The recent shooting in Las Vegas is a reminder that massacres are not the preserve of international terrorists. While the US Ambassador in Canberra has suggested Australia’s firearms laws could be a useful model for the USA, we cannot feel complacent while we tolerate domestic violence. Yet, politicians seem not to appreciate that cultural change is needed to address this scourge. (more…)
Tony Smith
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TONY SMITH. The farcical appeal to ‘family values’
Some opponents of marriage equality have resorted to spurious arguments about ‘family values’. The record of arch-conservatives on war, overseas aid, asylum seekers, Indigenous affairs, the social safety net, free market capitalism, the working poor and the monarchy suggests that the reference to family values is a hollow and hypocritical rhetorical device. (more…)
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TONY SMITH. In Defence of the Yarra Council
Local government leading the way on an important political issue? Who would have thought it? Well, anyone with an eye to federal ossification on Indigenous policy will welcome the move to stop calling 26 January ‘Australia Day’ as a potential circuit breaker. (more…)
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TONY SMITH. After the high hopes of Garma, disappointment sets in.
Last weekend, Indigenous leaders gathered at the Garma festival in north east Arnhem Land. The coverage on NITV showed a distinct slide from initial politeness and hope to disappointment and anger. (more…)
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TONY SMITH. The ‘Masked’ Man on Horseback.
When Prime Minister Turnbull announced changes to the way Australia’s security is conducted, he was accompanied by a member of the military. There is nothing unusual about that – except that the soldier was masked. The Prime Minister seemed to miss the irony in this masking which made our defenders resemble the people who are portrayed as threatening our security. (more…)
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TONY SMITH. The political ugliness we cannot hide
Half a century ago in The Australian Ugliness Robin Boyd reminded us what happens when architectural planners embrace utilitarianism and abandon aesthetics. During the days of the Howard Coalition Government, examining the invasion of Iraq and policy on asylum seekers, moral philosopher Raimond Gaita reminded us what happens when decision-makers abandon ethical considerations. Under the Turnbull Government, mendacity, hypocrisy and arrogance are producing an observable ugliness in its spokespersons. The great fear is that this ugliness is reflecting our own grotesque faces back to us. (more…)
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TONY SMITH. Company tax cuts by any other name
The federal government might have called its company tax cuts bill by another almost Orwellian name, but semantic disguises should not fool anyone. Tax cuts are being delivered to Australian business. (more…)
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TONY SMITH. Hope in diversity and real cases, not ideological claptrap
Self-righteous people, believing themselves to be ‘self-made’ are prepared to punish children along with single mothers and so entrench disadvantage for generations.
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TONY SMITH. Media ignorance of disrespect for parliament and people
It is a shame that at a time when government is so hollow, only a handful of journalists can escape the cliché and find a basis for critical analysis of policy, which ought to be the basis for judging a government’s performance. (more…)
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TONY SMITH. A nasty government
The compact between government and citizen is being destroyed. (more…)
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TONY SMITH. The US presidential election: no Australian perspective
We can’t get enough of Donald and Hilary!
John Tulloh correctly identifies US influence in the priorities of Australian media. Half a century ago Henry Mayer argued that while media might not influence how we think, they do decide what we think about. This was before television was firmly established, before big conglomerates destroyed diversity and before the ’24 hour’ news cycle shaped politics. Add the immediacy of the internet and social media and the how-what distinction remains a useful theory but hardly describes media influence adequately. (more…)
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TONY SMITH. Hopes End: the cynics must not prevail
Dear Prime Minister Turnbull
Congratulations on your election success. Two years ago very few observers believed the Coalition Government deserved another term so you have a personal achievement of which you can be proud.
While you were busy campaigning, I distracted myself by reading Coral Lansbury’s Sweet Alice. * What an enjoyable read that is! Critics are correct to compare the book with Tom Sharpe’s farces about life, manners and politics. The novel explores the fortunes of the central character Alice and her son Alaric. With her home in England being demolished around her, Alice learns that she has inherited a property called Mockery Bend near Hopes End in north-west New South Wales. The problem is that the will has been made in spite and Alice cannot claim her inheritance while several cousins have claims. Alaric sets out to contact the cousins because Alice believes that reasonable women would be happy to have a sharing arrangement. (more…)
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TONY SMITH. A major madness
It is only the most naive among us who equate democracy with majoritarianism. The ‘Brexit’ plebiscite certainly returned a majority in favour of Britain leaving the European Union, but the distress caused by the decision shows that the plan is far from the ideals of democracy. Democracies behave moderately. They demand a degree of consensus. Realising that there may be large numbers adversely affected by majority decisions, democracies ensure that minorities remain part of considerations. The implementation of Brexit threatens to create impacts that will be felt deeply by some sections of society, and in many cases, these sections saw the dangers and voted ‘no’. (more…)
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Tony Smith. There is a hole in my heart where NITV News used to be
There are times when the rhetoric about ‘closing the gap’ between
Indigenous Australians and the rest of the population sticks in the
throat. This week I turned on my preferred television news source – the
5.30 bulletin on National Indigenous TeleVision (SBS4) – and found that it
had disappeared.The ‘gap’ refers to the statistics showing the disadvantages suffered by
the Indigenous peoples relative to other Australians. In fact, there are
numerous gaps, in almost every social indicator: employment, income,
housing, incarceration, violence, kidney and heart disease, literacy,
education, infant mortality and life expectancy. At times, governments
seem committed to finding solutions to these problems. At others, they
seem to do little more than go through the motions while tacitly endorsing
processes of assimilation. But any realistic solutions must acknowledge
the ravages of dispossession and make urgent attempts to allow Indigenous
people to regain their unique identities, something they will surely do if
the broader Australian society avoids the kind of discrimination we have
hitherto practised.NITV News had the motto ‘our stories, our way’ and was faithful to this
aim. Here were stories that were not reported on mainstream channels and
were generally ignored by media with a few exceptions. There were reports
about threats to sacred sites, potential damage to fragile environment,
overt and covert racism, government policies, bureaucratic bungling and
proposed legislation. But the reports were always presented in a humble
fashion without the pontification customary on other news sources.
Relevant Ministers were approached often and whenever they appeared, were
given generous time to put the government side. Again, this is unusual in
television today when reporters seek to provide their own context, so
skewing stories to their own views.Very importantly, NITV News carried positive stories about Indigenous
people and their achievements: positive developments in health, justice
and employment and stories about members of the community supporting one
another.NITV News provided many positive spinoffs. As a result of turning to NITV,
I discovered programs about Indigenous cooking, traditional culture,
dancing and music among the young, grassroots sports action, classic
movies and even found the Maori news report on weekends.Successive governments have found Aboriginal affairs a difficult policy
area. They have thrown money at Indigenous ‘problems’ but the problems
remain. They have devised slogans such as Reconciliation. They have
advanced a woolly idea about Constitutional recognition. But they have
failed to create mechanisms whereby diverse Indigenous voices could be
heard. Indigenous leaders have continually appealed for genuine
consultation but these appeals have not been heard.Perhaps we really do not want to listen to what Indigenous people have to
say. Apparently we doubt that the people who preserved the fragile
Australian ecosystem for hundreds of bicentenaries have anything to teach
us. Perhaps it is part of a broader re-focussing of our listening away
from small, local communities on the ground towards what big business says
through its mouthpieces in politics. Generally, the propaganda is about
job creation and being able to ‘afford’ environmental concerns. We can’t
dig up the Hunter Valley, the Liverpool Plains, the Pillaga Scrub to
export if we listen to grassroots voices like those on NITV News, can we?Tony Smith is a former academic living in Wiradjuri country.
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Tony Smith. Wasting money on domestic violence?
The implementation of most Government policies requires some kind of expenditure. One of the laziest approaches an Opposition can adopt is to cite slogans about cost. This sloganeering is at its most shallow when arguing that the Government is just ‘throwing money at the problem’. Needless to say, there are occasions when this criticism is true. Governments can decide that by giving an issue some funding, it can silence the demands of groups pressuring for action.
There are times when Governments decide to fund a campaign, but then undermine the campaign by their actions in other areas. There is no doubt at all that domestic violence is a terrible problem for Australian society. The Abbott Government recently announced that it would spend millions of dollars on a publicity campaign alerting people to the problem and the unacceptability of domestic violence, particularly against women and children. Unfortunately, there are indications that the campaign might be undermined.
While the Government is right to condemn physical violence in domestic relationships, it has not given enough credence to lower levels of abuse. Physical violence might erupt spontaneously but it seems much more likely that it will be preceded by other forms of disrespect. In particular, verbal abuse is likely to occur before physical assault. This means that a campaign which focuses exclusively on physical violence will not address the problem adequately. A holistic approach to domestic violence should make it clear that any behaviour which demeans people or removes their dignity is unacceptable.
Perhaps one reason that governments might not be inclined to fund such a broad campaign is that verbal abuse and demeaning behaviour are endemic to politics. When members of the Government, particularly Ministers, attack women inside and outside parliament, they make such abusive attitudes seem legitimate. The Immigration Minister has recently attacked Human Rights Commissioner Professor Gillian Triggs in terms which were personal and insulting. Earlier this year when Prime Minister Abbott survived a challenge to his leadership, he emerged with a promise that he was about to start ‘listening’. Interestingly, Abbott responded to some criticisms of his leadership style with a suggestion that attacks on his protective Chief of Staff were worse because she was a woman.
But within days of making his promise about listening, Abbott refused to hear what the Human Rights Commission had found in its inquiry into children in immigration detention. Not only did he refuse to listen but he did it in such a way that sought to undermine the credibility of Professor Triggs. He made statements about Professor Triggs which were demeaning, and precisely the kind of personal attack which is a likely forerunner of violence.
The Immigration Minister also found it convenient to attack Greens Senator Hanson-Young. Hanson-Young was told by an insider at an asylum seeker detention camp that she had been under constant surveillance during a fact-finding trip to an ‘offshore’ centre. It might be argued that such surveillance is in itself a form of abuse but the Minister seems to believe that the Senator has no right to complain. This attitude is highly informative about the Government’s understanding of the importance of personal dignity and the ways in which it can easily be damaged.
Anyone who watches Question Time in Parliament must also wonder about the Government’s understanding of the processes of domestic violence. Whether the question comes from a male or female member, Ministers use the opportunity to make personal criticisms of their opponents. This legitimates for those who look for such examples in our political leaders, sneering, ridicule and demeaning language.
Politicians sometimes argue that in a representative democracy, parliament should reflect society in all its variety. They use this argument not to attempt to make parliament more inclusive, but in order to justify conflict. They argue that people actually expect their representatives to argue vigorously on their behalf, and that it is better to have such conflicts contained within the arena of parliament rather than outside in broader society where conflict can erupt into violence.
This argument denies the possibility of leadership. It holds that parliament can only ever respond to social demands, and never lead social trends and individual behaviours. This argument is clearly incompatible with an expectation that parliament – and government particularly – should show some leadership in addressing domestic violence.
Until the Prime Minister and other Ministers model some dignified behaviour in their comments both within and outside parliament, there will be little progress on any campaign that aims to address domestic violence. Unless the expenditure is backed up by personal changes, the money is likely to be wasted.
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Tony Smith. Baird’s risk on asylum seekers
When New South Wales Premier Michael Baird told an Australia Day luncheon that we should be more accepting of asylum seekers, he was taking quite a risk. Baird’s federal Liberal Party colleagues have espoused the hard policy of stopping the boats which the Abbott Government declares is its greatest achievement. It is not unknown for NSW Liberals to openly state their doubts about party policy. During the Howard Government’s campaign against asylum seekers, which used inaccurate phrases such as ‘illegal immigrants’, ‘queue jumpers’ and even ‘sleeper terrorists’, several backbenchers took principled stands against the more extreme aspects of government policy.
Even those observers who cannot bring themselves to vote Liberal should give credit where it is due. Although not in his electorate, I emailed Bruce Baird when he dissented over refugee policy during the Howard years to congratulate him and thank him. Such principled actions by MPs have the potential to restore our jaded expectations of the political process. Objections to Government policy by Labor MPs can seem like opposition for its own sake, and all too often such objections fail to suggest any decent alternatives.
More recently, in April 2014, I wrote to then Premier Barry O’Farrell to thank him for expressing concern about Abbott Government plans to amend Racial Discrimination legislation. Mr O’Farrell had sought advice about the possible consequences of softening laws against racial vilification, allegedly in the name of freedom of speech. These plans were roundly condemned by a broad cross-section of Australians and greeted as a sop to bigots.
It was barely a week after this correspondence that Mr O’Farrell resigned as premier. During hearings at the Independent Commission Against Corruption, O’Farrell apparently answered a question inaccurately. O’Farrell maintained that he did not remember receiving a gift of some rare and expensive wine, a Penfolds Grange Hermitage. When his error was pointed out to him, O’Farrell said that for the sake of the integrity of the office, he would resign.
Many political observers remain puzzled by O’Farrell’s resignation, thinking that there must be more to the story. Surely, his misleading answer was neither intentional nor serious. Some observers think that more would have emerged about that particular bottle of wine and/or its donor. They think that O’Farrell resigned to protect either himself or associates from further allegations, questioning and exposure. No-one though, raised the possibility of a link between O’Farrell’s stance against the proposed amendments to the RDA and his subsequent embarrassment before ICAC. Perhaps few observers are as cynical as I about the lack of ethics within political parties. Perhaps I am prone to accept conspiracy theories too readily. But one day, we will almost certainly learn more about the situation surrounding the demise of a premier who seemed to be both genuine and compassionate and whose popularity, mid-term, was as high as could be expected.
On the Labor side of politics, John Robertson’s resignation as parliamentary leader seems as premature as O’Farrell’s departure. Robertson admitted that he had written in support of the perpetrator of the Martin Place hostage situation. However, the man was a constituent and MPs write such letters as a matter of form. Before public reaction could be tested, Robertson said that he had lost the support of unnamed ‘senior colleagues’. It appears that these senior colleagues must have – as the jargon has it – ‘tapped him on the shoulder’. What is clear is that senior colleagues would be those first in line for the top job.
What also seems evident to anyone not involved in the party’s internal power shuffles is that the need to find a lower house seat for the new Labor leader created a milieu in which local party members must feel that they have been treated shabbily. Voters who became disenchanted with Labor when a number of Ministers seemed to lack a spirit of public service have been reminded of the bad old days. While Robertson might not have been an inspiring leader, under his leadership the party seemed to be regaining the discipline which made it electable during the Carr period from 1995 to the early 2000s.
Left leaning Liberals like Michael Baird embarrass the party’s Right because they are evidence of how real ‘liberals’ should behave. He must have his fingers crossed that Liberal Party power brokers think they need him too much to ditch him now with an election looming in March. The fact that Baird’s stance on asylum seekers and refugees carries a certain amount of risk makes it all the more admirable.
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Tony Smith. Our dubious talent as jailers
In 2004 I was a patient in the cardiac unit of RPAH Sydney. I had mysterious heart inflammation which turned out to be due to a rare auto-immune condition known as Churg-Strauss Syndrome, a form of vasculitis that raises the eosinophils in the blood to life threatening levels. In the next bed was an Indigenous man from Dubbo. Because of the way names were written with surname first, the card over the bed read “Lord, Stanley”.
I teased Lord Stan a little but he was there for a serious procedure – a triple bypass – and soon went nervously into an intensive care room. This week we acquired a new television set. The old one had lasted since 1986, so we reckoned we were just about due and the decision was forced on us by digitisation. So I broke with normal practice and watched some midday news bulletins. And there was Lord Stan. It was good to see him looking well after ten years. Obviously both the surgeons and the post-operative carers had done a good job with Stan and of course, his own attitude to rehabilitation was the main factor in his survival.
Unfortunately, Stan was on the news because his son, Stanley Lord Junior had died in prison in January. An inquiry into Stanley Junior’s death had recommended that there should be alternatives to imprisonment for non-violent offenders. Stanley had accumulated several driving offences. Stanley senior was understandably heart-broken and grief stricken yet again after these months.
Decades after a royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody, the report’s recommendations should have been implemented across all jurisdictions. The two huge issues are the state’s duty of care and the judicial system’s disproportionate imprisonment of Indigenous people. Lamenting our incarceration of asylum seekers who are innocent of any crime whatsoever, I was beginning to think that Australia had such a talent for locking people up out of sight and out of mind, that we actively looked for victims. I have more than one convict in my ancestry and assumed that we inherited this talent from Britain. The British empire enthusiastically exported its socio-economic problems – and of course Scottish, Irish and Welsh dissenters.
Recent events suggest however, that we are such appallingly bad jailers that we should really abdicate the field immediately. Apart from the news about Stanley’s death in prison, recently we saw the tragedy of a death of an asylum seeker Hamid Kehazaei from an infection acquired while in one of our remote camps. Even had he not acquired the infection in the camp, we assumed duty of care for this man when we placed him in detention.
It seems amazing that Prime Minister Abbott has not asked for the resignation of his Immigration Minister Scott Morrison. Morrison has direct responsibility for the welfare of asylum seekers and the failure of care stops at his desk. That he did not immediately resign on principle suggests a total lack of principle in both the Minister and in the Abbott Government.
Worse still perhaps are the implications of these cases for Australians generally. They, and the continual obfuscation around them suggest that compassion and humanity are quickly losing their grip amongst a people made to feel financially insecure for the sake of the rich and powerful. Generosity of spirit is becoming an alien attribute for Australians.
Both major parties, but especially the Coalition, claim to have a focus on priority on policy outcomes. There has always been some hypocrisy in the way these outcomes are measured, but there is little amiss with the ideal. Governments should be judged according to the results of their policies. This week, at both State and Federal levels, there are serious reasons for ‘outcomes’ focussed politicians to admit their failures. The deaths of Stanley Lord Junior and Hamid Kahazaei are derelictions of duty of the worst kind. Nothing short of ministerial resignations will restore faith in the processes surrounding our incarceration policies.
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Tony Smith. The failure of imagination
Australia has rushed to despatch even more armaments into the already troubled areas contested by men of violence across Iraq and Syria. It is clear that once again, our national government has assumed that this action is necessary and unavoidable. In reality, there are always choices and it is disappointing that the Coalition has failed to imagine any alternative to an escalation of warfare.
The Government line is reminiscent of the disastrous entry to the invasion of Iraq a decade ago. Minsters argued that Australia had to do ‘something’ about the regime of Saddam Hussein, but the only thing on their minds was military action. We went to war then with inadequate information, and in some respects totally inaccurate information, particularly about the so-called ‘weapons of mass destruction’. The intelligence services are expensive financially and their cultural threats to civil liberties both here and abroad make their failures doubly tragic. Why, if we make such sacrifices of national sovereignty to be kept well informed by the big players in the USA and Europe, did we not see the need to take some lower level of action over the rise of ISIS during the last two years?
There are several unpalatable possibilities. First, Australia has not been informed of the rising threat posed by ISIS. Secondly, we were informed but the Government deliberately chose to ignore this advice so that it could eventually resort to the action it has now deemed ‘necessary’. Thirdly, we just did not have the imagination required to address the rise of ISIS using other means. All three possibilities suggest that Australia does not have skills in this area and that we would be better off to vacate the field and not try to be important players in the ‘war on terrorism’ being conducted by the USA and Britain.
Exactly what is likely to happen to arms dropped to those under threat is anyone’s guess. Some will almost certainly be captured by ISIS guerrillas. Some will no doubt be turned against the people we have professed to be helping, but we will suggest this is an unfortunate consequence, something like the acceptance of thousands of child deaths in Baghdad in the earlier conflict. After all, ours is a country which can put our hands on our hearts and export uranium to India, despite India’s refusal to sign the international conventions relating to nuclear non-proliferation. We delude ourselves by asserting that ‘our’ uranium’ will not play any role in India’s nuclear weapons program so perhaps we can just as easily pretend that weapons dropped in the path of the rampaging ISIS forces will not be used by them.
In earlier attempts to disperse land mines across South East Asia, western forces made the same assumptions. Yet those land mines created numerous innocent victims. Now arms manufacturers and military strategists have turned to other means of killing; they now maim remotely by using cluster bombs and drone missiles. It is time that all those members of parliament and other commentators who support this weapons drop faced the reality that a world bristling with armaments will continue to experience instability. The availability of lethal weapons makes small problems into larger ones.
In the invasion of Iraq ten years ago, some people of conscience, including some Australians, attempted to stimulate the imaginations of the strategists by offering themselves as ‘human shields’. They attempted to make it clear that some civilian targets such as schools and water supplies should be avoided. They risked death by positioning themselves near these sites so that the bombs and missiles of the forces of the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ would not damage them. For their pains they were vilified and condemned by the Australian Government. There is no opportunity for such an action in the present crisis. However, there remains an urgent need for creative thinking to avoid what will almost certainly become yet another humanitarian disaster. Millions of dollars will be spent daily on the campaign that is now unfolding. It is appalling that a Government which claims to be so careful of the taxpayers’ dollars will spend this money without any prospect of achieving a positive outcome. Where are the alternative visions for peace across Iraq and Syria?
In 2014 the world began remembering the centenary of the outbreak of the war of 1914-1918. The propaganda of the time assured those who suffered that their sacrifices would not be in vain because this would be a war to end all wars. The century since 1914 has been a time of almost constant warfare. No war can end war. No amount of killing and violence can establish the principle that killing and violence are wrong and should be eliminated from world affairs. It really is time to imagine some other way of achieving our legitimate aims.
Tony Smith is a former academic and regular contributor to Eureka Street, The Australian Review of Public Affairs and the The Australian Quarterly.
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Tony Smith. Dubious celebrations of war.
On 28 July 1914, the world was thrown into a terrible conflict. On that day, a Serbian nationalist assassinated an Austrian archduke and his wife. Because European states belonged to alliances which were heavily armed and many countries on other continents belonged to their empires, the war spread until it had consumed over a million lives. Between 2014 and 2018 those terrible events will be remembered in various ways. Some of those commemorations might be regarded as neutral, but inevitably, many will be matters of controversy. While Australia’s events will start in earnest around the centenary of the Gallipoli landing next year on 25 April, the screening of a television series on Anzac nurses suggests that one theme will be the evocation of sentimental responses in admiration of those who enlisted.
The Anzac legend has been exploited cynically by politicians over the last 100 years. In all conflicts, there is a distinct pattern that most of the population opposes Australia entering a war until such time as troops are committed. Then people understandably feel an obligation to support the ‘diggers’ as they engage in their dangerous tasks. There is a desire to get the fighting over with and then return to normal politics.
This leaves opponents of war in a difficult situation. During times of conflict, the expression of any doubts about the wisdom or correctness of engaging in military action is construed as disloyalty to the troops and to the country. At other times, however, the issues do not have the urgency to grip the popular imagination and so opportunities to discuss matters of war and peace are limited. It is understandable that people do not want to be forced to discuss such matters when they are enjoying peace. They want to get on with the ordinary everyday things that help them to develop their lives – work, play and building relationships.
Over the next five years the nature of the commemorations could mimic either war or peace. It is important to discuss the issues critically. As the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner over Ukraine shows, the world is over armed today, and the situation is more serious than it was in 1914. Alliances still cause blind responses to crises. Russia has been reluctant to condemn the Ukrainian separatists and the USA has been weak in its response to Israel’s military actions in Gaza. The international agencies which could assist to ameliorate the problems are weakened by states which refuse to compromise on matters of national sovereignty. The archduke’s assassination may have been the spark which ignited a conflagration in 1914, but the background conditions of war are just as dangerous in 2014. This suggests that merely contemplating earlier tragedies has not enabled the world to progress in its thinking over the last century.
An alternative explanation for the failure to learn from the 1914-18 war is that discussion has been stifled by cynical forces. Patriots have been reluctant to allow a focus on the folly, waste and evils of war because they are afraid that our veterans might be dishonoured. They fear also that if killing in war is condemned as evil, then the stories of Australia’s wars might be revised. By most popular interpretations, Australia has prevailed in its wars because its cause has always been just and its engagement reluctant. The controversy over the Vietnam conflict shows that veterans can indeed be hurt when the political motivation behind a commitment is questioned. We do however have a duty not to despatch the military for dubious reasons such as the call by a powerful ally.
Recently deceased Tasmanian Governor Peter Underwood caused some controversy in an Anzac Day address this year when he questioned the importance of studying Simpson’s donkey rather than scrutinising the reasons for Australia’s lengthy involvements in Iraq and Afghanistan. During the election campaign, the Coalition suggested that Gallipoli was not studied enough in schools and critics immediately argued the desire to include more about the Anzac legend in education programs was a part of the broader ‘history wars’. Formerly this cultural controversy has focussed in on the treatment of Australia’s Indigenous peoples. Despite some positive statements about Indigenous policy, the Prime Minister recently attracted the criticism of Labor’s first female Indigenous parliamentarian when he suggested that Australia was undeveloped until the British arrived in 1788.
Over the next five years, all thinking Australians should regard it as their duty to look critically at First World War commemorations. They should be very sceptical about any events which could make it easier for a future Australian Government to commit the military to conflicts overseas. In particular, they should scrutinise the statements of current politicians who, unfortunately, are likely to cynically exploit every occasion to enhance their popularity.
Tony Smith is a former academic and regular contributor to Eureka Street , The Australian Review of Public Affairs and the Australian Quarterly -
Tony Smith. Singing out for asylum seekers.
Recent poll results that show rising support for the Abbott Government’s approach to border security are disturbing even if not entirely surprising. Asylum seekers have been detained offshore, out of general sight and conveniently out of mind for those Australians who prefer not to think about the issue, and the Labor Opposition has consistently failed to offer any decent alternative. Given that refugee advocates have had the better of the Government on details of truth and on virtually every moral and economic argument, they might well be wondering what they must do to convince Australians that our approach to asylum seekers is shameful and urgently in need of change.
While advocates must maintain the arguments and keep pressure on government to tell the truth about what is happening in our proxy prisons, other approaches also have the potential to appeal to the popular imagination. Writers, visual artists, dancers and musicians are all playing important roles in the campaign to make Australian policy more just, humane and positive. The CD Reclaim Your Voice: Stopping the Punishment of Asylum Seekers deserves recognition as an important addition to this campaign. The album of 18 very strong and moving tracks was assembled and produced by Andy Busuttil, whose musical skill is matched by his compassion towards asylum seekers.
There are clear messages in these 18 tracks, each of which demands attention for its sincerity and power. For example, Blindmans Holiday sings the late Alistair Hulett’s ‘Behind Barbed Wire’ which presents internment as a measure of our own fears and a mutual constraint: it is we who ‘retire behind barbed wire’. Just as Hulett’s song is now a classic, the prolific Shortis and Simpson point out that their ‘Detainee’ was written twelve years ago but there is no sign that our understanding and compassion have increased during the twenty-first century.
Spike Flynn’s beautiful ‘Further On Down the Line’ speaks of the hope that refugees must hold in order to survive. The down side is that it reminds us that we are effectively their only hope. The Bridge Project – including Andy Busuttil – tell the tragic tale of a man from Lebanon who witnessed the drowning of his eight children and pregnant wife between Indonesia and Christmas Island. In ‘Fruit of the Earth’ Andy recites the poem of Hossein Babahmaadi who was forcibly returned to Iran after enduring the ‘hell hole’ of Manus Island for three months. Kavisha Mazzella’s mother escaped Rangoon when it was bombed by the invading Japanese military. ‘May I Be A Raft’ is her Bodhissatvas-inspired prayer for asylum seekers.
In ‘The Journey’ Christina Mimmochi sings of the ‘nameless, faceless refugee’ asking for our assistance. She laments the way that the news seems to be always the same, with a list of the ways that we disappoint them and eventually ourselves. She asks simply whether Australia will play its part in relieving the distress of some fraction of the millions cast adrift by the failure of politicians or whether we have lost our national heart. Here we sit ‘girt by sea’ and dare to judge people who have never known the peace and prosperity we enjoy by the accident of where we were born.
Contributors to Reclaim Your Voice use a wide variety of musical sub-genres. As well as Ben Iota’s hip-hop and Getano Ban’s reggae ‘Stop Da Boats’ there are pieces that would be fine additions to blues, folk or rock albums. There is also wide variety in instrumentation thanks to Andy Busuttil’s skilful mixing and the donation of time and skills by session musicians. He can be contacted at.. andy@bluemountainsound.com.au All proceeds from the sale of the album go to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre. www.asrc.org.au
If there is a most commonly occurring term it is ‘humanity’. The songs and verse appeal to the listener to respond to asylum seekers with a greater sense of our shared humanity. In dealing with this issue, refugee advocates know we are not alone but sometimes knowing is not enough. Reclaim Your Voice operates on an emotional level, helping us to feel we are in excellent company. The warmth and strength on offer in Reclaim Your Voice should open the hearts of many of those people who have closed their minds. While the contributors to this excellent album speak from their hearts, Reclaim Your Voice is not a despairing cry but a hopeful demand for action.
Tony Smith is a former academic, regular contributor to Eureka Street, Australian Review of Public Affairs and Australian Quarterly. He is now a keen “folkie”