John Menadue

  • 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.

  • A last hurrah from Graham Freudenberg on his 80th birthday

    May Day 2014 – fittingly the day of Neville Wran’s memorial service at Sydney Town Hall – may well turn out to be the day when the Labor Party began to see its way ahead.  Not because of the event itself, although it certainly was a marvellous celebration of a great Labor era.  But it was the day of the Shepherd Audit Report. It also happened to be the day when News Ltd bared its fangs and reminded the Abbott Government just who was calling the tune. I invite students of history to file away the Sydney Daily Telegraph on 1 May 2014 and its coverage of the Shepherd Audit next day. All its hatred of Labor was as feral as ever, but in page after page, the message to Abbott and Co was clear:

    “It was us wot done it last year and we can do for you too if you don’t toe the line.”

    But what is really important for Labor is that Abbott, Hockey and Murdoch, in fomenting this spurious crisis that is supposed to engulf Australia sometime in 2024 or 2034 have drawn up clear policy and political battle lines for the rest of the decade. They are surprisingly traditional lines along the distribution of wealth and the concentration of power, but they provide a basis for the restoration of a coherent two-party system, the mainstay of our parliamentary democracy.  After the first week of May 2014, let us have none of this nonsense that there is no real difference between the major parties.

    For the past eight months the whole operation has been designed to entrench three myths (1) that Labor wrecked the economy with a six-year spending spree, (2) that Australia is living wildly beyond its means because of outrageous extravagance in welfare, health and education, and (3) that the ‘productive’ sector is crippled by taxes and debt.  There is a fourth myth behind all this – that the ruinous reality was covered up until the election and kept secret from everybody, including the international agencies who praised Australia’s recovery from the GFC, and even the editorial writer of the Australian Financial Review who as recently as 4 May wrote sensibly about the tasks and challenges facing ‘one of the world’s strongest economies’.

    The Daily Telegraph on 1 May itself illustrates the hypocrisy in its page 3 story headed “Hey Joe, cut here instead of taxing us”. If any of the myths were true, why then did Abbott go into the campaign with his parental leave promise, when Labor’s fratricide had already guaranteed a huge coalition win? Since the election, the News Ltd commentators have portrayed the National Disability Scheme and Gonski on education as two glaring examples of Labor’s ‘mad’ excesses. In order to prevent these becoming election issues, Abbott signed up to them, while persisting with his parental leave proposal. Yet, the Daily Telegraph’s own list of cuts Joe should make costs NDIS at $1.563 billion in 2016-17 and Gonski at $1.120 billion in 2016-17. But the Abbott paid parental leave would cost, on the Daily Telegraph’s figures, $5.684 billion in 2016-17 – more than twice the NDIS and Gonski combined.

    Of course you can do anything with figures. All these supposedly horrific projections are being bandied about without any context.  What does it actually mean to predict that programs inherited from Labor would cost an extra $700 billion in 2050?  The Federal Budget reached an astronomical 100 million pounds ($200 million) in 1939.  Fighting the Second World War cost us a shocking one million pounds a day and today we are the children and grandchildren presumably burdened by Curtin and Chifley’s extravagance.  By 1961 Arthur Calwell nearly won the election by calling for a deficit of 100 million pounds to end the intolerable unemployment level of less than 3%. Menzies denounced it as ‘wildly inflationary’ and ‘grossly irresponsible’.  When he survived by one seat, Menzies promptly announced new spending measures costing 100 million pounds – the nominal figure for the entire Federal Budget barely thirty years previously!

    The timing, circumstances and political intentions of the Shepherd Audit are guaranteed to nullify any objective economic merits it may have. Instead of a serious examination of the role of government in modern economies, it will be seen as a more sophisticated and therefore more menacing Australian version of the American Tea Party agenda.  How far Hockey’s budget will follow News Ltd instructions and the Shepherd Audit Remains to be seen. But for years the Audit will stand as a blue-print for right wing aspirations for Australia – a kind of ‘black light on the hill’. If Labor can’t unite against this, around the development of new programs for growth and fair shares, and in defence of its fundamental achievements in health, welfare (including superannuation) and education, it won’t deserve to survive as the chief standard bearer of the progressive, liberal and egalitarian cause in Australia.

     

    Graham Freudenberg AM (born 1934) is an Australian author and political speechwriter who worked in the Australian Labor Party for over forty years. He has written over a thousand speeches for several leaders of the Australian Labor Party at the NSW state and the federal level. These have included Arthur Calwell, Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke, Neville Wran, Barrie Unsworth, Bob Carr and Simon Crean.  In 1990 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in recognition of his service to journalism, to parliament and to politics.  In 2005 he was inducted as a life member of the NSW ALP.

    He is the author of four books to date:  A Certain Grandeur – Gough Whitlam in Politics, Penguin 1977;  A Cause for Power – the Centenary History of the NSW Labor Party, Australian Labor Party, 1991;  A Figure of Speech (autobiography), John Wiley & Sons Australia, 2005; and Churchill and Australia, Pan Macmillan, 2008.  

  • Walter Hamilton. Yasukuni Shrine and why it matters.

    Yasukuni–Japan’s Patriotic Lightning Rod

    The Shinto shrine known as Yasukuni sprawls over ten hectares in the centre of Tokyo near the northern edge of the Imperial Palace grounds. Here are enshrined 2.47 million ‘deities’––the spirits of Japanese military personnel and civilians on war service from conflicts going back to 1853, including around 1,000 convicted war criminals. To its critics, Yasukuni is a bastion of historical revisionism, which denies that Japan waged a war of aggression between 1937 and 1945. Visits to the shrine by senior members of the government are an ongoing source of friction with China and South Korea.

    Australia has the War Memorial in Canberra; the United States has Arlington National Cemetery. Indeed every country raises monuments to remember and honour their war dead. What’s different about Yasukuni Shrine? Why the controversy?

    Yasukuni is not a cemetery, nor is it a secular monument. It is a religious institution. Prior to 1945, the shrine was a special organ of the state under the jurisdiction of the Army, Navy and Home Ministries. As ‘ritualist-in-chief’ of the Shinto religion, the god-Emperor had the final say on who could or could not be enshrined at Yasukuni. Shintoism furnished the mythologies that underpinned Emperor-worship in totalitarian Japan, such that soldiers and sailors embarking for the front, and fully expecting to die for the Emperor, would pledge to ‘meet again at Yasukuni’.

    Between 1945 and 1952, the Allied Powers set about dismantling the apparatus of Japanese militarism. The nation’s top civilian and military leaders were put on trial in Tokyo by an international tribunal (the Australian judge Sir William Webb serving as president of the court) for war crimes, crimes against humanity and/or ‘crimes against peace’ (the so-called Class ‘A’ category), which was defined as the ‘planning, preparation, initiation or waging wars of aggression’, or conspiracy to do so. Seven of these high-profile defendants were executed, including wartime leader General Hideki Tojo. Two died during the proceedings; one was declared insane; sixteen were sentenced to life imprisonment; and two others were given shorter prison terms.

    Another forty-two accused Class ‘A’ war criminals, including Nobusuke Kishi, future prime minister and grandfather of Japan’s present leader Shinzo Abe, were arrested but released without trial. After recovering its sovereignty in 1952, Japan began to reverse certain reforms of the Allied Occupation, and by 1958 all war criminals had been released from jail and politically rehabilitated.

    Yasukuni Shrine became a private religious institution in September 1946, in accordance with the principle of the separation of church and state, soon to be enshrined in Japan’s new constitution. Ten years later, however, contrary to this principle, the Ministry of Health and Welfare and Yasukuni Shrine began ‘administrative co-operation on enshrinement’, the process by which individuals were selected as kami or deities. A start was made in 1959 on the enshrinement of Class ‘B’ and ‘C’ war criminals (convicted of mistreatment of prisoners, murder of civilians, wanton destruction and atrocities). By now Prime Minister Kishi was in office. He and other conservative leaders supported the aims of such patriotic groups as the Japan War Bereaved Families Association.

    In 1966 the Ministry of Health and Welfare approved the first group of Class ‘A’ war criminals for enshrinement, but when the list went to the shrine’s head priest Fujimaro Tsukuba no action was taken. In light of subsequent events, it seems likely that the attitude of Emperor Hirohito was crucial. Tsukuba, a former marquis, was himself a member of the Imperial Family, and for as long as he remained in charge at Yasukuni no Class ‘A’ war criminals were enshrined there.

    Tsukuba died in 1978. He was succeeded by Nagayoshi Matsudaira, a former lieutenant commander in the Imperial Navy, whose father-in-law, a vice-admiral, was tried and executed by the Dutch for war crimes (and later enshrined at Yasukuni). Within three months of Matsudaira’s taking over, fourteen deceased, Class ‘A’ war criminals were secretly enshrined at Yasukuni. While its defenders may claim that Yasukuni Shrine serves no other purpose than to console the spirits of the dead and honour their sacrifices, this sequence of events shows how personal and political motives have driven its use as an instrument of national policy. ‘Even before I made up my mind [to become head priest at Yasukuni], I argued that so-called Class-A war criminals should also be venerated, as Japan’s spiritual rehabilitation would be impossible unless we rejected the Tokyo tribunal,’ Matsudaira told a magazine in 1989, as quoted by the Mainichi Shimbun.

    According to Professor Yoshinobu Higurashi of Teikyo University (whose writings on the subject have informed this blog: See http://www.nippon.com/en/authordata/higurashi-yoshinobu/) the enshrinement of the Class ‘A’ war criminals ‘cannot be attributed simply to religious or filial impulses’. It was ‘a blatantly ideological and political act driven by an urge to justify and legitimize a highly controversial chapter in Japan’s history’.

    Even though, as a signatory of the San Francisco Peace Treaty, Japan formally agreed to the outcome of the Tokyo Trials, the nation’s conservative elite––most notably these days, Prime Minister Abe––steadfastly refuse to accept the burden of war guilt. They have a personal and public stake, through ties of blood and marriage, in overturning the verdict of history. On its English-language website, Yasukuni Shrine sets the tone by referring to ‘people who were labeled war criminals and executed after having been tried by the Allies’: in other words, victims not perpetrators. The shrine’s museum continues the narrative of denial of Japan’s atrocious wartime behaviour and, instead, strikes a note of triumphalism in its displays of armaments and trophies of battle.

    The Defense Ministry similarly promotes the idea of ‘victor’s justice’. At its compound in Tokyo where the auditorium used for the Tokyo Trials is preserved, the only reference to the court’s verdict is a display devoted to the dissenting judgement of the Indian jurist Radhabinod Pal, who would have acquitted all the accused on the basis that Japan was forced into war by hostile Western nations.

    The person best placed to know whether this dissenting view has any merit would be Emperor Hirohito. After the enshrinement of the fourteen Class ‘A’ war criminals, Emperor Hirohito made the decision never to visit Yasukuni Shrine again. No emperor has been there since. Not long before he died, according to a memorandum taken by an aide, Hirohito made clear that the two decisions were directly linked. ‘What’s on the mind of Matsudaira’s son, who is the current head priest?’ he is reported to have asked (the man’s father, Yoshitami Matsudaira, was well known to him as Imperial Household Minister during the war). ‘Matsudaira [senior] had a strong wish for peace, but the child didn’t know the parent’s heart. That’s why I have not visited the shrine since. This is my heart.’

    Having controversially escaped prosecution for his role in the war, Hirohito’s stand against the revisionists and deniers––albeit indirectly and by an act of omission––gives the lie to those, like Abe, who insist that Yasukuni can serve both as a symbol of peace and a shrine to warmongers. Could it be that Japan’s swing to the right is, as Hirohito feared, the blindness of the child who does not know the parent’s heart?

    Walter Hamilton reported from Japan for the ABC for eleven years. He is the author of Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story (NewSouth Press).

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Penne Mathew and Tristan Harley…Regional Cooperation on refugees

    In November last year Penne Mathew and Tristan Harley of the Australian National University undertook field work in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia to examine the treatment of refugees in those countries and to discuss the possibilities of improved regional cooperation amongst themselves and also with resettlement countries such as Australia. I am strongly of the view that shared responsibility and cooperation is essential

    The Indonesian Foreign Minister, Marty Natalegawa recently put the case succinctly. “For Indonesia, the message is crystal clear: the cross border and complex nature of irregular movements of persons defies national solutions…There is no other recourse but to take a comprehensive and coordinated approach…a sense of burden sharing and common responsibility should be the basis for our cooperation.

    .John Menadue

    The Executive Summary and Recommendations follow. This report is based on fieldwork that Professor Penelope Mathew and Mr Tristan Harley conducted in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia in October – November 2013. The authors gratefully acknowledge all of the participants in our research who graciously offered their time, expertise and hospitality. The purpose of the fieldwork was to examine the treatment of refugees in each of the three countries and discuss the issue of regional cooperation with respect to refugees in the Southeast Asia region. Some key findings of the fieldwork are:

     

    a)      Thailand and Malaysia remain reluctant to become party to the 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol because they believe that it will lead to an increase in the number of refugees arriving in their territory and they believe that there are associated security threats. On the other hand, ratification is currently part of Indonesia’s national agenda. However, there are concerns that this process has been stalled and may not be realised.

    b)      States in the Southeast Asia region have indicated a desire to cooperate with one another in the area of refugee protection, particularly through the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime (the Bali Process) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). However, states continue to act unilaterally in ways that endanger refugees and cause friction among states. Current Australian policies undermine efforts at regional cooperation.

    c)      Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia recognise that regional cooperation is necessary in order to address the particular refugee situations that each country is facing individually and to tackle the initial causes of displacement in countries of origin. While ASEAN members adhere to the principle of non-interference in the sovereignty of other states, it was suggested that ASEAN could be an appropriate forum whereby states could assist countries of origin to minimise the need for persons to flee the country and seek asylum elsewhere.

    d)      Interviewees in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia suggested that resettlement programmes in the region should be increased and that states from outside the region should increase their efforts to help share the responsibility of hosting refugees.

    e)      Malaysia and Indonesia appear willing to consider granting refugees the right to work. However, there are strong concerns about how this policy would affect national migrant worker schemes and domestic labour supply. States are also concerned about the ‘pull factor’ that they perceive such a policy may produce.

    This report concludes by making recommendations for states to enhance the protection framework for refugees. These recommendations are divided into short, medium and long terms goals. Some key recommendations in this report include the following:

    a)      Skills training programmes should be established in countries of first asylum that prepare refugees for either resettlement to another country, voluntary return to their country of origin or local integration in the host county. These programmes can be funded by donor and resettlement countries;

    b)      Refugees should be granted the right to work in countries of first asylum and employment programmes for refugees should be established in areas and industries where there is high demand;

    c)      Refugees should be allowed to access health care at the same cost as nationals and refugee children should be allowed to access the public education system;

    d)      United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) offices in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, should be expanded and more funding allocated with the particular focus of improving both speed and fairness of refugee status determination (RSD) procedures;

    e)      Resettlement states should increase their annual intakes to provide protection to a greater number of refugees and share responsibility with countries of first asylum.

    f)       New projects and programmes should be established which simultaneously aim to support both refugee communities and local communities hosting refugees; and

    g)      The 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol should be ratified by states in the region.

    Penelope Mathew is Freilich Professor, ANU College of Arts and Sciences

    Tristan Harley is Freilich Foundation Research Assistant at ANU.

     

  • Walter Hamilton. Anti-climax in Tokyo

    Three words for Shinzo Abe––and for history. Three words: ‘…including Senkaku islands’ (was Obama’s omission of the definite article ‘the’, one wonders, part of a subconscious hesitation?). Thus a US president for the first time explicitly committed his country to defend Japan if it should come to blows with China in their territorial dispute.

    Barack Obama affirmed that the islands were covered by Article V of the Japan-US Security Treaty which states: ‘Each Party recognizes that an armed attack against either Party in the territories under the administration of Japan would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional provisions and processes.’

    While no different from the position enunciated previously by other members of his administration, in its language and setting––a joint news conference with Abe standing alongside him during a state visit to Japan––Obama’s endorsement of the status quo in the East China Sea was significant. It is exactly what Abe wanted to hear, after months of anguished commentary in the Japanese media suggesting the US might be turning into a fair weather ally. But the comparatively muted official response from China is also interesting: a sign that Beijing heard the president when he said he was not stating a new position. The words might be on the record, but was there is any greater will behind them?

    A visit by a US president to Japan as a state guest (the most elaborate form of diplomatic visitation) is uncommon. The last one was 16 years ago. Reportedly the Americans took some persuading to set aside the minimum three days required. Such occasions can serve to elevate a bilateral relationship to a new level, and they can draw attention to areas of disagreement as well as agreement. On the territorial dispute, for instance, the main focus was on the US commitment to fight alongside Japan. Obama, however, also stressed the importance of ‘dialogue’ to resolve the dispute, and avoiding ‘escalation’, which implicitly binds Japan to keep its power dry.

    As for the other big-ticket item on the agenda, trade liberalisation, Japan had hoped the impetus of a state visit would deliver an agreement. The strategy came up well short. Instead of sweetness and light, the impression gained in Tokyo was that the Americans were intent on extracting the highest price, in economic terms, for those three choice words on security. (Having said that, insiders already knew that Obama lacked the clearance from Congress to strike a deal with Japan, and nothing less than a trade coup would allow him to presume on Congress’s approval.)

    Abe took a gamble early in his second administration when he went against the protectionists in his governing Liberal Democratic Party and led Japan into the Trans-Pacific Partnership. While trade liberalisation is necessary for his program of economic revitalisation, the disruptive risks of increased import competition, particularly in the agricultural sector, are not inconsiderable. Japan’s farming communities are the most exposed to the effects of an aging society, and there are far fewer employment alternatives in regional and rural areas than in the big cities. Farmers are a well-organised lobby group in a country where all politics is local.

    In the TPP negotiations, the Americans are seeking a better deal on beef than was recently obtained by Australia, and they want a broader agreement to include various other farm goods, automobiles and intellectual property.

    Japan’s TPP Minister, Akira Amari, is showing signs of wear and tear, admitting publically that if he were ever asked to do the job again, he would refuse. Amari and his US counterpart Michael Froman have held 25 hours of face-to-face negotiations, continuing even as Abe and Obama were tucking into their Ginza sushi––but without result. At one point it seemed Obama’s visit would end with no joint communiqué, which certainly would have left a bad taste. Officials eventually managed to cobble together a communiqué that reiterated the president’s statement on the Senkaku dispute and supported Abe’s drive to reinterpret the Japanese constitution to embrace the right of collective self-defence (hardly surprising, since this is already assumed in the bilateral security treaty quoted above). But when it came to the TPP talks, the document turned to fairy floss: ‘Today we have identified a path forward on important bilateral TPP issues. This marks a key milestone in the TPP negotiations and will inject fresh momentum into the broader talks.’ It takes some cheek just to write that down. Japanese sources claim the Americans held the communiqué hostage, delaying its release in an effort to wring extra trade concessions from Japan––if so, all that resulted was sweet talk.

    Without a substantial trade deal soon the Obama administration risks a loss of domestic support for his much touted ‘rebalance’ to Asia. Likewise some of the gloss will come off Abe’s can-do image, particularly the credibility of his claim to want to break down structural rigidities in the Japanese economy. For all the pomp and ceremony, and three-star sushi, the two nations only managed to reaffirm the old––military––basis for their relationship rather than define the new.

    For the Japanese, an unwanted byproduct of the state visit has been to draw attention in the US and elsewhere, through media commentaries and analysis, to Abe’s pivot to the right since he returned to office in 2012. Some observers are discovering this issue for the first time, while others have looked for fresh evidence from Obama’s visit with which to refine their sense of where events might be headed.

    For the first group, it is always possible to overstate the situation––it is worth reiterating that Japan is not ‘rearming’, muzzling its news media or abandoning its democratic institutions. Nevertheless there are signs of a nationalistic revival, amid a period of heightened regional tensions. Against this background, the take out from Obama’s visit, I think, is disappointing. Having gone to Tokyo, he could not have said less than he did on the territorial issue––though he might have said more, for instance, on the mechanism by which the disputing parties might enter a dialogue. He came across more like a tourist than a statesman willing and able to engage Abe on fundamentals. If President Obama once seemed to represent a fresh, inclusive and future-oriented style of leader, he brought little or nothing of that to Tokyo. Which is more the pity, since he came at a time, without doubt, when Japanese are questioning whether what has served them well for almost 70 years can see them safe and strong into the future.

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

     

  • Brian Howe – Raising the Retirement Age

    The Labor Government planned to lift age of eligibility for the aged pension from 65 to 67 between 2017 and 2023 and now the conservatives are considering raising it to 70 by 2029. Unless there are very big changes in the demand for older workers these changes must increase numbers on other payments such as Newstart or the Disability Pension. In the case of case of Newstart it would add to the hundreds of thousands of people living at least twenty percent below the poverty line.

    Several years ago a panel (Advisory Panel on the Economic Potential of Senior Australians) chaired by Everald Compton, and established by the Gillard government reported to that government on the potential of older Australians to make a larger contribution to the economy given the fact that people for various reasons (higher living standards, medical breakthroughs) were on average living longer. (2011)

    Successive federal Treasury reports had tended to emphasize coming pressures on budgets generated by an ageing population, but there is a more positive story that might be told.

    ‘Australia’s ageing population brings real opportunity-opportunity for the nation, for industry and for individuals. Not only are Australians living longer. Australians born in 1950 will live on average almost ten years longer than those born in 1910 but changes in society are creating unprecedented opportunity. Advances in health, education and technology provide an enormous scope for the nation and individuals to make better and more informed choices about the contribution of seniors in the workplace and the broader Australian community’

    The Advisory Panel saw extended lives, especially extended middle years, as being especially significant for the active aged. It also recognized that in Australia there were formidable constraints/barriers that would need to be overcome if that potential was to be full realized.

    • the persistence of outdated stereotypes and discriminatory attitudes towards older people
    • the lack of vision and understanding on the part of individuals, organisations, industry and governments about how to capture the potential of older Australians through creating more flexible and responsive workplaces
    • the constraints of the built environment that limit older Australians living the most fulfilling and creative lives, (very limited housing and transport choices)
    • the potential of poor lifestyle and health choices, including those that increase chronic health problems such as obesity and diabetes that threaten to undermine the health advances of previous generations. (G Hugo)

    The consequence of this analysis is that simplistic approaches to ageing by increasing retirement ages whether to 67 or 70 may impacts on future trend in social security expenditure but do not address any of the key issues that the Panel considered

    Discrimination

    For example, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HEROC) has identified a significant problem in the discriminatory attitude of many employers who discriminate in favour of the young and educated, especially where they have some work experience, when putting on new employees. They may also encourage older workers to ‘take the package’ often another way of terminating workers whose skills may be getting rusty rather than offering redeployment or retraining. It is very unusual for older workers in a modern economy to be kept on if they are seen to be unproductive or be offered a transition plan that will enable that person to gradually phase from paid work into retirement. Similarly older women who have caring responsibilities outside of their paid workplace may have great difficulty in nominating the hours in which they work or having the flexibility to leave work when there are special demands at home. This may be especially the case when women are working casually and have very little protections in the form of an award. Discrimination tends to affect most acutely people doing physical work e.g., cleaners, and construction workers.

    A Different Labour Market

    It is very important that there be public recognition of the very different labour market we have today to that which existed a generation ago. Along which the shift from an industrial to knowledge/service economy (80% of jobs today are in the service economy) there has been created a very different and much more dynamic and diverse labour market. This has resulted in a comprehensive movement way from standard employment contracts. There have been increasing variation in working times, working lives of working contracts.  Also there is a shift away from large employers with life time commitment to an employee to the increasing fragmentation of employment and labour markets where people are much more reliant on maintaining their personal skills to survive in today’s labour market. The rapid pace of change implies high rate of ‘technological obsolescence’ along with a redefinition of work with for many their ‘skill set ’ no longer relevant. These changes place special pressures on older people who if they do choose to remain in paid work may have to learn new skills set or create a new business or job. It is for this reason that life long learning is so important but of course that requires time and space well in advance of so called ‘retirement ages’. For most people working longer will often mean creating a new career either in the paid workforce or in the voluntary sector. The delayed retirement age suggests that there is an employer to keep an employee on. Security of employment is no longer a part of the work contract.

    Changing Cities

    Of course the changes in the economy have spatial implications in that the new economy is now focused increasingly in those places where there is the most concentrated investment taking place in the new economy and where there are maximum opportunities for creative communication. Older people are increasingly rejecting ‘sea change’ and ‘tree change’ and seeking to ‘hold’ their places in cities but with the flexibility sought by younger childless households.  The higher costs of energy are turning cities inside out and thus the importance of holding position. But for many older people there will be the demand for new housing choices whereas the market has been slow to realize the opportunity and scale of the aged housing market.  Furthermore governments have tax and social security rules that reflect a period in which older people either did not need or were not encouraged to participate in the more cosmopolitan city. Governments are still giving the highest priority to new freeways whereas for older people wanting to be active the key will increasingly be public transport. For older people the 20-minute city makes sense as they are less mobile but want to be engaged.

    Wellbeing

    Perhaps there has been a too easy assumption that aging baby boomers are all fit and well whereas they may be much less fit than we imagine perhaps for reasons that have to do with a too comfortable life style. On the other hand they will not be served well by ageist assumptions that consign older people to a retreat from life. The good news associated with ageing is certainly that maintaining activity and involvement is consistent with good health. On the other hand there are constraints that need to be addressed. Exercise does need organization and an enabling environment.

    Conclusion

    The most important message is that advancing the age at which people are able to access income support may have a limited impact on social security expenditures. However it will do very little to increase employment for older people often facing discrimination and exclusion from a labour market increasingly favouring the well and more recently educated.  The most likely impact on the aged of deferring the pension will be increasing the numbers on Disability support pensions and on Newstart, thus creating a cohort of aged people living well below the poverty line while minimizing savings to budgets.

     

    Brian Howe AO is a former Deputy Prime Minister. More recently he was a member of the Gillard Government’s Advisory Panel on positive ageing. This panel has been disbanded by the Coalition Government.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Patty Fawkner. An Easter story

    If we think about it, each of us has an Easter story. Mine goes back to the death of my father.

    Dad died when I was a young nun. It was my first experience of the death of someone I deeply loved. Where once the word “loss” seemed a somewhat evasive euphemism, it was now acutely apt. I felt empty and fell into an abyss of grief, a grief that had begun eighteen months earlier, the day Dad was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. He was 57.

    People were kind; sympathy and support were generous and heartfelt. Yet when people spoke to me of God, faith and heaven I felt affronted. Many ‘holy’ words seemed vacuous and trite to me given that I felt nothing of the presence, let alone the comfort, of God. God was nowhere to be found.

    The ‘unfairness’ of this bewildered me. Wasn’t I a nun and a person of faith? Hadn’t I given my life to God, for God’s sake?    Shouldn’t I at least expect a modicum of divine comfort?

    Months later I decided to make a weekend retreat at a monastery under the wise guidance of an elderly Benedictine monk. He listened to my grief and wasn’t embarrassed by my tears. He simply invited me to reflect on the story in John’s gospel of Jesus appearing to Mary Magdalene on the first Easter morning.

    Mary comes to remember and honour a loved one and, like me, she encounters emptiness. She weeps. Mary turns from the empty tomb and wanders in turmoil and anguish until Jesus, initially mistaken for a gardener, calls her by name.

    As I read the words from this familiar Gospel scene, I had an inchoate sense of myself being called by name. I had a sense of some kind of presence within my confusion and emptiness. It wasn’t a warm, fuzzy experience, and even then I didn’t really have a strong sense of the presence of God. But there was a knowing, as real as it was delicate and deep, that somehow God was with me, calling me, loving me within my emptiness. And I was greatly comforted.

    Not surprisingly, Jesus’ appearance to Mary Magdalene has become my favourite Easter story and like any classic text it continues to contain a surfeit of meaning for me in new times and new situations.

    Years later when studying John’s gospel as part of a theology degree I chose to do my scriptural exegesis on this passage for my major assessment.

    The words “noli me tangere” “do not cling to me” came to the fore.  Mary had wanted to cling to the idea of who Jesus was for her before his resurrection. When Dad died I had wanted to cling to him and naïvely to a God who would shield me from human grief.

    Theological giant, Karl Rahner is unapologetically forthright:

    The God of earthly security, the God of salvation from life’s disappointments, the God of life insurance, the God who takes care so that children never cry and that justice marches upon the earth, the God who transforms earth’s laments, the God who doesn’t let human love end up in disappointment – that God doesn’t exist.

    Sobering but true. God never demeans our humanity by circumventing it.

    I had to let go of my ‘lesser’ God. I had to grow up a little in my faith and, in the words of Rahner’s fellow Jesuit, Anthony de Mello, I had to “empty out [my] teacup God.” Instead of concentrating on loss and emptiness, I had to search for a sense of the presence of my father’s spirit with and within me. With the help of the post-Easter Jesus and Mary Magdalene I began to experience the truth of John Chrysostom’s words written sixteen centuries earlier: “He whom we love and lose is no longer where he was. He is now wherever we are.”

    Mary Magdalene has become a companion and a hero. But history has not been kind to her and it is hard for the real Mary to shine through. She is often portrayed as the “good time girl” come good. Yet there is no scriptural justification whatsoever for asserting that Mary was a reformed prostitute. Nor is there any evidence to support the claim of Dan Brown of The Da Vinci Code fame, that Mary and Jesus were lovers, married, had a child, and for a time lived, not in Memphis (!) but somewhere in the Middle East.

    If we accept the orthodox definition of an apostle as one who encounters the risen Jesus and announces this Good News to the community, what we have in John’s Easter gospel of Mary Magdalene is the story of the first Apostle. She is truly, as Hippolytus second century Bishop of Rome names her, the Apostle to the Apostles.       

    This Easter, with Mary Magdalene as guide and mentor, I pray that I may once again hear a voice offering love and life in the empty tombs of my life. I pray that this may be so for you.

     

    Good Samaritan Sister Patty Fawkner is a writer, adult educator and facilitator. She describes herself as “a fairly Good Samaritan”.

  • Simon Rice. Racial vilification, social values and humility

    I have spent a professional lifetime trying to get people to know about (let alone respect) anti-discrimination law, and suddenly everyone knows about ‘section 18C’.  For all the wrong reasons.

    A right reason for knowing about 18C would be because it is offers guidance on what can fairly be said and done on the basis of race.  A wrong reason would be because it is characterised as an unwarranted limit on ‘free speech’.

    For close to 20 years, the limits imposed by 18C have been unremarkable. The Australian Human Rights Commission receives and resolves complaints about conduct that exceeds the limits, and the federal courts decide cases when the complaints cannot be resolved.

    As with any legal regulation, awareness of 18C, and understanding about how it works, has grown over time. But most importantly, 18C, as with any legal regulation, stands as a statement of public values, a declaration by the government, on our behalf, of what is and is not acceptable in society.

    For close to 20 years we have told ourselves and the world that an Australia value is to not tolerate race-based words that cause harm.  Brandis has declared that not only we will tolerate such words, but we will encourage them.  So the 18C debate is about much more than the unremarkable exercise of setting limits on free speech.  It is, as well, about the role of our representatives in articulating public values and, relatedly, about the place of legislation in expressing those values.

    Public values change, and law needs to change with them, though it often lags behind. When there is sufficient public momentum a government acts to reflect popular will by making, amending or repealing a law.  In the current racial vilification debate, ‘free speech’ has been promoted as an Australian public value that is overly-limited by 18C, and that should now be given greater prominence.

    Has the time come to resile from the values that are expressed in 18C? It is hard to see anything that suggests that Australian values have reverted to a time when racial abuse was permissible.  Despite the Attorney-General’s notorious defence of our right to be bigots, there is no evidence that a large number of us actually want to express bigotry any more than 18C allows.

    The ‘free speech’ rhetoric is, in fact, a claim to ‘free racist speech’, and the Racial Discrimination Act allows a great deal of free racist speech; persistent reference to 18C overlooks the wide exceptions available in 18D.  We are very free to engage in race-based speech in Australia; as Richard Ackland asked ‘what is it that these people really want to say about race, colour, etc, that they are currently chilled from saying by the anti-free-speech RDA?’.

    The one celebrated case when someone wanted to say something about race, but failed to do so within the exceptions in section 18D, was Andrew Bolt’s.  If it was not for that case, and News Limited’s determined attack on 18C as a result, we would not be having this debate, and our racial vilification law would have continued doing its work.

    Senator Brandis invites us all to engage in racist speech.  When your child comes home from school dismissing ‘boongs’ as lazy and ‘towel-heads’ as terrorists, she can say that Senator Brandis told her that she has the right to be a bigot.  This type of ‘leadership’ is unworthy of an elected official, let alone Australia’s first law officer.

    Specifically, Brandis’s amendments to 18C invite anyone to say anything about anyone, under the guise of ‘public discussion’.  Perhaps it is the contemporaneous announcement of the reintroduction of knights and dames that makes me wonder whether Brandis’s idea of public discussion is still in the 19th century: a town hall meeting or a Hyde Park soap box.  These days, very little is not ‘public discussion’.  Media such as websites, blogs, Facebook, YouTube and tweets enable the public promotion of ideas and opinions as never before.

    The contemporary unregulated, unbounded world of public discussion gives the lie to those who disdain government regulation and would rely instead on the ‘marketplace of ideas’ as a way of regulating speech.  The brave new world of public discussion is undiscerning in the relative prominence it gives to speech: in the absence of any guiding principles, vicious and hateful opinion is as ‘valid’ as that which is respectful and affirming.

    There is, therefore, no ‘exchange’ as there might be in a market, no mechanism for evaluating opinion; online, everything has a claim to credibility.  There is no ordered exchange of opinion.  Opportunities for debate are limited, most of what ‘said’ remains untested and unchallenged, and it is implausible to claim that opinions will thrive or fail on merit. 

    This unregulated space suits those with the capacity to exploit it, to make the loudest noise, and to dominate.  Politicians and news media corporations have that capacity, and 18C stands in their way.  They attack it because they can, and they (wilfully?) fail to see and respect the power they have. Without the quality of self-restraint, they are able to say that something should be done simply because it can be done. Without the quality of empathy, they are able to say that causing offence doesn’t matter. And without the quality of humility, they are able to decide what level of racial abuse people should live with.

    While politicians and news media corporations have the power to dominate public discussion, racial minorities do not.  Although the backlash against Brandis’s proposed amendment of 18C has been substantial, it comes largely from those who receive 18C’s protection – that is, from those who are on the receiving end of race-based conduct, particularly migrants and indigenous peoples.

    Our social minorities, who look to the government for protection in a majoritarian ethos, now find that their government promotes a right to oppress them.  In this perverse situation, it is vital that members of the majority stand against their colleagues, and stand by the state’s obligation to protect the vulnerable who are under its care.

    Simon Rice teaches law at the ANU. He is the Professor of Law, Director, Law Reform and Social Justice, ANU College of Law. He is also Chair of the ACT Law Reform Advisory Council. 

  • Caroline Coggins. The story of Easter: the love template.

    How often do we fall in love, the sort that turns us around, strips us and re-orientates us, shakes the foundations of what it is to relate and be with another?  Not very often, mostly we are too guarded.  But at times it happens, and I have come to take this as a call, our feelings leap forward and say follow me.

    A person I loved died this week.  He was an old man, though he did not feel old to me. I just loved him. He had been a training supervisor when I was becoming a psychotherapist, so I came to know him in that particular way.  This man stretched me.  He was shy and very private, but he knew the way the human heart worked, and what it needed to grow. Mostly he worked with children, and they are great teachers, open, and available to their needs.  This man taught me about my ‘duty of care’.   Sounds clinical, but it was far from that, it was his relationship with me that showed me what this means.  He mentored me into the depths of what another really needed of me, and then what I needed to do/grow within myself to get there.  This man knew how to keep an opening for the other.

    What does love, mentoring and passion have to do with the story of Jesus and Easter? Could they be the template for relationship, how love shapes us if we let it?   We are many things.  Parts of us do not move toward love, they resist and fear, but there is a part of us that leans toward the light.  We desire love and it is in love that we are again ‘little ones’, vulnerable and in the moment. In the story of Jesus we are shown how.

    Today, mostly, we are concerned with ourselves, interested in our psychology, health, security, and what will become of us.  We feel safe with certainty, and threatened by the unknown, by mystery, unsure of the idea of giving over to another.  Yet paradoxically we thirst to feel that we are known and loved by another.

    The story of Jesus walks in through the door that the thirst opens, touches us where we condemn ourselves, inviting our needy, desiring hearts into a passionate love response, which will shape us entirely.  Our needs and our stories are particular to us, and it is mostly how we understand others, but not only so, we also need to walk in the shoes of others, being stretched out of ourselves into the bigger family.

    God longs for us, and Jesus stirs us to an intimacy, a closeness, which cracks our self-absorbed protective shells and gentles us to pay attention.  The light can shine in.  We can be many things, shy, resistant, stunted in love, and this is what we learn, and these wounds he will carry for us. This, our smaller self, and often  the only picture we can form for ourselves, is transformed by love, the falling in love, being loved.  The possibilities expand.  He calls us and we are awakened, our heart quickens, he draws us, stirs our senses, excites our interest, and we find our desiring selves, our deepest desires.  The Sufi poet Rumi says ‘Your longing for me was my messenger’.

    Desire then is what St Ignatius uses in his spiritual exercises to invite the pilgrim into the discovery of God’s love.  It is our own story, but we walk beside this man Jesus, discovering ourselves in this relationship, finding what moves our heart, breaks our heart. It is a human story, nestled in the divine, and our story with our God.

    The power of the exercises is that rather than sealing off from what is happening inside of us, we use our feelings to grope forward, toward the light, walking with him, through the gospels, and inside our own imagining being, the being that is loved and desired by God.  In the weeks of the exercises we walk his entire life, being shaped and becoming aware of ourselves in this relationship. But here too, this is the small thing, the big thing, is what we will do, desire to do, for this great love we feel and which we are given.  There is a longing to get out of our own way.  We are given ‘duty of care’, such abundance of love it must be  shared.

    How blessed we are each year to have the ritual of Easter. From ashes we proceed to ashes, loved into life and loved into death that brings life, stretched into the mystery of all of this with Him, His way.

    Caroline Coggins works as a Psychotherapist.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Ben Saul. Australia’s Guantanamo problem.

    Ben Saul has written an article for the New York Times about the imprisonment of 52 people in Australia for up to nearly five years without trial. Secret evidence has been presented against them. They have no prospect of release. 

    Read the full article from the New York Times by following the link below.

    Ben Saul is Professor of International Law at the University of Sydney.

    John Menadue

     

    http://sydney.edu.au/news/law/436.html?newscategoryid=64&newsstoryid=13274

  • Kerry Murphy. To Kill a Mockingbird and 2014.

    Mark Twain is quoted as saying that history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.  I was reminded of this when seeing the excellent production of To Kill a Mockingbird at the New Theatre in Newtown, Sydney last week.  Good literature manages to make us reflect on our own times, and challenges us to think about how we might act in difficult times.

    Harper Lee’s 1960 novel is well known and is a modern classic.  The seemingly simple story of young Scout and her brother Jem, and their widower lawyer father in 1935 Alabama still resonates with an Australian audience in 2014.

    The community attitudes on race we would think are unacceptable in 2014, however it was only a week ago that the Attorney-General told the Senate that there was a ‘right to be a bigot’.   A ‘rhyming Twanian’ theme would be the vilification of those arriving by boat and the increasingly harsh way they are treated, under both Labor and the Coalition.  In To Kill a Mockingbird we can feel for Scout’s father Atticus, the lawyer defending a black man on a charge of rape of a white woman.  Like young Jem, we ask how could the jury possibly find him guilty on that evidence.

    In the New Theatre production, the jury is the audience and we are challenged to face and reflect on our own fears and prejudices in 2014 Australia, just as Atticus challenged the jury in the 1935 story.  How do we come out of this challenge?

    Atticus tells Jem and Scout to ‘spend time in the skin or shoes of the other’ so they can understand that person. This is a challenge for us in 2014.  What if we spent time in the shoes of an Aboriginal who was discriminated against because of their race or colour, or an asylum seeker who was vilified because of how they arrived in Australia fleeing the feared persecution.   Would we so easily say there was a ‘right to be a bigot’ or that ‘illegals’ should be locked away in Pacific penal colonies?

    Lee’s 1960 story of a small town trial in 1935 Alabama resonated as much with the 1960s in the US as it does with Australia in 2014.  The play was well produced and a simple and effective set added to, rather than distracted from the story.  9 year old Teagan Croft stole the show in her confident and credible Scout.  Ably supported by 14 year old Hudson Musty as Jem and 12 year old  Kal Lewins as Dill.  Lynden Jones ably portrayed the genuinely good character of Atticus the lawyer, who had to explain to his children the bigotry of the town against his client just because of his colour.  As good as Lynden was, I still think of Gregory Peck in the 1962 film.

    Revisiting this timeless tale gives a chance to reflect on whose shoes we should stand in to understand them better.  It is easy to preach or pontificate about the inflationary vilification and appalling treatment of asylum seekers in Australia, but like Scout and Jem, I need to stand in the shoes of the others.   What makes people so prejudiced against asylum seekers?  Why does the Attorney-General think there is a right to be a bigot?  Understanding their position will help me better explain my position and views.  I just wish they were able to stand in the shoes of the other as well, and maybe their bigotry and fear would diminish.

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

    The play is at New Theatre until 19 April http://newtheatre.org.au/whats-on/season-2014/to-kill-a-mockingbird/

  • Walter Hamilton. The guts of a Free Trade Agreement with Japan.

    Dolphin-culling and free trade agreements represent opposite sides of the coin of the relationship between Australia and Japan. Both are currently in the news, with Sea Shepherd activists hounding the fishermen of Taiji (where the documentary ‘The Cove’ was filmed) and Australian cattle producers in Tokyo trying to break down the last obstacle to a bilateral FTA. More than that, the two issues encapsulate the divided response among many in the West to Japan as a backward and insular nation, on the one hand, and a modern, global partner on the other.

    Years ago I visited the island of Iki, off the coast from Nagasaki in western Japan, to report on the practice of ‘drive hunting’ of dolphins, the same culling method used by fishermen at Taiji to reduce the natural competition for a diminishing fish stock. The founder of Sea Shepherd, Paul Watson, had been in town a fortnight before and got himself deported for cutting nets strung across a cove in Iki, releasing scores of dolphins. The irony was that in the very act of sabotage Watson was caught in a storm and became stranded on an islet from where he had to be rescued by local fishermen (a fact omitted from the fanciful account of this episode posted on the organisation’s website.)

    Interested to find out how others living on the island regarded the dolphin killing, I visited a farmer working his small holding a few kilometres from the coast. ‘Oh, those fishermen down there,’ he told me, ‘they’re an uncouth lot. They give the place a bad name.’

    I was taken aback to find such a sharp divergence of interest, on this tiny island, between fisherman and farmer. I then realized the true importance of factionalism, based on occupation and geography, particularly in rural Japan. Australia’s FTA negotiators, the latest in a long line of officials who have tried for half a century to eliminate tariffs on beef and dairy imports, will be aware of these fissures in the Japanese bargaining position; the fissure, for instance, between the farm lobby and the consumer lobby, or the one separating domestic from international economic priorities.

    The ‘enlightened’ farmer I met proudly showed me his chief productive asset: one Wagyu steer penned in his front yard, being pampered and premium-fed in readiness for the abattoir. Yes, you read that correctly, a herd of one. This and a few other odds and ends, plus a huge government subsidy, kept him in reasonable comfort. He was (and I think he sensed it to a degree) a parody of modern farming. It reminds me of another occasion accompanying an Australian delegation, led by the then Primary Industries Minister John Kerin, in the mid-1980s. Australia at the time was in the grip of a terrible drought, graziers were at their wits end, and yet they could not sell into the Japanese market at fair prices. I remember going with them to a farm near Nagoya and trudging past a veritable showroom of brand-new farm machinery bought with cheap loans from a highly protected rural bank. The Australians could only shake their heads in bitter disbelief.

    So the Japanese farmer and fisherman, for all their differences in lifestyle, share one vital, historic conviction: that, whatever it takes, whatever the international pressure and criticism, their survival is paramount to the national interest. Anyone covering Japanese affairs will tell you that the Ministry of Agriculture has always outranked the Ministry of Foreign Affairs around the Cabinet table. While some progress has been made as a result of the decades of lobbying to gain improved access to the Japanese market for farm goods, every yard conceded has been hard fought. Cracks in the façade often seem to open up at moments during negotiations only to close again as a result of sectional pressure. I’ve heard Japanese Agriculture Ministers explain, in all earnestness, that their countrymen, even if they were given the choice, could not eat more imported beef––because, wait for it, Japanese intestines were different from Westerners’ intestines. Try arguing against that!

    Without major concessions on agricultural imports, no FTA with Japan would be worth its name. Political conditions, however, are as favourable now as they’ve ever been for a genuine agreement, mainly because the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, riding a large parliamentary majority, does not need the farm vote as much as it did 30, 40 or 50 years ago. Global trade liberalisation is also an important lever in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s declared policy of economic deregulation (the last ‘arrow’ of ‘Abenomics’). Perhaps the time has come. But as the Sea Shepherd boys and girls will tell you, still prowling the headlands of Taiji looking for blood in the water, rugged self-reliance and a sense of entitlement to a traditional way of life remain formidable obstacles to change in Japan. And the Sea Shepherd crew should know all about that frame of mind.

    Walter Hamilton reported from Japan for the ABC between 1979 and 1996 for a total of eleven years.

  • Walter Hamilton. Credulity and formalism: Abbott’s twin challenges in Japan.

    A prominent Japanese historian once likened the psychology of wartime Japan to a ‘madhouse’ in which the public became capable of believing anything. Another who lived through those years noted how formalism––keeping up appearances long after a cause has ceased to have any meaning––suited a nation unable to change with the times. Credulity and formalism remain powerful elements in Japanese culture, regardless of the fact that the population is highly educated and, these days, formal barriers to the free flow of information are low. Recently we have witnessed extraordinary examples of this phenomenon. As Tony Abbott prepares for his first official visit to that country as prime minister next month, it is worth reflecting on the Japanese state of mind.

    The instinct driving an elderly mother to hand over her life savings on the strength of a telephone call might appear to have little to do with international affairs, and yet her credulity fits within the larger picture. Japanese call them ‘ore, ore’ (‘it’s me, it’s me’) scams, in which a con artist pretending over the phone to be a relative of the elderly victim pleads distress and solicits money. Despite public warnings and police campaigns, this and similar forms of extortion netted criminals an estimated 12.8 billion yen ($140 million) in 2012. Though it might be hard to prove the Japanese are the most credulous people on earth, evidence points to a strong predisposition to believe what they are told.

    Take, for example, the supposedly deaf composer described as Japan’s ‘new Beethoven’ and given the imprimatur of the national broadcaster, NHK, in a documentary broadcast last year entitled Melody of the Soul. The man was neither deaf nor did he compose the works for which he was feted (they were written by somebody else). The journalists and many others who dealt with him had grounds aplenty to doubt his story, but nobody dared challenge the myth. It wasn’t until the real composer, fed up with his paltry reward, threatened to blow the whistle that the truth was revealed last month.

    This episode was followed soon after by another––in the field of science. The story initially presented to the public again proved irresistible: an attractive, 30-year-old female biologist had led a team of researchers to discover a way to create stem cells, opening a simple and ethical way to the cure of all sorts of ailments. Her youth, her sex, and the fact that she worked at a comparatively unknown (to the lay observer) institution added glamour to what was hailed as a far-reaching discovery. National pride oozed from the saturation media coverage. When it became known that, during her experiments, the superstar scientist wore a Japanese cooking apron, or kappogi, in preference to a lab coat, sales of the traditional garment skyrocketed. She might be a modern girl, but her heart was in the right place.

    The stem-cell heroine is now in virtual hiding. The research papers she co-authored have been called into question on several grounds, prompting an inquiry. Though the mistakes uncovered so far have not been branded deliberate deceptions, clearly the public had been too ready to believe in miracles. As the backlash builds, there is a tendency to vilify (‘immature, sloppy’ research, her boss now calls it) what was previously adored.

    Where Tony Abbott comes into the discussion is not, of course, in relation to the specifics of these episodes, but rather what they might indicate about the psychology of present-day Japan. There seems to be a strong, pent-up craving for miracles: redemption miracles, artistic miracles, medical miracles and, in the shape of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, economic and political miracles. It would be dangerous for Abbott, and Australia, to indulge in similar wishful thinking about the bilateral relationship. Japan is not out of the woods, economically, and relations with its nearest neighbours, currently as bad as they have ever been since the war, show little sign of improving. To ignore, play down or set aside these major conditioning factors in our two-way relationship would pander to the Japanese weakness for credulity and formalism.

    What Japan needs right now is a cold shower: a reality check, a return to earth. Tokyo’s recent decision not to review the 1993 government apology on wartime ‘comfort women’ might, at first glance, appear to be the start of a healthy sobering up. But Abe’s explanation, that ‘we must be humble regarding history’, is not necessarily what it seems. Given the government’s direct hand in textbook screening, just one example of its current ideological offensive, his further comment that ‘issues regarding history should not be politicised or made diplomatic issues’ is hardly ingenuous or helpful. If Abbott ever intended broaching the issue that lies at the heart of Japan’s poisonous relations with China and South Korea (and recent media reports suggest he does not), he has been warned off even before he gets to Tokyo.

    History and diplomacy cannot be separated on a whim, no matter how much certain politicians might find it convenient to do so. The formalism of humility without candour and sincerity, the credulity of a diplomacy built upon a refusal to fully face up to the past: these are manifestations of the same blind spot exploited by conmen, ‘deaf geniuses’ and headline-grabbing scientists. Tony Abbott needs to go to Japan with his eyes wide open and not take the line of least resistance to Abe’s unsustainable worldview.

     

    Walter Hamilton reported from Japan for eleven years.

  • Louise Newman. Detention of children seeking asylum in Australia.

    Australia has a unique approach to the ‘problem‘of asylum seekers arriving by boat in an ‘unauthorised’ fashion – exportation. Under current policy all unauthorised arrivals are processed as rapidly as possible on Christmas Island and then transferred to Nauru or Manus who are supported by Australia to assess refugee claims, house and ultimately resettle those found to be refugees. Or so the story goes. Much recent discussion, particularly since the attacks on asylum seekers on Manus allegedly by those in protective roles, has pointed to the breakdown of this system with increasing numbers remaining on Christmas Island and lack of any processing of claims or moves to resettlement. There is even discussion about the commitment of PNG to the resettlement process and they themselves have recently stated that it will not be possible to resettle in PNG those already there. The politics is complex and with a certain air of separation on the side of the Australian Government which is wedded to the concept of off shore processing as part of a framework of deterrence. The focus on deterrence of any arrivals on the mainland has led to extreme measures such as towing or pushing boats away and setting asylum seekers in the opposite direction in life boats where they become someone else’s problem on landing. The consequence or outcome is seen as the sole factor driving policy and little account is taken of the means. It is in this context that vulnerable groups such as children and unaccompanied minors and the mentally ill are caught in a particularly unpleasant political drama.

    As this is played out on the high seas we hear little discussion of Australia’s position as a voluntary signatory to the UN Convention on refugees and our responsibilities. We do not hear much discussing of the regional issues and need to support neighbours who bear most of the burden of supporting asylum seekers with minimal support. We do not provide leadership in the construction of a regional protective frame work despite this being raised by the Government appointed expert group looking at a system of response to the needs of asylum seekers and displaced persons. The ‘problem ‘ of displaced persons continues to grow as Australia’s response shrinks  – to the point where we now accept no asylum seekers coming by boat and will never resettle these arrivals on the mainland.

    In the middle of this debate the plight of the asylum seekers is often forgotten or trivialised. Many find stories of persecution and trauma ‘distasteful ‘and Government prefers to dismiss many as ‘economic refugees’ with the implicit judgment that they are unworthy. The system does not value seeking a safe life for children or fleeing ongoing persecution as worthwhile goals. The notion of threat from asylum seekers continues to be used as a political tool. The community has been caught in this escalating series of political moves aimed at limiting discussion of the broader issues and escalating fear and xenophobia. The language of “sovereign borders” and approaches veiled in secrecy as we wage a war on people smugglers does little to help us think in a rational way about Australasia role in supporting the worlds dispossessed or being a leader in our region. Both major political parties brought in reductionist approaches and prided themselves on harshness and firmness in the name of a greater good.

    The current situation emerges from a history of harsh approaches including arbitrary and mandatory detention of all unauthorised arrivals including infants, children and the mentally ill. In the days of Baxter and Woomera detention centres in remote locations a considerable amount of research and clinical evaluation documented the damage of indefinite detention on mental health and the deterioration of asylum seekers capacity to tolerate the situation. Helplessness, depression and despair took their toll as the community witnessed mass despair, self harm and protest. Children witnessed violence and behavioural breakdown and saw the deterioration of their parents. The damage was significant and well described in the HREOC report of 2005 which recommended that children should only ever be detained as a matter of last resort. Following this and with the support of all major medical and health groups, children and families were moved in to community settings with seemingly greater awareness of their needs.

    The past 5 or so years has seen a reversal of that position as successive Governments saw the need to maintain a politics of exclusion and to appeal to those sections of the community with deep seated anxiety about Australian security in a changing world. Detention of the vulnerable has continued and no exceptions are made on the grounds of trauma exposure, age, mental disorder or physical condition. Government has exported the most vulnerable to situation where health and mental health services are  minimal and with no certainly about the future has essentially recreated the conditions of over a decade ago where the detention centres became the breeding ground of mental disorders and breakdown. Recent protest, violence and self-harm are entirely predictable in these circumstances and should therefore be preventable.

    The detention of children and other vulnerable groups in these circumstances is a great shame and belittles us all. Those of us in the mental health sector need to speak out about any policy which damages the mental health and development of children and others and help to develop a higher level of discussion across the community about these important issues, Whilst Government may prefer to remain silent on its actions and their morality, we cannot.

     

    Louise Newman is the Professor of Developmental Psychiatry and Director of the Monash University Centre for Developmental Psychiatry and Phycology.

  • David Isaacs. Impacts of detention on children.

    I am a paediatrician. I specialise in paediatric infectious diseases but also work as a general paediatrician. For the last 10 years, I and my colleagues have run a Refugee Clinic at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead, where we assess child asylum seekers and refugees. The initial aim of this clinic was to screen children for treatable infectious diseases like tuberculosis and malaria and for other non-infectious conditions like rickets. However, the whole nature of the assessment has changed of late.

    Over the ten years, we have seen a very large number of children who have been in detention centres. It has become increasingly apparent that many of the children we see are suffering from post-traumatic stress and this number has risen steadily so that currently more than half of all the asylum seeker children we see are suffering from post-traumatic stress. This may be because we are increasingly aware of post-traumatic stress and ask more searching questions, but often a history of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress is easy to obtain. Young children have nightmares and sleep disturbance including sleep-walking. They are fearful and cling to their parents. They may start wetting their beds or pooing their pants. They may have problem behaviours, such as being defiant, angry or irritable. They may have somatic symptoms such as head-aches or abdominal pain. Older children may self-harm.

    Many of these children were exposed to traumas in their countries of origin and undertook perilous journeys, which clearly contribute to their stress. However, the trauma of being in detention centres without knowledge of when they will be released clearly adds to the stress and compounds the problem. Children are particularly vulnerable if their parents are struggling to cope with the trauma.

    We are able to refer our most severely affected children to a dedicated psychologist working in the Department of Psychological Medicine in our hospital. The NSW Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and

    Trauma Survivors STARTTS is a useful resource for adults and children with post-traumatic stress.

    Impact of length of detention on children

    Unequivocally, we find that the longer a family is in detention, the greater the stress on the child and on their parents. Mounting parental stress in turn increases the stress on children.

    Measures to ensure the safety of children

    Although traumatised children in detention are referred to specialist mental health staff occasionally, this is the exception rather than the rule. Children in detention who are suffering from post-traumatic stress need to be seen by a paediatrician to see if they need specialist mental health assessment.

    Education, recreation, maternal and infant health services

    Australia is a co-signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which states that all children have the right to be provided with a safe environment and with adequate health-care and education. We have an obligation to provide these to children under our care, whether they are citizens, permanent residents, refugees or asylum seekers. This includes asylum seeker children on Manus Island or Nauru. Australia cannot abdicate its responsibility to asylum seeker children by preventing them reaching the mainland.

    The separation of families across detention facilities in Australia

    Separation of families is fortunately uncommon, but when it does occur it can have a disastrous effect on children’s mental health.

    The guardianship of unaccompanied children in detention in Australia

    Unaccompanied minors have often left their entire family behind and are in urgent need of being able to contact them and to stay in contact. Closed detention is particularly inappropriate for these highly vulnerable children.  There is a clear conflict of interest in having the same person who is detaining the child as the person who is legally responsible for their welfare (i.e. the Minister).  The role of advocate for the child has to be independent of judicial decisions about the child’s fate.

    Assessments conducted prior to transferring children to be detained in ‘regional processing countries’

    Children in offshore detention should have appropriate screening tests and catch-up vaccinations and be adequately protected against malaria.

    Progress made during the last 10 years

    There has been only minor progress in the last 10 years. It was acknowledged by the previous Government that children should not be in detention at all. The number of children in community detention has grown slowly but steadily. According to DIAC, however, in September 2013 there were still over 1000 children in immigration detention facilities and alternative places of detention (not community detention). There are no current figures available on the number of children in immigration detention or their whereabouts. This is disturbing. We need more transparency. No child should be detained unnecessarily in a detention centre.

    Conclusions

    Australia has a duty of care to asylum seekers under International Law, which includes protecting them. Delaying decisions about their fate and imprisoning asylum seekers and their children in detention centres is a dereliction of that duty of care. Whether or not the asylum seekers are eventually accepted as refugees, it is counter-productive and cruel to increase their mental health problems by inappropriately draconian measures such as detention.

    Professor David Isaacs is a Consultant pediatrician at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead and Clinical Professor in Paediatric Infectious Disease, University of Sydney

     

     

  • Mark Isaacs. Deterring boat arrivals!

    Over the past decades of asylum seeker policy in Australia we have heard many justifications for a strict deterrence policy. Border protection, save lives at sea, ‘no advantage’ for queue jumpers, smash the people smugglers’ business model, and, of course, ‘we decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come’.

    At the same time, public debate fostered by mainstream media and by Australian politicians continually refers to asylum seekers by terms such as ‘illegals’ and ‘queue jumpers’, terms that we must continually reject as they have no legitimacy in Australian or international law and aren’t representative of the global view of asylum seekers. Those who control the public discourse have created a confused and purposefully misleading national discussion that shadows the truth and promotes anti-asylum seeker sentiment.

    This was recently made clear to me with the recent publication of my novel, The Undesirables, and the subsequent media space I have had the privilege to occupy. I was faced with a multitude of different arguments that rarely aligned but all came from a similar source, propaganda. The main issue most journalists wanted me to address was the idea that a deterrence policy does stop asylum seekers getting on boats to come to Australia, and hence, the government is saving lives. It seems that when a person speaks out on humanitarian grounds, with the knowledge and conviction to say that these people aren’t illegals, terrorists, threats to our security, the debate focuses on ‘saving lives at sea’.

    First and foremost, I don’t believe that this policy is about saving lives. If this policy is about saving lives at sea, and not the border protection threats Scott Morrison cites in his press releases, why aren’t we championing this policy to the world as a humanitarian achievement? Why is the policy so heavily criticised by international organisations such as UNHCR and Amnesty International? Why has the Australian government banned Australian media from entering the camps? Why are we not allowed to know how many boats the government has turned back to Indonesia?

    Let’s say that this policy does stop asylum seekers taking boats to Australia. This doesn’t necessarily save lives and doesn’t solve any global issues with asylum seekers; it merely shifts our responsibility for protecting asylum seekers, a responsibility assumed by signing the United Nations Refugee Convention, to another part of the world. It means those asylum seekers originally facing persecution now face a very bleak situation in Indonesia, a country that has no such obligations to processing refugees. Asylum seekers will still need to flee persecution and will still need the help of people smugglers to facilitate their escape because there are few ‘correct channels’ of migration, if any, available to them. I asked the men I worked with in Nauru why they didn’t come to Australia by the ‘correct channels’. Such a question was an insult in the camp.

    ‘You show me the Australian embassy in Afghanistan. You see if a Hazara man can go there without being shot. If you go to the Australian embassy they ask you why you want to leave. If you say you have a problem, they say it is not enough. Many people have tried. We cannot go to our government and ask for visas. We are not even allowed to study in Afghanistan. How do I apply for a visa to Australia when my government wants to kill me? If you want to go to the United Nations office in Quetta, Pakistan, it is in a dangerous area. People recognise Hazara faces and they target them easily. If you go there, you have to stay for a long time and it is dangerous. Maybe you will be targeted. You think we would leave our homes if we didn’t have to? You think I’d leave my family if I didn’t have to?’

    The reality of deterrence is indefinite detention: incarcerated for unlimited time periods with no idea of when you can leave. Every day feels the same, no progress, no change; just waiting. The reality of deterrence is an illogical processing system that purposefully avoids giving people answers because judging by statistics 90% of these people will be approved as refugees. In my time in Nauru I witnessed self-harm, hunger strikes, thirst strikes, psychosis, and the ultimate loss of hope, suicide attempts. Saving lives at sea by ruining lives. Countless times I heard Nauru described by asylum seekers of all ethnicities as hell. If these people could return to their home countries, they would.

    I wrote ‘The Undesirables’ for many reasons, one of which was to show the Australian people what the reality of offshore detention centres is. If the Australian people are okay with placing people in such conditions in an attempt to shift our responsibilities for protecting the world’s most vulnerable then so be it, but better they make an informed decision than hide behind the falsities and mistruths peddled by both sides of politics and claim ignorance due to this veil of secrecy that has been placed over both Manus Island and Nauru.

    Mark Isaacs

    Author of The Undesirables

    http://www.bookworld.com.au/book/the-undesirables-inside-nauru/47134434/

    https://www.facebook.com/isaacsmark1

    http://markjisaacs.com/

  • Martin Laverty. Poverty and poor health go together.

    In 2008, the World Health Organisation provided an action plan to Australia and other countries to tackle the health disparity between rich and poor which sees an Australian in the lowest group of wealth-holders live with up to three times the amount of chronic illness of a person in the highest wealth-holding group.

    One year ago last week, Catholic Health Australia and the members of the Social Determinants of Health Alliance applauded a co-authored report of a Coalition, Labor and Greens Senate Inquiry that recommended the Parliament endorse the 2008 World Health Organisation’s recommendations on how to address health equity – that we had argued must be the first important step towards meaningful action on social determinants.

    But last week, on the one-year anniversary of the release of this rare tri-partisan report, there was nothing to celebrate. There was nothing to welcome. There was just a moment to bemoan the fact that yet another year had passed since the Senate Inquiry reported and the Federal Parliament has not pushed ahead with the Inquiry’s recommendations or any plan to address unacceptable disparities in the health of Australians.

    Reports seem to emerge every couple of weeks pointing to those unacceptable variances based on people’s socioeconomic status or their ethnicity or where they live or their education level. These reports – like last year’s Senate report – are not prompting action from federal politicians.

    While we have been advocating for change at the political level and in the public domain, CHA has also been presenting compelling evidence as to why action on the social determinants is crucial. One of those contributions is The Cost of Inaction on the Social Determinants of Health; a report commissioned by CHA and prepared by the National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling (NATSEM).

    That report found that $2.3 billion in savings could be found annually through avoidable hospital admissions if Australian Governments were to implement the findings of the World Health Organisation’s Closing the Gap in a Generation report. Those are the same recommendations that the Senate Committee said the Parliament should endorse.

    The NATSEM report also found implementing the WHO recommendations could see:

    • 500,000 Australians avoid suffering a chronic illness;
    • 170,000 extra Australians enter the workforce, generating $8 billion in extra earnings;
    • $4 billion in welfare support payments saved each year;
    • 5.5 million fewer Medicare services utilised each year, resulting in annual savings of $273 million;
    • 5.3 million fewer Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme scripts being filled each year, resulting in annual savings of $184.5 million.

    These staggering opportunities are what new approaches to health policy could achieve, yet counter-intuitively they do not require change to the way our health system operates.

     

    The opportunity to reduce chronic illness and save on hospital and pharmaceutical expenditure requires action outside of the formal health system. Doing so would improve the lives of half a million Australians. It would also help the Federal Government achieve savings it is very keen to find.

     

    Australia suffers the effects of a major differential in the prevalence of long-term health conditions. Those who are most socio-economically disadvantaged are twice as likely to have a long-term health condition as those who are the least disadvantaged.

     

    Put another way, the poorest are twice as likely to suffer chronic illness and will die on average three years earlier than the most affluent. Poor health of low-income Australians can be avoided, allowing Government to spend less money on treating health conditions that should never have occurred in the first place.

    Drug-, alcohol-, tobacco- and crisis-free pregnancies are understood to be fundamental to a child’s lifelong development. So, too, is early learning that occurs in a child’s first three years of life.

     

    School completion, successful transition to work, secure housing and access to resources necessary for effective social interaction are all determinants of a person’s lifelong health. These are factors mostly dealt with outside of the health system, yet they are so important to the health of the nation.

    We can’t afford – in dollar terms, but more importantly in human terms – for this to be a political can that is kicked down the road. Action on social determinants will save lives, and deliver both government and community an extraordinary financial and social surplus.

    A resolution passed in the House of Representatives in 2010 compelled the sitting Government to respond to a Senate committee’s report with six months.

    Labor can point to the federal election – held within six months of the report being tabled – and the Coalition can point to the fact the report was tabled during the last Parliament, but we are becoming increasingly impatient with politicians who aren’t addressing the causes of poor health.

    Isn’t 12 months of increasing inequity more than enough? It’s time for action.

    Martin Laverty is the CEO of Catholic Health Australia. CHA represents the largest single grouping of non-government health, aged and community care services in Australia.

  • Graham Freudenberg on ‘The Making of Australia – A Concise History’ by Robert Murray

    When I was a teenage Tory in Brisbane in the early Fifties, Bob Murray, a bright young spark from the Melbourne Argus was the most persuasive of my newspaper contemporaries who led me gently towards the light.  In Sydney a couple of years later, at the end of 1954, in midnight to dawn sessions at the old Phillip Street Journalists’ Club, we debated the coming of the Labor Split, unwittingly laying the foundations for his classic account The Split – Australian Labor in the Fifties (1970).

    In the halcyon early Seventies, as one of the few people I knew who had actually been behind the ‘Iron Curtain’, he helped me keep Ostpolitik and  Détente in the perspective of the continuing awfulness of regimes like the East German. This clarity of views, sharpness of insights, balance and common sense abound in his octogenarian opus The Making of Australia – A Concise History (Rosenberg Publishing).

    This is the first single-volume general history of Australia since the ‘history wars’. To some extent it complements from a more conservative perspective the monumental Cambridge History of Australia edited by Stuart Macintyre, at less than a tenth of the price. Both works show how the ‘history wars’ have transformed our approach, especially about the relations between the Aborigines and the occupiers after 1788.

    For the first time, the relations between the aborigines and settlers form an integral part of the whole narrative. In the index, there are 196 entries, with substantial references, by my count, on 103 pages – one third of the book. The aboriginal story is woven into the ongoing narrative. This inclusiveness is unprecedented in Australian general histories.  We have come a long way from the great flowering of Australian historiography in the 1950s and 1960s, when Manning Clark subsequently apologised for his comparative neglect of Aborigine studies and Gordon Greenwood, in the first post-war general history Australia, ignored them altogether.

    In dealing with Australia’s military history, Bob Murray has taken a very different approach, and I think less successfully. He has chosen to lump the First and Second World Wars together in a single chapter entitled ‘The Call of Khaki’. This approach may emphasise the continuity of the two wars, at least in their European and imperial context. But, besides wrenching the chronology of the narrative somewhat, this treatment understates what I believe to be the centrality of the wars to our political, social and economic development.

    There are signs that the Anzac Centenary is going to spark another round of ‘history wars’ in much the way that the Bicentenary set in train the debate that led to the ‘history wars’ about Aboriginal Australia. Perhaps John Menadue’s blog last year about the political manipulation of the Anzac tradition was a first shot.

    This time around, I hope we are mature enough to avoid some of the nastiness that accompanied the last round. In his book on the Split, Bob Murray memorably noted ‘the absence of goodwill’ as a major factor in Labor’s self-destruction. There was a notable absence of goodwill in the waging of the first ‘history wars’.

    It would be ironic if the renewed debate on Australia’s military history came down to competing slogans of ‘best we forget’ versus ‘lest we forget’. After all, ‘best we forget’ was a sentiment often used to discourage the quest for truth about the Aborigines.

    When it comes to Anzac (as shorthand for all our wars) I uphold ‘lest we forget’ in the sense that the author of the phrase, Rudyard Kipling, used it in his poem Recessional, written for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee in 1897. Kipling meant it as a warning against the pride and arrogance of imperial power and that even the mighty British Empire would one day be ‘as Nineveh and Tyre’.

    Bob Murray and I belong to the last Australian generation for which the British Empire was still a going concern. This fine book can stand as the testimony of our generation and our understanding of what it means to be Australian.

    We were the depression babies, formed politically in the Chifley-Menzies era, with our adulthood dominated by the Cold War in all its manifestations. Despite this tumultuous and often menacing background, we have been an exceptionally lucky generation of Australians. Perhaps because the low birth rate in the Depression made our path to education and employment so easy, we were optimists. Fittingly, Bob Murray ends his book on a high note, quoting the ‘other half of Malcolm Fraser’s (and George Bernard Shaw’s) ‘Life wasn’t meant to be easy.’ – ‘But take courage, it can be delightful.’ Both halves of the quotation apply to the writing of books about Australian history. And in this case, the second half certainly applies to the reading of it.

  • Rod Tiffen. Abbott contempt of court.

    After the 2013 election, the ABC satirical program The Hamster Decides responded to an election night comment by the columnist for the Australian Chris Kenny that the ABC’s funding should be cut with an animated version of Kenny having intercourse with a dog.  Kenny demanded an apology and then sued for defamation.

    It is unusual for satirical programs or cartoons to be the subject of defamation actions, and such cases carry dangers for both sides in any litigation.  A jury’s reaction to something that in ordinary discourse would be bad taste or disproportionate is unpredictable.

    On March 6, Justice Beech-Jones ruled that the case could proceed to trial by jury because it carried the defamatory imputation that Kenny was a low, contemptible and disgusting person, although he rejected the imputation that the skit implied Kenny literally had sex with dogs.

    Following this partial victory by Kenny, there was a short publicity blitz by all those usual suspects who seize any opportunity to criticize the ABC.  In the short-term, Kenny and his allies seemed to be winning the propaganda war.  On the ABC panel show, Q and A (March 10), not one panelist took the program’s side.

    There were several claims that all Kenny had wanted was an apology, but this is in some doubt.  Sydney Morning Herald columnist Mike Carlton said that he had it on strong authority that Kenny had demanded a considerable sum of money, an on-air apology to be telecast after Media Watch, plus the statement that he was a fair and impartial journalist.  Presumably if the ABC holds its nerve and the case goes to trial, the truth of these early interactions will be revealed.

    Perhaps the most notable intervention was by Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who said in a TV interview: ‘Well the point I make is that government money should be spent sensibly.  And defending the indefensible is not a very good way to spend government money and, next time the ABC comes to the government looking for more money, this is the kind of thing that we would want to ask them questions about.’

    It is hard to remember any other prime minister making such an intervention into a civil case in progress.  It takes its place alongside other Abbott precedents, such as handing over his predecessors’ cabinet documents to the Royal Commission on the home insulation scheme, or using international fora such as the World Economic Forum in Davos to make domestic partisan criticisms.

    So far Abbott has had a Teflon run since becoming Liberal leader.  Partly this reflects the double standards at work in Australian politics.  If a Labor leader had made a comment like Abbott’s say about a News Corp columnist, there would have been a huge outcry.  Those media which have dutifully reported Abbott’s comments as sensible observations would instead have been filled with outrage.

    We have a novel situation in Australia at the moment, where substantial sections of the media (News Corp newspapers and commercial radio talk shows, at least in Sydney) see themselves primarily in tribal terms, that they are on side with the government.  In the process, those who seek to report politics impartially (the Fairfax press and in particular the ABC) are constantly attacked.

    Prima facie, Abbott’s statement seems to not only have decided what the outcome of the case should be, but also to threaten one side financially for continuing.  A naïve reading would consider that in a case which is sub judice and to go to a jury, this would constitute contempt of court.  But it is another Abbott precedent that is unlikely to cause him any damage.

    Rod Tiffen is Emeritus Professor in Government and International Relations, University of Sydney.

     

     

  • Wayne Gibbons. The boats were not sabotaged.

    “So we convince ourselves every cruelty we’ve inflicted – beginning with sabotaging boats along the Malaysia coast under Malcolm Fraser – isn’t a reflection on us. It’s tactical.”

    I was surprised and disturbed by this sweeping statement from David Marr in theguardian.com on 5 March. It unfairly casts a pall over the great success of Australia’s Indochina refugee program led by the Fraser government and the role of the immigration officials involved.

    From 1978 to 1980 I was based in Malaysia as Coordinator of Australia’s refugee resettlement programs in South East Asia. Prior to that fulltime roll I lead several short term missions to Guam and the East coast of Malaysia to offer resettlement in Australia to Vietnamese refugees. I have also served as private secretary to Ministers for Immigration in the Whitlam and Fraser Governments.

    From this vantage of involvement at the highest levels of government and at the coal face of refugee selection and resettlement, I am confident that no directions to sabotage boats were given to Australian immigration officers by people in authority and that no boats loaded with refugees were deliberately damaged by our officials. Though, I believe we may have disabled several empty boats to prevent their reuse to “push off” people who had already arrived on other vessels.

    I understand why some people may be confused on this point because we often spoke publicly about the need to “stop the boats”.  But far from resorting to sabotage as a tactical response, our strategy was to conduct a sizable, caring and efficient resettlement program under a Comprehensive Plan of Action with the countries of SE Asia in co-operation with the US, Canada, France, the UK, New Zealand  and ourselves.

    From the start, all resettlement countries wanted to discourage refugees taking very long and risky journeys across open seas in unsuitable craft. We all wanted refugees that were fleeing Vietnam on small boats to be landed in neighbouring first asylum countries into the care of the UNHCR. Australia and other countries had already agreed to treat all such people as refugees. This meant we could offer resettlement without first having to determine individual status under the UN Convention.

    From the fall of Saigon in 1975 until the first half of 1978, those setting out from Vietnam to cross the South China Sea were mostly rural ethnic Vietnamese. They travelled in small owner skippered fishing boats that were usually reasonably seaworthy.

    If our immigration officers came across any of these people as they arrived along the Malaysian coast they would try to counsel them to disembark and await an offer of resettlement. Most heeded that advice, but a few pressed on. At the same time, some local Malaysian officials would insist they keep going if their boat was seaworthy and in some instances resorted to towing them back to international waters.

    Being owner fishermen and competent seamen the Vietnamese were very reluctant to disable their own boats and would keep going if pushed off. Some made it to Darwin but most broke down en route and ended up in makeshift camps in Indonesia.  It is difficult to believe them allowing Australian officials to sabotage their boats.  Indeed I have been unable to corroborate such a suggestion among surviving officials who served in Malaysia during this period.

    All this changed rapidly from mid 1978 as arrivals increased dramatically. This next, far larger wave of departures consisted of urban people who paid corrupt officials and middlemen for their passage. They were predominantly ethnic Chinese who were crowded into vessels in numbers that made their journey highly dangerous. For example, a small vessel that would have carried 15‑20 Vietnamese could be packed with 100-130 ethnic Chinese in appalling conditions. Understandably they were almost always desperate to disembark at first landfall, be that in Thailand or Malaysia. Their wretched, cramped conditions and not infrequent encounters with pirates en route fuelled fears about being forced back to sea, which in turn encouraged them to scuttle their boats as soon as they reached coastal waters or if they were intercepted by Malaysian patrol boats. In any case, very few boats were able to withstand the coastal surf and most broke up within hours of beaching.

    UNHCR was very slow to gear up as arrivals skyrocketed and this created great frustration within the Malaysian Government, which was increasingly worried by the growing concerns evident among Malays living in kampongs along the east coast. Malaysia soon reacted by closing all mainland camps (except for the transit centre in Kuala Lumpur) and designating Pulau Bidong, an uninhabited island,  as the site for a major holding camp for arriving refugees. This created huge logistical difficulties for all resettlement countries, made worse by continuing UNHCR shortcomings.

    Malaysian patrols were also subsequently increased with orders to stem numbers landing in Malaysia by intercepting boats further offshore and deflecting them south. This led to a rapid build-up of refugees landing in the Indonesian Anambas Islands where the local population was quickly overwhelmed as more and more makeshift camps developed. Australia was among the first countries to organise resettlement from these new remote camps.

    Far from calculated cruelty, our approach to people leaving Indochina was generous and fair. It certainly did not include sabotage of small boats crowded with refugees.

    Despite the many difficulties, we made a significant contribution through resettlement. It was made possible through close cooperation with regional countries in a strategy that balanced their requirements and the demands of refugees with our own need to maintain public support at home.

    Whatever has happened since then, at the time of these policies it was a watershed for Australia. As John Menadue said in an earlier blog, “in accepting 150,000 refugees from Indochina …… Malcolm Fraser broke the back of White Australia”. Australia is a better society for it and I am grateful I had a role helping achieve that outcome.

    Wayne Gibbons was the Co-ordinator, Australian Indo-Chinese Refugee Resettlement Program. He was later Deputy Secretary, Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs and Deputy Secretary, Department of Employment, Education and Training. He was also the CEO of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Susie Carleton. The ABC is at it again.

    Don’t we all now know from the upright Hon Scott Morrison that decent members of the Australian Armed Services would never – and did not – cause the burning of the hands of asylum seekers under their control. Nor was there any further ill-treatment of a later batch of unfortunates as claimed in ABC 7.30- Report of March 17. Servicemen told Scott – and he told us.

    Australian servicemen, according to Scott, are above such conduct and it is an insult to our nation’s Armed Services to think otherwise. Of this he is convinced because there are “Regulations” and a “Code of Conduct” which rules out the sort of behavior widely claimed by the victims.

    Isn’t there also not only a code of conduct but a criminal law to provide protection within the services against the gross ill-treatment and sexual violation of young men in the services’ playful initiation ceremonies or the sexual harassment, mistreatment, even rape of their female colleagues in the services.

    Recent years have seen, according to former Minister Steven Smith, more than 2,000 such incidents perpetrated by Mr Morrison’s upright servicemen. Almost without exception these have taken place on military establishments or vessels at sea with very senior military personnel close at hand. These offences have been committed against workmates and colleagues in the services.

    It ‘s surprising then that the same people become White Knights when operating among “enemies”, “Illegals” and “undesirables” virtually unsupervised on the high seas. Morrison said he had not bothered to question the alleged victims as they had “vested interests” in making their claims.

    In view of his “Code of Conduct” mightn’t the servicemen in question also have a vested interest in denial?