John Menadue

  • 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.

  • Catholic Church – catch-up and cover-up

    The sad saga of the Catholic Church in its response to sexual abuse goes on and on and on. Pope Francis is yet to grasp the nettle.

    Invariably it is people outside the hierarchy and clergy who are responding and calling for action. The latest has been former NSW Premier, Barry O’Farrell, who spoke in the NSW Parliament on this issue on 17 June 2014. He called on Fr Brian Lucas, the General Secretary of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference to be stood down in light of the report of the Cunneen Commission into alleged cover-up of child sexual abuse in the Catholic Diocese of Maitland/Newcastle. Barry O’Farrell has a particular interest in this issue as he had appointed the Cunneen Commission.

    In parliament, Barry O’Farrell added. “On the day the [Cunneen] report was made public, Bishop Wright issued a statement that suggested the report would be scrutinised, its findings taken on board and action taken. Yet last week, despite the damning exposition by the commission of Monsignor Hart’s lack of action in 1993, Bishop Wright simply stood him aside from advisory positions in the diocese. As a response to such a damning enquiry it was completely underwhelming “

    Australian bishops just don’t get it. It has been the same around the world.

    It was the secular media in Boston in 2001 and not the church leadership or church media that first drew attention to the sexual abuse in the Catholic Church in Boston under the ‘leadership’ of Cardinal Law. In Ireland it was a succession of royal commissions and enquiries that exposed the scandal within the Catholic Church.

    In Australia in 1997 Bishop Geoffrey Robinson called for action on sexual abuse problems in Australia. He was disowned and rebuked by his fellow bishops. It was a parliamentary enquiry in Victoria that told us last November “No representative of the Catholic Church directly reported the crimes committed by its members to the police … There is simply no justification for this position.” Then there was Cardinal Pell before the royal commission in Sydney. He has now gone to Rome but there is great damage left in his wake.

    As Fr Frank Brennan has said “Clearly the church itself cannot be left alone to get its house in order.”

    Our bishops, who are appointed through a secretive and manipulative process, are failing us badly. They are not responsive to the people of the church.

    One action which pastoral bishops could take would be to call urgent synods in their dioceses to tackle this problem of sexual abuse and the systemic and cultural factors which give rise to it. The Second Vatican Council recommended that synods should ‘flourish’. They have died of misuse in Australia. Only five bishops have convened a diocesan synod since 1965. The Melbourne archdiocese has not had a synod since 1916 and the Sydney archdiocese since 1951. Synods are a long-established and traditional form of collegial discussion on matters of doctrine, faith, morals and discipline. A flourishing and participatory regime of diocesan synods would enhance the accountability of bishops and improve the performance of the whole diocese. Representative synods with half of the membership from lay people would be far more knowledgeable in identifying and dealing with such issues as sexual abuse.

    Our church leadership is failing us. We are tired of continual catch-up and cover-up.

    Together with colleagues, we submitted a submission to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. This submission can be found on my website. Go to top left-hand of this blog, click on website and then click on religion folder. The submission can also be found on the website of the Royal Commission.

  • Joe Hockey’s lifters

    At a speech on June 11, a few days ago, Joe Hockey said that Australia should be rewarding ‘lifters and not leaners’.

    Presumably Glencore/Xstrata, Australia’s largest coal company, would be an ideal example of a heavy lifter, not like those welfare leaners, and particularly the young unemployed.

    But not so. Michael West in the SMH on June 14, a few days ago, reported ‘Lo and behold Glencore had booked cash of almost $15 billion from coal mining in Australia in the last three years and had effectively paid zero tax’.  Yes – that is right! Zero tax. Presumably Joe Hockey is proud of such a lifter.

    Apparently Glencore achieved this remarkable result by borrowing billions from its parent company and other overseas entities, and paid them interest on these loans. It is a classic example of shifting profits offshore to countries with low tax rates. The result was no tax payable on coal mining in Australia.

    Glencore/Xstrata has a track record in tax evasion. It was formed by Marc Rich who Michael West described as ‘the biggest tax-evader in US history’. He was charged with fraud and tax evasion. In 2001, Bill Clinton pardoned him on his last day in office.

    Other Glencore executives have similar track records in tax avoidance around the world and in Australia as our Federal Court found in a recent tax decision.

    In my blog of June 10 ‘Taxes and the free riders’ I described the various devices that the wealthy used to avoid taxes, e.g. self-managed super funds, moving funds offshore to avoid tax, tax havens and trusts.

    It is not only Google, Apple and Westfield engaged in this tax avoidance, but we now learn that companies like Glencore/Xstrata are also shirking their responsibilities.

    Not surprisingly the SMH in its editorial on June 16 said it was ‘time to get tough on profit-shifting multinationals’.  Previous Labor Governments made little progress.

    It is time also for Joe Hockey to get companies like Glencore/Xstrata to do some lifting instead of castigating the leaners on welfare.

    Glencore/Xstrata is a classic example of corporate welfare at the expense of the Australian community.

  • Out-of-Pocket Costs in Australian Healthcare and the $7 Co-payment.

    In my blog of  May 12 on health co-payments I set out my objections to the proposal including that we already have a very high level of co-payments, that they are a “dogs breakfast” and that the proposal on its own would be unfair. The debate has moved on since then which raises further concerns about a proposal which covers not only GP consultations but pathology and radiology tests and pharmaceutical prescriptions as well.

    My first concern relates to process and where this co-payment issue might be headed. Minister Dutton has repeatedly said that he wants ‘to start a national conversation’ about health. I agree. But the minister doesn’t do what he has promised. He has barged in with a ‘solution’ to the “unsustainability of Australian healthcare”, without any ‘conversation’. In practice what he is proposing in the budget is a mechanism to kill bulk billing and clear the ground for Private Health Insurance to fill the gap. Minister Dutton has said repeatedly that the government has an interest in greater involvement of PHI in primary healthcare. He said ‘we will be… looking over the next few years at new and innovative ways in which we might fund and deliver primary healthcare, including through partnerships with private insurers’. He has expressed interest in trials of PHI in primary care in Queensland.

    In terms of equity and efficiency it is remarkable that the government proposes a $7 co-payment, but maintains the $5 billion p.a. subsidy for PHI. That is real corporate welfare at the expense of low income earners and our health service in general.

    The intrusion of PHI into primary healthcare should be strenuously resisted. The experience with PHI around the world is clear, particularly in the US. It pushes up costs dramatically and does not improve health outcomes. There is no benefit to the Australian community if the government saves $1 in official taxes, only to turn round and for the community to pay  a lot more  in ‘taxes’ to BUPA, Medibank Pte or NIB, for the same or an inferior service. Because of its intrinsic inefficiency PHI will always be more expensive than Medicare. Since 1999 average PHI premiums have increased 130% whilst the CPI has increased by only 50%. PHI administrative costs are about three times higher than Medicare’s.

    I have written extensively about the damage that PHI does wherever it gets a foothold. The encroachment of PHI into primary healthcare as suggested by the minister is a much more serious threat to our universal system of healthcare than the co-payment in itself.

    Warren Buffet has described PHI as ‘the tapeworm in the US health sector’. It is also true in Australia. Its expansion here should be resisted. Minister Dutton is quoted as saying that he ‘will never go down the path of a US style healthcare system’. But allowing PHI into primary healthcare would take us down the American path.  Private doctors and private hospitals have enormous power to set prices unless there is some effective counter. Multiple private insurers have little power to control these prices as the US shows. Only a single payer, usually a public payer has the power to control prices

    My second concern is that co-payments could discourage disadvantaged patients from seeing their GP. The COAG Reform Council has just reported that 5.8% of Australians delayed or did not see a GP because of cost and 8.9% delayed or did not fill a prescription from their GP because of cost. A co-payment will make that worse. It will force some patients to use more expensive and less appropriate emergency department services in public hospitals which are already under great pressure.

    Third, the proposed co-payment will undermine preventive health services and continuity of care for people with chronic conditions. The best place to focus on prevention and at an early stage is in primary care. Any discouragement of access to GPs because of the co-payment would be detrimental to preventive healthcare. The decision by the government to abolish the National Preventative Health Agency is an indication of the government’s lack of concern on health prevention. The tobacco, alcohol and the junk food industries will be pleased with that abolition decision. A strong primary health care sector is the key to an equitable and efficient health care system anywhere in the world.

    Fourthly, the best way to reduce costs and pressures in primary care is not through a co-payment but to move away from fee-for-service remuneration. This type of remuneration promotes ‘turnstile medicine’. FFS may be appropriate for occasional and episodic care but it is not appropriate for long-term and chronic care. We need a major review of remuneration practices in primary care with more emphasis on capitation and bulk-charges for chronic care to keep people well at minimum cost. The British single payer system has many advantages. One advantage is as the Economist of May 31 2014 put it, “doctors are paid to keep people well, not for every extra thing they do so they don’t make money performing unnecessary tasks and tests.” Addressing this remuneration question is far more important than a co-payment.

    Fifthly, there will probably be unintended consequences for the $7 co-payment. If the co-payment takes effect, it is likely to result in an increase in doctor’s fees. The attraction of bulk billing for the doctor is that it removes the cost of handling and accounting for transactions. An invoice is sent directly to Medicare. Once the doctor is obliged to handle the $7 co-payment, another transaction occurs, either by cash or probably credit card. This inevitable patient/doctor money transaction will provide the doctor with an opportunity to charge above the bulk billing rate. As soon as doctors stop bulk billing, we can expect a rapid rise in doctors’ fees on top of the $7 co-payment.

    Sixthly there are numerous other ways to reduce health costs and by billions of dollars e.g. the duplication and gaps in health care between the Commonwealth and the States, the out of date list of medical services funded under the MBS,, adverse events, archaic workforce structures and high drug costs resulting in us paying more than $2b pa than our New Zealand friends for equivalent drugs. But real savings in these areas means tackling vested interests like the AMA. The Pharmaceutical Guild, Medicines Australia, State health departments and the PHI sector. It is politically easier to attack the less powerful by a co payment.

    Far from having a sensible and informed public discussion about health, Minister Dutton has embarked on an ill-considered and ideologically driven course.

     

  • Debt and negative gearing

    Many have grown tired of the exaggerations by the Coalition about debt and deficits. The fact is that, as least as far as public debt is concerned, we don’t have a problem. The public debt emergency is confected. Our public debt is about $300 billion which in world terms is a very low figure.

    But the real debt we have is household debt which is approaching $2 trillion, one of the highest in the developed world. Our household debt is 1.8 times household disposable income. This compares with 1.1 times in the US.

    A contributor to this enormous household debt is negative gearing. Under our tax system an investor can borrow on a property or asset even if the income generated is unlikely to cover the interest on the loan. Losses on the so-called ‘negatively geared’ properties are income tax deductable. These deductions are estimated to cost the budget about $15 billion p.a. The main beneficiaries are people on higher incomes. The Abbott Government didn’t go near this problem in his budget. Successive Labor governments have also avoided it.

    There is not only the loss to the budget of about $15 billion p.a. Negative gearing also skews the market. According to the Reserve Bank, almost 95% of investors in dwellings buy existing and not new dwellings.  This results in increased prices for existing dwellings.  The proportion of investors buying new dwellings has fallen spectacularly since negative gearing was introduced I 1987.This makes it very difficult for first-home buyers to afford a home. With so little negative gearing going to new buildings, there is little boost to the supply of new houses.

    This issue must be addressed on both budgetary and equity grounds. Politically it should be possible to ‘grandfather’ arrangements for existing investors and only allow negative gearing in future on new dwellings. This wouldn’t save the $15 billion mentioned above but there would be a saving to the budget in the early years of about $4 billion pa.

    Negative gearing makes big calls on the budget. It forces up prices of existing buildings and it makes it very difficult for new home buyers to get into the market.

    Domestic household debt, encouraged by negative gearing financed by the banks, is a far greater problem than the low level of public debt that the Coalition keeps telling us about.

  • Emily Howie. Australia’s dangerously close relationship with Sri Lanka..

    In March 2014 the United Nations Human Rights Council established an historic and long-awaited international investigation into war crimes and human rights abuses committed during the final phases of Sri Lanka’s civil war. The resolution is widely regarded as an important step towards reconciliation and peace. In addition to establishing a mechanism for examining past violations, including the deaths of 40,000 to 70,000 civilians, the resolution establish critical monitoring of the serious ongoing human rights situation in Sri Lanka.

    Whilst the UK Prime Minister David Cameron welcomed the resolution as a “victory for the people of Sri Lanka,” the Australian government stunned many observers with its vocal opposition to the resolution.

    Australia is not a member of the Council so it could not vote on the resolution. Nonetheless, Australia’s Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, said she was “not convinced that the resolution’s call for a separate, internationally-led investigation, without the co-operation of the Sri Lankan Government, is the best way forward at this time.” She said that the resolution did not properly acknowledge the economic growth and progress in Sri Lanka or the brutality of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).

    Bishop’s comments put Australia directly at odds with some of its closest allies – the United States, UK and Canada – who supported the resolution.  Surprisingly, her comments aligned Australia with countries known for their obstructionist approach to the resolution at the UN Human Rights Council.  You could have been forgiven for thinking she was accidentally reading from the notes of the Russian, Chinese or Iranian foreign minister.

    Australia’s opposition to the Human Rights Council’s investigation aiming to achieve justice and reconciliation in Sri Lanka is counterproductive, short-sighted and extremely disappointing.

    Sadly, this position is consistent with Australia’s deteriorating approach to human rights in its foreign affairs with Sri Lanka. The Australian government claims that “engagement” with Sri Lanka, not “isolation,” is the best way forward.

    However, in reality Australia is now so closely engaged with, and dependent on, Sri Lanka to conduct border control, that Australia is increasingly unwilling to criticise Sri Lanka on any account, even when it comes to some of the most serious human rights abuses in our region.  The close relationship puts Australia at risk of violating its international human rights obligation of non-refoulement.

    A dangerously close relationship

    To understand Australia’s unprincipled position on Sri Lankan war crimes it is necessary to consider domestic Australian immigration policy.

    In the last two years over 8000 Sri Lankan people have arrived irregularly in Australia by boat and Sri Lankan authorities claim to have blocked a further 4500 people attempting to leave. These arrivals were just some of the record number of boat arrivals to Australia during that time.

    The Australian Government’s obsession with ‘stopping the boats’ and its reliance on Sri Lanka to help block people from leaving their country is the root cause of Australia’s position on accountability for Sri Lankan war crimes.

    This is nothing new. In September 2013, Australia elected a new, conservative government led by Prime Minister Tony Abbott, however the previous Labor government formalised Australia’s close ties with Sri Lanka years earlier.

    Since 2009 Australia has forged a dangerously close relationship with the Sri Lankan military and police as part of Australia’s measures to prevent asylum seekers from arriving on Australian shores.

    In March 2014 the Human Rights Law Centre published a report, Can’t flee, can’t stay: Australia’s interception and return of Sri Lankan asylum seekers, detailing the way in which Australia encourages, facilitates and resources Sri Lanka to block its people from leaving the country as a part of Australian border control and anti-people smuggling operations.

    Australian Federal Police officers currently work inside Sri Lanka with their Sri Lankan police counterparts to prevent boat departures. Sri Lankan police had no “illegal migration” surveillance capacity at all until Australia established it for them in 2009.

    Australia also provides around $2 million dollars in material support to the Sri Lankan navy each year.  Recently Australia provided two patrol boats to the Sri Lankan navy to assist with on-water surveillance and interception.  Australia also shares intelligence with Sri Lankan security forces to aid the interceptions.

    Mr Abbott now describes Australia as having “the closest possible cooperation” with Sri Lanka.

    Australia’s efforts at ‘stopping boats’ are jeopardising the ability of Sri Lankans at risk of persecution to gain access to safety and asylum. The most recent data on Sri Lankan boat arrivals to Australia indicates that between 50% and 90% of Sri Lankans who flee are found to be refugees.

    Australia’s support for the Sri Lankan security forces’ interceptions increases the likelihood that Sri Lankan people fleeing persecution are exposed to torture and mistreatment. Australia is well aware of the serious human rights situation in Sri Lankan and the brutal track record of its partners. The Sri Lankan Navy is part of the military now being investigated for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war in 2009. The Sri Lanka Police have a long and well-documented track record of torture and mistreatment in custody, including the rape of men and women.

    Refoulement

    These risks are compounded by Australia’s domestic policy of forcibly returning Sri Lankan boat arrivals in Australia without properly assessing their refugee status or monitoring their safety on return.

    Australia has forcibly returned over 1100 Sri Lankans who arrived in Australia since October 2012.

    Australia’s Immigration Minister has made it clear that his preference is for Australia to return all Sri Lankans arriving by boat.

    This means that despite evidence that the majority of Sri Lankans arriving by boat are genuine refugees, Australia bases its treatment of Sri Lankans on the politically expedient assumption that they are economic migrants.

    Australia uses a so-called ‘enhanced screening process’ for Sri Lankans that arrive by boat. Enhanced screening is a truncated assessment process in which detainees have no access to a lawyer and no independent review of the decision is available. It is a flimsy short-cut and a grossly inadequate way to handle what are potentially life and death decisions. Sri Lankans have a legal right to have their protection claims heard properly – instead Australia subjects them to a less rigorous process and thereby exposes them to harm on return.

    Australia claims that no returnees have been harmed upon return to Sri Lanka, however there is no monitoring of returnees sufficient to allow Australia to make that assessment.

    The Human Rights Law Centre obtained documents through freedom of information that show one instance where the Australian High Commission in Colombo received a complaint that a returnee had been “severely tortured.” In that case the Australian Federal Police officer based in Colombo declined an invitation from the Sri Lankan police to meet with the complainant to assess his well-being.

    This kind of monitoring is woefully inadequate considering the gravity of the complaints made. It also raises questions about the Australian government’s assertions that nobody has been harmed on return.

    Other Commonwealth nations

    Australia is not a member of the Human Rights Council, although it is a candidate for membership in 2018. It is difficult to know what position Australia would have taken if it had been required to vote on the Sri Lanka resolution.

    There was not a unitary position among Council members from the Commonwealth: Botswana and UK voted for the resolution; Kenya, Maldives and Pakistan voted against the resolution, and Namibia, South Africa and India abstained from voting. Abstentions were critical in the result as the vote was 25 in favour, 12 opposed and 12 abstained.

    Abstention may have saved Australia’s relationship with its border security partner, but the new Australian government would have failed to live up to its own human rights standards.  The government’s foreign policy, at least on paper, includes taking a robust and principled approach to human rights abuses in the Asia Pacific region. Denying access to justice to victims of some of the region’s worst war crimes can hardly be consistent with that.

    Emily Howie is the director of advocacy and research at the Human Rights Law Centre. You can follow her on Twitter @emilyhowie.

     

  • Jane Tolman. Dementia: how did we get it so wrong?

    In the past few weeks I have had the privilege of participating in the second running of the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Understanding Dementia run by the Wicking Dementia Research and Education Centre at the University of Tasmania. This has provided a forum for learning and discussion about dementia for 15,000 carers, health professionals and interested persons from all around the world.  More than that, the participants are able to seek answers to their questions, and to tell us their concerns about their “journey” and about their expectations.

    I think there is much room for improvement in the way health professionals have dealt with dementia.

    We handle the diagnosis of dementia very badly. Families complain that doctors are unwilling to make the diagnosis, defer the diagnosis, or deny the diagnosis (just getting old). Statistics tell us that only about 40% of people with dementia ever get a diagnosis. There are established sets of criteria for diagnosis; but many of us still use a cut-off score on a basic cognitive test to make a diagnosis, maintain that a diagnosis can only be made post mortem with a biopsy, or tell our patients that it is a diagnosis “of exclusion”. While evidence suggests that the personal story (history in doctors’ language) offers considerably more weight to a diagnosis than any examination finding or test, families still find it hard to put their case, present their information and are sometimes dismissed due to privacy issues.

    Notoriously, people with dementia develop a lack of understanding of their situation.  Doctors call this “lack of insight”. People with dementia also lack skills required to make good decisions, to reason and to solve problems. These features of dementia are poorly recognised by many health professionals.  And yet they can expose the person with dementia to extreme danger.  Assessing cognitive capacity for decision-making can be challenging. Many clinicians are hesitant about providing an assessment, and many who do so, provide an inadequate assessment. It is essential that doctors embrace this role, and develop their competence in such assessments.

    What families most want to know about dementia is what will happen as the condition progresses. When we do make a diagnosis, we rarely address this.  Current staging systems of dementia tend to focus on what people can do rather than what their needs are, are often designed for research, and rarely address the real need: how to provide dignity to very vulnerable people.  At the time of diagnosis, or soon after, loved ones (and the person with dementia where relevant) should be given information about the stages ahead and what they mean.  There should be a “road map” to help people navigate the path.

    Dementia is often described as a memory problem and clinics for its diagnosis and management are still sometimes labelled as Memory Clinics. It’s time that we acknowledged that dementia is about a range of domains, including Cognitive (memory, language, insight, judgement, planning, reasoning), Function (inability to perform household and other tasks and ultimately personal care) , Psychiatric (commonly delusions, hallucinations and depression), Behavioural (aggression, screaming, following, calling out) and Physical (swallowing, continence, mobility and eating). Families and carers have the right to know the facts.  When these symptoms of dementia arise, families should not be surprised and need to be able to recognise these as manifestations of the disease.

    Dementia is a relentlessly progressive terminal illness. As a profession we have failed to identify dementia as a disease which has much more in common with cancer than with forgetfulness. At the time of diagnosis of other neurodegenerative conditions such as Motor Neuron Disease, a palliative approach is often instituted from the start, and early decisions are made about future feeding and assisted breathing. But in the case of dementia, we often offer families few choices, because we have failed to recognise that quality of life will be compromised, or to identify the role quality of life plays in decisions about management.

    The behavioural and psychological symptoms of dementia are common, and yet they are poorly understood by many of us.  Many clinicians offer treatments which have little (or sometimes no) demonstrated usefulness and which have well documented adverse effects.  We continue to offer medications which sometimes only work by virtue of their sedating effects, and we fail to communicate the facts to families. The best evidence from international data is that at best 20% of those with dementia who receive antipsychotic medication for the treatment of behavioural and psychological symptoms derive benefit. Despite this evidence, up to 80% of the residents of aged care facilities who have dementia are regularly taking antipsychotic medication.

    Despite the rhetoric, we rarely practise holistic, person-centred medicine when it comes to dementia.  This would mean the following: acknowledging that every person with dementia is a unique case; providing the knowledge which is essential in making wise decisions about management, and being aware of the evidence; ensuring that there is a decision-maker who can make informed decisions (in collaboration with the clinician); offering choices, and perhaps above all ensuring that this, of all conditions, requires a very clear focus on dignity for the person with dementia, and careful consideration of best way of providing it.  Management of dementia should always be a collaboration between the person with dementia, the loved ones, the medical team and paid carers.

    The MOOC has taught me that we need to listen more to those who live with dementia; that is to the carers, both loved ones and professionals. We can provide good care for those with dementia. But in many ways, we need to go back to the basics.  And we need to make sure that we listen to carers, engage them in management and acknowledge the critical role of education.

    Dr Jane Tolman is Director of Aged Care, Royal Hobart Hospital.

  • Irene Sutherland. A day on our Camino

    In April this year, my husband and I walked the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. For months leading up to the event, we both imagined how a typical day would unfold. For my part, I intended taking a sketchbook and had fantasised that we would pass through many a village and I could wander into the churches and draw the religious objects. Chris enthused how we would set forth at day-break, arrive at our destination around 2pm, locate our accommodation for the night, clean up and attend mass. But as we found out, a number of factors came into play that gave our daily routine an altogether different shape and colour.

    Given the limited time we had for the trip, we decided to walk one of the shorter routes called the Camino Primitivo. It runs along the north of Spain and for the most part traverses a range of mountains. We started at a place just before the beginning of the Primitivo, called Villaviciosa, with the goal of walking 400km over 16 days. This meant that we were committed to covering, on average 25kms a day. Like most of the pilgrims, we started our day straight after breakfast. If we had breakfast at the pilgrims’ hostel, we would leave around about 7am. But if there was an enticing looking café (in Spain, these are mostly bars), then we would get away by about 8 or 9.

    Initially, we looked at the map of our route and saw that we would be passing through quite a number of villages. It was easy to assume that we could stop off at a café for lunch or even buy something at a local ‘corner store’ on the way to have a picnic. But what we found was that for the most part, these places were just clusters of houses. As we discovered later, Spain has experienced a huge internal migration of people from villages to cities in pursuit of work, so tend to have much smaller populations of mostly elderly people and therefore can’t sustain amenities. Also, with the advent of motor vehicles, people can drive to larger centres to get supplies. As a consequence we had to be smart about stocking up on food at the end of the day in the larger centres where we stayed the night.

    The other factor that impacted on our preconceived plans was the lack of access to churches. Even though the spiritual pilgrim had been well catered for in times past with churches and chapels along the way to pray in, many of these are now locked up. Much to my frustration, dreams of doing sketches were not to be – at least not en route. I was confined to doing drawings in museums in the larger centres such as Lugo. My way around this limited source of creative engagement with The Way, was to commandeer Chris’ iPhone and take photos (I had deliberately left mine behind in an attempt to escape the digital world that usually cannibalises my time back home). In addition, we decided that we would actually visit each church anyway (despite their locked doors) and make the sign of the cross in Spanish. Sometimes we would also sit in the porches, built specifically for pilgrim respite, and have a snack or lunch.

    Chris’ assumption that we would arrive at our destination by about 2pm each day was mostly stymied by the mountains we had to cross. The reality of this hit home in the afternoon of our first day as we faced a 6km steep climb up a gradient enough to take your breath away. This was the first of many. And if that wasn’t enough to slow us up, coming down the other side was even worse. One foot steadily in front of the other as we had to take care of tender knee and hip joints and the tips of our toes pushing hard against the front of our boots. It might seem counter intuitive, but the effort and pain was something we actually came to relish (albeit in hindsight). I wrote in my journal of one such occasion walking into Lugo: “And when we were about 8km from our destination at the hottest part of the day, wishing like hell we had arrived, we thought about the words of Natasha, our Body Pump instructor. She says at the most intense part of our workout when the lactic acid kicks in and the muscles pinch in a ‘productive’ way, that this is when the benefits take place – that all the exercise is to prepare us for this pain. So, when we were so close to our destination and we were tired and thirsty and our feet were sore, we thought about how all the walking we’d done thus far in the Camino was preparation for moments like this – because we had to dig deep into our faith and motivation for walking the Camino to access the reserves we needed to push on.”

    Rather than fight against challenge of the mountains we embraced it for the benefits the Camino promised. Firstly, we were rewarded with some of the most spectacular scenery we’d ever experienced: wide blue skies arching above lush undulating land. And walking at the slow pace our bodies demanded, we could fully absorb the experience of moving through mile after mile of spring flowers – very often nestled in the ancient rock walls that line many parts of the Camino. As each day passed and we found our rhythm with ‘slow’, we learnt to be totally present with ourselves. Maybe this is why we were so taken by this verse found at the top of the Hospitales route (translated from Spanish): Happy are you pilgrim, if on the way you meet yourself and gift yourself with time, without rushing, so as not to disregard the image of your heart.

    In taking our time, our days were long. We tried to get away early, but sometimes delicious looking pastries, freshly squeezed orange juice and the best coffee enticed us to linger a little longer. We didn’t hesitate to wander off the path either, to pay homage to the churches that sat silently with their glory days a distant memory. Sometimes, we ate lunch on the go and other times we chanced upon a country kitchen that served nourishing soup, crusty bread, ensalada mixta (mixed salad) and a jug of wine. And when we finally reached our destination – usually around 4 or 5pm, we headed for the nearest bar for a cold beer. If we were lucky, there was a shop on the way to the hostel, which meant we didn’t have to go hunting for one after dinner. Sometimes, we just wanted a touch of luxury, so we found the nearest hotel and thought it a boon if we could get our washing done for us (packing light, you only take one spare set of clothes, which makes daily washing a necessity).  If there was time and we were in a city (such as Oviedo, Lugo and Melide), we would venture to a church for mass and some sketching. Afterwards we would find a restaurant or bar for dinner. This is where the day really stretches out, because sunset wasn’t until 9:30pm. But we made the best of it because the evenings were lively with families socializing and Asturian barmen putting on a good show with the pouring of cider. We finally got to bed at 10 or 11pm.

    Another feature of our days was our blog. Called Facebook.com/OurCamino2014 it was an efficient way of letting people know about our adventures. Out on the track, we would talk about a feature of the day that we could write about.  All that beautiful scenery, architectural features and details of church exteriors, interesting houses and other mood shots we captured on camera. Then in the evening, over dinner, we would compose our blog post together.  Taking advantage of the WiFi flowing freely in most cafes and bars throughout Spain, we uploaded the post and pictures. Like an offering to our friends and family back home, we hoped to share the best of our day.

    Even though our typical Camino day didn’t quite work out as we’d thought, it definitely didn’t disappoint. We could not have imagined the wonder and awe, not to mention the pain and the spiritual benefits that came with it. As they say in Spain; Sin dolor, no hay gloria (“no pain, no gain”). So even though we couldn’t get to daily mass or do as much drawing as I’d have liked, we faired even better with all the surprises the Camino promises as long as one submits to the experience and has no expectations of any given outcome.

     

    Irene Sutherland is Communications Officer at the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and is a practicing sculptor.

     

  • Bishop Bill Morris’ book.

    ​On 17 June in Toowoomba, Bishop Bill Morris’ book ‘Benedict, Me and the Cardinals three’ will be launched.  Launches will follow in Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide, Canberra and Melbourne.
    Bishop Morris was formerly the Bishop of Toowoomba. In November 2006 he wrote an open letter to his diocese about priest shortages.  He discussed the possibility of the ordination of women and married or widowed men. In response, the Vatican set in train a process of meetings and apostolic visits that forced him to resign.
    Details about the launch and the book can be found below:

  • Walter Hamilton. Fractured News from Fukushima.

    It’s raining in Fukushima.

    Since radioactive contamination from the crippled nuclear power plant is spread mainly by introduced water, even a routine weather bulletin has more-than-usual significance. The annual tsuyu, or rainy season, is in full swing in Japan. Fukushima prefecture normally receives 250 millimetres of rain in June-July, and every drop adds to the burden of the disaster.

    More than three years after the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami, it is difficult to form a reliable overview of how the nuclear accident is unfolding, its long-term effects on public health, and progress in making the site and surrounding areas safe. Information is released piecemeal fashion from various sources: Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO); national government agencies; separate local authorities; regulators; and non-government monitors. There is no single, unbiased source plotting progress comprehensively against consistent terms of reference and using plain language. The mainstream media also seem incapable of addressing the information gaps and unanswered questions. What follows, therefore, is necessarily a partial impression.

    For all intents and purposes, the decontamination and decommissioning of the four damaged nuclear reactors at Fukushima has yet to begin. Despite heroic efforts, the task has actually increased in size and complexity, rather than reduced, since March 2011. Debris may have been removed, cooling systems stabilised, structures reinforced and plans drawn up for the 30-40 year decommissioning process, but one critical factor remains out of control. By the end of next March, the amount of contaminated water being held on site, much of it highly radioactive, will have reached 800,000 tonnes­­––not counting leakages from storage tanks and containment vessels that continue to bedevil operations.

    Materials failure at inaccessible points is a constant threat. In one case, a leak of up to 1.5 tonnes of water per hour from the containment vessel of a reactor (which must be kept topped up for cooling purposes), detected last November, was only recently traced to its source with the aid of a robotic camera. The scale of the problem defies a simple solution. For instance, a new leak was found some days ago in a rainwater storage tank that had not been patrolled for three months. There are hundreds of such tanks.

    TEPCO’s latest strategy for reducing one of the main sources of new contamination––rain run-off and groundwater movement––is to install metal rods driven 30 metres into the ground to create a frozen perimeter around the plant 1.5 kilometres in circumference. The project, begun recently, will take six months and cost the public purse US$330 million. If it works––and nothing on this scale has been tried before––the big freeze will be maintained until at least fiscal 2020. Some commentators, however, fear it may exacerbate a subsidence problem said to be posing a separate risk to the reactor buildings.

    TEPCO, working with a variety of Japanese and foreign firms, continues to deploy newly developed robotic devices in parts of the facility where radioactivity levels are impossibly high for human activity. While technically impressive, the robots’ real rate of progress in performing tasks of assessing damage and sucking up radioactive dust is not clear from the TEPCO press releases.

    An operation that seems to be going well is the much-discussed one to remove and secure spent fuel rods from inside Reactor No. 4, which was off-line at the time of the accident. The delicate procedure began last November, and as of 9 June a total of 1,034 of the 1,533 fuel rods had been lifted out and transported to a ‘common pool’ storage facility nearby. Because of damage to the fuel rod assemblies, the task of removal, also being undertaken by remotely-control grabbing and lifting devices, is slow and arduous. Exposure of any one of the four-metre long rods to the air could have catastrophic results. It’s assumed that the most severely damaged assemblies have yet to be dealt with.

    Another enormous challenge is the removal of radioactive isotopes from the 400 tonnes of contaminated water accumulating each day on the site. A primary system is being used to extract the Cesium-134 and 137, but a secondary system, needed to remove Strontium-90, has been plagued by problems since its installation in October 2012. The radioactive water eats away the treatment system’s Teflon gaskets.

    Outside the nuclear plant, 81,000 people in 10 municipalities are still directly affected by evacuation orders. How long it will take to make these ‘no-go’ areas habitable again is uncertain (indeed 40% of former residents say they have no intention of ever returning). Since last October, special decontamination efforts have been focused on seven places inside the evacuation zone: washing roads and buildings, removing vegetation and topsoil, etcetera. As a result, considerable reduction in radioactivity was observed, but the average level remained ten times higher than acceptable for human health.

    The huge volume of soil and other radioactive waste dug up since 2011 is much more than authorities have been able to store away from population centres. In some cases, large bags of contaminated material remain in people’s backyards, with no indication when, if ever, they’ll be collected.

    The various health consequences associated with the disaster––from stress-related deaths to high-level contamination of workers involved in the cleanup––are difficult to fully assess. Time will reveal more. The national government insists that Fukushima is not a health risk, and it recently gave approval for rice production to resume in the prefecture (though only 2% of the pre-disaster acreage was planted this year).

    Fishing is still banned in waters off Fukushima due to the presence of elevated levels of radioactive isotopes. Cesium levels in the sea near the plant rose to calamitous levels in the immediate aftermath of the accident. Although they soon fell to a level close to the standard considered safe by Japanese authorities, they have stabilised there rather than fallen further, indicating that radioactive material continues to enter the Pacific Ocean from the site. While Cesium exists as a soluble salt and does not accumulate in bio-systems, Strontium-90 does, by displacing calcium in bones, and is of greater concern to some marine scientists.

    Local governments in affected areas continue to test children for possible thyroid damage. Certain findings point to an elevated incidence of thyroid disease. In one town, follow-up checks have been prescribed for about a quarter of the children on the basis of an initial screening.

    The World Health Organisation has not updated its February 2013 Health Risk Assessment from the Fukushima accident. Based on recorded exposures, the WHO report concluded that any disease effects would remain ‘below detectable levels’ in the general population. It predicted a ‘relative high increase’ (up to 70%) in the lifetime risk of thyroid cancer among females in the vicinity of the nuclear plant exposed as infants. For all solid cancers a maximum relative increase of 4% was estimated for the population living near the plant. Among the hundreds of workers engaged in the emergency response, the WHO report estimated a 20% increased risk of thyroid cancer for the youngest team-members.

    Though the Ministry of Health releases regular ‘all-clear’ bulletins on the results of testing of foodstuffs and drinking water, this information is mainly in the form of raw data and can be difficult for a layperson to interpret.

    No deaths directly attributable to radiation exposure have been verified. On the other hand, according to a survey published in March by the Asahi newspaper, Fukushima prefecture had recorded more deaths (1,660) due to ‘physical and psychological fatigue’ since the accident than were directly caused by the earthquake and tsunami––with more than 80% of the deaths occurring among residents forced out of the evacuation zone. In the absence of a legal standard for attributing such fatalities to the disaster, compensation claims are heading into the courts.

    Japan’s national television news programs have given up regular daily, even weekly coverage, of the problems associated with the disaster. As a story, it has slipped into the background of public consciousness except for those living in the most affected areas.

    But any of us can look at a weather map. And it’s still raining in Fukushima.

     

    Walter Hamilton is currently in Tokyo.

     

     

  • Nicholas Carney. Advancing the Australia-India relationship under Prime Minister Modi

    Narendra Modi’s ascension to the prime ministership of India has sparked interest around the globe, including here in Australia.

    The world is right to pay attention to Mr Modi’s rise. In the recent Lok Sahba (‘House of the People’) election, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that he leads took 282 of the 543 seats in the Lok Sahba. The result gives the BJP a majority for the first time in its history, and India its first majority government since the 1984 election. The new government’s majority rises to a commanding 336 seats if those won by the BJP’s coalition partners in the National Democratic Alliance are included.

    Mr Modi and the BJP were expected to perform well in the election – after all, Indian economic growth languishes between 4-5%, inflation is stuck around 9%, corruption is rife, and the former United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government appeared impotent to respond – but nobody expected a victory of this magnitude.

    The electorate has given Mr Modi a resounding mandate to pursue his promised program of growth, governance and infrastructure, and savaged the once-dominant Congress Party that led the UPA. The Congress Party, which has long been controlled by the Gandhi dynasty, recorded easily its worst result, as its seats fell from 206 in 2009 to just 44.

    It should surprise no one that Prime Minister Tony Abbott was quick to call and congratulate the new Indian leader on his victory. India represents a golden economic opportunity for Australia: it is enormous (with approximately 1.2 billion people), young (with a median age of 27), and on course to become the world’s most populous country by 2025 (leapfrogging China).

    The India that Mr Modi has pledged to deliver – a resurgent India, growing again at 8%, building and benefiting from new and long-overdue infrastructure, investing in its relatively young population – will have an insatiable appetite for resources, commodities, education and agriculture from Australia, just as China has over the last decade. Mining services, infrastructure and project management, and healthcare present extraordinary opportunities as well if we can seize them.

    India is also a key actor and potential strategic partner for Australia in our increasingly contested neighbourhood. Both countries have a clear interest in the stability and security of the Indian Ocean but our mutual interests extend further in the Indo-pacific region.

    The new Indian PM may be singularly focused on growth at home but he has made clear that isolationism is not an option if this goal is to be achieved. India will continue to pursue its ‘Look East’ foreign policy under Mr Modi but the emphasis will be on investment and trade opportunities.

    If Mr Modi’s approach as Chief Minister of Gujarat is anything to go by we should expect an assertive style of ‘economic diplomacy’ focusing on China, Japan, Singapore and other South East Asian nations, where the Indian government is not shy to promote its companies. Mr Modi courted these countries in his former role in Gujarat and developed good relations with leaders, especially with Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

    India has long been seen as a logical counterweight to China, a country that, in recent months, has adopted a more aggressive approach towards territorial disputes with its neighbours. However, Mr Modi will however be loathe to antagonise China because of its importance to his growth mission. How effectively he manages this relationship could have grave implications for the region and Australia.

    For Australia, a confident, regionally-engaged India is in our interest, particularly at a time when the US commitment to military engagement has diminished.

    With so much on Mr Modi’s plate and so many other countries queuing up for his attention – President Obama was also quick to call after the election – what, if anything, can Mr Abbott do to advance the Australian relationship in the halls of Delhi and Mumbai?

    A meeting with the new Indian PM is essential. Fortunately for Mr Abbott and Australia, Mr Modi is almost certain to attend the G20 Leaders Summit in Brisbane in November. This will be the first time an Indian PM has visited Australia since Rajiv Gandhi in 1986. Mr Abbott must make the most of this serendipitous opportunity by locking in a bilateral meeting during the visit.

    The agenda for the meeting will be critical. The following topics must be discussed: finalisation of the uranium export agreement; a roadmap to resolve any outstanding issues in the Australia-India Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement negotiations; cooperation in the Indian Ocean; as well as specific Australian trade and investment proposals that will support Indian growth – for example, how Australian education providers can assist India to meet its goal to deliver vocational education to 500 million citizens by 2022 when its current capacity is only 5 million, or how our mining sector can help India to access more efficiently its substantial iron ore deposits.

    Their meeting must not be a one-off. Prime Minister Abbott should follow former NSW Premier Barry O’Farrell’s example and lead annual or biennial trade delegations to India. These delegations create people-to-people links and put Australia front of mind for Indian businesses and diplomats.

    Another way the Australian Government can promote these links is by including India in the new Colombo Plan, which funds student exchange and internships in Asia, and funding the Australia India Strategic Research Fund (funding was not renewed in the recent budget).

    Having Australian students and researchers studying in India, or undertaking joint projects with Indian colleagues, will form life long friendships and academic and business partnerships which will serve Australia well in trade and security matters.

    India’s young population means connections with Indian youth are especially important. The Government should foster these connections by supporting organisation like the Australia India Youth Dialogue, which brings together passionate and energetic young people from both countries to consider issues central to bilateral relations.

    Prime Minister Abbott can also wield soft power by embracing the Indian diaspora in Australia. According to the 2011 census, there were 295,000 Indian migrants in Australia and 390,000 people who claimed Indian ancestry. At its best, the Indian diaspora can be a cheer-squad for Australia in Delhi and Mumbai, with better access to government and business than our diplomats can hope for.

    Given Mr Modi will have his hands full trying to lift Indian growth, improve governance and kick-start infrastructure projects, Australia must be proactive in promoting this important relationship. Mr Modi’s second visit to Australia later this year is an opportunity that cannot be wasted.

    Nicholas Carney is a Senior Associate at Herbert Smith Freehills and he sits on the Council of the University of New South Wales. In 2014, he was a participant in the Australia India Youth Dialogue. The views set out in this article are his own.  

  • Persecution of Tamils.

    Last weekend Tamil asylum seeker Leo Seemanpillai committed suicide in Geelong. His colleagues are bereft as a result. They believe that he feared deportation back to Sri Lanka and would suffer persecution. Tamil refugee advocate Aran Mylvaganam said ‘the particular area where Leo is from you are automatically branded as a Tamil Tiger sympathasiser if you get deported back to Sri Lanka and Leo had genuine fears of being tortured by the Sri Lankan army and possibly even getting killed … if he was sent back to Sri Lanka’.

    The Human Rights Law Centre released a report last month in which it expressed serious concerns first about the actions of the Sri Lankan government, supported by Australia, to stop Tamils fleeing from Sri Lanka. The second concern was that Australia’s ‘enhanced screening processes’ was denying Sri Lankans access to proper refugee status determination. The report by the Human Rights Law Centre can be found at this link:

    http://hrlc.org.au/report-launch-australias-cooperation-with-sri-lanka-to-intercept-asylum-seekers-is-in-urgent-need-of-rethink/

    John Menadue

  • Mark Isaacs. The Salvos on Nauru.

    Judging the Salvation Army’s role in Nauru is difficult. Their job was to provide humanitarian support to asylum seekers in a detention centre that was established to deter desperate people from seeking protection by subjecting them to cruel conditions. The contradictory nature of the Salvation Army’s position meant they were damned by the government if they assisted the asylum seekers, and damned by their staff if they didn’t. Despite this the employees of the Salvation Army, my colleagues, showed utmost care for the asylum seekers we worked with and implemented a wide range of programs that alleviated some of the mental pressure placed upon these people This justified the need for a humanitarian organisation to act as a service provider within detention centres.

    Having said that, my introduction to Nauru highlights several issues in the Salvation Army’s implementation of their contract in Nauru that were not confined to my initial experiences, but rather became consistent, systemic failures.

    I was hired by the Salvation Army in September 2012 to work in the Nauru Regional Processing Centre as a support worker, or ‘mission worker’. The camp had been established just two weeks prior.  The Salvation Army were desperately hiring people to fly out to Nauru on four week contracts. Accounts from members of the Salvation Army suggest that the organisation wasn’t expecting the camp to be opened so quickly, that they thought they had more time to prepare.

    I was hired without a job interview and without training of any kind. I was given no concept of what work I was about to become involved in. There was no job description or mission brief provided to staff in these early days. There was no idea of what the Salvation Army hoped to achieve by accepting the contract to run the centre. There were no clear directives to the staff in how we could meet these mysterious goals of the mission that one would assume the Salvation Army had discussed before accepting the contract. There was no education provided on the type of men we would be working with; where they came from, their cultural sensitivities, the types of stories we might hear, or why they were coming to Australia. I was given no guidance on how to work with traumatised refugees, or mentally ill clients who could be, and some proved to be, suicidal. The only advice given was to ‘go out and help the men’. My experiences were not isolated. In fact, in the first deployments, the most common characteristic of the Salvation Army support workers was an inexperience in working with asylum seekers and refugees.

    The Salvation Army have since responded to these claims by stating that the role of a support worker was to ‘fulfil unskilled duties in support of the provision of basic needs for transferees’ and that ‘support worker roles typically do not require individuals to have particular skills or experience’. The Salvos also refute my claim that I wasn’t interviewed prior to being offered a position in Nauru, suggesting that a phone interview was conducted before deploying me. I would assert that this brief phone conversation was not a sufficient format through which to assess my skills for a role as important as a support worker for asylum seekers. Having said that, the role I was taking did not require me to have ‘particular skills or experience’.

    I believe that, although the Salvation Army’s motives were admirable in accepting the brief to assist some of the world’s most desperate people, the inexperience of their managing staff in working in the refugee sector was detrimental to the well-being of the men they were contracted to care for and the workers they employed to enact this task. The statement mentioned above, provided almost eighteen months after my initial deployment, either demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the needs of asylum seekers in a place such as Nauru, or an equally complete disregard for the workers’ and the asylum seekers’ welfare.

    I believe that from day one there emerged a trend of the government pressuring the Salvation Army into submission. It was a commonly accepted view amongst my colleagues that the government would argue points of contention by threatening to ‘tear up the contract’, and the Salvation Army management would toe the line. Often this was at the expense of the asylum seekers well-being and that of Salvation Army staff. Greg Lake, former head of the Department of Immigration in Nauru, states that the Salvos were contracted by the government as the lead agency in the Processing Centre. The ramifications of the Salvos inability to assume the lead agency role meant that the humanitarian care for the men suffered.

    I can support all my claims with a number of examples, but in this blog I have only space for one.

    It took the Salvation Army over a month to hire their first professional case managers whose role it was to monitor the men’s well-being, a responsibility that we were led to believe was one of the Salvation Army’s contractual obligations. Prior to this Wilson Security assumed the responsibility of welfare services. The first two Salvo case managers were expected to establish case management practices in a camp that housed over two hundred men, the numbers increasing weekly. The impracticality of my colleague’s workload became apparent when one of her clients became involved in a prolonged hunger strike. The Department of Immigration demanded a file be presented on the client, a file that did not exist. Rather than support my colleague, Salvation Army management demanded she write a case file retrospectively.

    I believe the Salvos did not do enough to defend the human rights of the asylum seekers, and that this was a disservice, not only to the men imprisoned in Nauru, but to the Australian public who could rightly assume that the presence of a humanitarian organisation in Nauru would mean that human rights would be upheld and if those human rights were being abused, then the Salvos would voice their concerns.

    In summation, I believe that although the original motives of the Salvation Army were admirable, the implementation of the ‘Nauru mission’ suffered due to inexperience, poor preparation, and the Salvation Army’s inability to defend the asylum seekers’ human rights and handle government pressure. This resulted in a far more oppressive atmosphere for inmates that could have been avoided. Furthermore, the lack of respect shown to their own employees has left many embittered against the organisation and the experience of working in Nauru.

    Having recently been employed as a case manager for an asylum seeker settlement service in Sydney, I see how organisations can work in this intricate political space of advocating for clients while still being contracted by the government, reinforcing my belief that the role of humanitarian support in these camps is essential to the asylum seekers’ welfare.

    Mark Isaacs also wrote a guest blog which was posted on March 28 – ‘Deterring boat arrivals’.

     

    Mark Isaacs is the author of ‘The Undesirables: Inside Nauru’

     

    www.markjisaacs.com

    https://twitter.com/MarkJIsaacs

    https://www.facebook.com/isaacsmark1

     

  • Mary Chiarella. Nurses – debt and job satisfaction.

    In the AFR Laura Tingle rightly points out that nurses do not tend to fit the mould as one of those groups of fortunate students who may reap significant income returns for the cost of their university education. She goes on to point out that “modelling released by Universities Australia this week suggest nurses’ uni debts will rise from $19,398 to as much as $37,390 under the budget proposals. This is for a job paying a starting income of $48,729”. She calculates that a nursing graduate who works 6 years full time on graduation, followed by six years part-time before returning to full time work, would have a debt of $66, 195 that would take 22 years to repay.

    So this brave new world of market forces is pretty bad news for nursing recruitment. That is even if you consider that caring ought to be commodified in the first place or whether there are some things that are so important the market should protect them rather than hang them out to dry. Remarkably people often feel quite differently about these matters when they are in need of intensive or palliative care.

    But wait, there are more spanners to throw into the works. It’s also ipso facto bad news for nursing retention. This comes not long after Health Workforce Australia’s report Health Workforce 2025 (HWA, March, 2012) modelled future requirements for registered nurses and identified that, with no changes to the status quo, there would be a shortfall in registered nurses of 109,000 or 27%. As it turns out the government also decided to get rid of HWA in the last budget, so these data won’t bother them for much longer.

    Note this is a report on registered nurses. This distinction matters for safety and quality in health care.  We have an abundance of information about the impact of baccalaureate prepared RN staffing on reduction of adverse events. If the cumulative evidence from these studies were a pill, they would have stopped the trials and given the pill to everybody. Duffield et al’s work (2007) in NSW looked at the relationship between skill mix and adverse events, and governments and their advisory bureaucracies should ignore it at their peril. It is the biggest study ever undertaken examining the relationship between these two issues at unit level and she has received international acclaim as a result of it. For every 10% increase in RNs there is a 27% decrease in failure-to-rescue –we have wards way below that level today.

    But HWA’s report points out that we wouldn’t need that many nurses if we only retained 1 in 5 (ONE IN FIVE!!)  of the ones we currently lose. A 20% improvement in retention would ameliorate the predicted RN shortage –so we really only need to understand why they are leaving and do something about it. Elementary.

    A synthesis of serial investigations and reports demonstrates that the two primary reasons why nurses leave the profession are a sense that they are not valued and a belief that they are not able to deliver high-quality care. Job satisfaction is therefore connected with both skill mix and shortages. The work environment plays an important role in job satisfaction and patient safety as well, as Aiken and colleagues’ multi-country studies indicate (2010). In a number of their studies, hospitals providing “supportive” environments, in terms of staffing levels and organisational factors, were more likely to have better patient outcomes compared to less “supportive” hospitals. These findings are consistent with other surveys indicating the central role of the work environment in job satisfaction and patient safety. So a simple question, will increasing the HECs debts and anxiety improve the work satisfaction of our RN workforce Mr Abbott?

    Mary Chiarella is Professor of Nursing, University of  Sydney.

  • What to do about growing inequality in Australia.

    On Wednesday 11 June at Parliament House Canberra, former Liberal Leader, Dr John Hewson will launch a report on ‘What do do about growing inequality in Australia’. The report has been prepared by Australia21, ANU and the Australia Institute. The report can be found by clicking on below. It is embargoed until Wednesday at 11am.

    Final InequalityinAustraliaRepor (1)

    If you would like more information please contact CEO Australia21, c/- Lyn.stephens@australia21.org.

     

    John Menadue

  • Walter Hamilton. Postcard from Poland and Auschwitz

    Poland this month is celebrating the 25th anniversary of its rebirth as a democratic state. It is also marking 10 years since it became a member of the European Union. The country thus provides an interesting vantage point from which to observe Europe’s schizophrenic politics.

    To the west––notably in the UK, France and Germany––so-called Eurosceptic parties took the spoils in recent elections for the Strasbourg Parliament (with every intention, too, of being spoilers); to the east, meanwhile, Ukraine is struggling to attach as much of itself as Vladimir Putin will allow to the EU locomotive. It is the Disenchanted versus the New Believers. While voters in the west have flocked to rightwing parties opposed to sharing their baguette with new arrivals, in the east, where they’re still biting on black bread (to extend the metaphor), and where stateless Africans are scarce, most believe the opportunities flowing from European unity far outweigh the costs.

    Today’s Poland is where Ukraine hopes to be in a decade or two––which is why Kiev is willing to give almost anything––including, tragically, a measure of its people’s blood––to grab on to the EU. Poland, they tell me, is the only country in Europe to have experienced 20 years of uninterrupted growth. Able for the time being to use its own (undervalued) currency, it is experiencing a tourism boom, while the many new manufacturing and distribution plants of international firms erected on the periphery of major cities attest to an investment surge.

    That’s not to say Poland’s EU journey has been all smooth sailing. One might describe the general appearance of the country as one of ‘receding decay’. The downtown precincts of cities like Poznan and Wroclaw are sophisticated, smartly dressed and thriving; the suburbs tend to be graffiti-scarred and grey. The new rich want more, while many others on meagre wages need to work long hours to stay afloat. In a Warsaw supermarket, a woman of 70+ years who served me at the checkout at 8am was still there when I went back 11 hours later. Our host in Warsaw, a retired teacher, also in her 70s and still working part time, bemoaned the 13% national unemployment rate and the much higher joblessness (26%) among the young. As we drove out of the capital she pointed out abandoned industrial plant (Soviet-era and obsolete), which she blamed on the EU experience. And where was the livestock that every family farm once proudly displayed? Disappeared under mass-produced food imports. But if I detected nostalgia for the past, she quickly corrected me: ‘Communism was awful through and through; nobody, except perhaps some party boss, wants to go back to that’. Food queues are no more, inflation is zero and, even if unacceptably high, current unemployment is below the long-term trend, and falling.

    Poland, historically a gateway between East and West, now emphatically faces west. When President Obama was in Warsaw recently, the Polish government repeated its request for NATO to establish new bases on its territory. Sensibly, Obama refused to be drawn.

    If Polish history teaches us one thing, it is that all frontiers lie: they lie to those who believe they can secure the homeland, and they represent lies to those who wish to change them. Heading north out of Krakow, our driver Michael pointed out two buildings on either side of the road ahead. ‘Prepare your passports,’ he joked. ‘We are now leaving Austria and about to enter Prussia.’ The border checkpoints, operational until 1918, stand as reminders of the eighteenth-century partition of Poland when it ceased to exist as a nation (as it did again from 1939). The idea behind European union––distinct nations united by a shared destiny––is an undoubted improvement for Poles after centuries of partition and domination. Affirming this, as they do, they take a wary glance back in the direction of their old nemesis, Russia. Though the fighting in Ukraine seemed far removed from the beer and food-laden tables of Krakow’s teeming Old Square, the ordinary Poles I spoke with believed Moscow’s territorial ambitions extend well beyond Crimea.

    Frontiers are a European obsession these days, much as they are in Australia. With internal borders essentially open, an unauthorized entrant can make his or her way to any of the member nations of the EU. If they survive their journey in a leaky boat across the Mediterranean (Italy has received 40,000 unauthorised arrivals, mainly crossing from Libya, so far this year), theoretically they might end up in Bayeux or Bonn or Birmingham (or so the sloganising goes; the reality is somewhat different). This, more than any other issue, is hardening attitudes and inflaming rhetoric, and threatening the European experiment. New scapegoats have been found to blame for economic dysfunction and social stress, in a pattern that has terrible antecedents.

    In Block 6 at Auschwitz, the main hallway is covered with photographs of former inmates of the notorious concentration camp. Nothing, not all the books and films, can completely prepare you for a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is fine and warm on the day we are there, and many hundreds of tourists are being guided through the two camps (Birkenau, or Auschwitz II, the purpose-built extermination camp, is many times bigger than the other). Among the images on the wall at Block 6, I come across that of a Polish girl aged about 10. The caption tells me that she survived only a fortnight after being brought to Auschwitz in 1942. My eye alights on the next photograph: her identical twin sister.

    There is something about their expressions I cannot immediately fathom. Bewilderment I see, certainly, and fear; but what is the other thing? It would be grotesque to compare the sufferings of the 1.3 million people, mainly Jews, who perished in Auschwitz to the present-day treatment of asylum seekers in Italy or Australia, and I do not intend to do so; and yet, as I walk past the rows of photographs, taking in the individual faces and reading the individual names, it occurs to me how easy it is to forget that, behind barbed wire somewhere bleak and inhospitable today, and also incarcerated for no crime and provided no date of release, are many nameless, faceless individuals for whom we have a duty of care. It becomes a compelling thought when in Auschwitz, but it should not be necessary to travel here to feel it.

    And now I understand what it is about the portraits of the twin sisters that has so puzzled and disturbed me. In their anguished moment before the camera they ceased to be photographer’s subjects, just two more victims of a distant horror. Rather, they became cameras pointing at us, capturing an image of our souls, interrogating our hearts and consciences. It seems facile to speak of ‘ghosts’ in such a context, but for the first time in my life I truly felt that the mirror had been reversed.

    Walter Hamilton is the author of Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story.

     

  • Tuong Quang Luu, AO. Cambodia, a deterrent or an opportunity lost?

     

    My old friend looked straight at the stage with a strong determination, and perhaps, a touch of sadness. Sitting next to him, I sensed that the events of 60 years ago for Bern Brent, were rolling back to him as he mentally relived his teenage years. The occasion was a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Dunera Boys’ arrival at SydneyHarbour in 1940.

    I first met Bern in the late 1950’s when he taught me English as a lecturer at the University of Saigon. He was my first contact with Australia. Unbeknown to me at the time, Bern had been a ‘displaced person’ or an unattached refugee minor prior to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention. It was an unforeseen irony for both of us that I should follow in his foot steps a quarter of a century later.

    Berlin-born to parents of Jewish background, the 16 year-old Bern was sent by his mother to London to escape the Nazi tyranny and persecution. His search for safety went terribly wrong when he and thousands of others in the same circumstance were shipped on HMT Dunera by mistake to Australia. He became unwittingly a ‘boat person’ joining the First Fleeters in 1788 and other subsequent arrivals by boats from the United Kingdom. The Crown or more correctly His / Her Majesty’s Government organised these transportations as a state policy, so no one and much less the Aboriginals dared to label the organisers as today’s ‘people’s smugglers’

    Indeed, Australia has resettled many hundreds of thousands of displaced persons mainly from post-war Europe and refugees from all parts of the world, including those who came directly to Australia.

    In 1977, Hieu Van Le, a young man in his twenties, waded with his wife and scores of other exhausted Vietnamese asylum seekers to the shores of Darwin in search of freedom. Found to be refugees, they were allowed to stay permanently in this country. Hieu Van Le has subsequently gone on to become the longest serving member and chairperson of South Australia Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Commission, and is currently lieutenant governor of the state.

    Of course not everyone amongst the Australians of a refugee background can be as successful as Bern Brent or Hieu Van Le in their respective careers, or as Frank Lowy, an entrepreneur in the business world. By and large, surviving refugees tend to possess a strong will to overcome calamities and generally demonstrate a good entrepreneurial spirit to succeed. Their contribution to Australia has never been in doubt and their commitment to this country as a democracy has never been questioned.

    Until 2013, Australia normally allowed on-shore asylum seekers who were found to be Convention refugees to resettle, subject to security clearance. Only when both sides of politics, in my view, competed against one another for electoral advantage that denial of a permanent residency in Australia became part of a suite of deterrent measures against potential asylum seekers.

    But why was Cambodia chosen?

    The government has said correctly that Cambodia is now a signatory of the 1951 Refugee Convention. But Cambodia – and for that matter, Papua New Guinea and Nauru – are the poorest amongst developing countries. One can assume that these three countries have agreed to settle refugees only on the basis of generous financial aid from Australia, but one cannot assume that Australian tax payers’ monies will be properly spent as intended, because local corruption is rampant.

    Cambodia has promised that it will provide welfare and education to refugee families who come ‘voluntarily’ as settlers, while at the same time failing to look after its own people, including around 1 million ethnic Vietnamese Khmers without citizenship, employment and education.

    As a signatory of the 1951 Convention, Cambodia has an abysmal record of treating refugees and at times has sold them down the river as in their dealings with Beijing (relating to Uighur asylum seekers), and Hanoi (relating to Vietnamese dissidents). Some Vietnamese dissidents supposedly under the UNHCR protection in Cambodia had to escape a second time to Thailand to avoid forced repatriation back to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

    To force those asylum seekers who are found to be refugees by Australia under the Australian legal mechanism is not just to deny them a legitimate desire to live in a democracy after fleeing authoritarian regimes, but also to take away from Australia a group of potentially good contributors

    The writer came to Australia as a Vietnamese refugee and is a former Head of SBS Radio (1989-2006)

     

  • NY Times – Capitalism Eating its Children.

    Yesterday I posted a blog ‘Are our Bankers Listening or Caring’. It referred to speeches by the IMF Chief, Christine Lagarde, and the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney. They were speaking at a ‘Inclusive Capitalism’ conference in London. 

    Today the New York Times has carried an op ed piece by Roger Cohen entitled ‘Capitalism Eating Its Children’. Cohen draws extensively on the speech by Mark Carney. The op ed piece in the New York Times can be found at:

    http://nyti.ms/1owYMKI

    John Menadue

  • Geoff Hiscock. Onus on Abbott to forge closer ties with India

    ​As a young man, Tony Abbott backpacked across India in 1981, and spent six weeks at the Australian Jesuit mission in Bihar state. He was fascinated by the country’s many contrasts, from its bullock carts to its nuclear power stations.

    His Indian exposure since then has been limited, but the Australian Prime Minister says he has always taken India seriously and has made it clear in his speeches and his interaction with the Indian community in Australia that he wants a much closer and deeper relationship.

    With Narendra Modi as India’s new leader, he has chance to do just that. Abbott was quick to call Modi and congratulate him when his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) scored a decisive electoral victory earlier this month, saying on May 17 that he looked forward to strengthening ties between the two countries.

    Modi’s priorities, of course, are not the same as Abbott’s. Modi lives in a much more volatile world, where relations with Pakistan, China, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and Afghanistan take precedence, and where domestic terrorism, social stability, food and energy security, job creation, infrastructure development and health issues are of overwhelming importance.

    Still, like Abbott, Modi is conservative, pragmatic and pro-business, with a mandate to get things done. Abbott and Modi may not otherwise be natural soul mates, but Abbott is eager to turn what he calls a “neglected” Australia-India relationship into something much more substantial and balance it against the other Asian heavyweight, China, in the areas of trade, strategic cooperation and people to people ties.

    India’s GDP of $1.8 trillion lags well behind China’s $10 trillion, but with an economic pick-up on the cards and a growing middle class of several hundred million out of a total population of 1.25 billion, India is a target market of considerable size.

    For Australia, there is potentially much more trade in energy and resources (including ultimately, uranium) and agribusiness, and in services such as education, engineering and finance. For India, there are opportunities in manufactures such as medicines, jewellery and motor vehicles and in services such as tourism and information technology. In terms of direct foreign investment, India already has built stakes in Australian coal mines, other metals and food.

    The raw statistics show just how much work remains.  Australia’s total two-way trade in goods and services runs at about $625 billion a year, but India accounts for only about $17 billion of this, or less than 3 per cent. That is roughly the same amount of business Australia does with Malaysia, but is way behind trade with the big four of China ($150 billion), Japan ($70 billion), the United States ($54 billion) and South Korea ($30 billion). Even Singapore ($27 billion), New Zealand ($21 billion) and the UK ($19 billion) rank ahead of India among Australia’s main trading partners.

    In his first major foreign policy speech in Melbourne last year, Abbott ascribed the relatively modest trade flows partly to “India’s long preoccupation with the non-aligned movement and statist economics; and partly because of Australia’s historical amnesia and fascination with China.”

    Certainly Australia’s economic relationship with China has rocketed ahead in the past two decades and it would be fair to say that while Abbott is a little more wary of China than his recent predecessors Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd were, he has continued the fascination. In April Abbott led a large trade delegation to China, Japan and South Korea; at the Boao Forum on the Chinese island of Hainan, he told his hosts: “Australia is not in China to do a deal, but to be a friend. We don’t just visit because we need to, but because we want to.”

    His avowed goal is to add a China free trade agreement as quickly as possible to those already signed with Australia’s two other big North Asian trade partners. So far, we haven’t seen much sense of urgency about a free trade agreement with India, though in 2011 Australia and India did begin negotiations for an FTA-style “comprehensive economic cooperation agreement.”

    But it’s not an “either-or” thing with China and India. There is ample opportunity for Australia to grow its business ties with India without threatening anything it has with China. The first step is for Abbott to build some personal rapport with Modi and to take any residual heat out of the relationship left by past kerfuffles over perceived discrimination and the attacks on students in Melbourne.

    Unless Abbott can shuffle his packed schedule to squeeze in a visit to India in the next few months, it is likely his first chance to meet Modi as Prime Minister will be at the G20 leaders’ summit in Brisbane in November. Before that, Australia will host the G20 trade ministers’ meeting in Sydney in July, with India’s new Trade Minister likely to attend. At both these events, the focus will be global rather than bilateral.

    In Melbourne last December, Abbott observed that “no one should underestimate India now, nor its potential to be a global superpower in this century.” His challenge – and to a lesser extent that for Modi – is to expand trade, investment and defence ties, and nurture some new areas of mutual interest that go beyond the old staples of democracy, rule of law, the English language, and a love of cricket.

    Geoff Hiscock writes on international business and is the author of several books, including “Earth Wars: The Battle for Global Resources” and “India’s Global Wealth Club,” both published by Wiley

     

  • Michiya Matsuoka. Japanese collective ‘atmosphere’ and the power of the media.

    In John Menadue’s blog of 31 March, 2014, he expressed strong concern for recent events concerning Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, and warned that Japan was fast approaching a nationalistic agenda and revisionist view of history. (See re-post today)

    I have these same misgivings about Japan and fully agree with John Menadue’s concern, including the role and responsibility of NHK (the Japanese public broadcaster similar to the Australian ABC and British BBC).

    Although NHK is an independent corporation, its annual budget is subject to review and approval by the Diet.

    A twelve member Board of Governors oversees NHK and makes final decisions. Under the Board of Governors, NHK is managed on a full-time basis by an Executive Board.  The new Director General of the Executive Board is Katsuto Momii, a very close friend of Prime Minister Abe.  Abe also appointed another four members of the Board of Governors.

    On Katsuto Momii’s first day as Director General, 25th January 2014, he asked all members of the Executive Board to submit “a resignation paper with signature and without date” – which they did. In April, Momii withdrew the resignation papers following criticism by the public.  At the press conference on the same day, Momii said it was his personal view that the recruitment of comfort women during WWII was not a problem. He also said that current members of the Executive Board were appointed by the former Director General – and as the new Director General, he would do things in his own way.

    In February, Naoki Hyakuta, a new member of the Board of Governors close to PM Abe, spoke in support of a candidate for governor of Tokyo Metropolitan, the ex-Chief of Staff of the Air Self Defence Force. Hyakuta has been reported as saying that the Tokyo War Crimes Trial was designed to “fool people”.

    Another new member of the NHK Board of Governors, Ms Michiyo Hasegawa, a philosopher and University Professor Emeritus, whilst claiming that the public broadcaster is politically neutral, wrote an article praising a right-wing activist who committed suicide. She also attracted public dispute in January this year saying “Women’s most important job is to give birth and raise children. Women should prioritise children more than actively working outside”.

    The new Director General and members of the NHK Board of Governors are known to share PM Abe’s views on amending the Constitution, his interpretation of history and his visit to Yasukuni Shrine – among other things.

    As a citizen, I am extremely worried that NHK, the most influential public media outlet which should be politically neutral, might be leading Japan in the wrong direction.

    Why do these new members continue to speak out and take actions that do not respect NHK’s essential political neutrality? Why did all the members of the NHK Executive Board submit their resignation papers to the newly-appointed Director General Momii, without hesitation?

    We can find a key to answering these questions in a book widely read in Japan for nearly half a century.  In 1977 Shichihei Yamamoto, a prolific Japanese writer, wrote “’Kuuki’ no Kenkyuu”, usually translated as ‘The Study of the Atmosphere’ – where ‘kuuki’ or ‘atmosphere’ refers to a collective socialised mentality that Japanese people are said to feel or share without actually questioning its basis. Yamamoto pointed out that this ‘atmosphere’ is created by leaders and has the power to lead people as a group in a particular direction without any logic or contention.  I believe many Japanese people tend to make decisions influenced by this ‘atmosphere’ without thinking logically or accepting scientific data – especially if they belong to influential groups or organisations. Yamomoto’s thesis is that ‘atmosphere’ allows overwhelming emotions and group pressure to transcend logical behaviour.

    NHK’s series of incidents may well be the result of ‘atmosphere’, created by PM Abe, who has the power and authority, supported by the majority of Diet seats and the support of his Cabinet (51% as of April 2014).

    I am very concerned that NHK, managed and overseen by Director General Momii and other PM Abe supporters, will take us in a dangerous direction.  Influenced by NHK, the largest public media outlet, the Japanese people may be caught up in Abe’s ‘atmosphere’ and become incited towards war.

     

    Michiya Matsuoka is a former executive of a major advertising agency in Japan. He was also CEO of the agency in Australia from 1989 to 1993 after nine years in New York.

  • Caroline Coggins. Art and prayer

    What do we pay attention to, what do we look for? It sounds like such an innocent question, yet it is a reflection of who we are, and how we have been shaped.

    I went to a Matisse exhibition when I was in London recently. What struck me was a comment the artist made as an older man, with only fourteen years of life left to him, that it was only now that he had to learnt how to ‘ see’.  And this seeing would take him on a totally other path, and would revolutionize what was considered art.

    Of course artists, poets and mystics have always been involved in a kind of stripping of the layers, cleaning the windscreens of perception, of dust. Whatever we spend time thinking about and how we have chosen to live are what we will become. And this in turn will also shape our  seeing/ hearing/feeling.

    Matisse would learn to see each object and give it its life.

    As I live my life right now, I’m away from the familiar, live and pray in a bedroom, I have few props, and no buddies. I am interested to see what this does to me. Can I stay open and flexible, change my moods, do things because I always have?  When it comes to prayer, do I begin, do I start with those so familiar processes and what will happen then?

    I hear the same things going on in my mind, and often the familiar instructions from the outside are the same. But acting on instructions is not the point as they are meant only to guide and focus the intelligence and spirit.  But subtly we can be seduced into thinking that these instructions, this knowledge, are the thing itself.

    I sit at dinner parties and conversation is about things, but rarely are our fine gifts of intelligence given any room to develop and discern. We become governed by our world of thoughts and rarely do we actually get the chance to look at the thinker of the thoughts.

    Of course this is what starting to contemplate is about. Yet the mind is very interested in what it has thought before, what it already knows and it is rarely interested in what it doesn’t know. It will be interested in unknown facts to increase the stockpile of facts, because this can appear as intelligence (aren’t we often impressed by people who know a lot about everything!). But are we really curious about entering into the wordless world?

    Not having a formula to control our movements at this time puts us at risk as we grope blindly. We often need to invite silence to hear what is initially wordless.  Our darker places inside emerge: fear of the unknown, risk of being wrong, seen as lacking.  Yet all of these qualities keep us on the wheel that spins faster and faster as we seek to be in control.

    Like Matisse, I think we are developing ourselves to become sensitive, to see from our own experience?  But the first thing is to know that we will need courage and a kind of solidarity with ourselves.  Matisse would live his whole life outside of what was acknowledged as “good art”, yet now people will queue for months to taste and see this freedom.

    The trick to finding a way forward is to recognize that we are the only ones who can do this, there is no formula, the only pointer is that others have set this course and have done it before us.  Usually people we admire can show us how. But I often wonder if we want it enough for ourselves, I mean the deeper desires, those that will really satisfy us. We may not at the time be appreciated by  our fellow travellers,  but it will certainly bring aliveness and creativity.

    The last part of Matisse’s statement is that in truly learning to see, we learn to love. That sounds like a good outcome.

     

  • John Falzon. Time to stand and fight

    There are measures in this Budget that rip the guts out of what remains of a fair and egalitarian Australia. These measures will not help people into jobs but they will force people into poverty.

    You don’t help young people or older people or people with a disability or single mums into jobs by making them poor. You don’t build people up by putting them down.

    This Budget is deeply offensive to the people who wage a daily battle to survive. The content of the Budget is offensive. The lies told to justify the Budget are offensive.

    As philosopher Slavoj Zizek explains:  “…we are told again and again that we live in a critical time of deficit and debts where we all have to share a burden and accept a lower standard of living – all with the exception of the (very) rich. The idea of taxing them more is an absolute taboo: if we do this, so we are told, the rich will lose the incentive to invest and create new jobs, and we will all suffer the consequences. The only way to escape the hard times is for the poor to get poorer and for the rich to get richer.”

    The government wanted us to believe that its first Budget was tough but fair. It has since explained that its outright cruelty to people living in poverty is actually good for them because by strengthening the economy everyone, especially the poor, will benefit. Wealth, you see, trickles down, when the wealthy are treated well and their privilege preserved. Thus goes the message it has been trying to dangle before us.

    It is still trying.

    But all we can hear is the sound of the excluded still waiting for the trickle-down to trickle down.

    Budget 2014, you see, has the wealth trickling up! Not that this is all that unusual when market forces are allowed to trample on the lives of people who bear the brunt of inequality.

    Even Pope Francis has something to say about this: “Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralised workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting.”

    When you’ve got a rich country like ours “unable” to afford to ensure that the more than 100,000 people experiencing homelessness or the more than 200,000 people on the waiting list for social housing have a place to call home, it is not a misfortune or a mistake. It is the sound of the excluded still waiting

    When you’ve got more than 700,000 people unemployed and around 900,000 underemployed, on top of those who are set to lose their jobs due to company closures, the dismembering of the public service and government cuts to social spending, it is also the sound of the excluded still waiting. Let us not forget the woeful inadequacy of the Newstart payment, at only 40% of the minimum wage. Neither let us forget the single mums who were forced onto the Newstart payment at the beginning of last year, and let us not forget the working poor for there are some who would like to squeeze them even more by reducing the minimum wage and taking away what little rights they have.

    When you’ve got David Gonski, not generally seen as representing the vanguard of the working class, working alongside his fellow review panellists to recommend a package of education funding reforms to address the outrageous inequality that besmirches education funding in Australia, and then the government does a triple back-flip and declares it is not committed to seeing this redistribution of resources through, you loudly hear the sound of the excluded still waiting.

    The long, fruitless wait of the excluded for some of the wealth, some of the resources, some of the hope, to trickle down, is one of the most audacious and sadly successful con jobs in modern history. It is not misfortune. It is not a mistake. It is certainly not, as perversely asserted by those who put the boot in, the fault of the excluded themselves! Rather, it is an attack, sometimes by omission as well as by commission, against ordinary people, from the First Peoples to the most recently arrived asylum seekers and everyone in-between who has been residualised and demonised and made to bear the burden of inequality.  That is why there is absolutely nothing unusual about understanding this as an issue of class. And why Warren Buffett was quite correct when he said: “There’s class warfare alright, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

    The public response to the Budget reflects the deep feeling of injustice in the community. The powerful thing about the Budget response is that people are banding together to defend our egalitarian values of fairness and respect. People are saddened not only because the Budget affects them but because it hurts and humiliates the people they love and care about: young people, older people, people with a disability, single mums, struggling families. As we can see from the strength of the response to it, now is the time not to watch and weep but rather to stand and fight.

     

    Dr John Falzon is Chief Executive of the St Vincent de Paul Society and the author of The language of the Unheard.

  • Geoff Hiscock. Economic time is right in India for Modi and his mandate

    ​Narendra Modi comes to office in India with two big advantages: the economic cycle is starting to turn up at last, and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has a clear majority in parliament that frees him from the coalition-style shackles that plagued his predecessor, Manmohan Singh.

    The timing is right for Modi. After two years of sub-5 per cent growth, it looks like India’s economy will grow 5.2 per this year and 6.0 per cent in 2015, according to the latest outlook from regional analysis firm IMA Asia.

    While that is still a long way from the 8 to 9 per cent boom days of 2010 and 2005-07, it offers hope of better times ahead for India’s 1.25 billion people, particularly for lower income earners who are eager to join the spending class.

    One caveat is that the livelihoods of many of India’s 800 million rural dwellers will depend on how much rain this year’s southwest monsoon brings. The first monsoon rain is expected in Kerala in the south around June 5, but there is also a 60 per cent chance of a strong El Nino this year, according to the Indian Meteorological Department. That could bring drought conditions, which would have a big impact on rural incomes.

    Whatever the weather, the new government’s policy settings will play a big role in how the economy performs.  Indian ratings and research agency CRISIL says the election result has created “the best environment in a long time to bite the bullet on government finances.” It says an agenda that improves India’s competitive stance by tackling inflation, introducing the long-awaited GST, reducing subsidies, recapitalising banks, fostering corporate debt markets and giving a “booster shot” to manufacturing will pave the way for a shot at 6.5 to 7 per cent annual GDP growth.

    More broadly, Modi’s decisive win and pro-business outlook should encourage multinationals and domestic companies alike to dust off their investment expansion plans. The one area where this won’t happen is in the modern retail sector, where Modi and the BJP remain opposed to foreign direct investment in multi-brand retailing.

    That is a pity, because retailing is a job-intensive business of the type India desperately needs. The services sector, along with manufacturing and construction, is where growth must occur if Modi is to make any headway against one of India’s biggest challenges: providing jobs for the 13 to 15 million young people who seek to enter the labour market every year. International retailers such as Tesco want to expand their operations in India and would bring new skills, technology and job opportunities to the table if allowed. But for now, Modi and the BJP are more concerned about protecting the livelihoods of the 13 million “kirana,” or family-owned corner stores, that are the backbone of India’s retail scene.

    Consulting firm McKinsey estimates that India needs to add 115 million new non-farm jobs over the next decade to cater for a growing population and to reduce agriculture’s overall share in employment. Labor market flexibility and more vocational training for the poor and uneducated are among the steps it says are required.

    One of India’s biggest handicaps remains its poor performance in infrastructure development. It has hundreds of road, rail, port and power projects on its books, but they seem forever mired in red tape, corruption and disputes about land zoning, jurisdiction, relocation and environmental factors. Modi brings to the table the model of his home state Gujarat, where the electricity always runs – courtesy of profitable private power stations — and where businesses such as automotive plants have been encouraged to set up. The central government’s role in state-based infrastructure development is limited, but Modi’s mantra of “minimum government, maximum governance,” should at least encourage some movement on the national infrastructure front.

    Internationally, Modi will find the existing policy settings do not require too much fiddling. Pakistan, as always, is the key security challenge, but at least Modi is amenable to a dialogue with his counterpart Nawaz Sharif, who has already invited him to visit Islamabad. Modi talks tough on China over territorial issues, yet is pragmatic enough to want expanded business ties. Likewise, China says it wants to take relations with India to a “new height.” Modi likes Vladimir Putin and got a congratulatory call from Barack Obama, so he may be able to improve India’s energy security outlook in the way he deals with Russia and the United States over oil and gas supplies and nuclear technology, though the nuclear civil liability issue is not fully resolved. He also likes Japan’s assertive leader Shinzo Abe – the pair follow each other on Twitter – with Abe tweeting this week: “Great talking to you, Mr Modi. I look forward to welcoming you in Tokyo and deepening our friendly ties.”

    And what of the man Modi is replacing, the long-serving Manmohan Singh?  Widely regarded as a good and decent man, Singh was brought low by the dynastic politics of the Congress Party, and the sheer complication of heading a fractious agglomeration of self-interested parties. His best legacy goes back to the early 1990s; as finance minister he brought in a series of reforms that allowed India to slough off the Raj-era mindset and embark on a more vigorous growth path. Sadly, too many of his colleagues at the state and federal level still believe in the “pay to play” approach to governing the world’s biggest democracy. Let’s hope Modi’s mandate cuts corruption and gives India the boost it so desperately needs.

    Geoff Hiscock writes on international business and is the author of several books, including “Earth Wars: The Battle for Global Resources,” and “India’s Global Wealth Club,” both published by Wiley.  

     

  • Julian McDonald. We will right this terrible wrong.

    With searing eloquence, 11 men bravely told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Perth of the devastating impact of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of Christian Brothers in residences at Castledare, Clontarf, Bindoon and Tardun in Western Australia more than 50 years ago.

    No one could be but moved by these men, who told of their painful experiences of stolen innocence, of being subjected to physical brutality and the depths of sexual depravity by supposedly religious men from whom they had every right to expect care, nurture and respect. Instead they were betrayed and treated as objects for sexual gratification.

    A regret I have is that every Christian Brother in Oceania was not present to hear the testimony of the men, victims of an earlier generation of Christian Brothers.

    The ongoing suffering of children so wantonly abused by those charged with their protection demands of their carers an immediate and effective response. That response is demanded from Christian Brothers for survivors now in the later stages of their lives.

    At the Christian Brothers’ Congregation Chapter held in Nairobi in March, I went on the record as saying there will be no future for the Christian Brothers unless and until we do all in our power to address the devastation inflicted on the lives of children and vulnerable adults by the sexually, emotionally and physically abusive conduct of some of our number. However, I am conscious that rhetoric is validated only by appropriate action. We have to find additional ways of engaging with those victimised so their voices are heard.

    As the representative of all the decent, committed Christian Brothers living and working throughout Oceania, I accept our shame and ask forgiveness of those whom my Brothers have harmed. I have spent the past 25 years reaching out to victims to try to address the hurt they suffer. I ­acknowledge that there have been times when my efforts have been less than perfect. I can only promise to work at doing better. However, I am confident this royal commission, at which I was a witness, will give us some direction. I pledge the co-operation of the Christian Brothers in working with the royal commission in whatever way we are able.

    And as we wait for the findings to provide a pathway for the future, the Christian Brothers commit to continuing our work with survivors each and every day, knowing that help, care and compassion are needed in the present. I commit the Christian Brothers to working with survivors now on their individual needs and circumstances in an atmosphere of care, compassion and dignity.

    I also urge the Catholic Church, of which the Christian Brothers are but part, to open itself to examining the causes and embracing the learnings from what has been a shameful episode in our history.

    We cannot delegate our ­response to others to formulate but rather must look inside ourselves for the way forward, listening to views from within, however confronting we might find them.

    The report into sexual abuse by Christian Brothers published by Brother Gerry Faulkner some 16 years ago offered some analysis of causes, some learnings and some suggested ways forward.

    Moreover, I believe that the church cannot continue to ignore the voices of people such as Bishop Geoffrey Robinson and Sister Angela Ryan, who have campaigned for decades to ­address the blight of sexual abuse by priests and religious orders. They have been the conscience for us all in this matter, but at times it would appear that they have even been punished for their courage.

    I would like to thank Judge Peter McClellan and the other commissioners and their staff for their work and dedication in pursuit of the painful truth, and I can assure them of our continuing support and co-operation.

    And to the men who continue to suffer so greatly, we will not abandon you.

    Brother Julian McDonald is deputy province leader, Christian Brothers Oceania Province. This piece was run in The Australian 12 May 2014.

  • Fran Baum and Sara Javanparast. Demise of Medicare Locals.

    Demise of Medicare Locals: impact on community health, partnership and PHC research

    Fran Baum and Sara Javanparast  
    Southgate Institute for Health, Society and Equity, Flinders University, Adelaide

    Tuesday’s budget announced the abolition of the 61 Medicare Locals and that they will be replaced with an unknown but smaller number of Primary Health Networks. Regional primary health care organisations are widely acknowledged to be vital to effective   coordination of PHC activities, reducing service fragmentation, making the health system easier to navigate for users, and reducing health care cost. Primary Health Care Trusts in England, New Zealand Primary Health Care Organisations, Canada/Ontario Local Health Integration Networks, and Scotland Community Health Partnerships are examples of overseas regional PHC organisations which support GPs and other PHC providers and plan for population health initiatives. The World Health Organization  recommends that PHC should be comprehensive and not just concentrate on clinical issues but also emphasise population-based approach, including disease prevention and health promotion, equity of access, responsiveness to community needs and community engagement.

    In Australia, various models of PHC have been established including Medicare-funded General Practice, State-funded multi-disciplinary community health centres and Aboriginal community controlled services. In 2009, the National Health and Hospital Health Reform Commission recommended that ‘service coordination and population health planning priorities should be enhanced at the local level through the establishment of Primary Health Care Organisations’. This has resulted in the establishment of Medicare Locals to fulfil the role of co-ordinating PHC services at the local level, improving access and preventing hospital admissions.

    The establishment of MLs, introduced by the Gillard Labor government, commenced in July 2011, with a total of 61 MLs operational from July 2012. Since then, the MLs have been conducting community needs assessment, identifying and building partnership with key health, community and social organisations in their region, and developing population health plans that are based on and responsive to local needs. A range of local programs and services have been designed. These include mental health, after hours care plan, Aboriginal health, E-health, aged care, and migrant health. Many resources have been spent building positive relationship with key stakeholders and community members within each ML with some good examples of collaborative work, joint planning and community engagement strategies. Taking the Pulse program in a number of ML including the Gold Coast ML, ACT ML, and Metro North Brisbane ML enabled consultation about health and wellbeing with people from all walks of life. The priorities that emerged from these consultations have been used in the formulation of needs assessment and informed the development of their strategic plans to ensure they respond to local need. The Tasmania ML is addressing social connection and other social determinants of health using strategies including community capacity building. Our local research suggests the MLs are co-ordinating with local health authorities on issues of joint concern. They have begun to fill identify and fill service gaps.

    All these programs and initiatives have taken staff and local PHC health providers’ (including many GPs) time, and cost a lot of taxpayers’ money to develop and establish.  Now is the time when Australians should be able to capitalise on this investment and see better co-ordinated local health services, community alternatives to hospital services (which will save money), Aboriginal health programs, and local mental health programs. It takes time to establish the trust and connections needed to develop and co-ordinate PHC services and this social capital that the MLs have established will be squandered by the decision to abolish them in the budget. Of course, the ML model and its programs need to be scrutinised and evaluated, but its demolition while it is still in its infancy will have many negative impacts on the community’s health and represents a failure to capitalise on investment.

    The short term life of such large national initiatives also makes it difficult for primary health care researchers to produce rigorous evidence on the effectiveness of existing models and to evaluate the programs in terms of population health and cost benefits that need to be followed through for a longer period of time. “Lack of evidence on program effectiveness” is one the key justifications for budget cuts was evident in the Review of Medicare Locals by John Horvarth (http://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/review-medicare-locals-final-report) . Such evidence can hardly be produced in the current rapid changing policy environment which makes rigorous evaluation impossible.

    Undoubtedly, replacement of MLs with Primary Health Networks that are more clinically focused will move our primary health care system away from its broader mandate of disease prevention, health promotion, equity and social determinants of health. Of course, communities particularly those most in need are the ones who will suffer the most from these continuing political battles and health system changes.

    We now face an uncertain period when the work of the existing ML is undone and new Primary Health Networks are established. The budget papers say this process will be open to tender and that the new organisations will be able to “partner with private health insurance” presumably opening the ways for the privatisation of the Networks and a further move away from equitable and efficient health care. We could see big providers such as BUPA winning tenders to run these PHNs!

    As a postscript we note that had the budget taken the fiscally responsible step and abolished the private health insurance subsidies this would have released around $5.5 billion dollars for investment in PHC services and the existing MLs which would have represented a far better investment in our health.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Peter Menadue. Should corporations have political rights?

     

    There is an old legal saying that a corporation has no body to be burnt or soul to be damned.  In other words, it is just a legal fiction designed to confer limited liability upon its shareholders.

    Despite that, there is an insidious and very dangerous notion abroad that corporations have political rights and should be allowed to make political donations and engage in political advertising.  That notion is a terrible threat to the health of our democracy.

    The United States Supreme Court recently gave that idea a massive boost in the Citizens United case, when it decided (5-4) that the First Amendment right of free speech allowed corporations to engage in as much political advertising as they liked. In dissent, Justice Paul Stevens, one of the great justices in the history of the court, wrote that the First Amendment did not protect corporations.  He said that corporations were not “We the People” for whom the Constitution was established.  Rather corporate spending on politics should be viewed as a business transaction designed by the officers or the boards of directors for no purpose other than profit-making. Stevens called corporate spending “more transactional than ideological”.

    In Australia, we have recently seen what happens when corporations are allowed to engage in such transactional politics.  When the Rudd government tried to introduce a mining tax, major corporations (mainly foreign owned) funnelled huge sums into an advertising campaign to force the government to back down – which it did.

    Corporations must be pushed out of our political system and denied any political rights.  They should not be allowed to use their balance sheet to either make political donations or engage in political advertising.  Only citizens (including, of course, those who are employees or shareholders of corporations) should be allowed to do either.  Further, there should be a cap on how much individual citizens can spend (say $1,000 a year).  Indeed, one option is for the government to give each citizen a political donation voucher which he or she can direct to the party of his or her choice.

    However, that does not mean there will be no role at all for business organisations (like the Mining Council), trade unions or even corporations.  They should be allowed to collect money from citizens (up to the prescribed limit) on behalf of political parties.  However, all donors must be identified (to ensure they are citizens).  That would mean that, to fund its attacks on the Rudd Government, the Mining Council would have had to attract contributions from individual citizens (presumably in the mining community) who felt strongly enough about the issue. My guess is that the money collected wouldn’t have bought the council a 3am advertising slot on a regional TV station.  However then, at least, the citizenry would have spoken through their wallets, not major foreign-owned multinationals.

    The next time a progressive party takes power in Canberra,  the very first item on its agenda should be amending our electoral laws to exclude corporations from politics and to cap donations.  If it doesn’t, it might as well throw away the rest of its agenda.