John Menadue

  • 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?

     

     

  • Azita Bokan. The tragedy on Manus – an eye-witness account.

    Azita Bokan was on Manus Island as an official Iranian interpreter during the recent violent clashes. What follows is an edited version of her interview by Richard Glover on ABC Radio Sydney on 21 February 2014.

    I came to Australia some 27 years ago and am a proud Australian.  My father was a writer and had a newspaper of his own. He was imprisoned in Iran as a political prisoner for his anti-government views. I escaped Iran and was forced to wait three and a half years in Turkey for my turn to migrate to Australia. At the time Turkey was unsafe and dangerous, rife with smugglers, drug dealers and organised prostitution but I had to wait there alone as a little child without a family. I was very grateful to Australia for rescuing me as a refugee which was why I recently enlisted to assist the Department of Immigration in its efforts to protect Australia’s borders.

    I was previously in Nauru and it is bad, but the situation on Manus is simply horrendous – the heat, the physical conditions, the malnutrition [mostly raw red meat without any vegetables] leading to diseases of many different kinds, and so much more. Oral hygiene is almost completely absent and what dental treatment is available results not in remedial attention but in the detainees having their teeth pulled out without anaesthetic. Most upsetting of all is the absence of anything for the inmates to do day after day and the fact that they mostly sit in dirt looking out to the surrounding fences, which have resulted in personal suffering with deep mental conditions which I can only describe as psychological numbness. When I became aware of this situation, my immediate reaction was that I would prefer to be dead than to live in a camp like this for a day.

    Until the recent troubles, I saw and heard no unruliness or misbehaviour still less violence on the part of the detainees. In fact I could not believe their calm patience, waiting seemingly for better days to come. They told me that they had been warned by departmental officials that if they misbehaved in any way or that something goes on their files suggesting that they were or might be troublemakers, their cases would not be processed and they would not be allowed access to lawyers.

    Then on the Sunday morning, with all of them holding onto the hope that they would one day get out of that hell, they were told by departmental officials that they will never see Australia, that no third country was volunteering to take them, and that because if its awful economic situation PNG would never be able to assist them.

    Despite the fact that most of the Iranians were well educated and their leader was a PhD who was against any protest or uprising, that news became a catalyst for the first real reaction among the inmates. Two guys climbed a fence even though there are many fences, each one further away than the others, and absolutely no chance of escape. The men had no weapons so they threw fruit at the guards, mostly peaches. The response of the guards was to use rocks and metal legs of dismantled tables destined for junking to attack the detainees. Some of the detainees may have thrown back the same rocks at the guards.

    On the Monday morning, we interpreters were told that there was no work for us as no lawyers were being allowed to enter and only the medical team was being admitted. After some delay, some of us were in fact allowed in to assist the medical team and from a distance of 6 or 7 metres, I saw one detainee pushing another guy in a wheelchair. The wheelchair guy was “brain dead” – his mouth was distorted, one arm was hanging down and he could not pull it back up. One of the guards called out to the man pushing the wheelchair – “Get out, get out!!!” The guy pushing the wheelchair held tight to the wheelchair and refused to let go. In very broken English, which I did my best to translate, he said that the guards had killed his mate the previous night and he did not trust them with the wheelchair man. He said he was going to stay with him in the medical room to wait for his turn with the doctor.

    Because of my efforts to interpret, the guards turned on me and accused me of interference and of sticking up for the detainee. This was nonsense as all I was doing was interpreting what he was trying to say. The man said to me that he feared the guards would kill the wheelchair guy if he left him. I offered to the guards that I would push the wheelchair or that they could get someone from the medical team to do so. There were many guards there at the time and one or more of them pushed me away and jumped on the guy pushing the chair. He was strong and would not let go of the wheelchair until 7 of the guards threw him to the ground and held him down. I pleaded with the guards to stop the violence but they and others in the pay of the Government turned against me.

    When my attention was again drawn to the guy in the wheelchair, I could see there was blood all over him. There was a needle in his arm as if for a drip but his arm was bleeding and there was no drip attached to it. No nurse would have done something like that. His head was injured, he had no eye movement and his mouth was hanging to one side. He was just hanging like a piece of meat. Any human being would want to help a person in that state.

    I remonstrated with the guards. I said that you cannot do this to people to whom you owe a duty of care. These people paid everything they had to a people smuggler, they put their lives on the line coming through a difficult journey. Many of them lost loved ones on the way yet they somehow got to Australia. Now you shift them to the most dangerous place in the world away from the media and from the eyes of good hearted Australians. I cannot believe that Australians support what you are doing to these people. You are killing them.

    This outburst had me escorted out and treated worse than a criminal. I knew I would lose my job but I refused to let them do such awful things in silence in the name of Australia so that people elsewhere can think of Australians as a violent people intent on killing innocents.

    While I was sitting in the interpreters’ room waiting to be deported myself, I heard the sound of shooting and a lot of noise and disturbance. So I went up on the roof where I saw some horrendous things. There were many people badly injured. I saw one man who had no brain, and nothing on his neck. His skull was crushed. Another man had his throat cut and a doctor was trying to push a tube through the hole in his neck but there was too much blood coming out. He could not find the man’s lung to get the fluid out while telling someone else to pump air in. I actually heard the doctor say that he was very tired after three days of constant work. I come from a country that went through a violent revolution. I have been through a war. But I have never seen anything like this. It was barbaric.

    I am for stopping the boats and the people trafficking but I want Manus and Nauru closed and the people treated properly. Australian taxpayers are paying a fortune to the Governments of Nauru and PNG to have these terrible camps in their countries. People who cannot pay their mortgages are funding these other Governments for this sinful activity. Bring them to Darwin or other places on the Australian mainland where we have ample facilities to house them. Those who are found not to be refugees should be sent back to their homes. But those who are genuine refugees should be introduced gently to the Australian way of life and culture and then into the community.

    The politicians do not like to admit they are wrong but they have made the wrong decisions here. I appeal to them – please be honest with yourselves. You have children and families. What would you do if your brother’s throat was cut? What if your children were starving, without water or showers, and standing in 50 degree heat? What if they are dehydrated, have diarrhoea vomit every day? Where are your consciences?

     

     

  • Fran Baum & Paul Laris. Beware of the crocodiles, they will keep you out of the garden!

    We interviewed  20 former Australian Federal and State and Territory health ministers about the extent to which they were able to focus on promoting health, health equity and social determinants of health during their tenure. Social determinants of health are the conditions of everyday life (income, housing, food availability, employment, education) and the structural factors that shape those conditions (distribution of wealth, taxation levels, extent of political empowerment) that combine to determine health outcomes and their distribution. Evidence from the Commission on the Social Determinants of Health showed that action on the social determinants are vital to achieving equitable health outcomes.

    One health minister told us of a public servant who advised: ‘Health has two components to it. There’s health services, which is like a swamp full of crocodiles, and public health which is like a very pleasant garden’. The public servant noted that most ministers try and spend as much time ‘in the garden’ as possible but warned the minster to “make sure there’s a fence around the swamp and the crocodiles can’t get out first”.  From our interviews it was clear that nothing detracts more from a focus on social determinants than hospitals demanding ever more resources and ensuring they get on the  front pages. The strategies our ministers reported included “divide and rule”, for instance make allies with GPs at the expense of other groups of doctor  and having a very well-articulated, evidence-based policy framework to “divert money away from this monster of hospital based critical care”.

    Part of the process of fencing in the crocodiles was trying to shift the system towards primary health care, which as one minister said is “the only way to ameliorate the galloping demands and costs of the acute health care system”. Health ministers who had achieved a shift in health care resources in the direction of equity frequently reported it as a politically difficult move, given the competing, often emotive, calls for funding for the acute care sector. The good news is that when they did make a shift in the direction of primary health care they reported it as a legacy of which they were proud.

    Our interviews were with health ministers who held office between 1988 and 2010.  In the current health policy context even fewer few health minsters appear able to fence in the crocodiles. In South Australia we have seen very significant reductions in spending on our community health services, all done under the guise of a health funding crisis. Yet last year the salaried doctors received 9% pay increases, which seems to be a case of the crocodiles running the show! It will be interesting to monitor what happens in Queensland where Minister Springborg appears to be trying to fence in his crocodiles by introducing more stringent contracts, despite threats from the doctors about mass resignations unless Springborg backs down.

    Our study showed that only really brave health ministers are able to stare down vested interests sufficiently to make changes that are likely to increase health equity and bring about action on the social determinants of health. One of the most important things that might drive this action is a strong commitment to social justice and redistribution and a rejection of the current commitment to market fundamentalism as the bible which drives policy decisions. It is tempting to speculate that the influence of  content- free managerialism has joined with careerism amongst politicians  to reduce the likelihood of any effective ministerial commitment to equity.   A number of the ministers we spoke to felt that a spirit of redistribution had been more event in the 1970s and 1980s before the religion of neo-liberalism occupied the state. The introduction of Medicare was possible because it was linked to the Accord between the government, unions and business.

    If we are to see health ministers in the future who are driven to pursue health policy aimed at achieving health equity then they are going to have to stand up to some very powerful ideologies and players. These include the organised medical profession, those pushing market fundamentalism as a basis for organising society and a powerful medical-industrial complex that lobbies for privatisation of health services. With such pressures it becomes easier to see why the compelling evidence on the social determinants of health equity quite rarely translates into enacted policy.

     

    Reference

    Baum, F. Laris, P. Fisher,M. Newman, L. MacDougall C.  (2014) Dear Health Minister:  tend the garden but make sure you fence the crocodiles. Journal Epidemiology and Community Health Published 2 January 2014,  doi:10.1136/jech-2013-203040 http://jech.bmj.com/content/early/2014/01/02/jech-2013-203040.abstract.html?papetoc

    Fran Baum is the Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor of Public Health and Director Southgate Institute for Health,Society and Equity, Flinders University. Paul Laris is Member Medical Board of Australia and adjunct researcher Southgate Institute for Health, Society & Equity, Flinders University.

     

     

  • Walter Hamilton. Calling a spade a spade in Ukraine.

    Ukraine, the U.N., the European Union and the U.S. have nine days in which to influence the tide of events in Crimea or witness the second (after the excision from Georgia of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in 2008) expansion of Russia’s military and political control beyond its post-Soviet borders. Nine days. That’s how long the Sochi Paralympics will run – during which the prestige-conscious Vladimir Putin is unlikely to declare ‘Full Ahead’.

    Everything about the Russian takeover in Crimea suggests a carefully planned, long-term strategy. The concoction of excuses being offered by the Kremlin, the disinformation about ‘fascist threats’ to Russian-speakers and Jews, comes straight from the old KGB playbook. It is utter nonsense to suggest the special forces being used in Crimea were briefed, equipped and deployed in response to an appeal for help from ousted Ukrainian president Yanukovych contained in that piece of paper produced days after the troops were on the ground. An operation like this, requiring the coordination of many external and internal elements, had to have been in the making for weeks, if not months. The reason Russia refused last month to sign the negotiated political settlement in Kiev becomes apparent: Putin had another solution in mind.

    Sitting in Sydney, thousands of kilometres from Simferopol, never having visited that part of the world, I am little qualified to comment on the events unfolding there, I admit. But I have read enough history and heard enough of Putin lamenting the ‘disastrous’ break up of the old Soviet Union to sense that Crimea satisfies more than a passing ambition for the Russian leader. Some more knowledgeable observers believe he is acting out of a need to distract attention from weaknesses in his own country’s economy and social cohesion; that what we are witnessing is opportunistic adventurism. While adventurists are not necessarily less dangerous than methodical imperialists, the implication of their analysis, that Putin is riding the tiger’s tail, smacks to me of wishful thinking. And, anyway, successful adventurism often proves habit forming, and domestic problems, and the opposition movements that in normal circumstances coalesce around them, tend to melt away when the cause of ‘national survival’ is invoked.

    The Internet offers us a bewildering array of information, commentary and analysis on the crisis. What I did not know about the history of Ukraine, up until a few days ago, was a lot; for many people, I imagine, it has been a quick swot. Yes, Ukraine has been an independent country for only a short time. Yes, it is divided along religious, ethnic and linguistic lines. Yes, Crimea occupies a special place in the survival story of the Russian people. Yes, Nikita Khrushchev may have been tipsy when he ceded Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954. But, so what? An invasion is an invasion, and no hastily organised referendum conducted under the guns of an occupying power can be considered a legitimate act of self-determination (first run a Russian flag above the parliament building, then ask the people whether they want to be part of Russia––an order of events reminiscent of the Nazi’s Lebensraum program). The use of thugs and militias to intimidate and threaten opponents––a further tool in the Kremlin’s kitbag, as we are seeing––is the present reality, and no amount of gesturing to former historical realities can cancel out what is happening on the ground today.

    Very few Europeans would welcome a return to the Cold War. Fewer still want a ‘hot’ war over Crimea. I suspect most governments would be satisfied if Putin stops there and does not extend his annexation to include eastern Ukraine. If so, there will be a touch of ‘Munich’ about the collective sigh of relief. (A Mark Twain quote is being used a lot lately: ‘History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.’) The planned economic and political sanctions are unlikely to have a deep or lasting effect. They’re already being be cited by the Kremlin as evidence of Western hypocrisy and anti-Russian animus; any chinks in the solidarity of the sanctioning states will be ruthlessly exploited.

    All nations bordering Russia, meanwhile, have been put on notice, especially those with significant Russian-speaking populations. Over the past 25 years, efforts have been made to draw Russia into the European sphere––under Putin now the tide is ebbing. The ancient contested ground of Central Europe faces increasing pressure to re-align national interests with Russian interests. The levers for this pressure from the east will include the threatened withdrawal of energy supplies, ‘nationalist’ agitation from within the Russian diaspora and blatant military power. There will be sweeteners, too, such as soft loans and trade privileges. All will be played out amid a geopolitical conversation about growing American irrelevance and impotency (see: Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam). Such is the worst-case scenario.

    A best-case scenario might be something like this: the withholding of international recognition for a Russian-annexed Crimea (the example of Burma-Myanmar is instructive about what can be achieved through a lasting international resolve); a policy of engagement with Russia based on strict reciprocity (starting with strategic trade goods) that stays Putin’s hand from turning off the gas pipelines running west; immediate material support for open and fair elections in Ukraine, with sufficient independent observers on the ground to validate the process; and encouragement for a more inclusive political culture, which might assuage Russian concerns about creeping NATO-ism. A failed and bankrupt state in Ukraine would, after all, be a more immediate threat to Russia than any member of the European Union. It could be smarter for Russia to let the E.U. and its partners pick up the tab. Now that could be the starting point for a real conversation with the Kremlin.

    Walter Hamilton reported on international affairs for the ABC for 13 years.

  • National Council of Priests – Choosing a successor to Cardinal Pell – a pastor or a prince.

    In late February the National Council of Priests met with the Catholic Bishops Commission for Church Ministry. This is an annual dialogue. Fr Ian McGinnity who is the President of the National Council of Priests sent to his colleagues a record of the issues that were raised with the Bishops. The issues raised referred generally to the selection of bishops and archbishops. It has particular relevance to the process which will now be put in  motion for the appointment of a successor to Cardinal Pell. In its conversation with the Bishops, the National Council of Priests refers to comments by Pope Francis about the qualities he was looking for in bishops. The Council also described the issues which the Council believes should be followed in the appointment of bishops and archbishops.  John Menadue

    Episcopal appointments

    Ian McGinnity

    Since we last met two momentous events have occurred in the life of the universal Church. Firstly, the reigning Pope retired for reasons of age and health (only two other Pope’s have resigned from their post in the history of the Church, the first being St Celestine V in 1294; the last was Gregory XII, in 1415) sending a significant message to all involved in Church leadership that it was possible and also desirable to do so for the good of the Church.

    Secondly, we saw the election of a new Bishop of Rome, Francis, who has introduced a very different style of leadership in the universal Church which has given new hope and encouragement to many. Pope Francis has modelled and encouraged leaders at all levels in the Church to return to a more simple and Gospel aligned style of life.

    At the Holy Thursday Chrism Mass in Rome, Pope Francis delivered an appeal to priests to live simply, close to the needy and the suffering poor, instead of worrying about careers as “church managers”. He also said those who do not live in humility close to the people risk becoming “collectors of antiques or novelties instead of being shepherds living with the smell of the sheep”.

    On June 21 during a meeting with Nuncios and apostolic delegates he outlined the characteristics he wanted to see in candidates to serve as Bishops. He said he wanted “pastors who are close to their people, fathers and brothers, who are meek, patient and merciful, who love interior poverty and live that externally with a simple lifestyle and won’t have the mindset of a prince.”

    Candidates must be real pastors and shepherds “sustaining with love and patience the plans that God is working within his people. One who is wed to his diocese, the spouse of one church who is not constantly  seeking another.” He also stated “beware of those who are ambitious, who seek the episcopacy.”

    These criteria are challenging for all who assume this office. There is no doubt the selection process is difficult with fewer candidates and more onerous responsibilities. However a few issues still need to be faced.

    • The extraordinary length of time it takes to appoint a new Bishop, particularly in smaller dioceses.
    • The unfair expectation on elderly bishops to continue in office past the age of 75.
    • The movement of bishops between dioceses and archdioceses.
    • The lack of consultation of different groups (including the smelly sheep) in the selectionprocess.
    • The imposition of bishops with little past experience and smell of the sheep.We are aware that you have a major consultative role in the appointment of your brother bishops in conjunction with the Nuncio and the Congregation for Bishops.

      We respectfully suggest that you as a group express your hope that this process of selection will improve for the good of the people and priests.

      People rightly expect a more professional process for the selection of leaders the 21st Century.

  • Daniel Brammall. Financial advisers and the conflict of interest.

    In December last year the new government announced how it was going to ‘make financial advice more affordable’ by amending the previous government’s ‘Future of Financial Advice’ (FOFA) proposals (1).

    Recall that the FOFA legislation was introduced in response to hundreds of millions of dollars of Australians’ savings  being lost in the corporate collapses of investments like Opes Prime and Westpoint, as well as financial planners like Storm Financial. These spectacular corporate implosions and the actions of incentivised planners largely took place between 2005 and 2007 — in what we now remember as the good times, before the GFC. Of the nearly $400m invested in the Westpoint group of companies, nearly half was recommended by financial planners (2).

    Given that financial planners propose to advise us on the $1.5 trillion we have in superannuation (4), what do we do about the Financial Services industry’s pink elephant: is this a sales or advice industry?

    In 2009 this prompted an investigation into the Financial Services industry by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services (3) which asked the question “what is the role of financial advisers in this country?”.

    The answer was unambiguous: “On the one hand, clients seek out financial advisers to obtain professional guidance on the investment decisions that will serve their interest, particularly with a view to maximising retirement income. On the other hand, financial advisers act as a critical distribution channel for financial product manufacturers, often through vertically integrated business models or the payment of commissions and other remuneration-based incentives” (3). The ASIC, as Financial Services watchdog, was more strident: “Remuneration structures used in the financial advice industry create real and potential conflicts of interest that can distort the quality of advice (5).” The ASIC says that not only are conflicts of interest inconsistent with providing quality advice but they are often not evident to consumers. It believes the most effective way to deal with this is to remove the remuneration structures that give rise to these conflicts.

    What could that look like? Simple: to hold yourself out to be a financial adviser, you must be impartial. This means no links to product manufacturers, no commissions and no ‘asset fees’ (commissions by another name). This doesn’t necessarily mean that no one can work for a bank or insurer anymore. It just means that you can’t hold yourself out to be giving impartial advice.

    However on the whole the Financial Services industry is not set up that way. Of the 18,000 financial planners in this country, four out of five are owned by a bank or insurance company. Of the remainder, virtually all of them receive commissions or charge fees calculated on the size of your wallet. In fact, fewer than 30 advisers Australia-wide appear to meet these criteria (8). A small band of independents is gathering under the brand of the Independent Financial Advisers Association of Australia (IFAAA) which last year trademarked a ‘Gold Standard of Independence’, specifically forbidding these three conflicts.

    The big end of town, though, has influenced the new government to the extent that the issue of conflicts has been quietly brushed under the carpet. Last week the Assistant Treasurer said: “The current ban on conflicted remuneration captures a far wider range of circumstances than was originally intended and has resulted in significant compliance costs for industry” (7).

    Here’s the point …

    Many thousands of Australians collectively lost hundreds of millions of dollars – some of them their life savings – in collapses like Westpoint. Conflicts of interest was primarily behind it and the intention of FOFA was to avoid this ever happening again. However the new government is dismantling the reforms because industry has convinced them it costs too much. In doing so industry has successfully transferred the cost to the consumer because without reforms that squarely address conflicts of interest, Westpoint will most certainly happen again.

    — Daniel Brammall, Brocktons Independent Advisory

    References:

    (1)   http://axs.ministers.treasury.gov.au/media-release/011-2013/

    (2)   https://westpoint.asic.gov.au/wstpoint/wstpoint.nsf/byheadline/Actions+against+financial+planners?opendocument

    (3)   http://www.aph.gov.au/binaries/senate/committee/corporations_ctte/fps/report/report.pdf

    (4)   http://www.superannuation.asn.au/resources/superannuation-statistics/

    (5)   http://www.apesb.org.au/uploads/attachment-4-c-asic-submission-to-pjc-inquiry.pdf

    (6)   http://www.smh.com.au/business/profit-above-all-else-how-cba-lost-savings-and-hid-its-tracks-20130531-2nhde.html

    (7)   “Retreat on planners to hit investors”, AFR 8 February 2014.

    (8)   http://www.superguide.com.au/how-super-works/truly-independent-financial-advisers-in-australia

     

  • Arja Keski-Nummi. Offshore Processing in Cambodia – Really?

    The idea of Cambodia as a so-called offshore processing centre is not new. For a nanosecond I recalled the former government contemplated Cambodia as a likely candidate for an offshore processing centre. Thankfully saner heads prevailed, although to their discredit they did also contemplate East Timor.

    The scramble to avoid doing the decent thing and accept our responsibility to process asylum seekers quickly and fairly is mind-boggling.  This government is following in the questionable footsteps of the former government in shirking decency for short-term political gain.

    Just consider the countries we are using for off shore processing or the one, Cambodia, now being considered.

    According to the CIA publication The World Fact Book 2013, Australia’s population of 22.2million has a life expectancy of close to 83 years, a GDP per head of $US 42 000  We have 3.85 doctors available for each 1000 people and by international comparisons negligible poverty. Compare this with PNG which has a GDP per head of $US 2700, a life expectancy of 66 years, where 37% of the population live below the poverty line and where there are only 0.05 doctors per 1000 .In Cambodia the statistics show the following for a population of 15.2milllion: life expectancy 63 years, GDP per head $US 2400, and where there are 0.23 doctors per 1 000 population and where 20% of the population live below the poverty line.

    We live in different worlds. Not only should we be embarrassed.  We should be ashamed to think that this is even considered.

    If we were truly serious about regional security and building a sustainable and dynamic regional economy and societies then we would not be offshoring our responsibilities for a small proportion of the world’s asylum seekers. We would not be decreasing our aid efforts in poverty alleviation, health and education as we have done to the tune of $250 million in the Asia Pacific region while “bribing” poor, politically unstable countries to take asylum seekers for an unknown number of years.

    The Foreign Minister cited the Bali Process as justification for the approach to Cambodia. It is a disingenuous characterization of the Bali Process to see an arrangement with Cambodia as consistent with recent Bali Ministerial communiqués that endorsed the concept of regional processing centres. It would do the government well to know how such arrangements worked in the Comprehensive Plan of Action under the Indo China program to understand how regional governments might view such arrangements now.

    It would also diminish the Bali Process if the Government uses it as merely a people smuggling forum and not actively support the development of the broader regional arrangements that Bali Process governments have endorsed in recent years and which address in a more holistic way both the people smuggling dimensions of population movements as well as protection and support arrangements for displaced people.  Admittedly such arrangements are not “quick fixes” but in the long run are more sustainable and realistic.  The pity is that Australian governments seldom have a long-term strategy in mind and are limited by their lack of imagination, the political cycle and fear of an electoral backlash.

    In 2012 there was an answer in the proposed arrangement with Malaysia that the Abbott Opposition rejected because it suited them, not because they really believed it was wrong but because they did not want the former government to succeed in “stopping the boats”.  Well, now that the Abbott Government has succeeded in that they should be big enough to revisit the Malaysia arrangement. It should see if it can be salvaged, make the necessary legislative changes and get on with the job. That arrangement was sound, it was humane, it was supported by the UNHCR and importantly it addressed the issue of displacement “in situ” unlike the arrangements on Nauru, PNG or indeed if it happens Cambodia. None of these are countries of transit or in any appreciable way countries of first asylum. Indeed with the current arrangements we are exporting those problems to them!

    If the two parties were really serious they would do what two previous Governments, the Fraser and Hawke governments did when faced with similar issues and talk to each other, agree on a way forward and show leadership by dealing with these issues not as a political free for all that creates social disharmony but rather as a responsible and humane approach to address the circumstance of vulnerable people displaced by war and civil unrest.

    Arja Keski-Nummi was First Assistant Secretary of the Refugee, Humanitarian and International Division of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship from 2007 to 2010.

     

  • Andrew Babkoff. The human side of refugees.

    (*names have been changed to maintain privacy)

    There is a significant amount of misinformation and misunderstanding surrounding asylum seekers (in particular ‘boat people’) and refugees in Australia. In response, a number of people outside of the mainstream media have highlighted the need for refugees’ stories to be presented through mainstream outlets. My personal experience as a teacher of refugees and migrants has allowed me to see the human side of the refugee issue by hearing about the stories of people who have been granted asylum in Australia.

    Below is a reflection I wrote after a numeracy class I had with a group of refugees and migrants in Brisbane in 2013.

    We had our tests today in numeracy. I gave them the shopping docket test and the one on the ANZAC biscuits recipe. Attendance was good. I spent the first twenty minutes pre-teaching vocabulary and reminding the students to show their working on the test paper. When they started the test, a hush of concentration fell over the room, and I kept a lookout for anyone who needed help. Some students, especially the younger ones, worked quickly, only needing a little help with concepts and the wording of questions. A couple of the mature age students, Afghan men, lagged behind and needed a lot of explaining, although their maths skills were quite good. Hassan, who seems around seventy, laboured faithfully over his paper, scribing his working and answers methodically and accurately. Several times, when they were speaking to each other in Dari, I had to remind Hassan and Mustafa, a man in his late forties, to ask only me if they had any problems, as it was a test. I sensed their frustration building, but I had to keep it fair for all students and maintain the standards of the process.

    I ended up spending another half an hour with Hassan after class. Apologetic and grateful for my help, he felt compelled to explain his slowness. His wife, in a beginner English class, came in and, after seeing us talking, sat down at the front of the room facing us. In what most people would call broken English (which was a huge improvement from when I first met him), Hassan recounted to me how he’d been denied the opportunity of an education in Afghanistan. He said, “I couldn’t have an education. Neither could my wife. Many times I’ve thought, ‘Why am I alive? What am I living for? Wouldn’t I be better off dead?’”

    For many years, he had done business in Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan and Iran, so spoke five languages fluently, but he lacked the English to be able to work and support his family in Australia. He told me, with heartbreak on his weathered face, how in Afghanistan he and his sons had run a successful used car business and that, when he had refused to share his profits with the Taliban, they had killed two of his sons. As he spoke, tears ran down his face and his wife wept silently. Despite her very limited English, I felt she knew what her husband was talking about. After he told me they had brought their three daughters to Australia, he and his wife lit up with joy as they expressed their gratitude at being given a second chance at life.

    Hassan came to Australia by boat with his wife and three daughters. Sadly, his third son and daughter-in-law died en route to Australia.

    Many refugees have similar stories of escaping horrors such as the torture, rape and murder of people in their family or community. In many cases, the journey to asylum is long and painful. It can also include years enduring the conditions of overcrowded refugee camps. In some cases, mothers even resort to prostitution to attain limited food for their children while staying in a camp. Some asylum seekers have to go to several different countries before they are finally granted refugee status. For some, getting on an old boat to come to Australia is the last option for survival, not an easy way to a better life by ‘cutting the queue’. If someone is willing to leave their home country and give AUD20, 000 or more to a ‘people smuggler’ to make the perilous journey across the sea to Australia, then it must be an act of extreme desperation to escape a situation that promises dangers such as persecution, even death. Some families send their eldest son with all their savings, a gamble for safety.

    In my nine years of teaching, I have never seen such determination to learn as I see among my refugee students. People like Hassan have rescued their families from imminent danger, giving them the chance to have a full and productive life. Though they may have experienced or witnessed horrific abuse, they live with a spirit of resilience and profound gratitude.

    As Hassan told me, “Here, in Australia, I feel for the first time I am free. I have started to live here. I and my family are very happy here.”

    Andrew Babkoff was an English language teacher in Seoul for five years. He is now an ESL teacher in Brisbane.

     

     

  • Mark Gregory. NBN – ageing copper network and structural separation.

    The Australian telecommunication industry is in crisis and centre stage is an ageing copper network that some would have you believe is good for another hundred years and others argue it is time to move to an all fibre access network.

    But the problems extend far beyond copper versus fibre and go to the heart of what an industry needs if it is to be a successful contributor to the Australian economy. As Australia struggles to find out how this sorry saga will end, questions should be asked of our politicians and telecommunication industry leaders why there is no plan for the future.

    To understand why criticism can be levelled at the development of one of Australia’s most important industries it is necessary to wind back the clock to 1982 when the Davidson Enquiry recommended the introduction of a competitive telecommunications industry.

    At the time Australia had three telecommunication organisations. The Australian Telecommunications Commission (ATC), trading as Telecom Australia, was responsible for the provision of terrestrial telecommunication services within Australia. Aussat Pty Ltd was responsible for satellite telecommunication and broadcasting services within Australia, and the Overseas Telecommunications Commission (OTC) was responsible for the provision of international telecommunication services. Aussat was established with a restrictive license that prevented competition with Telecom Australia, and to ensure this was adhered to, Aussat was effectively prevented from raising the capital it needed to flourish and two directors of Telecom were appointed to the Aussat Board.

    The Davidson Enquiry’s recommendation was timely and if it was implemented carefully the Australian telecommunications industry could have entered a period of expansion, competition and prosperity. So what went wrong? Everything.

    The first mistake, which has never been corrected, was a failure to map out the future of the fixed infrastructure, which at the time was largely copper in the access network and coaxial cable, microwave radio or copper pairs in the transit links.

    Optical fibre was new in 1982 and the Telecom Research Labs had started the process of introducing optical links into the Australian telecommunications network. Enough was known about the potential future capabilities of optical fibre for forward network planning to incorporate it into all major trunk routes by year 2000 and access networks thereafter.

    During the 1950s the then Postmaster General’s Department expanded the copper network beyond urban areas and commenced an ongoing maintenance and upgrade program. A key reason the copper network expanded beyond the urban areas was the recently adopted universal service principal by government that resulted after a robust campaign by regional and remote Australians for telephone services.

    The modern Australian copper network was progressively rolled out in the 1950s, first in urban areas and then to regional areas, with an anticipated lifetime of 50 years. In some areas the copper network is now more than 10 years beyond the anticipated lifetime. Copper networks do degrade over time, due to the effects of water leakage, the environment and mechanical damage. Over the decades the cost of maintaining the copper network has been steadily climbing.

    In the period 1982 to 1992 the fate of the three monopoly telecommunications providers was debated within the federal government, and initially the focus appeared to be on how to ensure each organisation remained viable rather than how to promote competition. For example, proposals for Aussat and OTC to merge were rejected in favour of OTC being merged with the ATC which was renamed AOTC in 1991 and finally became Telstra Corporation in 1993. Aussat was sold to a new entrant, Optus, as part of a deal enabling it to share a duopoly with Telstra in 1991-97 as a first step towards national infrastructure competition.

    Guidance on how the fixed infrastructure network could be expected to change over the next 50 years was not provided and was put into the hands of the telecommunications market to best determine, within the constraints of an amended Trade Practices Act (1997). But the reality was and remains that the future of the fixed infrastructure remained largely in Telstra’s hands until the advent of the 2009 National Broadband Network (NBN) policy, though this policy was flawed and Telstra retained ownership of exchanges, pits, ducts, traps and other infrastructure to be utilized by the NBN.

    In 1997 the government made extensions to the Trade Practices Act 1974 that guaranteed access to Telecom (Telstra) infrastructure on terms that were to be negotiated and ultimately regulated by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). In 1997 the Australian telecommunications market was formally opened to full competition in accordance with the Telecommunications Act 1997.

    Or so the government would have us believe, because by carefully restructuring the existing incumbents the government created two monopolies that remain today: Telstra (national copper access network) and Aussat (later Optus – satellite broadcasting).

    Whilst other companies have launched satellites, installed undersea cables, installed fibre networks and built mobile cellular networks, Telstra and Optus remain dominant because each was provided with public infrastructure and in Telstra’s case the public infrastructure included the thousands of telephone exchanges and tens of thousands of kilometres of pits, ducts and traps that house the copper network.

    So Australia slipped into a regime where “competitors” would pay Telstra and Optus to utilise their infrastructure at rates negotiated or set by the ACCC, which ultimately include a profit component that ensures Telstra and Optus remain viable. The degree to which Optus retains an anti-competitive advantage has diminished more than Telstra’s anti-competitive advantage.

    Telstra in particular has taken every opportunity to leverage its infrastructure to optimise profit, often arguably at the expense of competition. As mobile telephone networks became more prevalent Telstra was able to convince the government that the mobile network should be used to provide aspects of black spot remediation, provision of emergency information and services that might be considered to be better provided under the universal service for which Telstra was most recently awarded another contract for 20 years in 2012.

    What this means is that Telstra has been able to draw on local, state and federal government funds to assist in the build out of the Telstra mobile cellular network. The extent of public funding received by Telstra for mobile network expansion has been difficult to quantify.

    At the last election the government announced that $100 million would be provided to assist with mobile cellular network expansion and black spot remediation. Telstra will argue that its network is best placed to facilitate the government’s aims, but only if all the money or the greater proportion goes its way.

    By the early 2000s Telstra found itself with two infrastructure competitors in the mobile cellular market and about 10 infrastructure competitors in the provision of DSL over the copper network. Prior to 2008 Telstra charged DSL providers for fixed telephone connection line rental in conjunction with a line rental cost for the provision of DSL. Effectively for every DSL provider customer Telstra would benefit through the provision of a fixed telephone service ensuring Telstra’s profit related to the copper network remained high.

    The decision by the ACCC, which Telstra fought all the way to the High Court in 2008, to introduce unconditioned local loop provisions effectively ended Telstra’s ability to force DSL providers to include fixed telephone connections with DSL.

    The loss of this income and the ACCC’s ongoing review of the charges that Telstra could levy DSL providers for DSL only connections meant that Telstra put the fixed network infrastructure into a holding pattern whilst Telstra focused its investment on expanding and upgrading its mobile cellular network.

    In the Howard government years between 1996 and 2007 questions were asked of Telstra about upgrading the copper network to FTTN for broadband delivery, and as time progressed the FTTP option was also discussed. The Rudd government asked the same questions and received the same answers, which amounted to Telstra asking for a government handout to upgrade to FTTN or overbuild to FTTP.

    By the 2000s there was a dawning realisation that effective competition would only flourish if there was a way to do what should have been done in the mid-1980s and that was to split Telstra into retail and wholesale organisations, so that future privatisation would facilitate effective retail growth whilst ensuring the wholesale organisation could go to the market when demand dictated to upgrade or overbuild infrastructure.

    In the Australian context this means upgrading or overbuilding the entire network, no piecemeal approach, no urban cherry picking of high value areas, because the universal service legislation effectively enshrines the right of every Australian to fair and equal access to a standard telephone service (it does not dictate fair and equal access to broadband or mobile services, which are left to the market). The 2012 government review and update of the universal service obligation did not include the provision of data services in the legislation and for this reason the outcome was flawed. Any thought that regional and remote Australia would accept anything less than a socially acceptable national outcome would return us to the robust campaign days of the early 1950s that led to the universal service in the first place.

    Whilst not discussing the national broadband network at this point, but staying focused on the reasons why the Australian telecommunications industry is not truly open and competitive, it needs to be pointed out that by “leasing” access to Telstra’s infrastructure for the national broadband network the government has effectively ensured that Telstra will retain its market dominance, because it can undercut any provider using the national broadband network knowing that it can make up the income shortfall through the profit it receives through the infrastructure lease agreement and maintenance arrangements.

    So where to from here? Australia is long overdue for a non-political rethink of how to facilitate an open and competitive telecommunications industry that results in effective structural change that includes Telstra’s separation into retail and wholesale organisations and also provides forward looking guidance on what the industry’s infrastructures needs will be over the next millennium.

     

    Mark Gregory is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at RMIT University. His blog can be found here.

     

  • Walter Hamilton. The ABC and its Japanese Cousin.

    If the board and management of the ABC need to firm up their ideas about the proper relationship between a public broadcaster and the government of the day they might consider what is happening in Japan.

    NHK, that nation’s public broadcaster, is a $7bn enterprise largely funded from television licence fees, with a board of governors appointed by the prime minister. It exerts enormous influence through its highly rating news and information programs, but the situation in which it now finds itself––criticised for being a mouthpiece for the conservative national government––is in sharp contrast to the ABC’s predicament. In thinking about how to respond to the attacks of Tony Abbott and others, managing director Mark Scott and chairman Jim Spigelman might reflect on their Japanese cousin.

    There are direct parallels. The ABC has an international service that must report on controversial issues such as the Navy’s involvement in forcing back boats of asylum seekers from Indonesia. NHK has an international service that must report on issues just as touchy, including the territorial disputes Japan has with China and South Korea.

    On 25 January, at his first news conference after being appointed NHK president, Katsuto Momii (a former business executive with no background in broadcasting) was asked how the organisation should approach the subject of the Senkaku (Diaoyu) islands. He replied: ‘International broadcasting will be different from domestic programs. Regarding the territorial issue, it will only be natural to clearly present Japan’s position. It would not do for us to say “left” when the government is saying “right”’. In responses to other questions, he effectively endorsed the Abe government’s position on visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, the use of ‘comfort women’ during the war and the necessity of a new state secrets law.

    Though clearly embarrassed by this kowtowing performance, the government’s chief spokesman later excused Momii’s remarks on the basis that he was expressing his ‘personal views’––as if that made them irrelevant. (Former ABC chairman, Donald McDonald, while still in that position, continued his fund-raising activities for the Liberal Party according to the same logic, so there is an Australian precedent.) On Friday, summoned before a parliamentary committee, a nervous Momii heard an opposition member express the concern of some that NHK was becoming ‘the public relations department of the government’. Also last week, an economics professor quit an NHK radio program, on which he’d been a commentator for 20 years, after being told to refrain from criticising the nuclear power industry during the current Tokyo gubernatorial election. Keeping silent on the election issue, he was advised, was NHK’s way of maintaining balance.

    By some accounts, the man that Momii replaced at the top of NHK, Masayuki Matsumoto, decided not to seek a second term because of complaints from within Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party that NHK gave too much prominence to critics of nuclear power and the American military bases in Japan. It must be said, however, Matsumoto’s presidency was marked by other scandals and for most of his three years the now-opposition DPJ (Democratic Party of Japan) was in office.

    Nevertheless, for someone who watches NHK daily (via satellite) a change in tone and content of its news and current affairs programs has become more apparent since the Abe government returned to power. Conspicuous has been the switch from prominent coverage of anti-bases activities in Okinawa to muted and irregular coverage of this issue. For such a thing to be apparent is significant because, for as long as I can remember, NHK’s news product has been predictably middle-of-the-road. Never flamboyant or opinionated, its programs could be boring through avoidance of controversy, and thus culturally conservative, but rarely did they carry political bias on their sleeve. Now, according to Momii, the policy is: what’s right for the LDP government is right for NHK.

    How this will play out with the Japanese public remains to be seen. Already one in four television owners is refusing to pay the NHK licence fee, for whatever reason. In this respect, NHK is more exposed to the public mood than the ABC, which is funded directly by parliament. It is easier for the Abbott government to punish the ABC by, for instance, taking away the Australia Network (which is funded separately through the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade).

    There are some within the ABC who would welcome this step. They have always felt the international service sapped resources from the corporation’s primary, domestic functions and would rather have the battle-lines with the Coalition drawn along the issue of how the ABC serves its Australian audience.

    But this would be risky and shortsighted. Australia Network, if it is to project the nation’s values to the world, must be able to report without fear or favour, a core value in a society that embraces free speech. Here and now is the place to stand up and be heard. Secondly, the ABC’s critics obviously believe it is easier to make the case that the corporation has grown ‘too big’ than it is to win the ‘bias’ argument. (Donald McDonald himself took this line during a recent appearance on the ABC, though when asked for examples to prove the ABC was overstretched only mentioned seeing errors in Supers, the text that appears on screen identifying people during news items.) Chopping off the Australia Network, if achieved without great political cost, could embolden more and deeper cuts aimed at specific domestic services.

    In making a defence for the role of a vigorous public broadcaster the ABC’s bosses might look down the path NHK is sliding and take heart from the alarm being raised in Japan. The ABC’s journalists and other program-makers, meanwhile, though understandably eager to rush to the barricades to counter the apparent threat from the conservative side of politics should think again. It would be much better for them and for their organisation not to treat this as a partisan cause (Labor, when in power, also wants a co-operative ABC) and avoid openly siding with critics on the left (including on Facebook). The principles of free speech and openness that form part of the fabric of our democracy are, and must remain, above party politics. If the ABC, in upholding the highest standards of professional journalism, must sometimes say ‘right’ when the government says ‘left’, then the Australian public can be relied upon to know and respect the difference.

    Walter Hamilton, a former Tokyo correspondent, worked at the ABC for 33 years.

     

  • Walter Hamilton. A Strategy Less Than Grand: Where the ‘New Japan’ Goes Wrong.

    In a commentary published by the Lowy Institute entitled “Japan is Back: Unbundling Abe’s Grand Strategy*, Dr. Michael Green (Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic International Studies in Washington, DC) analyses the political and economic policies of Japan’s conservative government under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and concludes that “the overall strategy could be quite effective” in enhancing Japan’s prestige and forcing the cooperation of China.

    The article is detailed, wide-ranging and informed by high-level contacts within Japan. The credentials of the author and the forum in which his views were aired suggest they are likely to be consonant with advice that Prime Minister Tony Abbott is receiving from his foreign affairs advisers. The article deserves a close reading because Green’s attempt to give Abe’s policies the status of a “grand strategy” unintentionally exposes their underlying contradictions.

    The author begins by arguing that Abe’s strategy does not represent a break with the past: “[His] national security agenda is not, in fact, a departure from the general trajectory established by his predecessors in the post-Cold War era.” Elsewhere, he asserts, “While scholars have emphasised the debate among different strategic schools in Japan, the real debates now are mostly about the timing and scope of change – not its direction.” Green wants to counter any suggestion that Abe is an extremist or maverick politician acting out of step with popular opinion. Later in the article, however, he states: “The policy and legal obstacles that Abe is now busy removing as part of his internal balancing strategy were erected by previous Japanese governments eager to build a buffer against involvement in US military plans in the Pacific.” There is an obvious contradiction. Is Abe building on existing policy frameworks or dismantling them?

    Green’s case that Abe’s policies are continuous with the past, on closer examination, is based mainly on the claim that “[his immediate predecessor, Prime Minister] Yoshihiko Noda…began the push for most of the key elements of Abe’s security agenda.” In other words, by “predecessors” he means principally Noda. While it is true the Noda government sought to shore up Japan’s alliance with the United States, this represented a swing of the pendulum back from the failed attempt of a former leader of his ruling Democratic Party of Japan, Yukio Hatoyama, to put a distance between Tokyo and Washington. Noda gave expression to one side of the historical “bi-polar” complex that has characterised Japan’s postwar relationship with the US. Furthermore, the Noda government––deeply unpopular because of its perceived incompetence––took strategic decisions (notably the purchase of the three Senkaku/Diaoyu islands that so enraged China) reactively, under duress and without a clearly articulated policy agenda. To posit a continuum between Abe and the panicked previous administration is curious, to say the least.

    Green refers to a former “left-leaning” Prime Minister Takeo Miki’s opposition to arms exports, without identifying him as a leader of the same Liberal Democratic Party Abe now heads. The LDP, like the DJP, has always contained competing views on whether rearmament or disarmament best serves Japan’s national interest, whether a look-to Beijing or a look-to-Washington posture is preferable. The current ascendency of the pro-Washington hawks within the LDP is just that: a phase in a cyclical power play. To suggest, as Green does, that a single continuity of views has existed within Japan’s leadership since the breakup of the Soviet Union is unsupportable. (The recent about-face by former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, coming out against nuclear power and backing a rival to the LDP’s candidate in Tokyo’s gubernatorial election, is a further example of the volatility of Japan’s conservative mainstream.) While it is true that Abe enjoys a high level of support within the electorate––anything over 50% is extraordinary by recent standards––there is little evidence that the so-called “grand strategy” (which Green invests with a spurious coherence) goes more than slogan-deep in terms of public understanding. Indeed it is incapable of being comprehended, I submit, because of its internal contradictions.

    Another of the contradictions emerges when Green discusses regional responses to Abe’s policies. He states that the Abe Government “is pursuing foreign and security policies that are welcomed…by most governments in the region.” Yet he also says, correctly, that “the most striking thing about his diplomacy is that it has been focused on the near and far abroad rather than the immediate neighbours South Korea and China.” Given that the other key players in Japan’s region are, of course, China and South Korea, how does Green’s first statement stack up? He seems to believe that Australia, the US and other like-minded nations should support Japan in a diplomacy conducted over the heads of its nearest neighbours: “Abe’s preference for diplomacy with the states around China’s periphery also reflects his view that Japan’s natural partners are the democratic maritime states.” For Australia to automatically support Japan against its neighbours, rather than urge Tokyo to seek an accommodation with nations of vital interest to us, would be foolhardy.

    Green identifies within Abe’s diplomacy (correctly, as far as it goes) an attempt to present Japan as a bastion of freedom, rule of law and transparency, and thus a defender of “Western” values, as opposed to the alternative “Pan-Asian” version that defines Japan by cultural and ethnic affinities. Japan, however, has been down a similar path before, in the period 1900-1925, and that, as we know, proved unsustainable. Green concedes that “tensions between Seoul and Tokyo are indirectly hurting broader Japanese influence in Asia and even in Washington” but does not explain how, by facilitating a diplomacy that overlooks South Korea, the US or Australia would benefit. Green treats the disagreements over historical accountability, so damaging to regional relations, as “complications.” This happens to be the prevailing Japanese attitude, based on the calculation that since China and South Korea have not always been as strident about such matters in the past, they can be waited out. The danger of inaction, however, was underlined again recently when the new president of NHK, Japan’s national broadcaster, made light of the “comfort women” issue during a news conference. Every time the Japanese Establishment’s complacency and recalcitrance are exposed, the gulf widens. If Abe wishes to lead a credible world power he must embrace a credible and candid accounting for the nation’s past. More than a complication, right now it is the spanner in the works.

    In his discussion of Japan’s defence needs, Greens starts from the proposition that “China’s coercive pressure in the East China Sea…is most likely to spark a larger confrontation.” No evidence is offered for this one-sided view. He considers an increased Japanese military capability, including counterstrike deterrence, the sine qua non of a strategy to prevent Chinese coercion. Green’s account of why the country has lived for so long with a limited military capability is pure revisionism: “Japan’s deterrent capabilities are significantly less efficient and credible because of the numerous legal and bureaucratic constraints that have accumulated in the post-war period.” The language suggests that red tape, rather than a popular aversion to military adventures, has been the main constraint on Japan since 1945. The opposite is true. Japan’s war-renouncing constitution has been the central pillar of the nation’s postwar prosperity, and to dismiss it as a “bureaucratic” encumbrance is quite perverse. Certainly, various governments over the years have reinterpreted the basic law to enable Japan to maintain a modern military establishment but each step on that journey has kept intact a credible commitment to the principle of non-belligerence (though critics of Japan’s support for American military engagements in Asia and elsewhere would, of course, disagree). This is a whole-of-state issue, not a matter for backroom tinkering.

    Green reports a “growing interest in Tokyo in the concept that Japan might use the development of counterstrike capability as a source of leverage vis-à-vis the United States.” He argues that as a result of Japan embracing a broader definition of its right to collective self-defense “the SDF will be seen by allies, partners, and potential adversaries as a more effective fighting force within the confines of Japan’s renunciation of war as a means to settle international disputes.” A more effective fighting force, I suggest, is not necessarily the best advertisement for the renunciation of war. For the two to be possibly compatible would require a style of leadership––inclusive, disposed to listen rather than dictate, and sensitive to the concerns of neighbours––that Abe so far has not displayed.

    Green describes a view taking shape within the LDP that the government need not move immediately to revise Article 9 of the constitution in order to achieve its military-strategic objectives; it can do so through an administrative measure. But a change to Japan’s military posture to include a significant counterstrike capability, without a full airing of the issues that a debate on the constitution would enable, is not a development Australia should welcome. It runs counter to the very democratic values Abe insists link his nation to “natural partners” like Australia. The centralisation of power under Abe that Green identifies (and approves of), including the creation of supra-parliamentary organs, such as the new National Security Council and National Security Bureau, and the enactment of a wide-ranging state secrets law, might, to some, make Japan a “normal” country, but they seem unlikely to cast more light on the murky process of Japanese policy formation––quite the reverse.

    A final contradiction arises in Green’s discussion of the support he says the US, Australia and others should lend Japan in its confrontation with China: “The United States, Australia, and all maritime nations have a stake in Japan not backing down under Chinese military pressure. Ultimately, a modus vivendi might be reached in which Japan finds a way to acknowledge officially that there is a de jure dispute [over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands].” For Japan to acknowledge that a de jure territorial dispute exists, as Green surely knows, would to Abe and his supporters constitute a back down. Such a concession might be desirable; but to argue against backing down to China and, in the same breath, to advocate it is peculiar. Green gets into this pickle by failing to adequately acknowledge that Japan’s actions have contributed to the impasse with China. Japan’s friends would do better to denounce the hardliners on both sides and propose solutions that get beyond fixed positions implied by the term “back down.” Green’s proposal would lead to an untenable situation in which anything Japan says or does must be approved, or else. He writes: “Resisting Japanese requests for joint contingency planning or pressuring Tokyo to compromise in the face of Chinese coercion would do fundamental damage to the credibility of the [US-Japan] alliance and lead to more pronounced hedging by Japan. The result would be less US control over escalation in a crisis in the East China Sea and weakened dissuasion and deterrence all along the offshore island chain.” You can’t have it both ways. Either Japan is a partner who can be resisted and corrected, as well as supported, or it is a liability. The same goes for China.

    Green performs a valuable service by articulating issues that Australians should be considering as a matter of urgency. Without a doubt, Abe (who has compared current relations between China and Japan to those between Germany and Britain in 1914) is the strongest, most belligerent Japanese leader to emerge for decades. There are, however, flaws in his “grand strategy.” Diplomacy conducted over the heads of China and South Korea to engage supposedly like-minded democratic maritime partners such as Australia should make any modern Bismarck quaver. Resolving the historical grievances between Japan and its former colonial underlings is essential to future regional security. They will not fix themselves. To demonstrate its commitment to democratic values Japan needs a full-blown debate about the role of its defence forces within the constitution rather than increasingly centralised and elitist decision-making. Australia’s interest in a vibrant and peaceful Japan requires our leaders to oppose all measures that heighten regional tensions and undermine longer-term stability.

    * http://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/japan-back-unbundling-abes-grand-strategy

    Walter Hamilton reported from Japan for the ABC for eleven years. He is the author of “Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story”.

     

  • Pope Francis – Message on Migrants and Refugees. January 2014

    ‘Migrants and refugees are not pawns on the chessboard of humanity.

    They are children, women and men who leave or who are forced to leave their

    homes for various reasons, who share a legitimate desire for knowing and having,

    but above all for being more.

    Contemporary movements of migration represent the largest movement of

    Individuals, if not of peoples, in history.

    As the Church accompanies migrants and refugees on their journey,

    she seeks to understand the causes of migration,

    but she also works to overcome its negative effects,

    and to maximize its positive influence on the communities of origin, transit and

    destination.
    While encouraging the development of a better world,

    we cannot remain silent about the scandal of poverty in its various forms.

    Violence, exploitation, discrimination, marginalization, restrictive approaches to

    fundamental freedoms,

    whether of individuals or of groups:

    these are some of the chief elements of poverty which need to be overcome.

    Often these are precisely the elements which mark migratory movements,

    thus linking migration to poverty.

    Fleeing from situations of extreme poverty or persecution in the hope of a better

    future, or simply to save their own lives,

    millions of persons choose to migrate.
    A change of attitude towards migrants and refugees

    is needed on the part of everyone, moving away from attitudes

    of defensiveness and fear,

    indifference and marginalization – all typical of a throwaway culture —

    towards attitudes based on a culture of encounter,

    the only culture capable of building a better, more just and fraternal world.

     

     

  • Arja Keski-Nummi. They are us … and the language of war!

    Why are we using the language and methods of war against civilians fleeing war and persecution?  Asylum seekers are not our enemies. Our real enemies are our complacency and a willingness to turn a blind eye to the spin we are getting. This reflects the Abbott government’s ability to drill deep into our collective psyche of fear with our settler past. What if we lose it all?

    It conflicts so dramatically with our other self-image of an open, caring and welcoming society.

    This debate is about much more than people arriving by boat, it is about reshaping an Australian narrative that excludes and rejects difference. “In our image or no image” is the message. The High Court action against the ACT legislation on same sex marriages and Christopher Pyne’s curriculum review are part of that same agenda.

    In trying to turn the page back to an Australia that no longer exists and never in reality existed the Abbott government is using the asylum debate to send a message of “them and us”.  At best it is elitist. At worst it is narrow minded, bigoted and opportunistic. The problem is that the “them” eventually become “us” as over 200 years of migration – illegal and legal – has proven.

    Governments and politicians carry an enormous burden of responsibility in helping shape how we react and welcome the stranger.  We are the community and society we are because by and large governments understood that most people did not feel comfortable with immigration but if we were to grow and develop and be prosperous we needed people. Nothing has changed.

    The language used about asylum seekers by both the previous government and the current one however has sought to divide our communities. Little compassion is shown or expressed to the plight of people displaced by war and human rights abuses. Rather the language is about people cheating a system and a vow to not “let them get their way”. Disturbingly in the last few months the language of war has started to be used with greater frequency.

    While this may be playing out well in the polling of today, we will pay a price for such demonization. A cornerstone of our success in settling millions of people in Australia over the past 70 years, irrespective of how they may have arrived in this country has been that we have genuinely subscribed to the ethos of a “a fair go”, helping create the opportunities for people to establish new lives and participate in the broader Australian community while at the same time valuing and cherishing their cultural heritage and giving some of it to our own uniquely Australian society. We don’t have an underclass at risk of exploitation nor do we have ethnic ghettoes. Our settlement programs have helped avoid that.

    We do have vibrant culturally diverse suburbs that reflect our cultural make up. It is true that for some the process of settlement is difficult and not trouble free and will be so for a long time but a generation on the children of those arrivals are politicians and in professions creating new wealth and opportunities for all Australians. They are us. That is the time when we need to measure how successful we have been in welcoming the stranger, and by any measure we have been truly successful.

    The previous government’s decisions to lock asylum seekers out of work and the continuation of this policy by the current government will have consequences. We are creating a new underclass. People will have to survive and it is disturbing to contemplate where this may lead and not just into a thriving black economy. It is an own goal we could well avoid if we just recognized and capitalized on the resilience, toughness and determination to succeed that asylum seekers bring with them.   It is on these qualities that Australia’s wealth has been built.  Rather than spending billions of dollars on detention centres and offshore processing centres (where is the budget emergency now?) a little helping hand will in the long run be rewarded a hundred times over. We have two hundred years of evidence to prove that.

    Our problem today therefore has been of our own making. Currently there are no formulated political structures to counter the governments’ opportunistic and increasingly militaristic approach. The Opposition is caught in its own appalling policy paradigm, one which cleared the way for the Abbott government when they reopened Nauru and Manus Island and went still further to announce that no people detained in those centres would be resettled in Australia.   They seem to have forgotten what they stand for!

    Likewise the Greens show no great policy nous in this area having a simplistic, emotive response that ignores the reality of multiple issues colliding with each other including the very difficult issues of how to manage mixed migration flows, return of non refugees, countering people smuggling and support for refugees. Their starting off point is that everyone is a refugee. It leaves no space to contemplate the harder elements of a refugee and asylum policy.

    Emotionalism is not a substitute for a good political strategy.  We cannot turn back the clock and bemoan missed opportunities but nor should we simply accept the mantra of war. It is disrespectful to survivors of wars and betrays the shallowness of politicians who have turned civilians, seeking sanctuary, into enemies.

    What we need is an approach that engages our international partners and regional governments in finding genuine regional solutions and not the Orwellian ones of Manus Island and Nauru). We need to recognize the humanity of people seeking asylum but we also need to have a process that quickly identifies who is and  who is not a refugee and be able to resolve the immigration status of a person who is not a refugee quickly and with dignity even if this means return to their country of origin. To do anything less undermines our obligations under the Refugee Convention, a protection tool that has withstood the test of time. We must compromise the system of international protection that we as a country have worked so hard to shape.

    We have done it before. We can do it again and we can be true to our own self image of a caring and open society.

    Arja Keski-Nummi was First Assistant Secretary of the Refugee, Humanitarian and International Division of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, 2007-2010.

  • Pearls and Irritations – one year on. John Menadue

    I launched this blog in January last year. To date there have been 285 posts, just over 5 a week.

    I hope you have found some ‘pearls’ and been ‘irritated’ from time to time. Thank you for your support.

    I have enjoyed putting together stories that I believe are important for Australia’s future.

    I now prefer blogging to speeches and interviews.

    A feature of the blog has been the support of guest bloggers. This has introduced a range of people with interesting ideas and views. As a result, the blog is becoming more like an e-magazine.

    I am a beginner in blogging, as you will have noticed, but Susie has been a great help. We have made changes, including a better weekly summary with lists of posts. Much remains to be done.

    We have appointed a blog manager which will leave me with more time to work on content.

    The traffic is increasing steadily. In February last year, the first full month of the blog,  the number of ‘visits’ (not hits) to the blog was 7063  In December last year “visits” had increased to 33,539. In February last year 14,132 ‘pages’ were read. This has increased to 84,873 in December. The increase has been steady with almost 1,200 readers of the blog each day this month despite the holidays. Many of the readers are friends and contacts but include a considerable number in the media, churches and NGO communities.

    I hope we can be more influential in the years ahead. Your help in suggestions and passing posts and emails to friends is much appreciated.

     

  • Could we do more to offend the Indonesians? John Menadue

    Could we do more to offend the Indonesians? Yes, I think we could by appointing, as has been suggested, Peter Cosgrove as our next Governor General. He was the military Commander who led the INTERFET forces against the Indonesian military in East Timor in 1999.  This was much more than just a military defeat for the Indonesians. It resulted in Indonesia’s political humiliation in the eyes of the world. Indonesia had to withdraw from East Timor with loss of face.  I don’t think that Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison, in their reading of the Lonely Planet Guide to international relations would be aware of this. Stopping the boats is everything regardless of the human beings involved or our relations with Indonesia.

    I believe the Australian-led intervention in East Timor was justified and in normal times the appointment of a former military opponent of the Indonesians would largely go unnoticed. But because of the Abbott Government we are not in normal times in our present dealings with Indonesia; the country that is more important to us strategically than any other.

    The Abbott Government has trod clumsily and provocatively in our relations with Indonesia. It should not add to the problem.

    The phone-tapping of the Indonesian President, his wife and senior colleagues by an Australian security agency occurred before the Abbott Government came to power. But the insensitivity and amateurish response by the Abbott Government really caused annoyance in Indonesia.

    More unfortunately there has been our provocative policy of turn back of asylum boats to Indonesia. There is no doubt that the Indonesian Government feels quite strongly that this action has breached and continues to breach its sovereignty. In the ‘war’ on boat arrivals, the Abbott Government has ignored the collateral damage it has done to our relations with Indonesia.

    The Abbott Government has portrayed the humanitarian issue of asylum seekers and refugees almost entirely in the vocabulary of war. It has established Operation Sovereign Borders, a military operation led by the military.  To justify secrecy Tony Abbott says “if we were at war we wouldn’t be giving out information that is of use to the enemy” Scott Morrison says “this battle (against boat arrivals) is being fought using the full arsenal of messages..” With this sort of terminology it is not surprising that the Indonesians are alert to crossings of their borders by Australian warships. This unfortunate militarisation and vocabulary of war would also be exacerbated by appointing a former senior Australian General as our next Governor General.

    Discretion is important particularly when diplomatic relations become fragile. Discretion suggests that the Abbott Government should not worsen the situation by appointing a former military opponent of Indonesia as our next Governor General. In the Javanese way, the Indonesian Government may be polite on the subject. But it would be wise to avoid more potential damage particularly as the anti-Australian drum is likely to beat louder in this Indonesian Presidential election year.

    It should be recalled that in his military career, Peter Cosgrove in 2001 was the Chief of the Army when the Howard Government put SAS troops on board the Tampa to stop asylum seekers coming to Australia. I thought at the time that this was a highly political and partisan act to use the military in this way and that when matters had cooled General Cosgrove would stand down. But not so.

  • The power of vested interests and why drugs cost so much in Australia. John Menadue

    Why does the widely used cholesterol reducing drug Atorvastatin cost $A19 in Australia and $A2 for the same package in NZ? Why does the widely used cancer drug Anastrozole cost $A92 in Australia when the equivalent drug in the UK costs $A3.30. The answer is the political power of Medicines Australia and how it twists the arm of governments.

    In a blog on January 7, I drew attention to the political power of vested interests to undermine the public interest and good policy development in Australia. I referred  particularly to the miners and their role in destroying the super profits tax, the polluters’ opposition to the carbon tax, the hotel and liquor industry which is responsible for violence on our streets and poor health in the community, and the gambling industry particularly Clubs Australia, that successfully opposed proposals to shield problem gamblers. Just consider how James Packer has been able, so easily, to use his political power to avoid any public process in obtaining a licence for his “high-rollers” casino in Sydney.

    What makes these vested interests so dangerous is their power to persuade or threaten politicians. The media is ill-equipped to contest their power. In some cases, The Australian and the Australian Financial Review newspapers become outlets for these vested interests.

    Medicines Australia (MA) is a classic case. It represents the pharmaceutical industry in Australia. Its members supply 86% of the medicines that are available in Australia under the Pharmaceuticals Benefits Scheme. (PBS)

    The Grattan Institute has pointed out how, with the cooperation of pliant governments, MA has been able to exploit Australian consumers and taxpayers. The facts are quite clear. For March last year, the Grattan Institute reported as follows:

    • For Atorvastatin, the cholesterol reducing drug, the PBS in Australia paid more than $51 for a box of 30 tablets. NZ paid $A5.80 for a box of 90 tablets.
    • Grattan also looked at the ‘top 73 doses that are prescribed most often in Australia’. It found that Australian wholesale prices were eight times higher than NZ’s. For identical drugs, NZ prices were six times cheaper than in Australia.
    • Grattan also compared prices in some public hospitals in Australia who buy drugs outside the PBS. It found that on average these hospitals obtained drugs eight times lower than the prices under the PBS.

    Those comparisons where for March last year. In December last year, under what is called ‘price disclosure’ arrangements, prices were reduced.  However, the Grattan Institute found that even with these reductions, Australia was still paying sixteen times more than the UK and NZ for seven key drugs. For example the cost of Atorvastatin dropped from $A30 to $A19 for a pack in Australia. The same pack sold for the equivalent of $A2.84 in UK and $A2.01 in NZ. For Anastrozole, the cancer drug, the wholesale price in Australia is $A92 and in the UK $A3.30.

    How can these outrageous differences occur?

    Before a drug can be registered on the PBS it has to be cleared by the Therapeutic Goods Administration for safety and efficacy. Then it is assessed by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee for cost effectiveness and clinical benefit. The Pharmaceutical Benefits Pricing Authority (the Pricing Authority) then determines the maximum price that can be charged and how much the Government will pay manufactures or importers under the PBS.

    The Pricing Authority, a non statutory body is set up by the Minister and is within the Department of Health and Aging. The Authority includes, amongst its six members, two representatives of drug companies. That is extraordinary-building vested interests into the price setting process. They should be excluded completely.  The whole process is opaque, and political. It is ready made for manipulation by vested interests.

    In NZ, politicians decide how much is spent by the government on drugs and an independent and professional expert panel sets prices. In Australia we have the process the other way round. Our politicians should determine the budget for drugs at the beginning of the process and then get out of the way and let market competition work and leave final price decisions to independent experts.

    The vested interests get their fingers all over the price of drugs on the PBS. In NZ they are excluded from the process.

    Grattan Institute estimates that Australia’s wholesale prices for identical drugs are now six times the prices paid in NZ. In some cases they are as much as twenty times higher. Grattan Institute estimates a saving of almost $A2 billion p.a. if we paid the same price as in other relevant jurisdictions.

    The Chief Executive of MA is Brendan Shaw. He was formerly a staffer for Dr Craig Emmerson. It is typical of the pedigree of vested-interests and their political lobby that they choose persons well-known and influential in the political corridors of power in Canberra. .

    In response to Grattan’s findings, Brendan Shaw in the Australian Financial Review made an irrelevant point that because of budget restraints in NZ, fewer new medicines were available in that country. He avoided completely the issue of price comparisons. I would rather rely on the professional advice of independent experts on what drugs should be on the PBS and the prices we pay.

    When will we seriously tackle the exploitation of the public that Medicines Australia inflicts upon us?

    The Department of Health and Ageing should be spending its time developing and implementing improved health policies. Instead it spends its energy and time placating the powerful rent-seeking vested interests in our health services – Medicines Australia, the AMA, the Pharmaceutical Guild of Australia and the Private Health Insurance companies.

    The Rudd and Gillard Governments did little to curb the abuse of political power by these groups in the health field. In fact they made the situation worse. The Rudd Government appointed a senior executive of BUPA, the second largest private health insurance firm in Australia, to head the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission enquiry.

    Ross Garnaut described the power of vested interests in Australia as a ‘diabolical problem’.  He is right. If the Commission of Audit wants to save some real money and curb rent seeking it could start with vested interests like Medicines Australia.

    Governments and particularly conservative ones extol the virtues of markets. But all too often this is a diversion, designed to advantage corporations, like the members of Medicines Australia, rather than letting markets work and promote competition and lower prices.