity, competitiveness and, in the end, the sense of social cohesion that comes from equal access and equal opportunity.

    John Attia is Professor of Medicine and Clinical Epidemiology at University of Newcastle.  John Duggan is Conjoint Professor at University of Newcastle. This article first appeared in The Conversation, 5 February 2015.

  • Rosemary Breen- Living water in Myanmar

     I listened to Rosemary Breen  from  Inverell speak at my local church about the work she is doing in Myanmar to help poor villagers get access to clean water.  She was inspiring and challenging. We all know that polluted water is a cause of dysentery, diarrhoea, infant mortality and early deaths across all age groups. Rosemary Breen decided she would do something about it. 

    If you could help financially you could greatly improve the health of many young people and reduce the death rate. My own parish contributed well over $20 000 in a Christmas appeal. As each tank costs about $US 2 000 that gift will bring clean drinking water to over 10 villages.

    Rosemary Breen gives her time freely and pays for her own travel expenses.

    Can you help?       John Menadue. 

    Rosemary tells her story below.

    I began going to Myanmar in 2004, having been asked by some sisters of an international religious community to research the possibility of their starting a community there.  Eventually this happened and I would return to stay with the sisters in Yangon and help with a teacher-training course.

    About four years ago, I worked with a young woman, Maw Maw, who was trying to get a scholarship to train in early education in the USA.  This didn’t eventuate and she finally got her training in Manila.  On her return, she told me of the great need for clean water in what is known as the Dry Zone in Central Myanmar where she was going to be living and where, eventually she hoped to open a small school .Her teacher was Saya Toe, who became the organiser of the water-tank project which grew out of this tiny seed which Maw Maw had planted in my mind and heart.

    Screen Shot 2014-11-26 at 1.58.46 pm

    I had been involved in a small way in water projects in Africa and felt strongly that clean drinking water was one of our basic rights and I had already financed the building of a water-tank in the southern part of Myanmar after a cyclone had hit that part of the country.  And so it started!

    Various friends donated generously to this project. I spoke at meetings and groups and then received a very generous donation from a Trust in the UK.  So what began as a very modest idea began to grow bigger and bigger and last January I visited the forty villages and schools which now have tanks, some 3000- 5000 gallons, depending on requirements.  The cost of each tank is about $US2000…  When I returned in December 2014, the 74th water-tank was being built, much to the delight of the villagers and the little local school.  A special joy was being accompanied by a young woman who had come to Australia as a refugee with literally nothing in the early 1980s and was sponsored by our local refugee resettlement group.  Her family has already financed four water-tanks and Hieu-Duc is already planning another fund-raiser.  What an asset to Australia and to the world are these refugees that we provide protection for.

    The building of the tanks is quite simple – there is a dedicated team which goes round the villages. This means these men now have a regular income. Guttering is put on the roofs, pipes affixed and the tank is built on site, using metal mesh, bamboo and cement.  When the monsoon rains come, the tanks quickly fill up.  The local people in the villages help by getting the gravel, stones and water.

    Their labour has been estimated at 17% of the cost.

    At my last visit, a number of school principals and village headmen came to ask if they too could have a water tank. There is still great need.  As one headman said simply, “Please help us – we are so thirsty!”  Last season there was less than usual rainfall. Some tanks were empty but for as little as $20, it was possible to hire a driver and bullock-cart to refill the tanks by making numerous journeys to a well.

    One very great need that I discovered is for a second-hand 4WD. The roads are mostly sandy tracks and often the taxis I had hired could not get through. We had to get out and walk or go by bullock-cart which tested my aged bones!

    Saya Toe has organised all this without any remuneration. He visits each village four times, to discuss the proposition and educate the people who will be responsible for the tank’s maintenance. It has been a mammoth task for him.

    Since last May, the project has come under the auspices of the Global Development Group which looks after sending receipts to donors and getting the money to Saya Toe in Myanmar which previously was quite a problem.  Another advantage is that it is now tax-deductible.

    So to date, 74 villages now have clean drinking water, thanks to donors all round Australia, in the USA and recently the UK.  I pass on to you all the gratitude of so many who have seen clean water as a luxury beyond their reach which we just take for granted.  I still get really moved seeing the school children drinking clean water and know it is thanks to so many who have been inspired to help.

     

    (Living Water Myanmar is an approved project (J812N) with Global Development Group – issuing tax deductible receipts for gifts over $2.   Donate at: www.gdg.org.au/GiveToJ812N)

     

     

    Rosemary Breen can be contacted at lrbreen@nsw.chariot.net.au

  • Rod Tiffen. Murdoch blames Credlin

    Does ‘Red Rupe” have any remaining ‘red’ beliefs? Murdoch was called ‘Red Rupe’ by his fellow Oxford students in the early 1950s.  He had a bust of Lenin on his mantle, was a member of the Labour Club and generally espoused the need for radical change.  Many thought that his stance was more posturing than any deep seated set of intellectual commitments.  Later, and especially from the time he went to live in New York in 1974, his beliefs have tended towards the far right – neo-liberal economics and hawkish foreign policies – and there is a solid, indeed simplistic, consistency to them.

    Perhaps the one trace of his youthful radicalism that survives is his republicanism.  Murdoch has always been against the British monarchy.

    This posed problems for one of his closest confidantes in Britain, Woodrow Wyatt, originally a Labour MP, who was knighted and then made a life peer by Thatcher.  Wyatt was a snobbish and bigoted influence peddler, but his three volumes of diaries make fascinating reading.  In a 1988 entry, the Queen’s new press secretary asked Wyatt how can we deal with Rupert Murdoch?  Wyatt said there was little to worry about even though Rupert was against the whole idea of monarchy.  Wyatt dissuaded the official from meeting with Murdoch on the grounds that ‘Rupert likes causing a bit of a commotion’ and to give him the impression you were worried would only make him go stronger.

    The next year at dinner with the Queen Mother, she said to him Rupert’s ‘against us, isn’t he?’  Wyatt said Murdoch liked the queen and queen mother, but it is ‘the others he doesn’t like’, and that is why he runs so many scandals.  Again in 1992, Wyatt was at a dinner with the Royal family, and again he had to assure the Queen Mother that Rupert’s mother was a ‘terrific monarchist’, that Rupert was afraid of her, and so he would ‘never launch direct attacks on the monarchy’.

    So given his anti-monarchical beliefs (and that his mother was no longer alive to inhibit their expression), it is not surprising that he was among the many to express criticism of Abbott conferring an Australian knighthood on Prince Philip.  Murdoch called it ‘a joke and embarrassment’, and added that it was ‘time to scrap all honours everywhere, including UK’.

    This was, I think, Murdoch’s first public criticism of Abbott as Prime Minister, but given that he was repeating what nearly everyone else was saying – an IPSOS poll for Fairfax Media found 74 per cent opposed and only 15 per cent supported the Duke’s knighthood – it failed to create what Wyatt would consider a ‘commotion’.

    Soon after, Murdoch created a very large commotion, however, by sending three tweets, all saying that Abbott had to replace his chief of staff Peta Credlin.  Abbott had to ‘forget fairness’; ‘leadership is about making cruel choices’; firing Credlin was ‘the only way to recover team work’.  If Abbott wouldn’t fire her, Credlin should ‘do her patriotic duty and resign’.  He opined that Credlin was a ‘good person’, and he was appealing to her ‘proven patriotism’.

    Let’s put aside Murdoch’s equating the good of the Abbott Government with patriotism, and instead ponder the curious situation of a media proprietor publicly commenting on the composition of a prime minister’s office.    According to a report by the Australian Financial Review’s Phillip Coorey, Abbott had already replaced his press office director Jane McMillan last December on Murdoch’s recommendation.  Credlin and McMillan had both worked for Howard Government Communications minister, Helen Coonan, in 2006, when she introduced legislation which did not give News Limited what it wanted, according to Crikey’s Bernard Keane.

    Laura Tingle reported that, within the government, ‘there has long been a deep unease about Peta Credlin’s role because she was seen as the centre of an obsessive and inappropriate insistence on control over everything.’

    It is ironic then the public pressure for her to resign followed Abbott’s act of unparalled prime ministerial idiocy in giving the gong to Prince Phillip.  While the main line of criticism has been Credlin’s degree of control, now she was being hounded for lack of control, for failing to protect her boss from himself.

    News Corp columnists, especially Miranda Devine, joined in the hunt, at first arguing that Abbott should show his colleagues he’s changed by sacrificing something very important to him, Credlin.  She also thought Credlin should be replaced by another News Corp columnist, former Coalition staffer, Chris Kenny, who ‘various high-level media and political figures’ had urged should be appointed.  Then in the Sunday Telegraph, Devine gave a long catalogue of Credlin’s ‘Stalinist’ behavior, and how the ‘Credlin Choke’ is strangling the business of government.

    In the short term, such public pressure from Murdoch and others makes it much harder politically for Abbott to dispense with Credlin, whom he and several of his closest colleagues credit with playing a pivotal role in their election victory.  Whatever the immediate consequences, this intermingling of personnel, of private and public comments, is unprecedented.  Where does the Liberal Party end, and News Corp begin?  We have come a long way from the Fourth Estate.

    Rod Tiffen is Emeritus Professor of Political Science in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney.

     

     

     

     

  • Brian Johnstone. The Right to Freedom of Speech

    During his flights to Sri Lanka and the Philippines, Pope Francis spoke of the massacre of the staff of a French magazine Charlie Hebdo and others at a kosher supermarket, which killed 17 persons. The attack was in reprisal for satirical depictions of the prophet Muhammad.

    “One cannot make war [or] kill in the name of one’s own religion, that is, in the name of God,” Francis said. “To kill in the name of God is an aberration.”   But, the Pope added, freedom of speech does not imply total license to insult or offend another’s faith.  “Every religion has its dignity . . . and I cannot make fun of it.”

    Spokespersons of the Orthodox Churches have also protested against the publication of the cartoons satirising religion.  The World Russian People’s Council chaired by Orthodox Patriarch Kirill stated:  “We call on journalists worldwide to observe a moratorium on publishing caricatures offending Muslims, Christians and followers of other faiths.”  The statement continued:  “Calls to reprint them are irresponsible and unjust–a blow to millions of innocent Muslims, and a show of disrespect for an entire civilisation.”

    Some Muslims reacted strongly and even violently to the republishing of the cartoons.   Muslims are reported to have protested in Niger, Sudan, Somalia, Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, Algeria, Jordan, Pakistan and the Russian republic of Chechnya.  In Niger there were reports of three deaths in the capital, Niamey, and another five in the second city, Zinder. The BBC reported that some 45 churches were set on fire or looted, and three dead were found in churches.  About 800 Muslims gathered to protest in Lakemba in New South Wales, Australia; a spokesperson rejected the Western value of freedom of speech. The protest was peaceful.

    Not everyone agreed with Pope Francis. As Christopher Lamb reported in the Tablet, on 19 January 2015, when the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, was asked about Pope Francis’s remarks by the American television channel CBS, said: “I think in a free society, there is a right to cause offence about someone’s religion.”  He went on:

    I’m a Christian – if someone says something offensive about Jesus, I might find that offensive, but in a free society I don’t have a right to, sort of, wreak my vengeance on them. We have to accept that newspapers, magazines, can publish things that are offensive to some, as long as it’s within the law. That is what we should defend.

    The UK Catholic Herald on 19 January 2015 interpreted this as contradicting Pope Francis’s comments.  This is not completely correct; the Pope would agree with Cameron on some points, but would disagree on others.

    Cameron said it was wrong to take revenge if someone insulted your faith.  Pope Francis would agree that vengeance in such a case is morally wrong and that the one who is offended does not have a moral right to take such vengeance.  He would also accept that in some countries there is a legal right to cause offence to someone by criticising that person’s religion, in the sense that it is not prohibited by the civil law.  The Pope did not require that that there should be a law prohibiting offensive speech against some people’s religious beliefs.

    There are three issues that emerge from these reports.

    Religion as solely private?

    The first is the meaning of religion itself.  In a modern secular society a typical view of religion might be as follows.  Religion may be a good thing, but it is a purely private matter.  Religious people may form communities such as Churches, but this is a free, personal decision.  Religious faith is a personal matter and it consists of individual convictions that are the expression of religious sentiments; there is no such thing as a ‘Christian culture’ except in the most general sense. The state exists basically to enable individuals to follow their personal projects and to protect them from intrusions from others that might hinder them from this pursuit.

    A right is essentially a claim to be able to act or to speak to express one’s convictions provided one does not harm anyone else.   Because religion is considered to be largely a matter of private sentiment, people generally find it difficult to appreciate that actions and speech that offend the religion of another can cause serious harm to that person.  It is moreover presumed that democracy requires freedom of speech.  Thus, whatever harm may be caused to someone by offensive speech will be outweighed by the benefit of maintaining freedom of speech for the sake of democracy.

    For various reasons, however, society may decide to set limits to the exercise of this freedom, for example by prohibiting “hate speech.”  But where there is no law against it an individual must be presumed to be free to offend others.  Since there are no generally agreed ethical norms governing such speech, one who desires to speak offensively does not need to justify his speech by providing ethical arguments, apart from a general appeal to his ‘democratic rights.’

    For the three groups that have been mentioned, the Catholic Church as represented by Pope Francis, the Orthodox Churches as represented by Patriarch Kirill and Muslim communities in general, religion is not merely an individual matter; it requires community and exists in specific communities.   Further, religious faith is not merely a matter of individual sentiment; it is a deeply personal commitment that expressed a person’s reason for living and constitutes that person’s identity.   An offence to a person’s religion is considered to be an offence to the person himself or herself.

    Religion and the state

    This second issue is the relation between religion and the state and in particular to the law of the state.  There are complex differences between the ways these three groups, Catholic Christians, Orthodox Christian and Muslims, relate to the state.  The Catholic Church has come to recognise a separation between the two; the Orthodox Churches would appear to favor a closer form of positive collaboration; the Muslim religion in principle requires the laws of the state to embody religious teaching. Such laws are called Sharia law.

    However, it does not follow that the members of such groups would require that their religion and its beliefs and practices should be protected by the law of the country in which they reside. In Australia where there are at present over two hundred different religious traditions represented, such a law would not be practically viable. This was the view of the judge in a case brought by the then Archbishop of Melbourne, George Pell in 1998. The case concerned the exhibiting of a photograph of Christ entitled “Piss Christ” that the Archbishop claimed was “blasphemous libel.”

    Justice Harper, while he acknowledged that the image was indeed offensive to Christians, found that there was no legal basis for the court to ban it. “A plural society such as contemporary Australia operates best where the law need not bother with blasphemous libel,” said the judge.

    Ethical aspects

    The third issue is that of ethics.  Cameron would seem to presume that, if there is no law against offending the religion of members of a society, such offences are justified.  However, an act may be legally permitted and nevertheless be ethically wrong.  A person who exhibits an image or makes a statement that offends the religion of others is not justified in doing so merely because he wants to express himself.  Nor may he claim a right to the freedom to do so on this basis. Such a right to freedom must be socially justified.

    The justification of the right to freedom of speech is that it is required to enable the relatively powerless to challenge the abuse of power by the more powerful.  For example, when a government official abuses his power to grant favours to his friends, a reporter may claim the right to freedom of speech to investigate and publish the facts of the case.

    But it could happen that a journalist or publisher who has significant power abuses the right to freedom of speech by attacking another who is relatively weak since he or she has fewer financial or political resources.   The effect of such an attack could be the destruction of the other’s reputation and the reduction of the capacity of that other to function effectively in society.  I would argue that this was the case when the journalist Andrew Bolt accused several persons who are light-skinned of claiming Aboriginal identity for motives of personal gain.

    The Australian Racial Discrimination Act (1975) was later amended to include a new Section 18C which prohibits: “Offensive behaviour because of race, colour or national or ethnic origin”.  The Act states:  (1) “It is unlawful for a person to do an act, otherwise than in private, if:  (a) the act is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people; and (b) the act is done because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the other person or of some or all of the people in the group.”

    It is noteworthy that the act prohibits offending, but does not include religion as one of the factors that could be the basis of the offence.  The alternative later proposed by the federal attorney general Brandis stated the following:  “3. Whether an act is reasonably likely to have the effect specified in sub-section (1)(a) is to be determined by the standards of an ordinary reasonable member of the Australian community, not by the standards of any particular group within the Australian community.”

    This means that the judgment as to whether the act is offending or not is to be made not, for example, by the Aboriginal person who experiences the offence, or by the Aboriginal community, but by the “ordinary reasonable member of the Australian community.”

    This is a clear example of imposing the judgment of the more powerful group on the relatively less powerful which is a criterion for an abuse of the right of freedom of speech.  It means that the judgment as to whether the person who experiences offence is really offended is to be made not necessarily by those who might be offended, but by any member of the community.  This criterion is discriminatory; it could include those who may well be engaged in doing the offending.

    What is to be said of the use of violence in response to an offence against religion?   It is clear that Pope Francis would not justify such violence.  The connection between religion and violence was explained some years ago by René Girard, who argued that the strong commitments and even passions that are connected to religion must be channeled in a relationship with transcendence, for example with a transcendent God. When that connection is lost or abandoned the intensity characteristic of religion can be attached to a culture, a way of life, a political system or a race.

    These become invested with absolute importance and violence can readily be justified in their defence; there are incontrovertible examples of this in the history of Christianity, as in the violent suppression of heresy, the wars of religion and the persecution of the Jews.  The history of Islam includes comparable instances.

    The key word is one invoked by Pope Francis, ‘dignity.’  Dignity implies a two-way relationship: it is impossible to preserve one’s own dignity while undermining the dignity of another.  I cannot ask another to recognise my dignity, when I am refusing to recognise the dignity of that other.  This is what one does when one offends another by mocking what he holds most dear: his religion.

     

  • War on terror leads to unusual friendships.

    Paul McGeough in the SMH of January 31 draws attention to our dubious links to Middle East countries that have appalling human rights records. Our Governor General, Sir Peter Cosgrove, having given advice to Prime Minister Abbott on a knighthood on Prince Philip decided that he need  not be in Australia for Australia Day, but went off to the funeral of the late King of Saudi Arabia. What a strange order of priorities! See link below.

    http://www.smh.com.au/world/war-on-terror-leads-to-unusual-friendships-20150128-12xntq.html