John Menadue

  • Walter Hamilton. Calling up the reserves.

    Japan’s central bank, 18 months into a monetary stimulus strategy of unprecedented scale, has decided to dramatically raise the bet. Since an extra 60 trillion yen annually fed into the economy failed to do the trick, perhaps 80 trillion (A$800 billion) will work. The look on the face of central bank chief Haruhiko Kuroda when making the announcement resembled that of a World War I general who having spent 100,000 men to gain 100 yards sees no way forward except to spend another 100,000 for ‘total victory’.

    The Japanese economy, says Kuroda, is at a tipping point. Again. The risk is it will slip back into a deflationary cycle and all his and the Abe Government’s efforts to restore growth and confidence will have come to nothing. The size of the stimulus expansion surprised the markets: stock prices leapt and the yen fell to its lowest level in six years. But will ‘shock and awe’ have the desired effect on Japanese consumers? They’ve seen and heard the big guns of monetary policy being fired so often in recent times, Kuroda must know he is captive to the law of diminishing returns. Significantly, the bank board voted only narrowly in favour of the extra stimulus, 5 to 4, the decision obviously hanging on Kuroda’s vote.

    What has been gained so far by the much-touted Abe-nomics, the government’s money-printing strategy for recovery? The yen has declined in value, which has helped exporters increase their profits (from very low levels in investment terms), and some of this increased income has been passed on through wage increases. But, at the same time, domestic consumption remains anemic. The overall economy contracted by 1.7% in the June quarter and price growth is almost flat again (the central bank wants inflation running at 2% per annum). There was a bout of spending ahead of a consumption tax hike in April (the government had to do something to rein in its huge budget deficit), but it was followed by an equally large contraction once the tax rise took effect.

    Here is the nub of the problem. Income growth in Japan has been so weak for the past 20 years, and confidence levels so low, what little money people have left after paying the mortgage and school fees and meals they choose to save rather than spend. Which is why another announcement made at the same time as the central bank unveiled Abe-nomics Mark II was equally remarkable.

    A big drag on consumption is the increasing share of household expenditure accounted for by retirees: aging Japanese drawing on the national pension scheme. The pension scheme’s earnings have been woeful for many years, largely as a result of its conservative policy of salting away 60% of investments in low-yielding Japanese government bonds. The managers of the pension scheme on Friday announced that would be cutting by half the proportion of investments held in domestic bonds while greatly increasing exposure to foreign shares and bonds, in a bid to increase returns to retirees. Younger Japanese refuse to spend their pay packets; perhaps the greying generation will spend their pension increases––or so the thinking goes.

    If this step had been taken unilaterally the withdrawal of support from the domestic bond market might have been highly disruption. However, the central bank’s simultaneous decision to increase its purchases of government paper offsets the pension fund’s move into more speculative investments. The sight of two supposedly independent agencies acting collaboratively in this way might seem sensible, at one level, but it also suggests that official Japan has staked everything on one horse in a marathon steeple chase. Most observers have probably judged this to be the case already: nobody seems to have an alternative strategy. But might one ask, if the central bank is printing more money to buy an investment the nation’s own pension fund is so bearish about, how can that work?

    Kuroda and Abe could point to the example of the United States, where the economy is growing again nicely following a similar monetary transfusion (now being turned off). There are, however, differences between Japan’s economic problems and the American recession. Endemic deflation, rather than credit flight, lies at the heart of Japan’s malaise. It is linked to weak income growth, a decline in the working-age population and the vast accumulation of government debts from a series of fiscal pump-priming measures undertaken with little effect after Japan’s asset bubble burst in the 1990s. Ironically, one result of the latest moves will be to make certain assets, notably stocks, more attractive: benefiting a small minority, with no automatic flow-on benefits to the wider economy. Small and medium firms don’t raise money on the stock market; they rely on bank credit, and if their principal market is the domestic consumer, the commercial banks are unlikely to be moved simply by this latest arrow fired into the air from the bow of Shinzo Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party government.

    Walter Hamilton reported from Japan for the ABC for 11 years.

  • Eric Walsh. Gough Whitlam – Australia’s greatest reforming Prime Minister.

    Australian media had never seen anything like it. Suddenly print, radio, television and social media were overwhelmed – blanket coverage of a single event.

    Edward Gough Whitlam, Australia’s 21st and greatest reforming Prime Minister, was dead.

    Newspapers were turned over to almost complete coverage ,not only of the fact that the former PM had died, but with coverage of the extraordinary series of changes he made to life and living in Australia in a short three years in office more than 40 years ago.

    Throughout Australia newspapers (including News Limited) carried full facial photographs and wrap- arounds of up to 8 pages, outlining the major events of the Whitlam Era. Radio talkback shows were flooded with Whitlam tributes, anecdotes and testimonies. Greek, Chinese and other ethnic newspapers         who might occasionally give front page treatment to a political event but rarely to a personality, featured the late reformer all across their covers.

    Aboriginal leaders lauded Whitlam as “a brother” who had made great steps in advancing land rights and other interests of Australia’s native people. Within two days newspapers worldwide had made more than one and a quarter million references to Whitlam and what he had done for Australia.

    Television stations began screening hours of features on the Whitlam era, listing the dozens of major changes initiated by Whitlam and which were still part of Australian life.  Social media were similarly overwhelmed.  At one stage one media site registered more than 410 accolades to Whitlam in just over an hour.

    These came from professional people acknowledging the importance of Whitlam’s free universities in building their careers, from people who themselves or their families had come through health crises thanks to Medibank which was won against strong political opposition only after the holding of a Double Dissolution election. Others, from formerly unsewered sections of our major cities, expressed gratitude for the new comfort in which they now lived thanks to Whitlam’s initiatives. And there were dozens from men, now of mature years, who in their youth had been saved from possibly perilous tours in the Vietnam War by the Whitlam intervention. And there were many others.

    Nowhere, it seemed, was there anyone who had not had some aspect of their lives affected by changes made by Gough Whitlam 40 years ago and which have been left untouched by succeeding Governments.

    No other major event – the outbreak of World War II, the unexpected (in Australia) death of King George VI, the passing of Churchill or Menzies has generated nearly the outpourings that followed the death of Gough Whitlam.

    But somehow this impressive cross section of the Australian community, including media masters, had somehow got it wrong. In one quarter we were told Gough was not great; the endless string of enduring changes for which he was responsible, it seems, had just routinely happened.

    The political battles which Gough was forced to fight over recalcitrant political opponents to win these changes it seemed had never occurred.

    For this unusual view we have three principal authorities – all unsurprisingly from the Murdoch Press. Miranda Devine who is considered to be a mere convenience in her predictable religio-political views by thinking conservatives but is actually taken seriously by some others;  Andrew Bolt, who having failed to distinguish himself in mainstream journalism, has won some notice with his nutty extremism; and Greg Sheridan who was immortalised in an online publication some years ago in a hilarious two page listing of his erroneous predictions and fatuous assessments and, more recently, reinforced this criticism removing any doubt about his worth as a commentator with the novel assertion that George W Bush would come to be seen as one of the great US Presidents.

    For the millions who somehow “got it wrong” the list of Whitlam’s accomplishments is awesome – almost endless. It is as impressive as it is long.

    Organisations like the Federal Court, the Foreign Investment Review Board, The Trade Practices Commission, The Administrative Appeals Tribunal, every day institutions in Australia today, came from Whitlam initiatives.

    The Honours system, which is now exclusively Australian, came when Whitlam discarded the borrowed British system of Knights and Dames. He started the move to scrap “God Save The Queen” and adopt an Australian anthem of our own. He put “Australian” rather than “British” on our Passports for the first time.

    Whitlam started the process of granting Independence to Papua New Guinea, finally abolished the White Australia Policy, he introduced legislation for equal pay for women and introduced benefits for single mothers and homeless people. He created the Australia Film Commission, introduced FM radio and colour television, removed the necessity for a paid licence to watch television and, in his first year, doubled the amount of Government money directed to the Arts in Australia.

    He created the Australian Law Reform Commission, the Consumer Affairs Commission, established the National Film and Television School in Sydney and unveiled the plaque launching the construction of Australia’s National Gallery.

    At the Government level he amalgamated five Defence oriented departments – Army, Navy, Air Force, Supply and Defence into a single Defence entity. He split Australia’s largest, but most cumbersome department, the Postmaster Generals, into two efficient and highly profitable sections, Telecom (now Telstra) and Australia Post. The list goes on.

    For the first time he went  beyond the provision of Science blocks to Catholic and other Non-Government Schools providing, for the first time, assistance to all schools on a needs basis (something that may have appealed to Miranda Devine), he gave votes to 18 year olds whom the previous Government had unhesitatingly drafted for war in Vietnam while denying them any say in the governance of their country. He legislated for no fault divorce and for the first time introduced parental leave for Commonwealth employees.

    The handful of detractors who would have us believe that these reforms had somehow “just happened” ignore the fact that almost, without exception, they were bitterly opposed in both Houses of Federal Parliament by the Liberal-Country Party Coalition of the day. From the recognition of China to the exit from Vietnam and the creation of our enduring health system, Medicare, opponents fought to frustrate the Whitlam Government. These critics also ignore the fact that there had been 23 years – a generation – of non Labor Government and four non Labor Prime Ministers leading up to 1972 where there had been no action on these fronts or, indeed, any evidence that they had even been contemplated.

    And while these remain among the hallmarks of Whitlam’s accomplishments leaders like Howard who in 11½ years left us two unhappy wars and a GST, Turnbull and Abbot continue to assert that the Whitlam Government was somehow totally inadequate.

    One reminds the reader that in more than 20 years and three non Labor Prime Ministers since, not a single major Whitlam reform has been reversed – surely a matter of some disappointment to those who assess the Whitlam reign as a failure.

    Eric Walsh was a long-time member of the Canberra Press Gallery, and Press Secretary to Prime Minister Whitlam.

     

     

  • Kelvin Canavan.   Gough Whitlam: a tribute to an education visionary.  

    I first met E. G. Whitlam when he spoke at a series of ‘State Aid’ rallies in Sydney prior to the 1969 federal election.  He was in full voice before a Catholic community that had packed halls and cinemas on eight Sunday evenings, demanding financial support for their schools from federal and state governments.

    The final gathering was in the Sydney Town Hall.  Around 5,000 people crammed into the upper and lower levels, and on the George Street steps.  The proceedings were broadcast live on radio station 2SM.

    His message was always the same.  Australia must increase spending on education and both government and Catholic schools should be funded according to need. Gough had a very clear view that the Commonwealth must make “a comprehensive and continuous financial commitment to schools, as it has to universities.”

    A few years ago, I located a sound recording of the Town Hall speeches.  I sent a copy to Gough who phoned me the next day with his reminiscences of the campaign by Catholics for financial assistance for their schools.

    Over the past 40 years, I have had many discussions with Gough.  He spoke about the struggle in the early 1960s to change the attitude of the ALP to state aid.  He was convinced that Labor was unelectable until the divisive issue of school funding was resolved.  He also believed that funding all schools was the right thing to do.  It was a justice issue, not a religious one.

    He took considerable pride in the role he played in ensuring that all students had access to well-funded schools.

    On a number of occasions, he came back to the 1969 rallies.  He lamented the passing of public meetings that provided a stage for a gifted orator.  “Television is a poor substitute for the Town Hall,” he said.

    Gough played a key role in changing the attitude of the electorate to the funding of Catholic schools. He gave legitimacy to the claim by Catholic parents for some government funding for their schools.

    Much of the opposition to the funding of Catholic schools by governments, and the sectarianism that was very obvious in the 1950s and early 1960s, had largely disappeared by the early 1970s. Whitlam played a key role in this change of attitude across the electorate.

    When elected in December 1972, Gough established the Interim Committee of the Australian Schools Commission.  This committee reported back in May 1973 (Karmel Report) and funding for all schools was increased immediately.

    In Sydney Catholic schools, the benefits of the long-awaited funding increases were felt immediately.  Additional teachers were employed and class sizes reduced.  Teacher salaries came in line with colleagues in government schools.  Programs to meet specific needs of students were introduced and teachers had access to a range of Commonwealth-funded professional development courses.  The survival fears of the late 1960s were quickly replaced by a new optimism, and the decline in Catholic school enrolments was soon arrested with the opening of new schools in the growth areas.

    While the Whitlam government lasted just three years, successive governments have continued to fund Catholic schools along the same trajectory, and the Commonwealth is now a major player in school education. Today, Catholic schools in NSW receive nearly 80 per cent of their annual income from federal and state governments or about $8,000 per student.  When Whitlam was elected in 1972, the comparable figure was about $122.

    By reforming the way that governments funded schools, Gough Whitlam changed forever – and for the better – the educational landscape in Australia.

    Br Kelvin Canavan, fms

    Br Kelvin Canavan has been a leader in Catholic education since he was appointed Inspector of Schools in the Catholic Education Office Sydney in 1968. He was Executive Director of Schools from 1987 to 2009 and was appointed Executive Director Emeritus: Catholic Schools, Archdiocese of Sydney in 2009.

     

  • Annabelle Lukin. When governments go to war, the Fourth Estate goes AWOL.

    A year after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the University of California, Berkeley, conducted a postmortem of the media coverage of the so-called “Iraq war”. The conference included academics, journalists, UN weapons inspectors and diplomats.

    UC Berkeley also invited Lieutenant Colonel Rick Long, whose job it had been to prepare journalists to be embedded with American forces as they rolled into Iraq. The invasion would soon be described as “the greatest strategic disaster in US history”, by no less than retired Lieutenant General William Odom, a former senior military and intelligence official in the Carter and Reagan administrations.

    But, as Long told the gathering, the strategy for managing the media had been beautifully executed:

    Frankly, our job is to win the war. Part of that is information warfare. So we are going to attempt to dominate the information environment. Overall, we were very happy with the outcome.

    When we needed them most, the Fourth Estate rolled over and let the military establishments of the belligerent countries tickle their tummies.

    By “we”, I mean the thousands upon thousands of dead Iraqis, the millions of Iraqis made homeless, the dead and permanently disabled servicemen and women and the constituents of the belligerent countries who saw trillions of their hard-earned tax dollars flushed down the sewer of the military industrial complex.

    Democracy depends on informed and engaged citizens

    When Dwight Eisenhower coined the term “military industrial complex”, the US president and former general prescribed only one antidote to the potential misuse of its power, an “alert and knowledgeable citizenry”. But Eisenhower’s alert and knowledgeable citizenry requires a critical and independent media.

    Sadly, it is not that hard to take legions of journalists along on a military adventure. It helps that media moguls get a nice windfall when America is “at war”. Murdoch used his used his newspapers – he owned 175 at the time – to support the 2003 Bush-Blair-Howard Iraq invasion.

    But the coverage by papers like the New York Times and the Washington Post was also so poor that both apologised to their readers for the gullible fashion in which they bought into the official narrative.

    The narrative of war

    Ideologies around “war” run deep, so deep that when a country is “at war” – or “a mission”, as prime minister Tony Abbott prefers to call the current exercise against Islamic State – its media get caught up in the “rally around the flag” effect.

    I say “war”, in scare quotes, because what made the last “Iraq war” a “war” is not self-evident. The observable phenomena of “war” – the violation of sovereignty, the bombardment of cities, towns and remote outposts, the rolling tanks and marching armies – look exactly like a “crime of aggression”.

    One is the stuff of honour and sacrifice, the other, according to the 1946 Nuremberg judgment, is:

    … the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.

    Media mouthpieces

    For the military to “dominate the information environment” they have to naturalise their version of reality. They need us to believe their acts of war are warranted. They need journalists to use their words – their words for “the enemy”, their words for what makes this enemy especially “evil”, and their words for what they are doing.

    They need us to believe that their killings and maimings, their destruction of property and infrastructure, their creation of new refugee camps, are legitimate because this is part of a striving towards some greater good.

    They need the media to echo and reiterate the aims and goals of “the mission”, to report uncritically announcements about “the campaign” and to fill news stories with ongoing updates on “operations”.

    And they need the media not to mention whose pecuniary interests are being served, never to seriously consider whether the military actions are legal, and to avoid historical facts, context or comparisons which could provide an alternative view of what is going on, and what it might lead to.

    Once the official version gets momentum, it doesn’t matter if things go wrong. If some journalists report on “collateral damage”, or disquiet about “strategies” or “tactics”, this won’t shake the firm foundations on which the dominant narrative rests.

    The ABC’s record on Iraq

    My research into the ABC coverage of the initial invasion of Iraq in 2003 shows how this same old script was allowed to run its course.

    I examined the ABC’s nightly news bulletin and its flagship current affairs program during the initial period of the Coalition invasion of Iraq (March 20 to April 2, 2003), when the “Iraq war” dominated the news. The ABC put five correspondents in Washington, but had none in Baghdad and none at the UN in New York. In this period, not one news item on the ABC was solely devoted to covering Iraqi civilian deaths – but there were four separate stories on the killing of a cameraman working for the ABC.

    The ABC’s embedded reporter dramatised the experience of one troop of marines, with vignettes of individual marines and banal recounts of their reactions to daily events. By levelling his vision squarely on one small group of American soldiers, his reports lacked the wider context of the unfolding invasion.

    He reported, wrongly, that Iraq had fired scud missiles. If his source was the Australian Defence Force, he missed the correction they issued the following day.

    From the Coalition media centre in Qatar, the ABC’s correspondent told viewers that Australia’s mission had “a code name all of its own” and that Australia would have a “frontline role”. He recounted the comings and goings of HMAS Anzac and the FA-18 Hornets, and gave details of events and places so far away from his personal gaze that he could have been in Timbuktu. He reported that the bombing of 1000 Iraqi soldiers was a case of the Coalition “heading off fighting”.

    The ABC duly regurgitated Australian Defence Force briefings. Three days into “the war”, the ABC news anchor, in a tone suitable for announcing a world cup victory, reported that Australian forces had “engaged the enemy”.

    The ABC used Defence Department footage of Aussie soldiers boarding a civilian Iraqi boat with a cargo of dates. They did not acknowledge the provenance of the footage, or that it had nothing to do with the content of the story. Instead, they reported the view of Defence Force Chief Peter Cosgrove that our diggers had just prevented “mayhem in the Gulf”.

    Australian forces were “fighting on the frontline”. The “elite armed forces of Australia” were “intercepting Iraqi ballistic missile sites (sic)”. Our navy divers, ABC viewers were told, were doing the hard yards to clear a port for the delivery of Australian humanitarian aid. In fact, the aid was a boatload of stranded AWB wheat that the government had stepped in and taken off AWB’s hands.

    The invasion of Iraq was reported by the ABC as Coalition troops “crossing the Kuwaiti border”.

    We got the “rules of engagement” story – the one that trumpets the ADF pilot for aborting a “mission” for fear of killing civilians. Here, it is being recycled for Iraq War mark III, so eerily familiar that plagiarism software would detect the similarities.

    On the 7.30 Report, Kerry O’Brien interviewed a panel of Australia’s “best military minds”. In my study of the questions O’Brien put to his panel, I could not avoid the conclusion that the 7.30 Report was, in this period, a megaphone for the official narrative. And in this way, it helped legitimise the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

    These military experts made wild predictions: Saddam was dead, the “war” would soon be over, the Coalition would be able to take charge of Baghdad because their tanks had “a very good frontal arc”. They had free rein to roll out their pseudo-scientific military twaddle about the campaign’s “centre of gravity”, “the modern battlefield” and the war’s “psychological phase”. These “experts” showed not even a glimmer of understanding what was to come.

    The ABC journalists who strayed from the script – Linda Mottram and John Shovelan – endured official complaints by then-communications minister Richard Alston. Their words were raked over by a bevy of review panels.

    Outside the chorus line

    Of all the gigs that journalists do, reporting on “war” is the toughest. Not because of the dangers – though these must not to be underestimated. But when reporting “war”, journalists face off against the world’s most powerful vested interests and compete with society’s deepest cultural mythologies.

    At its best, the Fourth Estate uncovered the My Lai massacre, the Abu Ghraib scandaland the incestuous relations in the Bush era of retired military officers, the US Defence Department and the “defence” industry.

    In this incarnation, the Fourth Estate frightened even Napoleon. In his words:

    Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.

    But the military’s “reality” is powerful, insidious and covert. It is seductive.

    To be truly independent, you can’t just criticise it, you have to stand right outside it. You have to find your own words, and you to have know some history. Then your language will sound “ideological” – like Fisk or Pilger – because you’ll no longer be humming the military tune.

    Annabelle Lukin is the Senior Lecturer, Linguistics at Macquarie University.

    This article first appeared in ‘The Conversation’ on 28 October 2014.

  • Adam Kamradt-Scott. Mining companies must dig deep in the fight against Ebola.

    The current outbreak of Ebola virus in West Africa shows no signs of halting. More than4,500 people have died and many thousands more are infected. Despite the creation of a new United Nations mission to tackle Ebola and commitments of thousands of western military personnel to help combat the disease, the virus is still “winning the race”.

    In September, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on the international community to donate US$1 billion to help fight Ebola. Yet one month later, despite dire predictions that we could see 10,000 cases a week by December and 1.4 million cases by January 2015, the UN has received less than 40% of the funds needed.

    While the main focus is on what governments are or are not doing, the role the corporate sector can play in the current crisis has received very little attention.

    Is the mining sector doing enough to fight Ebola?

    With six of the world’s ten fastest growing economies in Africa and rich mineral resources that include major iron ore deposits, the region has attracted considerable foreign investment over the past decade from some of the world’s largest resources companies.

    Yet while such companies continue to promote their corporate social responsibility credentials, the response to the current Ebola crisis has been utterly inadequate.

    For example, according to the UN Financial Tracking Service, Rio Tinto, which operates two mines in Guinea and boasts that it has worked in Guinea for more than 50 years, has donated just US$100,000 to the UN Ebola Virus Outbreak – West Africa Appeal. Guinea remains one of three countries in the region most severely affected by Ebola.

    In a statement obtained for this article, a Rio Tinto spokesman said the company had donated GNF$1.5 billion (US$220,000) to date to health organisations, including donating 10,000 prevention kits containing soap and chlorine for hand-washing, constructing latrines and conducting public awareness campaigns in the Guinean “sous-prefectures” of Boola, Beyla and Kouankan.

    Another Australian resources company, BHP Billiton, which has mining operations in Guinea and Liberia, has donated a total of US$400,000.

    The London Mining Company, which owns an iron ore mine in Sierra Leone that generated US$299 million in revenue in 2013, has claimed to be assisting with the construction of a 130-bed Ebola treatment facility. This assistance, though, equates to the loan of a surveyor and fuel to help clear the land – the actual construction of the facility will be “at cost” and operated by the United States and Irish governments.

    Beyond this, in terms of financial contributions, the London Mining Company joined a consortium of businesses that collectively donated US$279,643, but independently the company has donated just US$122,100 to the UN Ebola Appeal.

    Yet even these extremely modest contributions compare favourably to some Canadian-based firms such as Aureus Mining Inc, which has offered equipment (on loan) but has donated just US$30,000; while IMAGOLD has donated a mere US$35,000.

    For their part, mining companies have stressed their efforts to protect employees and contractors, citing the initiation of public education campaigns and testing regimes underway at various operations.

    However, the media focus has invariably been on how the Ebola crisis is affecting business, rather than asking what larger role these companies – many of which stress their ties to local communities – may make.

    It seems clear that many of these companies see it primarily as a government role and their own as using influence to lobby. Aureus chief executive David Reading was one a number of senior resource company executives who co-signed a letter calling for a stronger global response to the crisis.

    What about the rest of the corporate sector?

    This contrasts to the efforts of other corporate donors. By any measure, the leading private sector contributor to the Ebola crisis has been the IKEA Foundation which, according to the UN, has donated over US$6.7 million to the Ebola Virus Outbreak – West Africa Appeal. This is followed by General Electric which has donated US$2 million, and Kaiser Permanente and GlaxoSmithKline, which have donated US$1 million each.

    A number of other corporations have made either in-kind or cash donations to the UN Fund. Some of the companies that have donated cash include the Bridgestone Group (US$500,000), Coca-Cola (US$248,000), DuPont (US$250,000), and Exxon Mobile (US$225,000).

    In-kind contributions have also been received from companies like the Chevron Corporation (ambulances), Ericsson (collecting donations), FedEx (shipping logistics), the McKesson Corporation (medical supplies), 3M (medical supplies), and the Shell Oil Company (petroleum and vehicles), among others.

    Certainly the UN has encouraged the corporate sector to donate resources, even publishing an Ebola Business Engagement Guide.

    Multi-billion dollar corporations – those with the financial capacity to do much more – however, have been slow to respond. And without exception, even the contributions that have been made pale into insignificance against the contribution by the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, who personally donated US$25 million to combating Ebola.

    In the meantime, the virus continues to spread. World leaders, including former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, have expressed “bitter disappointment” at the international community’s lack of response. While much of the focus may appropriately be on governments, the corporate sector also has a responsibility to step up.

    In launching a fresh campaign for funds, Ban Ki-moon recently declared:

    This is not just a health crisis; it has grave humanitarian, economic and social consequences that could spread far beyond the affected countries.

    Let’s hope the message is heard.

    Dr Adam Kamradt-Scott is Senior Lecturer at University of Sydney. This article was first published in ‘The Conversation’ on 21 October 2014.

  • Mike Steketee. Whitlam: the power of persuasion.

    This article was first published by The Drum.

    Gough Whitlam’s sheer presence, drive and ambitions disguised some deep flaws. But his vision and achievements stand in stark contrast to the politics we often have seen since, writes Mike Steketee.

    “It’s time”. It seemed like a modest slogan for a momentous event – after 23 years, a new government led by a towering figure promising sweeping change.

    But it was perfectly pitched for maximum impact. Not all Australians were swept up in the political euphoria but all but the most died-in-the-wool conservatives could see that after 23 years, with the party of Menzies now under the leadership of the comical Billy McMahon, the Liberals had reached their fag end.

    In his first election as leader in 1969, Gough Whitlam secured a 7 per cent swing and gained 18 seats to reduce the Gorton government’s majority to seven. To some extent, it was a predictable correction following the landslide Coalition win in 1966 but its size – the largest swing since 1943 – spoke to another factor: for the first time for many years, Labor under Whitlam looked like an alternative government.

    In Canberra, there was a feeling of irresistible momentum, with Labor sweeping all before it at the next election.

    At least that is how it felt as a 20-year-old reporter arriving in the national capital in 1969. Canberra then was a mecca for journalists. Working cheek by jowl with politicians in the confined quarters of the old Parliament House, there was a sense of being part of great national events.

    In part it was the Whitlam style – what his speechwriter and first biographer, Graham Freudenberg, called “a certain grandeur”. His intellect dazzled, his wit sizzled.

    “Who’s this – Aristophanes?” he said as I walked into the opposition leader’s office and encountered him talking to his staff. Without the benefit of an education in the classics, I had to take the first opportunity to repair to the parliamentary library to discover that Whitlam was referring to an ancient Greek playwright. About all we had in common was a beard.

    The mood of the time could not be more different from the all-pervading cynicism surrounding politics today. There was a rare idealism: Australians dared to dream that a government could build a better, bigger nation than the outpost of the Empire that we sometimes still had trouble putting behind us.

    Whitlam elevated politics to a higher plane, convinced of what could be achieved through an expansive role for government and a more confident and independent foreign policy. As he put it in his policy speech for the 1972 election, ever since his entry to parliament in 1952:

    I have never wavered from my fundamental belief that until the national government became involved in great matters like schools and cities, this nation would never fulfil its real capabilities.

    Allied to this was a faith in his own powers of persuasion. He believed that patient, detailed explanation in countless public forums could convince the public, as he had first convinced his own party, of the merits of a national health insurance scheme that left no one facing crippling debts because of a medical condition; of a system of school funding based on student needs; of broadening access to university education by removing fees; of the national government funding basic services such as sewerage neglected by the states.

    If he received the nation’s trust, he would return the favour by keeping his promises – a novel idea in today’s politics. There was a warning sign in the 1972 election result – a swing of only 2.6 per cent, delivering a modest majority of nine seats. There was less a wholehearted embrace of the Whitlam revolution than a wary endorsement of the need for change.

    But this was overlooked in the euphoria of victory. The Program, as Whitlam called his policies (or less formally, the New Testament), was holy writ, especially now that he had received a mandate from the people to implement it. He would forge ahead, crashing through the political barriers and trusting his reforms would bring their own reward.

    In the modern context, when politicians barely dare move a sinew without reference to the opinion polls, it was a refreshing approach. But it also was the start of Whitlam’s undoing. To the extent that he thought of it at all, economic policy was a given. The assumption was that continued economic growth would bring with it the increase in revenue that would finance this expanded role of the government.

    As he said in his policy speech for the 1972 election: “Within Australia today we do not have to plan to ration scarcity but to plan the distribution of abundance, not to restrict shares but to secure a fairer share for all.” After 23 years out of office and with Whitlam’s determination to carry out his mandate, he and his ministers were not to be diverted from their grand plans.

    It was not Whitlam’s fault that Middle East oil producing nations decided in 1973 to use their stranglehold over supplies to extract greater returns, resulting in a quadrupling of oil prices and the new economic phenomenon of stagflation – recession combined with high inflation. But he was responsible for Australia’s ambivalent and inadequate response, which fluctuated from pulling in the reins to the government spending its way out of recession.

    Sounder economic policies, even at the cost of breaking or delaying promises, may have provided a stronger defence against opponents. Members of the Liberal and Country Party opposition, together with a conservative business establishment, simply did not accept the legitimacy of a Labor government. To them it was an aberration, to be rectified at the earliest opportunity.

    It is often forgotten that the Coalition parties not once but twice tried to bring the government down by blocking the budget in the Senate. The first time was in 1974, after less than 18 months in office, when Whitlam responded to the opposition threat by calling an election, which he won but with a majority reduced from nine to five. It was another warning sign.

    The following year, with the government in a much weaker electoral position, Whitlam defied Malcolm Fraser’s attempt to force an election, triggering the nation’s greatest political crisis. The fact that Labor held a majority in the parliamentary chamber that determines who forms a government was not enough to confer it legitimacy in the eyes of the opposition, even for the remaining year or so that it would have continued until its almost inevitable defeat.

    While it is now generally accepted that Governor-General John Kerr had the constitutional right to dismiss Whitlam, the enduring criticism is that he deliberately deceived Whitlam about his intentions, giving the prime minister no opportunity to react to warnings.

    Whitlam’s sheer presence, his drive and his ambitions for the nation disguised some deep flaws. But his vision and the achievements that flowed from them stands in stark contrast to the myopic, reactive politics, we often have seen since.

    Mike Steketee is a freelance journalist. He was formerly a columnist and national affairs editor for The Australian. 

  • German model is ruinous for Germany and deadly for Europe.

    In my blog of 16 October ‘Post-script from France’ I said ‘Like other Europeans [the President of France] hopes that the German economic engine will help power France and the rest of Europe, but the German economic engine has slowed down considerably.’

    Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, in the London Telegraph paints a very discouraging account of Germany and its prospects. He says ‘France may look like the sick man of Europe, but Germany’s woes run deeper.’

    For Evans-Pritchard’s account, see link below.  John Menadue

    Read more

  •  Claire Higgins. International legal obligations once shaped our refugee policy

    The refugee policy of the Fraser government is often invoked in debates about Australia’s current approach to asylum seekers. While the small number of boat arrivals between 1976 and 1981 cannot be compared to the many thousands who arrived between 2009 and 2013, the political difficulties in that era were far greater than simply the reception and processing of asylum seekers. By contrast with more recent policy, the Fraser government overcame these difficulties by choosing to fulfil Australia’s international legal obligations under the Refugee Convention and by explaining this imperative to the Australian community.

    Then, as now, the government was acutely aware that Australia was one of the only parties to the 1951 Refugee Convention and its 1967 Protocol within the region. Indeed, Australia ratified the 1967 Protocol only three years before the first Vietnamese boatpeople began to arrive in 1976. The Department of Immigration admitted that Australia was now ‘locked in’ to obligations and ‘had never envisaged’ forced migration on this scale. Yet instead of working to distance Australia from the Convention, the Department of Immigration worked to explain to the public that compliance with international legal and moral obligations was integral to Australia’s ‘credibility and status as a civilised, compassionate nation’.

    In fulfilment of these obligations, the Fraser government established Australia’s first formal refugee status determination procedure and used this mechanism to reassure the public that all boat arrivals were being rigorously assessed. Even though, in reality, the boatpeople could not be repatriated, the government nonetheless declared that only those found to be genuine refugees would remain in Australia. This was a clever strategy. By employing it, the government was able to emphasise the importance of giving due effect to Australia’s obligations under international law while maintaining the appearance of control over the entry of asylum seekers. There was no need to resort to the image of a militarised ‘national emergency’.

    Behind the scenes, the Fraser government was mindful to ensure that its response to asylum seekers should not be in breach of the Convention. The archives record how officials ruled out turning back boats and establishing closed detention centres due to the moral and legal implications of these measures. This was despite intelligence reports that up to 100,000 people could potentially sail to Australian shores. UNHCR records show that even the investigation and deportation of 146 fraudulent asylum claimants aboard the fishing vessel VT838 in 1981 was undertaken with the full knowledge of UNHCR’s Australian office.

    In public, the Fraser government sought to marry arguments about Australia’s international obligations with the need to move on from ‘White Australia’. Instead of expecting impoverished regional neighbours to shoulder the burden of resettlement, as Australia is now doing, the government encouraged the public to see that the admission of asylum seekers would enhance the nation’s standing in the eyes of the world. Efforts to improve Australia’s image abroad would come to nothing, the ministers for Immigration and Foreign Affairs announced, ‘if we now respond to the Vietnamese refugee question in a narrow, ungenerous and emotive way’. Given that the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has recently accused Australia of a ‘chain of human rights violations’ in relation to its offshore processing system, these issues are as relevant as ever.

    Working closely with UNHCR to expand and diversify the refugee intake was central to the Fraser government’s long-term vision for Australia’s immigration program. Immigration Minister Ian Macphee collaborated with his Labor shadow Mick Young to speak at public meetings around Australia on the benefits of non-discriminatory entry criteria and refugee resettlement. Macphee and Young recognised that the Indochinese intake was ‘a major wrench to the Australian people’, which brought about ‘more discussion about where our immigration policies were headed than took place at any previous time’. They ‘copped abuse’ from some members of the public as a result. Yet their bi-partisan efforts were based on the belief that these questions were vital to the nation’s future. On reflection, Macphee told the house in 1984, ‘I believe we are now a less parochial people’.

    The number of boat arrivals may have been much smaller during the Fraser era, but the political challenge was great. The Fraser government demonstrated that Australia can give effect to its international legal obligations while carefully managing the public’s response to asylum seekers. In looking to the past we are reminded that these objectives are not mutually exclusive.

    Dr Claire Higgins is an historian and a Research Associate at the Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW

     

  • George Lekakis recalls meeting Gough Whitlam.

    ​

    Dear John

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

    George Lekakis is a writer for The New Daily.

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

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

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

    John Menadue

  • Faith in coal.

     

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

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

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

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

    Tom Allard’s excellent article can be found at:

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

    John Menadue

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

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

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

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

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

  • The Italian solution.

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

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

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

    The Italian Navy shames our navy.   John Menadue

    See link to program below.

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

  • Medibank Private and members’ equity.

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

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

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

  • The community of expulsion.

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

    For full article see link below.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

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

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

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

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

  • Understanding the goals of Hamas and Israel.

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

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

  • Walter Hamilton. A Chandelier in the barracks.

    In July 1940, five months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Emperor Hirohito met with his military planners to discuss the details of Japan’s new “southward advance” policy. An apparently skeptical Hirohito asked them a series of questions, including whether the policy would involve “occupying points in India, Australia and New Zealand.”

    Although Japan’s supreme commander felt nervous about his country’s impending military adventure, he did not resist it––as he had, for instance, in 1936 when his disapproval was sufficient to crush a military coup by disaffected elements of the Imperial Army.

    Both episodes show Hirohito to have been a much more activist leader than some portrayals suggest.

    The latest attempt to paint Hirohito as a strict constitutionalist, obliged to follow the advice of his ministers, and look mildly martial on a white horse, is a 61-volume, 12,000-page publishing colossus, the Annals of the Showa Emperor. (Showa is the era name of Hirohito’s reign that lasted from 1926 to 1989.)

    Commissioned by the Imperial Household Agency, and 24 years in the making, it supposedly brings together all available documents related to the Emperor’s life. The first volumes are due to be published next year, with the remainder dribbled out to the public over five years.

    Although the work contains some new material of interest to academic researchers, critics complain that, on major points of historical conjecture, it is both incomplete and intentionally obscure. The Mainichi newspaper found it contained “hardly anything new” of real significance. The annals’ summaries make it impossible to link information to a particular source; it omits any direct quotations attributable to the Emperor; and some records of his close aides are withheld altogether. (I rely for this analysis on Japanese media and academic sources, since only a select group of individuals so far has been allowed to see the contents of the annals.)

    One example stands out. While the annals make reference to a 2006 newspaper article about a memo in which Hirohito is quoted as criticizing the honouring of Class “A” war criminals at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, the actual memo is not among the documents reproduced. It is not known whether this particular omission was done to appease the Abe Government, with its strong nationalist bent, but there can be no doubt that the project as a whole set out to avoid controversy.

    Professor Herbert Bix, author of Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan* told the New York Times he had been asked by a Japanese newspaper to comment on the annals––on condition he refrained from discussing Hirohito’s “role and responsibility” in World War II. Having expended much time and effort researching the Emperor’s close involvement in military planning, Bix naturally declined: “The very idea of a carefully vetted official biography of a leader fits within the Sino-Japanese historical tradition, but raises deep suspicions of a whitewash…”

    The annals cultivate the image of a leader who was war shy and peace friendly, and yet this analysis cannot withstand even the most superficial investigation. If Hirohito had the power to end the Pacific War in August 1945––and he did play a decisive role––why did he not have the power to prevent it starting in December 1941 or to bring it to an end much sooner? The evidence, in fact, shows he was enthusiastic about Japan’s early military successes and only swung his support behind the “peace faction” once his very existence was threatened by atomic annihilation.

    Australia wanted Emperor Hirohito put on trial as a war criminal, together with the military, industrial and political leaders who were convicted, and in some cases, executed. The United States, however, took the view that hanging Hirohito would play into the hands of Japan’s Communists and make the postwar occupation (and security realignment) of Japan that much harder. The Chifley Government eventually concurred.

    For the President of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, the Australian Justice William Webb, Hirohito’s immunity from prosecution rankled: “No ruler,” he wrote in his separate opinion on the Tokyo Trials, “can commit the crime of launching aggressive war and then validly claim to be excused for so doing because his life would otherwise have been in danger.” Evidence of Hirohito’s responsibility was suppressed during the actual hearings until Hideki Tojo slipped up while being questioned by a defense lawyer. “No Japanese subject,” insisted the loyal wartime prime minister, “let alone a high official of Japan, would ever go against the will of the Emperor.” Tojo was later given a chance (by the prosecution) to “correct” his mistake, but that ghost could never be laid to rest.

    Hirohito died in 1989 at the grand old age of 87. I remember, on the occasion of his funeral, standing with the crowds lining the streets near the Imperial Palace, sleet falling on a bitterly cold February day, and reflecting on the legacy of a man who had led Japan through its darkest and its brightest days, first by means of war and then by means of peace. The shuffling, bespectacled, grandfatherly figure I had witnessed performing his many official duties––whose only public opinion was an enigmatic smile––seemed to have redeemed himself. Certainly, at least, he and the Americans (those mighty republicans) had saved the imperial institution.

    But there was a cost, which we are still paying.

    Professor Bix, in his analysis of Japanese power, identified a “system of irresponsibility,” a closed circle of buck-passing in which politicians and generals acted in the name of an Emperor who, in turn, acted in accordance with their advice. Thus no individual took the blame (each of the Tokyo Trial defendants pleaded “not guilty”) for ideas and actions that resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people.

    In some respects modern, democratic Japan perpetuates this system of irresponsibility, including in the way it refuses to render a full and proper accounting for the past.

    Japan spent ten years between 1931 and 1941 creeping towards war with the great powers. The imperial institution was the chandelier in the barracks: a decorative incongruity lighting the way for the militarists. Still remote and unaccountable, I wonder what way it will light for Japan in the days ahead.

    * From my reading of his book, Bix seems unable to make up his mind whether Hirohito was a warmonger or an acquiescent nationalist, and some of his conclusions about the personality and temperament of the young Hirohito go beyond the evidence adduced. But, particularly in its second half, the book effectively demolishes the revisionist arguments of Japan’s “textbook” patriots.

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

     

     

  • Edmund Campion. Australian Catholic Lives.

    Fr Edmund Campion has just published a new book. A book review and information about the book can be found on the following link.  John Menadue.

     

    http://tintean.org.au/2014/10/06/australian-catholics-lives-by-edmund-campion

  • Geoff Hiscock. Abbott on the friendship trail with Modi

    China rightly dominates most discussions of Australia’s economic outlook, but Tony Abbott has made it plain he also wants to be good friends with the other emerging Asian heavyweight, India.

    A tangible example came during his visit there early last month (September), when he handed over two ancient Hindu statues that allegedly were stolen from temples in Tamil Nadu and subsequently acquired by Australian art galleries.

    It was a gesture that prompted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to express his gratitude and to say Abbott had shown “enormous respect” for India’s cultural heritage.

    Next month, the two leaders will have another opportunity to get closer. As well as attending the G20 summit in Brisbane, Modi has accepted Abbott’s invitation to make a bilateral visit to Australia — the first such trip by an Indian prime minister since Rajiv Gandhi in 1986.

    As a pro-business leader, Modi’s priority is domestic economic development, including in the manufacturing sector – hence his mantra of “Make in India.” To speed up the process, he needs funding from abroad, which is why he is courting big potential investors in Japan, China, the United States, and to a lesser extent, Australia.

    In his first four months in office, Modi has made a string of overseas visits and played host to some key leaders. Under his “neighbourhood first” approach, Bhutan was Modi’s first destination in June, followed by Brazil in July and Nepal in August. In the last month, he has visited Japan to meet the man he describes as a “dear friend,” Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and has just caught up with US President Barack Obama in Washington. At home, he welcomed Abbott in early-September and then hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping in mid-September. During his visit, Xi committed China to investing a further US$20 billion in India over the next five years.

    That suits the pragmatic Modi, who made some valuable Chinese contacts when he was drumming up business as Gujarat’s chief minister. China, of course, is the object of as much attention in India as it is in Australia. India wants a lot more Chinese investment, but the border issue continues to weigh on overall ties.

    In a September 19 joint statement in New Delhi, Modi and Xi agreed that pending a final resolution of their disputed boundary, the two sides would continue to make an effort to maintain “peace and tranquillity” in the border areas.

    India’s relationship with Beijing is nowhere near as comfortable as the one Modi has with Abe’s Japan. “India considers Japan among its closest and most reliable partners,” Modi told an approving audience during his visit to Tokyo, adding that as “two peace-loving and democratic nations,” India and Japan could “play an influential role in shaping the future of Asia and the world.” Abe has committed Japan to doubling its Indian investment and financing to US$35 billion, also over the next five years.

    Modi’s other big bilateral challenge is the relationship with the United States, where business ties have not developed as rapidly as both sides might have liked. Issues such as civilian nuclear power liability, intellectual property rights, foreign investment regulations and delayed financial reforms remain impediments to the fivefold increase in trade that Obama and Modi envision in their September 30 joint statement. Two-way trade in goods and services now stands at just under US$100 billion a year. The leaders also committed to a joint investment initiative on infrastructure. But in agricultural trade, India’s recent action to block a World Trade Organisation deal on food security upset Washington, despite Modi arguing that India had to retain the unfettered right to make food available to its poorest people.

    Like the US, Abbott wants to quickly grow Australia’s two-way trade with India from the current modest figure of $17 billion. He would also like to have some more big-ticket Australian investors entering India. “We are not as close as we should be,” Abbott said in New Delhi on September 5. “My visit to India reflects Australia’s desire for India to be in the first rank of Australia’s relations.”

    The on-the-ground reality is that India is not the easiest place to do business. Plenty of big international investors have burnt time and money trying to make headway there: Wal-Mart and Carrefour in modern retail, for instance, or Posco and ArcelorMittal in steel. Bureaucratic inertia, domestic opposition from vested interests, entrenched corruption in the police, judiciary and government layers, and an ongoing Maoist insurgency in parts of the country, combined with poor infrastructure, difficult labour laws and poor levels of skills and education all make for a testing investment environment.

    That said, with 1.25 billion people and a growing middle class of several hundred million, there is no denying India’s promise. Energy demand is rising rapidly, gross domestic product is approaching $2 trillion (still well behind China’s $10 trillion), economic growth this year should finish above 5 per cent and comfortably pass 6 per cent next year, and there is a big push for more and better food, and more consumer comforts in general. All of that plays to Australia’s strengths in energy, agribusiness and technology.

    Abbott’s focus in recent weeks has been on security at home and abroad, but his long-term economic agenda is unchanged: how best to maintain and expand the prosperity Australia has enjoyed virtually without interruption for the past 23 years. China, Japan, the United States and India are all crucial to that effort (as are South Korea and Indonesia). So far, Abbott has established good relations with their various leaders, but is the first to acknowledge that ties with India in the past have been under-done because of Australia’s fascination with China.  November’s visit by Modi will be a good pointer as to how quickly that situation might change.

    Geoff Hiscock writes on international business and is the author of Earth Wars: The Battle for Global Resources, India’s Global Wealth Club, and India’s Store Wars, all published by Wiley.

     

  • Mike Steketee. Abbott faces the reality of multicultural Australia

    While many conservatives continue to hold to the Howard line against multiculturalism, Tony Abbott is adjusting to the reality that Australia is a multicultural country, writes Mike Steketee.

    “The Australian Government will be utterly unflinching towards anything that threatens our future as a free, fair and multicultural society; a beacon of hope and exemplar of unity-in-diversity.”

    This is how Tony Abbott expressed his defence of Australian values before the United Nations Security Council this week.

    Many, probably most, Australians will find his words commendable, if perhaps unremarkable. Yet not so long ago, he would never have put it that way.

    His views on multiculturalism used to align with those of his conservative predecessor, John Howard, who hated the “m” word and avoided it at all costs. As he wrote in his autobiography, Lazarus Rising: “My view was that Australia should emphasise the common characteristics of the Australian identity. We should emphasise our unifying points rather than our areas of difference.”

    His views translated into action, with his government’s abolition of the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Bureau of Immigration, Multiculturalism and Population Research and with the substitution of “citizenship” for the “m” word in the Immigration Minister’s title.

    Many conservatives continue to hold to the Howard line. According to Senator Cory Bernardi, “the naïve … proclaim multiculturalism as a triumph of tolerance when in fact it undermines the cultural values and cohesiveness that brings a nation together”.

    Queensland National MP George Christensen this week supported a ban on burqas. In 2013, Scott Morrison, then shadow immigration minister, argued thatmulticulturalism “simply means too many things to too many different people and increasingly runs the risk of fuelling division and polarising the debate, which is the antitheses of what it is supposed to achieve”.

    But Abbott no longer counts himself amongst the critics. Two weeks ago, he said: “I’ve shifted from being a critic to a supporter of multiculturalism, because it eventually dawned on me that migrants were coming to Australia not to change us but to join us.”

    His conversion goes back some years. In Battlelines, the book published in 2009, not long before he became opposition leader, he wrote that he previously had underestimated “the gravitational pull of the Australian way of life”. The influx of people from a long list of countries who applied to become Australian citizens, “far from diluting ‘Australian-ness’ …. shows people’s enthusiasm to join our team”.

    That would be Team Australia of recent invocation.

    In 2012, as opposition leader, he explained an experience that helped changed his mind:

    With (historian) Geoffrey Blainey, I used to worry that multiculturalism could leave us a nation of tribes. But I was wrong and I’ve changed my mind. The scales fell from my eyes when I discovered – while running Australians for Constitutional Monarchy, would you believe – that the strongest supporters of the Crown in our constitution included indigenous people and newcomers who had embraced it as part of embracing Australia.

    The irony is that this conversion has come at a time when multiculturalism is under greater stress than at any time since its introduction by the Whitlam government. Each successive wave of immigrants to Australia has caused friction, stretching all the way from the Irish in the 19th century to the post-World War II surge of Italians, Greeks and other Europeans and the large numbers of Vietnamese who arrived in the wake of the Vietnam war.

    Yet the cycle became a familiar and reassuring one, from initial resentment and discrimination towards new immigrants to acceptance and later celebration.

    “Wogs” used to be a term of derision; now it is a badge of honour for many of Italian and Greek origin. Despite some initial tensions and problems with crime, the successful integration of Vietnamese into a nation that only recently had abandoned the White Australia policy was eloquent testament to a tolerant society.

    Immigrants typically worked hard and soon spread out from the then poor inner suburbs as they became more affluent. Their sons and daughters started marrying outside their ethnic group and often became indistinguishable from other Australians.

    In short, as Abbott came to realise, Australia changed migrant families more than they changed Australia.

    The 2005 Cronulla riots, sparked by an attack on lifesavers by young men of Lebanese origin and fuelled by inflammatory comments by broadcaster Alan Jones, shattered the image of Australia as a model of racial harmony. Still, it could be rationalised as an isolated incident. Harder to dismiss is the emergence of home-grown jihadists who regard themselves as enemies of Australia – hardly a stellar example of unity in diversity.

    Unlike previous immigrants, some from the Middle East, predominantly Lebanese with often low education levels admitted by the Fraser government in the wake of the Lebanese civil war, did not follow the traditional path of working, inter-marrying and generally spreading out into society. For some, unemployment, crime and racism contributed to alienation, particularly amongst the young.

    In some senses, Abbott’s conversion may be more rhetorical than real. On coming to government, he shifted responsibility for multiculturalism from the immigration portfolio – something for which Morrison may be grateful – to Social Security, suggesting a narrowed focus.

    That brings it under Kevin Andrews, a big “c” conservative who, as immigration minister in 2007, cut the intake of African refugees because he said they had more trouble integrating into Australian society.

    Deriding their religion, criticising how they dress, let along branding them as terrorists, is seriously counter-productive.

    The Australian Multicultural Council, an advisory body to the previous government, is in limbo, with all its nine positions listed as vacant, although a spokesperson for Andrews told me the Government is in the process of appointing new members.

    The ministry of multicultural affairs under Labor has been downgraded to a parliamentary secretary’s position, filled by Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, who, although a member of the hard right of the NSW Liberal Party, is preaching the success of multiculturalism.

    As prime ministers need to do, Abbott is adjusting to the reality that Australia is a multicultural country. The Government frontbench includes members with strong ethnic connections – Treasurer Joe Hockey (Armenian-Palestinian), Finance Minister Mathias Cormann (Belgian), Government Senate leader Eric Abetz (German), suspended assistant treasurer Arthur Sinodinos (Greek) and Fierravanti-Wells (Italian).

    Abbott is conscious that the ethnic vote can swing the result in federal seats, particularly in Sydney. He disappointed some of his strongest supporters with his decision to drop the so-called Bolt amendments to the Racial Discrimination Act after widespread opposition from ethnic groups.

    In this area and particularly in the current context, rhetoric matters – all the more so when it comes from the nation’s leader. Abbott is setting the right tone, balancing his uncompromising language against would-be Australian terrorists with words of reassurance for the Muslim community and an appeal to other Australians not to overreact.

    Given the rise of Islamic State and threats of beheadings in Australia, it is easy to lose perspective. The number of Muslims in Australia has risen rapidly – by 69 per cent between the 2001 and 2011 censuses. But they still number fewer than 500,000 and represent just 2.2 per cent of the population, fewer than the 2.5 per cent who are Buddhists.

    The vast majority are as law abiding as any other Australians. They have alerted Australian authorities to planned terrorist attacks. Deriding their religion, criticising how they dress, let along branding them as terrorists, is seriously counter-productive.

    Mike Steketee is a freelance journalist. He was formerly a columnist and national affairs editor for The Australian. View his full profile here

    This article was first published by the ABC, The Drum, on 26 September 2014.

  • Marilyn Lake. fracturing the nation’s soul.

    You might be interested in this repost. John Menadue.

     

    During World War 1 Australia lost its way. Its enmeshment in the imperial European war fractured the nation’s soul.

    Marilyn Lake

    World War I had consequences for individuals as well as nations. HB Higgins’s life would be deeply affected by the British decision to invade the Ottoman empire in early 1915. As a member of the new federal parliament in 1901, Higgins had opposed Australian participation in the Boer War, fearing that this would set a terrible precedent for involvement in other imperial wars, whose purpose, goals and strategy would always be determined by other powers. He also doubted the legitimacy of the European war, writing to his friend Felix Frankfurter, Professor in Law at Harvard, ‘What do you think of it? … [T]here are higher ideals than attachment to a country because it is my country. I blame our British jingoes…’ Higgins was deeply troubled when his only child Mervyn elected to join British forces fighting in the Middle East.

    When his son was killed in battle on 23 December 1916 Higgins and his wife Alice were devastated. Higgins poured his grief – and his bitterness over the imperial cant that had justified the war – into a new commitment to internationalism and disarmament. The only good that might come out of the war was not national pride, but a new world order. ‘Vengeance is a fruitless thing’, he wrote to Frankfurter. ‘I feel that the best vengeance my dead boy could hope for would be an integrated world, an organized humanity.’ No nationalist flag-waving or eulogies to the Anzac spirit for him.

    We tend to forget the doubts and expressions of opposition to Australia’s participation in World War I in which in fact only 30 per cent of eligible men chose to enlist. The anti-war mobilisations have largely gone unheeded in official and contemporary accounts of the war, which have recast the widespread destruction as a creative experience, one that gave ‘birth to the nation’, conveniently forgetting that our distinctive Commonwealth of Australia, with its world famous democratic reforms, made its name on the world stage in the years before the war, between 1901 and 1914. Australian nation-building was a peace time achievement.

    A decade before the outbreak of the European war, in 1904, an American visitor to Australia, Victor Clark, one of a number of investigators who journeyed south to Australasia, noted that ‘New Zealand and Australia are the most interesting legislative experiment stations in the world and they experiment so actively because their political institutions are extremely democratic’. The colony of Victoria had first invented the idea of a legal minimum wage in 1896, which was later elaborated as a living wage calculated to meet the diverse needs of workers defined as human beings, in the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Court by HB Higgins, in the Harvester judgment of 1907. Australia and New Zealand had pioneered industrial democracy and women’s political rights. ‘While the principles of democracy were first enunciated in the United States’, noted the historically-minded American suffragist, Carrie Chapman Catt, ‘Australia has carried them furthest to their logical conclusion’. Thus did we take our place on the world stage, not in fighting an imperial war.

    In Australia, it was noted by numerous overseas commentators, the working man and the voting woman advanced together, during the first decade of the nation’s existence, which saw a steady increase in the Labor vote, until the Fisher Government was elected, with majorities in both Houses in 1910. By war’s end, however, the Labor Party had split, conservative forces had triumphed, and the British Empire had gained a new lease of life in Australia. In World War 1 Australia lost its way. Its enmeshment in the imperial European war fractured the nation’s soul.

    Let’s look at this impact further through the experience of Higgins, now a largely forgotten Australian, but one of our unsung national heroes. Henry Bourne Higgins was a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly in 1896, when it introduced the minimum wage. He became an opponent, as noted above, of the British imperial war in South Africa, a member of the federal parliament from 1901 and then, from 1906, President of the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration, whose path-breaking reforms, shaped by a profound commitment to social justice and the public good, won him renown around the world. In 1914, he was invited by the Harvard Law Review to contribute an article on his innovative jurisprudence which he titled ‘A New Province for Law and Order: Industrial Peace through Minimum Wage and Arbitration’.

    By 1920, however, the conservative backlash unleashed by the impact of World War I and the fevered imperialism of Prime Minister WM Hughes, who sought to by-pass the Arbitration Court by setting up his own tribunals saw Higgins submit his resignation. It would seem appropriate to remember Higgins, the Australian idealist, and others of his generation, as we prepare to deal with the veritable tidal wave of military commemoration, funded already by $140 million, even as our universities face further funding cuts, increased student fees and the number of historians employed to teach students actually declines. Which funding bodies, one wonders, might finance commemoration of those who fought for Australia’s distinctive democratic and political ideals and support projects to carry their ideals forward?

    My current research project on the international history of Australian democracy has highlighted Australia’s high reputation around the world before World War I as a distinctive, pioneering, bold, independent-minded democracy. It was the perspective afforded by distance that enabled American Professor Hammond of Ohio State University to write of ‘the most notable experiment yet made in social democracy’ established in Australia in the first years of the Commonwealth, in the years preceding the outbreak of war.

    In 1902, in the shadow of the South African War, HB Higgins wrote an essay called ‘Australian ideals’ in which he asked prophetically whether the new Commonwealth of Australia was to become a militaristic nation or a progressive one: ‘Australia must make her choice between two ideals – the ideal of militarism and the ideal of equality’. Australians had to choose between the opposing standards of militarism and social reform, he suggested. He and his generation dedicated themselves to the latter, while we in our time seem to have committed to the former. Australian values we are now ceaselessly told are military values.

    One hundred years on from 1914, Australia has seemingly become the militarist nation Higgins warned about. Rather than celebrate the world-first democratic achievements forged by women and men in the founding years of our nationhood, the years that made Australia distinctive and renowned, we are told that World War I, in which Australians fought for the British Empire, was the supreme creative event for the nation. But those who lived through it knew that our nation was not born in the carnage of the world war, which left the country divided, disillusioned, disoriented, desolate and dependent on a resurgent British Empire.

    In the inimitable words of novelist Miles Franklin, writing to her American friend Margaret Drier Robins in 1924,

    it seems to me that Australia, which took a wonderful lurch ahead in all progressive laws and women’s advancement about 20 years ago has stagnated ever since. At present it is more unintelligently conservative and conventional than England and I am sad to see the kangaroo and his fellow marsupials and all the glories of our forests disappearing to make room for a mediocre repetition of Europe.

    Miles Franklin knew that although men could do many things they could not give birth to nations. Only women could do that. And in 1902, Australian women’s political ‘lurch ahead’ had made Australia the most democratic country on earth, an object lesson to humanity.

    _____________________________

    Marilyn Lake is Professor in History at the University of Melbourne. This is a revised version of a keynote address presented to the Annual Conference of the History Teachers’ Association of Australia, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 23 April 2013.

     

  • Peter Day. The Middle East: it’s important to talk.

    David was a good Jewish man: faithful to his God; devoted to his family, and deeply connected to his land.

    Khalid was a good Palestinian man: faithful to his God; devoted to his family, and deeply connected to his land.

    Each year, in early spring, David and Khalid would meet for a chat at a small cafe. It always began with a respectful, silent handshake. Then, after a kindly nod towards the waiter, the pair would sit down.

    More silence would follow, usually a couple of minutes at most, until their coffee and sweet biscuits arrived. Then, without any small talk, off they went – as they had done for 34 years:

    Said the Jew: “I think it’s important we are allowed to state our case.” 

    Said the Palestinian: “I think it’s important we are allowed to state our case.”

    Said the Jew: “This is rightfully our land.” 

    Said the Palestinian: “This is rightfully our land.” 

    Said the Jew: “We are victims of your aggression.” 

    Said the Palestinian: “We are victims of your aggression.” 

    Said the Jew: “We will fight ‘til the bitter end.” 

    Said the Palestinian: “We will fight ‘til the bitter end.” 

    Said the Jew: “You killed my family.” 

    Said the Palestinian: “You killed my family” 

    Said the Jew: “We are a brutalised and traumatised people.” 

    Said the Palestinian: “We are a brutalised and traumatised people.” 

    Said the Jew: “You hate us.” 

    Said the Palestinian: “You hate us.” 

    Said the Jew: “There can be no peace ‘til you change your ways.” 

    Said the Palestinian: “There can be no peace ‘til you change your ways.” 

    Said the Jew: “Look, this is our land.” 

    Said the Palestinian: “Look, this is our land.” 

    Said the Jew: “Mmm, a nice coffee. Give my regards to your family. See you next year.” 

    Said the Palestinian: “Mmm, a nice coffee. Give my regards to your family. See you next year.”

    The conversation continues …

    Fr Peter Day is the Parish Priest at Corpus Christi, Canberra.

  • Mike Steketee. Buying favours of politicians.

    You might be interested in this repost. John Menadue

     

    If the staggering evidence before the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption has taught us anything, then it must surely be to end the charade that democracy can function properly when people are buying favours of politicians, directly or indirectly.

    The standard argument that political fund-raising is conducted at arm’s length and that the politicians making decisions are not involved or even aware of who the donors are, no longer has an ounce of credibility. The Chinese wall is rice paper thin.

    Geoffrey Watson, SC, a person who does have credibility, arrived at this position a few months ago. The counsel assisting in recent inquiries by ICAC brought up the idea of full public funding of political campaigns. That is, taxpayers would foot the bill and all private donations would be banned.

    It seems a radical idea and it may be unattainable in pure form, given the constitutional hurdles. But it also is a logical extension of where the debate about corruption in politics is heading. If politicians so readily and willingly get around NSW laws that they themselves introduced for the purpose of cleaning up their act, or giving the appearance of doing so, and that on paper are the toughest in Australia, then drastic alternatives deserve consideration.

    After prosecuting the case against Eddie Obeid, Ian Macdonald and sundry other malefactors with Labor connections, Watson turned his attention to the Liberals. In his opening address for Operation Spicer, he laid out another remarkable saga of politicians rorting the rules to their own advantage. As he put it, “this inquiry will expose the systematic subversion of the electoral funding laws of NSW”.  Watson detailed how the office of Chris Hartcher, who resigned as minister after ICAC launched the investigation, had used front organisations to accept some $165,000 from property developers, who were banned from making political donations and some of who had planning applications before the state government.

    He argued that the systemic failure of the system of political funding encouraged and rewarded corruption. “Something must change,” he told the Commission hearing, adding that “the problems caused by election funding are not intractable.” One suggestion that had been floated, he said, was full public funding as a way “to free political decision makers from the insidious effect of improperly motivated donations”. While ICAC was not the place for the debate, he pointed out that the Commission had an arm devoted to corruption prevention, whose experts “would be more than pleased to assist”.

    Tony Abbott didn’t think much of the proposal. “At a time when we’re talking about a very tough budget indeed, the idea that we should scrap private fundraising and fund political parties through the taxpayer, I think, would be very, very odd.”

    Hello! We’re already doing that. Last year’s federal election cost taxpayers $58 million, calculated on the basis of $2.49 per vote received. Four of the six states also have public funding systems – NSW, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia – as well as the ACT.

    The implication in Abbott’s comment and the assumption of many others is that public funding would have to be increased to fill the gap left by the withdrawal of private donations. Politicians can make that argument if they like, though Abbott obviously doesn’t have the appetite for it. The major parties even could agree on a bipartisan approach and justify it on the need to end the corruption, which is the position that NSW political leaders have taken.

    But there also is a clear alternative: restrict spending to the present amount of public funding. It is not as though the taxpayer contribution is parsimonious – given they have a vote for the House of Representatives as well as the Senate and that not all voters pay taxes, taxpayers are contributing well over $5 each to federal elections.

    The major parties in particular might complain long and hard about such belt tightening. But what a relief it would be to be spared of much of the largely fact-free deluge of election advertising that soaks up most of the money donated to the major parties. This competition between the parties has turned into an obscene arms race, in which parties feel compelled to spend more and more on advertising just because the other side is doing so, all the while admitting that they may not be getting much return on their investment.

    The campaign managers are coming up with ever more far-fetched schemes for raising money, like conducting auctions at fundraisers for private meetings with prime ministers, premiers and ministers, all the while arguing that no favoured treatment ever flows from this. And they wonder why public trust in them keeps falling.

    NSW Premier Mike Baird thought Watson’s idea had enough merit to send it off for review. Or perhaps more correctly, he didn’t feel he could dismiss the idea out of hand. He may have been relieved when the head of the panel he appointed – former senior public servant Kerry Schott – said she thought full public funding would fall foul of the High Court. Last year, the court declared invalid the law by the O’Farrell government banning all corporate and union donations on the grounds that it breached the freedom of political communication implied in the Constitution.

    Graeme Orr, a law professor at Queensland University and an expert on electoral funding, does not see the High Court as an insuperable barrier. Rather, he says, the court said in last year’s case that the NSW government had not given a proper rationale for the legislation. “The court is really saying we require you to have an evidence-based explanation for these laws that restrict the implied freedom of political communication.”

    He believes a system can be designed that could withstand challenge. It would need to allow for some private funding but a low limit could be applied – perhaps $1000 a year – that could not be considered potentially corrupting.

    What about fabulously wealthy individuals like Clive Palmer funding their own parties? Caps can be set on campaign expenditure as well as on donations. They already exist in NSW and Queensland, although the Newman government has announced it will abolish them, together with the cap on donations.

    There would be complications in implementing a system relying predominantly on public funding. While it may be possible to stop third parties, like trade unions or business lobbies, from donating directly to parties, they could still run their own partisan campaigns. But if the argument against radical reform is that loopholes will emerge, we may as well throw up our hands and give up. As Watson says, “something has to change”.

    Mike Steketee is a freelance journalist.

  • Portraits of Humanity

    An exhibition by Wendy Sharpe is planned for February/March next year.   See details below and contacts for Wendy Sharpe and Lee Meredith of the Asylum Seekers Centre. JohnMenadue.

    Renowned artist, Wendy Sharpe, is developing a portrait exhibition to highlight our common  humanity with asylum seekers.  A previous Archibald winner and 2014 finalist, Wendy is drawing portraits of 39 refugees and asylum seekers as her contribution to creating public awareness and putting a human face to the issue.

    “This is not about politics.  I want to show our common humanity,” she said.  “I want to show that they are people like us, with hopes and dreams just like ours.

    “Many of those I have met during this project have fled situations of great danger, whether it is political, cultural or religious.

    “I can’t imagine how it would feel to have to leave everything behind.  But they have had to leave their family, their home, their culture and their country.  All of these form your personal identity.  But they have survived and are now focussed on rebuilding their lives and starting all over again.  It has been an inspiring experience for me.

    “Through these portraits I want to reach out to as many people as possible, especially those who may be confused by the many myths about the issue or feel uncomfortable with what is currently happening.”

    The exhibition will portray people who are living legally in the community while they wait for their applications for protection to be processed as well as some who have recently been granted protection.

    “This exhibition will continue projects I have undertaken in the past, particularly as an official war artist,” said Wendy.  “The portraits will be displayed in a major exhibition and then placed on sale.  I will not be receiving any commission and intend to donate the proceeds to support the vital work of the Asylum Seekers Centre in Sydney which provides personal and practical support to asylum seekers, such as legal advice, accommodation, health care, food and employment assistance.

    Melanie Noden, CEO of the Asylum Seekers Centre, said it is an incredible honour to have the support of an artist of Wendy’s status.

    “We believe that most Australian’s want to see asylum seekers treated with respect and dignity while they are in our care and waiting for their applications to be processed.

    “Through her art Wendy will be sharing the lives of asylum seekers with the general public, and show that underneath all the troubles and politics around the issue, we are all the same.”

    The exhibition will run for four weeks in February/March next year at The Muse Gallery, Sydney TAFE, Harris Street, Sydney.

    We are grateful to the following supporters for their contribution towards making this exhibition possible:  Sydney TAFE,  Michael Amendolis and Kadmium Art+Design Supplies.

    Contacts:  Wendy Sharpe:  0448 887 319, 

    Lee Meredith, Asylum Seekers Centre:  0432 062 122

     

  • Robert Manne. “When the facts change I change my mind. What do you do, Sir.” JM Keynes

    You might be interested in this repost. John Menadue.

     

    I have been a supporter of refugee rights since the mid-1970s, when with others I formed the Indo-China Refugee Association. During the period of the Howard government I wrote tens of thousands of words in defence of the asylum seekers fleeing from Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran. This interest arose from family history. Not only was I the child of refugees from Nazism. I very recently discovered that not long after my father was accepted by this country he wrote passionate articles in The Jewish News expressing, on the one hand, gratitude to Australia, and, on the other, radical astonishment that the most anti-fascist element in the community, Jewish refugees, were subject to petty forms of discrimination as enemy aliens. I mention all this to make it clear that what I am going to say this afternoon is delivered with a heavy heart.

    The asylum seeker issue, or more accurately, the issue of those asylum seekers who arrive by boat, has been near the centre of Australian politics for the past fifteen years. Opinion has generally fallen into two broad camps—the friends of the asylum seekers and their enemies. These camps have now become very rigid. Thought has become frozen. As happens when thought is frozen, dishonesty abounds.

    The dishonesty of the enemies of the asylum seekers is familiar. They deny or diminish the human cruelty of their deterrent policies—mandatory indefinite detention; temporary protection visas; offshore processing; tow-back to Indonesia. They close their eyes to the damage these deterrent policies inflict upon the reputation of this country, especially in the Asia-Pacific region where the White Australia Policy is remembered. Their attitudes moreover reek of hypocrisy. The enemies of the asylum seekers opposed the idea of deterring boat arrivals by sending eight hundred to Malaysia on the grounds that it was not a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention. They simultaneously advocated towing boats back to Indonesia, itself not a signatory to the Convention. In public, they shed crocodile tears about the hundreds of drownings that occurred under the policies of Rudd and Gillard. In private despite the mass drownings they were delighted with the political advantages the accelerated arrivals offered to the Abbott Opposition, as a WikiLeaks cable revealed.

    Of more interest to me however is the dishonesty that I have witnessed among my former allies—the friends of the asylum seekers.  From late August 2001 the Howard government introduced the policies of offshore processing on Nauru and Manus Island and occasional tow-back to Indonesia, known as the Pacific Solution. Between 2002 and 2007 virtually no asylum seekers arrived by boat. And yet throughout these years, almost without exception, the friends of the asylum seekers refused to admit that in its deterrent objective the policy had worked.

    In 2008 the Rudd government dismantled the Pacific Solution. Shortly after, the asylum seeker boats returned, eventually in much larger numbers than during the Howard period. Under Howard there were approximately 13,000 boat asylum seekers; in just the final year of the Gillard government some 25,000. And yet the friends of the asylum seekers rarely admitted that it was the dismantling of the Howard policies that was primarily responsible. Frequently the friends of the asylum seekers claimed that with firm political leadership the anti-asylum seeker sentiment of the Australian people could be turned. This denied the meaning of hundreds of public opinion surveys and flew in the face of common sense.

    Most troublingly, the friends of the asylum seekers failed to register the moral meaning of the 1100 certain or probable drownings that took place under Rudd and Gillard. There was great anguish at the time of the mass drowning following the sinking of SIEV-X in October 2001 for which the Howard government was blamed. There has been even greater anguish following the recent terrible death of Reza Berati on Manus Island for which the policies of the Abbott government have been blamed. But among the friends of the asylum seekers, the mass drownings that took place under Rudd and Gillard barely registered or lingered in collective memory. I frequently read articles by prominent friends of the asylum seekers berating the present policies of offshore processing and tow-back where even the fact of mass death by drowning is not mentioned.

    In their principled opposition to all forms of deterrent policy, many friends of the asylum seekers are wedded to a Kantian absolute—for them it is never permissible to save a greater number of lives by treating certain people, like those presently marooned on offshore processing centres on Nauru and Manus Island, as a means to an end. Others are legal absolutists, for whom, no matter what the consequences, it is never permissible for what they believe is the letter or spirit of international law, in this case the UN Refugee Convention, to be violated by a regime of offshore processing. Yet others are indifferent to the political dimension of the asylum seeker question. For them there is no problem for the Labor Party, the only opposition party that is a serious contender for government, to hand a permanent political advantage to its Coalition opponents. This position implies that in Australia today the asylum seeker issue should trump all other considerations, for example whether or not our country becomes involved in the most vital question of our era—the struggle to combat global warming.  In my view, all these forms of absolutism—moral, legal, anti-political—are wrong-headed. On the asylum seeker issue many moral, legal and political questions have to be balanced and taken into account. The world is complex. Asylum seeker policy is inherently very difficult.

    Because of their commitment to one or another form of absolutism, almost all friends of the asylum seekers now advocate the dismantling of the policy of offshore processing and tow-back, in other words a return to the policy of the Rudd government in 2007-8. Our only reliable guide to what might eventuate if they succeeded in their ambition is what happened in the past. Following Rudd’s abandonment of the Pacific Solution, three things occurred. The issue of asylum seekers helped undermine the government’s popularity and served the interests of the Coalition. Asylum seekers arrived by boat in accelerating numbers—in 2010-11, 5,000; in 2011-12, 8,000 and in 2012-13, 25,000. Most importantly, in these few years, on their way to Australia, some 1100 asylum seekers died at sea. Those who now advocate the end of the current policy of offshore processing and tow-back, a policy that has quite predictably stopped the boats, need to explain why history will not repeat itself.

    There is another consequence of the present position of the friends of the asylum seekers—by campaigning for the dismantling of offshore processing, they have abandoned any prospect of contributing to the formulation of a more humane and politically realistic asylum seeker and refugee policy. One aspect would be to look to conditions in the offshore processing centres and the ultimate fate of those presently there in such a way that suffering was diminished but the deterrent purpose maintained. The other would be to look to the future of the thirty thousand or so recently arrived asylum seekers in Australia who are being treated with great cruelty by the present government. Some of these people are in detention centres. A larger number are on one or another form of bridging visa, waiting for their asylum seeker claims to be assessed. Some with adverse ASIO assessments have been imprisoned without trial for life. Many are living in penury. Many are not allowed to work. These people are promised that even if they are assessed to be genuine refugees they will never be allowed to become permanent citizens.

    Through the combination of these policies, Australia for the first time in its history has a government that is consciously engineering the creation of an immigrant under-class.  As there is now an effective deterrent at the border, older ineffective domestic deterrent policies—like mandatory detention, temporary protection visas, absence of work rights or access to decent welfare services—are not only cruel but entirely purposeless.  They are also quite predictably creating social problems for Australia in the future. All these policies should be abandoned.

    It is, moreover, a misunderstanding to think that Australians are hostile to refugees. Historical experience and almost all opinion polls show that Australians are opposed not to refugees but to those who arrive without visas by boat. It was more politically difficult for the Fraser government to accept the 2,000 Vietnamese spontaneous boat refugee arrivals than the tens of thousands selected by the government from the South-East Asian camps.

    Rather than advocating the dismantling of offshore processing, the friends of the asylum seekers in my opinion could play a far more fruitful role by the advocacy of full human rights for those asylum seekers presently on Australian soil, and an annual refugee intake of 30,000 refugees chosen from among those in most desperate need, like the persecuted Hazaras of Afghanistan or the Rohingyas of Myanmar, the ethno-religious groups most closely experiencing what the Jews of Central Europe experienced in the late 1930s. This is the kind of policy that the Labor Party could realistically take to the next election. It is the policy for which I intend to fight.

     

    This talk was delivered to Limmud Oz in Melbourne on Sunday, June 8 2014. Limmud Oz is a Jewish Festival of Ideas.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

     

     

  • Kerry Murphy. Kurds in the way.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Kerry Murphy is a Sydney solicitor who specialises in Immigration Law

     

  • Walter Hamilton. A paranoid state?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    It would be a good beginning to a sounder dialogue.

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