John Menadue

  • 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

  • Pearls and Irritations –over 2,100 daily readers

    This blog was launched in January 2013.

    Daily figures for June 2014 were:

    • 2,108 views/reads
    • 5,896 pages read
    • 12,652 daily “hits”

    Monthly figures for June were:

    • 63,266 views/reads
    • 176,894 pages read
    • 379,587 “hits” for the month.

    There are 2,952 subscribers.

    Thank you for your support.

    Please spread the word.

    John Menadue

  • Xenophobia and strange behaviour over boats.

    UN High Commissioner Antonio Guterres criticises Australia’s ‘strange’ obsession with boats

    Excerpts from his address and answers to questions at UNHCR  NGO  consultations, Geneva, 17 June, 2014.  

    I think it is .. important to underline that, especially from the perspective now of refugee protection, we are facing also the development in several parts of the world of manifestations of xenophobia and similar other problems – Islamophobia, racism – that are particularly worrying. If you analyse the result of the last European elections, you have seen that xenophobic parties made remarkable increases in the number of votes. And even from the point of view of, for instance, borders, we see, in several situations in the world, borders being closed. We see it in Egypt. We see it in Bulgaria. We see it in Australia. We see it in many other parts of the world – and manifestations of xenophobia at the same time targeting refugees in communities in very dramatic circumstances. The plight of Somalis for instance in many countries, including in African countries, is a very dramatic demonstration of this dimension…..

    We will not fail to provide our colleagues the financial and other aspects of the capacity to go on monitoring when allowed the situation in Nauru but also in Papua New Guinea and eventually, if that will be the case, in Cambodia. This is something that we have been very worried about. The findings that were presented about Nauru clearly underline that Nauru is not a place where adequate protection can be granted. This is quite obvious. We insist that this is the responsibility of the country that receives the people and that this should be an Australian responsibility. The fact that Cambodia has signed the Convention doesn’t mean that Cambodia is an adequate space for meaningful protection for people in need. Our position has always been, as you know, very reluctant in relation to those agreements, very reserved in relation to them. Of course, we can do our best to support people in the circumstances where we might be able to operate. But that doesn’t mean that we are in agreement with this kind of extra processing of refugees without giving the guarantees that those found to be in need of protection will be accepted in countries, or be resettled to countries, where that protection can be effectively granted, which, of course, is not the case with Nauru and eventually will not be the case with Cambodia…

    The problem is when we discuss boats and there, of course, we enter into a very, very, very dramatic thing. I think it is a kind of collective sociological and psychological question. (Australia)  receives, I think, 180,000 migrants in a year. If you come to Australia in a different way, it’s fine but if they come in a boat it is like something strange happens to their minds. That problem I know that we have and it is a serious one. But if there is anything that we can help, we will do it.

     

    Mr Guterres’ address and his responses to questions can be viewed at http://new.livestream.com/4am/unhcr

    These extracts were supplied courtesy of the Refugee Council of Australia.

  • Thailand – toppling a democratically elected government.

    The best article I have seen recently about the confused state of politics in Thailand was in the London Review of Books. It was written Richard Lloyd Parry. See link below.  John Menadue

    ​

    http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n12/richard-lloydparry/the-story-of-thaksin-shinawatra

  • Walter Hamilton. A Death in Tokyo

    A bespectacled, middle-aged man wearing a suit and tie climbed onto the steel rafters above a footbridge in Tokyo’s busy Shinjuku district and, using a megaphone, began to address passers-by below. According to witnesses, he spoke out against the Japanese Government’s impending decision to embrace the right of ‘collective defense’, which until now has been considered outside the bounds of the nation’s pacifist constitution.

    After squatting on the steel girder speaking undisturbed for almost an hour, the man poured accelerant over his body and set himself alight.

    In the aftermath of this horrific incident, Japanese police refused to release details about the protestor: his identity or his medical condition. Video evidence showing him falling, still fully alight, onto the walkway below suggests he would be unlikely to survive.

    Despite street protests––the anonymous self-immolation being the most dramatic––and opinion polls showing more Japanese oppose than support the constitutional reinterpretation, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has got his way in Cabinet. After months of coaxing––and, according to one source, a little blackmail––Abe has convinced his coalition partner, the New Komeito, to support the Liberal Democratic Party’s agenda.

    But consider this. As of today, according to the Defense Ministry’s official website, ‘It is…not permissible [for Japan] to use the right [of collective defense], that is, to stop armed attack on another country with armed strength, although Japan is not under direct attack, since it exceeds the limit of use of armed strength as permitted under Article 9 of the Constitution’. Tomorrow, or very soon, this statement will disappear and be replaced by one staying the exact opposite.

    How can this be possible?

    Normally, in advanced and orderly nations, a constitution is interpreted over time by administrative dialogue, the passage of new laws and associated court rulings, all of which must be supportable with reference to the original text. Should a state come to adopt attitudes or values unsupported by its basic law, a formal process allows for constitutional amendment.

    In Japan’s case, an amendment requires two-thirds’ support in a vote of the combined houses of the Diet and majority support in a referendum. This has never happened since the present constitution was adopted in 1947. Instead, there has been something of a tradition for the executive branch of government to determine what the constitution does and does not allow, and Japanese courts­­––particularly the Supreme Court­­––have tended to defer to the political judgement of the Cabinet of the day. Hence, although the constitution states that Japan will ‘never’ maintain land, sea and air forces, it has reacquired all three; and now, even though the constitution disavows the use of force to settle international disputes, the Cabinet is preparing the way to send military forces into a conflict regardless of whether a direct threat to Japan exists.

    The move is supported by the United States (that already has strategic plans and weapons systems in place in and around Japan that cannot be effectively engaged unilaterally) and, most recently, was applauded by the government of the Philippines, which is embroiled, like Japan, in a territorial dispute with China. From such indications, we can see where this business may be headed.

    While it is likely that dissent groups in Japan will challenge Abe’s policy shift in the courts, precedent suggests the Supreme Court will not accept a case until after a concrete situation has arisen, i.e. after Japan has forces engaged in a conflict. The Supreme Court’s timid track record on constitutional issues does not inspire confidence that it would defy a government in the midst of a security ‘crisis’.

    Prime Minister Abe has argued the need for Japan to embrace ‘collective defense’ because of a changed security environment in the region. Though this assuredly relates to the rise of China and a wish to support a continued military engagement by the United States in East Asia, Abe has devoted more effort to explaining the policy shift to his coalition partners than to the general public––having earlier decided that the public could not be trusted to pass a constitutional amendment. Abe has assumed the right of ‘final authority’ on this fundamental issue. He considers the notion that constitutions exist, in part, to restrict state power to be an obsolete one.

    The New Komeito is the political arm of the lay Nichiren Buddhist movement Soka Gakkai, which has traditionally opposed military entanglements, especially anything that would risk spilling Japanese blood abroad. With nine million loyal members, Soka Gakkai is a powerful force at the ballot box in a country where voting is not compulsory. The importance of the New Komeito for the LDP-led governing coalition is greater than the party’s Diet representation alone might suggest.

    Abe’s tactics in winning over the New Komeito have mimicked the line of argument used by the Supreme Court when acquiescing with past constitutional ‘re-interpretations’. Abe began by stating a general principle that the New Komeito could not dispute: that, like any sovereign nation, Japan had an obligation to defend its citizens. In an increasingly unstable world, he went on to argue, this required Japan to co-operate with like-minded nations to secure the peace. When he suggested this could be achieved by sending military forces into foreign conflicts, Abe met resistance; but his response then was to ‘salami-slice’ the principle of ‘self defense’ into a myriad of scenarios until he found some that the New Komeito could live with. For instance, might not Japanese naval vessels participate in U.N.-sponsored minesweeping operations? ‘OK’ says New Komeito. ‘And what if…’ says Abe. And so it went: constitutional change achieved through a maze of hypothetical scenarios that can, and surely will, themselves be reinterpreted to fit whatever real-life situation emerges down the track. (The Supreme Court similarly has started out by avowing a motherhood principle before going on to find reasons for granting politically convenient exceptions to it.) Abe’s promise to the nation that the government would use only the ‘minimal force’ necessary for collective defense rests on nothing more solid than political expediency.

    According to an Asahi group magazine, the LDP used other methods of persuasion on New Komeito, including a little blackmail. The party was reminded that its links to Soka Gakkai could also be considered a breach of the constitution––the guarantee of separation of church and state––if a ‘black letter’ interpretation of the law were applied. ‘So, lighten up, why don’t you?’

    On the eve of the Cabinet meeting expected to adopt Abe’s resolution, official reports said that the lone protestor in Shinjuku who set himself alight was still alive. Most probably he was being kept on a life-support system until after the Cabinet decision, as a confirmed fatality would not sit well with the politicians in Kasumigaseki. His desperate act will be explained away as an isolated moment of madness. Who will even remember his still-undisclosed name in coming days? Forgotten, like the click of the keyboard that will consign the Defense Ministry’s soon-to-be obsolete web document to oblivion.

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

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • The rich are inheriting the earth … our earth

    The last budget kept our Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) unchanged at a nominal amount of $5.03 billion. In real terms that was a cut of 2.25% or over $100 million.  Julie Bishop told us that it was a contribution that ODA would have to make to repair our budget deficit.

    At the same time the government is abolishing the mining tax. We are obviously expected to believe that we cannot continue helping the world’s poor. It is more important to give money back to the miners.

    The mining lobby keeps telling us about the great contribution it makes to the Australian economy. There is a lot of exaggeration in this and often much worse.

    • As Ross Gittins in the SMH and others point out mining accounts for about 10% of our national production, but only 2% of employment. The large increase in mining investment in recent years has mainly been to purchase equipment from overseas.
    • About 80% of our very profitable mining industry is foreign owned. BHP/Biliton is 76% foreign owned, RioTinto 83% and Xstrata 100%. This means that 80% of mining profits accrue to foreign shareholders and not to Australians. In this situation it is important for the owners of the minerals; we Australians, that we get some worthwhile return either in taxes or royalties.
    • The Coalition government is planning to abolish the mining tax, just when it is likely to produce some worthwhile revenue. See my blog of May 6, 2014, ‘The cost of abolishing the mining tax’.
    • State governments do receive royalties from mining companies for the exploitation of our national resources, but they hand a lot back to the mining companies. According to the Australia Institute, the states gave the mining companies $3.2 billion in concessions last year – mainly in providing railway infrastructure and freight discounts. In Queensland, these concessions or subsidies were equivalent to about 60% of the royalties the Queensland government received.
    • We would expect that even if mining companies could dodge the mining tax, they would at least pay the 30% company tax. But not so. Michael West in the SMH on 27 April 2014 points out that Australia’s largest coal miner, Glencore/Xstrata paid no company tax at all over the last three years despite an income of $15 billion.( In response Glencore has said that over those three years “it paid $3.4 b in taxes and royalties”. But royalties are not taxes. They are a cost of production. So in my view Michael West’s assessment that Glencore did not pay company tax in the three years stands.) According to West it achieved this remarkable result of paying no company tax by paying 9% interest on $3.4 billion in loans from overseas associates.  This 9% incidentally was about double the interest it would have had to pay in the open market or from a bank. Having paid 9% on these borrowings to load up its “costs” in Australia it then lent money to ‘related parties’ interest-free. We are not told who these related parties were. But there is more. Apparently there has been a large increase in Glencore’s coal sales to ‘related companies’ from 27% to 46%. This would seem to indicate transfer pricing to shift income to lower tax countries. In this regard Michael West reported on the complex Glencore company structure. ‘The Glencore structure is now run as a series of business units controlled by one company [Glencore/Xstrata Plc) which is incorporated in the UK, listed on the London and other stock exchanges, with its registered office in Jersey (a tax haven) and its headquarters in Baar, Switzerland. It is probably all legal but is it right?

    The latest BRW 200 Rich List ranks Ivan Glasenberg, the CEO of Glencore Xstrata, as the fifth wealthiest Australian with $6.63 billion in wealth – up from $5.61 billion in the last twelve months. His current wealth is $1.1 billion more than we spend each year on ODA to help the poor of our region and the world.

    The BRW top 200 richest people in Australia have a combined wealth of $194 billion. That is almost forty times more than we spend each year in ODA.

    The poor of the world will just have to put up with a cut in our ODA. We can’t help the poor when we need to dole out enormous benefits to foreign-owned mining companies.

    The rich are really inheriting the earth – our earth!

  • The disastrous outcome on climate change and the Greens’ culpability

    As a result of the Clive Palmer intervention, we are now unlikely to have any carbon reduction policy in place. In a few weeks’ time it is likely the Senate will vote down the Carbon Tax, its successor an Emissions Trading Scheme and Direct Action.

    The party that is chiefly responsible for this fiasco is the Greens. The same is true of its holier-than-thou approach on asylum seekers, but I will leave that for another day.

    I set out my views on the enormous damage that the Greens have done in my post of September 2 last year ‘Holier than thou … but with disastrous results’. That blog is reposted below. As Gough Whitlam put it in a different context ‘Only the impotent are pure’. The Greens have been giving us policy purity in truckloads, but on a sensible policy on climate change they have given us ‘a big fat nothing’.

    That quote is from an article today by Phillip Coorey in the AFR, page 55. The article is headed ‘Green opportunism leaves carbon policy at zero’.

    Coorey writes

    ‘The only mainstream party never to have taken a risk, never to have put any skin in the game and never to have lost a vote [over climate change] is the Greens. Throughout the entire eight year saga they have chained themselves to the altar of policy purity and watched others suffer for their ideals. The result is a big fat nothing. … Because they believed the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme introduced by Rudd to be inadequate, they voted it down twice. The second time was the day after Abbott knocked off Turnbull. Liberal senators Judith Troeth and Sue Boyce realising the need to establish a foothold for carbon pricing, crossed the floor to vote with Labor. The Greens helped the Coalition kill it. … Even when Labor was dying last year and Abbott was at the gate of the lodge, vowing the carbon tax would be the first policy put against the wall and shot, the Greens attacked Rudd for cowardice when he announced … that if he was elected the fixed price would move to a much lower European linked floating price on July 1 2014, one year earlier than scheduled.

    As I mentioned in my blog of September 2 last year, the defeat of Rudd’s CPRS brought on an acrimonious and divisive debate and a denial of the science of climate change. As a result public support for a carbon tax on an Emissions Trading Scheme has plunged from 75% in 2007 to less than 40%. The Greens cannot wash their hands of this debacle. They triggered it in the Senate.

    Whether on climate change or asylum seekers, Australia is paying a heavy price for the Greens’ policy purity. They have played into Tony Abbott’s hands.

    But for the Greens an ETS would have been done and dusted five years ago.

  • Repost. Holier than thou … but with disastrous results. John Menadue

    The posturing of the Greens on the two big issues of this election, asylum seekers and climate change has given us two appalling policy outcomes. They sided with Tony Abbott in the Senate on both critical issues to defeat improved policy. The country is now paying a very heavy price. The perfect became the enemy of the good.

    The Malaysian Agreement was not ideal and needed improvement but it was an important building block towards a regional arrangement. In opposing   the processing of asylum claims in Malaysia the Greens were unremitting in their bashing of Malaysia. The collapse of the Malaysian arrangement gave oxygen to people smugglers in persuading desperate people to take dangerous sea voyages. The evidence is clear. When the High Court rejected the Malaysian Agreement in August 2011 irregular maritime arrivals were running at less than 300 per month. By May2012 they had increased to 1200.They have been rising rapidly ever since, reaching  over 14,000 in the six months to June 30 this year The rot set in with the collapse of the Malaysian Agreement. We have been in a downward policy spiral ever since…. Nauru, Manus, PNG, TPV’s, turn backs at sea and even buying clapped out vessels in Indonesia. The madness continues. The Greens cannot wash their hands of the havoc they have wrought. The Government attempted to amend the Migration Act to correct the problems identified by the High Court but the Greens colluded with Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison to block the amending legislation.

    Yet that Malaysian Agreement was actively supported by the UNHCR. The Director of UNHCR in Australia told the Australian Parliament on 30 September 2011 that

    “Many persons of concern to UNHCR stand to benefit from the programme (with Malaysia) by having their status regularised. It could mean all refugees in Malaysia would, in addition to their registration and ID documents from UNHCR, be registered with the government’s immigration data base and thus protected from arbitrary arrest and detention. It would also mean that all refugees in Malaysia would have the right to work on a par with legal migrants in the country. This would also entitle them to the same insurance and health schemes as documented for legal migrant workers.”

    This agreement could have been quite historic, a first between a refugee convention signatory country and a non-signatory country in our region. For Malaysia, this agreement was also quite remarkable progress. This is in a country that has a burden of much larger numbers of refugees than we have. But because the agreement with Malaysia was not enshrined in law it was discounted by the High Court. What that means is that if it wasn’t enshrined in law we could not trust the Malaysian government. What an awful outcome for refugees and our relations with the Malaysian government.

    It is true that the numbers of boat arrivals who seek asylum in Australia are miniscule in world terms. . But we have a political problem with boats that is exploited by Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison. The Greens abetted the coalition in the name of policy purity. Then the Labor government joined the rush to the bottom.

    The Greens must also accept major responsibility for the decline in public support for effective action on climate change. They opposed in the Senate the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme of the first Rudd Government. Belatedly the Greens then supported the Gillard Government’s legislation including the carbon tax which is much inferior to the CPRS. In the intervening years we have seen acrimonious and divisive debate and a denial of the science on climate change. As a result, public support for a carbon tax or Emissions Trading Scheme has plunged from 75% in 2007 to less than 40% today. The Greens cannot wash their hands of this debacle. They triggered it in the Senate.

    Whether on climate change or on asylum seekers, Australia is paying a very heavy price for the Greens’ policy purity. Asylum seekers are paying an even heavier price.

  • Tony Abbott’s negotiating skills.

    With the unpredictable and confusing state of the new Senate, Tony Abbott will have his negotiating skills tested. So far negotiating skills have not been part of his political success.

    Thanks to the Palmer United Party and five other  cross-benchers in the Senate from July 1, the situation could become even more chaotic than the House of Representatives was after the 2010 election- a situation that Tony Abbott did his best to make even more chaotic.

    If Tony Abbott had revealed good negotiating skills, he may have been the prime minister after the line-ball election result in 2010. But it turned out that Julia Gillard won hands-down in persuading Tony Windsor and Robb Oakeshott to support an ALP government. Tony Abbott was no match for Julia Gillard in winning over the Independents.

    Will he do any better with the senators after July 1?

    In the new Senate the Coalition will have 33 seats, the ALP 25 seats, the Greens ten seats, with ‘others’ having eight seats. If the ALP and the Greens oppose legislation, the Coalition will need the support of six out of the other eight senators.

    These eight ‘other senators’ are a very mixed bag. Three are from the Palmer United Party. There is one independent, Nick Xenophon; one from the Democratic Labor Party, John Madigan; one from the Liberal Democratic Party, David Leyonhjelm; one from Family First, Bob Day. And one from the celebrated Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party, Ricky Muir.

    But Tony Abbott doesn’t have a good record of compromising and doing deals. In his recently published memoirs ‘The Independent Member for Lyne’, Rob Oakeshott is quite critical of Tony Abbott’s negotiating skills. He points to this in many ways. In his memoirs he says

    • ‘I am now both curious and frustrated by Tony Abbot’s negotiating style or lack of it … The door is always open, the mood is always civil, but nothing is progressing. He always indicates he is available if required, but doesn’t pursue anything.’
    • ‘Abbott has all but run dead in the first 15 days of negotiation.’
    • Oakeshott says that he doubted Abbott’s genuineness and sincerity about running a three-year term. He says that his intuition was later confirmed when Bronwyn Bishop told Sky News in October 2012 ‘Of course we would have gone to another election.’
    • ‘For reasons I couldn’t understand, I felt Tony Abbott hadn’t even been trying throughout the entire process to date.’
    • The sincerity of Tony Abbott’s offer ‘just doesn’t feel real’.
    • ‘I was pissed off’ with Tony Abbott.
    • He described Tony Abbott as ‘the master of negativity we’d all come to know’.
    • Abbott laid his cards on the table ‘Climate change and the NBN are non-negotiable – Look, if you want to support one or both of these issues, go with the other mob.’

    Will Tony Abbott do better this time with the Senate? He needs to learn a lot.

    He has apparently written to all the eight cross-bench senators and the micro-party leaders requesting meetings. Apparently the letter said that he is not going to be held hostage and that he expects the parliament to respect his mandate on the carbon and mining taxes and pass his budget. The AFR journalist Phillip Coorey suggests that the same old Tony Abbott is still at work. Coorey said ‘This week [Senator] Madigan was scathing, telling this column he had received a letter from Tony Abbott but he did not believe that Abbott was serious about wanting to engage.’

    On top of the doubts about Tony Abbott’s negotiating skills we now have the unpredictable Clive Palmer and his bombshell on climate change.

    Tony Abbott’s representative in the Senate is Eric Abetz who is not known for his finesse and mediating skills. Before the last election Abetz said that asylum-seekers living in the community should be named and shamed like paedophiles.

    After July 1, the Senate is really going to test Tony Abbott’s negotiating skills.

  • Patty Fawkner SGS. Permissible victims.

    Permissible victims are defined as those whose life and dignity is violated with very little notice, outrage or public protest.

    Only once have I been ‘bumped off’ a plane. It was in the USA on a 6am domestic flight.

    I recall the sequence of emotions: surprise, dismay then anger as I became acquainted first-hand with the airline practice of over-booking planes to guarantee full flights. The airline officials were regretful – professionally so – for any inconvenience that I might subsequently experience.

    A minor incident with no long-lasting consequence. However, it was a sobering experience to be treated as a commodity. I was simply a ‘permissible victim’ of the airline’s policy and business plan to maximise profit.

    More broadly, permissible victims are defined as those whose life and dignity is violated with very little notice, outrage or public protest. They are the expendables, a by-product of a ‘whatever-it-takes’ mentality that enables others to achieve their goals.

    Think permissible victim and think sexual abuse victim, John Ellis, eclipsed by the Church’s concern for reputation and material assets. Think permissible victims and think asylum seekers who attempt to come to Australia by boat. “Stopping the boats” may be a worthy goal, but spare a thought for those who pay the price for this policy and are now housed in harsh, remote off-shore detention facilities for an indefinite duration.

    Permissible victims are those who lack leverage and influence, those whose potential for being forgotten and discounted is great. More often than not they are the voiceless, the faceless, the weak and the poor – in a word, those least able to defend themselves.

    One definition of a prophet is one who stands in solidarity with permissible victims. The Old Testament prophets railed against the ruthless pragmatism of a society, similar to ours, which creates ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos and their ilk, including the wonderfully named Obadiah and Habakkuk, weren’t liturgical police; their message wasn’t “you’ve forgotten the rituals of the temple” or “you’re not reading the Scriptures”. Their consistent message was “You are creating permissible victims by forgetting the poor”. God doesn’t want sackcloth and ashes, holy days and sacrifices, good as these things are, says Isaiah. No, God wants us to free captives, break bonds, feed the hungry, and clothe the naked.

    This is the prophetic message, manifesto and mission of Jesus, the prophet of the Reign of God. José Pagola’s Jesus an Historical Approximation a book as refreshing as it is illuminating in exploring the pre-Easter Jesus, portrays Jesus as an itinerant preacher and healer who stands in solidarity with the permissible victims of his day. Jesus’ healings and exorcisms are signs that the reign of God had come to the most alienated sectors of society.

    Pagola says that Jesus’ behaviour was strange and provocative on two counts: he flouted the establishment’s prevailing social and religious codes of conduct, and he befriended undesirables. Jesus was shockingly inclusive, surrounding himself with society’s dregs including tax collectors and prostitutes. He fraternised with Middle Eastern ‘bogans’ and beggars, the socially marginalised and sinners. He interacted with women in culturally inappropriate ways and, my goodness, accepted them among his disciples.

    There was nothing haphazard about the way Jesus did these things, Pagola claims. Jesus was intentionally saying that God’s reign is open to everyone, with no one excluded or marginalised. God’s schema does not allow for any permissible victim. Each person is precious in God’s sight.

    Jesus’ modus operandi was extremely threatening to the priestly aristocracy. With the support of Roman officialdom they conspired to eliminate him. “It is better to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed,” observes ruthless Caiaphas (John 11:50). Jesus becomes the scapegoat, the permissible victim. Pragmatism reigns supreme.

    It’s all too easy to create permissible victims. We do it constantly and by diverse means.

    1. We create them when we adopt a differing scale or different criteria in assessing who is worthy of human dignity, security, access to resources and who is not. We may muse, as some commentators have done, that it’s “regrettable” that four-year-olds in Pakistan may have to die in US air strikes so that American four-year-olds do not become victims of terrorism. In the ‘war on terror’ the Pakistani four-year-olds simply become that most ugly of euphemisms, ‘collateral damage’.

    Foreigners who fly to Australia, overstay their visa and then seek asylum are deemed, by some odd Down Under logic, more worthy than those who board the proverbial leaky boat in an attempt to reach our shores.

    2. Permissible victims are less likely to be ‘one of us’ and more likely to be ‘one of them’. Would our country’s shameful indifference to the loss of life of the Siev X, which sank in international waters just south of Java on October 19, 2001, killing 146 children, 142 women and 65 men Middle Eastern asylum seekers, been as great had those on board been carrying British passports? I think not.

    3. Stereotyping and labelling creates permissible victims. Once we ascribe a person with our label of choice – “bleeding heart”, “ultra-conservative”, “red-neck” – it is easy to dismiss them and ignore their contribution. Apart from being evidence of sloppy thinking, stereotyping and labelling, it causes us to close ourselves to the unique mystery of the other. We fail to acknowledge their full personhood.

    4. Bad religion and bad nationalism create permissible victims. We build straw gods to justify political action. For decades Scripture was used to justify the apartheid regime in South Africa (for example, Romans 13:1-7). We readily recognise the false god of the Islamist suicide bomber and we see it on ‘our side’ as well. George W. Bush said that God guided his decision to bomb Afghanistan and that “God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq”. Such a god and not the God of Jesus Christ, justifies the creation and extermination of permissible victims.

    5. We create permissible victims when we make ourselves the centre of our universe. We greedily take for ourselves the greater bulk of the earth’s resources. We ravage the earth with hardly a thought for other species who share our planet home. We scapegoat, we wage war, we allow torture, and we turn a blind eye to the desperation and needs of others. We have done this in Syria and Manus Island.

    From the lofty realms of my moral high horse, I readily point the finger at those who create permissible victims. Yet honesty demands that I acknowledge how seamlessly I slip into the practice. I have betrayed and victimised as many people who have betrayed and victimised me. I have labelled others as often as they have labelled me. My contempt for others is the corollary of my self-righteousness.

    My practice can be subtle and sophisticated. It is de rigueur for me ‘to have a go’ at this person, to make that group the butt of my jokes, to rail against the treatment of this group, but not care a slither about that group, to dismiss what someone has got to say even before they’ve said it.

    What to do?

    I can try and be more mindful of the reality of permissible victims. I can choose to stand in solidarity with one particular victimised group. Rather than skimming and scanning I can commit to the careful reading of news reports for this group. I can be grateful that God’s ways are not my ways and pray for a deeper sense of kinship and empathy with others.

    I can also hope that the next time I’m metaphorically ‘bumped off’, I can try and redirect my anger away from my own self-pity and spare a thought for the real permissible victims in my world.

    I can but hope and try.

    Good Samaritan Sister, Patty Fawkner is an adult educator, writer and facilitator. Patty is interested in exploring what wisdom the Christian tradition has for contemporary issues. She has an abiding interest in questions of justice and spirituality. Her formal tertiary qualifications are in arts, education, theology and spirituality.

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


     

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  • All at sea again.

    Lt Gen Angus Campbell, the Commander of Operation Sovereign Borders is at it again highlighting the policy and political achievements of the Coalition government on asylum seekers rather than sticking to his last, and ensuring that Australian naval vessels don’t stray into Indonesian waters.

    Gen. Campbell says that as a government employee, he doesn’t comment on government policy. But apparently he has no constraint about commenting when it suits him. He declines to comment when there are embarrassing political questions. He then says they are ‘on water’ matters.

    On Tuesday this week at a speech to the Royal United Services Institute of NSW  he made two political points as reported by the Guardian.

    The first was that Australia was among the top three nations resettling refugees, according to the UNHCR. That is technically correct, but it is quite misleading. A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

    There is a UNHCR resettlement program which resettled 88,578 refugees in 2012. We were ranked third behind the US and Canada in this program. This is a useful program but it is quite minor when set against the total refugee problem. In 2012 there were 15.4 million refugees in the world. There were another 28.8 million displaced persons. The numbers would have increased since then particularly with the disasters in Syria and Iraq.

    Of the 15.4 million refugees in 2012, the top five hosting countries were Pakistan 1.638 million people, Iran 868,000, Germany 590,000, Kenya 565,000 and Syria 477,000. Australia ranked number 49 in the world in hosting 30,000 refugees. Taking into account our population, we had a world ranking of 62 and on a wealth/GDP basis, we were ranked 87. That is all a long way from the third ranking that Gen. Campbell tells us about. His claim just does not bear close examination when we consider the total problem.

    The second thing that Gen. Campbell said to the Royal United Services Institute was that the policy that he was implementing in OSB had saved lives. He estimated that without OSB, up to 180 more people might have been drowned.

    Is he really suggesting that the purpose of OSB is to stop drownings? It may be a consequence but it is not the objective of OSB. The objective of OSB as Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison cannot help telling us is to ‘stop the boats’. It is not to stop drownings. Gen. Campbell’s public relations gloss is designed to hide immoral and cruel policies. If it was about saving lives at sea, the government would be nominating him for a human rights award.

    The Director General of UNHCR, Antonio Guterres, has recently spoken of our ‘strange’ phobia about boat arrivals when we ignore the 8,000 plus asylum seekers who come by air each year and, in world terms, the few asylum seekers that come to Australia. As with refugees, Australia ranks well down the list in the number of asylum seekers coming to our shores and seeking protection. That is one of the benefits of our remoteness. In 2012 the five top countries receiving asylum seekers were Turkey 325,000, Jordan 136,000, Lebanon 135,000, South Sudan 101,000 and France 98,000. Australia ranked number 20 with less than 30,000 asylum seekers coming to our shore either by boat or by plane. In relation to our population our world ranking was down at 29 and in relation to our wealth/GDP we ranked 52 in the world.

    We are nowhere near as generous as Gen. Campbell suggests in trying to justify the immoral policies which Australia is pursuing and which he is helping to implement.

  • Those Feisty Iranians

    Amongst our asylum seeker population Iranians feature very prominently. And it is not just because of Reza Barati, an Iranian asylum-seeker who was murdered at Manus Island on our watch.

    A feature of the Iranian asylum seekers, apart from their number, is that they have a reputation of being quite “pushy”. As past and current Immigration officers tell me ‘they are always in our face’. I am afraid that this view of Iranians does not help in the way they are treated. But the same qualities make them good settlers – determined and highly motivated. I wish more of our migrants were like that.

    The number of Iranian asylum seekers in Australia stands out. If we look at the figures before the Manus/Nauru ‘solution’ and Operation Sovereign Borders, we see that in the June quarter 2012, Iranian asylum seekers represented only about 10% of boat arrivals. Within a year they had risen to about 40% of boat arrivals. The actual numbers told the same story – up from 352 in June quarter 2012 to an estimated 3,600 in the June quarter 2013. Later data is not available.

    After appeal processes, over 80% of Iranians are usually found to be genuine refugees.

    There are still a lot of Iranians in detention. At the end of May this year, there were 4,016 people in Immigration Detention Facilities. 27% were from Iran, almost double the percentage for the second largest group, Vietnamese at 15%. Of the 1,081 Iranians in Immigration Detention Facilities, 255 were children. In addition to those in Immigration Detention Facilities, at the end of May this year there were another 2,955 people in the community under Residence Determination. The largest group again were Iranians with 841, or 28%.

    In addition to the large number of Iranian asylum seekers arriving, there is another reason why many remain in detention. In many cases the Iranian government will not accept returnees to Iran that have claimed refugee status in another country,been refused and are subject to deportation.

    There is obviously great pressure on Iranians to leave their country and for a variety of reasons. As I pointed out in my blog of July 28 last year

    ‘The population of Iran is increasing very rapidly. It has been referred to as a population time-bomb. The population is young (with over 60% of the population under 30). The middle class is also growing rapidly. It is well-educated. Iranians have a lot of “get up and go”. My observation is that they make very good migrants. They are determined people and perhaps for that reason they get up the nose of Immigration officials.

    They are also repressed by the mullahs but probably more importantly the sanctions imposed by the West are biting hard. Not surprisingly with population and economic pressures at home, they want to leave Iran. It must be possible to open a different migration pathway for eligible Iranians through some type of skilled migration program, perhaps a 457 visa or sponsored migration. Surely we have Australian companies that would be supportive. Iran is an important market for Australian wheat.’

    Unfortunately the migration application process is difficult and lengthy in Iran and elsewhere. As a result Iranians often decide to risk all and flee and hope that countries such as Australia will give them a new chance in life.

    In the last decade Australia has received almost 1.5 million migrants because of their skills, family connections or other special eligibility.

    We would be doing ourselves a service as well as helping young well-educated and entrepreneurial Iranians if we opened more migration opportunities for them and discourage them from making hazardous and dangerous voyages.

    Former and current Immigration officials do express quite different views about Iranian asylum seekers. The first is that they are demanding. The second is that ‘they won’t cop any shit’.  I must confess that I admire those qualities in people-being prepared to push back.

    Many Iranians would make excellent settlers in this country, even if they do not meet our refugee criteria. We need to consider alternate migration pathways for young people in Iran who are under pressure.

    Amongst our asylum seeker population Iranians feature very prominently. And it is not just because of Reza Barati, an Iranian asylum-seeker who was murdered at Manus Island on our watch.

    A feature of the Iranian asylum seekers, apart from their number, is that they have a reputation of being quite “pushy”. As past and current Immigration officers tell me ‘they are always in our face’. I am afraid that this view of Iranians does not help in the way they are treated. But the same qualities make them good settlers – determined and highly motivated. I wish more of our migrants were like that.

    The number of Iranian asylum seekers in Australia stands out. If we look at the figures before the Manus/Nauru ‘solution’ and Operation Sovereign Borders, we see that in the June quarter 2012, Iranian asylum seekers represented only about 10% of boat arrivals. Within a year they had risen to about 40% of boat arrivals. The actual numbers told the same story – up from 352 in June quarter 2012 to an estimated 3,600 in the June quarter 2013. Later data is not available.

    After appeal processes, over 80% of Iranians are usually found to be genuine refugees.

    There are still a lot of Iranians in detention. At the end of May this year, there were 4,016 people in Immigration Detention Facilities. 27% were from Iran, almost double the percentage for the second largest group, Vietnamese at 15%. Of the 1,081 Iranians in Immigration Detention Facilities, 255 were children. In addition to those in Immigration Detention Facilities, at the end of May this year there were another 2,955 people in the community under Residence Determination. The largest group again were Iranians with 841, or 28%.

    In addition to the large number of Iranian asylum seekers arriving, there is another reason why many remain in detention. In many cases the Iranian government will not accept returnees to Iran that have claimed refugee status in another country.

    There is obviously great pressure on Iranians to leave their country and for a variety of reasons. As I pointed out in my blog of July 28 last year

    ‘The population of Iran is increasing very rapidly. It has been referred to as a population time-bomb. The population is young (with over 60% of the population under 30). The middle class is also growing rapidly. It is well-educated. Iranians have a lot of “get up and go”. My observation is that they make very good migrants. They are determined people and perhaps for that reason they get up the nose of Immigration officials.

    They are also repressed by the mullahs but probably more importantly the sanctions imposed by the West are biting hard. Not surprisingly with population and economic pressures at home, they want to leave Iran. It must be possible to open a different migration pathway for eligible Iranians through some type of skilled migration program, perhaps a 457 visa or sponsored migration. Surely we have Australian companies that would be supportive. Iran is an important market for Australian wheat.’

    Unfortunately the migration application process is difficult and lengthy in Iran and elsewhere. As a result Iranians often decide to risk all and flee and hope that countries such as Australia will give them a new chance in life.

    In the last decade Australia has received almost 1.5 million migrants because of their skills, family connections or other special eligibility.

    We would be doing ourselves a service as well as helping young well-educated and entrepreneurial Iranians if we opened more migration opportunities for them and discourage them from making hazardous and dangerous voyages.

    Former and current Immigration officials do express quite different views about Iranian asylum seekers. The first is that they are demanding. The second is that ‘they won’t cop any shit’.  I must confess that I admire those qualities in people-being prepared to push back.

    Many Iranians would make excellent settlers in this country, even if they do not meet our refugee criteria. We need to consider alternate migration pathways for young people in Iran who are under pressure.

  • Bill Van Esveld. Dispatches: What’s in a Name? A lot, in the West Bank.

    Is it occupied, disputed, or contested? Some are finding it hard to find the right words to describe the West Bank.

    In a move widely seen as an effort to demonstrate its pro-Israel bona fides, Australia’s attorney general said on June 5 that the Australian government would stop referring to East Jerusalem – which is part of the West Bank – as “occupied” territory. Attorney General George Brandis explained the change was being made because the term is “freighted with pejorative implications,” relates to “historical events,” and is “neither appropriate nor useful” to “describe areas of negotiations” in the peace process. On Twitter, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu welcomed Australia’s statement, calling “eastern Jerusalem” an “area in dispute” and condemning “the chorus of hypocrisy and ignorance of history” around the issue.

    Australia’s announcement sparked substantial criticism in its domestic media. Meanwhile, in the United States, mainstream media outlets frequently choose to avoid the “occupied” label, even though the US government officially regards the West Bank as “occupied.” The New York Times, in an unrelated article on June 6, referred to the entire West Bank as “contested” territory, while MSNBC’s Hardball recently aired a graphic about “disputed” territories.

    Regardless of whether “occupation” and “occupied” are considered pejorative, they relate to a broadly recognized and specific international legal standard. Whether or not a territory is occupied is a legal question determined by facts on the ground: under laws of war dating back at least a century, territory is occupied when a hostile army has established and exercises authority. It is important to get this right because the international law of occupation, codified in The Hague Regulations of 1907 and the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949, places certain obligations on the occupying power toward the local population and the territory’s resources. Of particular importance in the case of Israel, the Fourth Geneva Convention, which Israel has ratified, makes it a war crime for an occupying power to transfer parts of its population to occupied territory, as Israel has done in facilitating the growth of its settlements.

    The Israeli government’s position is that the Fourth Geneva Convention does not apply to the West Bank, because the territory was not the sovereign territory of a state party to the Geneva Conventions (Jordan) at the time Israel occupied it. However, not only has Israel’s interpretation of the convention been universally rejected, it is also at odds with the convention’s purpose of protecting people under the rule of a hostile military. To our knowledge, every court, foreign government, agency, and international body that has addressed the issue – from the UN Security Council to the International Committee of the Red Cross – refers to the West Bank as occupied territory. In fact, in scores of judgments, Israel’s own Supreme Court has applied the law of occupation to determine the lawfulness of actions by Israeli forces in the West Bank.  For decades, it has ducked review of the legality of Israel’s current settlements policy.

    So when the Israeli government or others assert that the West Bank is “contested” or “disputed” territory, it’s worth remembering that these terms have no recognized legal meaning, and are nothing more than an attempt to avoid the laws that govern Israel’s military rule there. As a general rule, when an occupying power complains that the term occupation doesn’t apply to its situation, journalists and policymakers should take a deeper look.

    Bill Van Esveld is an Israel and Palestine researcher at Human Rights Watch.

     

  • The widening wealth gap

    Oxfam Australia has just released a report ‘Still the Lucky Country?’ which highlights the widening gap in wealth and incomes in Australia.

    It found that the nine richest people in Australia have wealth that equates to the poorest 20% of the community. That 20% represents about 4.5 million people.

    The nine richest people have a combined net worth of $67.7 billion. They are: Gina Rinehart, $17.7 billion; Anthony Pratt, $7 billion; James Packer, $6.6 billion; Ivan Glasenberg, $6.3 billion; Andrew Forrest, $5 billion; Frank Lowy, $4.6 billion; Harry Triguboff, $4.3 billion; John Gandel, $3.2 billion and Paul Ramsay (now deceased), $3 billion.

    The top three wealthiest in Australia inherited most of their wealth. As American devotees of baseball would say ‘They were born on third base’.

    Oxfam took a national poll of 1,000 people which revealed that Australians were concerned about inequality.

    • 76% said that the wealthy don’t pay enough tax.
    • 75% want the government to close the wealth divide.
    • Two thirds of people said that it is unfair that the richest 1% of Australians own more than the poorest 60%.

    Oxfam noted that inequality in the world is growing with 68 billionaires. They are as rich as a half of the rest of the world.

    Pope Francis has been denouncing inequality as ‘increasingly intolerable’ and the ‘seat of social evil in the world’. But it is not only the Pope who is expressing major concerns. The plutocracy has been joining him.

    Paul Pulman, the CEO of Unilever, describes this growing inequality as a ‘capitalist threat to capitalism’. The Lord Mayor of London Fiona Woolf warned that capitalism needed to be ‘for all and not just the gilded few’.

    Prince Charles said ‘The long term job of capitalism is to serve people, rather than the other way round’.

    The managing director of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, and a former Conservative French minister called for ‘more progressive income taxes and greater use of property taxes’.

    The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, said that ‘rising income inequality was real and international … just as any revolution eats its children, unchecked market fundamentalism can devour the social capital essential for the long-term dynamism of capitalism itself’.

    Mark Carnegie an Australian venture capitalist puts it this way ‘The enemy that we face at the moment is growing inequality, growing divisiveness, growing disengagement….in America you see society just absolutely sheering because the rich and the poor are just getting further and further apart.’

    A wide range of people are now raising serious concern about growing inequality. We are all being called to account for this growing inequality and the economic and social consequences that it will inevitably bring. We need to consider wealth and property taxes as well as raising the rate of personal tax on high income earners, like the CEO’s of our banks.

  • Cristian Martini Grimaldi. St Francis of the East

    Cardinal John Henry Newman said ‘There is nothing on this earth as ugly as the Catholic Church and nothing so beautiful’. We have seen a lot of the ugliness recently. The following story tells us something about the beauty. John Menadue.

    The prestigious Ho-Am Prize 2014, known as the Nobel Prize of South Korea, has been awarded to Father Vincenzo Bordo. This is the first time an Italian has received this accolade. A missionary with the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, Fr Bordo was honored for his services to the homeless, to elderly people living alone and young people on the street, through a series of programs he created.

    These include a cafeteria and a youth center in Seongnam, a satellite city outside Seoul. He picks me up at Seongnam’s historical market, which is called Moran. “Welcome to the real Korea,” he says. “Here you can find everything from power drills to dog meat.” After six months in Korea, this is my first glimpse of dog meat — a delicacy that is strictly taboo in most nations.

    From here we head towards Anna’s House, where Vincenzo works and lives. Vincenzo arrived in Seongnam in 1990. As a true St Francis of the modern era, the first question he asked as soon as he set foot in the Far East was: where are the poor? “When I came here there was nothing,” he says. “Today the city has a million people, all living a hand-to-mouth existence.”

    For his first four years, he was an assistant pastor and worked hard to integrate in his new environment. He studied Korean for two years. Then in 1993, inspired by a nun who helped the poor, he opened a cafeteria for the elderly. This is where Anna’s House originated.

    Throughout the 1990s it was the first and only place in Seoul where the poor could have a hot meal indoors. Now its volunteers number 600 altogether, divided into 30 groups of 20, mostly students. It now offers medical and psychiatric services, as well as a barber and a consultant to help people find jobs. There are cultural classes for the homeless and even religious counseling, but only for those who want it, Vincenzo stresses.

    “Our goal,” he says, “is not to convert, nor to just feed the hungry, but to realize that these people have lost their human dignity. We try to restore it.” Why the name Anna’s House?” I ask him.

    “In 1998 there was an economic crisis here and many people found themselves on the street overnight. At that time a man who owned a restaurant came to me and said, ‘I know you work for the poor. If you want, I’ll provide you with an extra room to make a new cafeteria.’”

    “Why did he do that?” “He said: ‘I am a Catholic, but I’m a poor practitioner, I never go to church, I seldom pray, but my mother has just died and I want to do something to honor her memory.’”

    “Let me guess, the mother’s name was Anna?”

    “Yes. The man, who was called Matteo, funded the cost of providing two meals a week. Immediately the place was filled with 80 people. But when I asked people ‘what are you going to eat tomorrow?’ they all replied ‘we won’t eat anything.’ “So we extended the meals to three a week. But when I asked people what they would be eating tomorrow, it was still the same answer: ‘Tomorrow I won’t eat.’ So we went up to four meals a week, then five, and today we serve every day.

    “Everything we built here has come from listening to what I call the cries of the poor.” As well as the cafeteria Vincenzo also operates four reception centers, looking after 40 boys; orphans, the abandoned, and those who run away from home. “That’s Ji-hoon,” Vincenzo tells me, pointing out one of them

    “He’s eight years old and his divorced father beat him every day. He came to us just a few days ago.” Then he introduces me to Ye-jun, a tough looking 20-year-old with a tribal tattoo on his biceps and numerous ear piercings. When asked where his parents are, he shrugs; he has no idea. Ye-jun has been in and out of the center several times since he was 15, but is now intent on studying.

    “I came back when I realized I did not stand a chance alone,” he says. “Now I want to prepare well, earn a bit of money and go to live on my own. ”

    I ask Vincenzo what percentage of the guys who come here eventually manage to find a stable job and build a life. “If they’re young, as much as 80 percent can make it,” he says. “But if they’re older it means they carry so many scars inside, recovery become difficult.

    “They’ve learned on the streets that they can make easy money just by stealing. When they come to us and see that they need to engage in study, follow rules, follow a certain form of discipline, then many of them abandon the attempt. The alternatives appear easier.” Vincenzo too has had his struggles. The old parish priest, he says, hated him.

    “Yes, he wanted to send me away. For him this activity had nothing to do with the Church. Many think that to be a parish priest means to celebrate Mass, hear confessions and that’s all. The homeless? They stink, they cause trouble.

    “I spent four years suffering and struggling. At one point I wondered if what I was doing was really the right thing, but I found the strength to believe in what I was doing. So this award was important for me psychologically. It has given me great satisfaction.”

    Read more at: http://www.ucanews.com/news/a-st-francis-of-the-east/71186

    Cristian Martini Grimaldi is a correspondent in Seoul of UCANews.

  • Is Tony Abbott still a climate change denier?

    Tony Abbott claimed on his recent overseas trip that he takes human induced climate change “very seriously” Or was it just a diversion before his meeting with President Obama who does take the issue seriously.

    I hope he is no longer a climate change denier but I have my doubts.  I suspect it is mainly window dressing with no serious new understanding of the urgency of the issue and what further action must be taken.

    There are several reasons for my doubt.

    • He has not outlined in any serious way why he now takes the issue “very seriously” It has been a one liner and nothing more with no explanation or elaboration. His key supporters still want to relegate science to the dark ages.
    • He keeps saying that any action to cut greenhouse gases should not “clobber the economy” But if the climate is seriously damaged as seems likely by carbon pollution then our economy will also be seriously damaged. Or as it is colloquially put there will be “no jobs on a dead planet”, like there will be no jobs on a polluted or dying Murray River. Where appropriate we need to intervene to wind back our old and polluting economy and in its place encourage a new economy based on new energy-renewables, wind and solar. That is the best way to stop our economy being clobbered. It is the way capitalism renews itself, not clinging to the old that threatens the future of our planet and our future economy but embracing necessary change.
    • Tony Abbott is also ignoring his Chief Scientist Professor Ian Chubb who told us in February this year that the scientific evidence for human induced global warming is so overwhelming that those who reject it are usually forced to impugn the messenger with stupid expressions like “group think” or silly arguments that global warming is a “delusion”

    But other tests of Tony Abbott’s seriousness about climate change are what he does on the issue and the company he keeps. As Professor Rod Tiffen in the following extracts from Inside Story of 5 June 2014 points out the actions of Tony Abbott and the company he keeps are cause for concern.  John Menadue

    “Whether or not Abbott really does believe in anthropogenic climate change, it is “extraordinary,” according to Professor Ross Garnaut, that the four business leaders the government has appointed to senior advisory roles – Dick Warburton on the inquiry into renewable energy, David Murray on the financial system inquiry, Maurice Newman to chair the PM’s Business Advisory Council, and Tony Shepherd to head the Commission of Audit – all share a strong view that the science on climate change is wrong.

    Since the election, writes leading business journalist Giles Parkinson, the government has sought to close or reduce funding to many of the agencies whose work relates to climate change. Its first, and highly symbolic, move was to disband the Climate Commission, whose main purpose was to communicate facts about climate change to the public.

    Its next target, the Climate Change Authority, might prove more difficult to get rid of. As a statutory agency established by parliament, it can’t simply be closed. “The CCA was intended to be a non-partisan, expert body,” wrote New Matilda’s Ben Eltham, “a little like the Reserve Bank or the Productivity Commission, that would review the best available scientific and economic evidence and recommend a consensus position on Australia’s carbon reduction targets.” When it handed down its report on how Australia should address global warming – by cutting emissions to 19 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020 – environment minister Greg Hunt didn’t hold any sort of event to mark the report’s release. He simply issued a media release, full of misleading statistics and claims, whose key point was to rehash Coalition criticisms of Labor’s carbon tax.

    Earlier, the Climate Change Authority’s review of Labor’s renewable energy scheme had concluded that the current targets should be kept. Although it had the statutory obligation to undertake the next review, the government moved quickly to appoint its own inquiry. Its members included a climate change denier, a fossil-fuel lobbyist and the former head of a coal-and-gas generation company, all with an “antipathy to renewable energy,” according to Parkinson.

    Environmentalists’ fears that this inquiry was set up to reach a predetermined conclusion were strengthened by the government’s rapid moves to cut funding in this area. The budget recommended the abolition of the $3.1 billion Australian Renewable Energy Agency, or ARENA, an institution formed to help bring new technologies into production and deployment, and to fund Australia’s world-leading solar research. While it retained funding to meet its existing contracts, it had almost no funds to enter into any new agreements. Abolishing ARENA requires Senate approval.

    The most tangible effect of these measures is to dampen activity in the area. But they will also minimise the flow of information about climate change and policy responses. The government’s resolve even extends to organisational names: the Australian Cleantech Competition was renamed Australian Technologies Competition, and the words climate, clean energy, or clean tech are considered non grata.

    Unusually, Australia was not represented at ministerial level at the UN climate summit in Warsaw in November, which was working towards the global agreement to replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Australia’s recent performance and changes drew some criticism at the meeting. The government also decided not to send a representative to the World Bank–supported Partnership for Market Readiness assembly, despite the fact that Australia had previously co-chaired three assemblies. Some EU diplomats have criticised Australia for “not including environment issues on the G20 conference it is hosting later this year,” reported Parkinson.”

    – See more at: http://inside.org.au/the-abbott-governments-war-on-transparency/#sthash.k0nLtgsq.dpuf

    I suspect that Tony Abbott has not changed his mind on climate change.

    Professor Tiffen is Emeritus Professor of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney

  • Joe Hockey on welfare dependence

    Surely Joe Hockey must soon become more careful about preaching to us about ending the age of entitlement and the need for Australians to be less reliant on welfare.

    Facts are getting in his way.  The latest reality check has been the release of the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research’s Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) which surveys 17,000 people each year in Australia. The HILDA report found that Australians are becoming less dependent on welfare.

    • In 2001, 23% of Australians aged 18 to 64 received weekly welfare payments. It has now fallen to 18.6%.
    • The proportion of retired people who relied on welfare benefits as their main source of income has declined over the last decade from 68.5% to 65.8%.
    • In 2001, there were 7.1% of Australian households where more than 90% of income came from welfare. A decade later the figure has fallen to 4.8%.

    Professor Roger Wilkins, the report’s author, said ‘The long-term trend away from welfare reliance was largely the result of the long boom, although a succession of welfare reforms, tightening eligibility, had also contributed.’ Professor Wilkins added ‘I’m absolutely bewildered by Hockey’s obsession on welfare reliance in Australia. It’s lower than it’s been in a couple of decades, possibly longer.’

    I have pointed out in earlier blogs that Australian government expenditure by all levels of government as a percentage of our GDP is one of the lowest in the OECD.

    The major problem is the erosion of our tax base by deductions, or as economists calls them, tax expenditures that favour the wealthy. The higher the marginal rate of tax, the greater the benefit of these deductions. These deductions include superannuation, negative gearing and the discount on capital gains.

    The “debt and deficit” crisis has been wildly overplayed. Now the facts on welfare dependence are running in the opposite direction to what Joe Hockey is telling us.