Pearls and Irritations

Category: Politics

  • Walter Hamilton. Australia – still a colonial relic in Japan.

    The two greatest calamities to befall the people of Tokyo in modern times were the September 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake and the March 1945 firebombing by American B-29s. In each case, many tens of thousands perished within a matter of hours.

     

    In Sumida ward, a working class area in the east of the city that suffered grievously on both occasions, a large Buddhist-style memorial hall, the Tokyo Irei-do (erected in 1930; rebuilt in 1951), links these two events – as though the whirlwind reaped by Japan in the Second World War was itself an act of God.

     

    Nearby is a museum that preserves relics of the earthquake destruction: stopped clocks, fused glassware, that sort of thing. Entry is free, and the day I visited a sprinkling of Japanese visitors were making their way solemnly past the exhibits.

     

    The museum is dimly lit and badly in need of refurbishment; there are myriad ways the objects could be better displayed and explained. But nothing about the Japanese treatment of history surprises me any more. Whether it is the glib denials of conservative politicians and media commentators or the whitewashed phrases of certain school textbooks – history is one of the most elusive and vulnerable commodities in contemporary Japan.

     

    As I wandered through the museum I came upon a large wall chart illustrating the foreign relief aid provided in the wake of the 1923 disaster. I happened to have recently researched this subject and discovered that the £75,000 ($5.4 million in today’s money) pledged by Australians in private donations ranked them, per capita, among the most forthcoming in the world. Their “spontaneous sympathy and generous aid” was applauded by such as the leader of the Japanese delegation to the Pan-Pacific Science Congress, which was meeting in Sydney at the time.

     

    I examined the wall chart with a sense of anticipation. The donated sums were shown as coloured columns rising above the countries named: Mexico, Panama, Peru, Sweden… My eye ran along the line. No Australia. How could it possibly be missing? Then I realized that the Australian contribution must have been absorbed within the sum assigned to “Britain and her possessions.” Alas, I reasoned, the fact Australia had been a sovereign nation for two decades had not penetrated all levels of Japanese officialdom by 1923. Wrong again. At the bottom of the chart was the date it was made: August 1958.

     

    While a small lacuna in the historical scheme of things, what are we to make of the fact that in 2013 Australia remains – in this Japanese memory at least – a “British possession”? It is surely a reminder that Australia continues to be perceived as culturally derivative and, to some extent, not quite authentic or sovereign. We may console ourselves with the thought that this old idea is suitably place among an ill-kempt collection of museum pieces. But, as we strive to confront the challenges of the “Asian century,” it is still a shock and a disappointment to find the stubborn anachronism on display at all.

  • The Miners’ Lament. John Menadue

    It is only a matter of time before the miners start lamenting that they did not seriously negotiate with Kevin Rudd over his Resources Super Profits Tax (RSPT).

    The mining industry has always favoured rent/profit taxes instead of royalties. What the mining industry really disagreed with was the rate of the Resources Super Profits Tax.

    The GST Distribution Review Report of October 2012 said the following.

    “Well designed rent-based taxes are likely to be more economically efficient than royalties, particularly in periods of low commodity prices or high costs. . .Other factors, such as the size, variability and timing of the return received by government, as well as administration and compliance costs, are also important considerations when choosing between alternative resource charging regimes. .. The commonwealth’s design of the Mineral Resources Rent Tax [MRRT] and the Petroleum Resources Rent Tax [PRRT] has created an opportunity for states to seek to increase their revenues at the expense of the commonwealth – an undesirable and unsustainable situation, which needs to be resolved.”

    Consider the ways that the mining industry now faces problems because of its failure to embrace the RSPT.

    • As the world economy and particularly China slows, export prices for Australian minerals are falling. The GST Review report mentioned above notes that since May 2012 “the spot prices for iron ore and … coal have fallen between 15% and 33%.” This trend has continued. There will be an increase in the production volume because of the increased capacity that the miners have installed. Because of this the miners are caught in a double whammy- export prices are falling which which will reduce income, but through an increased volume and value of sales there will be increases in royalties.
    • With the states squeezed for revenue, they will look increasingly to mining royalties to help their budgets. These increases in royalties are well under way. The royalty take of the states has increased five-fold from about $2 billion p.a. in the early 2000s. These royalty increases are likely to continue.
    • A lot of the recent high profits of the mining companies have ended up in dubious investments that are now being written off. Rio Tinto alone has written off $US35 billion since 2007 with more to come. BHP has also written off substantial investments. The high profits of the miners that were not effectively taxed also resulted in wage and cost blow outs that the miners will now have to wind back. Many of the large resource projects are de unionized. Yet that is where the big wages/cost blowouts have occurred. Managers must bear the responsibility. If they had been paying a super profits tax in the boom years, they may have been much more prudent. Some must have thought they were dealing in monopoly money.
    • An important part of the Henry RSPT package was that in return for the super profits tax on miners in boom times, there would be a reduction in the company tax rate to 25%. All businesses, including the miners, have missed out on this and continue to pay at the rate of 30%.

    The miner’s “victory” is likely to prove pyrrhic. At some point, they will have to return to   the table and negotiate tax changes.  Hopefully the federal government will handle it much better next time. All the key players will need to be involved.

    • The commonwealth government, which has a pre-eminent role in revenue raising on behalf of the community.
    • The state governments who depend heavily on mining royalties.
    • The mining industry that supplies the capital and expertise, and
    • The community which is the owner of the minerals and has a legitimate interest in ensuring that the whole community benefits over the long term from the extraction of its resources.

    .

    A recent Deloittes-Access report to the Mining Council of Australia which can be found online pointed out that because of falling commodity prices the mining sector would have done better under Kevin Rudd’s RSPT than under the present bowdlerised tax, the MRRT. The report said

    “Our analysis finds that the first two quarters of 2012-13 were indeed ‘bad times’. A slow-down in China hit commodity prices for six. That’s why the MRRT raised only $126 million over this period. However, had the RSPT been in operation, we estimate it would have generated negative net revenue of the order of $0.9 billion.”

    The miners seem to have already kicked an ‘own goal’. In the period mentioned by Deloittes they would have been better off under Kevin Rudd’s Resources Super Profits Tax.

    If commodity prices keep falling and the ineffient state royalties keep rising the miners may need to start praying for the Resource Super Profits Tax. What a tasty dish!

  • Was the ‘hung parliament’ all that bad? John Menadue

    We have been told many times since the 2010 election that the hung parliament was an abomination, it wouldn’t work and that it wouldn’t last. Denied government after the last election, the Coalition tried to make the government as well as the parliament as unworkable as possible. Paul Keating put it more colourfully “If Tony Abbott doesn’t get his way, he sets about wrecking the joint”.

    But here we are almost three years later with the parliament seeing out its full term.

    It hasn’t such a bad record as the Jeremiahs said. Let’s look first at some achievements.

    The establishment of the Parliamentary Budget Office was a major change. We will hear more about it during the election campaign. It will provide independent advice to the whole parliament, including the opposition, which was never available before on key budget issues. For a long time executive government, supported by a disciplined party system, has dominated the parliament. The information the parliament and we received was largely determined by the government. Rolling back domination of the parliament by the executive will be an important achievement. Hopefully the PBO is just a start in that process.

    There were many legislative achievements and I believe that the carbon tax was one despite the violence of the language and the opposition. Changes to the present carbon tax arrangements will be necessary but the carbon tax remains the best and most efficient way of reducing carbon pollution and global warming leading hopefully to an emissions trading scheme.

    For decades the tobacco lobby has brought great harm to hundreds of millions of people around the world. The plain packaging of cigarettes show that Australia is a world leader in rolling back the damage of tobacco.

    The National Disability Insurance Scheme may rank with Medibank and Medicare as one of the most important social reforms of the last 40 years.

    There was also the Murray Darling Basin Plan, paid personal leave and hopefully, the Gonski reforms even though they will be a paler version than what Gonski intended.

    The NBN has opened the way for a fast, world leading 21st century communications system.

    All the appropriation bills have been passed, which has helped Australia achieve one of the best performing economies in the world. In 2011 and 2012, 199 and 195 Bills were passed by the House of Representatives. Apart from 2009 this was the highest number since 1997 and above the annual average of 184.This was achieved despite the Gillard Government not having a majority in the House or the Senate

    In 2011 23 private member bills were presented, with the same again in 2012.The average number of such bills since Federation is four per year. 30% of all legislation was amended through negotiations between the Government the Independents and the Greens. The Independents, and particularly Tony Windsor and Robb Oakeshott performed with good sense and responsibility despite the vitriol often heaped on them.

    There were clearly some downsides.

    • The House of Representatives was often disorganised and with intimidatory language. Both parties have responsibility for that but the provocation in my view was mainly by the coalition. It was determined to prove that the parliament was unworkable and that the Government was illegitimate.
    • There were three Speakers. Not all performed creditably.
    • The shadow of Craig Thompson hung over the parliament but he is still there!
    • The mining tax was a mess.

    All in all I think the evidence is that the ‘hung parliament’ performed quite well in the circumstances. It has survived almost three years with considerable achievements to its credit.

    The next election is unlikely to produce a hung parliament. But I wouldn’t be disturbed if it did.

     

  • Catholic Health still leaves the impression that it wants to destroy Medicare. Joint Blog: John Menadue and Ian McAuley

    On Mar 14 John Menadue wrote, on this blog site “Does Catholic really want to destroy Medicare”.  Martin Laverty responded on 29 May.

    This is a further response by Ian McAuley and John Menadue. Together we have written many joint articles on health policy. See publish.pearlsandirritations.com.

    Catholic Health’s response through Martin Laverty identifies two problems with our present health care funding – inequities in health delivery and outcomes, and fragmentation of funding and care between Commonwealth and State Governments.

    Catholics Health’s proposed solutions to the two problems  are well off the mark, however, and their response – tailored health plans for the most disadvantaged and adoption of “Medicare Select” does not address the core issue identified in the original article “Does Catholic Health really want destroy Medicare?”  The core issue is avoided in the Catholic Health response. That issue is that if the 50% of Australians who have private health insurance took up the option under Medicare Select to transfer their $30 billion  plus entitlements  per annum in Medicare to their private health insurance it would be goodnight Medicare There is no doubt about it. Even a withdrawal of a lesser amount would still be crippling.

    It is understandable that Catholic Health should be concerned with the most disadvantaged. Martin Laverty must be well aware of what has happened in the USA, where hospitals under the umbrella of the Catholic Church, such as those nominally operated by the Sisters of Mercy, have become big profit-making enterprises with little if any connection to their original mission. http://livingwithmcl.com/BitterPill.pdf

    But turning over Catholic hospitals and other facilities to provide care for the “most disadvantaged” www.theage.com.au/national/catholic-health-plan-for-disadvantaged-20090818-ep4u.html is fraught with the curse of unintended consequences.

    There is an obvious appeal in directing such services to those most in need, but a system  reserved for the poor, or the “indigent” to use the US term, degenerates into a charity ward system. Catholic hospitals would become the hospitals for “losers”, for those without voice, and without the political influence to pressure governments to provide public facilities and public funding for all. The poorly funded US “Medicaid” provides a strong lesson we should heed.

    Whatever our means, we can all retain our dignity when we come through the same door to the same hospital or clinic.  There is merit, also if we pay for those facilities according to our means. Means-tested co-payments are a far more dignified way of achieving equity than provision of separate facilities. Perhaps Catholic Health can take guidance from Pope Benedict’s encyclical letter Caritas in Veritae  http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20090629_caritas-in-veritate_en.html  which stresses the virtue of civic solidarity, rather than segregation of society along a division between a supposedly self-reliant class and an indigent underclass.

    We have examined Medicare Select each way and every way and are still at a loss to understand Catholic Health’s enthusiasm for it – a proposal which has far more to do with entrenching high-cost financial intermediaries in the health system than with providing care or meaningful choice.  As stressed in  the original article of May14, it involves churning funds once through the tax system and then again through private insurers, offering “choice” when we have hardly any idea what our future health care needs will be.

    There is a strange contradiction in Catholic Health’s argument. It puts the case for a single funder – a strong case in our opinion – and then in an unexplained twist uses it to support a proposal where funding would pass through a plethora of financial intermediaries.

    The problem with Medicare Select is not that it’s “too radical” as suggested by Martin Laverty. Rather, it builds on a method of health-care funding, private insurance, that has demonstrably failed to contain costs and is inequitable. Just look at the disaster in the US.

    In defence of Medicare Select, Catholic Health refers to the Netherlands system, which, it is claimed, is operating successfully. The “success” of the Netherlands system has become an article of faith among those who see every retreat from public funding a success, regardless of the outcome.

    In fact, since the Netherlands compulsory private insurance system was introduced in 2006, health care expenditure has risen sharply – from 9.7 per cent of GDP in 2006 to 12.0 per cent of GDP in 2010 (the Netherlands Government is yet to provide later figures to the OECD). http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/total-expenditure-on-health_20758480-table1.  That’s the second-highest in the OECD – only the USA, where private insurance has had a longer period to wreak its damage, is expenditure higher, at 17.6 per cent of GDP.  To put Netherlands’ rise into perspective, if our health expenditure were to rise by 2.3 per cent of GDP we would be outlaying another $35 billion a year. That would be a high price to pay for expanded overheads and a dubious “choice”.

    Evaluations of Netherlands post “reform” health care arrangements point to anything but success. An evaluation published in the Journal of Health Politics and Law found opposition from both the public and health care providers, a failure by insurers to negotiate with providers (a common problem when providers can play off insurers against one another), and poor profitability among insurers, even though their premiums were rising steeply.  Another evaluation in the same journal found that while the new private insurance model offered more choice of insurers, the former Bismarkian system, to which 60 per cent of Dutch had belonged, offered more choice of providers. Kieke Okma of Leuven Catholic University says of the “reforms”:

    Originally presented as a means to help contain costs, the government now seems to see competition in health care as a goal by itself. While earlier reform documents emphasize goals like improved quality of care, innovation, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and patient satisfaction, those elements receive less attention as competition has taken the front seat.

    If Catholic Health is seeking a European model of health care, it may turn its attention to Sweden, a country with strong traditions of Christianity and social solidarity, where the right-leaning Government has now wisely maintained the government as the single health insurer, but has introduced compulsory (and uninsurable) patient co-payments, and has encouraged the private sector to expand into service provision, including operation of private hospitals.

    It’s not hard to see our Catholic hospitals fitting into such a model – a model which would secure their strong role in the community, and allow them to provide their distinctive services – not just to those who can afford private insurance, as is the case now, and not just to the poor, as is their other vision, but to all Australians

    But Martin Laverty proposes something fundamentally different. Does the Stewardship Board of Catholic Health really want to go down the path he proposes?

    John Menadue and Ian McAuley

    References (not available on line)

    Pauline Vaillancourt Rosenau, University of Texas, Houston and Christiaan J. Lako, Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands “An Experiment with Regulated Competition and Individual Mandates for Universal Health Care: The New Dutch Health Insurance System” Journal of Health Politics and Law  Vol. 33, No. 6, December 2008

     

    Kieke G. H. Okma, Catholic University, Leuven, and New York University “Learning and Mislearning across Borders: What Can We (Not) Learn from the 2006 Health Care Reform in the Netherlands?” Commentary on Rosenau and Lako Journal of Health Politics and Law Vol. 33, No. 6, December 2008

     

    The Economist (Schumpeter column) “A hospital case: Sweden is leading the world in allowing private companies to run public institutions” The Economist 18 May 2013

  • Fear and Trust. Guest blogger: Michael Kelly SJ

    It was Arthur Augustus Calwell, Federal Leader of the Australian Labor Party before Gough Whitlam, who believed that fear was the most potent political weapon. He ought to know: he lost three elections because of it.

    The political correlative to fear is another emotion – the appeal to “trust me”. Creating or eroding trust is the common task and challenge of individuals and institutions in Australia, home to the most testing and suspicious populace in the world.

    It’s a tried and tested tactic in Australian public life – Paul Keating in his attack on Fight Back; the way the ACTU got Work Choices to be the millstone around the Howard Government’s neck; the mining companies on the profits tax; and Tony Abbott’s campaigns on asylum seekers coming by boat whom he still calls “illegals”.

    Maybe it’s our convict origins or the Irish instinct to bring everyone down to size or just the inherently secular nature of life in Australia where no orthodoxy has sway or hierarchy prevails.

    But individuals and institutions in Australia aren’t granted or allowed to assume trust and credibility simply in virtue of their office or proposed function. Australians are and always have been suspicious of authority and pretentions to it. Trust and credibility have to be earned.

    As we move into electioneering mode in the lead up to September, it will again become clear that politics is more about emotion and perception than it is about platforms and policies. That’s why trust and fear are so important to register and gauge, to recognize and manage.

    And so, as the litany of bungled policy initiatives and dumb promises about budget surpluses add to the popular suspicion that the Gillard Government is illegitimate – getting there only through back room deals among Labor politicians that showed scant regard for any popular mandate – the correlative emerges from the Coalition.

    “Trust me” because we won’t do anything stupid. We’ll develop a White Paper on the Carbon Tax before doing anything; we’ll get the Productivity Commission to review industrial relations before acting; we’ll review the GST with the States and have an external review of Treasury see why they got revenue predictions so wrong; and, the old chestnut, we’ll get an external audit of all government programs.

    The potent weapons of fear and trust can operate in at least two ways: use by agents and political practitioners to prosper their advancement and the demolition of their opponents or they can end up backfiring on the proponents and practitioners who first deployed them. And the play is already underway in Australia as can be seen in accusations of “unworthiness for office” because of past abuse of trust.

    Or so it seems to be going with appeals to trust him by Tony Abbott and accusations of untrustworthiness levelled at Julia Gillard. Trust and fear are rich currency for politicians to trade in, but it’s one where they can’t control the exchange rate.

    What is so important about registering the use and abuse of trust and fear is to recognise what it does to us, the electorate. Someone might invite us to trust, for example. But no one can claim to be trusted until others entrust themselves to you. The essence of trust, and fear for that matter, is that they are relational experiences.

    Political power and its legitimacy are essentially social because they only occur when I and we entrust ourselves, our prospects and our fortunes to those people inviting the trust.

    Australians have good reasons for suspecting politicians’ promises – from John Howard’s promise not to introduce a GST to Julia Gillard’s promise not to introduce a carbon tax.

    Long before Shakespeare adopted the phrase, we were all well advised to take a long spoon to sup with the Devil. Appeals to trust and accusations of untrustworthiness unlock the most ambivalent human energies from hope and expectation to contempt and despising.

    While we all should follow the warning of buyer beware, politicians, indeed all office holders, should take note too.

    Michael Kelly SJ

  • Asylum seekers and refugees – political slogans or humanitarian policies? John Menadue

    Australia has a proud record in accepting 750,000 refugees since WWII. But the mood has now turned sour. It is so easy for unscrupulous politicians to exploit fear of the foreigner. It is paying off politically. We no longer ‘welcome the stranger’.

    The continually repeated slogan ‘stop the boats’ is with us almost every day. One line slogans don’t make up a coherent policy. We need to look at the facts behind the empty slogans.

    •  In 2012 the US had 82 000 asylum claimants. In Germany it was 64 000, in France 55 000, in Sweden 44 000 and in Australia 16 000. In the same year refugee numbers in major receiving countries were Pakistan 1.7m, Iran 890 000, Syria 755 000, Germany 577 000 and Kenya 566 000. In Australia we had 23 000. refugees.
    • Asylum and refugee flows are driven by “push” factors, persecution and war in such countries as Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and Syria. Deterrent policies in receiving countries have little effect.
    • Over the last 10 years more than 70% of asylum seekers to Australia have come by air and not by boat. What is important is the total numbers of asylum seekers not their mode of arrival. But all the public debate is about boat arrivals. Perhaps it can appear scarier! We hardly lock up any asylum seekers that come by air. They live in the community and can usually work. They have a success rate in refugee determination of just over 40%.
    • Boat arrivals are locked up and subsequently, and very slowly, released into the community. They have a refugee determination success rate of over 90%, but the government will not allow them to work when released into the community. The Coalition will deny review rights in refugee determination to boat arrivals but not air arrivals.
    • The Coalition has demonised boat arrivals as “illegals”, when they are not, they bring disease, and they carry “wads of cash” and introduce crime into Australia.
    • The Coalition has ‘dog whistled’ that most refugees are Muslims. In fact, in 2010 and 2011 26% and 42% respectively were Muslim. In those same years Christians represented 51% and 34% of refugees accepted into Australia. The number of Christians fleeing the middle-east, particularly from Syria and Egypt, is likely to increase in the years ahead because of persecution and war.  The Middle East, the birth place of Christ is squeezing out its Christian populations.
    • The Coalition has said that it will re-introduce its Pacific Solution.  That ‘solution’ has three elements.
      • Re-open Nauru despite warnings by the Department of Immigration that Nauru would not work again.as asylum seekers had learned very clearly from the Howard years that even if they were sent to Nauru they would, after a delay, finish up in Australia or New Zealand. 97 % of persons on Nauru who were found to be refugees came to Australia and New Zealand. The Government foolishly adopted this Coalition policy.   Since August last year when the Nauru/Manus option and the no-advantage test were adopted, the number of boat arrivals to Australia has increased.  Nauru/Manus is not only cruel. It is not working to deter boat arrivals…
      • The re-introduction of Temporary Protection Visas. The evidence from the Howard years is that despite the introduction of TPVs, boat arrivals increased in the years following their introduction. More people got on boats after TPV’s were introduced with over 6000 coming in 2001 All but 3% of TPV holders obtained refugee status. Further, TPVs which denied family reunion resulted in more women and children coming by boat. That is why when SIEVX was lost at sea in 2001, 82% of the 353 people who drowned were women and children.
      • Turn-backs at sea. Both the Indonesian Government and the Royal Australian Navy have warned against this. In 1979 when a similar policy was proposed, Malcolm Fraser rejected it because it would make Australia a ‘pariah’ in our region. Threatened with turn-backs desperate people are likely to scuttle their vessels. It is also dangerous for RAN personnel. Furthermore, returning boat-people to Indonesia would be returning them to a country which has not signed the Refugee Convention.
      • The Coalition claims that its ‘Pacific Solution’ will work. The evidence is clear that it won’t. It will also be dangerous and cruel.

    What should be the key elements of a humanitarian policy?

    • Increase the humanitarian intake to 20,000 p.a. which the Government has announced. The Coalition has declined to do so.
    • Abolish mandatory detention except for processing purposes and to check safety and health. No country in the world has mandatory detention the way we do. It is not working and is ridiculously expensive. Next year the total cost of detention related services and off shore asylum seeker management will be $2.97b. Both the Government and the Coalition agree on mandatory detention. Fortunately the Government is cautiously releasing detained persons into the community on bridging visas whilst their refugee claims are being assessed. The Government seems ashamed even when its policies are on the right track because of fear of a populist backlash.
    • Minimising Nauru/Manus by urgently working with Indonesia and UNHCR to establish a UNHCR processing centre in Indonesia.
    • Re-negotiate with the Malaysian Government in cooperation with the UNHCR for the temporary protection and processing of asylum seekers in Malaysia. UNHCR will cooperate with us on Malaysia but not on Nauru/Manus. The Greens have cooperated with the Coalition to defeat legislation that would allow Malaysia to be an important building block in a regional framework. They continually trash Malaysia which is doing more to assist asylum seekers and refugees than we are
    • A regional framework is what we need most of all and Indonesia and Malaysia are the key countries.
    • Negotiate Orderly Departure Arrangements with Sri Lanka, Afghanistan and Pakistan to process asylum seekers in their own countries, many of whom have family in Australia. This provides an alternative to risking their lives at sea. We negotiated an ODA with Vietnam in 1983. Over 100,000 Vietnamese came to Australia under this arrangement. They did not have to risk their lives at sea.

    The government has failed in many respects.

    • It has failed to outline and promote a principled and humanitarian case for asylum seekers and refugees. Unfortunately the Government listens to focus groups rather than its own conscience. Malcolm Fraser showed that it could be done with the 150 000 Indo Chinese refugees who were settled in Australia. Another 100 000 came in family reunion. To be fair Malcolm Fraser was lucky to have Gough Whitlam and Bill Hayden as Opposition leaders who both broadly supported the refugee programmes. Julia Gillard is not so lucky. She has Tony Abbott grabbing every opportunity to exploit xenophobia. He is following John Howard who started us down this slippery slope- Tampa, children overboard and Nauru.
    • It succumbed to the nonsense from the opposition in re-opening Nauru/Manus.
    • It has been slow to introduce ODAs and cooperate with Indonesia to establish a processing centre in that country.
    • It has excised the Australian mainland from our migration zone which surely must be a gross breach of the spirit if not the letter of the Refugee Convention. This action not only diminishes Australia physically, it diminishes us morally.
    • Refusing to let asylum seekers on bridging visas in the community the right to work. How can a Labor Government which had at its core the right to work do this to vulnerable people! They will be forced into the grey economy and even crime.

    There is a lot that governments can do to improve the plight of asylum seekers and refugee’s situation but we also need to be mature enough as a country to accept that desperate people will not always play by our rules. They will cut corners.  It will always be messy. We need to accept that good policies and our best intentions will not always succeed in stopping irregular flows. We need to grow up.

    Generosity does pay off. We have settled 750,000 refugees since WWII. It has not been trouble-free but we can look back with pride what these refugees and particularly their children have contributed to Australia. We acted generously in receiving them and it paid off for us. Immigration, refugees and multiculturalism have been Australia’s great success story. Let’s stop spoiling it as we are doing today.

    “And if a stranger dwells with you in your land you shall not mistreat him  … for you were once strangers in the land of Egypt” Leviticus 19, 33/34

    This not just a moral injunction. It also in our national interest.

  • Myth-busting. John Menadue

    One after another, the opinion polls tell us that the Liberal and National parties are much better economic managers than the ALP. This is despite Australia having one of the best performing economies in the world by almost any measure; debt, economic growth, employment and inflation.

    Unfortunately for the Liberal and National parties and John Howard and Peter Costello in particular their records as economic managers have recently been taking a beating.

    First the International Monetary Fund.

    In January this year, as reported by the SMH on January 11, 2013, the IMF

    “identifies only two periods of Australian ‘fiscal profligacy’ in recent years, both during Mr Howard’s term in office – in 2003 at the start of the mining boom and during his final years in office between 2005 and 2007. The stimulus spending of the Rudd Government during the financial crisis does not rate as profligate because the measure makes allowance for spending needed to stabilise the economy. … The key finding is that Australia has few examples of economic recklessness compared to other developed states like Canada and Japan.”

    Joe Hockey attempted to rebut the IMF report. Perhaps he misunderstood what a ‘structural deficit’ is.

    Second, the Parliamentary Budget Office.

    In its just-released ‘Estimates of the structural budget balance of the Australian Government 2001-02 to 2016-17’ it outlines first what a structural budget balance is. It says

    “The structural budget balance (SBB) is a partial measure of the sustainability of the budget. It shows the underlying position of the budget after adjusting the actual budget balance for the impacts of major cyclical and temporary factors. The SBB reflects the impacts of underlying budgetary trends and discretionary fiscal policy decisions.”

    It then goes on to crunch the Howard Government’s economic performance. It says

    “Over two thirds of the five percentage points of GDP decline in structural receipts over the period 2002-03 to 2011-12 was due to the cumulative effect of the successive personal income tax cuts granted between 2003-04 and 2008-09. 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 2001-02 budget and the decline in the consumption of cigarettes and tobacco over the period.”

    Treasury reported very much the same on the structural deficit but Joe Hockey suggests that Treasury has become political and it cannot be relied upon for the figures it presents. So I have highlighted independent reports by the International Monetary Fund and the Parliamentary Budget Office.

    As Laura Tingle put it in the AFR on 23 May this year

    “All up, these reviews put the blame for much of the budget deterioration on the Coalition in government and credit at least some of the forecast improvement on savings Labor has implemented in office. As such, they don’t sit comfortably with many of the critiques of Labor’s budget management, nor does the Parliamentary Budget Office endorse the view that Australia’s debt position is of major concern.”

    Despite the evidence, the partisan business commentators and the opinion polls continue to tell us that the coalition is a better economic manager. The evidence is just not there to back up that view.

    The myths continue.

     

  • Japan: Renaissance? Guest blogger: Walter Hamilton

    After two decades mired in largely self-made problems (post-bubble depreciation; political instability; aging population; nuclear meltdown), Japan is suddenly feeling much better about itself. Anyone observing events could not fail to register the shift in the national mood. Are we witnessing a Japanese renaissance, a return to economic expansion? Will economic recovery ease the way for long-debated constitutional and political reforms?

    Japanese have a name for it: Abenomics. It hardly matters that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is neither an economist nor the principal driver of the stimulus plan (that role is performed by the new central bank governor, Haruhiko Kuroda), what makes the slogan important is that it trumpets one identifiable hero to a public that has long craved a strong leader, someone with a capacity to exercise power.

    I don’t say this on the basis of shopworn historical references to shoguns and samurai; I say so because opinion polls over the past several years have made it abundantly clear. The ousted Noda Cabinet, and those that went before it, did not lose public confidence because of unpopular policies. Japanese voters ditched them because they perceived they were unable to exercise power. Abe himself succumbed in 2007; an ineffectual leader, he stepped down as Prime Minister the first time around due to “illness”. In a stunning comeback, he appears energized, decisive and focused.

    Previous attempts at stimulating the Japanese economy relied on public works spending and near-zero interest rates. Abenomics involves a more dramatic form of monetary stimulus aimed directly at currency depreciation and igniting inflation: two conditions Japanese governments have usually shunned as dangerous, even unpatriotic. Since Abe’s patriotic credentials are not in doubt, what is going on?

    The central bank has undertaken to buy back huge volumes of government bonds, creating what appears to be another layer of debt for a country already burdened with massive public sector liabilities. But since Japan’s public debt is covered largely from domestic private savings, the strategy is not as reckless or contrived as it may sound – as long as confidence in recovery can be maintained. Abe and his team want to prod and coax the Japanese public to save less and spend more, and people tend to bring forward spending if they think prices will rise and/or they feel more assured about the future. This calculation lies at the heart of the government’s inflationary monetary policy.

    The other part of the calculation is currency depreciation. If a country starts printing money at an unprecedented rate, as Japan is doing, its currency can be expected to fall. The yen has dropped from 80-something to the US dollar to about 100 yen to the dollar. That trend is supporting the third pillar of Abenomics. A cheaper yen immediately benefits Japanese exporters, driving up profits and share prices. The Tokyo stock index has rebounded from 9,000-something to 15,000 in a short time.

    These circuit-breaking developments have made one class of Japanese much better off (on paper at least); and, for the rest, people’s hopes are raised about a flow through to higher wages. For someone earning $9 or $10 an hour, as do many part-time workers in the retail sector, the prospect is desperately appealing. The mainstream media, so recklessly negative about the former centre-left Noda government, finds nothing but virtue now in Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party. The Abe “magic” seems to be dazzling even practiced eyes. An Upper House election, due in July, may deliver a triumphant LDP the numbers necessary to push through constitutional change.

    Conservatives have long wanted to be rid of the “American” constitution presented to Japan during the postwar occupation, which renounces the right to wage war as a means of settling disputes. They intend to start by making it possible to rewrite the basic law through a simple parliamentary majority of votes, instead of the current two-thirds. Since it can be argued the constitution has formed the most effective political “opposition” to one-party rule in Japan for the past 66 years, such a move would severely weaken checks and balances within the system.

    Standing up to China over a long-running territorial dispute is the most conspicuous foreign policy manifestation of the Abe doctrine. Another important strand is Tokyo’s willingness to accept a significant deterioration in relations with South Korea for the sake of pandering to Japan’s right-wing nationalist fringe. Abe has set a low standard for public discussion of historical facts, effectively licensing other politicians and commentators to utter increasingly outrageous remarks on “comfort women” and other inflammatory issues.

    These are risky self-indulgences for a leader whose daring economic strategy depends upon building and maintaining confidence in markets, among consumers and with strategic partners. Abenomics is still only a slogan and a starting point. Unless and until it delivers to the real economy higher wages, improved competitiveness and a genuine sense of security for ordinary Japanese, nothing is assured. A grab for power by weakening the constitution and indulging in historical revisionism can still undo it all.

    Walter Hamilton spent 11 years as the ABC’s Tokyo Correspondent. He is just back from a six-week visit to Japan.

     

     

     

     

     

  • What Rupert Murdoch told the US Ambassador about the pending Whitlam dismissal – 12 months beforehand in November 1974? Yes 1974. John Menadue

    More pieces are falling into place. Last year we learned from Jenny Hockey’s second biographic volume of Gough Whitlam that a serving High Court Judge Anthony Mason from August 1975 improperly briefed Sir John Kerr about the dismissal of the Whitlam Government.  He even drafted a dismissal letter, although it was never used. The legal, political and business establishment was closing ranks to get rid of the elected Whitlam Government.

    Now Philip Dorling has written what Rupert Murdoch told the US Ambassador Marshal Green and other Embassy officers over lunch at the US Embassy in Canberra on 27 November 1974. According to the cable from the US embassy, Murdoch told the Ambassador

    ‘Australian elections are likely to take place in about one year, sparked by refusal of appropriations in the Senate’. (Published in the National Times, May 20, 2013)  http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/political-news/whitlam-radical-fraser-arrogant-hawke-moderate-secret-cables-reveal-murdoch-insights-20130520-2jvtl.html

    Note that Murdoch’s prediction was made 12 months before the dismissal, not one month or even one week before hand.

    This is the first time I have seen anything about the Embassy lunch. The record of these discussions was released by the US State Department on 20 June 2005. But the search engines had not found this record because Murdoch was misspelt with a ‘k’ rather than an ‘h’.

    Murdoch got it right about the dismissal, although he expected that Bill Snedden would be the likely Liberal leader in twelve months. If not he suggested to the Ambassador it could possibly be Phillip Lynch. Murdoch discounted the possibility of Malcolm Fraser becoming leader.

    But he got one thing absolutely correct. The Whitlam Government would be dismissed in twelve months’ time through refusal of Supply in the Senate. And so it happened.

    How could Murdoch be so well informed a year in advance? I cannot prove it but I think I know the answer.  Sir John Kerr had made it clear that dismissal was one of the options at his disposal.

    In my autobiography ‘Things you learn along the way’ (Go to: www.publish.pearlsandirritations.com, then click on book.) I recounted a meeting between Rupert Murdoch and Sir John Kerr and others at Cavan, Murdoch’s country residence outside Yass in late 1974. On page 155 I wrote

    ‘George Munster in his book about Rupert Murdoch, ‘Paper Prince’ recalls a visit which Kerr made to Murdoch’s home at Cavan as far back as late 1974. … The account which George Munster gives of that meeting in Cavan in late 1974 is very similar to an account which Ian Fitchett, who was also present, gave to me. Fitchett was political correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald and doyen of the Canberra Press Gallery. … [Kerr] had been invited by Murdoch to drop in at Cavan for a drink and perhaps a meal. Murdoch was holding one of his soirees with his editors from around the world. Kerr, over drinks, embarked on a very detailed and elaborate outline of the various possibilities that the Whitlam Government might face in the future if the Senate blocked or deferred supply. According to Fitchett and Munster, all the options were laid out in front of Murdoch. There was probably no-one in Australia better briefed than Murdoch as to how the Governor General might act.  He was very privileged; the Governor General never gave his Prime Minister such a briefing. Kerr was very indiscreet. That was a briefing that Murdoch tucked away for future reference, a year later. Just as importantly, Murdoch, who was always a great judge of people’s strengths and weaknesses knew how and when to apply pressure to Kerr.’

    Note the critical dates. The briefing of Murdoch by the Governor General was “late 1974”.The briefing of the US Ambassador was on November 27 1974.

    Further Murdoch told me over lunch in Canberra on 7 November 1975 what I now surmise he had learnt from the Governor General twelve months before and told within a few days to the US Ambassador about the imminent election. He told me on November 7 1975 that

    ‘He was quite certain there would be an election before Christmas and an election specifically for the House of Representatives.  I suggested to him that a half Senate election was the only possibility. He rejected this view and said that he believed that there would certainly be a House of Representatives election before Christmas and that he would be staying in Australia until this occurred. He was very confident of the outcome of any election and even mentioned to me the position to which I might be appointed in the event of the Liberal victory – Ambassador to Japan.’ See my autobiography p157

    Murdoch denies my account of the lunch and our discussion. I stand by it. He was accurate about both the election and my appointment to Japan in 1977.

    Rupert Murdoch has a pattern of memory loss in relation to the Whitlam Government. He denied that he asked me to negotiate with Whitlam after the 1972 election for his appointment as Australian High Commissioner to London. (See also my autobiography p113) I stand by my account of Murdoch’s request for the London appointment.

    Murdoch was clearly a major player in the dismissal of the Whitlam Government. His newspapers could not have been more partisan in the lead-up to the dismissal and the subsequent election. Journalists at The Australian went on strike over the bias of the Murdoch campaign. Nothing much has changed.

    Murdoch was determined to get rid of the Whitlam Government. The briefing he got from John Kerr in late 1974 was an enormous benefit. Confident from the Kerr briefing he boldly predicted to the US Ambassador the dismissal of the Whitlam Government in twelve months’ time. He told me very much the same story again in Canberra a few days before the dismissal.

    How else could he have known so accurately what was in prospect from the Governor General?

    Murdoch loves the exercise of power. He is addicted to it whether in business or politics.

     

     

  • We are a more generous people than the politicians think we are. John Menadue

    It is easy to be disappointed and depressed with the whole toxic debate about asylum seekers. The government is doing some things well, such as releasing more people from detention, but it is failing to provide political and moral leadership in this sensitive area. Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison do their best to demonise asylum seekers and create fear.

    But many people don’t want to be part of this.

    Last Friday night, with 500 other people, I attended a fund-raising and fancy-dress dinner for the Asylum Seekers Centre in Sydney. My wife and I dressed as best we could – French clowns. Perhaps that would not be hard you might say.

    What struck me most of all were the hundreds of young people who attended, many volunteers at the centre and all supporters of the cause to help asylum seekers and refugees. Seeing all the young people gives us ‘oldies’ encouragement.

    We had a moving and inspiring story from ‘Antoinette’, an asylum seeker who came from Uganda several years ago, having lost many of her family.  In Sydney she was homeless and friendless. The ASC ‘took me in’ she said. With that support she was slowly and steadily able to find her own feet. So many Australians helped her, some in small ways and others in big ways. She is now in employment, has a boyfriend and has become an Australian citizen. The speech was not a ‘tear jerker’ but a moving story of vulnerability and resilience. We should never underestimate a survivor.

    HG Nelson was the MC giving his time and talents freely for the 11th function in a row.

    I was at a table arranged by St Mary Magdalene Parish in Rose Bay. This parish has raised almost $100,000 for the Centre over the last few months.

    There is good news around despite the public debate.

    One issue stands out in my mind in the asylum seeker debate. The government is wisely releasing more asylum seekers from Immigration Detention Centres into the community. But very few of them are allowed to work. How can a Labor Government justify this denial of the dignity of people by insisting that they cannot work! The argument which the Minister for Immigration gives is that if they were allowed to work it would encourage more asylum seekers to come. There is no evidence in research anywhere in the world to support such a claim.

    Denying anyone a right to work, particularly for able bodied people in a desperate situation will inevitably result in some breaking the law and finding work. Can you then imagine what Scott Morrison and Eric Abetz will say?

    Confronted by a problem the Australian community is more generous and understanding than our politicians give us credit for. If only we had principled leadership we could do even better.

    John Menadue

  • Malaysian Elections Hangover.-How 51% of votes secured only 40 % of the seats. Guest blogger El Tee Kay

    As a guest blogger on May 2 I described the intense interest in the General Election to be held on May 5. This was shown on election day with a voter turnout of more than 84%, the highest in Malaysian history.

    The Opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) won the popular vote but lost the elections. It garnered 5,623,984 or 50.88% of the popular votes but won only 89 Parliamentary seats (40%) compared with the ruling Barisan Nasional’s (BN) 5,237,699 votes or 47.38% with 133 seats. The BN lost 7 seats.

    The component parties of BN, the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), and the Gerakan were almost annihilated and the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) with only 4 seats barely survived the mauling. The United Malay National Organisation (UMNO) the strongest coalition partner however did well in the rural areas.

    The hard fought elections had some undesirable aspects. Rumors were rife that “ballot box stuffing” by foreigners legitimized as “Malaysian citizens “was used in marginal constituencies to influence the result. Opposition supporters were encouraged by bloggers to alert the authorities, but some of them behaved like vigilantes.

    Despite BN’s fear mongering tactics of talking up potential racial violence and religious tensions, the bribing of voters with cash handouts and promises of more to come after the elections, urban voters voted for the PR in large numbers. The Prime Minister’s election pledge of “you help me and I will help you” only amused urban voters.

    The BN, particularly the PM and former PM Tun Mahathir Mohammed, bitterly criticized the Chinese voters for being racial in abandoning the party in urban constituencies. It became clear how out of touch BN was with the demographic changes and the powerful socio-economic and political forces at work in urban areas. Their political analysts must know that the Chinese electorate could not have pulled off the coup in urban areas without the strong support of the Malays. But stoking racial and religious sensitivities have always been exploited successfully by BN.  They must also know that Chinese candidates in BN lost to opposition Chinese PR candidates. Clearly this was a party preference and not an ethnic one. It is to the credit of the Opposition that they did not use the race card to criticize the BN for pushing for Malay dominance in rural areas.

    What saved the BN were the rural Malays voters in the 317 Felda settlement land schemes spread throughout the country. 90% of these 600,000 settler voters, beneficiaries of huge payouts during the run up to the elections, are diehard UMNO supporters. The Pan Islamic Party (PAS) a component party of PR was hoping to improve on its 2008 performance in these areas but was not able to make inroads into the 54 parliamentary and 92 state seats in the Felda dominated areas. Also, BN maintained its stranglehold in the mainly rural areas of East Malaysia. The opposition DAP made impressive gains in all urban areas in the country.

    The PR claims fraud in at least 30 seats. This is significant as it needs only 23 seats to unseat BN. Allegations have been made of vote buying, misuse of postal ballots, of legitimizing foreigners to vote and other irregularities. The Election Commission (EC) has said that appeals to the courts can be made within 21 days of the election results being gazetted. No one is holding their breath in expecting a fair outcome to any of the appeals. The credibility and track record of the investigating agencies have never inspired confidence in Malaysians.

    Bersih, the NGO for clean and fair elections is setting up a Peoples Tribunal to probe election fraud and irregularities. Its findings may have little impact on the outcome of the election but it will certainly have long term national and international implications.

    El Tee Kay from Kuala Lumpur

     

  • National Party fails farmers. John Menadue

    Warren Truss and Barnaby Joyce have allowed the National Party to be dragged along at the heels of the Liberal Party on climate change and other issues. What was it that Tony Abbott said about climate change being ‘bullshit’? Australian farmers particularly in Western Australia are now paying the price of failed leadership by the National Party.

    Last week the government announced measures to assist distressed farmers who face drought, a strong dollar and other difficulties. Particular mention was made of farmers in the south-west of Western Australia.

    Evidence keeps coming that the drought in Western Australia is more than a normal drought – it is man-made and the result of climate change. Consider the evidence and views of the experts on this question.

    • The Australian Climate Commission said very recently ‘Western Australia, particularly the south-west, is vulnerable to climate change. Rainfall patterns in WA have changed over the last forty years. There is significant evidence that climate change has contributed to the marked drying trend in the south-west of the state. This has had serious implications for urban water supplies and agriculture. Sea levels along the west coast of Australia have been rising at more than double the global average. With a significant part of the population living in coastal cities and towns, rising sea levels pose significant risks … ‘.
    • Professor Ross Kingwell of the University of Western Australia’s School of Agricultural and Resource Economics said in the Australian Financial Review on May 1 2013 that ‘in the 1900s the (south-west) region enjoyed a wet year about one out of every two years. This has diminished significantly since the 1970’s”.
    • A senior climatologist at the Bureau of Meteorology, Blair Trewin, told the AFR that ‘The biggest driver in the rainfall declines is long-term climate change.’
    • Dr Wenju Cai, a research scientist at CSIRO, said that the long-term deprival of rain in WA’s south-west represents one of the strongest examples anywhere in the world of the impact of human induced climate change on a region.

    Australia has always had to deal with drought. But it is now becoming clear that climate change is playing an increasing and long-term role in affecting the livelihood of many farmers, particularly in WA. I wonder what questions farmers are asking Warren Truss and Barnaby Joyce about their failure to join in a national and international effort to minimise global warming. If only they had done that instead of playing politics on the issue we would all have made more progress.

    John Menadue

     

  • Malaysian General Elections – Change or Chaos? Guest blogger: El Tee Kay in Kuala Lumpur

     

     

    The run up to the 13th General Election on Sunday May 5 has been described as the dirtiest in Malaysian history. For the first time in 54 years the Barisan Nasional (BN) Government led by Prime Minister Najib Razak fears it may lose its grip on power. For the first time the Malaysian voter has a choice of a credible opposition, the Pakatan Rakyat (PR) led by Anwar Ibrahim, which is mounting a strong challenge. Indications are that the main coalition partners of BN – the Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) and the Gerakan may suffer severe losses or even be wiped out. The United Malay National Organisation (UMNO) may also lose some seats to the Pan Islamic Party (PAS) of the opposition coalition.

     

    The UM Centre for Democracy and Elections in a recent survey has put the PR ahead of the BN by 43% to 38%.

     

    There also seems to be a genuine concern amongst BN politicians that if they lose the elections, there will be accountability and retribution for past misdeeds. This has led to a change in strategy and the battle lines, unfortunately, are being drawn on racial and religious grounds. This has always been a disturbing tactic used by all parties to garner support of the disgruntled racists and fundamentalists.

     

    Fear mongering in the BN controlled media and in party propaganda is also raising its ugly head. The opposition is countering with an expose of BN excesses on the internet. Notably BN has at every election including this one resurrected the ghosts of May 13th 1969 when hundreds of people lost their lives in racial riots instigated by devious politicians which broke out after the elections. A film Tanda Putera (the Executioner Prince), a distorted version of the May 13th events, is being allegedly screened privately to Malay audiences to stir up hatred towards the Chinese.

     

    Numerous full page advertisements also appear in the media daily designed to instill fear in non-Muslims- that a vote for the opposition will be a vote for PAS and hudud law, dismemberment of limbs as punishment for certain crimes.. The opposition has been highlighting poor governance, mismanagement of public funds, bribery and corruption by BN governments at the State and Federal levels for decades.

     

    Of equal interest to the General Election is the battle for 12 State Governments which is being held simultaneously. Sarawak held its elections in 2011. Currently BN controls nine States and PR four. BN says it can win back 2 States and PR has hopes to retain its 4 States and capture at least 3 more BN States.

    It is difficult to gauge voter sentiment because there are no independent surveys, but if the crowd attendance at party rallies is an indication of public support, the Opposition has a great chance of winning at least another 33 seats in a House of 222 seats to obtain a simple majority. It could also win a number of States .At the very least PR may make substantial gains.

     

    As a casual observer of the Australian media I keep asking myself how a bombing in Boston is more important to Australia than an election in Kuala Lumpur?

     

     

  • Is the ALP a political party or a suicide cult? John Menadue

    Friends overseas are amazed that with a world class economy such as ours, the Australian Government faces a rout. I try and explain that the government’s difficulties are self-inflicted; that it is tone-deaf on many political issues; that the Prime Minister is not being listened to and the public will not accept what she did to Kevin Rudd.

    How could Australia’s longest-established and most reputable political party be behaving like a suicide cult? Where are the wise men and women in the ALP to stop the Party going over the cliff?

    Australians are genuinely concerned about the prospect of Tony Abbott as Prime Minister. If he wins it would be by default. He has proved himself an effective political wrecker, but credible policies are hard to find.

    The government’s policy performance is far from ideal, but it has a lot going for it.

    • We have had six years of uninterrupted economic growth, even through the Global Financial Crisis.
    • The pre-eminent international mining advisory consultancy, Behre Dolbear, has rated Australia as the top country in the world for investment in mining and mining activity.
    • The roll-out of the NBN in more expensive, but it will give Australia a top-ranking technology compared with a fourth-ranking technology that the Coalition offers.
    • The carbon price which will be followed by an Emissions Trading Scheme is superior to the direct action and “soil magic” which the Coalition proposes.
    • The government continues to improve superannuation. The coalition opposes
    • It has launched the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
    • The Gonski school reforms are underway which the Coalition opposes.
    • The overall cost of living is growing at a slower rate than inflation. The National Centre for Social and Economic Modelling tells us “right across the board our research shows Australian households on average are better off. We really are a lucky country”

    The main policy disappointments of the government have been in health where we continue to muddle through and on asylum seekers where the government has failed to show courage and act decently.

    But it is not only policy differentiation. There is also the quality of the rival front benches.

    Beyond the present leaders, the Government has a very strong front-bench; Combet, Shorten, Butler, Clare, Wong and Dreyfus. Compare that with Brandis, Joyce, Bronwyn Bishop, Andrews, Abetz, Pyne and Morrison. By comparison it is talent-free at best and in some instances, a very ugly front bench.

    Is the ALP prepared to disappoint so many of its supporters and allow Tony Abbott to win by default?

    John Menadue

  • The post-September struggle. Guest blogger: Red Pimpernel

    As the Labor Party lurches to a blistering defeat in September there is a lot of work going on to reframe it as a democratic and progressive organisation. Those that seriously believe in the ALP as a 21st century social democracy have begun quietly. The reframers know they will run into internal conservative opposition.

    It will be a debate that gives Labor members and supporters plenty to keep themselves busy as they contemplate the Abbott era.

    In NSW we have seen the beginnings of attempts to challenge monoliths of preselection power bases and union block voting. We have seen boldness borne of desperation in trialling new methods of engagement in preselections. In Victoria demands on the national executive to actually implement the many tomes calling for party democratisation and reform have been accompanied by deadlines for measures such as directly electing the state party leader.

    These are the tips of an iceberg reflecting serious attempts to raise questions about the culture and the operation of the Party.  Reassessment of values, aims and aspirations for what constitutes a progressive community and the role of the state to build it will underpin much of this debate.  Whilst the lid of discipline holds down much of this debate before 14 September it won’t last long after that date.

    Big questions are being framed up by every Labor parrot in the corner pet shop with a raft of Labor ex ministers ready to hit the ideas and book circuits.

    The large numbers of younger activists looking to the role of Government in building progress provides hope for comeback

    Debates on how Labor plans and regulates for sustainable growth to build the capacity of the State to deliver on the social justice and redistributive project that lies at its heart are being argued about – and not just in a 5 km radius of the Centre of Sydney and Melbourne

    Given that there will be a long bleak winter of Opposition to contemplate these existential questions it is better to set the parameters now for the ideological debate rather than await the hysterical recriminations and blame shifting that will inevitably follow after September.

    For a Party well used to being at the crossroads, the choices to be made soon will be defining

    All power to those who are promoting these debates.  They will need it.

     

  • Post card from Kyoto

    Kyoto is both an historic and beautiful city. Fortunately it was spared allied bombing during the last war.

    When our family first visited Kyoto and other parts of Japan in the 1960’s the exchange rate was about 400yen to the Australian dollar. It  made for not only wonderful holidays, but cheap holidays as well. We usually stayed at Japanese minshuku for less than $A 10 for dinner, bed and breakfast for an adult.

    Over the years, the yen strengthened considerably until it appreciated to about Yen 65 to $A1. To reverse this appreciation of the yen, the new Abe Government is flooding the economy with cash which has helped depreciate the yen to about Yen 104 to $A1.

    The hope of Abe is that with the depreciation of the yen, there will be new opportunities for Japan’s export sector. But will it succeed? To combat the previous strong yen, Japan has moved a great deal of its manufacturing offshore, particularly cars to the US. Much of Japan’s manufacture of electronics and IT has been shifted to Asia. So the depreciation of the yen is unlikely to help these Japanese firms that have already shifted offshore. With labour costs in the ROK about half those of Japan, the Japanese will have a lot to make up if its manufacturing and SME sectors are to become competitive again.

    The new debate in Japan, which is about the economy, has produced an unexpected benefit. In the months before Japan’s general election in December last year, the leader of the Opposition, Abe-san, and his Jimento Party were incessantly banging the anti-foreigner drum, a bit like Tony Abbott on asylum seekers in Australia. Abe and the Jimento were determined to head off the extreme nationalism of Ishihara, the Governor of Tokyo, and Hashimoto, the Governor of Osaka and seized every opportunity to beat the anti-Chinese drum. Now with a strong majority in the Diet and with Ishihara and Hashimoto side-lined, PM Abe can safely scale back his xenophobic posturing. Abe’s concentration on the economy will be a welcome change from the nationalist posturing and anti-Chinese sentiment that prevailed several months ago in Japan.

    Japan has been nervous, but not particularly panicked by the dangerous tantrums of the North Korean regime. Japan has put on alert its anti-missile batteries around Tokyo and has deployed AGIS destroyers into the Sea of Japan. Even with this Japanese response, I sense that the Japanese people expect the problem to blow over quickly. They have seen these antics from North Korea so much in the past – acting belligerently and then being rewarded by the US when it starts talking and acting ‘normally’.  In the past this tactic has been a clear winner for North Korea. It obviously hopes that by being reasonable in the weeks ahead it will persuade the US to ease sanctions and increase aid.

    Yet the North Korean action is to some extent understandable. After the American invasions of Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, any small power could come to the conclusion that only the possession of nuclear weapons would prevent a US attack. A price is being paid for the US abuse of power in the world.

    One consequence of North Korea’s erratic behaviour is that the US presence in north-east Asia is likely to be continued and possibly enhanced, particularly with its large bases in Japan. China is understandably concerned about the US presence in north-east Asia, but its failure to ‘manage’ North Korea means that it is encouraging a continuing US presence in the region.

    John Menadue

  • Fear of Asia. John Menadue

    This fear has been with us since European settlement – a small, relatively wealthy white community living on the rim of the large populations of Asia. This fear stunts our own human growth and is an obstacle to trusting relations with our own region.

    Although we have broken the back of ‘white Australia’, fear of Asia and the ‘yellow peril’ is still alive. We see it in so many ways.

    • Our uncritical alliance with the US and formerly with the UK stems from the fear of our region and the need for a strong external protector.
    • Politicians such as John Howard, Pauline Hanson, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison, see fear of Asia and particularly demonising of asylum seekers as a potent political weapon.
    • The hostility to a small number of skilled workers on 457 visas.
    • The campaign against Chinese investment by Barnaby Joyce and others which is really a re-run of the campaign by Pauline Hanson against Japanese investment 25 years ago.

    These campaigns against our Asian neighbours are designed to appeal to our emotions, our feelings our prejudice. They are not directed to our intellects.

    We waste a great deal of effort in trying to improve our relations and understanding of Asia with more diplomatic posts in the region, more conferences and more articles. These activities operate at the intellectual and cerebral level, appealing to our logic and rational natures.

    Fear however is visceral, it is of the gut. It can really only be countered by experience and hopefully we come to a feeling that foreigners are not such a threat after all.

    An important driver in the ending of White Australia was the experience by many of us in studying and living with Asian students in Australia. We weren’t changed so much by intellectual arguments about our relations with the region, but by our experience of feeling comfortable and at ease in dealing with people from our region who were quite different to ourselves. Experience of the unknown, not argument or logic was the influential factor. So Australian students of the 1950s and 1960s campaigned to end ‘white Australia’. We felt comfortable with fellow Asian students. They were not a threat.

    For the same reason, I have been a strong supporter of working holiday programs in providing opportunities for young Australians to travel and work in Asia for extensive periods. Unfortunately recent Australian governments have not seen the long-term benefits of these programs. The first working holiday agreement in Asia was with Japan in 1980. We didn’t have another in Asia until the 1996 agreement with the ROK. In the last ten 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 working holiday agreements with China, India or Vietnam.

    Many universities now provide opportunities for undergraduates and graduates to take up 12 months or more study at an Asian university or college. Over time, with these programs, if well developed, we will have a core of young Australians who have studied and experienced an Asian culture and society. It will be a visceral experience as much as a cerebral experience

    Studying foreign languages is also important if we are to ‘experience’ Asia. It is difficult to fully experience a foreign society, except through the language of that society. Yet unfortunately in Australia today Asian language study is in crisis. It is in decline. This trend must be reversed as soon as possible.

    By all means let us have our seminars and intellectual discussions about Asia. But the real focus we need in combatting our fears of Asia is for hundreds of thousands of young Australians to study, work and live in Asia for extended periods. Fear is visceral, not cerebral and experiencing the foreigner is the best way to break down our instinctive fear and reservation about the outsider and the person who is different. Importantly, we have to name the fear and what drives it, in all of us. Unless we do, we will be dissipating our energies on secondary intellectual issues.

     

  • Tokyo postcard. John Menadue

    It is great to be back in Japan for cherry blossom. I first came to Japan almost 45 years ago and have been visiting regularly ever since. On our visits and residence in Japan, we stayed at scores of minshuku – Japanese B & B – across the country. It was a wonderful experience.

    Cherry blossoms have been early in Japan this year. Many locals say that it is due to climate change! I suspect that many Japanese are more concerned about their environmental pollution of dust out of China, soaring eastwards, first over Korea and then over Japan. A family member who recently stayed in Seoul for a couple of days said that the dust obscured the sun until about 2pm each day.

    We attended the Australian embassy cherry blossom celebration along with about 1,200 others last week. It is a great occasion for Australia to display its friendship and its produce. We established the first such celebration almost 35 years ago. It was then called a ‘wattle and cherry blossom day’. The cherry blossoms in the garden have always been beautiful, but in the early days we brought in wattle from the Commonwealth War Graves garden in Hodogaya.

    In the 1980s, the Australian government sold a large section of the embassy premises for $750 million to a large Japanese company. The capital gain was tax-free. Some of the money was used to erect a new chancery and staff apartments. I am yet to hear of anyone who admires what we built. The Canadians did it much better than we did. However, a lovely part of the garden was retained and is well used for embassy functions.

    I sense a much improved mood in Japan following the election of the Abe Government several months ago. After 25 years of stagnation, the Japanese are now much more optimistic. But time will tell whether the optimistic mood is justified. Major structural problems still face Japan – an ageing population and a refusal to seriously entertain immigration, a protected agricultural sector and serious governance problems whereby operators like TEPCO, the nuclear power operator at Fukishima, are much too close to government regulators. By flooding the economy with money and forcing down the Japanese yen, it is clearly causing difficulties for adjoining countries such as ROK. The depreciating yen will also increase prices of all imported energy and foodstuffs. But the mood has certainly improved, something I have not noticed for a long time.

    Knowledgeable Japanese that I have spoken to express admiration for the strength of the Australian economy – growth rates over many years averaging about 3%, inflation ranging between 2% and 3%, unemployment just over 5% and miniscule government debt compared with Japan with its very serious international debt problems. But Japanese express real surprise that with such a strongly performing economy, the Australian Government should be at such political risk in the coming September elections. I don’t think they quite understand when I tell them that so much of the damage to the Australian Government has been self-inflicted.

    John Menadue

  • The Asian Century – another smoko? John Menadue

    Chaired by Ken Henry, the White Paper, ‘Australia in the Asian Century’ was released five months ago, in October 2012. We have heard precious little about it since. Prime Minister Gillard appointed Craig Emerson, the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Asian Century Policy. I have not seen or heard anything from him that gives me confidence that an implementation plan has been drawn up and is being implemented.

    Will we go on ‘smoko’ again as we did after the Garnaut Report of 1989 on the challenge and opportunities we faced in North Asia and particularly Japan and Korea. (See ‘The Asian Century and the Australian Smoko’ which Greg Dodds and I wrote in April 2012 on my website publish.pearlsandirritations.com.)

    A key issue from the Asian Century White Paper is to ensure that the key institutions are keeping up with the modest bench marks that were set. The Henry Review of Taxation showed that policy and ideas are the easy part. The hard slog is implementation. We have not heard from Craig Emerson how the modest objectives spelt out are to be achieved. What are the bench marks along the way to 2025? Where are the champions of our engagement in Asia? Those champions will have to come from within our existing institutions, particularly in business, media and education. We have not heard from them.

    Commenting on PM Gillard’s pending visit to China, Minister Emerson said that in the White Paper ‘content is important, but even more important is the very existence of the White Paper’. I am not sure I understand what he means and I don’t feel the least bit reassured.

    The response of Minister Emerson was almost as unhelpful and ill-informed as the comment by PM Gillard when referring to the “Asian Century”, she said ‘we have not been here before’. That may be true for her, but she showed little knowledge of our history and what was set out for Australia in 1989 by Professor Garnaut. We have “been here before” but the Prime Minister obviously missed it.

    The barriers to our involvement in Asia are obvious. The first is our large companies with their Anglo-Celtic culture and clubbish directors who are failing to equip either themselves or their companies for Asia. The second is our media whose structure and coverage was laid down over a century ago. It is overwhelmingly focussed on the UK and the US. There is only token interest in our region.

    A central issue beyond these two institutional failures is our fear of Asia. The White Paper did not adequately address this issue. This fear of Asia has been with us since European settlement – a small white, fearful English-speaking enclave surrounded by large numbers of Asians. That fear of Asia is regularly exploited. The Liberal Party with its ‘stop the boats’ one-liners incites exaggerated fear of Asia. The National Party runs the same campaign against Chinese investment that Pauline Hanson ran in the past against Japanese investment.  The Greens bash Malaysia over its human rights. The Government gives lip-service to our relations with the region, but the effort is not there.

    So far the follow-up to the Asian Century White Paper is not encouraging. The Garnaut Report was influential for a number of years and then we largely forgot. Asian language learning in Australia today is worse than it was 20 years ago!

    Is anyone really driving the implementation of “Australia and the Asian Century”?

    John Menadue

  • The Medicine Lobby. Vested interests win again. John Menadue

    Professor Stephen Duckett of the Grattan Institute has just reported that ‘Australians are paying too much for prescription drugs. The cost of this overpayment is at least $1.3 p.a.’

    This is another example of the power of vested interests in the health sector and their ability to extract economic rents from the community. The other privileged players in the health sector include doctors, particularly specialists, and the private health insurance industry that extracts a $3.5 billion annual subsidy from the taxpayer.

    The Minister for Health and her department spend much of their time placating and appeasing the vested interests in the health sector rather than developing policies and administering programs for the benefit of the community.

    The Pricing Authority for pharmaceuticals makes recommendations to the Minister for Health. The authority is a non-statutory body established by the Minister. Of the six members of the committee, two are industry lobbyists from Medicines Australia and the Generic Medicines Industry Authority. It is not surprising with a headstart like that that the pharmaceutical sector is able to secure the sorts of privileges that Stephen Duckett has outlined.

    The Australian Pharmacy Guild is also infamous in the privileges it extracts from Goverments. New pharmacies in urban areas must be at least 1.5 km from each other. One consequence of this restriction of competition agreed to by APG and Australian governments is that the number of community pharmacies has remained substantially unchanged at 5,000 since 1993, despite large increases in population and PBS prescriptions. The consumer organisation, Choice, in 2005 commissioned a study by the Allan Consulting Group on these location rules. Choice commented that ‘the location rules provide little consumer benefit and only advantage existing pharmacy operators’. The PGA has also successfully barred pharmacies from operating in supermarkets. Australians don’t have a great love for the Coles/Woolworths oligopoly but they would love to see more competition.

    Canberra has over 900 full time lobbyists, many in the health field. They are seriously undermining good government Their power is exaggerated but politicians fall over themselves to oblige them.

    The ministerial/departmental model in health is not serving us well. It provides a fertile hunting ground for vested interests – the health  providers- who hold all the important cards. They cling to the Department of Health like limpets. Even enquiries like the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission, are invariably timid and anxious to appease sectional interests. This Commission was chaired by a senior executive of BUPA.  After six years of the Rudd/Gillard Governments there is little to show in real health reform. The muddle continues.. But the sectional interests must be happy that their. position is secure.

    Because of the failure of health governance to counter the lobbyists and sectional interests in health, I have proposed on many occasions that the Commonwealth Government should establish a permanent, independent, professional and community-based statutory authority, an Australian Health Commission, similar to the Reserve Bank in the monetary field. The Reserve Bank’s governance structure has made it almost impervious to lobbying. It is respected for its independence and professionalism. Just as the Reserve Bank is subject to guidelines determined by the Government, so an Australian Health Commission should operate within guidelines determined by the Government.

    The power of vested interests in health must be tackled. The Grattan Report provides yet another example of why this must be done.

    John Menadue

  • Does Australia care about what happens on its doorstep in Sabah? Guest blogger: El Tee Kay

    Almost a month ago two hundred of the self styled Royal Sulu Army, some heavily armed, landed in a small coastal village in Sabah, Malaysia. They came from the nearby Tawi Tawi islands in the southern Philippines. Their objective was to “persuade” the Malaysian Government to recognize their “hereditary” claim to Sabah for the Sulu Sultanate.

    The Suluk or Tausag tribes have traversed this narrow stretch of water as traders and pirates for centuries and many settled along the East coast of Sabah. The influx increased during the Moro uprising in the southern Philippines. This most recent invasion, it seems, has all to do with the Philippine claim to Sabah and reminiscent of President Marcos’s “Operation Merdeka” which was an attempt to launch 160 army trained Muslim youth from Sulu and Tawi Tawi to foment an uprising in Sabah in 1967. This plot went horribly wrong when this commando unit called the Jabidah found out they were to kill fellow Suluks. They mutinied and were apparently eliminated by their handlers. Coincidentally, Benigno Aquino Jr the father of the current Philippines President blew the cover of this covert operation and massacre.

    The Philippines has not dropped its claim to Sabah and wants Malaysia to have the case adjudicated by the International Court of Justice. Malaysia dismisses this on the grounds of “effective” and “a’titre de souverain”.

    The Manila government has said that the intruders and the Sultan will be charged under Philippine law but the Malaysian Government wants them to be tried in Malaysia. The opposing stands taken by the two Asean countries and the extradition process will be drawn out which will result in more political posturing.

    The Philippines will hold its midterm elections in May. In an earlier election “Sultan” Jamalul contested a senate seat in the former President Arroyo’s Team Unity and lost. It is speculated in Manila that the “invasion” of Sabah is politically motivated by the opposition to embarrass President Aquino.

    Malaysia will also hold its 13th General Election soon and as Sabah emerges as a key to forming the next government, both the Barisan Nasional and the opposition Pakatan Rakyat are accusing each other of treachery for political gain.  The Malaysian government has become prickly about criticisms of this long drawn out conflict and of its alleged mishandling of the incursion by a handful of invaders and the loss of lives of civilians and security forces. There is also the question of Muslim voter reactions to the use of force in dealing with the situation. President Aquino also has to deal with the influx of refugees to Tawi Tawi fleeing the conflict and the loss of Filipino lives and alleged mistreatment of its citizens by security forces.

    Fortunately neither the Philippines nor the Malaysian Governments’ have upped the ante. This is in keeping with ASEAN’s collaborative approach but there are fears that this spat could escalate into retaliatory terrorist activities within Sabah by Suluks which could further strain relations with Manila. Some of the “invaders” are said to be veterans of the Moro National Liberation Front who have relatives and sympathizers in both countries

    But a recent look at the Australian media suggested greater interest in a New York Court decision on sugar in drinks and a former British MP and his wife jailed for a traffic lie. Does Australia have a real interest in Asia unless it is for economic advantage?

    El Tee Kay, Kuala Lumpur

  • The Power of the Gambling and Liquor Complexes. John Menadue

    I remember speaking many years ago to an old friend, Justice Xavier Connor, after he had completed an enquiry for the Victorian Government on a possible casino in Melbourne. He recommended against it.

    He said ‘John, gambling and casinos everywhere in the world attract criminals and organised crime. It is like bees around a honeypot. Criminals are naturally attracted to gambling and casinos.’

    We have had warnings that the gambling industry has enormous power and influence. Look how easily it ran off the rails the attempts by Andrew Wilkie and Nick Xenophon to curb problem gambling in licensed premises in Australia.

    Only a couple of weeks ago, the brilliant young footballer, Ben Barba, withdrew from rugby league and admitted that he had serious personal problems with gambling and alcohol. The Canterbury Leagues Club was praised for the way it handled Ben Barba’s personal problems. But what of the culture of the Leagues Clubs, those pleasure domes of gambling and liquor, who cause so much damage not just to Ben Barba but also to thousands of others.

    We see saturation advertising of gambling and liquor in association with sporting events. We can get the odds for a bet on a game in progress from Sportsbet. Individuals are charged with match-fixing. Our Australian cricket team carries the logo of Victorian Bitter without blushing about the damage that liquor does in this country, way beyond the damage of illicit drugs.

    The liquor and gambling PR people work overtime telling us that they are committed to responsible drinking and gambling. Please spare us the hypocrisy! We are urged to forget the problem drinkers and gamblers who wreck their own lives and their own families.

    Fifty years ago, President Eisenhower warned Americans about the power of the military and industrial complex. Who in Australia is really concerned about the growing power of our gambling and liquor complexes?

    John Menadue

  • The Neverending Story. Guest blogger: Greg from Cottesloe

    Side show alleys have become smaller these days. They used to be the centre of attraction at the annual Royal Show with the boxing troupes, the bearded ladies and so on but even the shrunken lane of today still has a conjuror performing the old pea and thimble trick. The conjuror puts a pea under one of three thimbles then swirls them around with appropriate flourishes and invites a member of the audience to pick the one hiding the pea. Some honest but dim fellow steps forward and has a go but…no luck. He retires ruefully shaking his head and the conjuror’s patter goes on.

    Our bemused citizen here could well be the Australian Republican Movement. The Monarchist conjuror has in truth few assets to work with and he will exploit the plodding good nature of his adversary for all it’s worth. The conjuror’s first rule: NEVER accept the idea of a simple referendum question asking the people whether they want (some form of) a republic or to continue with the present structure. That would probably finish the game there and then. Those in the magic trade still gasp with admiration at the Howard/Minchin Flutter of 1999 which deftly avoided this core question but nevertheless convinced most people that the issue had been decided.

    After dodging that bullet, it becomes a bit easier for the conjuror. “It would be disrespectful to the Queen to hold such a referendum while she is still alive”. Fair enough, concedes our generous friend only to hear when he steps forward the next time that “We’ve got to do the Australian thing and give Prince (King) Charles a Fair Go”. Beyond that awaits Prince William and the radiant Kate protected by a slobbering media. Even our decent bloke is beginning to get the idea that he’s been had here, played for a complete mug.

    The political process could resolve this but the Prime Minister, in spite of Labor policy and her own professed position as a republican, has assured the country with a wagging finger that there’ll be none of this republic stuff during her term, as though describing distasteful behaviour by schoolboys behind the tennis shed. Has she won the Monarchist vote through this step into Liberal territory? Unlikely. As for the conjuror, he sits quietly in the background contemplating an untroubled future for the next decade at least.

    So what’s to be done? Upend the table? No, but let’s change games. A straightforward arm wrestle through a simple referendum would be a good start.

    Greg at Cottesloe

     

  • The Malaysian General Election. Will the fix be in again? Guest blogger El Tee Kay, Kuala Lumpur

    Australian Senator Nick Xenophon flew into Kuala Lumpur in mid-February. He was detained and deported back to Australia as he posed a “security threat” to the country. He was roundly condemned by the Malaysian Home Minister, the Election Commission and the media for his interference but received favourable support overseas and from the opposition parties, civil and human rights groups in Malaysia. He was blacklisted for participating in an illegal rally for free and fair elections in last April’s Bersih 3.0 rally and “tarnishing” Malaysia’s image. His summary deportation has cast further doubts about the fairness of the coming general election, probably in June this year.

    The government can usually ignore protests about unfair elections as it has great influence over radio and television channels. Many of the main English, Malay, Chinese and Indian newspapers are owned by supporters of the the Barisan Nasional (BN) the major governing party. The BN is a coalition of UMNO, MCA, MIC and some smaller parties.

    For 40 years, Malaysians have put up with rumors of election fraud but have been dismissed.  In 2004, the voters gave BN a strong mandate to support the new PM Abdullah Badawi after two decades of authoritarian rule.  Although the country was prosperous and peaceful, the ethnic minorities felt marginalized in government, business and education. Government affirmative action policies favored the Malays and Muslims and minorities felt deprived and discriminated against. The festering discontent was too strong to contain, and the Chinese and Indian partners in the BN, the ruling coalition, were blamed for not fighting for the rights of their constituents. UMNO (United Malays National Organization) too lost touch with the grass roots. It is alleged that UMNO Putras (the elite) got all the contracts and perks while the UMNO base was neglected.

    To try and beat back the opposition to its money politics the leader of Pakatan Keadilan Rakyat (PKR), Anwar Ibrahim was charged and later acquitted on what many regarded as trumped up sodomy charges.

    The opposition parties exploited this discontent in the BN. A large number of Chinese switched allegiance to the DAP (Democratic Action Party), and the Indians to PKR. PAS (Parti Islam Semalaysia) made inroads into the religious heartlands in the country where UMNO was strongest. The political advantage held by UMNO in gerrymandering in favor of Malay rural constituencies became less relevant as PAS mounted their challenge in these staunchly Muslim areas. In the 2008 elections, BN was devastated by the electoral swing to the opposition.  BN lost five States to the opposition and only strong support from Sabah and Sarawak saved them from losing the Federal Government.

    The next General Election has generated a tremendous interest .The opposition is optimistic about winning the Federal Government and several State governments. This will depend on whether the loosely knit coalition is able to stick together. Bickering over seat allocations, differences on religious and social issues, unless dealt with maturely, may cause an erosion of confidence amongst voters.

    Sabah and Sarawak still hold the key to success. They have 56 parliamentary constituencies and they have been loyal BN states. The predictions are that the BN will lose urban seats in Sarawak but the bulk of the rural seats are safe for the BN. This time Sabah is a problem. The presence of illegal immigrants in the State has been an open sore. For decades, the government has denied political gifting of citizenship to immigrants in exchange for their vote for the BN. Evidence presented at the Royal Commission of Inquiry recently confirmed that this occurred. In Parliament, it was alleged that about 700,000 immigrants were given citizenship and of these, about 200.000 were registered as voters. These numbers have changed the demographics of Sabah drastically and increased BN’s and UMNO’s dominance.

    The global scrutiny of the elections and pressure at home to deflect growing concerns of massive electoral fraud motivated the PM Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak to sign the Transparency International (TI) Integrity Pledge on Wednesday 20 February declaring that the governing parties would uphold integrity and reinforcing his commitment to fight corruption. The Opposition parties did not participate in this pledge and continue to insist that all members of the administration declare their assets and wealth. It is unfortunate the   pledge comes at such a late stage of the election process, but it is a positive message from the PM that “money politics”, a euphemism for corruption, a long standing scourge in UMNO politics, will not be tolerated.

    Money politics in other parties also is common where the “frogs” (party hoppers) are enticed to switch camps after the elections for large sums of money betraying their parties and their constituents. There have been cases where State Governments have fallen due to these turncoats.

    Senator Xenophon’s deportation may not have been unexpected. The bungling officials may have scored an own goal. It has only attracted more international attention which will no doubt please Anwar Ibrahim the leader of PKR and more broadly the coalition of opposition parties (Pakatan Rakyat). He needs to win an additional 34 seats. It is a big ask but not impossible.

    El Tee Kay, Kuala Lumpur

     

  • The Darkening Shadow of Hate Speech in Japan. Guest blogger,Tessa Morris-Suzuki

    Japan’s new Prime Minister, Abe Shinzō, has proclaimed Japan a regional model of “democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights”. Indeed, Japan has proud traditions of free debate and grassroots human rights movements. But ironically – and largely ignored by the outside world – the rights of minorities and the work of those who fight hardest for human rights are under growing pressure in Abe’s Japan.

    Japan signed the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, but refuses to introduce anti-hate speech laws. One reason, according to the government, is that such laws are unnecessary, since Japan’s penal code prohibits group defamation, insult, threatening behaviour, and collective intimidation.

    But the limits of this approach have been on display in recent disturbing incidents. On 9 February, for example, a group of racist demonstrators –  including members of the best-known hate group, the Zaitokukai – marched through an ethnically diverse district of Tokyo, shouting incitements to violence and carrying placards with slogans such as “Kill Koreans”. A large police contingent was on hand, but despite abundant evidence of group defamation, threats and collective intimidation, none of the demonstrators was arrested.

    Matters were very different, though, when, around the same time, a Zaitokukai member lodged his own complaint of victimization. His claim, made more than four months after the event, was that he had been “assaulted” when refused entry to a September 2012 meeting organized by Japanese grassroots groups seeking apology and compensation for the former “comfort women” (women from throughout the Japanese empire coerced into serving in brothels run by the Japanese military during the Pacific War). Those who attended the meeting remember it as a peaceful event, despite the presence of a few menacing Zaitokukai protestors outside. Regardless of this fact, and of the curious delay in the complaint, police responded zealously to the Zaitokukai member’s claim, bringing in four members of the “comfort women” group for questioning and descending on members’ homes to search for incriminating evidence.

    Many in Japan work very hard for “democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights”. But there is no rule of law if the instigators of violence are allowed to peddle hatred, while those who pursue historical justice are subject to police harassment. Democracy is left impoverished when freedom of hate speech is protected more zealously than freedom of reasoned political debate.

    Tessa Morris-Suzuki 

     

  • Corporate bullies

    Public debate and the development of good policy are being steadily corrupted by the success of powerful lobby groups to quickly close down debate and force retreat by the government. This tactic is assisted by a timid government and a media that has little understanding of policy issues, and is only too prepared to recycle the handouts from powerful groups.

    Last week we saw this bullying in full view. The government floated the suggestion that the concessions handed out to wealthy retirees in tax concessions by Peter Costello in 2007 should be reconsidered. The superannuation lobby went into immediate attack. Pauline Vamos, the CE of the Association of Superannuation Funds in Australia said that for people to have a really comfortable standard of living throughout their retirement, they should have at least $2.5 million as the balance in their superannuation account. Ian McAuley has estimated that this would give the retiree a tax-free pension of about $160,000 p.a. Such a retiree would normally not have a home mortgage and the cost of raising children and their education.  In the face of this nonsense by Pauline Vamos and others, the government quickly retreated and said that it had no intention of taxing any capital sums in superannuation. Tax avoidance won the day, quickly and comprehensively.

    In the SMH last week, Ross Gittins wrote about the ‘four industries that rule Australia’ – superannuation funds, miners, bankers and the gambling industry.  I would have added the health industry.

    In 2009, the miners ran a highly successful and cheap advertising campaign ($22 million) to defeat the Rudd Government’s resources super profits tax. They also helped to get rid of the Prime Minister! The industry saved itself an estimated $66 billion over five years. We have now been left with a wimp of a mining tax.

    In 2011, under pressure from Independent Andrew Wilkie, the government undertook to introduce strong legislation to help addicted gamblers. But the licensed clubs and the gaming industry went to work and won the day.

    Ross Gittins has pointed out that through acquisition the four major banks have increased their market share from 74% to 83%. They make record profits and continually trouser additional savings by not passing on fully to customers the cuts in official interest rates.  They ignore both the treasurer and the shadow treasurer. They have real power.

    Then there is the health lobby – the AMA, private health insurance and the Pharmacy Guild who successfully restrict competition, protect restrictive work practices or secure increased government subsidies. The public debate is about what the government needs to do to buy off the specialists, the pharmacists and the private health funds.

    The lesson is clear; the large and wealthy groups with their lobbying power can derail public debate and secure concessions for themselves at the expense of the public interest. Too often the government runs for cover at the first whiff of grapeshot.

    There is a public register that lobbyists must complete. It is quite inadequate. As a starter, the public needs to know who the lobbyists and corporations are seeing, particularly ministers, parliamentarians and senior members of the public service, together with the nature of those discussions. That information should be updated weekly. It would be a small but important step in making transparent how corruption of good policy is occurring.

    John Menadue

  • Japanese Amnesia. Guest blogger: Susan Menadue Chun

    In the Washington Post articles http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/japan-must-face-the-past/2013/01/25/7a9b9244-6713-11e2-85f5-a8a9228e55e7_story.html  Jennifer Lind describes how Japanese conservative politicians have been playing a potentially dangerous game in disputes with neighbouring countries. The dispute arises mainly because of Japan’s inability to acknowledge its past aggression.

    The current Japanese hostility to neighbours is in part designed to distract national attention away from the country’s economic woes. Fortunately, Prime Minister Abe did not antagonise the ROK on territory issues as feared on Takeshima Day on 3 February 2013.(Takeshima/Dokdo are the disputed islands between Japan and ROK). Hopefully, it is a sign that Prime Minister Abe is becoming more moderate. He may even decide not to make any more visits to the Yasukuni Shrine which commemorates Japanese war criminals and others.

    The present hostility to neighbours may only cause short-term damage in Japan’s relations with neighbouring countries. However, there is the likelihood of continuing long-term damage as a result of Japan’s reinterpretation of history which is taught in schools under the direction of the Department of Education. After World War II a new and standardised national identity was created through the school curriculum. This curriculum reinterpreted history. As a result, the majority of Japanese adults, including conservative politicians themselves, have not had access to the teaching of a comprehensive view of history. They fail to comprehend why Japan’s neighbouring countries continue to be angered over Japan’s denial of the past on such sensitive issues as comfort women. The modifying of history through textbooks has indeed affected the Japanese public. It has caused a collective amnesia. It is likely to continue as conservative politicians are now proposing to further revise school texts to reflect their nationalistic view of history. The current damage could be made worse and reconciliation with neighbours could become all that much more difficult.

    The problem runs deeper than the current indiscretions of conservative politicians. The problem is endemic as a result of 60 years of Japanese reinterpretation of history.

    Susan Menadue Chun

    Tokyo, Japan

  • Can the media spell ‘policy’?

    A friend of mine, Ian McAuley, has drawn attention to an election study by the ANU’s Institute for Public Policy Trends. It covers elections 1987-2010.

    The study shows conclusively that our media is badly out of touch with what the public wants. For the 2010 federal election campaign, the study asked voters what were the most important considerations in their voting decision. 52% said ‘policy issues’. 25% said ‘parties as a whole’. 15% said ‘party leaders’. 8% said ‘candidates in my electorate’.

    The media and particularly the Canberra Press Gallery keep pushing personalities, leaders and politics when clearly the public wants to hear about policy.

    Policy is harder to understand and explain. It is so much easier for the media to serve us up a diet of politicians and politics.

    I would have hoped that the ABC would do better, but watching or listening to its flagship programs on TV and radio, I get the same diet.  At the moment it is leadership, leadership, leadership.  I turn off more and more.

    We will have a new government after September. We also badly need a new Canberra Press Gallery that can at least spell the word ‘policy’ even if it cannot explain what it means!

    John Menadue

  • Handle with Care. Guest blogger: Greg from Cottesloe

     
    When I was a kid, the pictures on Saturday afternoons were a highlight of the week. Before the main feature, the cartoons and even the Pathe newsreel would come one of the top favourites, a government warning on the danger of keeping unexploded ammunition in homes. Mortar bombs often featured; unlike bullets and other aimed projectiles, they don’t miss and they wound anyone that’s exposed. These films had names like Not Worth Dying for and started with a picture of a mortar bomb on the mantelpiece, went to pipe smoking Dad accidentally knocking it over, the house going up with a roar, just the thing to put kids in the right frame of mind for the next episode of Gunsmoke.
    Germain Greer has long been an icon on the mantelpiece of the Left and of Feminism but they might need to have a look at those old government films. Her article in last weekend’s AFR tackles Australia’s alleged love of plain speaking and inflicts casualties on all sides. Greer is non denominational; everyone gets a serve regardless of gender, age, education, ethnicity, etc. And this on the One Day of the Year set aside for mass smugness and feeling mightily pleased that we are not anyone else.
    But it’s when we go dipping into the Rozella biscuit tin of history looking for precedents of our general fabulousness that we come up against some problems. Australians seem to have been more collectivist, more taciturn and instinctively aware of the limits on individual expression in the past and this hasn’t travelled so well to the present  A former Malaysian Trade Minister once commented that Australians often told her how much they liked plain speaking but how they seemed to lose their enthusiasm for it quickly enough when they were on the receiving end.
    And then there are the comparisons with the Americans. One of the staple cliches is how quietly spoken and unobtrusive we are as travellers compared with loud and pushy Americans but any time spent flying around Asia these days is going to make that notion questionable at least. A recent online article on doing business with the US advised Australians to be less aggressive and boastful, to “get the tickets off themselves”. If we’ve got the Americans telling us to tone it down, something is amiss in the self image department.
    So let’s keep that mortar bomb on the mantelpiece – even if it’s a bit fat and old – and give it a good toss around every now and then. It might go off but then that’s what it’s designed to do.
     Greg from Cottesloe

  • Federal Election bits and pieces

    There was nothing new in the timing of the next election announced by Julia Gillard. There wasn’t much doubt that it would be some time in August or September. There may be a marginal benefit for the government in the early announcement. It has some major policy issues to outline – Gonski reforms, national disability and how they are to be funded. Having the resources of the bureaucracy in outlining these issues will be a considerable advantage. Furthermore, oppositions have been inclined to make themselves small targets and hide policy until late in the day. That will now be much harder for the Coalition.

    I suspect that one issue in Julia Gillard’s mind is the timing of the interim report by the ICAC in NSW on mining leases and Eddie Obeid. The ICAC evidence is extremely damaging to the ALP although it’s hard to imagine that the ALP vote can fall much further after it was almost wiped out at the last state election. The best way to make a new start in NSW would be for the federal executive to dismiss the NSW ALP state office.

    The Liberal Party has obviously been trying to remake and reposition Tony Abbott. At the moment he doesn’t seem to know if he is coming or going as he struggles with his new image.

    In the lead up to the election, Sportsbet in the SMH and perhaps other papers, carried a full page advertisement of Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard. There was the thought bubble from Tony Abbott ‘I am going to win big on election day’. The thought bubble over Julia Gillard said ‘only if you back me at sportsbet.com.au’. I wonder if Sportsbet had permission from either Tony Abbott or Julia Gillard to use them in this advertisement? If they gave their approval I would be disappointed. I recall many years ago that a major car manufacturer used Arthur Calwell’s face and name to advertise its product. He took his hat around and got some major financial settlements.

    Whoever wins the election, many must hope for a rejuvenation of the Canberra Press Gallery. It is badly out of touch with the Australian community as Julia Gillard’s misogyny speech indicated. In its group-think, it is all about politics and personality. Policy comes a sad last.

    John Menadue