John Menadue

  • Repost: We all see our doctor too much; and it’s not just the aged. John Menadue

    The media have been discussing a proposal to impose a $5 or $6 levy for GP visits. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of times we each see our GP. It needs addressing, but not with a simplistic GP levy. See also piece below by Ian McAuley.

    Following the Grattan Institute’s recent work on budget deficits there was a focus by the media on rising health costs. The media commentators didn’t seriously examine the Grattan work about ageing but hopped onto an old and overworked hobbyhorse – that rising health costs are largely due to the ageing on the Australian population. The Business Council is also a repeat offender on this fiction about ageing.

    Increases in health services have been across all age groups, particularly in the band 25 to 54 year olds. The following figures compare Medicare services per head and by age 1984/85-2011/12. They are extracted from the Department of Health and Ageing website, although the figures are not easy to find.  Below I have combined male and female figures, assumed a 50/50 gender split. It should also be noted that some Medicare services and items were not around in 1984/85 when Medicare was established by the Hawke Government. This would not detract from the thrust of the figures.

    Medicare services per head and by age 1984/85 to 2011/12

    Age group

    1984-85

    2011-12

    % Change

    0-4

    6.97

    8.87

    27

    5-9

    4.25

    5.04

    18

    10-14

    3.49

    5.06

    45

    15-19

    4.68

    7.59

    62

    20-24

    6.43

    8.58

    34

    25-34

    7.05

    10.78

    53

    35-44

    6.54

    12.15

    86

    45-54

    7.99

    14.75

    85

    55-64

    9.47

    20.32

    115%

    65-74

    11.80

    28.61

    142%

    75-84

    15.22

    39.08

    157%

     

    It is noteworthy that the rate of increase in Medicare services levelled off in the over 65s but grew very strongly in the 35-54 band. Age is only a part of the problem.

    The Productivity Commission confirmed this in its report in 2005 on Medical Technology “to date population ageing does not appear to have been a major driver of increased demand for health services’.

    Professor Jeff Richardson of Monash University’s Centre for Health Economics, in his paper on the ‘Lamentable state of Australian health reform’ in March 2009 put it ‘Ageing per se in the absence of technological change would have minimal effects on expenditure… the link between ageing and health expenditure as a percentage of GDP is simply disinformation’.

    The Grattan report referred to  said ‘Contrary to widespread belief, it is not just the ageing of the population that is driving health spending but the fact that people of all ages are seeing doctors more often, having more tests and operations and taking more prescribed drugs”

    The Health Council of Canada in a survey a couple of years ago of more elderly users of health services concluded ‘the largest controlling factor in this rise [in health costs] is neither ageing nor population growth … it is increased use’.

    In future blogs I will look at some of the major drivers of increased demand and increased costs in health care that should be addressed. It is not just the ageing of our population.

    But we should keep a sense of perspective. At 9% of GDP committed to healthcare in Australia, we are in the middle range of comparable countries and slightly below the OECD median. Medicare has served us well. We spend about a half of what the US spends on health as a proportion of GDP.

    The US is a standout example that we should not entertain any idea of increased government support for private health insurance companies that are no match for powerful providers…doctors and private hospitals including “charitable” hospitals.

    John Menadue

  • Repost: Are most asylum seekers and refugees Muslims? John Menadue

    Repost for holiday reading.

    Well, as a matter of fact, they are not.

    But I am sure that many commentators and a lot of the community believe that most are Muslim. The dog-whistlers like Scott Morrison feed on this assumption .According to Jane Cadzow in the Sun Herald he urged the Coalition parties “to ramp up its questioning … to capitalise on anti-Muslim sentiment”.

    Figures on this issue are extracted from the DIAC Settlement data base. One reason for the difficulty in analysing the figures is that a religious test is not applied to persons seeking refugee status, and neither should it. Ascertaining religious background often then depends on voluntary declarations.

    The Refugee Convention is blind to religion but the Convention recognises that religious persecution is a valid ground for claiming protection.

    But based on DIAC Settlement data the general picture becomes reasonably clear. For settlement purposes refugees are asked on a voluntary basis to declare their religion as it is likely to assist in settlement in the community.

    In the figures for the year from January 1 2010 there were 8,342 arrivals of refugees and other humanitarian entrants. The religious affiliations were as follows:

    • Christian 4,263 – 51%.
    • Muslim 2,223 – 26%
    • Hindu 1,125 – 13%
    • Other 731 – 10%
    • Total 8,342 – 100%

    In the period 1 April 2011 to 31 March 2012, humanitarian arrivals including refugees were as follows.

    • Christian 5,523 – 34%
    • Muslim 6,732 – 42%
    • Buddhist 445 – 3%
    • Hindu 1,089 – 7%
    • Other 2,255 – 14%
    • Total 16,044 – 100%

    These figures give a fairly reliable guide to the religious background of humanitarian entrants in recent years. The increase in Muslim arrivals in the year to 31 March 2012 is largely due to the persecution of Hazaras both in their own country Afghanistan and more recently in Pakistan. This trend is continuing.

    The pattern will vary from year to year, depending on the religious composition of the country where the persecution is occurring, and if a particular religious group is being persecuted.

    I would expect that the number of Christians currently facing persecution in the Middle East, particularly in Egypt and Syria, is likely to increase. Christians represent about 10% of the population in both countries the highest in the Middle East. If the Assad regime in Syria falls both minority Alawite and Christian communities are likely to be in jeopardy. Over a million Syrians have already fled to neighbouring countries.

    Christians in the Middle East, the birthplace of Christianity, have fallen from 20% in the early 20th Century to about 5% today.

    The religious pattern of asylum seekers and refugees is hard to predict. What is clear is that it is nonsense to assume that most of them to date are Muslim.

    John Menadue

  • Remarks by Sir William Deane AC on “Refugees and Asylum Seekers: Finding a Better Way”.

     On 17 December, Sir William Deane, former Governor-General launched Australia21 – essays on refugees and asylum seekers. Sir William Deane’s remarks follow.

    Paul Barratt’s acknowledgement of the traditional custodians in which I respectfully join, serves to remind us that apart from indigenous Australians we are all migrants or descended from migrants and that many of us were asylum seekers or are descended from asylum seekers. My own great-grandfather came to Australia with his wife and young family, including my grandfather who was aged 7 from Tipperary in 1851 on a wooden sailing ship called the Harry Lorrequer. They sought asylum on this side of the world from the devastation of the great famine. After disembarking in Melbourne and time on the goldfields near Ballarat, my great-grandfather took his family to Wahring near Nagambie in rural Victoria where he became the legal owner of land taken without compensation from the Taungurung people. That land, which we now know was unlawfully acquired, provided the basis of his and his family’s subsequent well-being.

    The first point which I wish to make through that brief reference to a rather typical Australian family history is that we Australians should have understanding and compassion for the actions of those who subject themselves and their families to serious risk of disaster at sea, to escape from violence or terror or unbearable hardship and seek asylum in a new country which they dream of making their homeland. We will never know precisely how many of the wooden sailing ships, bearing asylum seekers from Europe to Australia in the 19th century didn’t make it. Or how many men, women and children died through the awful sicknesses and conditions on the way. The Harry Lorrequer  did make it. But parts of the journey were so stormy that 45 passengers and seven sailors were washed overboard and the youngest of my great-grandfather’s children, Martin, died as a result of the sicknesses which threatened all on board.

    Perhaps some would criticise all those early Australians and present would-be Australians for subjecting themselves and their families to such awful risks. Most of us would however see them as bravely seeking a better life for themselves and their families in circumstances where they saw or see no really worthwhile alternative. The other point is that from the earliest days of European arrivals and constantly thereafter, our country and its people, both indigenous and nonindigenous have faced extraordinary and at times seemingly overwhelming challenges and problems.

    The challenge which we as a nation face in relation to refugees and other asylum seekers who arrive, or seek to arrive by boat is a very difficult one. But it is not the most difficult which has confronted our nation. And while it seems to me that there are no obvious complete answers or solutions, I believe that we are as a nation capable of dealing with it, with both justice and decency. In that regard it is well to remember that other countries are facing much greater challenges as regards refugees then we are. For example as the violent crisis in Syria enters its third winter, Lebanon with a considerably smaller population than ours is currently engulfed by more than 800,000 refugees.

    The book which we are gathered to launch “Refugees and Asylum Seekers: Finding a Better Way” demands the attention and careful consideration of any Australian who is concerned with that challenge. Its contents are of immeasurable national value and importance as a basis of understanding, of discussion, of planning and of hope. The authors of the essays are outstanding Australians with extraordinary expertise and profound practical and theoretical experience in the field. They identify what they see as current problems, difficulties and shortcomings and suggest what they see as possible lines of investigation, discussion and solution. As the editors explain in their thoughtful preface, the objective of Australia21 in initiating and publishing the book has been to provide the foundation for the convening of a roundtable of stakeholders and decision makers next year to examine the feasibility of a fresh, new bipartisan approach.

    It is only a couple of weeks since the world’s most respected authority on refugees, the United Nations High Commission delivered its assessments of our detention camps, officially called “regional processing centres” on Nauru and Manus Island. There is close correspondence between the published findings in relation to each place. As regards the Nauru centre which has been established or re-established for more than a year, the United Nations Refugee Agency found, that “The current policies conditions and operational approaches do not comply with international standards, constitute arbitrary and mandatory detention under international law; do not provide a fair and expeditious system for assessing refugee claims and do not provide safe and humane conditions of treatment in detention”. As regards the children who are in our nation’s care and detained on Nauru, the agency found “The harsh and unsuitable environment is particularly inappropriate for the care and support of child asylum seekers” and that “children do not have access to adequate educational and recreational facilities”. Finally, and relevant to the description of the Nauru detention centre as a regional processing centre, the agency found that “Only one claim for refugee status had at the time of inspection been finally determined and handed down in the 14th month period since the transfer of asylum seekers to Nauru commenced in September 2012.

    Hopefully, our government and the relevant authorities will in due course, properly respond to the United Nations Refugee Agency’s criticisms. But pending such a response one cannot but fear that at least some of the findings, particularly those relating to children held in detention and unsatisfactory processing are justified. If they are correct, the United Nations reports diminish our country’s hard won and long justified international reputation as an upholder of human rights and dignity. More important, they give rise to questions relating to our decency and sense of fairness and justice as a community and as individuals, which we cannot properly ignore.

    In that context, the publication of this book and Australia21’s call for open discussion and dialogue and a search for national consensus about a new and better way, come at a  particularly apposite time. I sincerely hope that all concerned, particularly the legislators and decision-makers in government and the administrators in the field, will welcome that call and fully participate in any ensuing discussions and exchanges, and that at everyr every stage of such discussions there will be a conscious awareness of the fact that the lives, the well-being and the futures of extraordinarily vulnerable human beings including children are involved.

    Let me conclude by congratulating and thanking all who have contributed to the initiation, writing and publication of this book, authors, editors, publishers and the members of Australia21. I join them all in wishing it every success.

    “Refugees and asylum seekers: finding a better way” is now officially launched.

    Earlier posts on ‘Refugees and asylum seekers’ can be found in the categories to the right of this page.

  • Repost: The Asian Century and the Australian Smoko. John Menadue and Greg Dodds

    The Asian Century and the Australian Smoko was first published in April 2012. This repost might be interesting holiday reading.

    The Gillard Government has commissioned Ken Henry to report on Australia and the Asian Century. Our trade with China, Japan, India and other Asian countries is booming.  Our luck is still holding.  But our key sectors – business, education and the media – are no more Asia-ready than they were two decades ago.

    This may seem counter-intuitive with the superficial signs pointing in the other direction – the number of Asian faces on our streets, staffing in our hospitals, our holidays in Bali and foreign students at our universities. But the quality and depth of our relationship with the diverse countries of Asia is quite superficial. Dig below the surface and we find a worrying situation.  We have booming trade but little real engagement.

    Reading the submissions to the Henry Review one has a sense of deja vu.  The dates and the figures are different, but the concerns raised are substantially the same as those that we ‘debated’ in the 1980s. Lee Kwan Yew joined in the debate and warned that we risked becoming the cheap white trash of Asia. Paul Keating warned that we could become  a banana republic

    That debate culminated in the Garnaut Report at the end of the decade in 1989 – ‘Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendancy’. Garnaut pointed to the sustained growth in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, and how Australia needed to respond. Rather than seeing Asia as a threat, he argued that we should see it as an opportunity. We needed to reduce trade barriers. We needed to back this with greater efforts in education, language and research. Our immigration policies should also be more sensitive to the region.

    The Hawke Keating Government’s opening of the Australian economy forced change. We saw rapidly growing mineral exports to Japan and Korea. The back of White Australia was broken. Government and business responded with more skilled people working in the region. The media became more interested in Asia. Exchange programs with the region were established. Asian students flooded into our universities. Protection was reduced.  Productivity growth lifted to 2.1 pa in the 90’s

    But in the mid-1990s we went on smoko, even as we continued to dig up more of our ores and coal for export. We are now less dependent on Japan but more so on China and India.  Today, 48% of our exports are fuel and mineral products, a proportion way ahead of most comparable countries. Coal, our second largest export (19% of total exports), is a major contributor to greenhouse gasses. We are dependent on a few markets and a few exports.

    The economic changes of the Hawke-Keating years, whilst beneficial, were painful for some. On top of these changes there were considerable social and ethnic changes brought about in part by the Fraser Government’s successful Indochinese settlement of 240,000 people. Some populists saw it as a chance to take us back to what Garnaut had warned us about – fear of Asia. Today the populists continue to promote fear of Asia but now call it border protection.

    The Queen of England continued as our Head of State and we remained at the beck and call of faraway and fading empires at the expense of attention to our region.

    John Howard gave us permission to be ‘relaxed and comfortable’, to have a break from the Asian challenge and opportunities.

    In the two decades since Garnaut, the performance of our businesses, universities, schools and the media has been disappointing. DFAT and Austrade have done better and have more Asia trained staff in the region, but nowhere near enough.

    Let us look at the performance of key sectors in this Asian readiness.

    Business

    Only four Australian companies in the top 150 bothered to put in a submission to the Henry Review. They were ANZ Banking, ASX Group, IAG and Rio Tinto. BHP didn’t make it! That says a lot.

    Far too many Australian businesses see Asia as customers rather than partners.  In the long term trade and investment is about relationships of trust and understanding.

    • At the most there would only be a handful of Chairpersons or CEOs of any of our major companies who was born and educated in Australia, who can fluently speak any of the key Asian languages? This failure is stark. It is obviously too late for them now, but it is not at all clear that they are recruiting executives for the future with the necessary skills for Asia. It is hard to break into the cosy club. A recent survey by The Business Alliance for Asian Literacy, representing over 400,000 businesses in Australia found that ‘more than half of Australian businesses operating in Asia had little board and senior management experience of Asia and/or Asian skills or languages’.  There are now tens of thousands of Australian-born citizens of Asian descent at our universities. But they are likely to be recruited for their good grades and work ethic rather than their cultural and language skills.
    • Maybe we don’t need an Asian language or indeed much business sophistication to dig up and sell iron ore and coal to very willing buyers, but we certainly do to sell wine, elaborately transformed manufactures and services, particularly tourism.
    • Some Australian expats in Asia have developed Asian skills and sensitivities, but there are downsides.  Coming home for an expat is often harder than going offshore. His or her world has changed, but the culture of head office has not. Some join foreign companies or leave Australia. We know of many such instances.
    • Tourism boomed but we did not get enough repeat business. We skipped from one new market to another – first Japan, then Korea and now China. Not surprisingly, the Australian Tourism Export Council told the Henry Review that we needed to improve our tourism product.
    • Success in Asia requires long-term commitment, but the remuneration packages and the demands of shareholders are linked to short-term returns.

    Asian Languages and Education Funding

    In the 1980s Professor Stephen FitzGerald and several others of us campaigned for a national language policy. In October 1982 the department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs organised the first National Language Conference. In 1985, the Senate Committee on Education endorsed the need for a national language policy. In 1987, the Hawke Government adopted a national policy on languages. This was followed in 1994 by a COAG commitment to fund Asian languages in Australia. Later Kevin Rudd supported this, but the renewed interest and commitment was short-lived. Asian language learning in Australia is in crisis again today as it was in the 1980s.If anything the situation is worse.

    This is spelled out in spades in the submissions to the Henry Review. The Australia-China Council advised that ‘for the last 20 years successive Australian Governments attempted to boost Asia literacy and particularly the study of Asian languages in schools… these attempts produced limited results’. In its submission, the Australia-China Council quoted from the Business Alliance for Asian Literacy 2011  ‘50% of schools teach very little about Asia, only 6% of Year 12 students study an Asian language and just 3% pursue these studies at university, and only 2.5% of Year 12 students study Chinese.’

    Tertiary education funding is also a key to Asian competence. As Ian McAuley has  pointed out, our public funding of tertiary education fell sharply between 1995 and 2000, and has stayed low ever since. The shortfall has been covered by income from foreign students. Teaching and research has suffered. Instead of adequately funding education from the budget, we have diverted public funds to middle-class welfare e.g. superannuation and private health insurance subsidies. This has crowded out funding for our future preparedness in Asia.

    Media

    Australia’s media relationships with the world are embedded in our history of relationships with UK, Europe and then the US.

    Our TV news, commentary and entertainment are heavily dependent on the BBC, CNN, et al. Media programs about Asia shown in Australia are often recycled UK or US material. Our media is full of it. Just compare the current coverage of the US Republican primaries and the much more critical National People’s Congress in China. Japan, except for disasters, India, Korea and Vietnam are covered intermittently, almost as an after-thought. It will require a real wrench to change the nature of Australian media that history has laid down.

    People exchanges

    The first working holiday agreement in Asia was with Japan in 1980. We didn’t have another one in Asia until the 1996 agreement with the ROK. In the last 10 years there have been another six working holiday agreements with Asian countries, but most of them have caps of 100 persons per annum. We still have no agreements with China, India or Vietnam. Outside the four key North-east Asian countries identified by Garnaut in 1989, fewer than 1% of working holiday makers to Australia come from the new and rising developing countries of Asia.

    Getting ready

    To take advantage and integrate ourselves in the region will require continuing openness in trade, investment, ideas and people. It will require substantial investment in skills for Asia and a new generation of business leaders who see the opportunities in our own region, and not a region they fly through on their way to Europe. We need to reengage in economic reform alongside reengagement with Asia beyond the superficial.

    We are both enriched and entrapped by our Anglo-Celtic culture.

    Postscript: There are follow up posts on this subject on April 2, 2013 and June 13, 2013.

    John Menadue AO is Board Director of the Centre for Policy Development. He was Australian Ambassador to Japan, Secretary Department of Immigration, Secretary Department of Trade, and CEO of Qantas

    Greg Dodds was Director, Australia Japan Foundation in Japan, Senior Trade Commissioner Japan and Executive General Manager, Austrade, North East Asia

    Edited versions of this article were published in The Melbourne Age and Sydney Morning Herald on April 5, 2012

  • A letter to Pope Francis

    The Australian Catholic Coalition for Church Renewal has called for structural amd cultural change in the governance of the Catholic Church

    The letter can be found on my web site.Go to top left hand of the home page and click on John Menadue web site.

    John Menadue

  • Japanese Prime Minister Abe and Yasukuni Shrine. Guest blogger: Walter Hamilton

    Perhaps the most significant aspect of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s visit on Thursday to Yasukuni Shrine – the place where Japanese venerate their war dead – was its timing. Abe chose to go on the day that marked the first anniversary of his administration, in effect directly linking his government with this controversial establishment. He not only became the first serving prime minister to cross its threshold for seven years but, most unusually, he lent the visit an official stamp. (Notwithstanding that the Prime Minister’s Office described it as a “private” affair, the media were forewarned, his visit was televised live and he signed the visitor’s book using his official title.)

    Abe’s action was immediately condemned by China and South Korea, which consider Yasukuni Shrine an unholy vestige of Japanese militarism. It is the place where soldiers and sailors dedicated themselves to the emperor before heading off to war and where, since 1978, the spirits of fourteen convicted “Class A” war criminals have been enshrined.

    Japanese nationalists argue that Yasukuni, occupying a large site in central Tokyo, serves the same purpose as, for example, the Cenotaph in London, Arlington Cemetery in Washington or the War Memorial in Canberra. But, despite now being operated by a private organisation (an arrangement paying lip service to the constitutional separation of religion), the shrine is irrevocably associated with the discredited apparatus of State Shinto that once promoted emperor worship, imperialism and notions of racial and cultural superiority. For many, this association is perpetuated by the military museum now attached to the shrine. Jeff Kingston, Director of Asian Studies at Tokyo’s Temple University, is one of many critics of the museum’s “selective and sly” representation of Japan’s shared history with Asia:

    Japan’s war in China is supposed to have suppressed banditry and terrorism, while its invasion of the rest of Asia is represented as a war of liberation from Western colonialism. Missing from the extensive exhibits are any mentions of the Rape of Nanjing, the awful [biological] experiments conducted by Unit 731 on prisoners of war, or the suffering endured by tens of thousands of “comfort women”… The only thing that Japan’s modern reactionaries regret about the war is defeat, and they are still fighting an uphill battle against Japanese public opinion to justify wartime Japan’s ‘’noble mission.” No amount of sanitizing will change that.

                                                 – The Japan Times, 14 August 2013

    Prime Minister Abe said he visited Yasukuni “to pledge and determine that never again will people suffer in war.“ It was “not intended to hurt the Chinese or South Koreans.” His remarks, however, upend the reality of what Yasukuni represents in both historical and contemporary terms. He knew full well any attempt to associate anti-war sentiments with such a place would be highly offensive to those who suffered at the hands of Japanese militarism. To expect them somehow to “reform,” to “grow up” and feel differently about the issue, just because he says so, seems to me the height of arrogance. (Not even Yasukuni is as brazen as this: sensitive to disapproving eyes, it requires journalists to obtain prior permission from the management before reporting on the contents of its revisionist exhibits. For the record, this journalist did not comply.)

    To some extent Abe’s action is unsurprising. After his first stint as prime minister, in 2006-7, he went on record as saying he deeply regretted having abstained from visiting Yasukuni Shrine. He did so then out of concern for relations with China and South Korea, which had been damaged by his predecessor Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni. Since Abe’s return to office relations have plummeted again mainly as a result of territorial disputes inflamed by the activities of super-patriots in all three countries. It must now be assumed that Tokyo either does not want or cannot foresee a return to cordiality in the immediate future.

    The Abe Government is set upon a course to “normalise” Japan, most notably by expanding its military posture. The stated purpose is to enable it to be more proactive in contributing to international peacekeeping, but elements of the military build-up, such as the acquisition of a capability to undertake opposed naval landings, are clearly part of a response to China’s claim on the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands in the East China Sea. Beijing’s strongly worded criticism of Abe’s defence plans, together with its recent declaration of an air defence identification zone incorporating the disputed islands, are part of the tit-for-tat confrontation to which Abe’s Yasukuni visit is the latest contribution.

    Japanese nationalists who wish to refight old battles – to make out, for instance, that Yasukuni is a shrine to peace – are incapable of taking the country forward to a sounder, more productive relationship with their neighbours. Even if the “history debate” has been hijacked in China and South Korea by equally blinkered nationalists – as, seems to me, is the case – nothing is achieved by giving them legitimacy by adopting the same mentality. Abe, judging from his expression of regret about his past efforts to assuage the feelings of Chinese and Koreans, is looking backwards, not forwards. Whether he realises it or not, he is sounding like the Japanese leaders of the 1930s who, impatient with being “misunderstood,” insisted that other nations accept Japan on its own terms – or else. It is ugly, wrongheaded and dangerous. Most particularly, it ill fits the reality of Japan’s place in the world in 2013: a dignified place forged out of the disaster of the 1930s and dependent upon a repudiation of self-aggrandisement and the use of force.

    Other nations, with an interest in improved regional relations, have a role to play in urging all sides to step back from confrontation and stop trying to win old battles or overturn the verdict of the past. The United States Embassy was quick to make its views known. While Japan was “a valued ally and friend”, it said in a statement, the Embassy was “disappointed that Japan’s leadership has taken an action that will exacerbate tensions with Japan’s neighbors.” The Australian Government recently sided with Japan on the issue of China’s air defence zone; it should now make its “best friend” feel the brunt of its disapproval of Abe’s reckless action.

    Walter Hamilton reported from Japan for eleven years.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • A Christmas Message from Sister Joan Chittister.

    Two years ago this Christmas message was published by Vision and Viewpoint, an e-newsletter. Sister Joan Chittister, OSB, is prioress of The Benedictine Sisters in Erie, PA.

    Now and here bells everywhere are ringing again. The gift boxes are heaping up. Everybody’s saying it: “Christmas Blessings… God bless you at Christmas time… Christmas Peace to you and yours… Merry Christmas.” But is there any truth at all to any of this manufactured joy? Or is this, at best, nothing more than an exercise in auto-suggestion: Say it often enough and you’ll think it’s true, whatever the facts to the contrary.

    Christians, after all, at least from one perspective, live a very schizophrenic life. As Paul puts it in one of his letters to the fragile communities of the early church, “Your standards should be different than those around you.” But at Christmas time, those standards can get terribly confusing. The Christian standard says that Christ, our Peace, has been born. But look around you. The other standard, the real public norm, the front page of our daily newspapers, says that there is no such thing as peace anywhere.

    So, are we simply kidding ourselves when we put up manger scenes in our parks, and weigh our churches down with bark-covered, life-size crèches, and decorate the crib sets under our Christmas trees? Will the world ever really come to peace? In fact, is there really any such thing as peace? And, most of all, what do we have to do with it? What are we singing about? (It depends, I believe, on what you think “peace” means.)

    One kind of peace is a state of life that is free from chaos and turbulence, from violence and institutionally legitimated death. That kind of peace happens often enough in history to show us that such a thing is possible. But don’t be fooled: that kind of peace can be achieved as easily through force as well as through justice. In the latter, little is gained by it.

    But there is another kind of peace. This kind of peace does not come either from the denial of evil or the acceptance of oppression. This kind comes from the center of us and flows through us like a conduit to the world around us.

    This kind of peace is the peace of those who know truth and proclaim it, who recognize oppression and refuse to accept it, who understand God’s will for the world and pursue it. This kind of peace comes with the realization that it is our obligation to birth it for the rest of the world so that what the mangers and crèches and crib sets of the world point to can become real in us—and because of us—in our own time.

    The award-winning foreign film “Joyeux Noël” reminds us of another Christmas Eve. This one in Europe during the bloodiest period in WWI. Knee deep in wet snow and ice that jammed their weapons and froze their souls, two armies—one French and Scottish, one German—faced one another across a barbed-wired field. Hundreds of fallen soldiers had already died on both sides of the rough and blood-soaked land. Then suddenly, the Christmas truce began. The men put down their weapons, ceased for awhile to be soldiers, and bowed their heads while they listened to the other side sing Christmas carols.

    That is the kind of peace—disarmed, foreign to hate, and receiving of the other—that was born in the manger we remember at Christmas time. That is the kind of Christmas peace we must ourselves seek to be. Then “Merry Christmas” will really mean something.

     

  • Waiting on Him in Advent for His Birth; His birth in us. Guest Blogger: Caroline Coggins

    Is the birth of Jesus a story that can touch us deeply today, does it offer a way for us to know and follow Jesus?  Do we get glib with what we know, and skate over the story?

    The advent story is like a pregnancy, it creates an intimate space to be with Mary, from her meeting with God, through conception and pregnancy, to the birth of Jesus, the Son of God.   What a marvel that a woman will bear this child, and Joseph will father him, ordinary people like us, called to do extraordinary things for God.   The story, if we are game, is not an external narrative, but one where we are called to hear God calling us, to enter into His story.

    From the moment of Gabriel’s visit to Mary we feel a tension, a pause and we are witness to a meeting. God will ask Mary to carry a child, and she will say: ”Yes”.  She will become pregnant and carry the heart of Jesus inside her body, letting him nestle and grow within her, transforming her. She will, in her body and soul, bear God’s gift to us.  Now during this time of advent she will show us the way.

    Aren’t we also like Mary, asked into a mystery of saying “Yes.” to Christ in us?  When I am drawn into this mystery of a life with Jesus, letting him into me, I too am like Mary, I too become a fiddle of questions and resistance, but he waits on me, as he did Mary, he gives me the time to want and need to remain the same, until the ‘yes’ comes. Our ‘yes’ becomes a pregnancy, he comes to live in us. He grows into our very fibers winnowing from the inside.  It is a grace that he bestows, utter love. Mary carries Jesus within her, His being utterly absorbing her, making her His own.

    What a wonder he gives us during Advent, not just that I wait for him, make this time for him, but that he is inside of me, transforming my heart, emptying me, to see with his eyes, to receive his love.  When I receive the host, and my lips receive Him, and my tongue tastes His blood, I say “Yes”, I take Him into the cells of my being, He who gave me His heart then, at His birth, all those years ago, and now again, this Advent. He prepares us during this time for the next mystery that of His birth, Christmas.

    Giving birth isn’t a passive thing, it will tear me open, pull from my depths a ‘yes’. This love we are given is not private thing, it cannot be kept inside, it must and will be born when the time is ready, a winnowing, that will strip me, break the waters, tear at my heart, so that I can receive love, to see with His eyes and His heart.

    As I walk the desert to His birthplace, following the stars, looking for Him, I know that His path will lead me to Jerusalem. I follow Him to His last supper, my head on His chest waiting, pausing now, His human heart the same as mine, as He says “Yes” and moves toward His death, and resurrection, and the final mystery and the greatest act of love for me and humankind. But this is jumping ahead, and we cannot know yet what the child will become.

    Advent is a time of pausing, waiting, feeling our way into Mary as she waits, feeling that space as God waits on Mary and her ‘yes.’  There seems time, on an inner level, to relish the pause, to let God have time with me.  To feel the simplicity of choice that Mary makes. He is in her body; He is in mine, His blood flows through my veins. He gave me this with His birth.  He marked me too, like Mary, with a heart that beats for Him, a pulse that jumps with His arrival.  A time to reflect on a ‘yes’, to know this in my body and in my heart, to feel the fear and the joy, the longing and intimacy of His presence. The path I take with Him may not be what I imagine for myself; there is a pause as He waits on me.

    Caroline Coggins works as a Psychotherapist. He has just completed the 30 day Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatias at St. Beuno’s.

     

     

  • My year of leaning – and leaning into Christmas. Guest Blogger: Patty Fawkner SGS

    There are all kinds of years. There’s the year of living dangerously and the annus horribilis. 2013 was the Year of Grace and the Year of the Snake. For me it’s been the year of leaning.

    Earlier this year I was intrigued by the title and the phenomenal publishing success of Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In, which was on the New York Times best-seller list for a remarkable 36 weeks. Sandberg and her book were ubiquitous. There she was on the cover of Time magazine; I tuned in to Geraldine Doogue’s Saturday Extra show on Radio National and heard a panel discussing Lean In; and along with hundreds of thousands of others, I viewed Sandberg’s TEDTalk on YouTube.

    Her message is fairly straightforward. The world will be a better place when, and only when, women lean into positions of leadership and go against their gender-wide tendency to underestimate their abilities. Sandberg’s leaning is about ambition, confidence and partnership. “A truly equal world,” she writes, “would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes.”

    These ideas are not altogether new, so I was left wondering if Sandberg’s impact could in part be explained by the novel use of the image of leaning.

    While still pondering this, I came across two fine Christian writers who were also ‘into’ leaning. Far from the corporate world in which Sheryl Sandberg leans in, Beatrice Bruteau and John Philip Newell lean back.

    In Radical Optimism, Bruteau, a Christian philosopher, proposes leaning back as an image to describe our relationship with God. She paints a word picture from John’s Gospel of the beloved disciple who “reclined on the breast of Jesus” at the Last Supper:

    “I want to suppose St John positioned with his back to Jesus. Jesus is behind John, not face to face with him. Therefore, when John wished to move closer to Jesus, for instance to ask him a question, he just leaned back toward him.”

    John Philip Newell, contemporary poet and Anglican priest, picks up the image.

    “One of the most precious teachings in the Celtic Christian world is the memory of John the Beloved leaning after Jesus at the last Supper. It was said of him that he therefore heard the heartbeat of God… To listen for the heartbeat of God is to listen both within the vastness of the universe and within the intimacy of our own hearts.”

    Where Sandberg’s ideas stir my social conscience, Bruteau’s and Newell’s image of leaning back toward Jesus and listening for the heartbeat of God, capture my imagination and heart.

    This metaphor of leaning back came to mind as I travelled on a suburban train recently. Instead of reading, I was content to simply sit and enjoy the ride. Most seats were taken and there were a number of people in the foyer area of the carriage, including a man in a wheelchair. I felt myself lean back, literally and metaphorically, as I wondered how Jesus would view this man.

    My circle of concern soon expanded to include other passengers – the man in the smart business suit, the teen in the black hoodie, the private school students engrossed with their iPhones. Again, how would Jesus regard them?

    My wondering led to a visceral experience. I did not know these people; they were anonymous commuters on a city-bound train, but I felt myself beholding each one with compassion, acceptance and deep appreciation for their uniqueness, beholding them with God’s heart. I beheld them with love. It was as though Jesus and I were one as we together viewed these strangers.

    I reached my station, alighted and went about my business, but with a heart gentled by my leaning and wondering.

    Leaning has become part of my spiritual practice in that I now begin my time of prayer imagining myself leaning back toward Jesus. I feel myself ever so slightly physically move. I then try to be still (and straight), moving my awareness within, hoping to encounter and be encountered, hoping to be one with the One in whom I “live, move and have my being” (Acts 17:28), hoping to hear the heartbeat of God.

    When you think about it, lovers lean into each other; they are not rigid. Love leans and persons lean. The Greek word for person – prosopon – literally means “turned toward the other”. I don’t become fully human as an isolated individual. To be human is to lean on, to allow ourselves to be leaned upon, and to lean towards the other.

    Trees teach us this. Trees build up strength by moving with and into the wind. By leaning and bending trees become strong. Rigidity is weakness.

    Likewise, to become strong in our relationships we, too, lean and bend. We become fully human in the give and take of life when we move beyond any self-absorbed “it’s-all-about-me” state to do our bit to create and sustain communities of care with all the imperfect people – and that’s everyone – who are part of our world.

    And God leans. Rublev in his classic icon of the Trinity captures this. The three figures lean into each other symbolising that intimacy, relationship and a love that is self-giving, self-emptying and graciously receptive, is of the essence of God.

    There have been other leaning experiences throughout 2013.

    I went on retreat in September and there in my room – serendipity at play – was an icon of the beloved disciple at the Last Supper. The lettering was in French: Je te fiarcerai a moi dans la tendresse. I will draw you to myself with tenderness. The words are from the prophet Hosea and reminiscent of Rumi, that wonderful thirteenth century Persian poet and Sufi mystic, who says, “Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.”

    Teilhard de Chardin concurs. Teilhard often wrote about God’s attractive influence. God is “up ahead” as the ultimate force of attraction of the universe, alluring us, drawing us forward into an unknown but graced future.

    During the year I listened to an interview with English theologian and Catholic priest, James Alison, who spoke of faith in a most refreshing way. Faith, Alison said, is “relaxing into the embrace of the One who likes us.”

    Alison’s definition bears pondering. Think how delightful and freeing it can be to be in the presence of someone whom you know likes you. When I’m in this situation I feel myself physically and emotionally relax. I lean back in the chair, so to speak, content to be myself, secure and confident in the knowledge that I am known and accepted for who I am.

    This seemingly unorthodox description of faith is utterly orthodox. Alison says that God takes the initiative and that faith is always God’s gift. God’s grace enables me to relax and lean back in surrender into God’s embrace. Within that embrace I hear God speak a unique word of love to me and to all creation. God loves us, yes, and God also likes us, is fond of us, is attracted to us and leans toward us.

    Isn’t this what creation and incarnation are all about? Isn’t this what we celebrate at Christmas? By the power of the Spirit who, in Gerard Many Hopkins’ beautiful words, “… over the bent world broods with warm breast and with ah! Bright wings,” God leans over creation and humanity, not because of sin, but because of love.

    With overwhelming proof of how much God loves us and likes us, God gives Godself away in becoming human. God is both the giver and the gift. God is selfless love poured out in Jesus, the Beloved Son. At Christmas we celebrate the Son of God’s humanity and also our own. We are the human place God has chosen for God’s leaning.

    Look at the figures in the Christmas crib. Notice how all of them, animals included, are leaning in towards the child in the manger. Each of them is an icon of God leaning into us, all of us without exception.

    During this anything but “silly” season, may we lean on each other and allow ourselves to be leaned upon. May we lean back and accept God’s embrace and constant flow of love in Jesus. May we accept this embrace with deep peace and joy at Christmas and throughout the coming year – every coming year.

    Merry Christmas and a Happy Leaning New Year.

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

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

    You can follow Patty Fawkner on Twitter at https://twitter.com/PattyFawkner

     

     

  • New Vatican Committee on Sexual Abuse – What the Pope and the Bishops should do. Guest blogger: Bishop Geoffrey Robinson

    ​Pope Francis has announced that he is setting up a committee to advise him on how to respond to sexual abuse within the Church.  There is a large amount of scepticism in many quarters about such a move, for there have been so many other meetings before this and they have produced so little.  So why should one more committee make any difference?

    I am more hopeful than the sceptics because I think there is a new factor here, and that new factor is Pope Francis himself.  He has shown a willingness to face unpleasant aspects of the Church and a determination to change what needs to be changed that I have not seen since Pope John XXIII.  So I am more than happy to work with his initiative and to support him in any way I can.  Under his leadership I would far rather give wholehearted support to an initiative that may produce nothing than not give support to a movement that might seriously and genuinely confront all aspects of abuse.

    There are three things that have to be done in overcoming sexual abuse: deal with the offenders, assist the victims, and identify and remove any factors within the Church that have contributed either to abuse or to the poor response to abuse.  The Committee will need to look at all three.

    Before being ordained a bishop, every candidate is required to take a special oath of loyalty to the pope, and I know that bishops take this oath very seriously.  So I would like to see Pope Francis write a personal letter to each bishop in the world and say to them,

    “The people of the world, and the Catholic people themselves, will never believe that the Church is truly serious about confronting abuse as long as no action of any kind has been taken against any bishop, no matter how badly individual bishops may have responded to abuse.  I know that there are a million different degrees of both hard-heartedness and compassion in this field, so I have looked for an objective criterion with which I am confident the Catholic people of the world would agree.  I believe I have found it in this: If a minor has been abused because of an action or decision you took, or an action or decision you should have taken but did not, I want you, in accordance with your oath of loyalty to me, to submit your resignation from office to me within the next month, for this would mean that you had been truly, if indirectly, responsible for the sexual abuse of a minor.  I am confident in stating that the Catholic people of the world do not want bishops leading them who have been a true cause of abuse.

    “Furthermore, from now on, I wish to include under the oath of loyalty in a specific manner all aspects of your response to sexual abuse.  If you deal firmly and openly with all offenders and if you do everything within your power to assist victims, you will have kept your oath.  But if you do anything to hide offenders, shield them from civil authorities or allow them to continue to be a threat to the young, or if you in any way treat victims as though they were threats to the good name of the Church, or if you fail to show them compassion, you will have broken the solemn oath that you took before God.  I ask you to conduct a serious examination of conscience on this matter and I will accept the resignation of any bishop who decides that he has failed seriously.  I cannot insist on this, for I do not wish to make a present statement retrospective in its effects, and I am aware that my predecessors did not speak in these terms, but I ask you to give the most serious consideration to what I have said.

    “I realise that these are dramatic steps, but I believe they are essential if the Church is to be freed from the intolerable burden of abuse.  Bishops may well feel the need to issue a public statement concerning why they are or are not offering their resignation, but that would be no bad thing.

    “I also ask that each diocese nominate a series of persons to whom complaints of abuse can be made.  They should not be priests or anyone in authority, but lay persons who are capable of listening with intelligence and sympathy.  Unless this exists, a bishop simply does not know the extent of the problem in his diocese, and is certainly in no position to say that he has no problem.

    “I have spoken of bishops, but leaders of religious institutes must also consider these matters.”

    I have recently written a book (For Christ’s Sake) suggesting some of the causes of abuse and I shall not repeat that material here.  The only comment I wish to make here is that there are certain matters that directly involve the very credibility of the Church.   To say that celibacy is the total cause of the problem is as naïve as saying that marriage would solve all problems, but the question of celibacy must be put on the table for discussion.  To refuse to allow the matter even to be discussed, as both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict did, is to lose all credibility from the outset.  A celibacy that many priests experience as unwanted, unaccepted and unassimilated has its obvious dangers.  Equally, the absence of women from any positions of authority, with the consequent totally masculine ethos of authority cries out for discussion.  The idea that priests are somehow up on a pedestal, above other people, “ontologically different”, has certainly contributed to abuse.  There has been much comment on dealing with offenders and reaching out to victims, but the Committee absolutely must tackle this question of the causes of abuse.

    I thank Pope Francis for this initiative and wish it well.

     Geoffrey Robinson, Retired Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney

     

  • No Room at the Inn – Asylum Seekers in Australia, Christmas 2013. Guest blogger: Kerry Murphy

    In the time approaching Christmas, asylum seekers in Australia have been the target for increasingly harsh and punitive policies from the new Government.  None of this is really surprising as the Coalition policy documents stated the broad outline of their intentions.   It may help to outline the recent major events and to put them in context.

    No one is illegal

    Mr Abbott has often stated ‘‘This government will never allow people who come here illegally by boat to gain permanent residency in Australia.’’ [1].  This is an example of the incorrect use of the word ‘illegal’.  Under the Migration Act, people are either lawful non-citizens (s 13) or unlawful non-citizens (s14) – illegal is not mentioned.  There is no punishment for being unlawful, but you face detention and removal from Australia unless you have a visa application in process.  Until September 1994, it was an offence to be ‘íllegal’ but the offence was repealed in September 1994.

    The use of the word ‘illegal’ creates a negative connotation mainly against asylum seekers and this is reinforced by linking asylum seekers with people smugglers.  People smuggling is an offence in Australian law and also in several overseas jurisdictions.  Asylum seekers are fleeing persecution and using smugglers is a common way of escaping persecution.  However by linking the two, and then incorrectly calling the asylum seekers ‘illegal’ – they are stigmatised and seen as undesirable to the general public.

    Temporary Protection Visas

    There are several recent changes in the law which also target asylum seekers.  The first was the reintroduction of Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) on 18 October for those arriving without a visa.  The TPV is only for 3 years, and does not allow the refugee to apply for any other visa nor to sponsor their immediate family.  It was documented as causing psychological harm in the Howard era, and the return to such a punitive visa for people found to be refugees and in need of protection is seriously disturbing.[2]

    The TPV regulations were disallowed by the Senate on 1 December but the same day, the Minister retaliated by capping the number of protection visas to be granted until 1 July 2014 at 1650.[3]  Last year there were 7504 protection visas granted, including 2555 to those arriving on visas and subsequently being granted a protection visa.  Already 1650 was met so it meant no-one could be granted a protection visa until the new Immigration Year.  This affected those refugees who had not come without a visa, but had a visa on arrival and subsequently applied for a protection visa.  Then on 19 December this was revoked after a High Court challenge was commenced.[4]

     

    Abolishing Complementary Protection

    Then the Migration Amendment (Regaining Control Over Australia’s Protection Obligations) Bill was introduced.[5]   The Bill will abolish Complementary Protection.   How control over “Australia’s Protection Obligations” was ever lost was not explained by the explanatory memorandum.  Complementary Protection (CP) was introduced under Labor and took effect from 24 March 2012.  CP introduced a mechanism for people to access protection under the non-refoulement (not be sent back) obligations under the Convention Against Torture (CAT), International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and other international Human Rights Instruments.

    This long overdue reform brought into Australian law provisions which already existed in other similar countries such as Canada, UK, New Zealand and the EU.  The only way of accessing such protection in Australia, when it could not be shown it was for a Convention Refugee reason, was to seek the personal unreviewable and non-transparent discretionary intervention of the Minister.   This is only possible after you lose at Immigration and at the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT).  Whilst such a power is needed for the complicated and hard cases, administratively and legally it made sense to reduce the need to access the Minister by establishing administrative procedures at an earlier stage in the assessment process.[6]

    So far only 57 cases were found to meet the Complementary Protection provisions, but that is 57 people who otherwise would have had to try their luck with the Minister.  The Complementary Protection law was reviewed by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee back in 2009.[7]  The same Committee is now reviewing its proposed abolition.  Abolition of Complementary Protection would be a serious retrograde step and just make a complex system less reviewable and not transparent.[8]

    Code of Behaviour

    13th December was also unlucky for asylum seekers because they learned of yet further changes to commence the next day.  A Code of Behaviour was introduced. This required asylum seekers on a bridging visa E to sign the Code to state they would comply with all Australian laws and comply with reasonable requests to attend interviews.  Curiously, road laws were specifically mentioned, along with sexual offences, violent offences and ‘anti-social or disruptive activities’.   Whilst this may seem innocuous, it is nothing of the sort.  All visa applicants must sign a statement they will comply with Australian laws and values, but only asylum seekers must sign this extra Code of Behaviour.

    Failure to comply with the Code can lean to a cancellation of the Bridging Visa and a return to mandatory detention. So a breach of driving laws which would normally only lead to a fine means the putative refugee will have their visa cancelled before the Local Court even considers the matter.  Once cancelled, they must remain in detention until they are removed or are granted a protection visa.  However another change makes the grant of a protection visa no longer possible.

    Since 14 December it is impossible to get the permanent protection visa if you arrived in Australia without a visa.  This means that a person can be found to meet the refugee or Complementary Protection criteria (a complex process) but not be able to get any visa apart from a bridging visa.

    Another new regulation which authorises the disclosure of information to the State or Federal Police regarding the address details for applicants on bridging visas.  Why do the police need to know where asylum seekers are living?  Only applicants for protection face this demeaning provision – the thousands of others who apply for partner, skilled, student, business or employer sponsored visas are not caught by this odious regulation.   This is yet further vilification.

    Since Labor re-established offshore processing in Nauru and Papua New Guinea on 19 July 2013, all arrivals by boat are excluded from the Australia process entirely, so the changes announced in the last few months by the Coalition Government are designed for around 30,000 asylum seekers who arrived before that date and are still in the process.  Vilifying and targeting a group in the community is a poisonous way of dealing with people, as it makes other forms of discrimination and ill-treatment seem acceptable to the wider public.

    The overall impact of these policies is to deliberately demean and punish a group of vulnerable people, because of how they arrived in Australia.   This is punishment of refugees. At a time when many are expressing hope and peace for Christmas and the New Year, these policies do not promote Australia and Australians in the region as supporters and advocates of human rights.   Maybe we need to change the second verse of our national anthem – where it states’ for those who’ve come across the seas we’ve boundless plains to share’- not anymore we don’t.

    Reflection

    “Hostility comes from ignorance, hospitality from openness. Hostility towards strangers is born in a heart with barriers, hardened and incapable of seeing richness in diversity. The collective hostility of the western world can be healed by learning from hospitality in other cultures. The shift from hostility to hospitality happens when one experiences welcome, this gift of opening oneself to the reality of an individual or a family of refugees.”

    (Luis Magrina sj, In the footsteps of Pedro Arrupe p41)

     

    Kerry Murphy is a solicitor who works in the asylum and refugee area.

     


    [2] Zachary STEEL, Derrick SILOVE, Robert BROOKS, Shakeh MOMARTIN, Bushra ALZUHAIRI and Ina SUSLJIK, “Impact of immigration detention and temporary protection on the mental health of refugees.’  BRITISH JOURNAL OF PSYCHIATRY (2006) 188, 58 – 64,  http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/188/1/58.full.pdf

  • Election aftermath – where to now on asylum seekers and refugees? John Menadue

    Yesterday Sir William Deane launched a book ‘Refugees and asylum seekers – a better way’. A link to the book can be found at

    http://gallery.mailchimp.com/d2331cf87fedd353f6dada8de/files/Refugee_and_asylum_seeker_policy_Finding_a_better_way.pdf

    The book includes a chapter I wrote ‘Election aftermath – where to now on asylum seekers and refugees’. This chapter follows

    Election aftermath- where to now on asylum seekers and refugees?

    Since Tampa in 2001 asylum-seekers and refugees have become a divisive public issue. In that debate, boat arrivals have been the most contentious issue of all.

    Just before the September election the Rudd Government announced that no asylum seeker coming to Australia by boat would ever receive refugee status and permanent residence in Australia, but would be transferred to PNG or Nauru. This hard-line policy with some additional punitive measures in Operation Sovereign Borders has been adopted by the Abbott Government.

    The number of asylum seekers coming by boat fell dramatically in the last weeks of the Rudd Government. That trend has continued. The net result is that the gate has been very nearly closed for boat arrivals for the foreseeable future. But it will never be shut completely.

    Asylum seekers will continue to come by air. Presently about 7,000 to 8,000 asylum seekers come to Australia by air each year. Invariably they state their intention to come as a student, visitor or working holiday maker. They then get issued with a visa, enter Australia and apply for refugee status. Desperate people do desperate things. The chief source country for air arrivals is China and with about 40% of all air arrivals gaining refugee status. This situation is likely to continue. The toxic political debate is only about the mode of arrival. Arriving by aeroplane is OK but not by boat! What a lot of nonsense this is. We are obsessed only by boats.

    But as the gate for asylum seekers coming by boat closes more will seek to come by air.

    Against this unfortunate background where should we now try to focus the debate? Can we find some ground where effective and humanitarian policies can still be pursued? How can we blunt the edges of cruel policies?

    Despite the setbacks of recent years, I still think that there is quite a lot that we can try and do, as difficult as it will be in the present political climate.

    We must change the political narrative with a positive message about persons facing persecution and their contribution to Australia rather than the demonization and fear that has been engendered since John Howard’s days. It comes down to leadership across our community and not just politicians. Polls suggest that boat arrivals do not rate highly against such issues as health and education but it is a hot button issue on its own that produces a very strong and hostile response. It is so easy for unscrupulous politicians and some media people to engender fear of the outsider, the foreigner and the person who is different.  History is littered with such unscrupulous people. We must keep trying to change the debate and appeal to Australians more generous instincts that we all know are there.

    The dialogue between the Government, including the Department of Immigration and refugee advocates has been broken for a long time. We need a “second-track dialogue” – involving government officials, civil society, NGOs and refugee advocates in the dialogue process. A more constructive role by refugee advocates is essential and with a government prepared to listen.

    Progressively we should increase the refugee and humanitarian intake. If we took the same number of refugees today that we took during the Indo Chinese program of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s adjusted for our population increase since then we would now have an intake of about 35,000.  The Gillard Government increased the intake to 20,000 pa but the Abbott Government plans to reduce it to 13,750.  Having been frightened over border security Australians may now feel more secure with the new government in charge! As a result they may now be more supportive of refugees that have been processed in a more orderly way offshore, particularly by the UNHCR.

    Reluctantly, I have come to the view that the blanket opposition to offshore processing of asylum seekers has politically failed and with dire consequences for asylum seekers. A couple of years ago I welcomed with some reservations the agreement with Malaysia on transfers and processing. Unlike the Rudd Government’s agreement with PNG, the agreement with Malaysia was supported by UNHCR. On the contentious issue of offshore processing, the UNHCR in May this year issued a ‘Guidance Note’ on bilateral and/or multilateral arrangements on the transfer of asylum seekers. It emphasised that in any arrangement there must be effective protection. This encompasses (a) people given a legal status while they are in a transit country, (b) the principle of non-refoulement (c) people have access to refugee determination processes either within the legal jurisdiction of the state or by UNHCR and (d) treated with dignity. What is important is not where the processing occurs, but whether it is fair, humane and efficient and consistent with the Refugee Convention.

    The Malaysian Agreement was opposed by the Coalition, the Greens and almost all refugee advocate groups. It was an odd alliance! The failure of this agreement saw a threefold increase in boat arrivals within a few months. These arrivals rose to 14,000 in the six months to June 2013. The result of that large increase and with an election looming was the draconian agreement with PNG.

    In opposing the Malaysian Agreement many refugee advocates sided with Tony Abbott on “canings” in Malaysia. It was quite novel to see Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison defending the human rights of asylum seekers. Tony Abbott gave the impression that he was not interested in stopping the boats but stopping the Government stopping the boats. This was consistent with what a “key Liberal strategist” told the US Embassy in November 2009  that the boats  issue was “fantastic” for the Coalition  and “ the more boats that come the better”( SMH 10 December 2010).

    The agreement with Malaysia was also criticised because of the treatment of children. But children could never have been excluded from the arrangement or the boats would have filled up with children. They are called “anchors” to haul in the rest of the family. Children do need protection through a guardian arrangement but the Minister cannot be both gaoler and guardian.

    We should also pursue alternative migration pathways to discourage asylum seekers taking dangerous boat or other “irregular” Journeys.

    The first alternate pathway is through orderly departure arrangements with “source countries” such as we had with Vietnam from 1983. Over 100,000 Vietnamese came to Australia under this arrangement. We must pursue ODA’s with Sri Lanka, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. In both Iraq and Afghanistan we will have to bear particular responsibilities for our involvement in the wars in those countries just as we did after the Vietnam War. An orderly departure arrangement with Pakistan would probably have to be managed by UNHCR.  Importantly DIAC must anticipate future refugee flows.eg Syria and Egypt. I just cannot understand why the previous government did not actively pursue ODA’s.

    Secondly we should consider permanent or temporary migration in particular situations. e.g. Iranians on 457 visas. Recent Iranian boat arrivals are mainly single males, well-educated and resourceful. With a population explosion in Iran and the sanctions biting hard many want to leave. In the last 12 months the proportion of boat arrivals from Iran has doubled from 16% to 33%.Iranians are by far the largest national group in immigration detention in Australia. We need alternative pathways to address the special needs of nationals like the Iranians.

    Many asylum seekers in the community on bridging visas are not allowed to work. This is absurd. Work rights for all such visa holders are essential for reasons of human dignity and taxpayer cost. We should also review the ad hoc and confusing support arrangements for all asylum seekers living in the community.

    We should progressively abolish mandatory detention. At the end of August this year there were over 11,000 people in immigration detention. 96% were asylum seekers. At that time there were 1700 children in immigration detention of some form. It is all cruel and expensive. There is no evidence that it deters but politicians believe that it makes them look tough. If we should have learned anything from successive governments it is that punitive policies in immigration detention centres will result in riots, burnings, suicides and other self-harm. We will bear the human, social and financial costs of mandatory detention for decades

    Despite the heavy handed crackdown on boat arrivals there are still some important areas that we could address to help asylum seekers and refugees in their desperate plight. We have a duty to do what we can despite the toxic political environment.

    But we cannot manage these problems on our own.  Regional cooperation is essential, not to shift the burden but to share it. That is why we need to work particularly with both Indonesia and Malaysia in cooperation with UNHCR in the processing and then the resettlement of refugees. Those arrangements will problem not be” legally binding”. They will depend on trust.

    But whatever we do there is no “solution”.  Refugee flows will always be messy. Desperate people will try and cut corners. They will not play according to our rules. But we can do a lot better as we have shown in the past by successfully settling 750,000 refugees in Australia since 1945.

    John Menadue is a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development. He was Secretary Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs 1980-3. He was also Secretary, Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser, Ambassador to Japan and CEO of Qantas.

     

    Postscript:

    Only a few days ago, Tony Abbott released a pamphlet on the government’s achievements since the election. The first subject mentioned was ‘Stop the boats’. At this very time, the UNHCR was been drawing attention to the growing refugee crisis around the world and particularly the outflow of 4 million people from Syria. Yet Tony Abbott took pride in the fact that 33,000 refugees already living in Australia will ‘all be denied permanent residence’.

     

  • Is trench warfare the answer? John Menadue

    Sensing concern about the government’s performance in the first 100 days, Tony Abbott reportedly told the Liberal Party caucus to ‘prepare for trench warfare’ when parliament resumes in 2014.

    I would have thought that the last thing that Australia needs is for the government to embark on trench warfare. I sense that the public is looking for considered and conciliatory leadership.

    Defenders of Tony Abbott’s 100 day performance point out that John Howard had a rocky start, but that he then recovered. That is true, but Tony Abbott needs to learn quickly or the pattern set in the first 100 days will become entrenched. And the polls are certainly showing an early disquiet with the government. I suggest that the disquiet about Tony Abbott was always there, but the divisions with the ALP leadership took focus away from that concern. The last election showed that oppositions don’t win election. Governments lose them.

    There are several reasons for the disquiet.

    The first is that the  lack of a considered policy agenda was disguised by one-line media grabs – ‘stop the boats’, ‘axe the tax’, ‘pay down the debt’ and ‘eliminate the deficit’. Not surprisingly in almost every respect the government’s performance in these areas falls a long way short of what the one-liners suggested. The care and consideration which goes into good policy development was just not there.

    Secondly, it is clear that there is no clear ideological framework. Conservatives traditionally believe in markets, choice and enterprise. But it was clear in the GrainCorp decision for example, that the government had retreated from its traditional free-market approach. Tony Abbott says that private health insurance is part of the Liberal Party’s DNA, yet he supports continued massive government subsidies to PHI. I have also drawn attention to Tony Abbott’s policy of Direct Action to reduce carbon pollution. This policy is the antithesis of a market approach. Malcolm Turnbull described Direct Action as a fig leaf when you don’t have a coherent market-based policy.

    A third problem is the failure of the government to manage the transition from opposition to government. I wrote about this in my post of December 6 ‘Being in government is different to being in opposition’. The NSW Premier put the problem succinctly when education policy was being emasculated by Christopher Pyne. The Premier said that the Abbott Government should start governing and stop acting as if it were still in opposition.

    Another issue which the government must address is the competence of its cabinet and ministry. I drew attention to this problem when the Coalition was in Opposition. See my blog of July 3 ‘The C team versus the Shadow Cabinet’.  The former NSW Liberal Premier and Commonwealth Finance Minister, John Fahey, commented only last week ‘Tony has picked the team that got him over the line as Opposition leader. A number of them were never going to make him look good in Government.’

    A former Conservative Prime Minister in the UK, Harold Macmillan, when asked what he feared most as Prime Minister, allegedly said ‘it is events, my dear boy, events!’. Tony Abbott is not showing that he has the policy or ideological framework – or perhaps temperament – to handle ‘events”

    Instead of facing up to these glaring problems, Tony Abbott says that there is more trench warfare ahead. A good example of this is the decision to appoint a royal commission on pink batts. It will be to attack and settle old scores with the Rudd Government. Should a victorious Prime Minister really be doing that? Where does it stop?

    But the government has 1,000 days to prove itself. It may yet do that but the first 100 days have not been promising. The last thing we want is more trench warfare.

    A vision for the future would be much more appealing.

  • Budget deficits – how did they happen and what can be done. John Menadue

    The government is announcing today an update of this year’s budget. This is the government’s first major economic statement since the election. It will focus particularly on the budget deficit. It will attempt to blame the previous government as much as possible. I addressed this issue of the budget deficit and how it has come about. 

    What is important is the performance of the economy. The budget is a means to that end. The budget deficit is important, but it is important not to over-react. The Europeans did this with very serious consequences for slower economic growth and large increases in unemployment particularly in southern Europe. 

    Consumer and business confidence is fragile. The government’s performance and exaggeration of our economic and financial problems will not help.,

    The following was posted on 29 November 2013.  Repost below.

    I have written extensively in this blog about the phoney outrage of Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey about the budget deficit and the debt. How ironic it is now that the government wants to lift the debt ceiling when only a few months ago it said that it would better manage the economy and quickly lower the level of debt.

    Our deficit is not a cause for panic. We have a well-performing economy. And our deficits and debt are in far better shape than most countries in the world. But we do have a longer term budget deficit problem that we need to address.  Economists call this our structural deficit problem, the long-term deficit that we have in government accounts regardless of the fluctuations in revenue and expenditure over the ups and downs of the business cycle.

    It is estimated that with existing federal and state policies at the present time, we face a structural budget deficit of about $60 billion in today’s currency.

    How did this happen?

    The primary and major cause was the way the Howard Government wasted the tax returns from the mining boom. The parliamentary budget office put this problem in the following terms.

    ‘Over two thirds of the five percentage points of GDP decline in structural receipts over the period 2002/3 to 2011/12, was due to the cumulative effects of the successive personal income tax cuts granted between 2003/4 and 2008/9. A further quarter was the result of a decline in excise and customs duties as a proportion of GDP. Significant factors driving this trend included the abolition of petroleum fuels excise indexation in the 2001/2 Budget and the decline in the consumption of cigarettes and tobacco over the period.’

    The IMF came to much the same conclusion. It identified two periods of Australian ‘fiscal profligacy’ in recent years, both during the Howard turn in office – in 2003 at the start of the mining boom and during his final years in office between 2005 and 2007. (SMH Jan 11, 2013)

    In short, our structural budget deficit is due in substantial part to the Howard Government’s laxity with government spending and tax reductions during the mining boom. We blew the benefits of the mining boom when we should have been doing more to improve the budget surplus.

    The second cause of the structural deficit is that the Rudd Government spent heavily to counter the global financial crisis. It was more successful than almost any other government in the world in avoiding a major recession and unemployment, but when the recovery took hold, the Rudd and Gillard Governments did not focus on the structural deficit problem particularly as identified by the Henry tax review. Some improvements were made to reduce middle-class welfare like the subsidy to private health insurance and the over-generous concessions that Peter Costello had given to superannuants. But the improvements were nowhere near enough.

    The Abbott Government has established a Commission of Audit to address this structural deficit and other problems. But I am doubtful if it will address the big ticket items and the hard political decisions that will be required.

    Despite the public perception that we are highly taxed, the fact is that Australia has one of the lowest ratios of tax to GDP amongst the 34 OECD countries. In 2010, Australian taxes were about 26% of our GDP. This compared with the OECD average of 34%.

    A major contributor to our lower taxes is the large number of ‘tax expenditures’. These are tax breaks, rebates and other loop-holes which reduce tax revenue. Australia has a much higher level of these ‘tax expenditures’ than countries such as Canada, US, Korea, Netherlands and Germany.

    Some examples of these ‘tax expenditures’ that reduce tax revenue are as follows:

    • Ian McAuley and I have estimated that the subsidies to the private health insurance industry via policy holders cost about $7 billion per annum.
    • According to Treasury, tax revenue is reduced by about $30 billion per annum as a result of the superannuation tax concessions.
    • According to the Grattan Institute, governments provide benefits of about $36 billion per annum to home-owners through exemptions from land and capital gains taxes, and age pension entitlements. These very large tax expenditures work to disadvantage many young people who are unable to enter the housing market or people who prefer or are forced to rent accommodation.
    • The Grattan Institute also estimates that property investors get a benefit of about $7 billion per annum through negative gearing and the capital gains discount.

    The Grattan Institute also suggests that Australian government budgets could be improved by about $37 billion per annum through broadening the GST to include food and private spending on health and education, as well as lifting the pension and superannuation at retirement age to 70.

    To the above possible reform measures, could be added a reformed mining tax that really raises money. If the Minerals Resources Rent Tax was raised to 40% as proposed by the Henry Review, it would raise an additional $5 billion per annum.

    All the above are big ticket items that cost the budget large sums of money. These benefits and tax expenditures also heavily favour high income earners. Vested interests and rent-seekers will fight doggedly to maintain their privileged positions.

    These are hard political issues, but if we are to address our structural budget deficit problem, they will need to be examined carefully and introduced progressively, or at least partially-like limiting negative gearing to new homes.

    Worthwhile reform is likely to antagonise strong vested interests. That is why I am afraid that the Abbott Government is likely to direct our attention onto quite secondary issues such as ‘government waste’ which are really chicken-feed alongside the big ticket items mentioned above.

    The Hawke/Keating governments showed that bold reform is possible. John Howard showed it with the GST

    We can achieve necessary reform if we all stopped talking exclusively about politics and engaged in sensible policy debates.

  • Well-paid jobs or welfare? John Menadue

    The Abbott Government’s confusion over Holden’s withdrawal from Australia reflects a much deeper hostility to the car industry. The main reason for this is that the car industry is highly unionised, pays good wages and has a high degree of alignment of interests between labour and capital. The right-wing finds that all quite offensive.

    Yet the right-wing supports subsidies in other industries that have little merit. The subsidies to these other industries put the support of the car industry in the shade.

    As I mentioned in a recent blog on 12 December, the government provides enormous subsidies to parts of the services sector.

    • We provide $7 billion p.a. for the private health insurance industry – a very high cost and parasitic industry which Labor failed to properly tackle. Warren Buffett described PHI as the tape worm in the US health system. It is the same in Australia and we subsidize it!!
    • We will provide $1.8 billion over four years to the tax-avoidance industry with salary packages for executive cars. The coalition reversed a Labor Government decision to stop this rort.
    • We provide over $30 billion p.a. in subsidies to the superannuation sector. The wealthy receive highly subsidised tax treatment of their superannuation contributions? On top of that they do not pay tax on superannuation repayments from the time they reach 60 years of age.  This subsidy for superannuation holders is in addition to the enormous $20b annual fees that financial advisers extract from policy holders. Both major parties are culpable on this but Labor marginally less so.

    What is the sense or decency in decrying the car industry which has a well-paid and efficient workforce but we provide enormous individual and corporate welfare for the rent-seekers in the three areas mentioned above? Holden claim that they were seeking an additional subsidy of $80 m per year for 7 years.

    Conservatives decry welfare spending but have supported a major shift in welfare payments over the years. Because of under-investment in human capital like education and physical infrastructure and neglect of steady economic adjustment, conservative governments have spent very strongly on distributive welfare to compensate for inequalities rising from our weakened economic structure. Over the last 50 years, social security assistance has risen from 5% of Australians’ household disposable income to 12%. Examples of this expanded social security assistance are baby bonuses, family allowances and superannuation concessions for the wealthy. The previous Labor governments did move to some degree to wind back some of this middle-class welfare – subsidies to private health insurance and the second baby-bonus – but the justification was more about immediate budgetary management than an expression of the principle that it is better to have a strong and productive economy with good wages. We need to become less reliant on distributive welfare both for individuals and corporations.

    The path to growing incomes and fairness is through productivity and well-paid employment rather than government welfare handouts that have risen dramatically because of a failure of all governments in human capital and physical infrastructure development.

    As the Scandinavians have shown, well-paid jobs with high levels of skill rather than welfare are the way to long-term prosperity. We need to be more productive and in the process of adjustment our attention should be directed first to the rent-seekers in industries such as private health insurance and superannuation. The motor vehicle industry should be a much lower priority.

    The right-wing commentators show their political colours in supporting subsidies to the superannuation sector but are beside themselves in hostility to the well-paid and highly-unionised workers in the car industry. Australia needs more productivity and well-paid jobs and less individual and corporate welfare. We need a well-paid and productive workforce for good economic reasons but more importantly for the dignity that goes with meaningful work.

  • The Holden mess gets worse. John Menadue

    Yesterday I posted a blog ‘Taunting Holden to Leave’.

    Let me add to the continuing story of this major stuff-up.

    The Abbott Government, through Industry Minister Macfarlane asked the Productivity Commission to advise on assistance to the car industry. He asked for a report by March next year. On Monday this week, Minister Macfarlane was asked if he supported Holden remaining in Australia. He replied ‘Absolutely! Are we doing something about it? Absolutely!’ But this attempt by the Minister for due process and proper consideration was saboutaged by Joe Hockey. Holden was put to the sword by the Abbott Government long before the Productivity Commission could report.

    In acting ahead of the Productivity Commission report, Joe Hockey bullied, taunted and threatened Holden. Leaks poured out from ministers to make Holden’s position almost intolerable. The leaking was supported by Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal that said that General Motors had already decided to stop manufacturing in Australia. With all this hectoring, Holden decided that it had had enough and would exit manufacturing in Australia. If Holden was looking for an exit strategy the Abbott Government gave it one. It is hard to recall such a mess in decision-making.

    Another important factor is that the Abbott Government decided to retain the Fringe Benefit Tax salary packaging rorts for executive cars. The Labor Government said it would abolish these rorts and save $1.8 billion over four years. But the Abbott Government decided to reverse this decision. That $1.8b is almost the same amount as the cost of additional assistance that Joe Hockey said the car industry needed – $2 billion over four years.

    Furthermore, the Fringe Benefit rort had been used in executive salary packaging to buy almost exclusively foreign-made cars, whereas the $2 billion in industry assistance that was necessary would go directly to help Australian manufacturing of cars. So the Abbott Government was prepared to turn a blind eye to tax avoidance over executive cars. But it refused very nearly the same amount over four years to keep companies such as Holden manufacturing. In Australia. The Abbott Government decided that it would give preference to the tax avoidance industry rather than the auto manufacturing industry.

    What a disgrace. What a shambles.

  • Japan’s secret agenda. Guest blogger: Walter Hamilton

    Using its dominance of both houses of the Diet, Japan’s ruling party has pushed through a new anti-terrorism and secrecy law. The strong-arm parliamentary methods used to secure its passage have added to public concerns about the way the law may be employed by the Abe Government to stifle dissent, curb public access to information and intimidate political opponents. The LDP mustered its numbers during a late-night session on Friday, noisy public protests and extensive media criticism notwithstanding.

    The State Secrecy Protection Law is the legislative accompaniment for Japan’s newly created National Security Council (modeled on America’s NSC), both required, says the government, for effective crisis management. What crisis? Many observers believe Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has moved swiftly to exploit the sense of crisis affecting Sino-Japanese relations as a result of their territorial dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands.

    Critics of the law say it is vague and all encompassing and lacks a clearly defined process of review. The law defines “terrorism” as any activity that forces “political and other principles or opinions on the state or other people.” Concern that this could be used to control dissent took on more substance after LDP secretary-general and senior government member Shigeru Ishiba likened public demonstrations against the law to “terrorism” (he later “corrected” his statement). The law puts into the hands of bureaucrats the power to determine what is and what isn’t a state secret. While this is not unusual by international standards, the political culture in Japan is already conservative and opaque, and freedom-of-information laws have proven less effective than in some other countries. The threat of prison terms for journalists who seek or handle classified information is another provision that has drawn fire.

    The government’s lame response to these complaints has been to say that officials would be required to “take into consideration” human rights and freedom of the press. Abe also promised to set up an agency to monitor what information was being made secret, but the powers and scope of such an agency were not incorporated into the legislation. One of the weakest aspects of governance in Japan, most political scientists agree, is oversight of the bureaucracy and public accountability for its decisions. There is no reason to believe this is about to improve––more likely, it will get worse.

    Since the war Japan has not had a law directed specifically at protecting state secrets. This situation complemented the country’s constitutional restraint against belligerency as a means of settling international disputes: Japanese pacifism. “If Japan can never make war, what secrets does it need to protect?” or so the argument went. In some quarters, the country was regarded as a poor keeper of secrets. (It was always thus, if one looks back at the Allies’ success in breaking Japanese codes before and during the war and the activities of the Soviet spy Richard Sorge.) The United States, Japan’s ally, is a supporter of the new law, which its backers say is needed to facilitate intelligence sharing. Once upon a time, much critical intelligence did not need to leave the American “defense community” responsible for guarding Japan; increasingly, however, military burdens are being shared or taken over by Japanese agencies. The new law’s larger significance is how it fits into the LDP’s plans for constitutional change and the trend towards a more self-reliant or self-directed Japanese military posture.

    Abe has used up a considerable amount of his political capital in getting the secrecy law through the Diet. Commentators have likened his methods to the “bad old days” of LDP hegemony in the 1960s and 1970s. Though Japanese voters may from time to time hand one party (or a coalition) a strong mandate, they prefer governments to approach controversial issues with delicacy, allow a full airing of opinions and strive for consensus, rather than muscle through. Abe’s approval rating recently slipped below 50% for the first time since he took office. The scars of this latest battle are unlikely to heal quickly. It will be difficult to assess the operation of the new law because of its very nature, but when it is breached and a whistleblower is brought to book, as inevitably will happen, the government may find it harder to deal with the consequences than it was to corral the Diet.

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

  • Taunting Holden to leave. John Menadue

    It has been quite remarkable to see Joe Hockey daring and taunting Holden to close. He apparently chose to take advantage of Tony Abbott’s absence in South Africa to show off his “dry” credentials and burnish his leadership aspirations. Having lost the argument over Graincorp, Joe Hockey talked tough on Holden. He dared Holden to either put up or shut up. He then escalated the rhetoric against Holden by shouting in parliament ‘There is a hell of a lot of industries in Australia that would love to get the assistance that the motor vehicle industry is getting’.

    In fact there are a lot of industries that do get a level of assistance and protection that far exceeds the $500 million p.a. which Joe Hockey tells us the motor industry receives.

    Who are some of these beneficiaries of this corporate welfare?

    My first exhibit is the $7 billion p.a. taxpayer subsidy to the private health insurance industry. That corporate welfare alone is about 14 times more p.a. than goes to the motor vehicle industry. PHI has operating costs about three times higher than Medicare. Through gap insurance PHI has facilitated the largest increase in specialist fees in 25 years. PHI weakens Medicare’s ability to control costs. It favours the wealthy. It offers look-alike policies with very little real choice. It churns money rather than making things. Yet companies like BUPA, Medibank Pte and others attract a $7b pa subsidy

    Through restricted competition and political lobbying power our chemists impose excessive prices of over $1b per annum.

    Taxpayer provide a $30 billion p.a. subsidy to the superannuation sector.

    And there is a lot more in such areas as subsidies to fund negative gearing and capital gains discounts.  (See my blog of November 29).

    By contrast the motor vehicle industry does provide substantial benefits to the Australian economy and community. It is at the core of our manufacturing industry.

    The motor vehicle industry is far more important to our future than the industries that receive the enormous subsidies that I mentioned. We have got the issue seriously out of proportion.

    Why is it that our corporate economists have an ideological set against the manufacturing sector but ignore the enormous corporate welfare that goes to the rent seekers in our services sector?

  • Facts on boat arrivals. John Menadue

    There have been a number of claims by Scott Morrison that Operation Sovereign Borders has resulted in a significant reduction in boat arrivals. The ALP has asserted that the reduction in boat arrivals follows the trend set by the Rudd Government.

    It has been difficult to check Scott Morrison’s claims as there has been quite deliberate policy to make it difficult for the public to ascertain what is really happening.

    The ABC Fact Check has reviewed the facts that are available. The Fact Check Report can Facts on boat abe found at

    http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-12-10/scott-morrison-not-telling-full-story-asylum-seeker-arrivals/5119380

    The report concludes ‘There has been an 80% reduction in asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat in the comparison period outlined by Mr Morrison. However, the data shows the number of arrivals began to slow significantly under Labor, soon after Mr Rudd’s regional resettlement arrangement was announced’. Fact Check asked specialists in data analysis to comment. Dr. Higginson said ‘… the data shows that … there is no evidence to suggest that the new government’s policies have had any additional impact on arrivals over and above the trend already in place’.

    What a barren media landscape we would have without the ABC!

     

  • In defence of compulsory voting. Guest blogger: Graham Freudenberg

    One of the best features of Australian elections is the high voter turnout. This has been achieved by compulsory voting. The LNP in Queensland is now moving to abolish it in the state in which it was first established, by a Tory government, in 1914. This must not be allowed to go uncontested, like so much else that is happening in Queensland.

    Compulsory voting has been a distinctive, positive and successful feature of Australian democracy for the best part of a century (1924 in Federal elections).  It is deeply embedded in our political culture and custom. It makes elections by far the most majestic of all our national events – the only occasion on which every Australian adult participates in exactly the same way, on equal terms, for the highest common purpose – the election of a democratic government. It is a unique affirmation of the equality of every Australian citizen and of the inclusiveness of our society, immensely important in a nation of immigrants.  It embodies the civic obligation as well as the entitlement that comes with the right to vote.

    For more than two hundred years, the struggle for parliamentary democracy has been about enlarging the franchise. The Holy Grail of democracy has always been ‘one person, one vote;  one vote, one value’. Anti-democrats have sought to restrict the franchise, usually through property, educational, gender or racial qualifications. The move against compulsory voting is a disguised form of voter restriction. The argument that compulsory voting pulls in the apathetic, the ill-informed, the uneducated, the unintelligent, has been used to resist every extension of the franchise, including votes for women.

    A high participation rate in genuinely contested elections is the universally recognised sign of a healthy democracy.  Low turnouts are causing anxiety in democracies world-wide. Low turnouts undermine the legitimacy of the result. The polarisation of the American electorate along special interest and race lines is leading to a denial that the Presidential result represents the ‘real’ people or the true Americans. But the real problem in the United States is not the comparatively high turnout of blacks or Latinos in support of Obama but the low turnout of voters generally.

    Compulsory voting reduces the possibility of voter fraud and impersonation. It is a cruel irony that some states in the United States are invoking ‘fraud’ as a reason for tougher identification laws when the real purpose is to make voting more difficult for disadvantaged groups, specifically blacks.

    The low and declining turnout now occurring in all countries without compulsory voting makes it easier to disguise fraud. It can be used to mask discrepancies between the declared vote and pre-election opinion polls. It can be used to explain away otherwise inexplicable variations in the turnout between regimes. It can be used to cover the destruction or theft of ballot papers. This electoral corruption occurs on a massive scale in Russian presidential elections, facilitated by low voter turnout. The high level of public confidence in the integrity of the ballot in Australia is a direct result of compulsory voting and the high voter turnout which it produces.

    The low turnouts now endemic in the Western democracies increase the influence of pressure groups, lobbies, single-issue parties and special interests. In the US, the power of the gun lobby rests almost entirely on its ability to mobilise, or threaten to mobilise, its supporters against sitting members of Congress. That is why gun control measures with overwhelming popular support fail to pass Congress. The Tea Party’s power over the Republican Party derives from its threat to knock off main-stream Republicans in low turnout (and gerrymandered) elections.

    In the Australian context, the abolition of compulsory voting would increase the power of the party machines.  If ‘getting out to vote’ were to become the overriding function of election campaigns, the parliamentary leadership would become even more dependent upon the central machines.

    In the final analysis, my case for compulsory voting rests on the assertion that the highest possible voter turnout is a great public good in itself and for itself. The custom of a century has made the compulsion almost nominal. But Australia’s high voting performance would not survive its abolition by ten years.

    Graham Freudenberg, December 2013

  • Does Tony Abbott believe in markets? John Menadue

    We are already seeing a division opening up in the Abbott Government between ‘wets’ and ‘dries’ and a lot of confusion.

    The Liberal Party and conservatives generally espouse the value of markets – that governments should not interfere unless there is clear market failure or overwhelming reasons of public interest. This belief in markets is at the core of conservative philosophy The Liberal Party platform speaks expansively of “enterprise” and “consumer choice”. Ministers such as Joe Hockey, Andrew Robb and Malcolm Turnbull seem to hold to that belief.  But Tony Abbott, along with Barnaby Joyce and the National Party, seem opposed to markets when key decisions have to be made. Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane seems to be having an arm wrestle with Cabinet over support for Holdens. Then what about support for Qantas?

    This division clearly showed itself over the government decision to refuse foreign investment in Graincorp. Tony Abbott apparently sided against Joe Hockey and those in the Liberal party who espouse markets. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, Peter Reith, a leading Liberal party member and former Howard defence minister said that the Graincorp decision “had Tony Abbott’s fingerprints all over it”. Barnaby Joyce and the National party successfully carried out a covert campaign against foreign investment in Graincorp. Interestingly, after being criticised for his protection of Graincorp, Tony Abbott now wants to be seen as hairy chested” on both Qantas and Holden

    Peter Costello has also criticised the government for its Graincorp decision. Several years ago he reportedly told Michael Kroger that in the Howard Government, Tony Abbott had no interest in economics and that he was ‘economically illiterate’. Tony Abbott shows the same distributionist approach as one of his earlier heroes B.A. Santamaria.

    But the most striking example of Tony Abbott’s scepticism about markets is his policy of Direct Action on carbon pollution rather than a market mechanism like a carbon tax or an Emissions Trading Scheme. Tony Abbott’s denial of a market approach has clearly paid political dividends with his attack on the carbon tax. But good policy is sacrificed.

    In the latter days of the Howard Government, John Howard proposed a market mechanism to address carbon pollution. He proposed an Emissions Trading Scheme. He believed in a market approach. When the new Liberal party leader, Malcolm Turnbull supported an ETS, Tony Abbott and the climate sceptics in the Liberal party tore him down.

    The result is a highly bureaucratic and interventionist approach in Direct Action to combat carbon pollution. Direct Action with its subsidies and interventions is the very antithesis of a market mechanism. Malcolm Turnbull has described Direct Action as a fig leaf when you don’t have an effective and efficient mechanism to reduce carbon pollution.

    Almost every respectable economist in the world will side with the IMF and OECD that a market-based approach to carbon pollution reduction – such as a carbon tax or ETS – is the most efficient and effective mechanism. But Tony Abbott has sided with the ‘wets’ to give us Direct Action.

    Another important test of Tony Abbott’s attitude to markets is likely to be his response to the States and particularly the retailers who want more protection from on- line imports.

    I can understand the concern of the States about their loss of GST revenue but do the likes of Harvey Norman need protection The retailers keep bleating about unfair competition but an increase of 10% on imports is not likely to make much difference, given that the price on many imports is substantially below Australian retail prices.

    The Productivity Commission reported in 2011 that the “intensified competition from imports is good for consumers but is challenging for the retail industry which as a whole does not compare favourably in terms of productivity with many overseas countries” The Productivity Report   further found  high occupancy costs of retailers in payments to landlords as a major problem for retailers.. The report also found that out of 17 industry sectors only the mining sector was more profitable than retailing in Australia. That does not suggest the need for more protection.

    A survey by Choice said that the attraction of on line shopping was convenience rather than price. Yet retailers have been slow to develop on line shopping.

    The Abbott Government has shown its screpticism about markets in both the environment and foreign investment. Will it now protect the retail sector at the expense of consumers?

    The division between wets and dries will continue to play out in the Abbott Government. Tony Abbott is more at home with the vested interests that the Nationals and Barnaby Joyce side with. On the two critical issues to date, he has sided against the “dries”. What will its attitude be to on line shopping? Or Qantas? Or Holden?

    Tony Abbott’s scepticism about markets could be the same impediment to economic reform that the Fraser Government experienced…a continuous disagreement between “wet” and “dries”.

    In short the Abbott Government is showing that it lacks an ideological  and policy framework. Confusion is inevitable.

     

    PS A remarkable feature about subsidies to industry is that there is no mention at all in the media about the $7.5b annual subsidy which the Australian taxpayer provides to the high cost private health insurance industry. No wonder BUPA can waste public money in television advertising at the cricket.

  • Being in Government is different to being in Opposition. John Menadue

    Tony Abbott is being mugged by the reality of Government and how he manages day to day events. He has very little of a developed policy framework on which to draw.

    In Opposition, Tony Abbott was  adept at the political one-liners – ‘stop the boats’, ‘axe the tax’,’ reduce the deficit’ and ‘pay back the debt’. There was not a great deal of policy to back up this political rhetoric. We are now seeing that day after day with one blunder after another.

    The NSW Premier O’Farrell put it succinctly over education policy that the Abbott Government should start governing and stop acting as if it was still in opposition.

    Power may be abused, but power also reveals character. In one event after another, we are seeing the character of the Abbott Government.

    • In Opposition, Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison and Julie Bishop said that they didn’t seek Indonesian agreement but understanding on turn-back of boats at sea and the buying up of Indonesian fishing vessels. In Opposition, they didn’t hear or chose not to hear Indonesian objections to this clear infringement of Indonesian sovereignty. So when the telephone interceptions of discussions by President Yudhoyono and his wife were made public, it was an ideal opportunity for Indonesia to push back on Operation Sovereign Borders. Tony Abbott and his government then clumsily mis-managed the whole episode. In opposition you can take risks with other countries that you can’t take in government.  Would his close associates also tell him that many people and particularly Asians don’t like their personal space being invaded by aggressive hand-shaking?
    • The Abbott Government is clearly finding that abolishing the carbon tax is not as easy as it thought. Blind Freddy would know that the Senate would present difficulties. Furthermore Tony Abbott should know that unscrambling the carbon tax will present major problems for business.
    • Tony Abbott told us that his government would be “open for business”. Then he vetoed the bid for Graincorp. Peter Reith, a leading figure in the Liberal Party, and a former defence minister said that the government decision on Graincorp was ‘the latest in a series of botched decisions’. He added that the Graincorp decision ‘had Tony Abbott’s fingerprints all over it’.
    • Then there was the massive climb-down on budget deficits and debt. Both Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey are running as fast as they can from their election undertakings.
    • In Opposition, the Liberal Party said that it would abolish the Clean Energy Finance Corporation which was set up to assist investment in clean energy. The Chairman of the Corporation and a highly respected businesswoman, Jillian Broadbent has said that ‘it is disappointing that a tool that is fiscally responsible and effective is being abandoned’.
    • Then there was the fiasco of Christopher Pyne over school funding with three different positions in one week. The SMH in its editorial of December 3, carried the headline ‘Electorate, Students, betrayed by cynicism of PM and Pyne’. For sheer incompetence Christopher Pyne gets top marks. We thought we had a consensus or a “unity ticket” on school funding but the Abbott  Government has blown that away ,in the same way that Tony Abbott blew away the consensus we used to have on climate change when Malcolm Turnbull led the Liberal Party
    • The Chinese Government announced new rules for airspace in the dispute over islands in the South China Sea. The Australian Government attacked the Chinese announcement, but then allowed Qantas to abide by the new Chinese rules.
    • Scott Morrison continues to hide information about boat arrivals. The Canberra Press Gallery veteran, Laurie Oakes, says that ‘The Abbott Government is thumbing its nose at voters through a lack of transparency and communication’.
    • Then came the keystone cops activities of George Brandis and ASIO in raids on a whistle blower and an attorney over bugging of the East Timor Cabinet. There will be a lot more to come on this one.
    • Then there were the attacks on the ABC and an agreement with the Greens to abolish the debt ceiling. What’s next!
    • And all this began with the parliamentary entitlements scandal with Tony Abbott leading the peloton.

    Surely this muddle and confusion must end soon. But a Cabinet that includes Christopher Pyne, George Brandis, Barnaby Joyce, Greg Hunt, Eric Abetz, Scott Morrison, Kevin Andrews and Peter Dutton, is a cause for worry.

    I don’t recall a government that has had such a short honeymoon as this one. The first 100 days have been memorable for the wrong reasons. It has yet to successfully make the transition from Opposition to Government.

  • Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. John Menadue

    On December 9 the Royal Commission will commence public hearings into the role of the Catholic Church in Australia on this issue. Francis Sullivan the Executive Director of the Truth Justice and Healing Council of the Catholic Church said on 3 December that “Catholics and non-Catholics will be shocked and disillusioned when they hear the details of the four Queensland based case studies and how the Catholic Church handled the cases and treated the victims”.

    Together with friends, I have made a submission to the Royal Commission. You can find it by clicking on my website which can be found at the top left-hand side of the home page of this blog. The submission can also be found on the Royal Commission website under the item ‘Towards healing issues paper’.

    In our submission we highlight the problems of governance and a clerical culture which have contributed to the current problems.

    Our concerns were identified earlier by the Murphy Commission which was concerned with the Archdiocese of Dublin. That Commission found that the “structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated the cover up”. Pope Benedict wrote a pastoral to the people of Ireland and blamed the bishops for not following the “long established norms of Canon Law”. The problem however was Canon Law itself.

    The Maitland/Newcastle enquiry is continuing and is expected to  report on 28 February next year.

    The Victorian Parliamentary Enquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organisations handed down its report ‘Betrayal of Trust’ on 13 November 2013. This report stated starkly ‘No representative of the Catholic Church directly reported the crimes committed  by its members to the police’(p170). The Committee found ‘That there is simply no justification for this position’. It said that in not one instance of the 307 cases involving the diocese of Ballarat, Sale and Sandhurst, did the Bishops report directly to the police.  That is extraordinary, even though  the Church cooperated once police enquiries were afoot.

    What the Victorian enquiry did not elaborate on, was that any public reporting of information by the Catholic Church about sexual abuse of minors, (that a bishop was required to investigate internally under Canon 1717) was strictly forbidden by Canon law.  See guest blog on this issue by Kieran Tapsell on November 17.

    In addition to our submission to the Royal Commission referred to above you might find the following blogs relevant. They are posted on this site

    Bella Figura. Not admitting mistakes, Kieran Tapsell 4 December

    What a good effort.   Chis Geraghty, November 30

    Sexual abuse, two Popes late on the scene. Michael Kelly, November 26

    Sexual abuse, don’t mention Canon Law. Kieran Tapsell, November 25

    Victorian Parliament’s “Betrayal of Trust “ report. Kieran Tapsell, November 17

    I have also posted earlier blogs on this issue, February 20, February 22, February 28, March 25 and April 3, 2013.

  • The Japanese and Chinese provocations. Guest blogger: William Grimm

    China has expanded its air defense zone, ramping up a dispute with Japan that goes from bad to worse and shows no sign of abating. Observers are even thinking about the unthinkable – armed conflict between the two countries. And such conflict would not be limited to them. As was demonstrated by their sending two B-52 bombers through the area newly claimed by China, the Americans are bound to honor their alliance with Japan in the event of conflict.

    How did things reach this point? Though the issues that underlie the crisis have existed since at least the end of the Pacific War, until lately it has not been a cause of friction. China claimed some islets as theirs and Japan did likewise. In fact, the islands were privately owned by some Japanese. Rather than make an issue of it, each country simply ignored the other’s claims. However, the recent finding that there may be undersea gas fields near the islands made both countries more interested in sovereignty.

    Then, one of Japan’s most divisive figures entered the picture. Shintaro Ishihara is a far-right politician who was governor of Tokyo for nearly 13 years. He has made a career of making statements that demonstrate a hyper-nationalistic attitude against foreigners both in and outside of Japan. He seems to take delight in upsetting people.

    Last year, he declared that he would arrange for Tokyo to purchase the islands from their owners in order to secure Japanese sovereignty over them. What had been a situation of “you say they’re yours, we say they’re ours, but they’re not worth arguing over” may, contrary to anyone’s wishes, become a casus belli.

    The Chinese government has fostered a patriotism of resentment, emphasizing insults to the country by European and Japanese colonialists and by American “hegemony.” It can be a useful way to give a common ethos to people who are ethnically diverse, who have their own mini-nationalistic tendencies and who are increasingly disillusioned with the official ideology and practice of the ruling party. Foreign insults and injustices, ancient or modern, real or imagined, are handy ways to distract people from current domestic ones.

    So, it was impossible for the Chinese government to ignore Ishihara’s move without losing face among the people of China. (I doubt anyone outside China and a few Japanese hyper-nationalists care in the least.) Whether the Chinese leadership cares about the islets or not, it cannot appear to acquiesce in an insult from Japan, a historic enemy. Acquiescence could provoke an unmanageable domestic reaction.

    Japan, too, is faced with the problem of loss of face. The country has slipped from the time when “Japan as Number One” was the world’s mantra. But, just as Japan seemed poised to rival the U.S. at least economically, the bubble burst. Japanese have been humiliated to see their country become a has-been on the world stage. Especially galling is that their place has been taken by China, a country that has always been seen as a backward neighbor. The Japanese government is forced to put up a show of opposition to China in order to head off domestic accusations of weakness on the world stage.

    So, we have two countries that probably wish the islands would just sink into the sea and end the dispute, but which until that day are forced to save face by escalating their mutual blustering. It may all be a game.

    The worrying point, though, is that though the chief players may know they are playing a game while trying to find some way to minimize the loss of face on either side, their pawns might not be aware that it’s a game.

    In the 1930s, Japanese troops intoxicated by hyper-nationalistic claims and against the wishes of their government provoked incidents that eventuated in war throughout Asia. This time, it is more likely to be some Chinese pilot raised on the patriotism of resentment who will fire an air-to-air missile and launch disaster for the world.

    I hope that when Chinese leaders scramble their fighter jets because some Japanese (or American) aircraft has “violated” their air defense zone, they remember to remove the missiles from under the wings.

    Bill Grimm is a Maryknoll priest who has lived and worked on and off in Japan for 40 years. He is the publisher of UCA News.

     

  • The cost of healthcare in Australia and remuneration of doctors. Guest blogger: Professor Kerry Goulston

    The cost of healthcare is unsustainable here and in many other countries.  In Australia it is 9.5% of GDP, estimated to rise to 16-25% by 2025.  There are obvious reasons for this—population ageing, end of life heroics, increased technology and increased use of procedures.  A rapidly increasing contributor to the cost of healthcare in Australia comes from “out-of-pocket expenses”-estimated by Yusef and Leeder in a seminal paper –Oct 2013-in the Medical Journal of Australia to be $28 billion per annum.  For older households this represents an annual cost of $3,585.  Yusef and Leeder point out that the decline in adequacy of coverage of Medicare rebates for medical services has increased the need for co-payments .  This means that some people in lower socio-economic groups are not seeking medical care and are not getting their prescriptions filled. This needs review.

    Whilst there is considerable distress and indeed anger expressed anecdotally by patients at the increasing ‘gap’, it is remarkable that the Australian media has barely featured this.  Out-of pocket expenses now account for almost a quarter of the total healthcare costs in Australia.

    An excellent book Making Medicare: the politics of universal health care in Australia (2003) pointed out that the Medicare system was not designed to support integrated care and management; that fee-for-service fragmented patient care and increased doctors’ incomes.  The authors, Anne-Marie Boxall and James Gillespie from the University of Sydney called for genuine policy innovation.  This is echoed by The Commonwealth Funds “International Profiles of Health Care Systems “released in Nov 2013 which shows that 75% of Australians said they wanted fundamental change or a complete rebuilding of the health system—more than any other country surveyed.

    In the USA the Society of General Internal Medicine published a report on their national Commission on Physician Payment Reform in May 2013 with 12 recommendations.  These were aimed at containing costs, improving patient care and reducing expenditures on unnecessary care.  They suggested a “blended” system over a 5 year transition period with some payments based on the fee-for-service model and other payments based on capitation or salary.

    In October 2013 two US senators (a Democrat and a Republican) proposed a gradual change to a new system with incentives for doctors to forgo fee-for-service billing.  However a 2013 survey by the AMA of US doctors showed that while 85% agreed that trying to contain costs is the responsibility of every doctor, 70% were not enthusiastic about eliminating fee-for-service re-imbursement.

    In New Zealand, a blended system (universal capitated funding, patient co-payments and targeted fee-for-service) has an emphasis on an inter-disciplinary approach particularly for patients with chronic and complex problems.  From this side of the Tasman it appears to be working well.  It shows that remuneration change can be achieved over time.  We should learn from our New Zealand colleagues.

    Fee-for-service does not provide encouragement for preventive health and wellness care. It is not appropriate in addressing new or undiagnosed problems or managing chronic illness.  In fact there are dis-incentives embedded in fee-for-service which is skewed to episodic patient care and does not encourage doctors to spend time with patients who have chronic and complex conditions.

    A significant minority of recent medical graduates want a better work–life balance and many, not only women, are opting for non-fee-for-service employment.

    A move away from fee-for-service will improve the quality of care and reduce our steadily rising total healthcare costs, including the increasing out of pocket costs.  Such a change would need to be gradual, made optional-and introduced over a number of years.  It would require the support of leaders of all healthcare professionals, politicians and the community.  As yet Australian political parties lack any real vision for meaningful health reform and a serious commitment to reduce the rising costs without compromising quality.

    Professor Kerry Goulston, Emeritus Professor of Medicine, University of Sydney

     

  • Funding withdrawal forces the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council of Australia into Administration. Guest blogger: Ian Webster AO

    The Alcohol and other Drugs Council of Australia (ADCA) has served Australia for 50 years. It has worked collaboratively – but honestly – with all governments from Menzies to Rudd. But last week the Abbott government cut off funding.

    Compared with the costs of alcohol and drugs, alcohol alone costing $36 billion per year (Foundation for Alcohol Research and Evaluation commissioned study), the annual costs of $1.5 million to run ADCA is peanuts. Despite this it has a nation-wide constituency of 350 organisational, association and individual members – almost all being front-line agencies.

    When questioned about his daughter’s drug problem on TV Prime Minister, Bob Hawke was very distressed. The drug problem of the 80s had truly struck home in a most dramatic way. He then called the Premiers and Chief Ministers to the Drug Summit. It was the first time a social crisis, other than war-time, had galvanised such action.

    The Commonwealth Minister responsible, Dr Neal Blewett, turned to ADCA to organise a week-long national meeting to set the directions for the Summit. Thus was born Australia’s multi-sector campaign to reduce the harms of all drugs – alcohol, tobacco, prescribed and illicit drugs. It set the stage for pharmacotherapy treatment, clean needle and needle-exchange programs and other measures which shaped our response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

    ADCA started in 1967 when parents, clergy, judges, health professionals, researchers, journalists, union leaders and those directly affected by substance abuse came together to create a national voice, to promote research, education and training on alcohol problems and the emerging illicit drug problem. Around the planning table were people such as – “Weary Dunlop” of POW fame, Sir William Refshauge – Director General of Health and formerly of Army Medical Services, Dr Nan Waddy a community psychiatrist, (later Justice) Michael Kirby and others. The current president of the Board is former Liberal MP Mal Washer.

    When the Howard Government took the hardline stance, “Tough on Drugs”, it was ADCA which led that Government into new directions: programs to divert young people from courts and prison to education and treatment; persuaded the Government to have an alternative pathway of advice in the PM’s office through the Australian National Council on Drugs; and, pushed for grants to NGOs for diversion and treatment of illicit drug users.

    When no-one took up the devastating impact of alcohol and other drug use on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, ADCA was there. It is still there. From the very beginning Aboriginal leaders have been integral to the leadership of ADCA and to the research, education, training and resource provision for Aboriginal communities.

    As the peak body, ADCA has advised governments on policy and directions, run programs for government and done what governments have not been prepared to do – confront the commercial interests of tobacco, alcohol, pharmaceutical and illicit drug industries. ADCA’s stand has always been based on rigorous analysis, feedback from its member front-line agencies, the research it has sponsored, the data collated in its world-class resource centre and on input from professional bodies.

    Its training programs and resources have led to a viable drug and alcohol workforce. It has stimulated research from when there was none at all to now with Australia being recognised at the top end of international league tables for drug and alcohol research. ADCA’s Drug Information Service is accessed from around the world and is integrated into the research centres of excellence in addiction and drugs and alcohol in the major Australian universities. No other country has such a network of information sharing.

    More significantly ADCA is a broad church encompassing and reconciling competing views about the nature of alcohol and drug problems and how they should be dealt with.

    I am proud of its achievements and contribution to our society and I am especially proud of the ADCA Board which said to me, “We are NGO people, we know how to survive, and we can change the world!” I am sure they can with the active support and engagement of all in civil society.

     

    Emeritus Professor Ian W Webster AO

    Patron of the Alcohol and other Drug Council of Australia and Emeritus Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of NSW

     

     

     

  • Pope Francis’s Synod. Guest blogger: Eric Hodgens

    The new Pope Francis has caught the eye of the world. Many people with Catholic friends know that there are two Catholic Churches in the world today – one of the popes and the Pells, the other of the rank and file Catholics and their priests. The first is doctrinaire. The second makes adjustments to doctrine and rules as required.

    The Church’s central vision is one of life, forgiveness and hope. But in recent years this has been smothered by its pope and bishops’ preoccupation with today’s hot ethical issues – abortion, sexuality (including homosexuality), medical technology, divorce and gender. This has undermined the church’s credibility because all of these issues are in play – except within the ranks of a hierarchy. Then Pope Francis came along. He is aware that these issues are personal and pressing – and all under debate. He has changed the focus of the discussion from ideology to pastoral practice. We know the rules and doctrine, he says, but how do you handle the pastoral question in the lives of real people?

    The pope’s practical answer is to call a synod (a representative group) of the world’s bishops to discuss the matter. The subject is to be The Church and The Family. In a new departure for such synods he wants the whole membership of the church to discuss the matter and report back before the synod convenes. The synod’s organizing committee has sent out a questionnaire for discussion. Its four major topics are:

    • The teaching of the Church on the Family – and its reception;
    • The place of Natural Law in the Church’s teachings – and its reception;
    • The family’s place in evangelization;
    • New cultural issues re marriage. These include:
      • Extra-marital co-habitation and de facto marriages;
      • Divorce and its implications;
      • Marriage annulment;
      • Same sex unions;
      • Education of children of irregular unions.

    The questionnaire is surprising. Public consultation is a new thing. Issues hitherto discussed at your peril are now open for review, seemingly at the Pope’s initiative. Furthermore, all these issues are regularly discussed within the Church – but not openly. Many issues have already been operationally resolved by concerned pastors ignoring restrictions or defying them.

    Now to the points:

    Firstly, there is no single “Teaching of the Church” on marriage. Over the two millennia of the Christian Church’s existence we have had a variety of approaches. The Church had little to do with marriage till the 13th century when it took legal control of marriage. Church registration followed. Since then control of the legalities of marriage was in Church hands until the secular state took over in the 19th century. All this applies only to Europe and the West. Other cultures have their own customs which have been problems for Christianity as it became more universal.

    The 20th century teachings of the Catholic Church on Marriage can be summed up as restrictions on sex justified by Natural Law philosophy. Pope Paul VI’s decree “Humanae Vitae”, with its banning of contraception, is the poster child of this approach. He argued that contraception was against the “natural law”. His argument runs: if you study the nature of the human being you will deduce that sex is for procreation. To interfere with that is to violate the natural law.

    Both aspects of this teaching are now culturally irrelevant due to cultural changes in attitudes to sex and the obsolescence of the Natural Law philosophy. These are facts. The dogged opposition of Church officials is a lost ideological cause.

    Evangelization (spreading the gospel to newcomers) has never been a high priority of the Christian family. The passing of Christian affiliation from generation to generation has been a cultural phenomenon. The family might have indoctrinated, but evangelization was bypassed. Each new generation was inculturated into Catholicism – up till now. Evangelization has never been a serious issue even in the New Evangelization called for by Pope John Paul II. What he wanted was a return to the old mind set – an exercise in nostalgia.

    The values that matter are justice in relationships and stability in partnerships – especially while children are involved. Taking restrictive stances on varieties of partnership and recreational sex and is moralistic ideology. The hierarchy may have missed the opportunity to deal realistically with today’s Western approach to sexuality, marriage and family by canonising a dull, wowserish past. They have alienated two generations.

    Divorce is a punishing experience rendered double punishment by effectively excommunicating the remarried. Divorce in the West increased after World War II. Now at around 50%, it alone explains much of the post-War loss of affiliation.

    Forget annulment. Fewer Catholics are using it because the Church’s rules are a mess and less and less socially relevant.

    Contraception is a fairly reliable component of today’s living. So, either help people plan a family – or better – let them do it themselves and leave them alone.

    Support all stable partnerships. Argue about what you call them if that is your thing.

    Finally, give any support you can to partners doing their best to educate a new generation.

    There is movement at the station but there is still a long way to go. How widely will bishops consult on the questionnaire? Will the responses to the questionnaire be filtered by conservative local bureaucracies? Will burning issues be addressed by the Synod Preparatory Committee? Will the conservative officials still pervading the Roman administration win this one as they won after Vatican II? What political colour will the Synod be when it convenes? Will it reflect the mind of the Church at large or just the hierarchy? If it does, will the resulting report be true or doctored? And will the result be consensus or division?

    Past synods have been rubber stamps. How this one goes remains to be seen.

    Eric Hodgens is a retired Melbourne Catholic priest who ‘writes a bit’.  

  • There goes the neighbourhood. John Menadue

    It used to be thought that the intrusion of new ethnic communities into established Anglo-areas was destroying the neighbourhood.

    Now it is increasingly the excesses of wealth that are doing the damage.

    James Packer spent millions to buy and then bulldoze three houses to make room for his Sydney fortress. In the three year process, he inflicted noise, congestion and dust over the local residents whilst he lived quietly elsewhere.

    But it didn’t make for happiness and wellbeing. The marriage lasted only three months in the new $50 million pile which Erica Packer described as ‘like living in a shopping centre’. Family relations are not helped if one has to communicate by intercom.

    But in varying degrees this opulence and excess is destroying many neighbourhoods. Data commissioned by the Australian Bureau of Statistics by CommSec shows that the average floor area of new homes stood at 214.1 m2. in the 9 months to March 2011. The average floor area of new freestanding houses stood at 243.6 m2.

    The US has traditionally had the biggest homes in the world. But new homes in Australia are now around 10% bigger than in the US.

    Not just in James Packer’s area has it become increasingly common for two or more houses to be flattened to make room for a mega-pile. Even on these larger blocks, major excavation is necessary to accommodate 3 or 4 cars. A home theatre, sauna room, cabana gymnasium and lifts are musts. And of course – nanny rooms. A private swimming pool, sometimes underground, is desirable, even if there is one of the best beaches in the world within a few minutes walk.  Roller doors are essential to avoid eye-contact with other residents. Will draw bridges be next! The result is sterile streets where human contact is the exception.  In waterfront mansions the attractive front faces the water. The ugly rear is reserved for the neighbours.Any problem with pesky neighbours is handled by a member of staff or a lawyer.

    Wealthy newcomers are attracted to the neighborliness and village nature of many areas but then proceed to methodically destroy what initially attracted them.

    Some councils try to oppose this grandiosity but they don’t have the resources to combat a phalanx of celebrity architects, lawyers and “public relations” people. Some are also obviously concerned that if they reject gross over development it will lead to expensive legal appeals.

    Why is it that people indulge themselves in such fantasy at the expense of others? As Elizabeth Farrelly in the SMH put it ‘no-one can make excess look good’. Boris Pasternak hit the nail on the head when he commented in respect of pre-Soviet Russia that ‘only the superfluous is vulgar’.

    A great deal of what we are building is destroying human relationships. The more ostentatious and vulgar the built environment, the more it destroys neighborhoods.

    And one in two hundred people in Australia are homeless every night.

    Wealth doesn’t necessarily bring vulgarity and bad taste, but we are getting more and more of it.  Perhaps an inheritance and wealth tax would help curb this excess. I am not confident that an improvement in taste is likely.

     

     

  • China’s new rules. Guest blogger: Walter Hamilton

    China’s unilateral declaration of an “air defense identification zone” in the East China Sea is the most serious escalation of its territorial dispute with Japan since the large-scale mob attacks on Japanese property in China just over a year ago.

    China’s Ministry of National Defense has declared that as of two days ago new rules govern the entry of aircraft into the vast zone that encompasses the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, with all over-flights now requiring prior notification.

    To back up this measure, the PLA Air Force has begun enforcement patrols.

    Both Japan and the United States have condemned what they call Beijing’s “destabilizing” move and indicated they would not recognize the restrictions.

    China says that aircraft flying into the “air defense identification zone” should report their flight plans to its government agencies and respond in a “timely and accurate manner” to identification inquiries. “China’s armed forces will adopt defensive emergency measures to respond to aircraft that do not cooperate in the identification or refuse to follow the instructions,” it added.

    In September last year there were nationwide protests in China against Japan’s decision to nationalize several of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, off Taiwan, over which both it and China (and Taiwan) claim sovereignty. Since then Chinese and Japanese patrol boats have been shadowing each other in the disputed area, known to contain undersea oil and gas reserves.

    As recently as a week ago Japanese government officials were reported as saying they had begun to see signs of improvement in the severely strained Sino-Japanese relations. That assessment now seems premature. China’s latest move makes clear that it will not allow the dispute to slip back into the background where it had sat for decades, until last year.

    In stating Japan’s opposition to the “identification zone”, Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida did not say whether the country would take direct counter-measures. Tokyo has mostly tried to contain the dispute but is being hemmed in by Beijing’s every new assertion of control.

    Japanese Defense Ministry analysts have been concerned for some time about the aerial dimension of the territorial dispute. On regular occasions Japanese military aircraft are being scrambled to intercept Chinese patrol planes flying near the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Though no exchanges of fire have occurred, it is thought to be a more dangerous theatre of confrontation than the standoff on the water. China’s declaration of its “air defense identification zone”, in the first instance, may be intended to establish a more formal basis for resisting these Japanese Air Self-Defense Force operations.

    The official Xinhua news agency quotes “military experts” as saying the zone “accords with international common practices…if the move does not violate international laws, breach other countries’ territorial sovereignty or affect the freedom of flight”. Even this predictably supportive commentary suggests that disputed sovereignty and curtailment of freedom of the air would constitute valid grounds for objection.

    The Japanese and US military must now calculate the risks of testing China’s resolve to enforce its East China Sea “identification zone”. The recent relative calm in this strategic flashpoint may now be over.

    Walter Hamilton reported from Japan for eleven years for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He is the author of “Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story” (NewSouth Books).

  • Tony Abbott and his very close confidante, Mark Textor. John Menadue

    To refuse to apologise to President Yudhoyono would be entirely consistent with the type of advice that Mark Textor has given to a succession of Liberal leaders in Australia, including Tony Abbott.

    In his texting Mark Textor has made the point, according to Laurie Tingle in the AFR today “that (Australian) voters don’t give rats if Indonesia was offended by the revelation of eavesdropping.” This is consistent with the view of Textor that the media and the blogger sphere are filled with elite opinion which is not held in the community in general.

    Dextor then went on in his texting to speak more colourfully of ‘an apology demanded from Australia by a bloke who looks like a 1970s Pilipino (sic) pornstar with the ethics to match’. Textor declined to say if he was referring to President Yudhoyono or Foreign Minister Natalegawa.  Textor has subsequently withdrawn the twitter messages, but the damage has been done and the message conveyed. He is in effect telling the media that Australians don’t think much of Indonesians, so why should we apologise.

    The Crosby/Textor web site tells us that their firm is “Australia’s most successful pollster and strategist. Mark Textor is acknowledged as the most astute judge of political sentiment in Australia” In 2007 the Australian Financial Review described Textor as one of the ten most powerful people in Australia because of the valuable advice he was able to offer to clients. Amongst many Conservative leaders, Mark Textor is regarded as a guru.

    Textor has form in advising Tony Abbott. In the 2010 election he is widely credited with giving Tony Abbott the infamous lines that Abbott repeated time and time again – ‘we will stop the boats’, ‘stop the big new taxes’, ‘end the waste’ and ‘pay back the debt’. Tony Abbott now seems to be adding another one liner, “don’t apologise”.

    Textor has been politically invaluable to Tony Abbott  and the Liberal Party. Few people are as politically close to Tony Abbott as Mark Textor.

    If Tony Abbott wants to repair relations with Indonesia, he must distance himself from Mark Textor. Malcolm Fraser called on the Liberal Party to sack Textor. The fact is that Textor is too valuable for the Liberal Party to sack him.

    And what of the 21 firms that have now employed Crosby Textor Research Strategies Results to lobby on their behalf in Canberra. These firms include the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, the leading lobby group for the oil and gas industry. The APPEA is particularly campaigning for government support for the coal-seam gas industry.

    The Crosby/Textor web site also tells us that Textor’s direct clients include the Australian Bankers’ Association and the Business Council of Australia. I wonder how their businesses with Indonesia will fare now!