Blog

  • Australia’s Foreign Policy Trailing a Leaky Boat. Guest Blogger: Arja Keski-Nummi

    Our foreign policy is more than boats or asylum seekers but that is what the Abbott government has reduced it to.

    We should all be concerned because what is at stake is much greater than stopping boats – it jeopardizes our ability to influence and be taken seriously on issues of greater importance to our long term future and well-being such as cooperation in security related issues, trade and in the longer term building genuine regional cooperation on asylum seekers and displaced people.

    Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop have much to learn if we are to have a credible stand in the region. The sycophancy of Tony Abbott’s comments in Indonesia and Sri Lanka fooled no one and least of all his hosts but it belittled us.

    In Bali on 7 October he said this of West Papua “… The situation in West Papua is getting better, not worse, and I want to acknowledge the work that President Yudhoyono has done to provide greater autonomy, to provide a better level of government services and ultimately a better life for the people of West Papua. ….[and then]…. and while I acknowledge the right of people to free expression, I acknowledge the right of people to fair treatment under the law, I should also make the point that the people of West Papua are much better off as part of a strong, dynamic and increasingly prosperous Indonesia.”  And last week in in Sri Lanka – where he virtually justified the use of torture by saying that. “We accept that sometimes, in difficult circumstances, difficult things happen,”

    Unbelievable and contradictory comments that fly in the face of the evidence. Tony Abbott and his government must be living in a parallel universe!

    Australia is a signatory to the UN Convention Against Torture. Our long held position has been that we do not condone torture in any form anywhere. Has our policy on this changed? Are we now to “turn a blind eye” to inconvenient truths if it means we can stop the boats?  The import of the Prime Minister’s speeches in Indonesia and Sri Lanka would suggest that he will ditch any ethical positions or long held conventions to “stop the boats”. He will debase our foreign policy to get a domestic issue, largely whipped up by him in Opposition, off his back.

    Equally disturbing is the fact that no conditions have been placed on how the patrol boats gifted to Sri Lanka will be used. One can speculate how they will be used. The cynic in me can see them being a convenient vehicle to facilitate the movement of people out of Sri Lanka via corrupt navy personnel. The other extreme where they become the vehicle for greater human rights abuses by preventing people being able to seek asylum and so potentially we will be putting ourselves in breach of our Refugee Convention obligations. A breach we should take seriously but I suspect under this government will not register as a transgression worth worrying about.

    How we work and cooperate with countries in the region across many issues is important. However, it does not mean that we should or need to go overboard and explicitly endorse what should be for us as Australians fundamental universal freedoms and rights.

    The latest soap opera being played out on the spying allegations against the President of Indonesia, his wife and senior colleagues betray just how fragile the relationship is with Indonesia. Despite his speech currying favour with Indonesia just a few short weeks ago it was not enough. This, together with the government’s seeming disregard of Indonesia’s sovereignty with its own Operation Sovereign Borders policy and Abbott’s his appalling lack of judgment in not even being able to pick up a phone and talk to the President, has meant that his Jakarta not Geneva policy is in tatters for the time being.  It will turn a corner at some point but I suspect the Indonesian government is in no hurry to forgive him; first for how he spoke of the region while in Opposition and now how he has handled the spying fiasco. They know they hold in their hands the success of his domestic policy on boats and will play it for as much as it is worth.

    The tragedy of such games is that it plays with the lives of desperate people – boats will come, tragedies will occur and it need not be so.

    What we need is an approach on asylum seekers that is rooted in reality and underpinned by ethical considerations:

    • It should not be a military operation – how can we be at war with asylum seekers, people often fleeing real wars?
    • We should not turn asylum seekers into criminals but understand that even if they are not refugees they are doing what we all do – aspire to a better life for us and our families.
    • We should accept that we cannot be a “fortress Australia” but what we can be is a country that can help in finding durable solutions for refugees and asylum seekers; this does not always mean that the only outcome is to come or remain in Australia.

    What this episode shows is that we cannot manage these issues on our own. The only way we can do this is working in the region with our partners in governments and civil society and that requires trust and being there for the long haul, not merely until the “problem” is fixed. At the moment we are displaying very little of that in the ham-fisted way this government is pursuing its policy on “stopping the boats”

     

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

     

     

  • A mega industry subsidy to private health insurance companies. John Menadue

     

    Many business economists continue to criticise the previous government and possibly the current one over the government subsidy of $10 billion over seven years for the auto industry. But that subsidy is small beer.

    The government subsidy to the private health insurance industry (PHI) has been $30 billion plus, over seven years. This year the government will provide $7 billion for the private health insurance industry. $5.6 billion will be in a direct subsidy to the industry. There will be another $1.4 billion in income tax foregone by the Commonwealth Government.

    That $30 billion is a mega-subsidy which the rent-seekers in the PHI industry defend against all comers. Unlike the auto industry PHI does not provide any product at all. PHI is made up of financial intermediaries that shuffle money from one place to another.

    Australia is paying an enormous price for these high cost financial intermediaries whose major attraction is to help provide wealthier people an opportunity to jump the hospital queue.

    PHI is inefficient with administrative costs about three times higher than Medicare. The subsidy has not taken pressure off public hospitals. Private gap insurance has facilitated enormous increases in specialist fees. Most importantly, the expansion of PHI progressively weakens the ability of Medicare to control costs. The evidence world-wide is clear that countries with significant PHI have high costs. The stand-out example is the US.  President Obama may have substantially achieved universal coverage, but private health insurance in the US with its lack of cost control will ultimately cripple and finally destroy his reforms. Warren Buffett has described private health insurance companies as the “tape worm” in the US health sector. Yet the Australian Government generously subsidises this industry in Australia.

    The Commonwealth already has a sound model of a single payer operated through the Department of Veterans Affairs – a model which retains the strong control of a single payer accountable to the community whilst allowing private practise involvement in service delivery.

    These enormous subsidies to PHI escape real examination. If the Australian Government wants to subsidise private hospitals it would be much more efficient to provide money directly to private hospitals as occurred in the past rather than churning the money through these high-cost financial intermediaries.

    At least the auto industry does provide broad benefits to the general manufacturing sector and the community. That could not be said of the subsidy to PHI in the health field. Worse still this subsidy undermines Medicare in the same graphic way that Warren Buffett describes.

    The subsidy to the private health insurance companies also has the same pernicious effects as government subsidies to wealthy private schools. Middle-class and articulate professional people opt out of the public school system and as a result we lose key supporters of a comprehensive public education system of high quality and available to all. The mega-subsidy to PHI not only distorts the health system but it is the wedge to divide the public from the private health systems.

    But this mega subsidy to PHI is largely ignored. Our business economists reveal their true agenda by attacking the much smaller subsidies to the auto industry.

  • Tony Abbott in Sri Lanka. John Menadue

    Tony Abbott  has continued his ‘stop the boats campaign” in Sri Lanka regardless of growing concerns about human rights abuses in that country.

    He offered two patrol boats as part of a ‘foreign aid package’. His justification for this is that it would help save the lives of people drowning at sea. Please spare us this hypocracy. The real reason is that with the cooperation of the Sri Lankan Navy he hopes he stop asylum seekers leaving Sri Lanka and possibly landing in Australia. The previous government used the same phoney excuse that it wanted to stop the boats to stop the drownings.

    But the drownings were really only a secondary part of the story. The main story was attempts to stop the boats carrying asylum seekers who were seeking refuge in Australia. It was politically embarrassing for them to come by boat.

    As asylum seekers in direct flight from persecution, Sri Lankans were unlike many other boat people who were in transit through Malaysia and Indonesia to Australia. Those in transit were not in direct flight from persecution. Because Sri Lankans landing in Australia are in direct flight, they have a particularly strong claim to our protection as the first country of asylum.

    Tony Abbott last week  said that he would not comment on human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. But when it suited him he had no hesitation in criticising human rights policies in Malaysia. He criticised ‘judicial canings’ and many other alleged abuses in order to discredit the Gillard Government’s attempt to stem the boats by negotiating an agreement with Malaysia in cooperation with UNHCR.

    Last week the UK Prime Minister went out of his way to visit the Tamil areas in northern Sri Lanka. He expressed concern about human rights abuses. Canada refused to attend CHOGM at all because of  concerns over human rights abuses in Sri Lanka. The Indian Prime Minister did not attend.

    So as with the naval boats, Tony Abbott is quite misleading when he refuses to comment on human rights abuses in Sri Lanka.

    Successive Australian governments have badly treated Sri Lankans seeking asylum in Australia. Some have been ‘voluntarily’ repatriated to Sri Lanka. Very few people know how much pressure was applied by government officials to persuade them to leave Australia.

    Some Sri Lankans coming to Australia have been found to be genuine refugees but have been refused permanent residence status because of dubious and secret ASIO assessments. These assessments would in part have relied on information supplied by Sri Lankan intelligence agencies who are not known to be friendly to Tamils. The fact also that a person has been a member of the Tamil Tigers should not  automatically rule that person out from our protection. Given the ruthlessness of the Sri Lankan military it is not surprising that young Tamils would join the Tamil Tigers. For the same reason, Irish nationalists would have joined the IRA decades ago. Some are now members of parliament and ministers.

    To break the impasse over the persecution of Tamils and persons fleeing Sri Lanka, the Australian Government should negotiate an Orderly Departure Agreement with the Sri Lankan Government which would enable persons facing discrimination in Sri Lanka to leave that country in a safe and orderly way – perhaps 2,000 to 3,000 p.a.  It would provide an alternate migration pathway. It would not be a refugee pathway as those covered under such an ODA would still be resident within Sri Lanka. It is possible that the Sri Lankan Government would cooperate, at least quietly, as it would probably be pleased to rid itself of Tamil dissidents.

    When I was Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship in the early 1980s, Australia negotiated such ODAs with the Communist government in Vietnam and the military regimes in Chile and El Salvador. Over 100,000 came from Vietnam under such an arrangement. Thousands came from Chile and hundreds from El Salvador.

    We should seriously consider an alternative migration pathway for Tamils and others facing human rights abuses and discrimination in Sri Lanka.

  • Systemic issues arising from the Victorian Parliament’s ‘Betrayal of Trust Report’ Guest blogger: Kieran Tapsell

    On 13 November 2013, the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organizations handed down its Report, entitled “Betrayal of Trust”. It stated:

    “No representatives of the Catholic Church directly reported the criminal conduct of its members to the police. The Committee found that there is simply no justification for this position.” (p.170)

    There was no justification, but there was a reason. In 1922, Pope Pius XI issued Crimen Sollicitationis, requiring any investigation of child sex abuse by the Church to be covered by the “secret of the Holy Office”, the penalty for breach of which was automatic excommunication. There were no exceptions for reporting such crimes to the police. In 1962, it was reissued by Pope John XXIII with some minor changes.

    In 1974, in the decree, Secreta Continere, Pope Paul VI replaced the secret of the Holy Office with “pontifical secrecy”, which extended that top secret classification even to the allegation.

    In 2001, Pope John Paul II’s Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela changed the procedures for dealing with the sexual abuse of children by clergy, and by Article 25 of those rules, re-imposed “pontifical secrecy” on any such allegations and trials of these cases, again, with no exceptions for reporting to the police.

    In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI extended pontifical secrecy to cover clerics having sex with intellectually disabled people and the possession of child pornography. Around the same time, the Vatican spokesman, Fr. Lombardi SJ informed the bishops of a dispensation to pontifical secrecy by an instruction from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith requiring compliance with any civil laws requiring reporting. The Vatican had previously rejected requests by American and Irish bishops to allow reporting irrespective of whether there were such reporting laws. In other words, the only amount of reporting the Vatican would allow was the minimum to keep Church authorities out of jail.

    All Australian States have mandatory reporting laws about children at risk, but only New South Wales has a requirement to report “historic abuse”, that is, where the victim is now an adult. According to figures produced to the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry, historic abuse amounts to more than 99% of all complaints. The existence of pontifical secrecy means that in Victoria, where there is no requirement to report historic abuse, canon law prevents a bishop from taking that information to the police, even if he wanted to.

    The Melbourne Response has no requirement for reporting to the police, and Towards Healing up until 2010 required reporting where the law required it. Yet, the Committee found that in not one instance of the 307 cases involving the dioceses of Ballarat, Sale and Sandhurst, did the bishops report directly to the police. Only the bishops can give the reason, but a reasonable inference is that misprision of felony was abolished in Victoria in 1981, and there was no equivalent of S.316 of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) which requires reporting of all serious offences. But there is another reason:  any reporting of information about sex abuse of minors that a bishop was required to investigate under Canon 1717 was strictly forbidden by canon law.

    In May 2010, the Vatican requested all bishops’ conferences to send in their child protection guidelines which had to include a provision that civil laws relating to reporting had to be obeyed. If approved by the Vatican under Canon 455 the guidelines will become canon law for that region.

    The systemic problem for Australia is that in all States other than New South Wales, there is no requirement to report to the police in 99% of all complaints of sexual abuse, and canon law still prohibits reporting of any information obtained in the course of an investigation by the Church.

    There is also some confusion about the extent of the concession given in 2010. On 15 July 2010, the Vatican spokesman, Fr. Frederico Lombardi explained the changes brought about by the revision of Sacramentorum Sanctitatis Tutela. He said that any reporting had to be done “in good time, not during or subsequent to the canonical trial.” Four days later, on 19July 2010, he confirmed that any such investigation and trial was to be carried out with the “strictest confidentiality”. In other words, reporting to the police can only take place before the Church investigation and trial starts.

    A canonical trial is not like trials in Australia where all the investigation is done first. It is more like a Coronial Inquiry so that in the course of the “trial”, there is likely to be new evidence. If what Fr. Lombardi says is taken at face value, it means that if the allegation made against a priest is that he abused 2 children, but at the trial it turns out he abused 22, and further that he murdered one of his victims, the bishop and anyone involved in that investigation is forbidden by canon law to take that to the police.

    At the Maitland-Newcastle Inquiry, a canon lawyer, Dr Rodger Austin said that before anyone involved in that Church investigation and trial could disclose that information to the civil authorities, they would have to get a dispensation from the Vatican, thus confirming that canon law, as it stands, prohibits reporting this information to the police.

    The Vatican is a foreign State, and it is effectively saying to Australian State and Federal governments that if they want Australian bishops to report clergy crimes to the police, they will have to pass laws to that effect, and even then there is some doubt as to whether or not bishops can comply with it once a canonical investigation and trial starts.


    [1] Kieran Tapsell is a retired Sydney solicitor and barrister with degrees in Theology and Law.

  • The end of an era. Guest blogger: Michael Kelly SJ

    It may be because I’ve been in Ireland and dealing with people who are the heirs of those responsible for most of the heritage and works of the Australian Jesuits. But I don’t think so. What struck me most deeply after a month or more among European Jesuits, and registering the scale of challenge to the Church as it is represented in the new Pope, is what a “fin de siècle” state the Church is in throughout all its moods and tenses.

     

    It is difficult to overestimate the rate and depth of change and the collapse of a phase of the Church’s life that is currently underway. Throughout the world, but particularly in Ireland, the sense of the end of an era that delivered the largest growth in the history of the Church, something foundational is happening. In Ireland for 150 years from the Famine in the 1840s, a cast of Catholicism was exported worldwide. It’s plain that this phase in the Church’s life that seemed as though it would last forever is in fact over.

     

    For example, the Irish Jesuits who sent hundreds and hundreds of missionaries to Asia, Africa and Australia now have more members aged over 90 than they do less than 50 years of age. They have four under 50 and can only look at “consolidating”, also known as shutting up shop. One British Jesuit told me that on current figures, there would not be a Jesuit in Britain NOT on the aged pension by the middle of the next decade.

     

    It’s not as though the statisticians throughout the Jesuits and the wider Church in Australia, Europe and the USA haven’t seen it coming and haven’t already been advising the Congregational and diocesan leadership for a long time on the unsustainability of various Provinces, dioceses and works. But in Europe it would appear that the future has arrived a little earlier than expected, as John Battersby once said of the Archdiocese of Brisbane!

     

    Such has been the case for many congregations of religious women across the world far earlier than for some male clerical religious congregations and for the supply of clergy in dioceses. For clerical religious, the provision of the sacraments has been an enduring need to meet and one that provided relevance. That has kept numbers up quite apart from any special focus offered by the charism of founders and their relevance and attractiveness to prospective members. But not now.

     

    As far as absorbing the impact of these well-known and common experiences, not much work has been done apart from scaling back, sometimes done with an energetic press of the panic button by superiors and bishops to underline the urgency of their actions.

     

    For the rank and file among religious and clergy, even if these realities were not anticipated when most joined their congregations or dioceses, the challenge is great. The most common reaction is something I have come to call the spirituality and missiology of the last of the Mohicans.

     

    Everyone can see the reality; everyone is reluctant to utter the D word for DEATH; everyone hopes that at least there will be something around for when the inevitable admission to the aged care facility occurs. ‘Don’t ask me why it’s all evaporated; I’ll be the last of the tribe and I don’t want to have my life complicated by being asked to “please explain”. The ‘collapse’ is the way many respond’.

     

    At the turn of an age, as the early 20th Century French Church historian Peguy once remarked, the Church always arrives a little late and a little breathless. The turn of this one is no different because the reality is that there are no reinforcements coming from traditional sources to support existing ways of delivering the service.

     

    For believers, the future belongs not to fears but to God. The only authentic and spiritually persuasive response to being in the middle of a change of eras like this is one that allows the Spirit to do what the Spirit does. And what the Spirit does is always surprise. Discipleship asks that we be attentive to the unexpected ways we may be drawn.

     

    What I find very discouraging about ways of addressing this inescapable reality is the abject failure to see how the mission of the Church is actually delivered today.

     

    Despite our blindness to it at times, God is still vigorously at work. Only a conception of mission and the resources needed for it entirely reduced to clergy and religious as until recently trained and authorized could see it as something where God hasn’t been energetically active.

     

    To borrow from what Bill Clinton did to beat George Bush Senior twenty years ago – “the economy, stupid, the economy!” The real context for the Catholic Church in Australia and much of the developed world is “the laity, stupid, the laity”. There actually has been an explosion in lay participation in ministry at every level, except the sacramental. What’s needed is to acknowledge that fact.

     

    The acid test of whether there has been any acknowledgement of the facts is whether any real power sharing has occurred whereby lay people have become part of decision making processes of dioceses and congregations. Lay people and women especially have taken leadership roles in the services that are offered – in health, welfare and educations – because they require a professional expertise that these days the congregations and dioceses don’t have among their members.

     

    But do lay people and women in particular actually become part of the processes where the most significant decisions are made – on Congregational Councils and in the diocesan bodies often reserved for exclusive clerical membership?

     

    At a strategic and organizational level, acknowledgement of and decisive involvement by lay people in mission, leadership and ministry can go a couple of ways.

     

    One currently proposed response to this change of eras adopted by some in the Church, and reinforced by Emeritus Pope Benedict, is quite happy to welcome this decline in the Church as we have known it. They have seen it as a God given opportunity to scale the Church back to a faithful remnant that would be distinctive because of its orthodoxy and compliance with what Rome and its utterances required under the management of the last three decades.

     

    Shame about the mass of Catholics, you might say. They can amuse themselves. There is the elite and that’s all there really needs to be any concern for.

     

    The more recent, but also more ancient, view – proposed by Pope Francis who also accepts a reduced size and presence of the Church as inevitable and perhaps desirable – is to say that elitism is for the birds and what is needed is for the Church to be present and make its contribution as leaven: distinctive, even vital and decisive, but not all consuming and dominating.

     

    The faithful remnant – and not the usual clerical and religious suspects – in this view will be distinctive because it engages directly with the issues and concerns that the average person has, is in the market place and is ready to give an account of the hope they have. It is not hidden away behind sacristy doors and locked into conversations with the already signed up membership.

     

    However the present becomes the future, one thing is sure. The latter won’t be like the past. We might just be in a situation of such abject poverty and resourcelessness that we can allow God to be God.

  • Cooking the books. John Menadue

    Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey have decided that there wasn’t really a budget emergency or a debt crisis that they have warned us about for many years. Perhaps they may have also privately conceded, as they should, that the Australian economy was one of the best performing and best managed economies in the world during the years of the Rudd and Gillard Governments particularly through the Global Financial Crisis.

    Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey however have now decided on another tack – cooking the books by announcing budget changes in the current year that hopefully can be attributed to the Labor Government. They hope that in the confusion the electorate will forget who is responsible for what.  In this attempt to change the subject Joe Hockey is now suggesting that this year’s final outcome for the budget will be a deficit of $45 billion to $50 billion compared with the $30 billion announced by the Labor Government in August this year.

    Let’s look at some of this sleight of hand that so far the government is taking to deliberately blow out the budget deficit that can be blamed on the previous governments.

    • An extra $8.8 billion is to be provided to the Reserve Bank to top up its reserve fund. The Reserve Bank never asked for it, but who knows, they might need it! It is better to be safe, particularly if you can blame the previous government. On bank reserves, the four big banks might have done more to top up their reserve funds for the future given their large profits, generous dividends and high executive salaries.
    • The Government will not proceed with Labor’s change in the fringe benefits tax treatment of executive cars at a cost of $1.8 billion over four years.
    •  Joe Hockey will ditch the tax on superannuants who earn over $100,000 a year from their super funds, at a cost of $313 million over four years.
    • He will dump the cap on self-education expenses at a cost of $266 million over four years.
    • The government will review loans that permitted global companies shifting their profits from Australia to lower tax-paying countries abroad.

    These changes are just the beginning. There will be more of this in the future – the object being to worsen the budget deficit this year so that it can be attributed to the previous government.

    This is the same well-tried policy of almost all new CEOs – fix the books to attribute as much opprobrium as possible to your predecessor.

    Joe Hockey is in for a lot more long nights with his desk lamp and eye shades, to get the best political results he can from this year’s budget.

  • Surely the Indonesians wouldn’t play politics over boat people! John Menadue

    Well – yes they would. They have learnt it from Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison. The blokey Australians are no match for the subtle and sophisticated Indonesians.

    In Opposition, the Coalition took every opportunity to exploit boat arrivals. They were not genuinely interested in stopping the boats then. Their main objective was to stop the Labor Government stopping the boats. That was clearly spelt out in what a ‘key Liberal strategist’ told the US embassy in November 2009, as revealed by Wikileaks, that ‘the more boats that come the better’. It is not hard to speculate who the key Liberal strategist was.

    The best and most humane opportunity that the previous government had to reduce boat arrivals was the agreement with Malaysia. But Tony Abbott and the Coalition sided with the pious Greens and refugee advocates to defeat the amending legislation to the Migration Act in the Senate which was necessary after the High Court decision. The failure of the Malaysian Agreement had predictable consequences. Boat arrivals increased three-fold in the following six months and continued escalating month after month. This was only changed by the draconian arrangement which the Rudd Government made with PNG.

    Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison keep telling us that their policies have slowed or stopped the boats, but they will not produce the relevant information. Only time will tell but it is certain that boat arrivals decline dramatically after the announcement of the PNG Agreement with the newly installed Rudd Government.

    Not only did the Coalition play hard to stop the Labor Government stopping the boats, they insulted the Indonesians by assuming that they could infringe their sovereignty by turning boats back to Indonesia. Despite the grovelling apologies that Tony Abbott gave to the Indonesian President recently, the Indonesians at many levels are clearly not happy with the way the Australian Government has behaved.

    When news broke that the Australian Embassy in Jakarta and elsewhere was collecting intelligence information, it was really no surprise. It would not have surprised the Indonesians. But it provided the Indonesians with an opportunity to settle some scores with Australia. As a result, they have refused to accept the return of two or three asylum vessels that had been intercepted by Australian vessels.

    With a Presidential election in Indonesia next year we are likely to see more party politics from Indonesia. Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison are due for some pay back.

    Managing boat people in transit in Indonesia depends on close cooperation between Australia and Indonesia. Exchanging intelligence information is essential. But the heavy-handed politicking over boat arrivals by the Abbott Government has put that cooperation at risk. Scott Morrison is showing himself no more adept about turning questions around than turning boats around.

    The Coalition, for party political reasons has grossly exaggerated the boat issue but as a developing country with numerous challenges, Indonesia must get very impatient with Australia’s overbearing attitude over what to them must seem a small problem. The Australian Government seems incapable of understanding that.

    By the way the human rights problems in Sri Lanka are coming into even sharper focus in the run up to  the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting which is due to commence this Friday in Sri Lanka. Canada has said that it will not participate because of human rights abuses. The Indian Prime Minister will not attend. The UK Prime Minister has urged a thorough investigation into the disappearance of thousands of people in Sri Lanka. The UN has recorded 5676 cases of missing persons in Sri Lanka-more than anywhere else in the wold except Iraq. Yet Australia continues to deport asylum seekers back to Sri Lanka. They are called ‘voluntary returnees’. I am very doubtful. There are an increasing number of reports that indicate that whilst the civil war may be over, peace and human rights have not been restored in Sri Lanka.

  • Lagging the field on climate change. John Menadue

    Across the world there are clear signs that the tide is turning with acceptance of the reality of climate change, that humans are the cause and that we need to address the problem.

    But not in Australia.  We keep acting like King Canute against the tide.

    • The Abbott Government is proposing to abolish the carbon tax which is the most credible measure we have in place in Australia to reduce CO2 emissions. The OECD has just released a report ‘Effective Carbon Prices’. The report concludes that ‘carbon taxes and emissions trading systems are the most effective way to reduce emissions and should be at the centre of government efforts to tackle climate change’.
    • Years ago Tony Abbott told us that the science of global warming is ‘crap’. His mentor, John Howard, continued in the same vein when he told a London group of climate change sceptics only last week that those expressing concern about climate change were ‘alarmist’ and ‘zealots’. He added that ‘one religion is enough’. In a remarkable admission he went on to say his “dalliance with an emissions trading system (in 2007) was purely political.” What!!
    • Those other political soul mates of Tony Abbott, Rupert Murdoch and Maurice Newman were reported in the AFR of 7 November 2013 as follows: “Maurice, Tony Abbott’s favourite businessman said that the 17-year stasis on climate change – it’s like a religion.  Rupert replied that it’s more than a religion, it’s become a cult. Maurice Newman responded that the science is clearly wrong”.
    • In my blog of 6 November, I pointed out that independent research shows that News Limited papers were giving heavily slanted reportage in favour of the climate sceptics.
    • The UN climate change chief, Christiana Figueres, highlighted a couple of weeks ago the link between climate change and bush fires. Tony Abbott told us that she was ‘talking through her hat’.
    • The government has before it a fig-leaf of a “policy” called Direct Action, but Tony Abbott has told us that even if the policy does not achieve the 5% emissions reduction in emissions by 2020 that no more money will be forthcoming.
    • The Campbell Government in Queensland has flagged reductions in coal royalties in the Galilee Basin which could double Australia’s coal production and dramatically increase global carbon pollution.
    • The Australian Government has refused to send a minister to the Warsaw Climate Summit this week. This is the first opportunity for the Abbott Government to attend a UN climate change negotiation.

    The evidence of climate change scepticism by the Abbott Government and key supporters could not be clearer. But Australia is acting against the overwhelming tide of scientific evidence and action by countries that are now beginning to take seriously the threat of climate change.

    • The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has expressed even stronger support to the science consensus that carbon emissions are the cause of climate change and that human beings are responsible.
    • China, the world’s largest emitter has pledged to reduce the carbon intensity of its economy by 40% to 45% by 2020. Japan, ROK and the UK have all committed to emission reductions of at least 25% by 2020. Both the federal and state governments in the US are taking determined action.
    • Pope Francis is planning a major encyclical on the environment which is expected to focus on climate change.
    • A group of 70 global investors with more than $3 trillion of assets has asked fuel and power companies to critically examine the major pollution problems that coal-fired plants present.
    • The letters editor of the Los Angeles Times has decided not to publish letters from climate sceptics. He said on 8 October last month that ‘Scientists have provided ample evidence that human activity is indeed linked to climate change. Just last month the IPCC, a body made up of the world’s top climate scientists, said it was 95% certain that fossil fuel burning humans are driving global warming. The debate right now isn’t whether this evidence exists (clearly it does) but what this evidence means for us. Simply put, I do my best to keep errors of fact off the letters page; when one does run, a correction is published. Saying “There is no sign humans have caused climate change” is not stating an opinion. It’s asserting a factual inaccuracy.’ I wonder when News Ltd editors will follow suit!!

    In my blog of 6 November I drew attention to the study by the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at UTS. It said that ‘Nearly all the sceptic articles [on climate change] in this study were published by News Corp. … The Australian press is a world leader in the promotion of [climate change] scepticism. … Andrew Bolt is a major contributor to advancing climate scepticism in Australia.’

    Rupert Murdoch’s independent and courageous editors would tell us that they make their own decisions about coverage in their newspapers. But they have an uncanny ability to reflect what Rupert Murdoch says on climate change and almost every other subject.

    What principled and professional leadership we have on climate change – Rupert Murdoch, Tony Abbott and Maurice Newman!

  • Mid-east Journey to Nowhere. Guest blogger: John Tulloh

    I read Marcus Einfeld’s response to my blog regarding Israeli settlements posted on October 16 with both interest and incredulity. It seems that he has grasped my piece as an opportunity to voice his own musings on the question of Israel/Palestinian relations.

    Mine was based on my own personal bewilderment why Israel on one hand says it wants peace, but on the other insists on aggravating the Palestinians by building settlements in disputed land when it has five times as much undisputed territory of its own. To a distant outsider, it doesn’t make sense.

    Mr Einfeld suggests I have come up with ‘instant judgments and simplistic solutions’. Excuse me? I have made no judgments let alone been so naive as to offer solutions. He goes on to claim that for me ‘the only or principal cause’ of the current problems is the question of settlements. I wrote it was ‘one reason’ (my italics).

    He then accuses me of ‘one-sidedness’. I do not understand this when I was merely laying out what were mostly indisputable facts about just one of the many factors in this endless conundrum. The question of settlements has been a recurring theme in news reports for years. An international journalist friend, having read my blog, wrote to me to say: ‘I would like to see you give (your) opinion’.

    Mr Einfeld seems to believe I was – or should have been – writing an overview of the entire Israel/Palestinian question because that was the thrust of his tortuous response. My interest was simply the question of settlements.

    He views it all through rose-tinted glasses, possibly based on his own involvement there in the 80s and 90s when there was a real chance of a deal. Indeed I recall assigning ABC coverage of his much-lauded aid visits to help the Palestinians. He says the overwhelming majority of Israelis want a peace treaty which would involve the ‘evacuation of…the settlements’. In such a case, ‘most of the settlements would be no more than a passing phase of history…’ That may have been an idealism in his late 20th century world when there were far fewer settlements, but the reality in the 21st century is different. After all, why would so many settlers today – 350,000 at the latest count – invest their long-term future in the West Bank if they seriously thought they would be forced to move elsewhere and lose most of their money in return for a two-state settlement? Again, it doesn’t make sense.

    John Lyons in the Weekend Australian of November 2-3 has an article, quoting a Palestinian official, which says 15,000 Palestinians in Jerusalem will be left homeless because their apartment blocks are to be demolished by order of the Jerusalem Council. Meanwhile, the newspaper Haaretz reported that ‘Israel was about to advance construction plans for 5000 new housing units in Jewish settlements’. These are hardly the actions to enhance the prospects of a peace deal which Mr Einfeld says the overwhelming majority of Israelis want.

    In fact, the same article also says: ‘Reports in the Israeli and Palestinian media suggest the talks are collapsing. Both sides are facing strong internal opposition. On the Israeli side, right-wing elements in the Knesset, led by the Minister of the Economy, Naftali Bennett, have made clear their opposition to any Palestinian state’.

    Two other statements in Mr Einfeld’s response require an explanation:

    What was Netanyahu’s ‘shameless role in Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination’? This is a rather extreme accusation.

    Also, what does he mean by ‘They (Palestinian leaders) know that the so-called “right of return” of Palestinians to Israeli coastal areas is a hoax and a cruel play on words used to save Holocaust survivors, with no chance of fulfilment’? I do not understand what he is trying to say.

    I am surprised that a man who has a distinguished reputation as a jurist could be so loose with his claims and statements. I hope you can find room on your blog to note the above

     

     

  • Yes we can – zero carbon emissions within 10 years in Australia. Guest blogger: Ann Long

    On Wednesday 6th November Kiama’s Ss Peter and Paul Social Justice Group, together with Transition Towns Kiama, hosted a presentation by Gillian King from Beyond Zero Emissions, which explained a fully costed blue-print for Australia’s transition to 100% renewable energy.

    Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE), a not-for-profit research and education organisation, together with the University of Melbourne’s Energy Research Institute, developed the Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan. 

    The Plan was launched in 2010 and was fully costed, at $8.00 per household per week, with implementation over 10 years. The plan details the commercially available renewable energy technology plus the infrastructure that would be needed to replace all fossil fuel generated electricity in Australia within 10 years.  The plan depends on 3 components: – 12 Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Stations, Wind Turbine sources and improved infrastructure using High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) to transport current over long distances.

    With the publication of the most recent Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concern about our carbon emissions has increased and action is urgent.

    The latest policy report from the World Wildlife Fund – Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, defines Australia’s “carbon budget”.  WWF – Australia commissioned “Ecofys” to assess what would be a reasonable and credible contribution from Australia towards the international goal of limiting global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius. Expressed as a “carbon budget” Australia has “spent” two thirds of its carbon emission allocation for the period 2013 to 2100.  With business as usual Australia will have spent the lot within a decade.

    Australia’s existing unconditional goal of reducing emissions by 5% below 2000 levels by 2020 falls far short of a credible contribution.  Contrary to often stated opinion that “Australia must not do anything until big polluting countries move” China, the world’s largest emitter, and Australia’s largest trading partner, has agreed to reduce the emissions intensity of its economy by 40-45% by 2020.  Other countries, Japan, South Korea and the UK have all committed to emission reduction targets of 25% or more below 2000 levels by 2020.  Germany has set a target of 45% reduction in emissions below 1990 levels by 2020 and 95% by 2050.  Germany is not famous for its long bouts of solar exposure!  The Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan provides a way forward for Australia to reduce its carbon emissions by at least 25% by 2020.  The Plan also details job provision, essential as our trading partners reduce their demand for and importation of fossil fuels.

    Australia has a natural advantage in sources of renewable energy and can position itself as a global renewable energy power for future prosperity, at the same time ensuring national energy security.  Abundant solar energy falling on Australia’s centre could prove to be Australia’s greatest resource.

    Once again nuclear power is being raised.  It is not renewable, more expensive, and would take longer to implement than the proposed The Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan

    There is increasing anxiety within the local community about Coal Seam Gas Extraction (CSG).  The 100% renewable energy plan provides a constructive way forward for the community to support alternative policies, avoiding CSG.

    The plan is clear, affordable and doable.  It needs commitment from our policy makers with community backing.

    The Kiama Social Justice Group and Transition Towns’ goal was to provide accurate information for the community and a knowledge base for the community to argue the case with the policy makers for a carbon emission free Australia.

    The Kiama meeting was advertised widely – in local newspapers, through ecumenical groups, Landcare groups, the small farms network and in the local businesses of Kiama, Gerringong and Berry.  The Federal MP Ann Sudmalis, and the state MP Gareth Ward were invited but were unable to attend.  The Mayor of Kiama was away and 2 Kiama Councillors did attend.

    Agnotology is the study of the cultural production of ignorance and doubt.  The outcomes of deliberate cultivation of ignorance and doubt are alive and well in our community.  “The Merchants of Doubt” (Oreskes and Conway) details the powerful vested interests at work in attempting to ensure that little action is taken about climate change.  They have described how some of the same organisations and people, who were part of the tobacco companies’ campaign, are around again in this campaign of creating doubt about the science of climate change.  The Illawarra is home to coal mining and the steel works, so change is threatening to both companies and employees.

    Still, 72 people turned up to the meeting.  The group was surprising for its enthusiasm and engagement.  The formal presentation was followed by another hour of questions and discussion and finally a short summary of some local power generation initiatives.

    There was lamentation that there were few “young” persons present and a general despair about what to do next.  Many in the group will turn out for CLIMATE CATCH UP on 17th November.

    There seems to still be reluctance for some to write or visit their local state and federal representatives.

    Is the next move a series of deputations?

     

     

     

  • When “… language itself becomes a weapon” Guest blogger: Professor Ian Webster.

    When “..language itself becomes a weapon.”[1]

    “I know they’re rorting the system; I’ve seen it in the source countries; and I’ve seen it in my own electorate.” It was a party stopper from a Member of Parliament speaking informally with a group attending a meeting about preventing suicide.

    The two words “refugee” and “asylum seeker” provoke private and public dissonance. The criminalisation, the “otherness”, in the way we speak about refugees and asylum seekers stands in stark contrast to our attempts to prevent discrimination against ‘others’ in Australia – people with disabilities, those with mental disorders, suicides and attempted suicides, and others outside the mainstream, and their families. Governments legislate to prevent discrimination and they aim to reduce the stigma of mental illness.

    But refugees and asylum seekers are another matter; they’re fair game. The contrast in these public stances – one of kindness and the other of rejection could not be more extreme.

    To suffer is to be harmed or to fear harm. The health and social systems are expected to assess a person’s risks and harms and to respond to their needs; actions endorsed overwhelmingly by society. Refugees and asylum seekers fear harm and seek protection.

    In the emergency departments of our public hospitals, in our public health services and at the front-line of primary care, treatment is provided according to a person’s needs without moral judgement. It is expected. It is a proud tradition which can’t be reconciled with the way Australia responds to the suffering of those who seek sanctuary.

    Imagine arriving at an emergency department with distressing chest pain and having to demonstrate that you were in genuine need of help, being sent elsewhere to check your credentials and to wait.

    It is an irreconcilable paradox. We expect humane and moral responses from human services and our professions, but we adopt an inhumane and immoral stance to the frightened people who arrive from distant lands on our shores.

    The misguided focus on criminalisation, mandatory detention and the tricks of excising parts of Australia to circumvent our international obligations are a subterfuge for long-term strategies.

    The language and rhetoric of the ‘war on drugs’ has become the driving idiom of the ‘war on people smugglers’.

    The former Secretary of the Departments of Defence and Primary Industries and Energy, Paul Barratt, said on Radio National’s Outsiders on 21st July, “It is a failure to reframe the political discussion, to look more broadly at the refugee issue. It is the same as we have seen in the failed war on drugs – instead of dealing with that as a social and medical problem we focus on the people who are smuggling illicit drugs and say that this is a criminal …a game politicians of both parties are assiduously trying to focus on. The problem is that there are people in desperate need who need to be resettled and there are millions of them around the world.”

    The same point was made in 1959 by William S Burroughs in the Naked Lunch, “If you want to alter or annihilate a pyramid of numbers in a serial relation, you alter or remove the bottom number. If we wish to annihilate the junk pyramid, we must start at the bottom of the pyramid: the addict in the street, and stop tilting quixotically for the higher-ups so-called, all of whom are immediately replaceable. The addict in the street who must have junk to live is the one irreplaceable factor in the junk equation. When there are no more addicts to buy junk there will be no junk traffic. As long as junk need exists, someone will service at.”

    Fiddling with the idea of criminality and imprisoning people smugglers is doomed to failure. Just as the war on ‘drug smugglers’ has failed because it does not deal with the people problems which drive the demand for substances.

    It is an unchallengeable fact that problems of population have to be dealt with at source, at the root causes. In public health it is the fence at the top of cliff compared with the ambulance at the bottom

    Put simply, the problem of refugees and asylum seekers is not the making of people smugglers but of the oppression and violence against already marginalised people in their countries of origin.

    As John Menadue and others have argued, Australia should engage with countries in our region to establish pathways which have predictable outcomes and protection rather than  policies which will escalate even more desperate attempts for asylum.

     

    Professor Ian Webster, Physician and Emeritus Professor Public Health and Community Medicine, University of NSW.

     

     


    [1] Anderson Scott, Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East, Doubleday, Random House, New York, 2013, p xi.

  • The Catholic Church is in for a shake-up. Guest blogger: Michael Kelly SJ

    Pope Francis has pressed all the hot buttons that get Catholic and other tongues wagging- a pastoral response to divorced and remarried Catholics, homosexuality, the place of women in the Church, the excessively centralized nature of management in the Church, liturgical adaptation to local pastoral circumstances and wealth and triumphalism as the all too frequent public face of the Church to the world.

    Pope Francis has also commenced a process for addressing at least one of them by convening an Extraordinary Synod of Bishops in 2014 on how to address what is probably the issue that sees most adults part company with the Catholic community in the Western world:- divorce and remarriage.

    Considering themselves to be unacceptable to the Church because they have failed in what is the biggest risk they can take in their lives, the divorced and remarried often see the Church’s attitude as one that punishes the victims of the failure

    But the convening of this extraordinary synod is only the tip of an iceberg that Pope Francis has indicated he wants addressed. What the review by the Council of Cardinals he has appointed want him to accomplish is now clear: reform of the Vatican and the creation of a pattern of Church governance that is both decentralized and at the same time participatory.

    The Vatican Curia is already feeling the pressure.  To witness the spectacle of the leader of the Vatican’s doctrinal commission attempting to close down discussions actually begun by the present Pope is remarkable. It would appear that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has moved from being a service to the unity of the Church’s belief to one of some sort of “loyal opposition” in the Vatican. This is occurring in respect of discussions the Pope himself started.

    The current Pope’s ambitions to open up discussion in the Church go some way to addressing the comments made last October by one of three surviving theological advisors at Vatican II, These comments were made on the 50th anniversary of its opening in 1962. Fr Ladislas Orsy, together with Pope Benedict and the controversial Swiss theologian Hans Kung, are the three remaining “periti” from Vatican II who attended its sessions as theological supports to bishops from different dioceses.

    Orsy was interviewed on the subject of what remains to be done after Vatican II .The first thing he nominated was the need to remedy Vatican II’s biggest shortcoming. He said that Vatican II was long on excellent ideas but was short on frameworks and structures for implementing its excellent ideas. And what frameworks and structures it did create were quickly dismantled or neutralized by the Vatican Curia.

    This has been pointed out in reports after the first meeting of the Council of Cardinals advising Pope Francis on reform of the Vatican and its processes, The Council of Cardinals has pointed out that the Synod of Bishops that meets every three years is a fig leaf of consultation where speeches are choreographed by the Vatican The Curia has then been left to write up what was “agreed” by the participating bishops, much to the disbelief of the Bishops when the document actually appeared.

    Under the new Pope’s reforms, head office may be updated in line with the Vatican II Council that concluded half a century ago.

    But the challenge that lies ahead in addressing the other hot button topics won’t be resolved as speedily. There are inherent problems for a Church still anchored in the processes of a monarchical and aristocratic age for its governance.

    To their credit, Vatican offices have already begun consultation with high level lay organizations concerned with the role of women in the Church and suggestions about including women in significant and decisive roles in the administration of the Vatican are advancing. This will allow the Vatican to catch up with what is common practice in many parts of the Church where women lead many of its major services in health, welfare and education.

    But when it comes to addressing and resolving contentious issues, the structures for their consideration in a fair and informed way simply don’t exist. The sad truth is that the Catholic Church’s governance has so isolated itself from the world that it has simply missed many of the main developments in what can be called “best practice” in leadership and governance.

    Synods of Bishops won’t fix that. They are made up exclusively of bishops who are all by and large elderly men. That is hardly a helpful way to tap the wisdom of the Church or hear all the voices that need to be heard for the wide array of issues faced in the Church.

    What alternatives exist? It took the peoples of Europe, North and South America hundreds of years to develop structures and process of participatory government that work and that provide a release valve for tensions that can plunge populations into turmoil. Countries and societies in many parts of Africa and Asia are only slowly learning what they need to know for their peoples to survive and thrive as nations and communities.

    In the Church, the models of parliamentary democracy or representative government now common in many parts of the world do not fit with the complexity and uniqueness of the sort of community the Church is. An institution of divine origin cannot be reduced to having the democratic mean decide its destiny. It would be crass and a formula for disaster to assume that democracy as such is all the Church needs.

    All the same, the Church is the people of God and Pope Francis has said for many years before he became pope that the sense of faith of the people is the sure rock of authentic belief. If that is to be accepted, something other than top-down direction, discipline and censure of miscreants who question the wisdom declared by authority will have to be found.

    Whatever happens, one thing is clear with this Pontificate – the Church is in for a shakeup. And how it happens and what results is as much in the hands of the Holy Spirit as anyone’s.

     

     

  • Climate change as portrayed in ten major Australian newspapers. John Menadue

    Last week the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at the University of Technology, Sydney released a report on the above subject. It highlighted, amongst other things the unprofessional performance and influence of News Ltd publications in shaping the public debate in favour of the sceptics of climate change.

    This is despite the overwhelming consensus by eminent world scientists as expressed particularly in the UN’s 5th  Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change report just released, The panel said that it was increasingly confident that climate change was occurring and that it was now 95% confident that this was due to human activity.

    The campaign by News Ltd publications stands oddly with what Rupert Murdoch boasted to the Lowy Institute last week “that you can’t have free democracy if you don’t have a free media that can provide vital and independent information to the people and that we believe in providing the public with access to quality content”

    Some would say that he is “talking through his hat”. But see the following extracts from the ACIJ report and make up your own mind about “quality content” The full report can be found on the website of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism, University of Technology, Sydney.

    The findings of this report should be of concern to all those who accept the findings of climate scientists. …this study establishes that a large number of Australians received very little information through their mainstream print/online media of any kind about the findings of climate scientists over the sample period. There was an overall decline in coverage between 2011 and 2012. The West Australian and Northern Territory newspapers carried particularly low levels of coverage. Levels of coverage were higher in Fairfax publications The Age and Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian …

    The most significant finding is that nearly a third of all articles referencing climate science published by ten Australian newspapers during three months in 2011 and 2012 did not accept the consensus scientific evidence that human beings are the main contributors to global warming. Given the extremely strong consensus about this evidence, this finding presents a major challenge for media accountability in Australia. This conclusion fits with recent research by the Reuters Institute for Journalism which showed that in a six country comparison Australia had both the most articles in absolute terms and the highest percentage of articles with sceptic sources in them, ahead of the United States, the United Kingdom, France. The other two countries Norway and India had almost no sceptic sources in their media coverage.

    The high levels of scepticism in Australia in part reflect our status as the country with the most concentrated newspaper industry in the developed world. News Corp controls 65% of daily and national newspaper circulation. In the state capitals of Adelaide, Brisbane, Darwin and Hobart, it controls the only newspaper. While the influence of newspapers is waning, online versions of the same publications publish content similar to the print versions, although presented differently. This content continues to play a strong role is setting the news agenda for broadcast media.

    Nearly all of the sceptic articles in this study were published by News Corp. So it seems safe to argue that News Corps’ dominance is a major reason why the Australian press is a world leader in the promotion of scepticism.

    According to this study, Andrew Bolt, who recommends the sacking of journalists who consistently report the consensus position, is a major contributor to advancing climate scepticism in Australia. His individual role and that of other sceptic columnists should not distract from the decisions of corporate managers and editors who hire and heavily promote these columnists. While some of these editors claim to accept the consensus position they accord him the power to promote scathing critiques of climate scientists and other media that accept the consensus position. Scepticism is not only the product of opinion writers, however: as this study shows news selection, editing and reporting practices and the use of sources also embed sceptical positions.

    While media ownership plays an important role, not all News Corp publications are equal in their promotion of climate science scepticism. During the period of this study, Hobart’s The Mercury and Brisbane’s The Courier Mail did not promote scepticism. Since Brisbane editorial director David Fagan left News Corp in June 2013, The Courier Mail has begun to publish Andrew Bolt’s columns including a number of sceptic ones about climate change.

    The sample periods of part one and two of this research overlap but are not the same. This means that a synchronised comparative analysis of the coverage of carbon policy and of climate science cannot be made. It is clear, however, that news crop coverage of climate science is consistent with the dominant editorial stance of its publications towards political policy and action on climate change.

    … Fairfax media publications The Age and SMH were fairly even-handed or ‘balanced’ in their coverage of the Gillard government’s carbon policy with 57% positive articles outweighing 43% negative articles. As this study shows the Fairfax media reports climate science from the perspective of the consensus position. Their journalistic approach reflects the weight of scientific opinion as it would normally apply to scientific subjects.

    News Corp on the other hand was very negative towards the policy. Negative articles (82%) across News Ltd publications far outweighed positive (18%) article. This indicated a very strong stance against the carbon policy adopted by the government. The News Corp publications that were the most negative towards the policy also reflect the highest levels of scepticism. Their approach to climate science appears to reflect their political position in relation to calls for government intervention to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

    Some blame scientists for their failures to communicate their findings in accessible ways. But this can, at best, be only part of the reason why climate science is covered so poorly. Journalism is about finding the story, not expecting it always to be packaged in advance.

    This is not to suggest that a serious lack of resources is not interfering in the capacity of journalists to report adequately on climate change. The failure of old paper-based models of print journalism, the concentration of the print media in the hands of two main companies which share resources and reporters across mastheads, and the economic and political goals of the owners of corporate media are all relevant. These factors contribute to a situation in which science news-breaking stories are used to fill gaps as they arise, but in which longer term follow-up of issues is less likely. In this under-resourced situation, journalists are also more likely to edit a press release or a wire story generated elsewhere than to generate the news story themselves.

    There were plenty of examples in our study of strong, high quality climate science journalism in 2011 and 2012.

    But none of these worthwhile approaches solve one of the most worrying conclusions of this research, which is that an information gulf between different audiences and regions is widening in Australia. The resolution of that problem will have to address the concentration of media ownership in this country, a concentration that is largely responsible for the active production of ignorance and confusion on one of the most important issues confronting Australia.

    With  Rupert Murdoch  abusing the power that goes with the concentration of newspaper ownership in Australia it is not surprising ,according to Essential Research that 36% of Australians and 51% of Liberal/National voters do not believe that global warming is occurring and that it is due to human activity.

    We are witnessing an abuse of media power on an issue vital to Australia’s and the world’s future. It could hardly be more serious.

     

  • Are current maritime asylum seeker policies working? Guest blogger: Peter Hughes

    So what if current maritime asylum seeker policies are working? I mean that question in the narrow sense of reducing irregular maritime arrivals to a trickle.

    The arrival figure of some 339 persons for October 2013 announced by the government represents only 16 per cent of October 2012 arrivals.

    Although it is only the figure for a single month, this is a significant change. If arrivals were to level out at this rate, it would represent 4068 arrivals per year, compared to some 25,000 arrivals in 2012 – 13.

    It is quite possible that the announcement of long-term resettlement in Papua New Guinea and Nauru (as supposed to temporary stay in those countries pending departure for an unspecified destination – probably Australia) has been decisive in changing the decision to travel on the part of those asylum seekers who have not yet paid their people smuggler. Tighter visa procedures on the part of Indonesia might also be a factor. The overlay of stern language by the incoming Coalition government no doubt adds to the general atmosphere of a restrictive approach. We do not know whether the Australian Government has actually turned any boats around.

    However, even on the most optimistic scenarios of reductions in numbers, we are not out of the woods. Australia would still find itself with a huge legacy of people to deal with.

    There are some 2000 asylum seekers in PNG and Nauru. Their cases have to be decided and their futures determined. Those found to be refugees and given residence in Papua New Guinea or Nauru will agitate to come to Australia. Some non-refugees will return home voluntarily. It will not be easy to repatriate, against their will, those found not to be refugees to countries such as Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan because of lack of cooperation of those governments.

    There are some 33,000 maritime asylum seekers in Australia in the community on bridging visas or in detention, in various stages of processing. It will take years to finally decide their cases, even under foreshadowed truncated procedures. The grant of temporary stay and limited benefits to refugees will be controversial and legally contested. Achieving return to country of origin of those found not to be refugees will be even more difficult than for those in PNG and Nauru.

    There remains considerable anguish for the government, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and the asylum seekers themselves as these issues are worked through.

    Even if the current set of policies achieve the result of slowing arrivals to a trickle, the solution based on PNG and Nauru (which are simply not involved in the flow of maritime arrivals to Australia) and threats of turnarounds is certainly not the optimum way of managing the flow of asylum seekers.

    Australia will no doubt face future outflows of asylum seekers from within the region and beyond .A solely deterrent-based approach in partnership with small countries that may not wish to be caught up in our problems again is not a sustainable long-term approach.

    It is a pity that another way was not found for governments and UNHCR to take active responsibility for the protection needs of asylum seekers in the region, while cutting people smugglers out of the picture.

    One could imagine that it might have been a lot better had Australia managed to work with one or more of the countries through which people actually transit to work out an arrangement to return them there and have their future determined as part of established UNHCR processes in that country. It would have been good if those asylum seekers had the opportunity to live and work in those communities pending having their futures determined. It would have been even better if such arrangements could have been reached with the cooperation and blessing of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

    But of course, we did have such an arrangement. It was the Arrangement on Transfer and Resettlement with Malaysia negotiated by the previous government in 2011, before boat arrivals went to unprecedented levels. Australia rejected it. The High Court, with a surprise interpretation of the relevant parts of the Migration Act 1958, decided that the Minister did not have the legal power to make transfers to Malaysia. An odd alliance between refugee advocates, the Greens and the then Coalition Opposition ensured that the simple legislative arrangements needed to make it viable at that time could not happen. It was a truly lost opportunity for a long-term sustainable approach.

    The bottom line is that, even if the current downtrend remains, Australia has somehow ended up with a “one-off fix” based on fairly hard deterrent strategies. It may not be usable or sustainable in the future and certainly does not build any long-term partnership with the major states in the region in relation to asylum and protection issues.

    Of course, if the October arrivals figure turns out not to be the start of a further downtrend and arrival numbers go up again, existing challenges will be exacerbated and even harsher measures will come on to the table.

    Peter Hughes was formerly Deputy Secretary, Department of Immigration and Citizenship. 

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • In Bob we Trust. Guest blogger Chris Geraghty

    In Bob We Trust begins with Father Bob’s potted version of the history of the Roman Catholic Church. Five minutes of fun and irreverent theology. Over two thousand years passing in the blink of an eye.  Then Father Bob, assisted by his sinister chess opponent, John Safron in the guise of the Devil, gets down to more serious business – an old priest’s herculean struggle with an ecclesiastical dragon in Melbourne – the iron institution led by Archbishop Denis Hart and his mob. The story is a hoot.

    The Father Bob in whom we trust is a bit mad – but so are John Safron and Denis Hart. In fact most of the characters in the film, with the exception of a few faithful canine companions, are at least a little off the planet. But unlike Hart, who is endowed with the shape and gravitas of a Renaissance prelate, Bob is also a little touched in a special way – touched by the Spirit of God, touched by the message of the Jesus Gospel, with compassion for the poor, the smelly, the homeless, the unwashed and underprivileged. Father Bob had been running the parish of South Melbourne for nearly forty years, opening the church doors every morning, closing them at night, greeting all comers, welcoming the dwarfs, feeding the hungry, but the Archdiocese uptown wanted to get rid of him, the sooner the better, hopefully without any fuss. An embarrassment. A trouble-maker. He was making them look ridiculous. So he was “invited to retire” despite the fact that he was in rude health and there was a serious pastoral crisis caused by a dramatic fall-away of vocations to the priesthood. Pressure was applied. Questions were asked of Father Bob at the Cathedral touching the very heart of the Gospel message. The book-keepers suspected maladministration. Father Bob’s pastoral shadow, his black poodle, was probably being fed off the parish account. Wasting church funds. The Cathedral’s Captain Queeg was on the trail of a clerical mutineer.

    This movie is funny, sometimes very funny, so you’ll need to take your laughing gear along to the cinema with you. It is also challenging, even confronting, especially for any practising Catholic. It captures the conflict at the heart of modern Christian institutions – the struggle between property and power, money and influence, pomp and circumstance on the one hand, and a glorious message of service, inclusion and love, especially to the poor and downtrodden. But my overall reaction was one of profound sadness. How blind and stupid those at the controls can be!

    Father Bob was obviously a good man doing a good job for his Church in the parish of South Melbourne. The people loved him. His life and mission were transparently, obviously allied to the Gospel and to Jesus. He was a Melbourne, perhaps even a national, identity in a way Archbishop Hart was not, and could never be. He was a priest all Catholics could be proud of. He was the best of us. So why close him down? Why cut off his arms and legs, and take him out of circulation? It was silly, in anyone’s language – just stupid. He provided an opportunity to focus the community’s mind on the values of the Gospel and on the real work of the institution. At the very least, he could have continued his work as a parish priest emeritus, a consultant, gradually training, educating others, handing over to them, watching his work thrive. But no – a rare opportunity lost. Let the faceless ones work until they drop, but for heaven’s sake, let’s get rid of this one.

    Archbishop Hart’s mentor and powerbroker had done the same when he had arrived in Sydney, fresh and uninvited from Melbourne.

    Like a craggy, crazy prophet, Father Ted Kennedy had worked wonders in his parish. He had transformed his Redfern presbytery into a drop-in centre for Aboriginal people from the city, from the country areas of New South Wales and around Australia. Everyone was welcomed. He had lived and shared with his black brothers and sisters, baptized and buried them, welcomed those in trouble, visited them in prison, nursed their babies, put his arms around them and loved them. The parish looked unkempt but it was in truth a centre of excellence. It had huge potential to project the image of a different world to Sydneysiders at large. A constant reminder of what we could be, of our better selves. The Redfern community only needed someone with Christian eyes to see what they were doing, to encourage them, to give them space, to continue Father Ted’s work after a stroke had crushed him. But no. Another rare opportunity wasted. Captain Queeg’s work is never complete. George Pell could have been the toast of the town, a champion of the poor in tinsel city, a visionary, a new Dan Mannix-type for the aboriginal people of Sydney and Australia. Instead, the narrow-minded, ultra-conservative, anal retentive and culturally foreign Neo-Cats took over, with a mission to destroy all that Father Ted had done with thirty years of his life and more. A tragedy. An opportunity missed again, and the Church is suffering.

    When will they ever learn to trust the Spirit, to trust the people, to trust Father Bob?

    Of course, they are only institutional men, elected to office by the organization because they possess the qualities valued by the organization – obedience, loyalty, submission. Trained team players who will not rock the boat.

    But the good news is that the team has a new coach who wants to play the game in a different way. A new style. Playing on the front foot. More panache. More risks. Playing to win and even though they are rare, using our gifted players. Bob and Ted, living and working today, would be Pope Francis’s strikers playing till they drop, while Denis and George, playing at their present standard, should be on the bench or in the stands.

     

     

  • A back-flip on the carbon tax. John Menadue

    A number of my friends were impressed with the recent public debate between Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese. They told me that they had expressed an interest online to join or rejoin the ALP after many years absence. Without exception they now say that they will not pursue their membership enquiry until the parliamentary wing of the Labor Party decides to stick with the carbon tax. In short, they were all asking the same old question ‘what does Labor stand for?’

    At the last election the ALP promised that it would move quickly from the carbon tax to an emissions trading scheme. That was understandable and commendable. But if Labor cooperates in the repeal of the carbon tax, all that will remain in the public domain on climate change is Direct Action. This so-called carbon pollution policy is flimsy. It is really a pretext for a policy.

    The ALP should cling to the policy it presented at the last election, end the carbon tax but only if it is replaced by an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).

    It was not that the policy on the carbon tax was wrong. All the problems surrounding the carbon tax for the previous government were political – a broken promise, gross political exaggeration by Tony Abbott and a compliant Murdoch media.

    In my blog of 24 October “The Carbon Tax- policy and politics” I pointed out that the carbon tax is working to reduce carbon pollution and clearly the wild exaggerations of Tony Abbott have not come to pass. As Peter Martin in the SMH has put it, the carbon tax has become part of the furniture. We should leave it alone unless there is something better. And certainly Direct Action is not something better; it is far worse.

    At the same time we are hearing about the possibility of the ALP doing a back-flip on the carbon tax, the Fairfax media has surveyed 35 of Australia’s most eminent economists on the subject. Thirty out of the 35 favoured the carbon tax evolving into an ETS.

    BT Financial’s Chris Caton said that any economist who did not opt for an ETS should hand his degree back. The renowned Australian economist Justin Wolfers said that ‘Direct Action” would involve more economic disruption but have a lesser environmental payoff than a trading scheme under which big emitters have to pay for their emissions.’ Professor John Freebairn of the Melbourne University said ‘Placing a price on greenhouse gas emissions pollution, either by a tax or by an emissions trading scheme, is the least cost way to reduce pollution.’ Rob Henderson, the senior economist at NAB, said ‘If I had to make a choice between pricing carbon and having bureaucrats allocating permits, then I’m going to go for the market mechanism every time.’

    Until the business sector went politically partisan in the lead-up to the last election, numerous business leaders supported a carbon tax and/or an ETS. Marius Kloppers then the CEO of BHP Billiton, called for a ‘mosaic of initiatives’ to tackle global warming, including a combination of a carbon tax and a limited ETS. He was backed by the then Business Council of Australia President, Graham Bradley.

    In its 2011 submission to the Clean Energy Future legislation, Westpac said that it welcomed legislation ‘to introduce a price on carbon within a market framework’. AGL supported the introduction of a ‘least-cost market mechanism’. Grant King of Origin Energy was asked ‘are you in favour of having a carbon price or not?’ King responded ‘Well, the short answer to that question is yes’.

    At the same time that the ALP is thinking of doing a back-flip on the carbon tax, Tony Abbott made another sophisticated and intellectual contribution to the climate-change debate. He told the readers of the Washington Post that the carbon tax is ‘socialism masquerading as environmentalism’. But some of his conservative heroes are strong supporters of market means to reduce carbon pollution. Angela Merkel, probably the most prominent conservative leader in the world, believes that polluters should pay for the damage they create. She favours putting a price or tax on greenhouse gas pollution. Another favourite of Tony Abbott’s, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, has told us ‘The market is an effective way to [get control of global emissions]’.

    Those other key international institutions, the World Bank, the IMF and the OECD, have all endorsed putting a price on pollution.

    Where does Tony Abbott get his learning on climate change? Greg Hunt gets it from Wikipedia. Tony Abbott seems to get it from Lord Monkton and Cardinal George Pell. He must also rely heavily on his Kirribilli think tank-Miranda Devine, Piers Akerman, Gerard Henderson, Paul Kelly, Denis Shanahan, Janet Albrechtson and Andrew Bolt.

    Out of all this, let’s hope that the ALP doesn’t do another back-flip on the reduction of carbon pollution. It should hold to the carbon tax until a better option can be put in place – an ETS. If the carbon tax is repealed and we only have Direct Action in the field, we would not have a credible national policy to reduce carbon pollution.

    Will Labor abandon yet again its convictions on climate change!

     

  • A Click of the Fingers. John Menadue

    We badly need someone close to Tony Abbot to click their fingers and break him out of the hypnotic trance that he has been in for a long time. He has been hypnotised into campaigning mode and has yet to be released.

    Many had hoped that as Prime Minister, Tony Abbott would successfully make the transition from an aggressive critic to a more constructive, sober and positive prime minister. But he doesn’t seem able to help himself. He continues in attack mode.

    The Washington Post has just carried an interview with him. He describes his Labor predecessors as ‘wacko’ and ‘embarrassing’. He added for the Washington Post readers that the Labor Government had been a ‘circus’.

    What gouache behaviour. We don’t want our Prime Minister airing our domestic linen when he represents us overseas.

    Words can be bullets and one would have hoped that Tony Abbott’s grovelling apologies to two prime ministers and a president at the recent APEC meeting would have encouraged him to be more moderate in his language.

    Last week he dismissed the Executive Secretary of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana Figueres, as ‘talking through her hat’ on bushfires and climate change. Ms Figueres knows more about the science of climate change than Tony Abbott who dismissed the science a few years ago as ‘crap’. She politely and professionally explained that Tony Abbott had got it wrong. She was not talking through her hat.

    For the good of Australia it is desirable that our prime minister speaks temperately and respectfully in public debate. Will someone please try to help break him out of his aggressive and intemperate opposition mode?

    There is also media speculation that the Abbott Government in considering a judicial enquiry into the pink batts installations. Putting aside the responsibility of state governments to regulate such installations, it does portray the vindictiveness of the Abbott government. It should forget settling political scores and get on with governing for us all.

    After the loans crisis, the dismissal and the 1975 election many Liberal ministers urged Malcolm Fraser to hold a Royal Commission over the loans affair. Malcolm Fraser refused. He decided that governing and unifying the country was more important than carrying on an old political battle.

    Tony Abbott does not yet seem to understand that different behaviour is expected of a Prime Minister.

  • Mideast Road to Nowhere. Guest blogger Marcus Einfeld

    This blog by Marcus Einfeld is in response to the blog by John Tulloh of 16 October on the above subject.

    John Tulloh’s 40 year career in international news gathering should have taught him that jumping into Israeli-Palestinian issues with instant judgements and simplistic solutions is unwise and simply assists to continue the conflict. The concept, promoted in Tulloh’s piece posted on this blog on October 16, that the only or principal cause of the ongoing problems in this long dispute is Israeli settlements is at best naïve. More importantly it demonstrates a seriously imperfect knowledge of the facts and of the problems that have defied solution at the hands of the world’s best diplomats for almost 70 years, during most of which there were no settlements at all.

    Tulloh’s strange one-sidedness comfortably ignores the overwhelming majority desire in Israel for a peace treaty with the Palestinians based on the two state solution and the resultant evacuation of practically all the occupied territories including the settlements. It also conveniently fails to acknowledge the impossibility of negotiating with enemies holding the unashamed goal of Israeli destruction in preference to compromise and negotiation as equals. They seek, not the removal of the settlements, but the very removal of Israel itself.

    It was also rather blind of an experienced journalist to overlook that even a potential peace partner like Fatah is more worried about what will happen to its leadership at the hands of Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad if it reaches an accommodation with Israel than anything Israel might or might not do or where some of its people might live. The hateful militancy of these terrorist organizations manifests itself not merely in their regular random killing of innocent civilians but in their frequent and regular pledges to their people and the world never to negotiate or allow peace with Israel. Mind you, they are just as vicious with their own fellow countrymen and women who aspire to peace as well.

    To say the least, Prime Minister Netanyahu is and has always been much more a lucky opportunist than an inspiring leader and an enthusiastic peace maker, even more so than Prime Minister Sharon before him. Lucky because as in Australia a few weeks ago, recent election results in Israel owe more to the shenanigans of opposition parties than to Netanyahu’s personal popularity or acceptability to his constituents. Lucky because the terrorist organisations have given him no real choice but to take the populist if practical line of shoring up Israel’s defences waiting for the Arab parties to get their act together, which they never seem to show any signs of doing, and for the Muslim world to disavow terrorism and murder as mechanisms of progress. Lucky because the Israeli people have for some unknown reason apparently forgiven Netanyahu for his shameless role in the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

    I agree with Tulloh that the peace process has not been worth its name in desert sand, basically ever since the Rabin assassination but I am surprised that he does not seem to realise that if a genuine peace were to be in prospect, still more if it were to break out with all borders secure and people safe, most of the settlements would be no more than a passing phase of history, whatever some might shortsightedly try to argue.

    In the course of leading an Australian, World Bank and multinationally funded program, in the wake of the Oslo Agreements, to assist the Palestinians to build a legal system based on democratic justice and the rule of law in the 1980s and 90s, I met and spoke at length to virtually all the Palestinian Authority leaders and many others of their people. I have continued some of these contacts since. These leaders know full well that the settlements are in truth irrelevant because in substance they will largely go away in a peace treaty. They know that the so-called “right of return” of Palestinians to Israeli coastal areas is a hoax and a cruel play on words used to save Holocaust survivors, with no chance of fulfilment. They very well know that Israel could be, and in peace would be, a massive source of aid and support to a Palestinian State in almost every area of human and developmental activity, from music to irrigation and beyond.

    But their extremists have for decades vetoed all efforts to make peace, ensuring the election of the Netanyahus, Sharons and the religious extremists, and taking the pressure off them to protect their people by pursuing peace with vigour, instead preferring a form of protection by building and expanding wherever they want. Many of these activities have certainly not helped the so-called “peace process” but they merely demonstrate the supreme irony that as Palestinian attitudes have sent the Israelis lurching to the right, more in fear and exasperation than aggression, Israeli activities have sent the moderate but disunited Palestinian leaders into shutdown mode.

    Australians can do little to assist these parties to reach a compromise settlement of the issues which divide them. Rather than criticise one party alone, it would, in my view, be more helpful if those who wish to contribute to the public debate were to lend their talents to actions designed to show Palestinians what democratic statehood really means by contributing to the viability and peacefulness of a future Palestinian state and to challenge the Israelis to search for common ground based on mutual respect, understanding and constructive co-operation.

     

     

     

  • Honest Joe Hockey. John Menadue

    At the G20 Summit in Washington a week ago Joe Hockey said ‘People find it refreshing to hear that Aussie honesty’. It is nice to think that other people see us that way but I wonder what Treasurers at the G20 would make of it if they had been listening to what Joe Hockey had been saying about the Australian economy over the last six years.

    For years Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott have been warning us in quite shrill terms about our deficit and debts. We faced a budget ‘emergency’. It turned out to be phoney. Together with Tony Abbott, one could be excused for believing that the Australian economy was a smoking ruin.

    We were told for a long time that the Coalition would provide a budget surplus in year one and get the deficit down from day one. Then as the election rolled on the retreat began and the Coalition finished its election campaign by telling us that the Coalition Government would ‘deliver a surplus as soon as we can’.

    Actions speak louder than words  but the windy words continue.  If there was a real emergency we would be well on the way to a mini budget. We would have been told that nothing else would save the day. We can now see that the rhetoric of the Coalition has been reckless, inflammatory and fraudulent. There is a lot of huffing and puffing but no real action. Is that Aussie honesty?

    Unfortunately it seems that the Reserve Bank of Australia has now been drawn in to the political games of the Coalition. Joe Hockey has agreed to an $8.8 billion taxpayer capital injection into the bank. That is amazing. It helps serve Joe Hockey’s political agenda in highlighting a possible emergency. It is also an old trick in politics as in business to load as many problems as possible onto the previous regime. Saul Eslake has described it as “a ridiculous piece of theatre”  According to both  former Labor Treasurers, Wayne Swann and Chris Bowen the Reserve Bank never approached the Labor Government for such a capital injection.  Wayne Swann said yesterday that if he had been approached he would have agreed. But he was not approached. Furthermore on 10th April this year Treasury advised  the Treasurer against  boosting the Reserve Bank’s reserve fund. Very strange! Why is it happening now? And why does it have to be in one hit? Surely it could have been over two to three years. But by providing the injection in one hit this year it can all be attributed to the failures of the previous government. This looks a dodgy exercise? It is claimed that the Reserve was reluctant to pay large dividends to the government and so deplete its funds. But it is not at all surprising for the government to maximize dividends from the Reserve Bank. Governments do it all the time with statutory authorities.

    Some facts keep getting in the way of Joe Hockey’s bluster.

    • Australia has one of the lowest levels of government debt to GDP in the world. The major money manager, Blackrock, measures sovereign risk. It reports that Australia is amongst the ten lowest sovereign risk countries in the world along with Norway, Singapore, Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Canada and New Zealand.
    • The Australian Parliamentary Library has just released a report comparing the performance of Australian governments since the 1980s. The Commonwealth net debt fell from 5.6% of GDP under Howard to 2.4% under Rudd/Gillard Governments.
    • The IMF has told us that most of our structural deficit problem in Australia can be traced to the profligate policies of the Howard/Costello period- lowering the personal tax scales as the mining tax boom filled the tax coffers
    • Credit agencies continue to issue triple AAA credit ratings for Australian Government finance.
    • In 2012-13, we had the largest year to year fall in the Commonwealth budget deficit ever recorded. Government spending fell a record 3.2% in real terms.

    With the help of the China boom, The Rudd/Gillard Governments managed one of the best performing economies in the world, even through the Global Financial Crisis. But a failure of the Rudd/Gillard Governments was that they did not take up seriously the taxation review by Treasury – the Henry Review. This review carried a large number of recommendations to make our tax system more sustainable, more efficient, more equitable and simpler.

    Will Joe Hockey’s Commission of Audit really deliver on government finances? I hope it will succeed and that the Coalition will not dodge real tax reform as the Rudd/Gillard Governments did. It is particularly important that the Commission does not fall for the siren voices of big business. .

    It is concerning however that the Chair of the Commission of Audit, Mr Tony Shepherd, is also the Chair of the Business Council of Australia. The BCA is one of the most highly influential special interest groups in the country. It wants to roll back the Fair Work Act, amongst many other things, not to ensure that the market works better but to advantage capital. The Head of the Commission of Audit Secretariat is Peter Crone from the BCA. Just imagine if a Labor Government had appointed the President and Secretary of the ACTU to head a review of government finances.   The Murdoch media would have had a fit.

    There is no doubt that Joe Hockey and Tony Abbott succeeded in persuading the Australian electorate that the economy was in a mess and that the debt and deficit was out of control. None of it was true. My concern is that they are now reverting to their political ways that were so successful over the last six years.

    Tony Abbott and his colleagues are addicted to criticism and attack, attack and more attack. Can they transition to responsible and inclusive leaders concerned about good policy rather than aggressive politics and photo opportunities? We have not seen it yet from Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey, Scott Morrison and Greg Hunt. Some honesty would be a good start.

     

  • The Carbon Tax – Policy and Politics. John Menadue

    There are good policy and political reasons why the ALP should oppose the repeal of the carbon tax.

    The carbon tax is designed to reduce carbon pollution. That fact is continually ignored by those who talk wildly about the tax rather than what it is designed to do. In any event, the tax is working and is not producing the ‘almost unimaginable’ destruction that Tony Abbott predicted. Gladstone has not been closed down and Whyalla has not been wiped off the map. The tax had a relatively small impact on prices when it was introduced but it is now accepted as very much part of our everyday life.

    The September CPI figures released yesterday show an overall increase in prices of 1.2% for the September quarter and 2.2% for the year. It was all relatively benign. Water and sewerage costs rose by 9.9% in the quarter, fuel by 7.5%, council rates and charges by 7.9%, international holidays by 6.1% and gas prices by 4.8%. Electricity costs trailed near the back of the field for increases at 4.4%. That doesn’t sound like ‘almost unimaginable” destruction and chaos. Furthermore, even the relatively small increases in electricity charges have been due, not to the carbon tax, but much more to the ‘gold plating’ of poles and wires by the electricity utilities.

    As Peter Martin in the SMH has pointed out, the Coalition has maintained that repeal of the carbon tax would save households $550 a year. This Coalition estimate is based on the scaling up of Treasury estimates for increases in prices due to the tax. Insofar as the increase in prices will be much less than expected, the savings to households will also be less.

    It is also clear that the carbon tax is achieving what it set out to do – curbing electricity and gas consumption. Household spending on electricity and gas is now down 3%.

    The carbon tax is designed to change the pattern of investments. A move to renewable energy and  less polluting power generation  depends on the carbon tax to discourage polluting industries..It is highly unlikely that the Government will be able to achieve the Renewable Energy Target of 41,000GwH by 2020 without the carbon tax.

    So leaving the tax in place would be good policy. It is causing minimal problems despite Tony Abbott’s extravagance. Furthermore the unravelling of the carbon tax would be onerous for business which has written the tax into its energy supply contracts. It is also possible that in the repeal of the tax, the Government might have to pay $4 billion in assistance to industry with the wind back of the free permits.

    On the political front there is a clear lesson that chopping and changing on carbon reduction schemes can be fatal for political leaders. Malcolm Turnbull attempted to hold the Coalition to putting a price on carbon. He failed. And Tony Abbott became the leader because Joe Hockey, the Liberal Party’s first choice to replace Malcolm Turnbull, refused to abandon his support for a carbon price.

    Then the Greens sided with the Coalition to defeat the Rudd Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme in the Senate. If the Greens had supported this legislation, Australia would be well on the way to sensible carbon reduction policies and programs. It would have been “all over red rover.” Instead, the sanctimonious Greens helped provoke a divisive and destructive debate on carbon which has been at the expense of good policy. The Greens have a lot to answer for on this issue as well as for their “policy purity” on asylum seekers.

    With the failure of Rudd’s CPRS, and the failure of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, Kevin Rudd lost his way and his confidence. He was dumped.

    Then in February 2011, and in order to lock in the Greens to her minority government, Julia Gillard announced that she would put a price on carbon. She never politically  recovered, not that the policy was wrong but she had clearly gone back on a promise and did not effectively explain why.

    My sense is that Labor supporters would be appalled if Bill Shorten retreated now on the ALP policy to retain the carbon tax and then move to an emissions trading scheme. There has been too much chopping and changing. Surely he sees the price that both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard paid for walking away from well established and well considered policies.

    Global warming is real and a market-based mechanism is superior to the inept ‘direct action’ policy which will be introduced by the Coalition. To achieve a 5% reduction in carbon pollution, it will cost far more than the carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme. Direct action is a confected and inefficient program designed to pretend that the Coalition is serious about global warming. It is very hard to understand how the Liberal Party which says it believes in markets could propose such a non-market scheme. It has much more to do with politics than good policy. The Coalition would serve Australia better if it spent a proportion of the ‘direct action’ funds to buy carbon credits from developing countries. Carbon pollution is a global problem. It has no respect for national boundaries.

    With an early summer in parts of eastern Australia, we are seeing the extreme weather and the bushfires which we have been warned about as a direct consequence of global warming. The need for us to seriously address global warming is with us every day. Scientific reports, one after another, warn us of the consequences of global warming unless we all take action to reduce carbon pollution.

    But what about the ‘mandate’ which Tony Abbott claims for the abolition of the carbon tax? What the election confirmed was the right of the Coalition to form a government. It was not a referendum on a whole clutch of policies.  On September 7, we had a general election. We did not have a referendum on the carbon tax or a double dissolution election on the carbon tax.

    Let’s try and hold to the carbon tax and then move to an emissions trading scheme. That would be the best policy.  I suggest it would also be good politics for the ALP, that despite all of its political mistakes, does take more seriously than the Coalition, the threat of global warming .Its supporters would feel let down if Bill Shorten turned tail on climate change.

     

  • Japan and the denial over comfort women. Guest blogger: Susan Menadue Chun

    In a speech at the United Nations in September 2013, Prime Minister Abe conveyed Japan’s willingness to be involved in U.N security actions. He also emphasized Japan’s commitment to oppose sexual violence against women in war zones. Strangely, he didn’t mention comfort women, also known as sexual slaves, women who were forced to provide sex to the Japanese Imperial Army in WWII.  How many lies must be told to cover up the truth?

    The sex slave issue has become an international gender issue of grave and continuing concern. This issue needs to be confronted.

    In the past month there have been three incidents concerning Japan’s attempts to cover up the comfort woman issue.

    The first incident was the erection of a memorial for comfort women in Glendale, California. According to the Japanese press, there has been considerable opposition from sections of the Japanese community in California to the memorial. This may be so. However, in a conversation with Dr. Edward Chang (Professor of Ethnic Studies at University of California, Riverside) I was informed that the NCRR- Nikkei for Civil Rights and Redress is endorsing the movement to remember comfort women. It seems that the Japanese press however does not want the Japanese public or the world to recognize that the issue is gaining worldwide support. In addition, perhaps naively the mayors of Glendale and Buena Park (another area marked for a possible memorial) have been embroiled in a scandal created by Japan’s ultra-rightist internet channel – Channel Sakura. This channel seeks to repudiate Japan’s past aggressions and opposes any form of reasonable reconciliation with Korea or China. Mayor Weaver of Glendale informed Channel Sakura that he had regrets about supporting the memorial, saying “we opened a beehive, a hornet’s nest; we just shouldn’t have done it.”(Chosun Ilbo – a Korean news source). Now, the Glendale Council is demanding his resignation for his comments. Channel Sakura then went on to interview Mayor Elizabeth Swift of Buena Park. Her attempt to be impartial failed. I have reviewed the translations on Channel Sukura (85% correct and 15% incorrect). This was in order to establish whether the Channel had manipulated her viewpoint. Unfortunately, the interviewer nudged her into appearing to be taking a very sympathetic conservative stand with Japan on the comfort woman issue. I then found that protest emails sometimes pay off! I informed Mayor Swift on how Channel Sakura manipulated the interview. She now has regrets. Hopefully she won’t be granting any more interviews to Channel Sakura.

    The second incident was the agreement of the Nagoya Education Centre to accommodate an ultra-right group, the Zaitokukai, and allow an exhibition maintaining that the comfort women issue is a fabrication. Objections were to no avail. The Nagoya Education Centre then informed activists in support of comfort women that it did not want a law suit for refusing to permit the exhibition. Flyers for the event were handed out in tissue packages.

    The third incident was another cover up to try and preserve Japan’s international reputation. On the 14th October, 2013 the Asahi newspaper reported a declassified official document, about Japan’s diplomatic attempts in 1993 to cover up the comfort woman issue in Indonesia. It seems that Japan wanted to snuff out any anti-Japanese sentiment linked to the comfort women issue akin to what was happening in Korea. During the Suharto regime, the Japanese Embassy was successful in obstructing the publication of a book on comfort women, by a famous Indonesian author (name blacked out in declassified document); The Japanese Embassy advised that the publication could “hurt bilateral relations”.

    All of these incidents have occurred within the last month, Japan’s long term and continuing offensive to cover up the truth about comfort women is intense. Japanese politicians seem to lack consistency in any issue to do with Japan’s militarist past. They waste our precious time. Sadly time is something the aging former comfort women do not have.

  • Bushfires and climate change. John Menadue

    Last week, the Environment Minister, Greg Hunt, was really trying to tell us that black is white.  He attacked Adam Brandt who had said that the bushfires in NSW were part of a pattern of more extreme weather caused by climate change.  Brandt added that the government should not embark on dismantling sensible policies to limit global warming. What Brandt said was entirely consistent with the very strong advice that we have been receiving for many years from the best climate scientists in the world about weather changes.

    Having an indefensible policy called ‘Direct Action’ on climate change; Minister Hunt turned to political invective and attacked Adam Brandt for ‘politicising’ the bushfire tragedy. The Minister obviously decided that his “direct action” couldn’t sensibly be defended so he turned to filling the news cycle with political spin and nonsense by attacking Adam Brandt. Incidentally, Malcolm Turnbull, who lost his position as leader of the Liberal Party for espousing sensible marked based emission policies has told us quite clearly that he regards ‘direct action’ as a fig leaf when you don’t really have a policy.

    What Adam Brandt was saying is, I believe, at the top of the mind for a very large number of Australians. Is our weather becoming much more extreme? The evidence is increasingly pointing in that direction. Commenting on Minister Hunt’s political invective, the CEO of the Climate Institute, John Connor, said that it was time to face up to the growing risks of severe events such as bushfires owing to climate change. He said ‘Now is the time for a sensible debate’. But nothing sensible came from Greg Hunt.

    The Australian Climate Commission report ‘The Critical Decade 2013’ has just reported on the very worrying trends. It said

    • 70% of Australia experienced severe heatwaves across late December 2012 and January 2013. Temperature records were set in every state and territory. January 7, 2013 was the hottest ever average Australian maximum temperature.
    • Between 1973 and 2000, 16 out of 38 weather stations across Australia showed a significant increase in the Forest Fire Danger Index.
    • One quarter of the way through the Critical Decade, many consequences of climate change are already evident and the risks of further climate change are better understood.
    • 2000 to 2009 was the hottest decade since records began.
    • Global changes in rainfall have been observed, including in Australia.
    • The longer term regional drying trends over the south-west and south-east (of Australia) continued.
    • Increased heat is also causing significant global changes in snow and ice.
    • As expected, with the warming ocean and loss of land-based ice, the sea level is rising.
    • Climate change is likely to continue to affect Australians in a number of ways including: rising temperatures and more hot days; GREATER RISK OF BUSHFIRES; increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events including heavy rainfall and drought; and sea-level rise leading to more coastal flooding and erosion.

    The science on climate change is not conclusive but all the evidence and information points to the fact that we are embarking on a much more carbon intensive world and that that problem is mounting year by year.  This has been confirmed yet again last month by the fifth United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. More than 600 of the world’s top scientists contributed to the report.  There were 50,000 contributors to the report and exhaustive peer review. The IPCC report concluded that there was now a 95% probability that humans are responsible for global warning. It pointed to rising sea levels, rising temperatures and greater variability in weather patterns. Minister Hunt says he accepts the IPCC findings but then does a complete about face and resumes his police war.

    The greatest risk that we could take would be to ignore the possible calamity for the planet and our children. These serious prospects deserve a much more serious response than we have had from Greg Hunt and his leader, Tony Abbott, who have been playing politics hard and fast and successfully on climate change for years.  They are leading us down a dangerous cull ds sac.

    My concern is not just the abdication of responsibility by Tony Abbott and Greg Hunt but they have misled so many people and particularly their own supporters. In polling on October 1 this month, Essential Research found that 51 % of Liberal/ National voters did not believe in climate change. They believed that we were just witnessing normal fluctuations in the wold’s climate.

    I am stunned and alarmed by such poll findings. Surely so many Liberal/National voters can’t be such slow learners. Are they such party loyalists that they have allowed Tont Abbott to close their minds? Are they that partisan? Is it that they won’t allow any facts to threaten their comfortable life style?

    History will not judge kindly the way that Tony Abbott and Greg Hunt are playing politics with a looming danger. Our wondrous and delicate planet is on a dangerous trajectory and humans are the cause of the problem. We also have solutions in our hands. But ethical and wise leadership is essential. We have not got it at the moment.

    Hopefully, the ALP will not give way on the carbon tax unless it is satisfied that there is a better policy in place to combat the clear signs of climate change.

    On the particular issue of bushfires, let us not get distracted by the relatively minor issue of hazard reduction. That should be addressed, but we are facing a much more significant and possibly catastrophic problem, global climate change.

  • Why Iranians join the refugee queue. Guest Iranian correspondent Nadia S Fosoul

    In my country Iran, many dads take two jobs. They work hard so that their kids can check more items off their wish list. Moms like other moms in the world sacrifice their comforts for the sake of their children. Despite this, according to UNHCR data (immigrationinformation.org) the number of Iranian youth seeking asylum around the world has more than doubled since 2007. In 2012 nearly 20,000 Iranian sought asylum. Iran has thus, laid claim to producing one of the highest rates of brain drain in the world. Simultaneously Iran is one of the world’s largest refugee havens, mainly for Afghans and Iraqis.

    Why do young Iranians leave Iran?

    Sixty percent of Iran’s population is under 30, and are facing major difficulties in getting jobs. In Iranian families, the value of education is an important cultural element. Almost everyone believes that university education is essential for success. Thus, despite the highly competitive University entrance exams, the percentage of high school graduates who are admitted to universities is high. However, unemployment is one of the thorniest problems. This is because educational planners have focused most of their energy on expanding the universities’ admission rate. This has resulted in graduates having high expectations for their careers but with poor job prospects.

    Over the period 1970 to 2000, Iran experienced a revolution in many ways. The Iraq-Iran war lasted from 1980 to 1989. There was a regime change from conservatives to liberals after the election in 1996. The revolution impeded economic growth and the Iraq-Iran war exhausted resources in the economy and hindered economic growth. Conservatives took over power again in 2005 by electing Ahmadinejad and re-electing him in a fraudulent 2009 presidential election, resulting in a series of protests. According to Anna Johnson and Brian Murphy in June 2009, the Iranian government disputed these allegations, and confirmed the deaths of only 36 people during the protests. Unconfirmed reports allege that there were 72 deaths in the three months following the disputed election. However, the death toll was possibly higher because relatives of the deceased were forced to sign documents claiming their family members had died of heart attack or meningitis. During this period Iranian authorities closed universities in Tehran, blocked web sites, blocked cell phone transmissions and text messaging, and banned rallies.

    To make it worse the U.S. government tightened sanctions on Iran.  These sanctions were directed at ordinary people who bore the brunt in medicine and food shortages. There were also money problems.

    As I mentioned earlier, Iranians put education as their priority, so they try hard despite all the financial and political pressures. However they like to speak out peacefully for their rights and they want to freely write their opinions without fear of interrogation and prison. They look for their legitimate rights in Iran. When they can’t find it in Iran they seek it elsewhere.

    Their choice is immigrant friendly countries such as Australia that value freedom. The International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), states, “That every human being has a right to life, and to personal security, inviolability and freedom.” Countries that have ratified this agreement have taken concrete steps to promote and protect the economic, social and cultural rights of their people. Rights such as the right to work, the right to social security and the right to an adequate standard of living.

     Why opt for immigration?

    For these reasons many Iranians under economic or political pressure decide to leave their home and migrate to a friendly country. However obtaining a visa is not easy. The immigration process now takes more than 3-4 years with no guarantee. So many just give up and look for an alternative way.

    To make matters worse, immigrant friendly countries like Australia have toughened their immigration policies towards Iranians. This is particularly when there are political tensions in migrant friendly countries. However, it should be understood that Iran’s people face political persecution at the hands of the Iranian government. These people have difficulty obtaining legal visas while ironically, members of the regime can easily relocate to other countries on special visas. As a result innocent Iranians are being caught in the crossfire instead of getting support from refugee host countries like Australia.

    Between 1994 and 2000 Australia admitted a large number of Iranian postgraduate students and their dependents. Virtually none returned home. Contrary to common preconceptions, Iran’s education system has been world class – notably in maths and sciences. Australians of Iranian heritage now work as leaders in law, politics, science and the arts in Australia and they have been acknowledged for the contribution they have made to Australian society. (Crock and Ghezelbash –ABC.net.au 25 July 2013)

    There is a need for us to care for each other to make the world a better place to live in. The Persian poet, Saadi, says;

    Human beings are members of a whole,

    In creation of one essence and soul.

    If one member is afflicted with pain,

    Other members uneasy will remain.

     If you have no sympathy for human pain,

    The name of human you cannot retain.

    *******

     In my blog of July 28, I referred to the special problems of Iranians, ‘Refugees or Migrants’. I suggested the need for other migration pathways, perhaps a 4-5-7 visa or sponsored migration.

     In the last 12 months, the proportion of boat arrivals in Australia from Iran has doubled from 16% to 33% of all boat arrivals. At 31 August there were 2,786 Iranians (32%) in immigration detention. Iranians were the largest group by far. A particular difficulty for Iranians who are refused refugee status is that the Iranian Government will not accept any returnees to Iran who have sought refugee status elsewhere. So unless Iranian asylum seekers can find residence in another country they face long detention in Australia.

     John Menadue

  • The Mideast Road to Nowhere. Guest blogger: John Tulloh

     

    If ever there were a news story which goes nowhere, it must surely come under the heading of ‘Middle East peace talks’ with specific reference to the Israelis and Palestinians. Google the topic and you will find no less than 84,800,000 references at last count.

    Mediators come and go, the protagonists gather at the White House and Camp David, optimistic speeches are made, governments change, the Oslo accords were agreed, detailed ‘road maps’ reached, fresh initiatives made, the UN has been involved and international leaders have descended on Israeli and the Palestinian capitals with high-minded intentions and yet nothing really changes.

    One reason is the rapid spread of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, both Palestinian territory until the Six-Day War in 1967. The UN, the International Court of Justice and the international community at large, never mind the Palestinians, all regard the settlements as illegal. Israel’s attorney-general back in 2005 actually thought so, too, but two years ago a Jerusalem judicial commission disagreed. They were perfectly legal under international law, according to the three jurists appointed by the government. It was the ideal excuse to accelerate development.

    Pleas, including by US presidents, have been made to put a stop to the expansion in the interests of peace. There have been freezes on construction, but they’ve always been temporary.

    It is widely accepted that the current dispute is a result of the 1967 war when Israel took over East Jerusalem, which it then annexed, and the West Bank. But the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, disagrees. He said only last week that the problem actually goes back to 1921 when Palestinians, hostile to Jewish immigration, attacked a home for immigrants in Jaffa. At least, his reason was a 20th century one rather than the once customary biblical ones given in recent years, namely Israel’s rightful claims to the ancient lands of Judea and Samaria which basically comprise Jerusalem and the West Bank.

    The latest peace talks, brokered by President Barack Obama, have been stalled since 2010 when Netanyahu refused to freeze settlement construction in East Jerusalem. An overall settlement is supposed to involve Israel’s withdrawal from the West Bank.

    That is highly unlikely when you consider it already has 121 officially- recognised settlements and a population of 350,000 Jewish settlers. A recent survey said there were more than 55,000 private homes and apartments worth US$13.5 billion. The settlers rely on the Israel Defence Force for their security, surrounded as they are by Palestinian towns and villages and many resentful residents.

    This is clearly an investment by people confident about their long- term future there. Indeed the rate of population growth in the settlements is higher than in Israel itself. Communities elsewhere in Israel complain that they don’t get the same government financial aid as the West Bank outposts do.

    A Palestinian would have to be a supreme optimist to think that he or she has any hope of repossessing now occupied land. Israel has said that claims to East Jerusalem are non-negotiable. Until its annexation, it was the home for thousands of Palestinians. Now it is home for 300,000 Jewish residents.

    One can ask why, if Israel genuinely aspires to peace, it aggravates its neighbour by building so much on disputed land when it has five times as much undisputed land. The fact is that the settlements represent frontline security for Israel. In addition, many settlers are religious fanatics who believe the land was selected by God for them, the chosen people. Try negotiating on that basis!

    Leftist sympathies for the Palestinian cause in previous governments have all but vanished as Israelis, mindful of suicide bombings in recent years and increasingly distrustful of Palestinians, move to the Right in their electoral preferences. The current and recent coalition governments have depended on small Jewish nationalist parties to survive.

    A long-time Jewish foreign correspondent based in Israel told me that most Israelis could not care less about the Palestinians. What’s more, he said, ‘settling the land God gave the Jews, expanding the borders, is an unspoken priority for all Israeli governments’.

    A few years ago, a Palestinian friend, who was born in Israel and speaks Hebrew better than most Jews, told me how she and her family now had a new address at a place near Jerusalem. Innocently, I asked if both Jews and Palestinians lived there. She looked at me in disbelief. ‘Of course not’, she said. ‘Why would you ask such a question?’

    Some things in the Middle East will never change.

    As a postscript, I would add that I was at the birth of this never-ending story, covering the Six-Day War as a young journalist. I recall driving from Tel Aviv and reaching the brow of the hill. There before me, across the valley on the ridge, were scores of whitewashed homes bathed in the afternoon light. It was like a Biblical scene. It was in fact Jerusalem. The only concession to the 20th century was the outline of the Hilton Hotel. Five years later I returned and was shocked to discover the ridge dominated by tall tv aerials and modern architectural eyesores having muscled in among those whitewashed homes. The expansion of the Jewish presence was under way.

    John Tulloh had a 40-year career in foreign news, including 15 as the ABC’s first international editor for television news and current affairs.

     

  • What’s in it for me? John Menadue

    Last year in London Joe Hockey said that we had to break free of our culture of entitlement. He said. “The problem arises…when there is a belief that one person has a right to a good or service that someone else will pay for. It is this sense of entitlement that affects not just individuals but also entire societies. And governments are to blame for portraying taxpayer’s money as something removed from the labour of another person” He repeated much the same last week in his first visit as Treasurer to Washington. He made it clear that all Australians had to make hard choices and that we couldn’t have everything that we wanted.

    This is a problem for all of us but Joe Hockey should start with his own leader. Tony Abbott has been leading the peloton in dodgy claims at the expense of the taxpayer.

    Aside from politicians some of the worst examples of this culture of entitlement are in the business sector. Professor Ross Garnaut has commented that the long period of prosperity has provided a congenial environment for the entrenchment of a new political culture that elevates private demands over the public interest. This is reflected in the lobbying by many business people for special privileges. The Secretary of the Treasury has warned us that we will not be able to maintain our health and education services unless we pay more in taxes. In the public debate it is assumed that we can all have benefits of public spending without cost. The previous Secretary of Treasury, Ken Henry, has said that he has never seen such a poor standard of public debate about the need for hard choices in Australia.

    The fact is that any significant and worthwhile changes in the economy and society will mean that there will be losses by some. We need to face that fact.

    There are many examples of ‘what’s in it for me?’ in public discussion.

    In the reform of education, we have been consistently told that Commonwealth Government funding will ensure that no schools will be worse off. That implies that many wealthy private schools will continue to be funded at high levels at the expense of facilities for the disadvantaged in public schools- indigenous, non-English-speaking, and socially impoverished students. The fact is if we are going to have serious reform in education, that promotes equality of opportunity, there will have to be some schools that will be worse off. That may be politically difficult but we see particularly in the Nordic countries, that increased education spending which is directed to areas of greatest need provides enormous economic as well as social benefits. Maintaining existing levels of funding for many wealthy private schools will be at the cost of the disadvantaged.

    Kevin Rudd told us that climate change was the greatest moral challenge of our generation. He was right. But the ‘debate ‘quickly became mired in issues of compensation. Making sure that no-one was worth off, including the polluters, meant that we lost focus on the objective of the policy – reducing carbon pollution.

    The Business Council of Australia wants to increase the productivity of our economy, but is silent about the rent-seekers amongst its membership who want to retain their privileges whether they be in the hospitality, gambling or mining sectors. The BCA wants labour market flexibility for most of the workforce, but says nothing about the rigged system of executive remuneration.

    In reporting of Commonwealth and State budgets, the media almost always reduces the debate to tables showing who would be better off or who will be worse off regardless of the policy objective of the reform.

    The health ‘debate’ is invariably dominated by ‘what is in it for me?’ for the private health insurance funds, the pharmacists or medical specialists. Very quickly their public demands and self-interest dominate what should be a debate about necessary reform.

    In a global and changing world, we are indulging ourselves. As a community our individual expectations cannot all be fulfilled. We can’t have everything we want. The culture of ‘what is in it for me?’ will inevitably bring us undone. In any worthwhile reform, there will be inevitable losers. Those who need to loose most are the rent seekers for example in the mining and private schools sectors who work so desperately to maintain their privileged positions. Joe Hockey should start by talking to these sectors about their ingrained sense of entitlement.. and of course Tony Abbott

  • The eye of the needle, politicians, and Confucius. Guest blogger: Milton Moon

    Milton Moon is an eminent Australian potter.  A Master of Australian Craft.

    My current reading is dominated by the superb collected essays of Simon Leys, under the title The Hall of Uselessness.  (An indication of just how small the world has become it was recommended to me by a Jewish friend, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst living in New York who also uses Zen meditation as part of his therapy.)

    For those who don’t know, Simon Leys is the pen-name of Belgium-born Pierre Ryckmans, a sinologist and long-time resident of Australia. In the 1970‘s he taught Chinese literature at the Australian National University, and later was Professor of Chinese Studies at Sydney University. He lives in Canberra.)

    In this collection of essays the one on China was of most interest to me, and in particular, the one on Chinese calligraphy.  Also, unexpected as it was, of added and surprising value was the essay on Confucius. I must confess I have never fully valued the teachings of Confucius  responding more to the teachings of Lao-Tzu, readily available in the many translations of the Tao-Te Ching  (also more recently the Te-Tao-Ching).

    On reading the essay on him I readily admit to being remiss in undervaluing the teachings of Confucius and I was pleased to note that Simon Leys has added his own translation to the many other translations of the Confucian Analects. In the hope I can rectify my ill-judgement this is a book I must both own and study.

    The point of this introduction: In his essay on Confucius is the observation ‘Politics is an extension of ethics, Government is synonymous with righteousness. If the King is righteous, how could anyone dare to be crooked? ‘  To paraphrase this; if politicians are not righteous how can they appeal to the righteous in those they wish to lead?

    (I do not necessarily mean ‘righteous‘in its usual religious sense, but by what we understand as ‘common moral decency. ‘ )

    Appealing to either ignorance of the true facts, or the basest aspects of human nature, might get one elected, but at what cost?  Even Pontius Pilate’s washing of his hands, whilst giving in to the demands of a primitive-thinking mob insisting on the crucifixion of an innocent man, didn’t help him avoid the judgement of history.  And one wonders whether he would be happy to be remembered this way.  One wonders too  what history will say about our present-day politicians who are equally responsive to the loud baying of some elements of the voting public (and even some elected members in their own Party) in their treatment of the refugee problem.  I wonder also whether they measure their decisions against their own personal claims of religious-observance.  Substituting ‘politician’ for ‘rich man’ the well-known Biblical parable might be salutary: ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God.’  (Matt.19.24)   Continuing the Chinese theme, one might also add the lines taken from the

    Hsin-hsin-ming (Inscribed on the Believing Mind) attributed to the third Ch’an patriarch  Seng-ts’an in the 6th Century; ‘a tenth of an inch’s difference and Heaven and Earth are set apart.’

    Not all politicians claim to be ‘religious. If they do claim to have a moral basis for their decisions, some of these elected law-makers have done things which history might view with a degree of pride, but other decisions they have made might be viewed with understandable doubt, disappointment, or even contempt.

    Those who put little value in morality may think they can escape the immediate judgement of history but they might cringe a little if they spared a thought to the possible judgement of a future generation when their decision-making faces a clearer scrutiny.  Or do they hope they may not have to face any judgement at all,  because with a bit of luck, and time on their side, morality will have no voting value whatsoever.

    We live in strange times; an age, where to use a local jargon, ‘everything hangs out; it’s there for show.’ People espouse causes, or personal states unheard of when I was younger, (and this goes as far back as the mid-twenties.)  In my childhood an aircraft passing overhead was cause for great excitement. Now just about everything is on show.  Declaration to the world at large that one is atheist, agnostic, republican or monarchist, or whatever, is there for public consumption. Also at the time of this writing politicians can raid the public purse seemingly on any flimsy pretext and they can excuse their indulgences as ‘blurred edges’ of the stated conditions. And  it is quite acceptable that many will have ‘blurred vision.’

    Returning to Simon Leys and his writings on Confucius, the following lines are a beacon of some sort, in these times of ‘anything goes.’  ‘Political authority should pertain exclusively to those who can demonstrate moral and intellectual qualifications.’

    The other line that jumped out (and many many others did). ‘Confucius: he distrusted eloquence: he despised glib talkers, he hated clever word games. For him, it would seem an agile tongue must reflect a shallow mind….’

    It would do any politician some good, if they are able, to reflect on these concerns when dealing with Asian neighbours, both near and far.  It is not usual for any of these to let ‘everything hang out,’ nor to say outright what they see and feel, but rest assured they miss very little and make judgements accordingly. Many too have been educated in the West and know us very well.

    Australian good nature, familiarly rough on the edges, might charm some, and our seemingly good-hearted hail-fellow-well-met introductions, coupled with nimble double-talk, might get a seeming warm response, but the falsity and clumsiness doesn’t fool anyone: it would be unwise to take our neighbours too lightly.

    The Hall of Uselessness, Collected Essays by Simon Leys.

    Published by Black Inc. an imprint of Schwartz Media Pty Ltd, 2011

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • The apathy and hostility of South Koreans to their Northern cousins. Guest bloggers: Markus Bell and Sarah Chee

    In every way, Yu Woo-seong was a model defector. In his early 30s, he was smart, friendly, ambitious and well-liked. Despite the fact that he had been in South Korea for less than six years, Yu managed to work through his university studies while adapting remarkably well to his new environment, finishing his bachelor’s degree in 2011.

    While taking on organizing roles in a number of Seoul-based clubs and organizations created by North Korean defectors to help new arrivals, Yu gained entry into a master’s degree program, majoring in education in social welfare. Less than one year into his graduate studies he was hired by Seoul City Hall as a special attaché for North Korean defector projects. In every way, he was a model assimilation case – until early this year, when he was arrested as a North Korean spy.

    The evidence against him was based on testimony from his sister, who attempted to defect in October 2012. During an intense and highly secretive interrogation by the National Information Service (NIS) that all defectors are subject to upon entering the country, Yu’s sister, Yu Ga-ryeo, “confessed” her brother was a spy. The plot took a further twist when, on March 5, after 179 days in detention, his sister retracted her accusations against her brother, claiming that she had been subject to physical and psychological abuse at the hands of NIS agents and deceived into making the confession. A number of facts continue to be shrouded in secrecy; one detail, however, emerged as incontrovertible fact – Yu and his family are Chinese nationals who were born in North Korea.

    Further to the ambiguity regarding the significance of Yu’s ethnic background and the difficulties of potentially unravelling the twine of blood and nationhood that marks the socio-political fabric of both Koreas, are basic questions of human rights.

    In the modern, robust democracy that is South Korea, is it right – both morally and in the eyes of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) – that a person arriving and claiming asylum can be detained for up to 180 days? During this time an individual is subject to round-the-clock interrogation without legal representation. Questions including but not limited to place of origin, their motivation and method of escape, their political sympathies, their family networks, their day-to-day life in North Korea, their movements and activities since they were born, their medical history and much more are asked at all times of day and night.

    The question is not one of whether or not the government should be permitted to take the means necessary to defend its borders and citizens. Rather, it is of accountability. The period of time during which agents of the state interrogate asylum seekers continues to be cloistered from the gaze of the public in every way possible – a mysterious process through which it is ascertained – to some vague degree – that an individual is, or is not, an enemy agent and a genuine asylum-seeking North Korean.

    The general public seems at best oblivious to this process that is carried out in its name, and to some degree the absence of public discussion on this subject approaches the tacit condoning of these practices. It must be asked, given the potential physical and psychological harm a process like this can cause, whether it is any surprise that thousands of North Koreans are re-migrating to third countries as soon as they can muster enough funds.

    This is all possible because, on many levels, aspects of the Cold War linger on in Northeast Asia and cries of “spy” and “communist” still bring to attention (and to heel) the general public in passions which are only matched by their complete apathy towards matters pertaining to North Korean new arrivals, the much romanticised idea of reunification, and human rights.

    Yu’s case has underlined the apathy that is endemic in South Korean society, towards human rights and towards issues pertaining to that whose name cannot be spoken – North Korea. This disheartening fact is only compounded when we are faced with a North Korean defector community incapable or ill-prepared to fight for the human rights of defectors in South Korea (that is saying nothing about the human rights of North Koreans in North Korea), a divided leftist activist community, and questions about what constitutes a defector.

    On August 22, after eight months in solitary confinement, during which the highlight of each day was a one-hour exercise period – time also passed alone – Yu Woo-seong walked out of the In-deok detention center in south Seoul a free man. In his verdict reading earlier that day, the judge ruled Yu innocent of all charges.

    As the dust settles and the media loses interest in the latest spy scandal to capture its interest it is worth considering that perhaps Yu’s greatest crime was simply that he was more successful than other North Koreans at being a model defector. This case further highlights the need for media reporting that questions, rather than parrots the government announcements and that still values the old legal maxim “innocent until proven guilty.”

    Markus Bell is a PhD candidate at the ANU. Sarah Chee is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

  • Even-handed Tony Abbott. John Menadue

    In his toxic language over asylum seekers in the last three years, Tony Abbott has been not only derogatory about vulnerable people fleeing persecution, he has also gone out of his way to insult our neighbours in their handling of asylum seekers. He has shown no favouritism. He has insulted them all.

    Within the last two weeks he has offered ‘contrition’ to three regional leaders for his insulting language about their policies and performance. He has described his insults as really only part of a ‘rather intense party-political discussion in Australia’. That is sheer evasion. It has been Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison who have directly and personally led the attack on asylum seekers and our neighbours.

    What must regional leaders think of the intemperate behaviour of our new Prime Minister? In their minds it would not suggest strong and stable leadership on which they can rely. They would reasonably conclude that he will slip into a domestic political mood if that is necessary and ignore relations in the region.

    In Jakarta on his first visit, he had to apologise for his challenge to Indonesian sovereignty. He had earlier said that unilaterally his government would tow boats back to Indonesian waters and would intervene in Indonesia to purchase Indonesian vessels. This was clearly blatant intervention in Indonesian affairs. The Indonesian President was polite, but the real annoyance is best judged by statements by the Indonesian Foreign Minister, Members of Parliament, officials and the Indonesian media.

    Then in Bali this week at the APEC meeting he apologised to a succession of regional leaders.

    He insulted Malaysia in June 2011 when he said ‘Imagine taking boat people from Australia to Malaysia where they will be exposed almost inevitably to the prospect of caning … they will be detained, they will be tagged, they will be let out into the community and in the Malaysian community, people of uncertain immigration status are treated very, very harshly indeed.  … What is supposed to protect people in Malaysia from caning and other very harsh treatment? …. What [the Australian] government is proposing is to take people from Christmas Island, detain them, tag them and then expect that they are not going to be caned.’  Scott Morrison chimed in at the time that ‘Malaysia could not guarantee the human rights of people sent to that country’. For Scott Morrison to espouse the human rights of asylum seekers was surely breath-taking. One would not be surprised that in Bali the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Najib Tun Razak, was left wondering about the behaviour of our new Prime Minister with his belated apology.

    After the meeting with the Malaysian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott then had to apologise to PNG Prime Minister, Peter O’Neill. During the election campaign Tony Abbott said that to buy the cooperation of PNG the Rudd Government had surrendered control of half a billion dollars annually in overseas aid to PNG. The accident-prone Julie Bishop at the same time attempted to put words into the mouth of Peter O’Neill to the same effect. Peter O’Neill responded at the time that the Opposition claims were ‘completely untrue … we are not going to put up with this nonsense’. At the same time, the PNG High Commissioner in Canberra ‘warned Australian politicians to observe international protocols and courtesies when discussing relations with other friendly sovereign nations and not impugn the dignity of our leaders who are attempting to assist Australia in this very complex regional and international issue of asylum-seekers’.

    What enormous damage Tony Abbott has done, not just to asylum seekers who seek our protection, but in relations with our key regional neighbours. The ‘rancorous’ debate we have had in Australia didn’t come out of the air. It was provoked and led by Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison. It has been at great cost. Loose lips do cause damage. They can even sink ships.

    More importantly Tony Abbott should apologies to the Australian public for misleading us about his boat “policy” and suggesting that he could pull regional countries into line to do his will.

     

  • A somersault – back to business as usual. Guest blogger: Arja Keski-Nummi

    While in opposition Tony Abbot conducted a robust and aggressive policy on boats that effected Indonesia. But now he has done a somersault in order to put the Australian-Indonesian relationship back on a more even footing. As his speech at the official dinner portrays he has gone to the other extreme and engaged in rather sycophantic toadying.

    Tony Abbott’s robust approach to people smuggling and asylum issues in opposition reflected his focus on domestic politics where he was using this issue opportunistically in a volatile political environment and with one eye on the elections. As a result the foreign policy implications of his approach were held at a discount. In government this is no longer possible.

    Lets look at what he said in Opposition – “Operation Sovereign Borders” was his signature policy on how in Government the matter of boat arrivals would be handled. From the outset the discomfort of Indonesia was obvious, particularly returning boats to Indonesia, the use of transit facilities in Indonesia for the transfer of asylum seekers as well as the idea of buying boats and paying for information.  Operation Sovereign Borders seemed to rely on ignoring the sovereignty of another country.

    It was inevitable then that this first visit by Tony Abbott to Indonesia was going to put boats in the spotlight.

    So, what’s new with the Prime Minister’s visit to Jakarta? If the reporting is to be believed nothing has changed.  His speech makes it clear that what he has had to do was adapt his rhetoric to fit into a pre-existing relationship and eat his own words on what he said in Opposition.

    President Yudhoyono threw a bone in Tony Abbott’s direction and he grabbed it.

    The Australian media have likewise breathlessly reported that Jakarta has agreed to bilateral cooperation over the Bali Process and multilateral action.

    The fact is the bilateral cooperation on boats has been strong for some time.  The Report of the Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers identified that some $101 million was allocated to combatting people smuggling in the 2010-11 budget. Some $10million was specifically earmarked towards the care and maintenance of people intercepted in Indonesia. The Australian Federal Police had a budget of $12.3 million for capability and capacity building activities for law enforcement agencies in source and transit countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.   Based on these figures a conservative estimate of how much of this was for bilateral cooperation and operations in Indonesia would suggest that it would be close to $30 million across the customs, AFP and Immigration agencies. This does not include development assistance through AUSAID or defence and intelligence operations.

    So, if you were to actually analyse what has been said and agreed to regarding the government’s policy Operation Sovereign Borders by Indonesia it really amounts to much of the same. In 2010 Australia and Indonesia signed the Australia-Indonesia Implementation Framework for Cooperation on People Smuggling and Trafficking in Person which has been the main vehicle for strengthening the bilateral partnership on issues relating to people trafficking, protection claims, people smuggling and asylum seekers in ways that address the particular interests of both countries.  It is through this framework, established under the Labor Government, that practical bilateral cooperation is and will be channeled.

    The AFP will continue to pay for information through its established channels. Maybe just a little more money will flow in that direction. Boats will be intercepted and people intercepted in Indonesia will be referred to UNHCR and IOM for registration, processing and support in housing and welfare.  Protocols and practical cooperation around maritime interceptions, emergency rescues and Safety of Life at Sea will continue to be developed. The bilateral operational working groups will continue to meet and thrash out knotty issues on visas, border management and people smuggling laws.  There will be the usual give and take as assessments are made on how far a particular matter can be pushed before it backfires.

    At the same time the multilateral processes such as the Bali Process will continue to grow as Indonesia knows all too well that they are the “endpoint” of the transit movement and nothing can be achieved unless the countries en route are engaged and supported. They will continue to talk to Geneva even if we don’t because they know that UNHCR is a key to ensuring that any arrangements put in place are sound and has the imprimatur of the international community.

    In short, Tony Abbott’s visit to Indonesia was unremarkable. A few tidbits were thrown his way but when all is said and done it will be more of the same.  But the rhetoric about boats has served its domestic political purpose

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

     

     

  • Israel’s asylum-seeker dilemma. Guest blogger: John Tulloh.

    Like Australia, Israel has a major problem of what to do with asylum-seekers. And, like Australia with our proposed Malaysia solution in 2011, Israeli legislation aimed at curbing the influx has been thrown out by the country’s highest court.

    Those seeking refuge in Israel did not come by boat. They came across the Sinai from Egypt, many having to pay up to $2000 to Bedouin people smugglers. The majority were Sudanese and Eritreans fleeing abusive regimes. They used to fly to Cairo for refuge until police broke up a peaceful demonstration by Sudanese in 2005 and killed 20 of them.

    Last year, with more than 55,000 having reached Israel, there was growing disquiet. The Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called the new arrivals ‘illegal infiltrators’ who threatened the security and identity of the Jewish state.

    Jerusalem decided to act with what was known as the Anti-Infiltration Law. It allowed Israel to detain the asylum-seekers for up to three years without trial. Two detention camps were hastily built – and, like Woomera, the main one is in a desert location. They house more than 1700 people – mainly men, but also women and children – in what social activists call harsh conditions.

    Two weeks ago, the nine members of Israel’s High Court of Justice unanimously ruled the new law illegal because it violated Israel’s law on human dignity and disproportionately impinged on a person’s right to freedom.

    One of the judges, Edna Arbel, noted: ‘We cannot deprive people of basic rights, using a heavy hand to impact their freedom and dignity, as part of a solution to a problem that demands a suitable, systemic and national solution’.

    As welcome as this news was to the incarcerated, they remain locked up at time of writing. The Interior Ministry has 90 days – until mid-December – to review the inmates’ status. The Israeli government is said to be examining other ways of keeping them under detention.

    The governing coalition’s Whip, Yariv Levin, denounced the court decision as ‘insane, breaking all records for anarchy and will turn Israel from a Jewish state into a state belonging to its migrants’. This is hardly likely when Israel has now managed to stem the flow of ‘the illegal infiltrators’.

    Earlier this year, construction of a 230-kilometre fence from Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba to southern Gaza was completed. This has reduced the unwelcome visitors to a trickle.

    Virtually all the now estimated 60,000 asylum-seekers in Israel remain in a legal limbo. Most have temporary protection visas which have to be renewed every three months.

    Although they entered Israel from Egypt, Israel cannot send them back there because Cairo refuses to rule out returning them to their country of origin, where human rights are questionable. News reports in August suggested that Israel was planning to repatriate them to ‘safe’ African countries in return for military and other specialist aid. Jerusalem has denied this.

    Uganda was mentioned as one such country. Ironically, it was a place which Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism, once considered as a site for his Jewish homeland.

    The majority of the asylum-seekers have made their home for now in Tel Aviv’s poorer southern suburbs. They have been subject to the predictable demonizing, including being blamed for criminal activity whereas statistics show that the rate of crime by others is much higher.

    The government provides a range of social services, such as free education for children and free medical care for infants. An emergency medical clinic has been established along with psychiatric services for children.

    But, said Sammy, a 32-year-old Eritrean quoted by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, ‘There is one big problem here – we have no ID, no papers, and no life’.

    Mindful of the persecution of the Jews over the centuries and their need to escape, Israel has long championed the rights of refugees. It helped draft the 1951 UN Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol protecting the rights of people fleeing persecution.

    Indeed the Jewish Bible – the Old Testament to Christians – exhorts the faithful to ‘love the stranger as thyself, for you were once strangers in the land of Egypt’.

    John Tulloh had a 40-year career in foreign news, including 15 as the ABC’s first international editor for television news and current affairs.