John Menadue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Walter Hamilton. One Man’s War.

    Japan both treasures and abhors its status as the only nation to have suffered a nuclear attack. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are perceived, because of their unique and extraordinary destructiveness, as moral markers: warnings to the world and proofs that Japan paid in full for its part in the war.

    The A-bomb attacks are also portrayed in some Japanese narratives as events outside history, in the sense that they cannot be compared to anything else, acts that should never have happened and should not happen again. Rather than being the historical full stop in a sentence that begins with Nanjing or Pearl Harbor or Singapore, the atomic wastelands shame to silence attempts at arguing the logic of cause and effect.

    August 9th will be the 69th anniversary of the A-bombing of Nagasaki, which followed by three days the destruction of Hiroshima. In those two cities more than 200,000 people were killed outright or died within six months from wounds or radiation sickness. Even if one accepts the argument that the first bomb was necessary to shock Japan’s leaders into surrendering, the use of the second so soon afterwards seems wantonly cruel. For a Japanese person, therefore, any thought that he or she had a hand in delivering Nagasaki to its fate would be the stuff of nightmares. Which is exactly what 85-year-old Satoru Miyashiro says he has been struggling with these many years.

    To explain Satoru’s story is to open up the Hiroshima-Nagasaki narrative to a more subtle interpretation of responsibility, adding new ironies to the decisions that produced the mushroom clouds.

    Satoru Miyashiro was just 16 when employed at the famous Yahata Steel Works near the city of Kokura in northern Kyushu. Whenever the air raid sirens sounded it was his job to help light drums of coal tar placed near the steel works to create a smoke screen to prevent the B-29 pilots gaining a clear sight of their target. This counter-measure had been devised as early as 1936 because of Yahata’s importance as an industrial asset; by 1945, the local air defenses were so depleted little else stood in the way of Bomber Command.

    The Americans identified Yahata early on as a prime target, but initial bombing raids proved ineffectual. Everyone in the city of 250,000 knew they were living on borrowed time.

    The list of Japanese cities targeted for incendiary attacks was a long one: the sort of hit parade nobody would want to be on. A much shorter list of cities was drawn up in April-May 1945 for the atomic bombs. The American military-civilian committee given this task included the old capital, Kyoto, among them. The cultural treasure-trove was assessed as a major industrial centre.

    The Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, however, was familiar with Kyoto from having visited there some years before and vetoed the decision. In its place Nagasaki was added to the list.

    Young Satoru, of course, knew nothing of these high deliberations in Washington. He was fully occupied at Yahata fighting fire with smoke. Then came news of a terrible new kind of weapon unleashed on Hiroshima the morning of August 6th; like many in Yahata, which was still largely unscathed, Satoru feared what was coming next. Sure enough, two days later, the B-29s arrived overhead. But it was a conventional, not a nuclear attack (though 20 per cent of the urban area was destroyed by incendiaries the Americans rated the results only ‘fair’).

    The next day Bomber Command set off from the Pacific island of Tinian with the second nuclear weapon. Their principal target was Kokura, site of a large arsenal, less than 10-kilometres from Yahata (both cities are now incorporated into Kitakyushu). Official war histories state that when the B-29 carrying the A-bomb reached Kokura the weather had closed in, forcing the pilot to divert to his secondary target, Nagasaki. Visibility was bad there also until the clouds opened up just long enough for the bomb to be detonated, as it turned out, right above the main Christian neighbourhood in that port-city.

    But is it true that Kokura was spared, and Nagasaki laid waste, because of the vagaries of the weather? Ever since that day Satoru Miyashiro has believed otherwise. On the 9th, an hour before the A-bomb flight approached Kokura, the air raid sirens sounded again, sending Satoru and his colleagues running to light the coal-tar drums. Black smoke soon filled the sky and floated on the wind across to Kokura. The weather in the area that day, according to meteorological records, was fair­­––not cloudy as the history books say––although a mixture of smoke and mist hung in the air. Rainsqualls had doused the worst of the fires from the incendiary attack on Yahata the day before, and it was probably vapour plumes mixed with coal-tar smoke that blocked the nuclear flash––and sent it on to Nagasaki: the hand of man, rather than nature, determined events.

    ‘I’ve been hearing this story ever since I was a child,’ says Satoru’s daughter Yumiko. ‘But my father did not mention it to others because he felt a sense of guilt at having brought suffering to the people of Nagasaki.’ Now, as he approaches the end of his life, Satoru has finally gone public adding his recollections to the complex tangle of history.

    Was a teenage boy charged with lighting a line of coal-tar fires responsible for destroying Nagasaki? Of course not. The significance of Satoru’s story relates not so much to the past as to the present. Japanese are losing touch with the generation that experienced the war; they are vulnerable to the patriotic pitch of revisionists and others who wish to throw clouds of doubt over Japan’s war responsibility. Sometimes, however, one man’s conscience and sense of personal responsibility is able to throw new light on great events, and in that human affirmation we recognise a necessary truth.

    The original report about Satoru Miyashiro was published in the Mainichi newspaper. Walter Hamilton is the author of Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Noura Erakat. Five Israeli Talking Points on Gaza Debunked.

    Five Israeli talking points on Gaza debunked.  Why does the mainstream media keep repeating these false claims?

    Israel has killed almost 800 Palestinians in the past twenty-one days in the Gaza Strip alone; its onslaught continues. The UN estimates that more than 74 percent of those killed are civilians. That is to be expected in a population of 1.8 million where the number of Hamas members is approximately 15,000. Israel does not deny that it killed those Palestinians using modern aerial technology and precise weaponry courtesy of the world’s only superpower. In fact, it does not even deny that they are civilians.

    Israel’s propaganda machine, however, insists that these Palestinians wanted to die (“culture of martyrdom”), staged their own death (“telegenically dead”) or were the tragic victims of Hamas’s use of civilian infrastructure for military purposes (“human shielding”). In all instances, the military power is blaming the victims for their own deaths, accusing them of devaluing life and attributing this disregard to cultural bankruptcy. In effect, Israel—along with uncritical mainstream media that unquestionably accept this discourse—dehumanizes Palestinians, deprives them even of their victimhood and legitimizes egregious human rights and legal violations.

    This is not the first time. The gruesome images of decapitated children’s bodies and stolen innocence on Gaza’s shores are a dreadful repeat of Israel’s assault on Gaza in November 2012 and winter 2008–09. Not only are the military tactics the same but so too are the public relations efforts and the faulty legal arguments that underpin the attacks. Mainstream media news anchors are inexplicably accepting these arguments as fact.

    Below I address five of Israel’s recurring talking points. I hope this proves useful to newsmakers.

    1) Israel is exercising its right to self-defense.

    As the occupying power of the Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian Territories more broadly, Israel has an obligation and a duty to protect the civilians under its occupation. It governs by military and law enforcement authority to maintain order, protect itself and protect the civilian population under its occupation. It cannot simultaneously occupy the territory, thus usurping the self-governing powers that would otherwise belong to Palestinians, and declare war upon them. These contradictory policies (occupying a land and then declaring war on it) make the Palestinian population doubly vulnerable.

    The precarious and unstable conditions in the Gaza Strip from which Palestinians suffer are Israel’s responsibility. Israel argues that it can invoke the right to self-defense under international law as defined in Article 51 of the UN Charter. The International Court of Justice, however, rejected this faulty legal interpretation in its 2004 Advisory Opinion. The ICJ explained that an armed attack that would trigger Article 51 must be attributable to a sovereign state, but the armed attacks by Palestinians emerge from within Israel’s jurisdictional control. Israel does have the right to defend itself against rocket attacks, but it must do so in accordance with occupation law and not other laws of war. Occupation law ensures greater protection for the civilian population. The other laws of war balance military advantage and civilian suffering. The statement that “no country would tolerate rocket fire from a neighboring country” is therefore both a diversion and baseless.

    Israel denies Palestinians the right to govern and protect themselves, while simultaneously invoking the right to self-defense. This is a conundrum and a violation of international law, one that Israel deliberately created to evade accountability.

    2) Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005.

    Israel argues that its occupation of the Gaza Strip ended with the unilateral withdrawal of its settler population in 2005. It then declared the Gaza Strip to be “hostile territory” and declared war against its population. Neither the argument nor the statement is tenable. Despite removing 8,000 settlers and the military infrastructure that protected their illegal presence, Israel maintained effective control of the Gaza Strip and thus remains the occupying power as defined by Article 47 of the Hague Regulations. To date, Israel maintains control of the territory’s air space, territorial waters, electromagnetic sphere, population registry and the movement of all goods and people.

    Israel argues that the withdrawal from Gaza demonstrates that ending the occupation will not bring peace. Some have gone so far as to say that Palestinians squandered their opportunity to build heaven in order to build a terrorist haven instead. These arguments aim to obfuscate Israel’s responsibilities in the Gaza Strip, as well as the West Bank. As Prime Minister Netanyahu once explained, Israel must ensure that it does not “get another Gaza in Judea and Samaria…. I think the Israeli people understand now what I always say: that there cannot be a situation, under any agreement, in which we relinquish security control of the territory west of the River Jordan.”

    Palestinians have yet to experience a day of self-governance. Israel immediately imposed a siege upon the Gaza Strip when Hamas won parliamentary elections in January 2006 and tightened it severely when Hamas routed Fatah in June 2007. The siege has created a “humanitarian catastrophe” in the Gaza Strip. Inhabitants will not be able to access clean water, electricity or tend to even the most urgent medical needs. The World Health Organization explains that the Gaza Strip will be unlivable by 2020. Not only did Israel not end its occupation, it has created a situation in which Palestinians cannot survive in the long-term.

    3) This Israeli operation, among others, was caused by rocket fire from Gaza.

    Israel claims that its current and past wars against the Palestinian population in Gaza have been in response to rocket fire. Empirical evidence from 2008, 2012 and 2014 refute that claim. First, according to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the greatest reduction of rocket fire came through diplomatic rather than military means. This chart demonstrates the correlation between Israel’s military attacks upon the Gaza Strip and Hamas militant activity. Hamas rocket fire increases in response to Israeli military attacks and decreases in direct correlation to them. Cease-fires have brought the greatest security to the region.

    During the four months of the Egyptian-negotiated cease-fire in 2008, Palestinian militants reduced the number of rockets to zero or single digits from the Gaza Strip. Despite this relative security and calm, Israel broke the cease-fire to begin the notorious aerial and ground offensive that killed 1,400 Palestinians in twenty-two days. In November 2012, Israel’s extrajudicial assassination of Ahmad Jabari, the chief of Hamas’s military wing in Gaza, while he was reviewing terms for a diplomatic solution, again broke the cease-fire that precipitated the eight-day aerial offensive that killed 132 Palestinians.

    Immediately preceding Israel’s most recent operation, Hamas rocket and mortar attacks did not threaten Israel. Israel deliberately provoked this war with Hamas. Without producing a shred of evidence, it accused the political faction of kidnapping and murdering three settlers near Hebron. Four weeks and almost 700 lives later, Israel has yet to produce any evidence demonstrating Hamas’s involvement. During ten days of Operation Brother’s Keeper in the West Bank, Israel arrested approximately 800 Palestinians without charge or trial, killed nine civilians and raided nearly 1,300 residential, commercial and public buildings. Its military operation targeted Hamas members released during the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange in 2011. It’s these Israeli provocations that precipitated the Hamas rocket fire to which Israel claims left it with no choice but a gruesome military operation.

    4) Israel avoids civilian casualties, but Hamas aims to kill civilians.

    Hamas has crude weapons technology that lacks any targeting capability. As such, Hamas rocket attacks ipso facto violate the principle of distinction because all of its attacks are indiscriminate. This is not contested. Israel, however, would not be any more tolerant of Hamas if it strictly targeted military objects, as we have witnessed of late. Israel considers Hamas and any form of its resistance, armed or otherwise, to be illegitimate.

    In contrast, Israel has the eleventh most powerful military in the world, certainly the strongest by far in the Middle East, and is a nuclear power that has not ratified the non-proliferation agreement and has precise weapons technology. With the use of drones, F-16s and an arsenal of modern weapon technology, Israel has the ability to target single individuals and therefore to avoid civilian casualties. But rather than avoid them, Israel has repeatedly targeted civilians as part of its military operations.

    The Dahiya Doctrine is central to these operations and refers to Israel’s indiscriminate attacks on Lebanon in 2006. Maj. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot said that this would be applied elsewhere:

    What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. […] We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases.

    Israel has kept true to this promise. The 2009 UN Fact-Finding Mission to the Gaza Conflict, better known as the Goldstone Mission, concluded “from a review of the facts on the ground that it witnessed for itself that what was prescribed as the best strategy [Dahiya Doctrine] appears to have been precisely what was put into practice.”

    According to the National Lawyers Guild, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, Israel directly targeted civilians or recklessly caused civilian deaths during Operation Cast Lead. Far from avoiding the deaths of civilians, Israel effectively considers them legitimate targets.

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    5) Hamas hides its weapons in homes, mosques and schools and uses human shields.

    This is arguably one of Israel’s most insidious claims, because it blames Palestinians for their own death and deprives them of even their victimhood. Israel made the same argument in its war against Lebanon in 2006 and in its war against Palestinians in 2008. Notwithstanding its military cartoon sketches, Israel has yet to prove that Hamas has used civilian infrastructure to store military weapons. The two cases where Hamas indeed stored weapons in UNRWA schools, the schools were empty. UNRWA discovered the rockets and publicly condemned the violation of its sanctity.

    International human rights organizations that have investigated these claims have determined that they are not true. It attributed the high death toll in Israel’s 2006 war on Lebanon to Israel’s indiscriminate attacks. Human Rights Watch notes:

    The evidence Human Rights Watch uncovered in its on-the-ground investigations refutes [Israel’s] argument…we found strong evidence that Hezbollah stored most of its rockets in bunkers and weapon storage facilities located in uninhabited fields and valleys, that in the vast majority of cases Hezbollah fighters left populated civilian areas as soon as the fighting started, and that Hezbollah fired the vast majority of its rockets from pre-prepared positions outside villages.

    In fact, only Israeli soldiers have systematically used Palestinians as human shields. Since Israel’s incursion into the West Bank in 2002, it has used Palestinians as human shields by tying young Palestinians onto the hoods of their cars or forcing them to go into a home where a potential militant may be hiding.

    Even assuming that Israel’s claims were plausible, humanitarian law obligates Israel to avoid civilian casualties that “would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.” A belligerent force must verify whether civilian or civilian infrastructure qualifies as a military objective. In the case of doubt, “whether an object which is normally dedicated to civilian purposes, such as a place of worship, a house or other dwelling or a school, is being used to make an effective contribution to military action, it shall be presumed not to be so used.”

    In the over thee weeks of its military operation, Israel has demolished 3,175 homes, at least a dozen with families inside; destroyed five hospitals and six clinics; partially damaged sixty-four mosques and two churches; partially to completely destroyed eight government ministries; injured 4,620; and killed over 700 Palestinians. At plain sight, these numbers indicate Israel’s egregious violations of humanitarian law, ones that amount to war crimes.

    Beyond the body count and reference to law, which is a product of power, the question to ask is, What is Israel’s end goal? What if Hamas and Islamic Jihad dug tunnels beneath the entirety of the Gaza Strip—they clearly did not, but let us assume they did for the sake of argument. According to Israel’s logic, all of Gaza’s 1.8 million Palestinians are therefore human shields for being born Palestinian in Gaza. The solution is to destroy the 360-kilometer square strip of land and to expect a watching world to accept this catastrophic loss as incidental. This is possible only by framing and accepting the dehumanization of Palestinian life. Despite the absurdity of this proposal, it is precisely what Israeli society is urging its military leadership to do. Israel cannot bomb Palestinians into submission, and it certainly cannot bomb them into peace.

    Noura Erakat, a human rights attorney and activist, is an Abraham L. Freedman Fellow at Temple University, Beasely School of Law, and a contributing editor of Jadaliyya. 

    This article was first published in Alternet.org on July 28,2014.

     

     

     

  • Wiryono Sastrohandoyo. The new Indonesian President Joko Widodo.

    ​Joko Widodo is an upright, decent and honourable person.

    It is the general feeling in Indonesia that his election is a victory for the Indonesian people and the generally peaceful election process. This is a sign of the growing maturity of Indonesia’s young democracy.
    Jokowi was great during his two terms as mayor of Solo, a small city of half a million people in central Java. He has been less impressive during his two years as Governor of Jakarta with a diverse population of more than ten million people. Now he has to deal with a larger and even more diverse population of 240 million.

    Indonesians are proud that their nation is the third largest democracy. But we also know that whilst our democracy is maturing , the democratisation process must continue. It will not be easy. But since the first elections in 1999 in the post-Suharto period, Indonesians have been able to have free and fair elections. So I am hopeful.

    Probowo’s rejection and withdrawal from the electoral process reflects the inability of his party’s elites and himself to see the reality of his loss. What we need is reconciliation with his supporters who won 47% of the popular vote. They are a significant part of the Indonesian population and must be heard.
    ,
    But Jokowi’s electoral victory was achieved in a very close race. If the president was elected by parliament, the Prabowo-Rajasa team would have beaten Jokowi-Kalla easily. Jokowi-JK is supported by a coalition of parties controlling only 37% of the seats in Parliament while Prabowo-Hatta is supported by a coalition controlling 52.1% of the seats.

    But the president is directly elected and a majority of parliamentary seats does not mean victory. The new president’s first problem, if he is to govern effectively, is how to swing enough of the Prabowo’s coalition parties’ MPs to his side. At this time it is not clear how he is going to do it. But it is not impossible. Party discipline is weak and some politicians have indicated the willingness to swing. Usually – politics being what it is – at a price.

    A problem is how independent is Jokowi going to be? During the campaign Party Chairwoman Megawati Sukarnoputri stressed that Jokowi is mandated by the party and that he is to implement party policy. This involves reviving what is known as Trisaki, that Indonesia is sovereign in the field of politics, self-sufficient in economic affairs and with its own distinctive cultural identity. Fortunately this was not  so strongly emphasized later in the campaign but the relationship between President Jokowi and the Party leadership will have to be worked out. Time will tell. Coalition building is not only done for the purpose of implementing desired policy goals but also as rewards.
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    During the campaign, Jokowi indicated that he wanted a cabinet of professionals. This will be a good indicator of his intentions and priorities.

    Jokowi sees foreign policy as a tool for obtaining benefits for the sake of domestic economic and political growth. He said that Indonesian ambassadors should be the salesmen of Indonesia. In other words: promoting business. And in business relations, business usually takes a longer term and more consistent view. It is in other areas of relations that we usually have worrying problems.

    On the South China Sea issue Jokowi’s statements suggest that he does not see Indonesia in dispute with China. Indonesia will seek to play a constructive role for we need both China and the West in the Pacific. We need to ensure that the rising power of China and the pivoting US do not end in conflict.

    Relations with Australia will continue to be over shadowed by other more important issues. This is particularly so because Jokowi sees that foreign investment should serve domestic economic growth. His focus of attention in this will mainly be people at the bottom, those who are surviving on one dollar a day. Their living standard has to be improved and fast. During his youth he was one of them. But he is also an experienced businessman who knows that Indonesia needs foreign investment. His view on Australia is still to be developed but  he is not confrontational by nature although not unwlling to be tough. In the past there has been too many breakdowns of dialogue. Australians tend to hold dialogue on a head-to-head basis. The Indonesian way is to hold a dialogue on a heart-to-heart basis. The challenge is for both countries to have more cross cultural communication. Australia and Indonesia need to know how to communicate better.

    Wiryono Sastrohandoyo was Indonesian Ambassador to Australia from 1996 to 1999.
    This article is in response to questions I asked.   John Menadue

     

     

  • Ben Saul. The Occupation of Palestine.

    There is very partisan criticism of Hamas for firing home-made rockets into Israel. But the core problem is not rockets. It is the occupation of Palestine by Israel and the imprisonment of two million Palestinians in a sliver of land called ‘Gaza’.

    I often think how we should or could respond if our country was occupied by a foreign power. Surely there would be resistance to that occupation. That is fundamentally what the dispute between Israel and the Palestinians is about.

    In a speech given at Parliament House, Canberra, on July 16, Professor Ben Saul, says

    ‘The root cause of the Israel-Palestine conflict is the near fifty year occupation of Palestinian territory by Israel and the illegal colonisation of Palestinian land. Violence to liberate Palestine is inevitable unless Israel withdraws and complies with international law. Australian governments have failed to understand that there will never be peace unless there is justice.’

    A link to Professor Ben Saul’s speech is below.  He is the Professor of International Law at the University of Sydney.  John Menadue

  • Another Israeli massacre of Palestinians.

    One thousand and thirty-five Palestinians in Gaza, mainly innocent civilians, women and children have been massacred and so far the world turns its head away. And the number is increasing by the hour. We don’t want to feel the suffering of the Palestinian people.

    Alongside this 1,035 dead Palestinians there are 42 Israeli’s who have died. Just imagine what the Israeli lobby would be saying if 1,035 Israelis had died.

    We are angry and concerned that 297 innocent people lost their lives when MH17 was shot down by separatists in the Ukraine. These separatists were obviously funded and armed by Russia. That is of concern to us. But the US supports, funds and arms the Israeli army which is now conducting this massacre in Gaza. When will we get the balance right.  But it is not only the US government and the Israeli lobby that must be held accountable for what is happening today in Gaza. The Australian government has consistently sided with Israel against the Palestinians and even wants to deny the term ‘occupied’ which is a way any reasonable person would describe what Israel is doing on Palestinian land. The Israelis are occupying Palestinian land and imprisoning Palestinian people.

    There has been a pattern of Israeli massacres and the Gaza massacre is one of many. Just think of the massacres in  Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon in 1982.

    Israel is naturally concerned about home-made rockets being fired out of Gaza into Israel but the response is out of all proportion. What is more, the core reason for the dispute is not these rockets, it is occupation by Israel of Palestinian land. That occupation and colonisation must be ended if there is to be a just peace.

    See below an article this weekend by Robert Fisk for The Independent. It is headed ‘Eight hundred dead Palestinians. But Israel has impunity.’  John Menadue

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    http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/eight-hundred-dead-palestinians-but-israel-has-impunity-9629726.html

  • Richard Rigby. Tiananmen 25 years on.

    On the night of June 3-4, units of the Peoples Liberation Army entered Beijing, killing some hundreds of ordinary Beijing citizens as they made their way to their objective, Tiananmen Square, the focal point of massive protests that had begun in late April following the death of former Party Secretary Hu Yaobang. The square was cleared of protestors. Further killings and arrests ensued over following days. A small number of soldiers were also killed. Protests in scores of other Chinese cities were simultaneously brought to an end, with varying degrees of violence. Significant protests in Shanghai were settled largely peacefully. Beijing was the worst. This much is known; although a final, credible death toll has not been published to this day.

    After the event Deng Xiaoping famously said ‘this storm was bound to happen’. Not necessarily. The country wide protests, against corruption, against rising prices, against an array of contradictions between what opening and reform seemed to promise and the realities of daily life, and yes, in the case of some, demands for greater freedom and democracy – these were almost certainly inevitable; but the bloody denouement in the nation’s capital was not. The crucial element here was a serious power struggle at the centre of China’s leadership, a struggle that was both exacerbated by, and in which the contending parties sought to use, the popular protests.

    There were of course other, contingent, elements as well: the sensitive 70th anniversary of the May 4th Movement, the meeting of the Asian Development Bank, and, in particular, the historic visit of Mikhail Gorbachev, which made Beijing the focus of global media attention, quite apart from the events in the square – which also led to the humiliation for the government of having to cancel the official welcome at that site; and there were divisions amongst the student leaders and their supporters too, between those favouring a degree of accommodation with the authorities, with others more intransigent. But in the end it was the hard-liners in the government who won the power struggle, and who, backed by Deng Xiaoping, must take responsibility for the tragic way in which the protests were suppressed.

    It was this same Deng, though, who also ensured that, against the clear inclinations of a number of those on the winning side, this did not mean turning back from the policies of opening and reform that he had himself initiated at the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee in late 1978. He understood, even if not all his colleagues did, that his own dictum that stability takes precedence over all else demanded that those processes, and the resultant economic growth, be pushed forward. The domestic and international shocks resulting from the events of June 1989 notwithstanding, his Southern Tour of 1992 unleashed the second wave of the process of opening and reform that has resulted in the China we see today, with unprecedented levels of prosperity, openness to the world, international standing and influence.

    For one who lived through and closely followed the events of 1989 in Beijing, it is at times hard to realise that a quarter of a century has now past, and that vast numbers of adult Chinese today were only children, or not even born, when those events took place. June 4 means little or nothing to many of them. At the same time, China, and Beijing, have changed beyond recognition, and in terms of people’s lives, in many ways for the better. Millions of Chinese travel overseas on holidays every year, and when the holidays are over, they return home with no greater reluctance than tourists of any other country. Their lives are not bad. They take pride in China’s global standing. For many Chinese, particularly intellectuals and students, the 1980s were a period of unalloyed admiration for the West, but this has been tempered not only by patriotic education and warnings of the dangers of peaceful evolution, but much more effectively by Western failures in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Asian Financial Crisis, the Global Financial Crisis, the negative examples and unmet policy challenges of the Arab Spring, Israel/Palestine, the Ukraine…the list goes on.

    Of course China has huge problems and challenges of its own, some of which, such as pollution, result from its own successes, while others are more traditional, such as the corruption which now greatly exceeds that which was such an issue in 1989. But while ‘mass incidents’ resulting from particularly egregious and localised causes continue to take place across the country, the idea that the central leadership is vulnerable to challenge by mass protests in the heart of the nation seems inherently implausible. This is not what people want, and even if it were, the range of coercive means – lethal, and significantly, non-lethal –  at the disposal of the authorities gives them a far greater degree of flexibility and effectiveness than was the case 25 years ago.

    And yet, those same authorities are worried. They have not forgotten what happened. Some of them are the direct or indirect beneficiaries of the power struggle that Zhao Ziyang lost and Li Peng won, resulting in the subsequent promotion of Jiang Zemin, still exercising at least some influence despite his advanced age. (It is perhaps noteworthy, though, that Xi Jinping’s father Xi Zhongxun honourably but fruitlessly opposed the decision to use the PLA.) Neither have millions of Beijing citizens who themselves lived through the events forgotten, whatever roles they played or didn’t play, and whatever they thought then or think now. Neither have the parents, siblings, relatives, teachers, friends, of those who died, and the greater numbers injured or imprisoned or exiled.

    June 4, like it or not, is another of those dates, like March 18, May 4, May 30, September 18, and more, that have entered Chinese history, and as such demand an explanation. From time to time an official Chinese spokesperson says, usually responding to a journalist, that this issue has been settled years ago. It hasn’t. Were this the case, the date would not be as sensitive as it is. Every year in late May numbers of people associated with the events of 1989 are encouraged in one way or another to keep quiet, take a holiday, or something less pleasant. This year, a significant anniversary, has already seen a number of arrests, but also newer forms of activism, including a privately sponsored seminar and a series of messages on Weibo, China’s Twitter. The truth is, the issue is not going to go away, and the truth is…the truth. About what happened, and why.

    One may fully understand the desire of the Chinese authorities, faced as they are with massive challenges, to avoid rancorous disputes and whatever runs the risk of undermining China’s hard-won stability and prosperity. One should wish them every success in their efforts to achieve their stated goals for the the ‘two centenaries’ (of the Party and of the PRC), including moderate prosperity for all (2021) and democracy (2049). But sooner or later it should become clear that a truthful accounting should help, not hinder, the realisation of a China that is the stronger for the acknowledgment of its tragedies as well as its stunning achievements.

    Some years ago, invited by two graduate students of my acquaintance from the PRC, I visited the February 28 Memorial Museum in Taipei. I had wondered whether they wished to remind me of the sins of the KMT, but this was not their point. As we walked out, one of them said to me, ‘we wanted you to see this – the day we can take you to the June 4 Memorial Museum in Beijing, we’ll know our beloved Motherland has come of age.’*

     

    Richard Rigby was an Australian diplomat with postings in Tokyo, Beijing (twice), Shanghai (Consul General), London and Israel (Ambassador). He was also Assistant Director General of ONA. 

    May 18 Beijing

    *The February 28 incident occurred in 1947. Martial Law was lifted by President Chiang Ching-Kuo in 1987. The Executive Yuan promulgated a Research Report into the Incident in 1992. In 1995 President and KMT Chairman Lee Teng-Hui issued a formal apology and declared February 28 as an official day of commemoration for the victims. It took a long time.

     

  • Walter Hamilton. When Local Becomes Global

    Why is Vladimir Putin calling down upon himself the ire of the world by failing to help secure the crash site of MH-17 for international investigators? The answer, I think, is pretty obvious. He does not want to demonstrate how much influence, if not control, Russia has over events in eastern Ukraine. Putin’s response has been to blame the government in Kiev and hold it responsible for the situation.

    Since the fall of the Moscow-backed regime in Kiev, it has been Russian policy to destabilize its neighbour so as to discredit and weaken the pro-Western government that has taken over. It has used existing ethnic and religious divisions in Ukraine to hive off the Crimean peninsula and turn a large swathe of territory in the east into a war zone.

    For historical reasons many people living in the east of Ukraine identify with Russia; in Europe, where borders have changed often in the past century, this kind of cross-border allegiance is not unusual. Before now Hitler and Stalin, among others, exploited similar sources of tension. Putin has used pro-Russian Ukrainians––advised, trained and equipped by his own military intelligence services––together with a ‘free corps’ of Cossacks and other Russian mercenaries, some of them veterans of the fighting in Chechnya, to pursue his anti-Western agenda.

    He may have good reason to fear the loss of a satellite state, but his actions only serve to underscore why most of Ukrainian citizens want a future in the EU.

    Putin’s particular approach has been conditioned by a desire to localize the conflict as much as possible, thus avoiding a direct confrontation with member states of the European Union. Until this week he had been partially successful. Although both the United States and the EU imposed sanctions against Moscow following its invasion of the Crimea, there have been signs recently of a split in the trans-Atlantic response to Russia’s aggression. Washington expanded its sanctions regime after it determined that Moscow was supplying ever-more sophisticated weapons to the rebels, including surface-to-air missile launchers, but the EU did not follow suit. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande (who have not been the most outspoken of world leaders condemning the attack on MH-17) are the chief architects of a ‘slowly-slowly’ approach to Putin. Their approach, along with Putin’s ‘localizing’ strategy, has crashed just as surely as the ill-fated Malaysian Airlines plane.

    Local has become global. In an interconnected world, a conflict in the very centre of Europe in which the most sophisticated types of conventional weapons are deployed was never going to remain local for long. International travel is just one way in which humanity is knitted together; we cannot turn our backs on any festering conflict and hope it goes away. The complaint that the aircraft should not have been using air space above a conflict zone (as was done by many other commercial flights) completely misses the point. Whoever supplied and wantonly fired the missile, having failed to even identify the target, bears the whole responsibility.

    Putin has been hoisted with his own petard: if he continues to stand aside from this tragedy he is condemned as irresponsible and ruthless; if he exercises the authority of his office to clear the disaster area for a proper recovery and investigation, he demonstrates the true extent of Russia’s involvement. Alternatively, if indeed he cannot influence the disparate militias that are roving over the disputed territory, it will become clear that he has engineered a crisis over which he has lost control.

    Putin faces an unenviable choice, as far as his own prestige is concerned (and that, rather that the dignified recovery of the remains of 298 innocent people, seems to be the overriding consideration in Moscow). It is hard to imagine how this terrible situation can play out to his advantage. The best outcome, and the best memorial to the lost lives, would be an end to the fighting and a political settlement that respects the sovereignty of Ukraine and the rights of all its citizens.

    Walter Hamilton reported from foreign bureaus for the ABC and AAP for 14 years.

     

     

  • MH 17-Light a candle rather than curse the darkness

    In the horror and sense of evil we all feel about the downing of MH17 how should we respond?  Perhaps out best response is summed up in the above exhortation which is attributed to Peter Benenson the founder of Amnesty International. The candle cycled by barb wire has become the emblem of Amnesty. The quote was also used by Adlai Stevenson in a speech in the UN in tribute to Eleanor Roosevelt

    As a Christian I find such horror and pervasive evil hard to understand or explain. We particularly respond to MH 17 because of the large number of Australians who have been wantonly killed. But at the same time more have been killed in Gaza. And even more are killed almost every day in Syria and Iraq. Evil, violence and injustice are pervasive.

    That evil is personal as well as national and global. We each struggle with our own selfishness and fear.

    But we also have what Abraham Lincoln described as our better angels of generosity and concern for our neighbour. And that internal struggle between good and evil, between our better angels and our darker angels is played out in our wider community and the wider wold. We are affected by what happens even in remote Ukraine.

    Lighting candles seems to me to be best response or perhaps the only way in the long term not just for our own mental and moral health but to shift the balance against violence and injustice. There are many small and perhaps even large things that we can do; helping asylum seekers and our  indigenous people; the homeless; the poor of the world; advocacy for the vulnerable; resistance to the violent and the warlike and support for peacemakers. Cursing the darkness or wringing our hands is not helpful either for us or others.

    My father often told me to “stop complaining and do something about it”. I try to respond that way, inadequate as it is. We must take personal responsibility for the wrongs in the world. I see no other sensible way but to keep lighting candles.

  • Bugger the planet, ignore our children and trash our reputation.

    The repeal of the carbon tax is a political victory for Tony Abbott but it is hard to imagine a worse combination of poor reasoning and bad policy making. It shows little appreciation of economics. It will increase the budget deficit. It shows a mistrust of the market. Tony Abbott’s political legacy will be defined by the repeal of the carbon tax. It is one of the worst examples of policy vandalism in our history.

    As the world’s greatest carbon polluter per capita, we are now probably the only country in the world going backwards on carbon reduction. We will be left with a nonsense called ‘Direct Action’ which Malcolm Turnbull rightly described as a fig leaf when you don’t have a real policy to reduce carbon.

    All the expert advice around the world from the climate scientists and economists is that we have a real problem which is best addressed through a market mechanism – either a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme. Our own Treasury, Ken Henry, Bernie Fraser and Ross Garnaut, all tell us that the best and cheapest way to reduce carbon pollution is through a market mechanism rather than direct action. Tony Abbott prefers to take the advice on climate change – not of the experts but of Rupert Murdoch and other foolish people.

    Our political system and our political leaders have failed us badly. John Howard reluctantly said in 2007 that he would introduce an emissions trading scheme, but told us later that he really didn’t believe in it but he had to do it because of political pressure. Kevin Rudd’s emissions trading scheme was pursued more in the end to skewer Malcolm Turnbull. It was at the cost of a good policy outcome. When the Liberal Party dumped Malcolm Turnbull for Tony Abbott, Rudd refused to call a double dissolution on the ‘great moral challenge of climate change’. Julia Gillard told us that she would never introduce a carbon tax, and then did just that under pressure from the Greens. Then Tony Abbott, despite having favoured a carbon tax in his Daily Telegraph blog of 2009, played the carbon tax issue like a dog with a bone. No untruth was out of the question. No scare was too great.  He played to the climate sceptics and the extreme right wing of his own party and in the community. As the chair of the G20 in Brisbane later this year, he will do his best to keep climate change off the agenda.

    And then there were the Greens who must bear a huge responsibility for their policy purity that denied us a sensible outcome in 2009. The Greens joined with the Coalition in the Senate to vote down Kevin Rudd’s proposals because they ‘locked in an inadequate 5% target’. Five years later we still have a 5% target with no clear or efficient way to get there. The Greens should hang their heads in shame. They took no risks but kept parading their policy purity. Their hypocrisy continues on one issue after another. Just think asylum seekers when they sided with Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison on critical issues. In parading their self-righteousness the Greens invariably ask for more than is on the table and finish up with nothing. It is often better to hold your nose and make some real progress.

    But in it all, Tony Abbott stands out as the greatest vandal. He warned us about dramatic increases in power prices that the carbon tax would incur. Those scare tactics are turning out to be largely nonsense. The price rises due to carbon tax have been so small that the Australia Bureau of Statistics has had trouble measuring them. There certainly have been increases in electricity prices but they have little to do with the carbon tax. Only 7% of power prices are due to the carbon tax and another 7% is due to various other means to encourage energy saving and use of renewables. The big increase in electricity prices has been the gouging by the state-owned networks in NSW and Qld. On top of this gold plating by the networks which has forced up prices, we are likely to see a doubling of gas prices in the next two years as the domestic price of gas rises to the world price.

    The price increases from the carbon tax have been minimal, the economy has continued to grow and Whyalla has not been wiped off the map.

    And the carbon tax has been doing what it was designed to do in reducing carbon emissions. Only yesterday Frank Jotzo, Director, Centre for Climate Economics and Policy at ANU said in The Conversation

    ‘Carbon emissions in Australia’s national electricity market would have been 11 to 17 million tonnes higher if Australia had not introduced a carbon price. New research using the latest data indicates that the policy was working despite its imminent Senate repeal. Over the first two years of operation of the carbon price (July 2012 to July 2014) carbon emissions were down by 29 million tonnes or 8.2% across the national electricity market compared to the two years prior. The conclusion from our research is that the carbon price has been performing well in its main job; delivering emission cuts in the power sector, which is the largest source of emissions and the sector with the biggest opportunity for cuts.’

    Frank Jotzo adds that the reduction in carbon emissions would have been higher if companies had been confident that the carbon tax was here to stay. With Tony Abbott raising doubts some companies deferred decisions to reduce pollution.

    We are out of step with all other major countries. A month ago China and the UK signed an agreement to work together towards a global framework for combatting climate change. China has emission reduction schemes in six major provinces which will lead to a national scheme. China is the largest investor in renewable energy and coal use is being scaled down. President Obama is pushing ahead with ambitious carbon reduction policies. Ten US states are well ahead in carbon reduction. The Europeans have had an emissions trading scheme since 2005. Commenting on the Abbott government’s decision to abolish the carbon tax, the European Union’s Climate Commissioner said today ‘The EU regrets the repeal of Australia’s carbon pricing mechanism just as new carbon pricing initiatives are emerging all around the world. The EU is convinced that pricing carbon is not only the most cost-effective way to reduce emissions but also the tool to make the economic paradigm shift the world needs.’

    The repeal of the carbon tax will have some short term benefits for business. The chief beneficiaries will be the heavy polluting electricity generators in the La Trobe Valley who burn brown coal. But there will be significant down-sides in the long term. A carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme is essential in both reducing carbon emissions and helping organisations switch to low emissions technology. Companies will not be able to avoid making this transition. The sooner they do it the better. But there will now be fewer incentives for Australian businesses to develop low emissions technology. We will continue to depend on fossil fuels both as a major domestic energy source and an export product.  Tony Abbott prides himself in becoming an ambassador to the world for highly polluting thermal coal.

    Direct Action is not a serious policy. The cost will be higher than a market mechanism. The carbon tax penalised polluters, but Direct Action will be paid by taxpayers as an incentive for polluters to reduce pollution. What an absurd idea! Perhaps Tony Abbott has in mind paying people to give up smoking!

    If the world and Australia are to grow and prosper our polluting industries must decline and industries based on renewable sources of energy must expand. To delay that process is foolhardy…

    Tony Abbott and all Australians will come to rue the decision to abandon the carbon tax and an emissions trading scheme. Politics has won in the short term but at great cost to our future.

    Can Bill Shorten lead us out of this mess? He bears a heavy responsibility

  • Refugee success

    In recent years we have been getting a diet designed to diminish, denigrate and demonise asylum-seekers and refugees.

    We have lost a sense of proportion and the enormous contribution which refugees have made to this country.

    I have set out below links to information and articles which describe the remarkable way in which we have accepted refugees in the past and the way that they have helped build Australia. It is a thrilling story. These links are provided courtesy of the Refugee Council of Australia. Some of the information may be a few years old but the stories are current. John Menadue

     

    http://refugeecouncil.org.au/r/rpt/2010-Contributions.pdf 

    http://www.theage.com.au/executive-style/strive/they-came-they-conquered-20130419-2i4wf.html   

    http://www.21stcenturynews.com.au/refugees-great-australian-entrepreneurs/

     

  • How does Australia’s health system compare.

    The Treasurer, the Minister for Health and the Commission of Audit have warned us in one way or another that the Australian health service is unsustainable, particularly with an ageing population. The Treasurer tells us that the age of entitlement has to end in health as elsewhere.

    We need to keep modernising Medicare but by almost any international comparison we have one of the best and most sustainable health services in the world. We need to keep our problems in perspective.

    The Commonwealth Fund publishes a regular research report on health systems in major countries. The Commonwealth Fund is a highly regarded private US foundation that compares major systems around the world to stimulate innovative policies and practices in the US and elsewhere.

    In its 2014 report ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall’ it compares the performance of healthcare systems in eleven major countries. The comparisons cover quality of care, access, efficiency, equity,‘healthy lives’ and health expenditures per capita.

    Its overall health ratings for these eleven countries were as follows:

    1. UK
    2. Switzerland
    3. Sweden
    4. Australia
    5. Germany and Netherlands (equal)
    6. .
    7. New Zealand and Norway
    8. .
    9. France
    10. Canada
    11. US

    On almost all the measures the UK with its National Health Service is a stand-out performer. It has well and truly stood the test of time. The single payer nature of the UK health service is its strength. The regular laggard in almost all these rankings is the US. It tells us a great deal about the failure of a health service based on multiple private insurance payers. (Our private health insurance lobby is trying to take us down this disastrous US path.)

    When one looks at the break-down of these rankings, the UK ranks at the top in quality of care, access, efficiency and equity. US ranks last in access, efficiency and equity. What is more, the UK system is the cheapest at $US3,405 per capita in 2011 compared with the US, the most expensive at $US8,508 per capita in that same year.

    As indicated above, Australia stands at number four in overall rankings amongst the eleven countries. In particular areas we ranked as follows

    • In quality of care we ranked number 2.
    • In access, we are well down the list at number 8. This reflects in part our high level of co-payments or out of pocket costs. The proposed $7 co-payment will add to our problem of access.
    • In efficiency, we rank number 4.
    • In equity we rank number 5, which reflects in part our failures in mental health, indigenous health and in remote healthcare.
    • In ‘healthy lives’ we rank number 4.
    • In health expenditure per capita in 2011 at $US3,800 we were the third lowest amongst the 11 countries.

    Another measure of our success of course is our high life expectancy.

    It is quite clear that by world standards we rank quite well. We are behind the UK, but far ahead of the US. The single payer Medicare has also stood the test of time.

    But there are ways that we could improve our health services.

    • Mental health, indigenous health and remote healthcare are major shortcomings.
    • Our co-payments are confused and inequitable.
    • Subsidised private health insurance makes it harder for Medicare to control costs. (I find it hard to put up with the gall of the private health insurance funds that will never publicly debate their cause, privately lobby ministers in order to achieve results that will take us down the disastrous US path.)

    There are many ways in which the efficiency of our system could be improved and costs better managed.

    • The split of commonwealth and state responsibilities adds to costs and hinders integration of hospital and non hospital care.
    • The remuneration of doctors through fee-for-service is a perverse incentive which encourages over-servicing and over-prescribing. It also hinders the treatment of long-term chronic sufferers.
    • The government subsidy to private health insurance adds $5 billion plus per annum to government costs, benefits the wealthy and weakens Medicare.
    • Australian drugs cost substantially more than in NZ..at least $2b. pa.. because of the clout of Medicines Australia in negotiating prices with the Australian government.
    • With its lobbying power, the Australian Pharmacy Guild protects pharmacists from competition.

    There is a lot we can do to improve healthcare in Australia and better manage costs. But overall, we have a very good and sustainable health service which ranks well against comparable countries. We need to keep a sense of proportion.

    For further information on the Commonwealth Fund Report, including the overall rankings, google The Commonwealth Fund and search Mirror, Mirror on the Wall 2014 Update.

  • Take your pick on the way News Corp operates.

    On oath before the Leveson Enquiry, Rupert Murdoch said “I’ve never asked a prime minister for anything’. (Leveson transcript 25 April 2012)

    In his book ‘The Whitlam Government 1972-75’, published in 1985, Gough Whitlam says

    ‘ … in the week after the 1972 election, Menadue, who had become my private secretary at the beginning of 1960 and had then become Murdoch’s financial manager in mid-1967, saw me on Murdoch’s behalf to put the proposition that Murdoch should become High Commissioner in London. Murdoch was confident that there could be no conflict of interest, since he would put his British interests in trust and there would be no public outcry since the media proprietors would not oppose the appointment of one of themselves.’ (p.581)

    In my book ‘Things you learn along the way’ published in 1999, I said

    ‘Murdoch certainly believed that he had played a major part in the 1972 election result and that something was due to him. What he asked for was that he be appointed as Australian High Commissioner to London … Murdoch raised the appointment with me and explained that if he was the High Commissioner he would put his newspaper and television interests in trust so that there would not be a conflict of interest. He believed also that he could influence other Australian media proprietors and avoid medial flak for the new government over the appointment. He has since denied that the sought the High Commissioner’s job. … But Whitlam was adamant about Rupert for London. “No way” he said.’ (p.113)

    He boasted way back in 1997 “I bet if I was going to be shot at dawn, I could get out of it.” (Shawcross, Rupert Murdoch, The Making of a Media Empire p62/3)

    On his latest trip to Australia Murdoch gave us the benefit of his well-researched and in depth  understanding on climate change…”we should not be building windmills and all that rubbish” and to meet rising sea levels. “we have to stop building vast houses on the seashore”   His loyal employee and interviewer, Paul Kelly, did not even blink.

     

  • Chris Mitchell, The Australian and Iraq

    As part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of The Australian, the editor, Chris Mitchell, revealed on Monday 14 July that he was a secret opponent of the invasion of Iraq. This will come as a surprise for many who followed The Australian’s wholehearted support of the Iraq invasion and hectored and criticised those who opposed it.

    In The Monthly magazine yesterday, Robert Manne tells us about this remarkable confession by Chris Mitchell. See Monthly link below.  John Menadue.

     

    http://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/robert-manne/2014/07/14/1405315103/chris-mitchell-australian-and-iraq

  • Malaysia, Manus, Nauru and offshore processing.

    I have not always held the view that asylum seekers who come to Australia could be transferred and processed in another country. I changed my mind on that partly because of the rapid increase in boat arrivals after the Agreement with Malaysia fell over in 2011. The large number of boat arrivals was reducing public support for a generous and humane refugee program.

    I came to the view that what was important is that asylum seekers are treated with humanity and that the process is fair and efficient. The issue of where that processing occurs, on shore or offshore is a secondary issue.

    For the present we have comprehensively lost the argument of opposition to offshore processing of boat arrivals

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

    Unfortunately the agreement with Malaysia was made impossible by the combined support of the Greens and the Coalition in the Senate to block amendments to the Migration Act. The action of the Coalition and the Greens in the Senate was supported by refugee advocates across Australia. .

    The collapse of the Malaysian Agreement was the turning point. We have been on a slippery slide ever since. Boat arrivals quadrupled as a result of the High Court decision and the collapse of the Malaysian Agreement. In the second half of 2013 asylum seekers arriving by boat were running at a rate of over 40,000 per annum. We may wish it otherwise but no Australian Government can keep intact a generous humanitarian refugee program with boat arrivals at over 40.000 pa. At the peak of the Indo China outflow the largest number of people arriving by boat was 1423 people in 1977/78. In the aftermath of the collapse of the Malaysian Agreement it was almost thirty times higher.

    My own view is that the Fraser Government could not have sustained our generous acceptance of Indo Chinese refugees if boat arrivals had been anywhere near the rate the Rudd government faced in mid-2013. To think otherwise is kidding ourselves. I was Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs for some of the time involved

    The failure of the Malaysian Agreement triggered Manus and Nauru.

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

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

    • All countries should commit to the principle of non-refoulment.
    • Provide asylum seekers with a legal status and access to work and education.
    • Work to help not only displaced people but also host communities.
    • Increase our refugee intake from our region.
    • Work with partners in the region in association with UNHCR to create an atmosphere of safety and trust.

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

    We need to think again about total opposition to transfers and regional processing. That opposition has led us into a tragic cull de sac

    A way to minimize the damage to asylum seekers and our own credibility is to now press for such things as

    • Increasing the annual “regular” refugee intake to 25,000 from its present 13,750.
    • Negotiate Orderly Departure Agreements with Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. The governments in those countries are likely to welcome the departure of some of their opponents. In 1983 we negotiated an ODA with Vietnam under which 100,000 Vietnamese came to Australia without risky journeys.
    • Develop alternate migration pathways e.g. 457 visas for Iranians. There is often a blurred line between refugees and persons fleeing for economic reasons.
    • Wind back mandatory detention which is cruel and expensive.It punishes but does not deter as we have seen time and time again. Stopping boat arrivals in recent months is not because of mandatory detention. It is not because of Operation Sovereign Borders. It is because of government policy that no boat arrivals will ever be settled in Australia. That is the deterrent.
    • Allow asylum seekers in the community to work

    We may indulge ourselves with tears and criticism over what has happened but we need to apply ourselves where improvement is possible to help people in great need. It will require political pragmatism and compromise.

  • Creating a Long-Term Framework for Asylum Seeker Policy

    Last Friday 11 July 2014, I attended a roundtable at Parliament House, Canberra to discuss possible actions that could be taken to find a way out of the present divisive and harsh treatment of asylum seekers. The media release following that roundtable is reproduced below. The roundtable drew on  discussion paper ‘Beyond Operation Sovereign Borders’, prepared by Peter Hughes and Arja Keski-Nummi. That discussion paper can be found by clicking on my website at the top of this page. The paper is described on the website as ‘Final Policy Paper – Beyond Operation Sovereign Borders’.  John Menadue.

    High-level Roundtable held at Parliament House, Canberra

    A diverse group of 35 high-level policymakers and experts, including a former Indonesian Ambassador to Australia, a strategist from Malaysia, and parliamentarians from three of the four major parties, met all day Friday 11 July to discuss a long-term framework for Australia’s asylum seeker policy.

    Jointly organised by Australia21, the Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW, and the Centre for Policy Development, the roundtable was conducted under the Chatham House Rule.

    Members of the Steering Committee, Bob Douglas, Jane McAdam and Travers McLeod, said today:

    “This roundtable marked the start of a new conversation about a complex policy area that has been a political hot potato for too long. It aims to be a contribution which is helpful to all sides of the political spectrum and which reflects Australian values.”

    Participants recognised there is no panacea in this debate, and that a focus on politics over policy is unhelpful. They noted that forced migration is a global phenomenon, not something that Australia can control on its own, nor is asylum seeker policy one that should be viewed in isolation from other aspects of national and foreign policy. The ultimate goal was to consider how Australia could facilitate a sustainable immigration policy that balances protection, safety, transparency and prosperity.

    Discussion paper released today

    The roundtable drew on a discussion paper ‘Beyond Operation Sovereign Borders: A Long-Term Asylum Policy for Australia’ prepared by two former senior Immigration Department officials, Peter Hughes and Arja Keski-Nummi, working with the Centre for Policy Development. Released today, the paper suggests pathways to better policy responses for the future. Drawing on lessons from the past, it examines the evidence, including the rate of irregular maritime arrivals and the regional implications of refugee flows, including the way refugee policy has evolved in Australia since asylum seekers first began arriving by boat in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

    Common ground at the roundtable

    Contributions at the roundtable were frank, respectful and constructive. Fresh positions were adopted. Although the participants in this first roundtable did not seek to reach consensus on a new policy, some important areas of common ground did emerge:

    • While emphasising that Australia must respect its international legal obligations, the roundtable also recognised that the community wants reassurance that Australia retains control over who becomes Australian citizens and under what circumstances.
    • Participants stressed the importance of implementing fair, transparent and efficient refugee status determination procedures, wherever processing takes place. They supported raising Australia’s humanitarian intake, perhaps set as a percentage of our annual migration intake.

    Media  Release – 13 July 2014

    • Participants expressed concern at the militarisation of current approaches, and emphasised the need to build regional protection capacity and foster bilateral partnerships built on trust and respect.
    • There was support for extending the rights available to asylum seekers awaiting the outcome of their protection claims, including the right to work, and for phasing out mandatory detention.
    • Participants recommended measures to expedite the processing of particular cohorts of claimants, and encouraged new community initiatives, especially in regional Australia, that bring Australians into direct contact with refugees and use their skills to help rehabilitate depressed areas.
    • The participants are committed to creating a ‘second track’ dialogue that will engage the community, policymakers, experts and politicians in rethinking our approach.
    • Finally, it was noted that any new approach must use language carefully, recognising the humanity of those in search of protection.

    A full report on this project will be released later in 2014.

    Attendees

    Paris Aristotle AM,  Adam Bandt MP, Paul Barratt AO, Admiral Chris Barrie AC, Father Frank Brennan SJ AO, Julian Burnside AO QC, The Hon Fred Chaney AO, Dr Joyce Chia, Noel Clement, Dr David Corlett, Senator Sam Dastyari, Professor Bob Douglas AO, Erika Feller, Ellen Hansen, Dr Claire Higgins, Peter Hughes, Associate Professor Mary Anne Kenny, Arja Keski-Nummi, Dr Anne Kilcullen, David Lang, Ben Lewis, Libby Lloyd AM, The Hon Ian Macphee AO, Professor Robert Manne, Professor Jane McAdam, Dr Travers McLeod, John Menadue AO, Right Reverend Professor Stephen Pickard, Reverend Elenie Poulos, Paul Power, Ambassador Wiryono Sastro Handoyo, Jo Szwarc, Angus Taylor MP, Oliver White and Steven Wong.

    Media contacts             

    Bob Douglas
     Australia 21
     Tel: 0409 233 138, email: bobdouglas@netspeed.com.au

     Professor Jane McAdam
    Andrew & Renata Kaldor
    Centre for International Refugee Law
    Tel (02) 9385 2250, email j.mcadam@unsw.edu.au

    Travers McLeod
    Centre for Policy Development
    Tel: 0487 302 927; email: travers.mcleod@cpd.org.au

    About the organisers 

    Australia21 is a non-partisan, non-profit, registered research organisation which seeks to develop and promote new frameworks for understanding and acting on complex questions that are important to Australia’s future.

    The Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW is the world’s first academic research centre dedicated to the study of international refugee law and policy.

    The Centre for Policy Development is an independent and non-partisan think tank which develops and promotes policy proposals to help Australia thrive and lead in a fast-changing global environment over the long-term.

  • Turning the federation clock back to 1901.

    The Commission of Audit has made many unhelpful suggestions about budgetary and economic issues. It seems to have been driven more by ideology than fact.  See my blog of May 1 2014 “The Commission of Audit and facing the wrong way”.

    One of its most unhelpful suggestions is that Australia returns to the 1901 intentions of the federation fathers and with clear lines of responsibility drawn between the commonwealth and the states as set out in Section 51 of the Constitution. The Abbott Government’s terms of reference for its White Paper on Federalism also suggest that his government would like us to go back to the arguments about sovereignty. We are being urged to look back to 1901 rather than focus on the way our constitution has evolved to date and will need to evolve in the decades ahead.

    This sterile debate about states’ rights comes and goes, but the issue is never resolved. Malcolm Fraser attempted to do what Tony Abbott now suggests – defining sovereignty clearly between the commonwealth and the states. But Malcolm Fraser’s plans went nowhere. The same will happen over the present intentions of the government.

    In his blog on the Federation on May 23, 2014, Michael Keating set out very persuasively I thought why the national government has become pre-eminent and why that trend is likely to continue.

    • We now have a national market and face strong global competitors in a way that our founding fathers would never have dreamt of.
    • The powers of the commonwealth government have grown remarkably eg pensions, health services, managing the national economy and migration.  The exercise of these powers by the commonwealth government has been necessary and beneficial.
    • The commonwealth government dominates the taxation field and that will continue. The states could impose state income taxes but have chosen not to. High Court decisions over the long term have been consistently against the states in key areas.

    With three levels of government, commonwealth, states and local government, we are over-governed. With the territories we have nine departments of health, nine departments of education, nine departments of transport, and so on. There is great waste and duplication.

    The best solution would be to abolish the states as Jeff Kennett and others have suggested and replace them with fewer local government bodies that have substantially increased powers and coverage. That would best serve Australia’s interests but unfortunately the abolition of the states is not going to occur.  The states remain poor and proud.

    But there are possible ways that we could reduce duplication, waste and the blame-game between the commonwealth and the states.

    The two biggest areas of overlap, confusion and expenditure by the states and the commonwealth are in education and health. In 2010-11, education spending by the states and territories was $48.1 billion or 24.3% of total state spending. In that year, spending by the states and territories on health was $49.9 billion or 25.1% of total state spending. Health funding by the states is likely to remain the fastest area of expenditure growth.

    Together education and health are responsible for over one half of state budgets. Reducing overlap, confusion and spending in these two areas would make a substantial contribution to our federation and particularly the delivery of improved education and health services at lower cost.

    For years I have argued that in the health field the best solution to end the blame-game and confusion, and to integrate health services and improve the quality of care, would be to establish a small joint commonwealth-states health commission in any states where political agreement could be achieved. See my blog of June 3 ‘The blame-game in health’. A small planning commission would cost very little compared with large likely cost savings. Further the cost could be reduced by scaling back commonwealth and state government health department costs.

    A joint agreement on governance in health, the pooling of all commonwealth and states health funds in that states, and the implementation and monitoring of an agreed health plan in that state would be a major improvement in health services. Those services would continue to be delivered by the existing suppliers – commonwealth, states, local or private. An obvious example of the benefits of such a joint health commission is a reduction in hospital admissions. It is estimated that about 750,000 admissions to public hospitals each year in Australia could be significantly reduced if the commonwealth government improved the services available in primary care in the critical weeks before hospital admission. The problem is that the commonwealth largely funds primary care and the states largely fund public hospitals with poor integration between the two.

    Implementation of such a joint arrangement would be relatively easy. The real obstacle is securing a political agreement.

    We should also keep in mind that when Kevin Rudd proposed a takeover of states hospitals as a last resort, there was strong public support for this action as shown in opinion polls. Unfortunately he backed down and the health confusion continues.  The public would be open to a major reform in health.

    I am confident that joint arrangements in health that I have suggested would be the best way to end the confusion between commonwealth and state responsibilities. It would be more in keeping with our current needs and aspirations than going back to the federalism of 1901.

    It was a great achievement for Australians to come together in the federation of 1901. It was a real break-through at the time but the split of commonwealth and state responsibilities in 1901 is not particularly helpful for us in this century or the next.

    The key features of such an arrangement in health could be applied in the education field.

    Although with some rancour, our federation has evolved since 1901. We should look forward to the sort of society and economy that we should become in the future rather than nostalgically looking back to 1901.

  • Rod Tiffen. ‘The Australian’ and tobacco consumption.

    As the Australian approaches its 50th anniversary amid much self-congratulation, an insight into its editorial standards and how it conducts itself in controversies is provided by its recent reporting of competing claims over tobacco consumption.

    Tobacco is still the largest preventable source of premature death in the world.

    Despite the scale of its damage the Australian’s owner Rupert Murdoch has always had a curious attachment to the tobacco industry.  He was on the Philip Morris Board for a decade, and members of that company have often been on the News Corp Board.  Internal Philip Morris documents in the US described him as sympathetic to their position and his newspapers as ‘our natural allies’ and noted that his papers rarely publish anti-smoking articles.

    The fight to reduce the problems caused by tobacco has been a great policy success in Australia.  While around 37 per cent of the adult population (15+) smoked cigarettes daily in 1970, only around 16 per cent do now, and the decreases in per capita tobacco consumption have been even more dramatic, now around one third of their 1970 levels.

    There have been three strands to achieving this reduction.  The first has been public education….  The second has been raising the price of cigarettes…  The third has been legislation restricting areas where people can smoke, and importantly the ability of the industry to advertise its product, to give smoking a ‘cool’ image.  This was gradually extended from advertising on radio and television to print advertising to event sponsorship.

    The latest such measure came when under the Labor Government, led by Health Minister Nicola Roxon, Australia became the first country in the world to mandate that cigarettes could only be sold in uniform plain paper packaging, a move aimed at making young people less likely to take up smoking.

    It is interesting to note that before the enactment there were several scare campaigns by the tobacco lobby.  Tim Wilson, of the Institute of Public Affairs, which is reported to receive funding from the industry, said that the legislation could cost Australian taxpayers $3 billion in lawsuits over the intellectual property surrounding cigarette packaging.  The sum at the moment is closer to zero.

    On June 6, in a front page ‘exclusive’ by Christian Kerr was headlined ‘Evidence “World’s Toughest Anti-Smoking Laws” not working’/Labor’s Plain Packaging Fails as cigarette sales rise’.  It began ‘Labor’s nanny state push to kill off the country’s addiction to cigarettes with plain packaging has backfired, with new sales figures showing tobacco consumption growing during the first full year of the new laws.’  A supporting editorial began ‘Suck it up nanny, plain cigarette packs have not cut smoking.’  Columnist Judith Sloan followed up ‘The nannies are panicking’, and referred to ‘Head Nanny, Nicola Roxon’.  Henry Ergas similarly began ‘Not every nanny encourages her charges to take up alcohol and tobacco, but then again not every health minister is like Nicola Roxon.’

    The one piece of hard evidence in the original article is an industry survey commissioned by the tobacco industry to be used in lobbying against the introduction of similar laws in Britain.  More problematic than the provenance of the data is that the company was only prepared to release selective snippets, which makes it difficult to evaluate its overall worth and meaning.  The industry claim that smoking sales had increased was fleshed out with anecdotal evidence.  Except for a one paragraph ritual denial from the Labor shadow minister all the examples went in the one direction, that the policy was having no effect.  The owner of a convenience store, for example, was cited, but no public health experts.  A later story quoted a ‘proud’ Brisbane smoker saying the policy had had no effect on her.

    It is especially notable that the newspaper did not cross-check its industry data with any official data sources.  Others soon filled the gap.  The blog by leading economic analyst, Stephen Koukoulas, ‘the Kouk’, challenged the story by using Australian Bureau of Statistics National Accounts figures which indicated a decline in smoking over the calendar year 2013.

    A much bigger reaction followed Paul Barry’s dissection on the ABC TV’s Media Watch on June 16.  Skewered yet again by its arch-enemy, the Australian reacted vigorously.  It ran five stories on the topic the following Wednesday.  In the subsequent week or so, there were two editorials, a couple of references in ‘Cut and Paste’, and several news stories and commentary columns. Such huge attention was clearly more due to bruised editorial egos than to audience interest.  The coverage offers an instructive guide to how the Australian conducts controversies about itself.

    In this tobacco controversy legal affairs editor Chris Merritt criticised Media Watch for not disclosing that Stephen Koukoulas had worked on Julia Gillard’s staff for 10 months, and using Professor Mike Daube who had been a member of the government panel that recommended plain packaging laws.  Daube is an eminent authority on public health, while Koukoulas was a senior member of the Treasury for many years, and is a leading economist.  But red trumps expert in the eyes of the Australian.  Conversely the paper did not indicate that two of its staff working on the story – Christian Kerr and Adam Creighton – had worked for the Liberal Party, while one of its experts, Sinclair Davidson, had links to the Institute for Public Affairs, which is supported by the tobacco industry.

    The newspaper then wheeled out its three favourite academics – Judith Sloan, Henry Ergas and Sinclair Davidson – in its defence.  All three got the basic facts wrong.  Davidson asserted that ‘I have no doubt that the consumption of cigarettes has risen since plain packaging was introduced; we just can’t be sure whether it is by existing smokers or new smokers’.  Sloan repeated this claim.  Ergas claims that Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows tobacco consumption increased by 2.5 per cent in volume terms in the year immediately after the introduction of plain packaging.

    In fact, the statistical evidence is fairly clear, and in the other direction.  According to Media Watch the industry admits that the number of smokers fell in 2013 by 1.4%, and also that the number of cigarettes smoked per person fell by 1.4%.  Alan Austin gives the quarterly figures on household expenditure on tobacco consumption for nine quarters from March 2012 to March 2014.  Each quarter in 2013 was below its 2012 equivalent except for the December quarter.  Then there was a sharp fall in the March 2014 quarter.  Later Treasury data was released, and it advised that ‘tobacco clearances’ fell by 3.4 per cent in 2013 compared with 2012.  Clearances are an indicator of tobacco volumes in the Australian market.’

    The one exception to this consistent picture of declining consumption – and the one that the newspaper’s commentators have seized on without giving its context – is a spike in the last quarter of 2012.  This was almost certainly due to the anticipation by retailers and some customers of the large customs rise which was scheduled to occur in December.  Predictably this momentary increase was followed by a large decrease in the next quarter.

    The other figure used in several reports is a trend towards increased sales at the cheap end of the market.  But this is not inconsistent with a decline in aggregate sales.  Cheaper cigarettes now command a larger share of a shrinking market.  Their growth has been more than cancelled out by the decline in the more premium brands, no doubt to the chagrin of the tobacco companies.

    All three of the Australian’s columnists based their commentary on a false reading of the data.

    The paper’s economics correspondent, Adam Creighton (19-6-2014) argued that the data ‘do not discredit the Australian’s claim the policy might have contributed to rising sales of cigarettes.’  Actually, there was no ‘might’ in headlines such as ‘Plain fact: more people smoking’.  He also still believed that ‘as of now there is no evidence to refute the industry’s claims of a rise in the number of cigarettes being smoked …’

    What would a reader relying solely on the Australian know after all this coverage?  They would not have a clear idea of what the paper’s critics had been saying, or why they were saying it. They would not know that the AMA and Cancer Council had criticised the paper’s coverage as misleading.  They would probably think that tobacco consumption had increased rather than decreased.  They would not have had a clear and unvarnished account of the official statistics, or where the weight of the evidence lies.

    One cannot help thinking that the Australian in 1964 would have covered the tobacco story more competently than did the Australian in 2014.

    Rod Tiffen is the Emeritus Professor, Government and International Relations, University of Sydney. The above are extracts from a paper which will shortly be published by Inside Story.

  • Elenie Poulos. Morrison’s Vision of the ‘National Interest’ Does Us No Good.

    The parable of the Good Samaritan from the Bible (Luke, chapter 10) has become common place and almost clichéd in Christian conversations about the current Australian Government’s increasingly cold-hearted and abusive responses to asylum seekers. Christian conversations in the public space about this issue matter because the Minister for Immigration has made much of his Christian faith over the years (his first speech to the Parliament is worth a read). The Samaritan, of course, stopped to help a Jewish man (a traditional enemy) who was robbed, beaten and left by the side of the road to die. Two Jewish priests had already crossed the road to avoid the beaten man. We can confidently assume that the priests crossed the road because they deemed it not in their interest to stop and help. It was a foreigner, an outsider, who provided the care that was needed.

    Last week, the Minister for Immigration, Scott Morrison, in a flagrant move to circumvent the rule of law, announced that he would personally be assessing every request for permanent protection by an asylum seeker or refugee and make his decision against ‘a national interest test’. This test is set negatively, that is, the conditions describe what will not be deemed in the national interest. Those conditions include not doing anything that would: send a signal to people smugglers that they can still advertise potentially good results from the use of their services; negatively affect our relationships with our partners in the region; undermine the confidence we all have in the Government’s resolve to force ‘an orderly’ system into being and protect our borders; or been seen to reward people who don’t follow the rules.

    It is disheartening to say the least, that in the context of our humanitarian program and our obligations under the Refugees Convention to protect people regardless of their mode of arrival, there is nothing positively framed in this ‘national interest’ test.

    I’ve been working as a refugee advocate on behalf of the Uniting Church in Australia for over 12 years. In terms of public policy reform, it has been consistently frustrating and all too often demoralising. I have watched the progressive demonisation of asylum seekers who come by boat by both the Liberal and Labor parties for the purpose of base political gain and seen how the political rhetoric of ‘illegals’, ‘queue jumpers’ and border security have hardened the hearts of so many Australians. The militarisation of our response to what is a humanitarian problem has proved incredibly popular. It is unlikely that this latest move will raise a ripple among most voters. It must be said, however, that this explication of the ‘national interest’ is profoundly impoverished at best and at worst morally bankrupt.

    I don’t agree with, but I understand the classic neoliberal economic ideology that underpins the Abbott’s Government’s approach to every area of public policy. I do not understand what continues to drive Mr Morrison to increasingly creatively cruel responses to asylum seekers who come by boat; and I do not understand how the tests for permanent protection he is now relying on can possibly be in the national interest.

    It is not in the national interest to create a society in which people’s hearts are so hardened to the needs of those (relatively few by global standards) who come to us seeking care and protection. A robust, fair, efficient and transparent refugee status determination system, open to independent and judicial review, would identify those who do not have these needs. An approach which recognised the reality of the situations from which people are fleeing could inspire the growth of an outward-looking nation, making seriously hard-working and positive contributions to the development of peace in our world. Surely that would be in the national interest!

    It is not in the national interest for a country’s citizens to be supportive of policies deliberately designed to punish and break people. These policies are causing life-long harm to vulnerable, powerless people. There are too many ways for asylum seekers fleeing torture and persecution to die, including the tragedy of dying on a leaky boat but this Government can no longer claim that it is primarily concerned about saving people. Sending Tamil asylum seekers back to Sri Lanka without proper consideration of their protection claim risks their lives in just as real ways as people smugglers do. For asylum seekers kept captive in our detention centres and especially the horrendously harsh prison camps of Manus Island and Nauru, the slow, agonising torture they are suffering will, for many of them, affect the rest of their lives. And we have already seen the violent death of one man and the critical and permanent injuries done to others as a direct result of the abusive conditions of entirely unsuitable locations. Surely it would be in the national interest to be a society which responded with generosity and hospitality to those who knock on our door, especially the needy uninvited.

    It is not in the national interest for Australia to be regarded in the region as a bully who can buy its way out of the international and moral responsibilities it has, shifting what is a small ‘problem’ for us, onto the poorest, most insecure countries around us. Australia’s international relationships have already been damaged. What would be in Australia’s national interest would be to start turning this around with a show of good faith such as dramatically increasing (not reducing) our refugee resettlement intake from the region and working cooperatively with other countries to find long-term durable solutions that focus on protection and uphold people’s human rights rather than abusing them.

    It is also not in the national interest for such secrecy on the part of a democratically elected Government about how it’s implementing its policies. It is in the national interest for our governments to be open, transparent and accountable to the people they are elected to serve.

    Quite some time ago, I stopped expecting that our asylum seeker policies couldn’t get any worse but with the potential deliberate refoulement of Tamil asylum seekers and this new definition of the national interest surely we must be close to hitting rock bottom. 

    Elenie Poulos is the National Director of Uniting Justice Australia, the national policy and advocacy unit of the Uniting Church. She is an ordained minister of the Uniting Church.

  • Warwick Elsche. I hope you know what you’re doing, Tony!

    Rum has never been my drink; two wipe-outs in youth. One nip – very nice, two – too many, any more – dangerous – positively confusing.

    I suppose it was surprising then that I chose it as my companion as, with another million Australians, I settled in to hear the policy speech which would oust a dysfunctional Labor Government and make a Prime Minister of robust, forthright, Tony Abbott.

    Perhaps I should admit to a strong pro-Liberal partisanship; a particular admiration for Tony and the direct brand of politics he represents. It was this quality which had bought his Party to the point of certain accession to Government.

    Though suddenly feeling woozy, light-headed and extremely vague (how many nips did I have), I remembered his firm undertaking that he would not be a PM who said one thing before an election and did the opposite once elected. Smart guy Tony – knows the damage he did to Gillard over the “lie” on the carbon tax. He won’t put himself in that position!

    I vaguely remembered his promise to be a “Prime Minister for Indigenous Affairs’. He would preserve all front line services. He might even spend the first week of his Prime Ministry with these people on a settlement in the north. What a caring guy! Aussies will love their new boss. (Through the haze I heard nothing about heading north for a week.) There were some promises however. His Government would axe the program helping to re-establish aboriginal offenders return to society on release from prison. Several other front line services would go too. Everyone had to do some heavy lifting to cure the mess that Labor had left and Aborigines would be no exception. $170 million, he said, would be taken from Aboriginal Health Services and some half a billion dollars would come from the aboriginal budget.

    He confidently acknowledged his firm promise that there would be no cuts in Health and Education. But through the haze I heard him reveal that $80 billion would in fact be removed from their budgets. These were not broken promises, he said.

    I am finding it a bit hard to follow him here. 

    There would be no cuts to the popular media outlets – the ABC or SBS. Only $20 million would actually be taken from these organizations and there might be more to follow.

    He said there would be no interference with Medicare, the cornerstone of Australian health services – except for the addition of a $7 co-payment for each doctor’s visit and a $5 surcharge on prescriptions from a chemist. These also, he said, are not broken promises.

    In my confused state I think I am starting to get the message. Things are not really what they are; they are what Tony says they are. But will voters understand this?

    He said Australia would become a more robust and individualistic country, standing boldly on our own. During the campaign our Foreign Minister to be, Julie Bishop, had roundly upset Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O’Neill by publicly misquoting him on the state of Australia’s future aid to his country. But this was only practice. Australia would go further – It would again unsettle Indonesia, it would bring a rare and embarrassing public rebuke from China and it would totally rupture relations with near-neighbour Timor-Leste. (Is this real or is it the rum messing with me? Am I confusing what he said with what happened afterwards?) We would in fact go further and offend and threaten trade with nearly thirty Arab countries by ignoring the UN, the International Court of Justice, the International Red Cross, and almost every country in the world, by insisting on our own terminology for Occupied East Jerusalem.

    Listening to the banks, who have suddenly become enormously friendly – we’ll take away the protection Labor legislation gave to consumers in their dealings with them and their financial advisors.

    Will this win votes Tony? Why are you telling them this? 

    Students would not be left out when it came to heavy lifting. Uni fees would be allowed to rise – in some courses more than doubling.  And if any should, by chance, escape this burden, the interest rate on their HECS debt would be hiked.

    The rich of course would do their share too. Income over $180,000 would be taxed at an additional 2%. Anyone earning $200,000, as most politicians do, will face a slug of $400 annually – a whole $8.00 a week.

    At the other end of the scale, the unemployed would wait six months before they were eligible for any benefit and what benefits they get would be reduced. To get anything at all they would have to show they have applied for no fewer than forty jobs per month – ten applications per week. Their losses would come to something over $50.00 a week – nearly six times the impost on a $200,000 a year earner.

    I hope you know what you are doing Tony telling them all this I think through my haze. 

    Tony threw in for good measure the fact that the school kids bonus would go and they would get tougher with the child care rebate.

    Tony said we knew his view on climate change and at last he would have the opportunity to do something about it. The carbon tax would go, but to ensure there was no internal opposition or attempts to advise the Government, a whole lot else would go with it. To show our independence from the experts, including UNESCO, Tony said, we will allow the dumping of millions of tons of dredge material on the Great Barrier Reef in North Queensland. We will reward the loggers, “the real conservationists”, by de-listing from the world heritage list 74,000 hectares of virgin forest in Tasmania. A robust government in a newly robust country will not be lectured on climate change by so-called experts! To remove any threat from that quarter we will take 500 jobs from the Environment Department and slash their funds. In fact we can do better. We will axe the Climate Change Authority, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, the Climate Commission and the Australian Renewal Energy Authority. Just in case we have left anyone who would lecture us on the science of climate change, we will whip 500 jobs and $120 million off the CSIRO. In fact, for the first time in decades, he would scrap the whole science department altogether – but we will have a Ministry for Sport.

    Again – is this smart Tony? I guess you know.

    Pensioners, self-funded retirees and families will all lose much more than the annual $400 impost on high income earners.

    This seemed to jolt me awake. Had I heard right or was the rum continuing to confuse me? I was worried, really worried. But Tony knows best and he did win didn’t he? Would Tony have won had he enunciated these policies?

    We may yet find out.

    Before the election Tony promised us a double dissolution if his program was frustrated. Since the victory his henchman, Joe Hockey, has been similarly hairy-chested on the subject of a double dissolution. Rum haze or not – we now know what his program for any double dissolution must be. I can only hope it will work for him. Or will he at last break a promise and walk away from his double dissolution undertaking?

    Things are, after all, what Tony says they are. 

    Warwick Elsche, freelance journalist.

  • Woolworths and Pharmacies.

    The response of the Australian Pharmacy Guild (APG) to Woolworth’s proposal for free health checks was entirely predictable. It was about protecting the territory of pharmacists.

    But the APG did have a point. Are the leviathan department stores who sell large amounts of alcohol and tobacco really serious about our health? I don’t think so?

    But if the challenge of Woolworths would help curb the anti-social behaviour of the APG that would be a real public service.

    Pharmacists are the most over-qualified and under-utilised of health professionals. In the national interest and in their professional interest, pharmacists must participate in the transformation of our health sector. The 5,000 or so pharmacies on high street are a highly accessible and high profile resource, more so than GPs’ surgeries. Pharmacy attracts HSC students with high academic scores. Standing at the boundary of self-care pharmacists provide a range of services to customers – advice on medications, advice to see the GP, aches and pains, colds and flu, burns, rashes and abrasions. I cannot see why pharmacists for example shouldn’t almost immediately undertake blood tests, as well as flu injections and managing repeat prescriptions.  Their more active involvement in preventive health programs and primary care in general is essential.

    But the APG sees pharmacists primarily as shop keepers rather than health professionals

    Professor Sansom, described as Australia’s ‘pre-eminent pharmacist’, a former Chair of the PBAC, and the Australian Pharmacy Examining Council, put it bluntly a few years ago. ‘The profession would miss out on inclusion in future healthcare models unless it changed its current structure.’  He added ‘the current structure which is heavily structured on drug distribution…All of those things together and independently restrict the innovation and development in pharmacy practice which will promote this profession as a legitimate partner in new primary healthcare delivery models rather than being seen simply as a distributor.’

    Andrew Gilbert, Professor and Director of the Quality Use of Medicines and Pharmacy Research Centre at the University of South Australia, also described the problem very graphically a few years ago…

    ‘I know from the many telephone calls I get from disgruntled young pharmacists who are expected to dispense over 300 prescription items a day. They say that they are instructed that their primary duty is to supply the product, correctly labelled to the right person and that this type of professional performance measure limits any attempt to work with patients, to use Consumer Medicines Information Sheets as part of the patient consultation process and to provide a primary healthcare service. … These [supply] requirements leave no time for patient-centred healthcare, primary healthcare services, patient education and training, professional development through mentoring by experienced pharmacists and discussions with other health professionals regarding the care of complex patients. Professional services … [are] viewed as optional extras by many community pharmacists; services that may be provided if they are not too busy with the core business – supply. … Why is one of the most valuable professional services a pharmacist can offer, a pharmaceutical care focussed review in collaboration with the patient and their doctor only offered as an add on service in some pharmacies that chose to participate.’

    In addition to resisting the enhanced professional role of pharmacists the APG is in the front line in resisting competition. For example pharmacies must generally, in urban areas, be 1.5 km from each other? One consequence of this restriction of competition agreed to by the PGA and  Australian governments is that the number of community pharmacies has remained substantially unchanged at 5,000 since 1993.(At 30 June 2012  there were 5298 community pharmacies)  There are Pharmacy Location Rules which effectively put a cap on pharmacy numbers, This capping of pharmacy numbers is despite  population increase of almost 30 % since 19993 and an increase in PBS services, including Repatriation Pharmaceutical Services of over 80% since 1993.  In 1993, the average number of PBS prescriptions per pharmacy was 21,200. Last year it was close to 40,000.

    The consumer organization, Choice, in 2005 commissioned a study by the Allen Consulting Group on these location rules. Choice commented that ‘the location rules provide little consumer benefit and only advantage existing pharmacy operators’. (Choice, August 2009, p65)

    Last week the Productivity Commission said ‘There has been a failure to act on recommendations of a national independent review of pharmacies to relax ownership and other competitive restrictions”

    Our pharmacy sector needs a major shakeup. It needs to encourage pharmacists and particularly young pharmacist to be in the front line of primary care including employing nurse practitoners. In short they need to be less like shopkeepers and more the professionals they were trained to be. Further we need more competition but not from types like Woolworths

    I outlined the above case to the 2009 Pharmacy Australia Congress. It was well received well by many pharmacists but not by all. It was particularly welcomed by younger pharmacists who felt their professional skills were not being effectively used. Subsequently I accepted an invitation to speak to the Australian College of Pharmacy Dinner in Brisbane. It was described as a “must not miss event”. But the invitation was withdrawn. It was the first time in my public life that this had occurred. Perhaps I did not have the pulling power I thought! But the real reason for the withdrawal I am certain was that the APG leaned on the Brisbane College. This is typically the way the APG works–don’t engage in public debate but like all vested interests covertly lobby ministers, members of parliament and senior officials. That lobbying would now be going on with the present five year Pharmacy Agreement to expire in June next year. The present agreement is worth over $10b or $2m each year for the 5000 or so community pharmacies in Australia

    The APG like other powerful vested interests in the health field, the AMA, Medicines Australia and the Private Health Insurance Industry stand in the way of necessary reform. The public pays in higher prices and higher taxes.

  • Joanne Yates. The G20 and the C20.

    The G20 has become regarded as the premier forum for the promotion of economic cooperation.  It is comprised of 19 nations and the EU and together account for 85% of global GDP, 75% of global trade and two thirds of the global population.  As a consequence, its policy decisions have a significant impact on the well-being and life prospects of all citizens, but particularly on the poorest communities in the world, including those contained within G20 nations themselves.

    The Australian C20 – one of five engagement groups of the G20 and representing a broad cross section of Australian civil society – is charged with the responsibility of bringing to the attention of the G20 leaders meeting in Brisbane in November 2014, the key and pressing concerns of those who comprise civil society in Australia, within G20 nations and other world civil society organisations.

    There are two main elements to the Australian C20’s year-long focus – policy development and advocacy.  Under the leadership of Australian and international co-chairs, the C20’s policy papers were developed via a web-based crowdsourcing platform on four main policy themes (determined as priorities that international outreach and consideration of the G20’s agenda identified as most relevant) to positively influence the G20’s agenda to ensure outcomes address inequality and poverty alleviation.  The C20’s key themes include equity and participation, infrastructure, climate change and resource sustainability, and governance.

    The Australian C20 welcomes the G20’s recognition of the importance of a civil society engagement in its processes and as a critical voice in its policy deliberations.  Civil society has an important and ongoing role to play in translating the G20’s language and architecture into a meaningful narrative to those most affected by its decisions.

    Our C20 summit, attracting 350 Australian and international civil society leaders and representatives was held half way through the year to enhance our opportunities for engagement with key G20 officials at their joint sherpa and deputy finance ministers meeting.  We presented the Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, with our communique the following day (Sunday 22 June), with its 18 recommendations across our four policy themes.  Significantly, there was overwhelming support in calling for climate change to be a stand-alone issue on the G20 agenda.  The C20 strongly believes that the G20 should use its leadership and authority to create the momentum necessary to achieve an ambitious global climate agreement at the UNFCCC 2015 meeting.  There simply cannot be sustainable economic growth without due attention being paid to addressing the urgent ramifications of climate change.

    The C20 is conscious that change can only result from consistency and collaboration across the G20’s broad financial, economic and development agendas as well as deeper engagement from leaders and officials with all the engagement groups on an equal basis.  Where our policies align, we are pursuing outcomes with our colleagues across the other 20s, including business and labour.   This will add to the G20’s long term credibility and the legitimacy of its decisions.

    Throughout the remainder of the year C20 policy leaders will continue to engage with Australian and international G20 officials and leaders about our recommendations to influence outcomes at the leaders summit in November.  We are confident leaders will welcome our interventions and that these will ultimately be reflected in the G20’s 2014 leaders declaration.  The chair of the G20 presents Australia with a unique opportunity to demonstrate its leadership on the world stage, as a nation willing to be ambitious about addressing some of the world’s difficult questions.  This at a time when Australia also sits in the chair of the Security Council, the world is set to determine its collective action on climate change and secure new goals about inclusive, sustainable development.  It is important that we use the chair wisely and with good intent.

    The C20 communique and other information about our work can be found at our website, here.

    Australian C20 members

    The Australian C20 Steering Committee has drawn on the networks, talents, concerns and wisdom of the international as well as Australian civil society in developing its policy approaches and in drafting its recommendations.  Within the context of the G20’s agenda, it is concerned primarily with promoting inclusive and sustainable growth.

    The Australian C20 Steering Committee is comprised of people with diverse backgrounds and experiences. The Australian Government appointed the Members of the Steering Committee in their own right due to their relevant and diverse experiences and talents, and/or because they also lead major Australian civil society organisations.

    The Australian C20 Steering Committee is chaired by Tim Costello, World Vision Australia.

    Other Australian C20 members include:

     

    Cassandra Goldie Deputy Chair, Australian Council of Social Service
    Kelvin Alley Salvation Army
    Joseph Assaf Ethnic Business Awards
    Frank Brennan Australian Catholic University
    Jody Broun Aboriginal Advocate
    Ian Callinan High Court, retired Justice
    Tara Curlewis National Council of Churches of Australia
    Julie McKay Australian National Committee for UN Women
    Dermot O’Gorman WWF
    Rob Moodie Melbourne University
    Marc Purcell Australian Council for International Development
    Bills Scales Swinburne University
    Sally Sinclair National Employment Services Association
    Rauf Soulio Australian Multicultural Council 
    Helen Szoke Oxfam Australia
    Greg Thompson Transparency International Australia
    Joanne Yates Sherpa

     

     

  • Walter Hamilton. Abe Over Australia.

    In the six years since Kevin Rudd’s speech, in Mandarin, to students at Beijing University appeared to signal a sudden shift in Australia’s foreign policy focus towards China, and away from Japan, much has happened. Some even believe that the replacement of Rudd by Julia Gillard (not linguistically so equipped and keen to distinguish her policies from his) followed by the election of Tony Abbott as prime minister (bringing an ideological as well as a political agenda to the issue) has caused Rudd’s ‘pro-China’ course to be reversed. But this is a misreading of the larger picture. When Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arrives in Australia on Monday––the most important visit by a Japanese leader since that of his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi in 1957––it will signify a new phase in the bilateral relationship that began taking shape before Rudd, continued during his two administrations, and has solidified since the Abbott government gained office.

    The deepening of the relationship has multiple strands: trade, strategic alignment, political engagement, and defence co-operation. On the Australian side, it has been driven by senior bureaucrats in the Department of Defence and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) rather than by individual politicians. Kevin Rudd’s facility in Mandarin excited the public imagination in 2008 without really impinging on the policy direction in Canberra, which always interpreted the United States’ ‘pivot to Asia’ as a pas de deux with Japan––and possibly a pas de trois (DFAT makes much of the fact that ‘Japan describes Australia as its second most important security partner’). While new forms of political and defence exchange with China are being pursued at the same time, they build upon a shallower institutional base.

    Some major recent additions to the Japan-Australia framework include the Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation of 2007 (which set in train regular ‘2+2’ talks involving the defence and foreign ministers of both countries); the signing of the Acquisition and Cross-Serving Agreement (ACSA) in 2010 (which makes joint military exercises operate more smoothly and could lead to a joint submarine development project); and the conclusion of the Japan Australia Economic Partnership Agreement last April (which Abbott and Abe will sign in Canberra during his visit). Some Japanese commentators consider a bilateral security treaty to be the logical outcome of these developments, although such a step is not in immediate prospect.

    If Australians have not being paying attention to the drift of affairs, now is the time to do so. Certainly it is past time to discard the ‘if not China, then Japan’ false dichotomy––a notion that pretends to offer a fail-safe choice without our having to properly articulate the national interest.

    Australia embarked on the latest phase of relationship building with Japan before the sudden deterioration in Japan-China relations in 2012. But under the Abe and Abbott administrations it seems that that event has been more of a spur than a complication. Abe has set a furious pace of diplomacy in the past two years, shoring up support among like-minded maritime states, with emphasis on two principles: any attempt to change the territorial status quo in the region by force must be resisted; and law-abiding states must uphold international rules government freedom of movement at sea. China and the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands are the drivers of Tokyo’s preoccupation. China, on the other hand, considers the status quo, in which the United States asserts a leadership role in regional affairs, is itself an anachronism left over from an imperialist world order that Japan supposedly renounced in 1945.

    In last month’s 2+2 talks in Tokyo, the Australian delegation was the first to be told of the latest incident in which a Chinese military fighter aircraft allegedly ‘buzzed’ a Japanese jet near the contested Senkaku-Diaoyu islands. The occasion enabled Japan to invite an expression of Australian solidarity in a moment of ‘danger’. It is not known if the Australian side resisted, but it is unlikely.

    Japan has come to expect solidarity from the Abbott government. (For the PM, Japan is a ‘best friend’; for Defence Minister David Johnston, Japan is ‘one of my favourite countries’.)  Australia has been quick to approve the Abe Cabinet’s controversial decision to embrace the ‘right of collective defence’ (the actual Japanese phrase shudanteki jieiken translates as ‘the right of collective self-defence’, but I would argue that this is oxymoronic and misleading), which till now was adjudged contrary to the letter and spirit of the Japanese postwar constitution. Australia has eagerly endorsed a policy with which most of the Japanese public disagrees. Canberra and Washington consider that fully-fledged defence co-operation with Japan requires this newly-declared freedom of action, which Abe insists will not be used to get Japan involved in a foreign war. How that assurance can and will be policed, now or under a future administration––the legal bulwark having been dismantled––he has not explained. It is a question Australian journalists might wish to ask this week.

    When Tony Abbott was in Tokyo in April he was afforded the opportunity of attending a session of Japan’s new National Security Council. That favour will be returned in Canberra, with interest. Abe will join a meeting of the Cabinet-level National Security Committee, as well as address a joint sitting of Parliament, the first Japanese leader to be extended this privilege.

    Australians will see a Japanese politician they are not used to. Abe can speak in clear English. His appearance will be very different from the archetypal bespectacled ‘transistor salesman’ of Charles De Gaulle’s infamous bon mot (a reference to Prime Minister Ikeda in 1960). On the contrary, Abe is handsome, energetic, direct and emotional. He will seem ‘more like us’, and this will please policy-makers on both sides. But will Australians believe him when he says Japan still stands for peace and stability? That will be the true test.

    In the week before Abe’s Australian visit, around the foreign policy ‘ballroom’, that glittering and restless dance-floor where world leaders take and change partners, some strange moves have been observed. In Seoul, there was a presidential waltz between China’s Xi Jinping and South Korea’s Park Guen-hye. Unprecedentedly, Xi chose Park for his first dance on the peninsula ahead of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. The fact that Tokyo currently has wretched relations with Seoul surely had something to do with it. Then, what do we see in Pyongyang, but a Japanese diplomatic mission persuading North Korea to undertake a ‘serious’ investigation into the fate of Japanese citizens kidnapped by the communist state in the 1970s and 1980 (an issue especially dear to Abe). As an up-front payment, the Abe government immediately eased sanctions against North Korea, previously at the top of its ‘hate’ list­––in the absence of any international agreement on the bigger issues of human rights abuses and Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. Strange dance partners indeed.

    The lesson to be learnt from Seoul and Pyongyang is that, in the absence of a sound and progressive relationship between China and Japan––Abe and Xi have not held one summit meeting, whereas Park and Xi have met five times––all other contingent relationships are subject to distortions, in substance or interpretation. The Korean peninsula is a dangerous venue in which to get out of step with the music; rising tensions in the East China and South China Seas over a grab bag of disputed reefs and atolls are also pulling diplomacy out of shape.

    This rapidly shifting and unpredictable environment puts at risk––indeed could be inflamed by––any gains in Australia’s bilateral relationship with Japan. A closer relationship with a democratic Japan, a major trading partner and security interlocutor, is highly desirable, do not mistake me, but it cannot proceed indifferent to the multilateral regional outlook. The distorting effect of the serious falling-out between Tokyo and Beijing is already changing calculations and choices; ideological symmetries and short-term opportunism are not a sound basis for calculating national interest in the longer run.

    The political theatre surrounding Abe’s appearance in Australia will play in a pre-determined way before other regional spectators. Australia will not control the reviews. That is, unless the government is brave enough to take the opportunity to raise its hand to the orchestra, bring the dance to a halt for a moment, and forthrightly address the subject that all in the throng are talking about behind their fans: the dangerous wrong-headedness harming relations between Japan and China. Somehow a new start must be made, and Australia will have few better opportunities than during this week to play the honest broker. If all the talk we hear is platitudes about shared values and interests, framing the deepening relationship between Australia and Japan exclusively within a narrow two-step of brinkmanship and Sinophobia, it will be an opportunity sadly missed.

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

  • Garry Everett. Where angels fear to tread in the Catholic Church.

    One of the significant and pressing pastoral theological issues currently dividing opinion among the hierarchy and among the laity of the Church, is the issue of divorced and remarried Catholics, and their access to eucharist, writes Garry Everett.

    Pastoral theology is a tricky undertaking. It is easier, and certainly safer, to discuss theological matters in abstract or academic terms, or as principles to guide action. However, once theology is applied to people, their lives and actions, the task becomes infinitely more difficult.

    One of the significant and pressing pastoral theological issues currently dividing opinion among the hierarchy and among the laity of the Church, is the issue of divorced and remarried Catholics, and their access to eucharist.

    At the heart of this debate are our understandings (theologies) of marriage and eucharist. Pope Francis has called for serious discussion of the matter and it will be an item on the agenda of the Synod on the Family later this year.

    Cardinal Walter Kasper, former head of the Council for Promoting Christian Unity, has called for pastoral solutions to be developed for the issue, while Cardinal Gerhard Muller, head of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, has indicated that the rules can’t be changed. There may be other starting points as well, with perhaps the laity offering different perspectives, depending on their life circumstances. Let me share a story to illustrate.

    A few years ago while studying in London, I noticed that the neighbouring parish was offering a two-day course the following weekend on “Contemporary Issues in the Church”. I enrolled and met the other 18 participants early on the Saturday morning. These 18 people shared something in common: they were all Catholic; all were women; and all had been divorced and remarried.

    The course was delivered by Father Graham, recently retired provincial of a major religious order of priests. When Graham asked participants what issues they would like to explore, he was mightily surprised. There was only one issue: divorce, remarriage and access to eucharist.

    Graham tried hard for two days to explain material from the Catechesim, the Code of Canon Law and some Vatican documents. But the women were not buying his arguments. Graham’s emphasis was on the “contract” and its legally-binding force; the women only talked about their experience of love – its presence, its absence, its new discovery, and their sense of alienation from the “sacrament of love” (eucharist). We departed on Sunday still divided from Graham.

    This story, I hope, illustrates the difficulty of applying theology to people’s lives and actions. It also illustrates an emphasis that is shared by contemporary sociology and the approach to marriage developed by Vatican II. In his book, Catholicism, US theologian, Father Richard McBrien, describes it in this way: “…this is the first age in which people marry and remain in marriage because they love each other. There is a stress on the mutual exchange of love as constituting the sacrament of marriage”.

    Perhaps the Synod on the Family will have more to say about marriage. Hopefully it will do this in the context of love. It is worth noting in the above extract from Catholicism, that the sacrament of marriage is embedded in the mystery of love: human and divine. Applying theologies in definitive ways, to any mystery, is fraught with great difficulty. When one confronts the universal mystery of love, then one is cautioned to proceed with great sensitivity and a little less dogmatism.

    The other half of the debate centres on the fact that divorced and remarried Catholics are not permitted to receive eucharist. This prohibition is based on the Church’s judgement that the couple (or at least the Catholic partner) is in a state of sin, and/or is a source of scandal to others. Such disciplinary action stems from a particular Eucharistic theology developed in the Western Church.

    An exploration of this matter of denying access to eucharist to some people, is provided in a scholarly and nuanced way by Father Frank Moloney in his small book, A Body Broken for a Broken People. On the final page of his book, Moloney answers a question raised in an earlier section. The question was: “Does our present practice of Eucharist indicate a Church ‘clasping sinners to her bosom’?” (Lumen Gentium, 8). His answer reads: “We are touching here an injustice of which we are all guilty. We have a tendency to preach one message and to live another. To frequent the Eucharist full of my own self-righteousness and worthiness, is to leave no space for the presence of a eucharistic Lord who seeks me out in my broken-ness”. A more condensed version of this answer is the title of Moloney’s book.

    The pastoral problem that is dividing the Church cannot be solved by any form of popular vote, nor appeal to common experiences. Pastoral theology in this context requires that we re-visit our fundamental understandings of love, marriage and eucharist.

    Along with these mysteries, we will also need to re-examine notions of Church and community; of being the People of God; of being, as Pope Francis expressed it, “a poor Church for the poor”. The poor have much to teach us about the experience and value of being broken; of the God who gives solace to the broken; of the Church whose broken-ness needs redemption.

    As the Synod on the Family begins its preparations to answer the difficult questions it must, let us recall the words of Pope Francis as he expressed them with all the hope in his heart: “In order to dialogue, it is necessary to know how to lower your defences, open the doors of the house, and offer human warmth”.

    * Garry Everett has spent all his professional life, as well as much of retirement, as an educator, and mostly of adults. Garry’s enduring interests lie in family, Scripture, theology and Church renewal. At a local level he is involved in social justice, ecumenism and Mercy Partners. He is also a member of his parish St Vincent de Paul Conference.

    This article was first published in The Good Oil,the e-magazine of the Good Samaritan Sisters www.goodsams.org.au

     

  • Kerry Murphy. The four questions quiz for refugees.

    When Malaysian Flight MH370 disappeared, the Australian Government made a major contribution towards the international search operation.  Almost daily there were announcements by Prime Minister Abbott and other Ministers about new information they were checking and hopes of finding the plane.  Media accompanied the air force on the search and the Australian contribution was a genuine effort as part of an international search mission. 

    What a contrast when a boat or two of Sri Lankan Tamils arrives seeking our protection. Minister Morrison refuses to even acknowledge there is a boat or two.  The refuses to comment on ‘on water matters’.  Then we hear there is a possibility the asylum seekers will be returned to Sri Lanka, after they are asked four questions, three of which are about identity.

    Under international refugee law, the worst possible thing you can do is to return someone to a country where they could be persecuted because of their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group.  That is called the non-refoulement obligation.  The fact that only one question is asked about why they came to Australia, and done in circumstances not conducive to seeking information but ticking a box so we can send them home, is a serious indictment of how Australia adheres to its international obligations.

    We do not know exactly what happened, because it is all too secret.  However some information has come out.  The Labor party have unclean hands on this because they were using a similar process for ‘enhanced screening’ of Sri Lankans in late 2012.

    Many Sri Lankans were returned to Sri Lanka under Labor without a careful and thorough investigation of their case.  There is no way you could simply write off someone just because they give a poor answer to the final of four questions.  This is about our international obligations, not some pub trivia quiz knockout.

    UNHCR has criticised the ‘return oriented environment’ on Manus Island and this process shows the same focus on sending people home and stopping the boats, regardless of the seriousness of the claims.   If someone manages to raise strong protection claims, what happens then?  Are they taken to Manus, Nauru?  Who decides they have raised strong enough claims and what criteria are used?  Is there some checking process to ensure no mistakes are made?

    The four question quiz seems totally inadequate for assessing someone’s claims for protection, and there are no apparent safeguards.  If someone seeks legal advice or help, what happens?  It is all too secret to tell us.

    The Prime Minister then comes out and tells us how good Sri Lanka is now since the end of the brutal 30 year conflict:

    ”But I want to make this observation, Sri Lanka is not everyone’s idea of the ideal society but it is at peace . . . a horrific civil war has ended. I believe that there has been a lot of progress when it comes to human rights and the rule of law in Sri Lanka.”

    Sorry Prime Minister but that is not the correct legal test.   It seems DFAT are not aware it is so calm either. The Smart Traveller website warns against travel to Sri Lanka and says:

    • We advise you to exercise a high degree of caution in Sri Lanka at this time because of the unpredictable security environment.
    • Security forces maintain a visible presence throughout the country. Military and police checkpoints are present along some roads and road closures can occur without warning.
    • You should avoid all demonstrations and large public gatherings as they may turn violent or be a target for politically-motivated attacks. Police have used tear gas in response to protests.
    • In the Northern Province of Sri Lanka, which includes Mannar, Vavuniya, Mullaitivu, Kilinochichi and Jaffna Districts, post-conflict security force activity is ongoing.[2]

    There are reports from Human Rights agencies and UNHCR about serious human rights concerns in the troubled island of Sri Lanka.  These include reports of arbitrary arrest, assault and torture.  It is progress from being shot straight away maybe, but still far from a human rights paradise.

    Australia has shown it is generous when it comes to helping with disasters such as the tsunami in Indonesia, helping find MH370, and many others.  Sadly, when it comes to people arriving by boat seeking our protection we have a major blind spot. Tragically, a country that does have a reasonable record in helping refugees and respecting human rights is trashing its reputation for a three word slogan.

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

     

  • Financial Planning explained by an Irishman.

    ​

    Paddy bought a donkey from a farmer for £100.
    The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day.
    In the morning he drove up and said, ‘Sorry son, but I have some bad news. The donkey’s died.’
    Paddy replied, ‘Well just give me my money back then.’
    The farmer said, ‘Can’t do that. I’ve already spent it.’
    Paddy said, ‘OK then, just bring me the dead donkey.’
    The farmer asked, ‘What are you going to do with him?’
    Paddy said, ‘I’m going to raffle him off.’
    The farmer said, ‘You can’t raffle a dead donkey!’
    Paddy said, ‘Sure I can. Watch me. I just won’t tell anybody he’s dead.’
    A month later, the farmer met up with Paddy and asked, ‘What happened with that dead donkey?’
    Paddy said, ‘I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at £2 each and made a profit of £898’
    The farmer said, ‘Didn’t anyone complain?’
    Paddy said, ‘Just the guy who won. So I gave him his £2 back.’
    Paddy now works for the Commonwealth Bank.

  • Kerry Murphy. More punishment for asylum seekers and refugees.

    “As a young boat people refugee, I arrived here 36 years ago with nothing but an invisible suitcase filled with dreams, [with] a dream to live in a peaceful, safe and free country and to live a meaningful and fulfilling life.” said the new Governor of South Australia Hue Van Le OAM.  He arrived on a boat in Darwin back in 1978, a ‘boat person’ from Vietnam, or an ‘íllegal’ as Scott Morrison would prefer. Mr Le and his family were accepted as refugees and granted permanent residence. The announcement was made public, appropriately just after refugee week.

    On World Refugee day (20 June) the High Court held that the limit on granting permanent visas for refugees in Australia announced by Minister Morrison on 4 March was invalid.  The Court held it conflicted with an obligation in the Migration Act to decide protection visa cases within 90 days, a provision inserted under the Howard Government in 2005.   At the time, the Howard Government stated ‘that decisions on protection visa applications should be made in a timely and efficient manner so as to provide greater transparency and certainty for protection visa applicants.’

    It seems this objective to provide ‘greater transparency and certainty’ is no longer the view of the Coalition in Government.  Now the focus is on punishment with a policy that resembles a ‘fundamentalist belief’ rather than a properly articulated and balanced system.  The obsession with people on boats is remarkable and has driven the Coalition especially under Morrison.  It seems that there is nothing that people arriving by boat could do that would improve their image with the Government apart from taking money and going home to face the persecution they fear.

    The recent changes announced yet again to our refugee process illustrate the obsession in punishment and deterrence rather than a fair system that seeks to ensure our international obligations and human rights are respected.  The innocuously named Migration Amendment (Protection and Other Measures) Bill 2014 is not all bad, but you have to look hard amongst the 38 pages of Bill and 73 pages of explanatory memorandum to find anything positive.

    There are a number of key issues of concern and space restricts the ability to provide a full commentary so it may be better to focus on the major points.  Refugee determination is a complex process of fact finding but this Bill tries to simplify the process to enable more refusals, not to make it easier for refugees.  On 31 March the Minister announced that money provided like legal aid to assist applicants prepare their cases would be cut off for all arriving by boat, and also cut off entirely for those in the review process.  This Bill has several measures which make competent representation more important for applicants who do not speak English, and may be traumatised by experiences in their home country, or even the boat journey to Australia

    It proposes a requirement that an applicant ‘specify all particulars of their claim and supporting evidence to Immigration and if they raise new claims or provide new evidence to the Review Tribunal, there is a rebuttable presumption against their credibility.  Commonly it can take some time to get a full story from an asylum seeker and the short time to prepare and present cases in detention takes many dangerous short cuts. The system we have is inquisitorial or investigative, not adversarial however this proposal makes the process more likely an adversarial one, especially for unrepresented or poorly represented applicants flailing their way through the complexity of Australian refugee law.

    Another change is a requirement to refuse a case where a person has no identity documents or has destroyed them.  It is common for people to have few identity documents but the detail they can provide about themselves, their family and where they lived helps satisfy decision makers as to identity.  Some people have even been asked to get identity documents from their Government, despite their cases still being on review or appeal, or their limited funding to pay rent and food in the community could be removed.  This again shows the ‘return oriented environment’ referred to by UNHCR when discussing Manus detention centre that is a theme of this government.

    A third major change is the change in the threshold for protection under Complementary Protection (CP).   CP covers our non return obligations under the Convention Against Torture and ICCPR.  The current threshold test is the same as the Refugee test- a real chance.  This test was explained in a US Supreme Court case as like the ancient Roman punishment of decimation – killing one in ten.  If you are in the group of ten and you know one will be killed, you have a well-founded fear, and there is a real chance you could be the one.  Unlike a probability test, which is better than 50% which is the test the Government wants. Making the test a probability one increases the risk of someone facing serious harm or persecution and is at odds with similar laws in a number of countries including the UK and New Zealand. It makes protection less likely and the risk of the refugee suffering harm on return more likely.

    It is expected there will be more changes to reintroduce Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) despite the overwhelming social and psychological evidence against TPVs.  TPVs are another obsession of this Minister.  Sadly for refugees, the future is bleak and vilification and demonization continues.  Maybe there is some hope with the appointment of Mr Le as Governor for as he says,  “This appointment, however, says much more about our society than about me. It sends a powerful message affirming our inclusive and egalitarian society.”

    Kerry Murphy is a Sydney solicitor who specialises in Immigration and Refugee law.

     

  • The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses of Child Sexual Abuse and the Catholic Church.

    Yesterday, in Eureka Street, Fr Frank Brennan SJ commented on the first interim report of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses of Child Sexual Abuse. He said:

    ‘Before Prime Minister Gillard announced the commission, I said that the Catholic Church needed help, in part because there seemed to be a vast discrepancy in the statistics when it came to the number of abuse claims in the Catholic Church when compared with other Churches and institutions which care for vulnerable children. The Commission has not yet come up with any answers or theories about the discrepancy. But its own statistics are frightening and shaming. The commission has provided a safe space for victims to come forward and tell their stories. The commission refers to victims as survivors. 60% of the institutions where survivors reported being abused were faith-based institutions (1,033 of 1,719 institutions). Where abuse occurred in a faith-based institution, 68% of survivors reported that the abuse occurred in a Catholic institution while only 12% reported that the abuse occurred in an Anglican institution. Other churches reported lesser figures. No doubt there were many more Catholic institutions set up for vulnerable children. But that goes nowhere close to providing a complete explanation for the shameful discrepancy. It seems that about 40% of all victims who have come forward to tell their story were abused in institutions auspiced by the Catholic Church. When the royal commission was announced, Cardinal Pell said “we object to being described as the only cab on the rank”. We are not the only cab, but we are the main one when it comes to reports of child sexual abuse within Australian institutions.’

    In my blog of April 3 last year, I spoke about the particular problems of the Catholic Church. The blog was headed ‘Why the Catholic Church has such a problem with sexual abuse’. The blog is reposted below.  John Menadue

    Repost

    I am hopeful that Pope Francis will turn the barque of Peter around but it will be hard going after the disappointments and drift of the last two Popes. What a delight it would be if Pope Francis could pick up the unfinished work of Pope John 23 and the Second Vatican Council

    The role of women in the Church and the scourge of sexual abuse will be central issues for Pope Francis and the whole Church, particularly as the Royal Commission on Sexual Abuse commences its work in Melbourne today.

    In my blog of 28 February, I set out the facts that indicate that sexual abuse by Catholic clergy and religious is much higher than in the community generally and also higher than in other Christian churches. I referred to the paper by Professor Parkinson

    Why is the problem so great in the Catholic Church?

    One important reason is that the Catholic Church is patriarchal and male-dominated. Very little sexual abuse is committed by women. It is largely a male malady. In recent weeks we have seen the powerful male Catholic Church on display in Rome with exclusive male casts of Cardinals in all sorts of fancy dress. It is quite removed from St Paul’s ringing proclamation ‘that there is no longer Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, male nor female, but all are one in Jesus Christ’. Sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is overwhelmingly about male abuse.

    In Australian society women are often treated as second class citizens. It is much worse  in the Catholic Church .Invariably it is the Sisters in the Church who speak forthrightly and with courage  Together with lay women  they “keep the show on the road” The Bishops so often give us Vatican spin and evasion. Out of touch they just don’t get the gravity of the problem. Unless women are given a central role in the future of the Church I will remain concerned.

    Another reason given for the higher incidence of sexual abuse in the Catholic Church is the nature of seminary training. This problem is being addressed, but it has been historically damaging due to the early stage of selection for the priesthood and segregation from influences that promote balanced development.

    Another reason, as Parkinson has pointed out, is that the opportunities for abuse are much greater because priests, ministers and youth leaders have a much greater opportunity to abuse boys rather than girls, given the patterns of their ministry. In the past at least, it has been more common for priests and religious to be alone with adolescent boys and have unsupervised relations with them, than with girls.

    The mystique of the priesthood is probably another important reason. The assumption that the priest knows best leads to circumstances that in other situations would result in the potential victim telling the perpetrator to buzz off.

    There is a lot of speculation about the effect of obligatory celibacy. Perhaps Parkinson has over-stated it. But I think that the absence of an adult partner makes the emotional life of priests more difficult. Almost all of us need a close partner to help face the difficulties and mistakes we all make. We need partners who can smooth the rough edges and tell us when to speak up or shut up. Many priests do have a naïve and idealized view of women.

    But behind these particular problems is the attitude of the Catholic Church on sex going back to St. Augustine.(Calvinists followed suit) From that time we learnt fear of the body and the idea that somehow sexual relations are the carrier of original sin, and a distraction from God. As Bishop Geoffrey Robinson put it in 2010 in an ABC interview, ‘It is teaching on human sexual morality, more than anything else, that has kept the idea of an angry God alive and strong within the Catholic Church … (that teaching) has been a most significant contribution to the unhealthy culture in the Church … it can lead to the unhealthy attitude of sexuality being seen as dark, secretive and troublesome.’

    The Catholic Church must face up to some fundamental issues. It will be very difficult. The big risk will be to assume that with a new Pope the problems will be solved . He will be important but all Catholics must accept collective responsibility.

    As Bishop Geoffrey Robinson has put it we must follow the truth wherever it takes us and be courageous and confident enough to manage the consequences.

  • Japan and comfort women.

    In 1993 the Japanese government issued an apology to comfort women who had suffered sexual abuse by the Japanese military during WWII. This apology was called the ‘Kono Declaration’. Kono was the chief cabinet secretary.

    Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been trying to undo the words of the Kono Declaration without officially withdrawing the declaration. In an article published in the Canberra Times on June 29 2014, see link below, Tessa Morris-Suzuki describes how Japan is going about ‘the art of un-apologising’.

    Tessa Morris-Suzuki is an Australian National University College of Asia and the Pacific Japanese history professor and an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow.

    The Yonhan News Agency in Korea has just announced that Pope Francis has invited Korean comfort women to a Mass that he will celebrate in Seoul on August 18. Pope Francis is expected to deliver a message to the comfort women in the Mass at Myeongdong Cathedral in central Seoul and to pray for peace on the Korean peninsula.

    Japanese PM Abe who was striving to undo the apology to comfort women in the Kono Declaration will visit Australia next week.

    John Menadue

    http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/japan-and-the-art-of-unapologising-20140627-zsjv3.html

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