For many years, I have been concerned that the Jesuits at St Ignatius College Sydney seem to be producing mainly conservative politicians and merchant bankers. I don’t think St Ignatius would have expected that.
My confidence in the Jesuits at St Ignatius has been at least partially restored by action by senior students at St Ignatius to rebuke Tony Abbott and others for ‘betraying moral values on asylum seekers’. See the report of their action from the SMH below.
John Menadue
Health costs are rising rapidly, through lack of coordination and waste. Doctors provide too many services. Vested interests are rampant Mental and Indigenous health are in a serious position. Services are being delivered less equitably. Progress has been made in prevention. However, the high expectation raised by the first Rudd Government has not been realised.
In our view the key failures have been as follows.
Apart from plain packaging and increased excise on tobacco products is there any really memorable heath reform from six years of Labor governments What a disappointing story this all is for the party which created Medicare!
This article was published in Croakey on 19 August 2013.
Ian McAuley
John Menadue
Today Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison have announced draconian measures that will inflict enormous punishment on over 30,000 asylum seekers who have arrived in Australia over recent years by boat. These draconian policies will apply not just to future boat arrivals but will be applied retrospectively to over 30,000 asylum seekers who are already legally here.
We can imagine the widespread protests if any Australian government announced retrospective changes in taxation or other important policies, but some of the most vulnerable in the world are fair game in Australian politics.
What a shameful country we have become. The poisoning of public opinion against asylum seekers which began with Tampa in 2001 is getting worse by the day.
Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison propose:
Amongst these 30,000 asylum seekers in Australia are many whose lives have been put at risk because of the actions of Australian Governments to intervene in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not only has our involvement in those two wars been futile and cost many Australian lives, it has put at risk many Iraqis and Afghans who will now pay a huge price as the civil war in Iraq extends and the withdrawal of Western forces from Afghanistan leaves more and more Afghans exposed to danger. But we show no concern that some of these people now in Australia cannot call on the Australian government or people for protection or decency.
This announcement today continues the demonization of asylum seekers that has been going on for years. Scott Morrison, who would be the Minister for Immigration in an Abbott Government, said in his maiden speech in 2008 ‘From my faith I derive the values of loving kindness, justice and righteousness”. Yet he has told us on many occasions
Senator Abetz, a migrant himself and apparently a devout Lutheran said that asylum seekers in the community should be registered in the same way as paedophiles.
Tony Abbott, the seminary-trained and student of the Jesuits, continually calls asylum seekers ‘illegals’ when they are not. He wants us to believe that they are criminals. He has never called Scott Morrison into line.
Who will call a stop to our inhumanity? In world terms, with 45 million refugees and displaced persons, the number of asylum seekers coming to Australia is miniscule. When will we get out of our parochial stupor and appreciate the real world beyond our shores? But history shows that it is so easy for unscrupulous politicians to exploit fear of the foreigner, the outsider and the person who is different.
Malcolm Fraser we need you now.
Before I outline what I suggest we should do after the federal election let me first raise a few important background issues.
The Indo China program
In working with Malcolm Fraser and Ian Macphee I was actively involved in the Indochina refugee program under which Australia took 240,000 people, including family reunion. It was a successful humanitarian program which most Australians now look back on with pride. It also broke the back of White Australia but did not fully banish it. It still shows up to today in a de facto form, in hostility and demonization of asylum seekers.
There were several keys to that successful program.
Agreement with Malaysia.
The rejection of the agreement with Malaysia by the High Court started the rot that we have today. That High Court decision may have been sound in law but it has had awful consequences for good policy. The agreement with Malaysia needed improvement but it did provide guarantees that Malaysia had never provided before. UNHCR was prepared to actively cooperate.. It would have restarted regional arrangements. When the High Court rejected the Malaysian agreement in August 2011, Irregular maritime arrivals were then running at less than 300 per month. The number of boat arrivals increased to 1,200 by May 2012. ’ They have been on a rising trend ever since. The Malaysian failure sent a very clear message. Boat arrivals would succeed. People arriving by boat have increased since the failure of the Malaysia agreement to an estimated 40,000 to 50,000 people next year. (In March/June quarters 2012, boat arrivals totalled 4486.In March/June quarters 2013 they had risen to an estimated 14,000 and rising fast). The Government attempted to amend the Migration Act to correct the problems identified by the High Court but the Greens colluded with the Coalition to block the amending legislation. They bashed Malaysia at every opportunity over such issues as judicial canings but ignored for the moment the moat in our own eye, mandatory detention with suicides, self-harm, mental trauma, riots and burnings. The Greens must bear a heavy responsibility for the parlous situation we now find ourselves in. Their moral superiority has helped give us PNG/Nauru. Their conspicuous compassion is damaging the possibility of any sensible humanitarian and political outcome
Boat and air arrivals
For years there has been media and political preoccupation with boat arrivals with very little interest or attention to air arrivals who seek asylum. Air arrivals are presently running at about 8,000 p.a. They are mainly persons who arrive in Australia on visitor, working holiday or student visas and then seek refugee status. It is planned in advance. The biggest source for air arrivals seeking asylum is Southern China. About 40% of air arrivals receive refugee protection. They live in the community and can work. Boat arrivals are placed immediately in detention although an increasing number are now released into the community on bridging visas. About 90% of boat arrivals are found to be refugees. We have a remarkable fear about boat arrivals but apparently no concern about asylum seekers who come by air or the 50,000 illegals in the country who have overstayed their visas and disappeared into the woodwork with UK and US citizens high on the list.
The Pacific “solution”
The Howard Government’s Pacific/Nauru “solution” did work for a period. In the confusion after Tampa, people smugglers and asylum seekers did not know what might happen to them. The boats stopped. But that changed in the latter part of the Howard Gov. and in the early years of the Rudd Govt. Of the 1637 on Nauru/Manus who were found to be refugees 96% finished up in Australia or NZ. The Gillard Government was warned that Nauru/Manus would not work a second time. It was reasonable to anticipate, on the basis of previous experience that even if asylum seekers were sent to Nauru after August 2012 they would end up in Australia.And this is what happened. Boat arrivals did not slow down or stop. That is why the Rudd Gov. decided that any person arriving in Aust without a visa in future would never be settled in Aust.
Another element of the Pacific solution was Temporary Protection Visas. But they failed with more boat arrivals coming after TPV’s were introduced. Unable to sponsor family, many women and children took to the boats. That is why when SIEVX sunk in 2002 with a loss of 363 lives, 288 were women and children
What can be done after September 7, particularly to minimise PNG and Nauru.
We need to think again about the assumption by so many that all asylum seekers entering Australia must be processed in Australia .What is important is not so much where the processing occurs but whether it is fair, humane and efficient.
In 1998 UNHCR at an Exxon meeting envisaged the possibility of transferring people between states for processing. It concluded…”as regards the return to a third country of an asylum seeker whose claim has yet to be determined from the territory of the country where the claim has been submitted ,including pursuant to bilateral or multilateral readmission agreements, it should be established that the third country will treat the asylum seeker(s) in accordance with international standards, will ensure effective protection against refoulement and will provide the asylum seeker(s) with the possibility to seek and enjoy asylum”.
The keys are effective protection, consistent with the Refugee Convention, the treatment of people with dignity and efficiency in implementation. We are still a long way short of that with PNG/Nauru
Importantly we cannot manage these problems on our own. Regional cooperation is essential, not to shift the burden but to share it.
On Wednesday 7 August 2013, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe acknowledged that the clean up of the devastated Fukushima nuclear power reactors was beyond the capacity of the operator Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). It followed the revelation that heavily contaminated groundwater is flowing into the Pacific Ocean at an estimated rate of 300 tonnes a day because of the failure of a perimeter barrier installed by TEPCO. By any measure this was a major news story. So where did it run in that night’s one hour, mid-evening news on the national broadcaster NHK? Buried 40 minutes down in the program as a brief RVO (reader voiceover). Had the story broken a year ago, during the tenure of the former government, I have no doubt it would have led the program – accompanied by complaints of incompetence. If there had been any doubt that Abe was receiving a dream run from Japan’s mainstream media, this episode laid it to rest.
For six months or more the government ignored calls for it to take over management of the nuclear crisis from a secretive and bumbling TEPCO. Abe did nothing, unwilling to infringe on the prerogatives of a private enterprise. The delay deserved to be marked down as a failure of leadership, and yet NHK’s story offered no such analysis. Nor did it contain the information – available on the New York Times and BBC websites – that taxpayers will pick up the estimated US$400 million dollar tab for a new containment strategy. Reportedly the plan envisages freezing the ground around the crippled reactors to a depth of 30 metres. Some commentators suggest the government has been reluctant to take over control for fear of being blamed should the unproven strategy fail to hold back the radioactive groundwater. (One assumes some of these details were aired in other NHK news broadcasts; my focus is on how this story was presented in its prestigious News Watch 9 program on the day in question.)
The uncritical coverage NHK and others are giving to decisions by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party government contrasts with the media’s hostile treatment of the former centre-left administration led by the Democratic Party of Japan. The nuclear issue is just one example. Another is the issue of the controversial deployment of Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft by the US Marines on Okinawa. When the deployment began in July last year Japanese media outlets, including NHK, suggested that public safety and national sovereignty were being sacrificed to the US-Japan alliance. Night after night, NHK television bulletins devoted extensive coverage to anti-government protests. In recent weeks the number of Ospreys deployed on Okinawa was doubled, while on Monday the crash of a helicopter from the Kadena Air Base further underlined the safety concerns of residents of the heavily militarized islands. And yet NHK’s coverage of both developments was subdued and matter-of-fact, particularly in comparison with its coverage of the same issue during the time of the Noda government.
Why the change in temper?
When the DPJ came to power in 2009 one of its first acts was to end the LDP’s preferred method of governing through background briefings to a coterie of captive journalists. This attack on the kisha club system – under which media outlets attach journalists to ministries in return for exclusive access to information – threatened the drip feed media organisations relied upon. Once-privileged journalists now had to take their chances in the open forum of televised news conferences. They hated it – and seemed bent on revenge. Some proved incapable of adjusting to the fact there had been a change of government and continued to treat the LDP as if it were the ruling party.
As time went by, particularly after the earthquake and tsunami in Tohoku, simmering resentment built to a wave of criticism against Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his successor Yoshihiko Noda. While the DPJ government undoubtedly contributed to its loss of popular support, the media played a big hand in it. Conspicuous in this campaign was the mass circulation Yomiuri newspaper (one of the main backers of Abe’s plans for constitutional change). Journalists conveniently overlooked that the nuclear crisis was due, in large part, to a flawed safety and regulatory regime put in place by the LDP. The commercial television networks clamored to outdo each other in pillorying the government. During a March 2011 news conference by Prime Minister Kan, audiences of Fuji-TV’s broadcast heard background voices mocking the proceedings: ‘The nuclear story again, you’ve got to be kidding’, ‘Now I can start laughing’. (This insight into the mentality of some in the profession is no longer viewable on YouTube: Fuji-TV has had it removed ‘for copyright reasons’.)
Back at NHK, if Fukushima wasn’t the big story last Wednesday night, what was? A summer heat wave and the price of petrol led News Watch 9. The story immediately preceding the brief mention of Fukushima was a long item about the recovery of Japanese flags and other military paraphernalia taken from Pacific battlefields by American soldiers during the Second World War. Honoring the country’s war dead and comforting bereaved families are worthy causes, but they hardly rank above a current and out-of-control nuclear accident.
Walter Hamilton reported from Japan for the ABC for 11 years.
It may be early days, but I sense that some significant change might be afoot. So much of our political dialogue historically has been about Australia’s relationship with the UK and then the US. John Howard spoke of Australia being the deputy sheriff for the Americans in our region. Tony Abbott talks about an Anglo sphere – presumably linkages to English-speaking countries.
But so much of the discussion in recent weeks about asylum seekers has involved relationships with our own region. In a few short weeks we have seen some quite significant developments.
PM Rudd met President Yudhoyono and arranged a ministerial meeting on regional cooperation on asylum seekers for August 20.
The language was frank and brusque but that is surely much better than the platitudes that so much feature in diplomatic discourse.
Almost without catching his breath, PM Rudd was in Taren Kowt, Afghanistan, thanking Australian soldiers for their service and saying that it was time they came home. The exit from Afghanistan was announced some time ago, but I thought what was remarkable was that Kevin Rudd’s statement was received without any comment or query. Twelve months ago we were still following the US and its pivoting to Asia.
In the lead up to the general election we would normally expect our political leaders to be tugging their forelocks to the US President rather than being actively engaged with our regional neighbours.
It is early days yet, but it seems that some significant realignment to our region is under way. I wonder if some of our political class and the media are following.
The US will continue to be an important ally but with declining US power and influence it is inevitable that we must develop more effective and close relations with our neighbours. The issue of asylum seekers may prove to be an important catalyst in this process.
Regional cooperation will grow out of dealing with specific issues rather than grand statements of cooperation.
As an executive journalist at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation I was concerned on a daily basis with balance and fairness in news and current affairs coverage. I often heard it said, ‘if both sides of politics are criticising us, we’re probably doing a good job’, though I never embraced this mantra. In journalism, as in diplomacy, one does not ensure neutrality by being equally offensive to everyone. Similarly the counting of lines of copy and broadcast minutes, which is standard practice at the ABC during election campaigns to give ‘equal time’ to the opposing political parties, to me smacked of tokenism.
The tone, language and angle of a story, together with its running order within a bulletin or positioning on a web page, are more important factors in determining fairness and balance. The quality of the editorial conversation that accompanies a story’s preparation – its relative freedom from preconceived ideas – and what might be termed the ‘ideological culture’ of the newsroom are also crucial. Indeed, since both these aspects elude easy measurement and sit out of sight of the final audience, it may be they have the greatest significance.
I do not intend to offer an opinion here on how well the ABC discharges its responsibility to achieve fairness and balance, though I know for a fact there exists a corporate consciousness of the need to do so and surveys suggest most consumers of ABC programs believe it is being achieved. I withhold my opinion not because I am complacent about the current state of affairs but because the subject deserves more than a few hundred words.
What I wish to do is to highlight some aspects of the media environment in which the current election is being fought. Prime Minister Rudd has made it an agenda item by accusing News Corporation outlets of running a campaign to unseat Labor. Rudd has implied that News’ critical reporting of over-runs in spending and under-performance in delivery of the NBN is motivated by a desire to protect its investment in Foxtel. Under the previous Labor administration, Julia Gillard effectively boycotted certain commercial radio presenters because of their hostility to her and her government. On the other hand, in my opinion, the Fairfax press has generally tended to portray Tony Abbott in a negative light.
Partisanship is nothing new in the media business. Those who remember opinions being confined to the editorial pages of newspapers ‘once upon a time’ are kidding themselves. I refer back to what I said earlier about the less obvious determinants of fairness and balance in news presentation. What seems to have changed lately is the intensity and relentlessness of news ‘campaigns’ – by which I mean one-sided criticism of a policy or action or personality with the predetermined aim of having it (or him or her) overturned. A corollary of this is the recourse to more extreme partisanship in opinion pieces.
ABC managing director Mark Scott has described the corporation’s role as filling gaps, in programming terms, which result from ‘market failure’. In one sense he is restating the obvious: the ABC has always offered a place for high culture, in-depth analysis and coverage of non-mainstream Australia. A newer manifestation of this role, however, is the appearance of opinion forums, such as The Drum, which seem to operate on the principle that two extreme and opposite views equal balance and fairness. Even if this were the case – and I contend that it isn’t – encouraging a form of debate whose medium is half-truths is not a sound way of informing the public or cultivating an intellectual climate of tolerance and fair-mindedness. Take a look at the online feedback to this and similar forums elsewhere and you may understand what I mean.
On ABC News 24, as well, lobbyists are filling the airwaves with so-called informed comment that in currency trading rooms and racetrack betting rings – poor company for news programs to keep – is commonly referred to as ‘talking your book’.
Another worrying aspect of Mark Scott’s ‘market failure’ concept is that it might signal to staff that their journalism should seek to counteract some perceived bias in the commercial media. In other words, if the ABC is to compete in an increasingly shrill and partisan news environment then absolute balance and fairness could represent a ‘market failure’, i.e. a failure to ‘balance’ the market.
The Insiders program is an earlier ABC venture into what some in the television industry call the ‘Sabbatical rant’. Each Sunday morning a panel of journalists discusses the week’s political affairs. In the interests of a good argument, journalists of known opposing political persuasions are pitted against each other. (As such, it might be argued, they cannot be much use as journalists – but, for the moment, let’s put this consideration to one side). In my last ABC role I had direct management responsibility for Insiders, even though I admit I was never completely comfortable with the program concept. I worried that by relying on the same ‘proven performers’ it did not tap into a sufficiently wide range of opinion. I have never thought journalists should put themselves in the position of articulating political party lines, and, as already stated, I do not accept that journalistic balance is equivalent to a zero-sum game.
The ABC is a vital institution for our democracy, and yet it has powerful enemies. Rupert Murdoch, for one, sees no place for a public broadcaster in a free market economy. It is forever open season on the ABC at The Australian newspaper. Election campaigns are a challenging time for the corporation, needing to deliver quality journalism and be seen to be doing so. There is no better time, therefore, to contemplate the true meaning of balance and fairness. They are the professional values that will sustain the ABC, while other media players rush to mount the barricades of partisanship.
Walter Hamilton worked at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for 32 years.
On Copacabana beach in Rio, Pope Francis celebrated Mass with three million people, more than the Rolling Stones or Carnivale could ever attract. With his obvious modesty he showed himself a great communicator with the young and the poor. He appealed for the rich to share with the poor and solidarity between all people. He called the bishops to accountability rather than autocracy, to walk humbly with struggling people and to meet them on their journey. (John Menadue)
The following, with a minor edit is what he said to the bishops.
“Before all else, we must not yield to the fear once expressed by (Cardinal) John Henry Newman: “… the Christian world is gradually becoming barren and effete, as land which has been worked out and is become sand”. We must not yield to disillusionment, discouragement and complaint. We have laboured greatly and, at times, we see what appear to be failures. We feel like those who must tally up a losing season as we consider those who have left us or no longer consider us credible or relevant.
Let us read once again, in this light, the story of Emmaus (cf. Lk 24:13-15). The two disciples have left Jerusalem. .. They are scandalized by the failure of the Messiah in whom they had hoped and who now appeared utterly vanquished, humiliated, even after the third day (vv. 17-21). Here we have to face the difficult mystery of those people who leave the Church, who, under the illusion of alternative ideas, now think that the Church – their Jerusalem – can no longer offer them anything meaningful and important. So they set off on the road alone, with their disappointment. Perhaps the Church appeared too weak, perhaps too distant from their needs, perhaps too poor to respond to their concerns, perhaps too cold, perhaps too caught up with itself, perhaps a prisoner of its own rigid formulas, perhaps the world seems to have made the Church a relic of the past, unfit for new questions; perhaps the Church could speak to people in their infancy but not to those come of age. It is a fact that nowadays there are many people like the two disciples of Emmaus; not only those looking for answers in the new religious groups that are sprouting up, but also those who already seem godless, both in theory and in practice.
Faced with this situation, what are we to do?
We need a Church unafraid of going forth into their night. We need a Church capable of meeting them on their way. We need a Church capable of entering into their conversation. We need a Church able to dialogue with those disciples who, having left Jerusalem behind, are wandering aimlessly, alone, with their own disappointment, disillusioned by a Christianity now considered barren, fruitless soil, incapable of generating meaning.
A relentless process of globalization, an often uncontrolled process of intense urbanization, has promised great things. Many people have been captivated by their potential, which of course contains positive elements as, for example, the shortening of distance, the drawing closer of peoples and cultures, the diffusion of information and of services. On the other hand, however, many are living the negative effects of these realities without realizing how they affect a proper vision of humanity and of the world. This generates enormous confusion and an emptiness which people are unable to explain, regarding the purpose of life, personal disintegration, the loss of the experience of belonging to a “home” and the absence of personal space and strong personal ties.
And since there is no one to accompany them or to show them with his or her own life the true way, many have sought shortcuts, because the standards set by Mother Church seem to be asking too much. There are also those who recognize the ideal of humanity and of life as proposed by the Church, but they do not have the audacity to embrace it. They think that this ideal is too lofty for them, that it is beyond their abilities, and that the goal the Church sets is unattainable. Nonetheless they cannot live without having at least something, even a poor imitation of what seems too grand and distant. With disappointed hearts, they then go off in search of something which will lead them even further astray, or which brings them to a partial belonging that, ultimately, does not fulfill their lives.
The great sense of abandonment and solitude, of not even belonging to oneself, which often results from this situation, is too painful to hide. Some kind of release is necessary. There is always the option of complaining. But even complaint acts like a boomerang; it comes back and ends up increasing one’s unhappiness. Few people are still capable of hearing the voice of pain; the best we can do is to anaesthetize it.
From this point of view, we need a Church capable of walking at people’s side, of doing more than simply listening to them; a Church which accompanies them on their journey; a Church able to make sense of the “night” contained in the flight of so many of our brothers and sisters from Jerusalem; a Church which realizes that the reasons why people leave also contain reasons why they can eventually return. But we need to know how to interpret, with courage, the larger picture. Jesus warmed the hearts of the disciples of Emmaus.
I would like all of us to ask ourselves today: are we still a Church capable of warming hearts? A Church capable of leading people back to Jerusalem? Of bringing them home? Jerusalem is where our roots are: Scripture, catechesis, sacraments, community, friendship with the Lord, Mary and the apostles… Are we still able to speak of these roots in a way that will revive a sense of wonder at their beauty?
Many people have left because they were promised something more lofty, more powerful, and faster.
But what is more lofty than the love revealed in Jerusalem? Nothing is more lofty than the abasement of the Cross, since there we truly approach the height of love! Are we still capable of demonstrating this truth to those who think that the apex of life is to be found elsewhere?
Do we know anything more powerful than the strength hidden within the weakness of love, goodness, truth and beauty?
People today are attracted by things that are faster and faster: rapid Internet connections, speedy cars and planes, instant relationships. But at the same time we see a desperate need for calmness, I would even say slowness. Is the Church still able to move slowly: to take the time to listen, to have the patience to mend and reassemble? Or is the Church herself caught up in the frantic pursuit of efficiency? Dear brothers, let us recover the calm to be able to walk at the same pace as our pilgrims, keeping alongside them, remaining close to them, enabling them to speak of the disappointments present in their hearts and to let us address them. They want to forget Jerusalem, where they have their sources, but eventually they will experience thirst. We need a Church capable of accompanying them on the road back to Jerusalem! A Church capable of helping them to rediscover the glorious and joyful things that are spoken of Jerusalem, and to understand that she is my Mother, our Mother, and that we are not orphans! We were born in her. Where is our Jerusalem, where were we born? In Baptism, in the first encounter of love, in our calling, in vocation. We need a Church that kindles hearts and warms them.
We need a Church capable of restoring citizenship to her many children who are journeying, as it were, in an exodus”.
In the run-up to the September 7 elections, we will hear a lot of misleading stories about the economy and deficits.
My contention is that with the good luck of the China boom, the government has managed the Australian economy well. Our economic performance is amongst the best in the world. But the public debate has been side-tracked by nonsense about debt and deficits.
Despite the political rhetoric and the flak from News Limited, the evidence on the economy is very clear.
But the government has allowed itself to be side-tracked over the populist nonsense that debt and deficit are the important measures on the economy. The previous Treasurer, Wayne Swann, contributed to these misleading stories by continually making pledges to get the budget back into surplus when it was neither possible nor desirable. In fact, debt and deficits, whilst not unimportant, are secondary issues. Sometimes debt and deficits are appropriate, as in a recession. Sometimes they are not, as in an economic boom.
Have we got a debt and deficit problem?
There is a long-term and structural debt issue for Australia, even if it is a minor one. That problem was largely inherited by the government from the Howard and Costello years. The Howard government locked in tax cuts over eight years from 2004. The IMF in January this year reported that Australia’s most wasteful spending came in the Howard era. Without those tax reductions in the Howard era, budget revenue would now be about $26 billion p.a. higher after adjusting for inflation.
The Rudd and Gillard governments should have done more to reduce the relatively small structural deficits. It did not address some key areas of wasteful and inequitable spending – negative gearing on property, tax-free superannuation income for those over 60 (like me!) and the subsidy to the private health insurance industry. Taken together, reform in these areas would quickly fix the small structural deficit we have.
In short, the economy is performing well. We do not have an unmanageable deft and deficit problem.
Unfortunately the Treasurer Chris Bowen has now confused the issue by promising a wafer-thin budget surplus of $4 billion in 2016-17. Revenues are too volatile for a promise like that in three years’ time to have any credibility. That promise will play into the hands of the economically illiterate in the media who have persuaded themselves and others that the budget is the same as the economy. It is not.
Taro Aso, Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Japan, has a clumsy tongue; it’s always getting him into trouble. He’s so malapropic (remember the one about people becoming so affluent ‘even the homeless are getting diabetes’), we can only shake our heads and say, ‘Japan’s a funny place,’ before changing the channel on our Sonys.
But wait a moment. Did he really say this latest thing?
On Monday Aso addressed a forum on constitutional change organised by a right-wing lobby group, the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals (more on it later). He spoke extempore, as usual, with an eye to creating controversy that, if necessary, might be explained away later. The rubric ‘I was misunderstood’ or ‘I failed to explain myself properly’ or ‘I didn’t say what I meant’ is familiar with politicians of Aso’s type, who habitually linger between not meaning what they say and not saying what they mean.
The Deputy Prime Minister reminded his audience that the National Socialist Party in Germany came to power by democratic means under the Weimar Constitution. ‘They did not seize power by force of arms. It’s easy to forget they were chosen by the German people.’
He then turned to the subject at hand.
Inside Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, he said, discussion of constitutional change went on calmly, without raised voices, and that was the best way to proceed. Politicians need not stir up passions by, for instance, visiting Yasukuni Shrine on the anniversary of Japan’s defeat. (Yasukuni enshrines the country’s war dead, including a number of convicted war criminals.) China and South Korea were sure to complain. Why not go, quietly, on another day? It was always better to avoid a fuss (though he conceded, mischievously, that when he once suggested the anniversary of Japan’s 1905 victory over Russia as a better day it had caused one.)
Mr Aso again took up the example of Germany to illustrate his argument: ‘One day, before anyone was aware, the Weimar Constitution was changed into the Nazi Constitution. It was changed without anyone noticing. Why don’t we learn from that technique.’
Oops.
Presumably the particular audience he was addressing found it instructive to learn from the Nazis, since it was not until his comments were reported in the media, and condemned in the United States, Germany, China and South Korea, that a retraction became necessary. Reading from a prepared statement on Friday he conceded that it was inappropriate to offer the Nazis as a model for any undertaking. He had been ‘misunderstood’.
In reporting Aso’s original comments, some Japanese media outlets suggested he was being sarcastic, or at least ambiguous, and should not be taken seriously. The Japan Times – well known for its pro-LDP leanings – was one of them. But having gone over Aso’s entire speech with the assistance of a Japanese native speaker, I believe there can be no doubt he was extolling the virtues of constitutional change by stealth.
Aso is not a minor member of the government. He served – without distinction – as Prime Minister in 2008-2009 and remains close to the current leader Shinzo Abe. Both men are descendants of Japan’s conservative old guard. Taro Aso is a grandson of Shigeru Yoshida, who led Japan in the 1940s and 1950s, and his wife is a daughter of another former LDP chief Zenko Suzuki. His views on history reflect an intimate connection with past historical misdeeds. A family business, Aso Mining Company, in Fukuoka (Aso’s electorate) exploited Korean conscript labour and Allied prisoners, including nearly 200 Australian POWs.
The organisation that provided Aso a platform for his ‘Nazi’ remarks, the Japan Institute for National Fundamentals, formed in 2007, has a mission to ‘reconstruct’ a ‘malfunctioning’ Japan. Its president is Yoshiko Sakurai, 67, whose career in journalism began with the foreign media in Tokyo in the 1970s. She attracted a following as the host of a nightly television current affairs program in the 1980s and 1990s, taking up progressive social issues. More recently, however, she has become a glamorous proponent of extreme right-wing views.
Her institute can be judged by its string of recent policy pronouncements: ‘All Japanese must be resolved to reject foreign interference in our own affairs’; ‘Japan should lead international rule-setting to pursue national interest’; ‘Japan should not abandon nuclear power generation’. Sakurai advocates a tough line against China and South Korea, abandonment of Japan’s pacifist constitution, and all-out pursuit of the LDP’s economic and cultural agenda. Born in Hanoi just a month after the surrender, she is the archetypal ‘child’ of the postwar peace and prosperity Japan has enjoyed under its current constitution. As a political insider and media darling, however, she appeals to younger Japanese ripe to be recruited to the argument that Japan has become a ‘malfunctioning state’ (a phrase the Nazis would have approved of) due to a lack of vigour and self-assertiveness.
The accident-prone Mr Aso will have done his country and the world a service if only, by knocking over the furniture, he has managed to awaken the household to the presence of intruders stepping softly towards the family jewels.
In my blog of March 14 on Productivity and Skills I drew attention to the failure of Australian business to equip itself for Asia. PM Rudd in his address to the National Press Club on 16 July this year put it very clearly.
‘I am concerned that if you went through our business elites, you would not find a lot of the top 25 executives in each of our top 100 firms who have spent any of their career time serving in Asia – the engine driver of the global economy through until mid-century. Remember this is the Asian Century. The truth is Australia is much underdone in Asia.’
There are many reasons for our business failure in Asia. One is the continuing habit of company boards appointing people like themselves – Anglo-Celtic males, often from the same schools and with little knowledge or experience in Asia. Talk about the unions running a closed shop!
One other major obstacle in Australia and elsewhere to developing Asian skills in our major companies is their failure to align business and human resource strategies. Cross-cultural experience that are learned by appointing staff overseas are too often ad hoc and operational. Overseas appointments are not used as the catalyst to drive change in the organisation at home.
The most extreme example that I know of business failure to integrate business and HR strategy is Rio Tinto. It staffed its Shanghai office with local Chinese. Unfortunately some of them finished in goal. But the major failure was that Rio Tinto apparently had no plan to use postings in China to develop executives who would come back to Australia and use the experience gained in China to drive cultural and organisational change in Australia.
This failure is not just an Australian problem. A recent Global Mobility Effectiveness Survey, 2012, by Ernst & Young entitled ‘Driving Business Success’ highlighted the problem of so many firms sending staff overseas in a quite ad hoc manner and not using that experience learned overseas to enrich the talent pool of the organisation. (This survey covered 520 international countries including some from Australia.)
The survey said that business should take several crucial steps to improve its performance in overseas markets. It said that companies needed to ‘better align mobility strategy with business strategy … crucially talent-management and global mobility must be integrated.’
There is a lot of depressing reading from this survey.
I will write later about the disappointment of many executives who on return from overseas postings quickly leave their organisations. They often feel that the cultural experience overseas has changed them and their outlook on the world but the culture of the company back in Australia has not changed. It remained a closed shop. So they leave and the money invested in them is lost, at least to the company.
If there is any consolation in the Ernst & Young survey it is that Australia is not alone in failure to equip itself for Asia and new markets. But with our geographic position, we have probably more to lose by not properly equipping ourselves for our own region.
A key is clearly the integration of a business strategy for Asia and the human resources strategy – to steadily build on the experience of executives living and working in Asia, and when they return to Australia to use that experience to drive organisational change at home. We have a long way to go.
There is a lot of lip service by Australian companies about the Asian Century. They seem unable to grasp what is involved to change organisational culture and in the process drive productivity improvements and their long-term business prospects in our region.
The business and other opportunities in Asia is not something new. The spectacular economic rise of Japan started 50 years ago. It was followed by Korea. Now it is China. Where has our business sector been in the last 50 years? It has profited opportunistically but has not built the skill base we need for the long term.
Forgive me for repeating myself, but you might be interested in a presentation I gave on this subject in February 2012 (see below).
We have talked a lot about the need for regional arrangements, but progress has been extremely slow. Our political system based on ministerial and departmental responsibility has failed us badly on refugee issues. A new approach involving civil society – NGOs, academics and others is necessary to help us break out of the awful situation into which we have spiralled.
A Regional Cooperation Framework
International Association of Refugee Law Judges
Melbourne 3 February 2012
There are 33 million persons of concern to the UNHCR throughout the world. There are about 15 million refugees. With instability and failed states, numbers are likely to increase, including in transit countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia.
For our neighbourhood there will be no satisfactory arrangement concerning refugees and asylum seekers and particularly boat people without regional cooperation. It is so obvious, except for those who want to play politics with the lives of boat people.
I have chosen my words carefully in saying that there will be no ‘satisfactory arrangement’ rather than talking about ‘solutions’. For whatever we can accomplish together with our neighbours, asylum flows will remain chaotic and unpredictable. Desperate and vulnerable people will never abide by the ‘rules’ we seek to impose. But together with our neighbours we can do a lot better.
The successful resettlement of over 240,000 Indochinese in Australia, initiated by our acceptance of over 100,000 refugees followed by orderly departures and family reunion, could never have occurred without regional cooperation. The same is true today. Regional cooperation in the late seventies and eighties was not pretty at times, but it worked. Regional countries provided temporary protection for 1.4 million people who fled after the fall of Saigon. Resettlement countries were able to catch their breath and then generously respond. Just imagine if 50,000 of that 1.4 million had arrived by boat in northern Australia. The successful programs of the Fraser Government could not have succeeded in those circumstances.
But in dealing with our region we are often fair-weather friends, turning to them when we have a problem and then walking away. We also seem to have an unfortunate ability to project an air of superiority. Consider our record.
With so few convention signatories in our region, any regional cooperation framework will have to be constructed with non-signatory countries. A regional framework cannot be conjured out of thin air. It must be built from materials available. In that regard, there is an instructive precedent in the 1984 Cartagena (Colombia) Declaration on Refugees. At that time, 150,000 central American refugees were being assisted in the region. There were another 1.8 million people who had fled across a border or were displaced in their own country by conflict.
The Cartagena Declaration was adopted by a group of ‘government experts and eminent jurists’ from Belize, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama and Venezuela. Three of these countries were not signatories to the Refugee Convention in 1984 when the Declaration was agreed. The Declaration was a modest start, but it contained a number of important recommendations. Significantly the Declaration broadened the definition of a ‘refugee’ set out in the 1951 Convention to include those ‘who have fled their country because their lives, safety or freedom have been threatened by generalised violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive violation of human rights or other circumstances which have seriously disturbed public order’.
The Cartagena Declaration was further enhanced by the 1989 International Conference on Central American Refugees and the Mexican Declaration of 2004. Argentina (a non-signatory to the Refugee Convention) and Chile (a signatory) subsequently became parties.
Not surprisingly, these developments have not been straight-forward. There have been restrictive interpretations of the Declaration and exclusion of some clauses by some countries. But the progress has been clear.
There are also some lessons that we can learn about a regional cooperation framework in Africa where the numbers and the problems have been much greater than in Central America. In 2009, the African Union Convention for the protection and assistance of internally displaced persons in Africa was signed. This African Union Convention was the first legally binding instrument on internal displacement on a continent-wide basis. It provides a comprehensive regional framework setting out provisions for the protection and assistance of internally displaced persons.
In our region we must work actively with Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia if we are ever to find an enduring arrangement. If the Malaysian agreement offered anything, it offered the chance of accelerating the process of developing sensible, practical and robust asylum policies in the region. We need to strengthen the Bali process. It could lead to common asylum policies and practices in the region and ultimately to a regional protection instrument. Bali was initially focused on enforcement and criminalisation of people-smuggling, but has progressively shifted to humanitarian issues and population flows.
Both UNHCR in its ‘10 Point Plan of Action for Refugee Protection and Mixed Migration (2007)’ and OXFAM in its ‘Asylum Seekers; The Way Forward’ have outlined the key elements of a regional framework, including effective screening systems, protection-sensitive reception arrangements, durable solutions including resettlement, alternative migration pathways and repatriation, together with targeted development assistance. A critical element in any regional protection framework is that countries who commit to action are not left to carry the burden of managing and maintaining irregular migrants for prolonged periods.
There will be important roles for international agencies, jurists, local and international NGOs, regional governments and the Australian Government. Our government would assist by supporting the establishment of a well-resourced policy unit within the Bali Process Secretariat. That secretariat is a collaborative effort of more than 50 countries and international agencies. More strategically, Australia should target its humanitarian development assistance programs to benefit asylum populations in areas such as housing, health, jobs and education.
If the Malaysian Agreement is viewed through a regional lens, it can become the catalyst together with Bali to start the process of building a durable protection system and delivering protection dividends for all asylum seekers as well as nationals in the transit countries and Australia.
Second-track Dialogue and the Role of Jurists
It is noteworthy that the Cartagena Declaration was adopted by a group of ‘government experts and eminent jurists’ from ten countries. The UNHCR described the inaugural meeting in 1984 as a ‘colloquium of experts’.
Whilst the Declaration was not a treaty, its provisions became respected across the region. In particular the new refugee definition was incorporated in the legislation of most of the countries of the Americas.
Could the International Association of Refugee Law Judges initiate a similar regional ‘colloquium’ of experts? I notice that your website states that your Chapter is keen to encourage judges and decision-makers from our region to join in biennial regional deliberations. You comment that it might be possible for your Chapter to develop into an Asian-Pacific Chapter. I could only encourage you to explore that as soon as possible. A regional colloquium could help break the log-jamb on regional cooperation and related refugee issues. I think it is clear that the current ministerial/departmental model, together with the politicisation of refugee issues has brought us to the present sorry position, where good policy outcomes are very difficult to achieve. We need to break out of the party-political prison.
We need a more broadly based ‘track 2 dialogue’ in our region that can promote confidence and resolution of seemingly intractable issues. Such a dialogue would bring together a broad cross section of key players outside government with policy-makers, in their personal capacity as experts, to start the process of building a new dialogue and approach to both regional and domestic refugee issues. My comments here of course refer only to the regional issues.
Such an approach as this is not something that Australian Governments have traditionally engaged in except at the periphery through ‘consultation’ or commissioning one-off enquiries into certain matters. However, if done well, this type of approach could be transformational in breaking down the misunderstandings and suspicions of different countries and groups. The lack of such an approach serves only to perpetuate and reinforce the current stalemate.
The objective of this type of dialogue is to develop a shared understanding and a shared knowledge of the role of various countries and players on refugee issues. It can break down barriers and facilitate the development of a common understanding and knowledge of each other’s issues and concerns. This approach requires a long-term and sustained commitment by all parties.
Ideally this approach should start modestly and then progressively bring together actors from a broad spectrum of regional interests including jurists and the UNHCR. It would include social policy and refugee and asylum experts as well as persons familiar with intelligence and border security issues. Such a wide span of interests can help create a less hostile environment and open the door to mutually beneficial policies without the suspicion that pervades the present approach. It would enable players outside government to influence new policy thinking and create the space for government officials to ‘think aloud’.
Such an approach would need to have the implicit backing of government to allow officials to participate in their personal capacities.
Would your Chapter be prepared to sponsor a regional ‘colloquium of experts’ in Kuala Lumpur?
As I said at the beginning, no satisfactory arrangement is possible without active regional cooperation. We cannot do this on our own and neither can our neighbours. We need a Regional Refugee Instrument which whilst based on the 1951/67 Convention, recognises the particular problems of our region, one of which is that few regional countries are signatories to the Refugee Convention.
Governments are strengthened when they work collaboratively with each other and with civil society organisations. We must build trust in the region. Importantly it will mean working with countries, who almost without exception are not signatories to the Refugee Convention.
In my blog of July 20, I referred to the Regional Settlement Agreement with PNG. With some reservations I described it as the least-worst option. Some were surprised at my comments. I wish it were otherwise, but in the toxic and poisonous political debate over refugees since John Howard’s time, we have had to face up to many unpalatable facts.
The coalition has been the principal cause of this toxic situation. It broke with bipartisanship on refugees because it felt it was to its political advantage to focus our fears on the foreigner. I don’t think the coalition has genuinely wanted the boats to stop whilst ever it was in opposition. It was political manna from heaven to have the boat arrivals continue.
The Greens have taken a “holier-than-thou” political position and have sided with Tony Abbott in the Senate on the key issue of the agreement with Malaysia. The Greens and many NGOs have wanted the government to undertake a political ‘mission impossible’.
The government has failed to provide political leadership or rebutted the crude politics of the coalition. So paralysed by boat arrivals it has failed to develop effective ‘upstream’ policies to reduce boat arrivals on our doorstep. These upstream policies offer the best prospect of success. I will refer to them below.
What triggered the RSA with PNG was that the government was told that on present trends, boat arrivals could top 40,000 to 50,000 persons a year. That projected figure of up to 50,000 would invite a tough response from any Australian government. Rightly or wrongly, the Australian community would just not cop it. That is a fact of political life. From time to time I wonder what planet some refugee advocates live on.
I understand that all wings of the Cabinet and the ALP caucus – left, right and centre – agreed that boat arrivals at these projected levels could not continue. That doesn’t imply that the position taken on PNG is necessarily “correct”. But it does say a lot about the political situation when all factions agree.
I have always been of the view that firm compliance/border protection is essential if we are to have public support for a substantial and growing humanitarian/refugee program. For example if we had today the same scale of intake that we had during the Indochina outflow, adjusted for our population increase, the program today would be about 35,000 p.a. rather than the present program of only 20,000. I was involved with Malcolm Fraser and Ian Macphee in what is now regarded as the most successful refugee settlement program in our history. My view is that it could not have been sustained if we had then had boat arrivals at the present or projected levels we now have. In the years when the Indochina program was at its peak, there were an average of ten boats a year and an average of 340 boat people a year. The high point was in 1977-78 when there were 43 boats and 1423 boat people. Today it is infinitely greater than that. Even with the small number of boat arrivals during the Fraser period we were very anxious to minimise publicity about the threat of boat arrivals. Furthermore Malcolm Fraser had Gough Whitlam and Bill Hayden broadly in support. It is very different today with Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison.
But before I discuss ways to minimise the PNG arrangement, let me say something further about the PNG arrangement.
How best to minimise PNG
Together with others, I have been urging for over a decade two particular actions ‘upstream’ to reduce boat arrivals. Malcolm Fraser referred to these in his guest blog of July 15.
The first is that we must share the burden of asylum seekers with regional countries. In cooperation with UNHCR we need to work urgently with Indonesia and Malaysia to establish regional processing centres in those countries. This would need to be on the understanding that those countries will safely hold asylum seekers for processing and that resettlement countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand, will largely finance these processing centres and promptly agree to resettle those found to be refugees. These were the key features in the management of the Indochina refugee program.
We have been far too slow in focusing on doing this through the Bali Process. Unfortunately regional countries often regard us as fair-weather friends, running to them when we have a problem and not working to share the burdens in a long-term relationship. We have spent a lot of our political capital in Indonesia on drug smugglers. This regional processing is urgent. Hopefully the meeting that PM Rudd and President Yudhoyono have agreed on can give regional processing a major boost.
The second key to ‘upstream’ processing is to negotiate Orderly Departure Agreements with key source countries – Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. We did it with Vietnam in 1983 and brought 100,000 Vietnamese to Australia in safety over many years. ODAs provide a means for persons facing discrimination or worse within their own country to find an orderly way to come to Australia particularly if family members are in Australia. As the civil war in Iraq worsens and the end of Western occupation of Afghanistan draws near, we are likely to see many more people in those two countries facing a grim prospect. We have contributed to the breaking of society in both Iraq and Afghanistan with our own counter-productive military occupation. We will be obliged to help mend what we have helped break.
The government has been paralysed like a rabbit in a search-light over boat arrivals when it should have been energetically pursuing through diplomatic means upstream processing to minimise pressure on our borders. It is essential now to minimise what we face with the arrangement with PNG.
The RSA with PNG has been described as a ‘solution’. But it is not a solution. The best we can hope for is to manage the situation better in the future. Dealing with human beings facing a desperate situation will always be messy. They will not necessarily play by the rules that we determine.
In my blog of July 5, I compared the March quarter 2013 primary refugee protection visa rate for various nationalities and the finally determined grant rate.
In the case of Iranian nationals the grant rate rose from 55% at the primary stage to 86% on appeal. That is 86% of Iranian boat arrivals were finally found to be genuine refugees in the March quarter 2013. Because of this I queried Foreign Minister Carr’s comments about Iranian boat people being mainly economic migrants.
I have had to rely on the March quarter 2013 figures as they are the latest available from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. However it should be acknowledged that this March quarter Iranian cohort would be in respect of Iranians who had arrived six or twelve months before. The refugee determination process would normally take six to twelve months or more.
There could have been a significant change in the profile of Iranian asylum seekers over the last six to twelve months or so. The first indication of this is that the Indonesian Government has apparently been persuaded of the changing profile of the Iranian boat people by the Australian Government and has now refused to grant visas on arrival to Iranians entering Indonesia. Iranian nationals wanting entry to Indonesia will now have to apply for a visa in Iran or in a third country.
The second factor is that Foreign Minister Carr has now been much more explicit about Iranian boat arrivals. He recently said ‘The advice I have got is that overwhelmingly the Iranians coming here are middle-class Iranians. They are from the majority ethnic and religious group in the country. And they are coming here as economic refugees. They are coming as economic migrants, not as refugees.’ He added later ‘The profile [of Iranian boat people] has changed’.
The third factor is that undoubtedly the proportion of Iranian boat arrivals has increase significantly. In the June quarter 2012 they represented about 10% of boat arrivals. According to media reports they now represent close to 40 % of boat arrivals. The actual numbers tell the same story, up from 352 in the June quarter 2012 to an estimated 3600 in the June quarter this year
We will have to wait for further information on the refugee determination rates for Iranians and others. But I would not now dismiss completely, the comments by Foreign Minister Carr.
But there is another way to address this issue if the profile of Iranian asylum seekers is changing.
The population of Iran is increasing very rapidly. It has been referred to as a “population time bomb” The population is young. The middle class is also growing rapidly. It is well educated.
Iranians have a lot of “get up and go”. My observation is they make very good migrants. They are determined people and perhaps for that reason they get up the nose of Immigration officials.
They are repressed by the mullahs but probably more importantly the sanctions imposed by the west are biting hard. Not surprisingly with population and economic pressures at home many want to leave Iran.
It must be possible to open a different migration pathway for eligible Iranians through some type of skilled migration program, perhaps a 457 visa or sponsored migration. Surely we have Australian companies that would be supportive. Iran is an important market for Australian wheat
Perhaps the Government is considering this option if, as seems likely, the profile of Iranian boat arrivals is changing. Unfortunately the Government is so paralysed by boat arrivals it seems unable to focus on more creative and workable programs that would address an ever changing situation.
The saga proceeds in relation to people seeking refugee asylum in our country. The latest contribution in these last few days is that we should seek changes in the UN Refugee Convention because circumstances have changed since it was introduced after WWII. The label “economic migrants” is being resurrected as a reason for refusing refugee asylum to thousands of people protected by the Convention.
The idea that this situation can be dealt with by negotiating amendments to the Refugee Convention is fatuous. The chances of serious changes being achieved in the lifetimes of the currently displaced asylum seekers and their children, if ever, are non-existent. So is a new Convention. Many years of discussions in Geneva and elsewhere about the possible need to review the Convention in certain respects, in which I played a small part, actually produced proposals for its strengthening, not its weakening to relieve countries like Australia from its humanitarian obligations to provide rescue and relief of people fleeing terror and persecution, and yes, the consequent economic hardship that physical displacement always causes.
Have circumstances changed in fact since WW2? Once again people are being compelled to flee their homes by brutal, indiscriminate, often racially based armed force. Because of the immense dangers of not fleeing, they have to leave behind virtually everything they own thus placing them of course at economic peril.
In western societies, people forced out of their homes by natural or even manmade disasters suffer danger and economic hardship but are supported by governments and public subscription until they can safely return and rebuild. Why should people in other countries fearing death or torture at the hands of armed gangs be any less worthy of support?
In many decades of assisting refugees and displaced people in some truly awful camps in Malawi, Bosnia, Palestine, Bangladesh and other places, I have hardly met one whose first choice was not returning to their own countries. Home is what they know and love. The request they invariably make is not transportation to Australia or Canada but for help to go home, and support in the meantime so they can keep their kids alive and safe. Many sit and wait for years in terrible conditions. Some cannot wait any longer, as is entirely understandable. In the same situation, would we not move to save our kids from persecution and penury, even death on unseaworthy boats over vast expanses of dangerous oceans? Demonise them if you must but some people smugglers in history have been heroes, like Oskar Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg and the European priests and nuns and other ordinary citizens who hid Jews from the Nazis.
Our recent and current leaders know this story very well. Historically we have a proud record in refugee rescue and relief. They, like we, know that refugees have made towering contributions to Australia’s progress and achievements in many fields. Unfortunately too few are cricketers or footballers or this discussion might not even be necessary. But in recent years our leaders have consistently failed us, and those who suffer, by failing to explain publicly why we as a decent people must help people in need. As a wealthy country of 25 million people, we are simply not going to be adversely affected by taking 25,000 [0.1%] more people over 5 years or more [a tiny number in world terms] who have nowhere to go back to and will, as did their predecessors, make eminently successful migrants and contribute to the growth and success of our country.
No tidal wave is approaching, merely drips that can seamlessly be woven into our proud cultural tapestry. While ever the world is beset by violence, we cannot stop the boats, still less turn them around. Other solutions can and must be found. But that is another article.
What was that about Australia and the Asian Century? The umbilical cords still tie us to the past. John Menadue
From Walter Hamilton:
I had a choice today on the ABC Online News website of reading a story about a galah plague in a Queensland outback town or viewing the ‘first pictures’ (breathless pause) of a certain baby born in London the other night. I chose the galahs. Earlier in the day, sitting in the waiting room of a doctor’s surgery, I kept my head down and read my Kindle book as Channel Seven’s breakfast show replayed a clip of London crowd noise at least three times. Shamefully, the television station ignored the galahs – though no less melodious and far more relevant to an Australian audience.
Am I the grouch who stole Christmas for considering Australian media coverage of the so-called ‘royal birth’ (I thought we all came into this world naked of any pretentions) excessive, fawning and puerile? My irritation turned to annoyance – in cockatoo-terms, my yellow crest shot up – when I heard the ABC leading a radio news bulletin the other evening with a story about a certain young lady in London going into labour (I don’t mean Labor – that might be more in keeping). News? The most important news? Escapism as news? No wonder the galahs are massing Hitchcock-like. The noble profession of journalism – so finely represented by reporters embedded at a private hospital and gushing out ‘live crosses’ – has become the playground exercise frame on which the birds are perching. Galahs all.
Now I am told I must join the guessing game about the likely name for this London infant: George or Philip or Bruce or whatever. As if it makes the slightest difference, except to tabloid magazine editors (joined now, it seems, by every other news organisation that, once upon a time, would have shown more editorial discrimination and balance) who glory in selling this cheap pap. I can already imagine the ‘Boom in George [fill in alternative] Baby Name’ stories being prepared for trotting out three months hence.
Yes, I am a republican. I don’t wish Queen Elizabeth and her progeny anything but health and happiness, but they mean nothing to me and I wish they meant much less than they apparently do to my fellow Australians (though our Anglo-Saxon-dominated media may have seriously miscalculated the interest of the majority of Australians who aren’t). But I do not despair. The fact that the Windsors (the ‘royals’) are fodder for the celebrity circuit underscores their irrelevance for the serious business of defining Australian sovereignty and polity. Yes, the goings-on of the rich and would-be famous are a handy place to escape from the complex and trying issues that really command our attention and really shape our lives. No great harm in that. The mistake would be to think that any of this ‘Will he be George’ stuff carries any weight for Australia or its future. Let the British have their monarchy; but, please, let’s not humiliate ourselves by pressing our noses against the shop window, moon-eyed, because it is a closed shop – as anyone who has lived in the UK knows – and we long ago forfeited the price of entry.
Listen to the galahs. They are screaming for us to wake up.
Walter Hamilton is a former ABC correspondent and author of “Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story.”
With the dust settling a little I thought it might be safe to return to this issue!
I said in my blog of July 20 that I supported the general thrust of the RSA with PNG, although a lot remained to be sorted out and the implementation is already showing signs of problems. Without repeating myself too much, however, I emphasise the following.
A lot remains to be done and implementation will be difficult as we are seeing already.
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) won a resounding victory in last weekend’s Upper House election. It now has sufficient seats in both houses of parliament to dominate the important Diet committees and ensure passage of key legislation. The LDP, however, has fallen short of obtaining enough votes to push through constitutional change on its own.
Amendments require the support of two-thirds of both houses of the Diet, before being put to a referendum. The LDP still does not command a two-thirds majority, even with the support of right-wing opposition parties that favour ditching the pacifist clauses that were inserted in the constitution by the Americans during the postwar occupation. The LDP would also need the backing of its coalition partner, the New Komeito, the political arm of the lay Buddhist organisation Soka Gakkai. The New Komeito has traditionally supported Japan’s pacifist stance, and during the election campaign Prime Minister Shinzo Abe trod carefully so as not to overstrain the coalition relationship.
Mr Abe undoubtedly has enhanced his power by the election win. The LDP’s position is as strong now as it was when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi led the party to a stunning electoral victory in 2005. Ironically, as Koizumi’s immediate successor, Abe was a conspicuous failure in the top job first time around. Since returning to office last December, however, a reinvigorated and self-assured Abe has swept all before him. The Democratic Party of Japan, which held power for three years, has been reduced to a rump, and its future existence is in doubt. The experiment in two-party politics Japan embarked upon two decades ago is over.
But behind the appearance of LDP invincibility is a more complex reality.
The first thing to note is that voter turnout for the Upper House election was a miserable 53 per cent – the lowest in 20 years. The party’s big win was built on a shaky basis of voter apathy or disillusionment. Secondly, Abe’s popularity is due largely to recent signs of economic revival: stock prices are up, industrial output is growing and consumer confidence has rebounded. But ‘Abenomics’ must start delivering higher wages and greater job security if it is to outlast the electoral cycle. The problem for the government is that, in order to retain the confidence of the money markets, it must attend to reform of state finances by pushing through an increase in the consumption tax next year. There is a risk that the tax hike could snuff out the flame of economic revival before tangible benefits reach the pay packets of Middle Japan. Navigating this unpopular reform will consume a significant portion of Abe’s political capital.
Then there is the issue of Japan’s strained relations with China. The dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands hangs over the relationship like a monsoon front. The first time he was the head of government Abe showed an unexpected capacity for rebuilding Sino-Japanese relations after a stormy period (under Koizumi). This time, however, he has a direct stake in the issue at the heart of the problem. Again, in venturing forward, he must risk political capital. There is a pressing need – and feelers have already gone out – for a leaders’ summit between Abe and the Chinese President Xi Jinping. But can there be a summit without some form of compromise, or at least an understanding, on the territorial issue? Will Abe lose favour with the right wing of his party if, in order to gain a summit, he, for instance, foregoes a visit to Yasukuni Shrine next month on or around the anniversary of the end of the war? There is little prospect of an early rapprochement with Beijing should he make such a visit, and the absence of progress on that front could start to spook the financial markets.
All of this suggests that constitutional change may have to take a back seat. If, however, Abe decides to concentrate his effort on this potent agenda item, by trying to persuade the New Komeito to lend support for amendments (starting perhaps with an amendment to make it easier to change the constitution), the government’s economic and foreign policy objectives could end up being sacrificed to an ideological battle of uncertain outcome. It is a delicate political judgment. Constitutional change has been a plank of LDP policy since the party was formed in 1955, and many in its ranks are keen to seize the opportunity to cast off the last vestige of Japan’s wartime defeat. The prize is just out of reach of a simple ‘grab and run’. In reaching out for the holy grail of his conservative forebears Abe’s real mettle as a politician and a leader may be tested to the limit.
Walter Hamilton is a former ABC Tokyo correspondent and author of “Children of the Occupation: Japan’s Untold Story”.
Following their counterparts in the US, the attention of the international media has been attracted by the acquittal last Saturday by a Miami jury of 6 women of neighbourhood watch monitor George Zimmerman for shooting dead a young black teenager Trayvon Martin. My knowledge of the matter comes only from media reports but I have taken the trouble to seek out some of the more responsible outlets for these observations.
There was no dispute that Zimmerman shot and killed Martin who was unarmed at the time. Zimmerman claimed that Martin attacked him and that he fired in self-defence. Even Trayvon’s mother, although unquestioningly loving of him, has not suggested that her son was an angel.
Understandably having regard to the long repression of African Americans by the predominant white population, there has been an outcry of racism as the sole or main explanation for the jury’s unwillingness to convict Zimmerman of either murder or manslaughter. Black celebrities like Beyonce have appeared at demonstrations to attack the verdict. President Obama spoke of the possibility that he might once have been Trayvon. Unlike Australia and many other places including other states of the US, a conviction for manslaughter in Florida would apparently have brought a sentence of life imprisonment.
It is well known that America has had serious problems of racism throughout its history, and there is no reason to believe that either Zimmerman or his jury was unaffected by this scourge, one way or the other. However, there was apparently no evidence at the trial that Zimmerman had any history of racist attitudes or views.
Moreover, before this jury was selected, each of the original panel was allowed to be interrogated about their possible biases and other motivations. This process, not generally followed in Australia or the UK, is designed to and often does throw up serious prejudices on the part of potential jurors that might affect the fair judgment of the case. Nothing apparently emerged to suggest that any of the eventual six jurors had any views that militated against an unbiased verdict in this case.
So allow me to put an entirely different possible explanation of his acquittal. In my long experience as an advocate and a Judge, there was one thread of consistency. Assuming he is not a thug with an actual or presumed history of criminality, or the central allegation is of violence against a woman whose account is credible, a young man is significantly less likely to be convicted by female jurors than by males. This phenomenon may arise because women, especially mothers, have an acute understanding of how young men and boys get into trouble, perhaps born of their experiences with their own sons. They are also very quick to defend their sons of allegations of miscreances. Men tend to be much less patient and tolerant of young men, perhaps knowing what they did as young men themselves.
In an interview with CNN after the trial, one woman juror spoke of the evidence given at the trial by a young female friend of the victim, called by the prosecution, as being unhelpful and unconvincing, for which read untrue. My second piece of relevant experience, then, is that women are infinitely more judgmental of other women than men. Women can tell that another woman is lying much more perceptively than men who tend to be protective and understanding, even forgiving.
Taking all this into account, it is certainly worth considering that the combination of these two peculiarly female factors is just as likely to have affected the verdict as racism.
Australia and Japan are at loggerheads before the International Court of Justice not because they disagree over whaling but because they disagree and are both members of the International Whaling Commission. What may at first seem a fussy distinction is fundamental and important. It is only because of their mutual commitments under an international convention that the whaling dispute can come before the court in The Hague. In response to Australia’s complaint that it has been acting in bad faith by cloaking ‘commercial whaling under the lab coat of science,’ Japan has cited its continuing membership of the IWC as proof of a good faith commitment to multilateralism and consensus building. The accusation of bad faith is one to which Japan has taken particular exception, not assuaged by assurances from Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus that the ICJ case need not harm bilateral relations. In oral arguments before the court, the Japanese legal team has taken aim at Australian bad faith in the presentation of selective and distorted testimony and comments by Mr Dreyfus that, irrespective of the court’s decision, the government would continue to oppose Japan’s whaling program by, among other things, accommodating the activities of the radical Sea Shepherd group.
Australian media coverage of the ICJ case has been patchy, at best, given the amount of space and time devoted to the antics of Sea Shepherd. Methodical argument in a court of law is necessarily less accessible to superficial minds. But the to-and-fro in The Hague has been quite as lively by way of sarcasm, rhetorical flourishes and the cut and thrust of cross-examination. Both sides have employed an impressive array of advocates including, on the Japanese side, leading Iranian, Scottish and English barristers.
But what is the court asked to decide? What is it empowered to decide?
The ICJ is asked to determine whether Japan is meeting its obligations under the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, specifically whether its program of ‘scientific whaling’ meets the requirements set out under Article 8. Japan argues that research data it has obtained through the killing of whales could not be obtained any other way and that it has fully met requirements to notify the IWC and respond to the input of its Scientific Committee. According to Japan, the court is not competent to distinguish good science from bad but must determine simply whether the whaling convention has been followed. While Australia argues that Japan’s research does not fulfill essential criteria for a scientific program – specificity and apparent usefulness, the formulation and testing of hypotheses, and peer review – the narrow scope of the court’s competency and jurisdiction would seem, on the evidence presented, to make a ruling against Japan unlikely. The outcome is expected before the end of the year.
Australia took a costly, high-risk gamble by bringing the case to the International Court of Justice. If Japan’s ‘scientific whaling’ is endorsed by the court, anti-whaling groups that pay no heed to anything other than direct action will claim vindication. If the Australian government continues to agitate against Japan, having lost the legal argument, it may appear a bad loser whose opposition to whaling lacks logic or scientific basis and rests merely on a presumption of cultural superiority – the very thing Japan alleges. But, on the other side of the ledger, is the modern obligation on nations with shared interests and joined together under an international convention to seek and respect the judgment of their peers. Here is the inestimable value of the exercise.
Which brings me back to the importance of the two countries’ membership of the IWC. While the commission is not worth much at present, being deeply divided between pro- and anti-whaling factions, the alternative is unilateralism of the Sea Shepherd sort. Australia has a distinguished record of participation in multilateral responses to world problems. Since 1945, so has Japan. A compromise on the whaling issue was within reach at the IWC a few years ago, until zealous prohibitionists gained sway within both Labor and Coalition circles. Unilateralism is not a sound policy for a country like Australia (leave that to the North Koreas of this world). If it does not like the decision coming from The Hague, Australia’s worst course of action would be to leave the IWC or surrender prosecution of the argument to demagogues and free agents. Some Australian media outlets have selectively reported Japan’s comments before the ICJ to suggest it is ready to pull out of the IWC if the decision goes against it. As already pointed out, to the contrary, Japan insists its continued membership is proof of its good faith. It would puncture that argument by leaving, and the same goes for Australia.
Walter Hamilton was formerly Correspondent for the ABC in Japan.
With some reservations I support the general thrust of the RSA with PNG. I do that largely for the same reasons that I supported the earlier proposed agreement with Malaysia.
The RSA is in PM Rudd’s words ‘a hard line’ but I see it as the least worst option given the present intractable political impasse and the 850 souls who have been drowned at sea. Where were their human rights?
The arrangement does offer the prospect of slowing or stopping boat arrivals whereas the revamped Nauru policy did not. Nauru was never going to work a second time because even after the ‘no-advantage test’ and delays in processing, persons knew that in going to Nauru they would finally finish up in Australia or New Zealand. Now they will be resettled in PNG. Furthermore Nauru as an island state a long way to the east would never be part of a regional solution.
I supported the Malaysian agreement because it offered at that time the best prospect of building a regional arrangement. This has always been and remains for me the only sensible way forward. Furthermore UNHCR was prepared to work with Malaysia and Australia on the agreement. I had several reservations about the agreement, including the cap on numbers, penalties and the risks to children. It seems that these concerns have been addressed in the RSA with PNG.
What is important is not where processing occurs, but is it humane, fair and efficient.
In the submission that Arja Keski-Nummi (former First Assistant Secretary, Refugee, Humanitarian and International Division of the Immigration Department) and I made to the Expert Panel on asylum seekers in July 2012, we said.
Offshore/Regional Processing
While the High Court ruled against the agreement with Malaysia there remains a place for considering the regional processing of asylum seekers….
In 1998, UNHCR at its Executive Committee (ExCom) envisaged the possibility of transferring people from one state to another for processing and made the following conclusion:
No.85 (XLIX) : stresses that, as regards the return to a third country of an asylum seeker whose claim has yet to be determined from the territory of the country where the claim has been submitted, including pursuant to bilateral or multilateral readmission agreements, it should be established that the third country will treat the asylum seeker(s) in accordance with accepted international standards, will ensure effective protection against refoulement, and will provide the asylum seekers with the possibility to seek and enjoy asylum.
The High Court found the agreement with Malaysia could not be upheld because Malaysia:
1. was not a signatory to the refugee convention,
2. did not have in place a system of refugee status determination,
3. did not have in law guarantees against non-refoulement, and
4. did not give people some legal status while on their territory.
In short it could not be found to provide Effective Protection.
If new agreements in the region were to be considered the key issue to tackle would be the question of effective protection. For example, it could be made explicit that a person has Effective Protection if:
If a country is willing to enter into an agreement with these provisos then effective protection could be said to have been achieved.
However the complexities of such an agreement would need to be negotiated and would demand careful assessment of the legislation required to bring this into effect. …
Bali ministers have endorsed the concept of states exploring such arrangements. These opportunities should be pursued, not to “stop the boats” although no doubt that is the desire of many, but if done well have the potential to start the process of building a durable protection system in the region – one in which the protection outcomes for all asylum seekers can be significant…
New initiatives are always controversial. The Comprehensive Plan of Action for Indo Chinese Refugees (CPA) while today seen as a model of regional cooperation at the time was not without its critics. Host governments’ commitments to providing a protection space in the region were tested, resettlement countries’ commitments were regularly questioned, UNHCR was moving into unchartered territories particularly in the way it was to engage with Vietnam and in redefining its mandate. NGOs and powerful lobby groups were not happy.
If we are ever to achieve a regional cooperation framework it will take a considerable time and we need to work with what is available now step by step, difficult as these may be. (The full submission can be found on my web site. See below. Click on refugees etc.)
At the press conference following the announcement of the RSA, the Australian Attorney General said ‘This arrangement will be entirely in accordance with Australia’s international and domestic law obligations. PNG is of course a signatory to the Refugee Convention and, as has been indicated by both prime ministers, PNG is going to withdraw the reservation that it had to the Refugee Convention in respect of people who are to be transferred from Australia. What that means is that all people transferred to PNG will have the full benefit of the rights that come to them under the Refugee Convention.’ (end of quote)
It is to be hoped that this serves to address the High Court’s concerns. The earlier decision by the High Court and the subsequent parliamentary impasse was in my view a major setback for regional cooperation.
The RSA is a bilateral arrangement which must become part of a framework of other regional arrangements. PM Rudd said that the RSA will be ‘part of our broader approach on regional cooperation arrangements’. We can’t ‘fix’ these problems on our own. There has to be burden-sharing as the arrangement with PNG is. This arrangement follows the announcement a few days ago that Indonesia will deny visa-free entry to Indonesia for Iranians.
The regional conference being called as a result of PM Rudd’s meeting with President Yudhoyono must urgently consider processing centres in other regional countries in association with UNHCR and on the understanding that resettlement countries such as Australia will increase their refugee intake.
Australia has already increased its humanitarian intake from 13,000 to 20,000 p.a. At his Brisbane press conference PM Rudd said that if progress is made on further regional discussions Australia would lift its intake again. The Expert Panel recommended that the intake be lifted to 27,000 over five years. I think it should be at least 30,000.
In his statement PM Rudd said that he had spoken with the UN Secretary General about the RSA with PNG. But he did not mention the UNHCR which must be a key player in the arrangement with PNG. It has the necessary experience and credibility.
There are a lot of important issues that must be addressed. What will happen in regard to family reunion of asylum seekers sent to PNG who have family in Australia? Will asylum seekers sent to PNG have appeal rights? Will they have work rights in PNG? Will they be detained in prison-like conditions similar to Christmas Island?
The Australian government must also urgently redouble its efforts to negotiate orderly departure programs with Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
The Greens have called the RSA ‘a day of shame’. But the real ‘day of shame’ was when the Greens voted in the Senate with Tony Abbott’s coalition to strike down the enabling legislation which would have allowed a renegotiated Malaysian Agreement to proceed. Since that time there has been chaos and failure of refugee policy in Australia. The Greens must bear heavy responsibility for this. As Gough Whitlam said in a different context ‘Only the impotent are pure’.
The RSA has been obviously negotiated quickly. As PM Rudd said ‘many other steps lie ahead’. But this arrangement with PNG based on burden-sharing is a much more promising approach than the recent nonsense about amending the Refugee Convention and describing increasing number of refugees as really only ‘economic migrants’.
A key test for the RSA must be – does it provide effective protection?
The other key issue will be implementation.
Kevin Rudd, in your review of asylum seeker policy please don’t let Foreign Minister Carr lead you to a race to the bottom with Tony Abbott.
The media is clearly being briefed that in a revision of asylum policy, the Government is considering tougher new country assessments by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. It is suggested by the Foreign Minister that this is necessary to exclude persons who are really economic migrants.
In my blog of July 5, I expressed concern that the Foreign Minister was implying that the Refugee Review Tribunal was too soft on refugee determination.
In primary decisions on asylum seekers and according to UNHCR data, Australia is about in the mid-range in refugee determination in the first instance. The rates for refugee determination that did not go to further review were as follows.
Australia 46%
Canada 42%
Denmark 46%
Germany 32%
New Zealand 28%
Norway 56%
Sweden 49%
UK 37%
It is difficult to compare final refugee determination rates as appeal processes differ greatly between countries. If there is reliable information available on country comparisons I would like to see it. We do know however that the final rate of refugee determination in Indonesia is 94%. This compares with final determination rates in Australia for the March quarter 2013 – 91% for boat arrivals and 65% for air arrivals.
Frankly I would have much greater confidence in the RRT and its processes than the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. In the primary process asylum seekers are likely to be disoriented and confused and dealing with a very alien situation. The RRT has the experience and professionalism to sort out the merits of asylum claims. Denis O’Brien who headed the RRT for five years asserted that ‘members of the RRT have to apply the definition … under the Refugee Convention. So I don’t see a lot of scope for tightening up without running foul of the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees’.
Today the Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Professor Gillian Triggs, said ‘There is no evidence to support the Government’s economic migrant claim … When we were assessing asylum seekers claims up until August 13 last year, approximately 90% of claims for refugee status were found to be valid. So I think that Senator Carr is making an assumption for which there is no evidence.’
In the weighing of evidence, I would place great weight on organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International in their assessments of human rights violations and persecution around the world. They are experienced in this field. They get their hands dirty in dealing with the everyday problems of persons facing persecution. By contrast, DFAT officers are relatively inexperienced and live in remote and privileged foreign enclaves. Furthermore DFAT is very keen to maintain good relations with foreign governments and their agencies. These are often the very same organisations that asylum seekers see as their persecutors. I would seriously discount the advice from the governments of Afghanistan, Iran and Sri Lanka and their brutal intelligence and security services. The government of Canada has said that it will not be attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in November in Colombo this year unless the human rights position in Sri Lanka improves.
I have confidence in the independence and professionalism of the RRT to make just and considered final decisions.
Tony Abbott sheds crocodile tears over asylum seekers drowned at sea. He and Scott Morrison have demonised asylum seekers for years as illegals; they bring disease and wads of cash. Coalition concern for asylum seekers is largely seen as a political opportunity. On the 10th December 2010 the Sydney Morning Herald reported from Wikileaks that a key Liberal Party strategist told a US diplomat in Canberra in November 2009 that the issue of asylum seekers was ‘fantastic’ for the Coalition and ‘the more boats that come the better’. Tony Abbott shows that that still remains the approach of the Coalition.
As Malcolm Fraser said in a guest blog on July15 the plight of asylum seekers and deaths at sea is a world-wide problem that we cannot fix on our own. He said the only solution is a regional agreement based on two key elements. The first is that regional countries that bear a much heavier burden than we do on asylum seekers and refugees are prepared to hold and process in their country those who claim refugee protection. This must be done in association with UNHCR. The second is that settlement countries such as Australia, Canada, US and NZ must provide finance to regional countries and promptly agree to the resettlement of those that are found to be refugees.
Unilateralism will not work for anyone. The key is burden-sharing. The conference called by President Yudhoyono to build a regional framework must be pursued with urgency. It combines both good policy and good politics. It is to be hoped that the Government will not go down the track that Foreign Minister Carr is suggesting.
The advocates of stronger ties with Asia spend a great deal of time with seminars and press statements about the importance of the region to our future. They are correct but they refuse to join the dots and advocate the changes on the really important issues impeding our relations with our region. Some of those impediments are symbolic and some are real. They include:
So much of the public debate about our relations with the region is froth and bubble. We avoid the hard issues. If we address them we would really show a genuine determination to build our future in our own region.
John Menadue
Japanese has been Australia’s most studied foreign language in schools for a number of years. Japanese is neither a traditional school language subject such as French and Latin, nor a community language such as Italian and Greek. Japanese is distant from English linguistically and culturally. Thus it is remarkable that Australia is fourth place on the world map of the number of learners of Japanese by country, and in second place in terms of the ratio of learners in the total population. The 2009 Japan Foundation survey reveals one in 83 Australians were currently learning Japanese. Considering that this trend has been lasting for well over a decade, cumulative numbers of those who have at one point studied Japanese must be quite large.
This picture of a large number of learners and past learners of Japanese however needs to be looked at closely to find two trends. The first is the decline in numbers. Two Japan Foundation surveys conducted in 2006 and 2009 on Japanese language education in Australia showed a 25% decline in overall learner population in the three years. The second is the concentration of learners at beginner proficiency level. Of the 280 thousand learners of Japanese in the country, 96% are in schools, which produce beginners or at highest, lower intermediate proficiency speakers of Japanese. Of the three percent of the learners who are located in universities, at most, only one third are estimated to achieve advanced professional proficiency. That is less than 1% of the total learner population.
For a nation, foreign language education serves two major purposes. Firstly, learning a foreign language provides young learners with a different language system, new ways of thinking, links to foreign cultures and people, and as a result, broader and more critical perspectives of their own world and beyond, i.e., basic ingredients of becoming a global citizen. For this purpose, Japanese is perfect for young Australian learners, as it is vastly different from English. Secondly, foreign language education will produce those who are professionally proficient in target languages and who can contribute to nation building in government, business and other areas using the language. For this purpose, Japanese is critical for Australia, as Japan is Australia’s significant partner both economically and strategically.
So far, Japanese language education in Australia has done very well, especially in the above-mentioned first purpose. One in ten Australian school children are currently learning Japanese. We need to stop the decline of the learner population and to maintain the good work of providing our youngsters with the basics to become global citizens. For the second purpose, we have not done enough in developing high proficiency speakers of Japanese. We need to provide both learning pathways and career pathways to young learners so that they can envisage their future Japanese speaking selves and work towards their vision.
Chihiro Kinoshita Thomson Professor of Japanese Studies School of International Studies University of New South Wales.Australia’s problems with asylum seekers and refugees are not unique. We are not the only point of destination. There are around 30,000 in Australia, over 160,000 in Canada, 51,000 in Austria, 22,000 in Belgium, 74,000 in Netherlands with a population much less than ours, nearly 150,000 in the United Kingdom and 589,000 in Germany. There is a massive move of a similar kind to Europe. We are not the only destination. It is a worldwide problem which requires regional and international cooperation. We cannot ‘fix’ it on our own.
Asylum seeker and refugee movements by their very nature involve at least two countries – the country of origin and the country of destination. It will also invariably involve transit countries. Almost all asylum seekers seeking entry to Australia come in transit through Thailand, Malaysia or Indonesia.
If we want to solve our problems, we must help other countries to solve their problems. There is no solution for Australia alone. Mandatory detention that we unilaterally introduced in 1992 is just not working to deter asylum seekers. The harsh deterrent measures introduced initially by Howard, but continued by the current government are cruel, horrendously expensive and are still unable to match the terror from which people flee. When the current government stopped assessing asylum seekers in October last year, over 90% of boat people from Sri Lanka were proven to be refugees. When will we learn from our mistakes?
There are two essential elements to regional cooperation and burden-sharing. The first element is that transit countries and particularly in our case, Indonesia, being prepared to hold and assist in the processing of asylum seekers. The second element is that resettlement countries must be prepared to promptly resettle people after they have been processed and found to be refugees.
These two elements were the keys to what most people now regard as the successful management of the 1.3 million Indochinese who fled after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Building regional cooperation then was a slow and painstaking process. It was messy at times but it worked.
Alongside those two essential elements, we need to keep several other factors in mind.
I am not sure that the meeting called by President Yudhoyono will provide a breakthrough. It could however be an important building block in the development of a robust regional arrangement based on burden-sharing with the two key elements I mentioned earlier.
Only regional cooperation will work. We learned that the hard way during the Indochina outflow. Unilateral action and the posturing that goes with it will not succeed. What we need is good policy and less politics. We need to restore the bipartisanship that had existed between the end of the 2nd War and the middle 1980s. Good policy can only be built around regional cooperation.
The treatment of asylum seekers in Australia brings shame to all of us. Pope Francis called for an end to the ‘globalisation of indifference’. In his first visit outside the Vatican Pope Francis called for decency and humanity in the treatment of outsiders. John Menadue
The pontiff tossed a wreath of yellow and white chrysanthemums into the sea to commemorate those who died making the passage, imploring host societies to ensure that the arrival of immigrants does not occasion “new and even heavier forms of slavery and humiliation.”
Authorities estimate that as many as 20,000 migrants have died since the late 1990s attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea by boat en route to Europe, with survivors generally ending up in detention centers in settings such as Lampedusa.
The pope insisted that with respect to such suffering, God asks everyone: “Where is your brother, the voice of whose blood reaches all the way to me?”
Francis urged societies receiving immigrants to exhibit “maternal care,” noting that in many cases, migrants also fall victim to human trafficking.
Approximately 10,000 people were on hand for a Mass celebrated by the pope on Lampedusa, including 50 recent immigrants currently housed at a center on the island in the front row.
Roughly an hour before the pope arrived Monday morning, the latest boatload of 165 migrants was met by a ship of the Italian Coast Guard and its occupants taken to a processing center on the island.
“Who is responsible for the blood of these brothers and sisters?” the pope asked, saying that too often, the answer is, “No one.”
“We all answer, ‘It’s not me. I have nothing to do with it. It’s others, but certainly not me,’ ” the pope said.
Francis extended a special greeting to the Muslims among the migrants, noting that the fast of Ramadan is beginning and wishing them “abundant spiritual fruits.”
Amnesty International issued a statement shortly after the pope’s visit, saying the gesture will “favor respect for the human rights of immigrants, of asylum seekers and refugees.” …
… Francis began his remarks Monday by saying he read recently of a tragedy in which migrants died while trying to make a boat crossing, and the thought of it was “like a splinter in the heart that causes suffering.”
“I felt the duty to come here today to pray, to perform a gesture of closeness, but also to awaken our consciences to that what happened doesn’t repeat itself,” he said.
Francis compared apathy in the face of the suffering of immigrants to the Gospel story of the Good Samaritan, in which a half-dead man lying in the street is ignored until the Samaritan finally stops to help.
“So many of us, and I include myself, are disoriented,” the pope said. “We’re no longer attentive to the world in which we live. We don’t care about it; we don’t take care of what God created for all; and we’re no longer capable even of taking care of one another.”
“When this disorientation takes on the dimensions of the world, it leads to tragedies such as what we’ve seen [here],” the pope said.
Follow John Allen on Twitter: @JohnLAllenJr
Sorry if I keep repeating myself, but Tony Abbott keeps repeating his one-liners about stopping the boats. He provides little explanation about how or why his policies will work today.
He tells us that John Howard’s policy stopped the boats and he will do the same. But John Howard’s approach was over a decade ago. Since then the situation has dramatically changed.
Certainly under John Howard the boats did largely stop, although asylum seekers continued to arrive by air at the rate of about 4,000 persons per annum. Furthermore if we look at the broader picture of asylum seekers around the world at that time we see that the number of asylum seekers fell between 2001 and 2004 as a result of a more peaceful Afghanistan and Iraq. Boat arrivals started arriving again from 2004, mainly because of the state of emergency declared in Sri Lanka and then the withdrawal of the Sri Lankan government from the cease-fire with the Tamil Tigers.
But let us accept that the boats did stop for whatever reason.
Tony Abbott’s one-liners have three elements.
The first is to repeat the Pacific Solution and reopen Nauru and Manus. They were key parts of the Howard plan. Tony Abbott kept saying for a long time that the first thing he would do as PM would be to get on the phone to the President of Nauru and reopen the Nauru detention centre. There are many pitfalls in this one-liner about Nauru.
The second one-liner of Tony Abbott is to reintroduce Temporary Protection Visas as the Howard Government had done. Unfortunately for Tony Abbott this policy didn’t work at all for John Howard. More people got on boats after TPVs were introduced with over 6,000 coming in 2001. Further, TPVs which denied family reunion resulted in more women and children taking to the boats. That is why when SIEVX was lost at sea in 2001, 82% of the 353 passengers who were drowned at sea were women and children.
Tony Abbott’s third one-liner is to turn boats back to Indonesia if it is safe to do so. President Yudhoyono warned last week about such unilateral acts. In November 2011 the serving head of the RAN Admiral Ray Griggs told the Senate that turning boats around at sea was highly risky and the Navy personnel were bound by the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea. In 1979 when a similar policy was proposed, Malcolm Fraser rejected it because it would make Australia a ‘pariah’ in our region. Threatened with turn-backs desperate people are likely to scuttle their boats. It is also dangerous for RAN personnel.
The three one-liners which constitute Tony Abbott’s policy on boats – re-open Nauru, introduce TPVs and turn-backs at sea – will not work. Times have changed. He has not thought them through He relies on empty one liners.
My criticism of the Coalition’s unscrupulous policies and rhetoric does not imply acceptance of the government’s asylum and refugee policies. It is very plain that successive ministers have failed. They have not energetically pursued the only policy that will work – a robust regional policy.
Tony Abbott is obviously shaken by Kevin Rudd’s return. The coalition had been expecting to win by default and chose quite deliberately to provide as small a target as possible and release few policies. What “policies” there were were usually reduced to one liners. Tony Abbott left the dead wood in his shadow cabinet. He refused three debates with Kevin Rudd, something which opposition leaders would normally seize with both hands. And he refused to debate the three issues on which he has been staking so much, deficits, boats and the carbon tax. Then there was Kevin Rudd’s intervention in the NSW ALP branch. Then there was the agreement with President Yudhoyono to host a regional conference on asylum seekers in Indonesia. And to top that off the Indonesian President gave Tony Abbott a backhander about taking “unilateral” action on turning boats back to Indonesia. Then there was Kevin Rudd’s proposal to commence democratic renewal in elections for the leader of the parliamentary ALP. Through all this the opinion polls are trending very much in Kevin Rudd’s favour. Much is promised but can Kevin Rudd follow up and deliver?. Implementation is always the hard part. But it has all clearly unsettled Tony Abbott.
Kevin Rudd’s action on ALP reform is in my view the most important of all. In my blog of June 25 headed ‘Julia Gillard’s greatest failure’, I referred to her unwillingness to lead the reform of the sclerotic ALP structure.
She had her chance at the ALP federal conference in 2011 with the report prepared by John Faulkner, Bob Carr and Steve Bracks on ALP party reform. The proposed reforms were quite modest but Julia Gillard didn’t provide the leadership needed to really start the reform process. That failure stemmed from her dependence on the ALP machine and the factions which chose her as leader in 2010. Kevin Rudd then blasted the ALP Federal Conference for failing to “take some giant leaps forward” He was criticized by the union heavies and faction bosses. They did not want democratic renewal
Kevin Rudd is not dependent on those machine people and factions, and it is not surprising that one of the first things he did was to intervene in the parlous state of the NSW branch of the ALP. The Federal Executive has set out an eight-point plan for reform. With an election only weeks or months away, the ALP could scarcely sack the whole NSW branch, although I hope that down the track it will do so. Kevin Rudd has followed this up with a proposal that ALP members as well as members of the Parliamentary Labor Party should choose the leader. I don’t think unions should have a role in this.
But a key issue ahead will be the role of unions at party conferences. Obviously their influence must be reduced particularly as their membership has declined to only about 18% of the workforce today. Rodd Cavalier suggests union representation at federal and state conference should be reduced from 50% to 15%. I am not sure what the figure should be. The unions do provide stability for the ALP. They provide significant financial and hands-on support. They are the largest and most significant group in Australia committed to social justice. Their influence has prevented Australia going down the path of economic and social inequality that is so appalling now in the US. Working people in that country are paying a very heavy price for the neutering of the trade union movement. Unions may be annoying from time to time but if Australia faced a major crisis I would rather be in their corner than with any other group.
As the reform process gets under way particularly after the federal election, the role of unions, the participation of the rank-and-file in conferences and the selection of the parliamentary leader will be critical.
Julia Gillard wouldn’t start the process. Kevin Rudd is making encouraging progress. Tony Abbott looks flat footed. He and his coalition colleagues expected a cake walk. They didn’t really prepare. They now look ill at ease with a new and energised Rudd Government
In my blog of July 6, ‘Asylum seekers … good news at last’, I expressed concern that it had taken so long for the government to take action and really put effort into the development of a regional framework. It has been obvious for years that this was the path we had to take. We cannot solve this problem unilaterally. As a result our public discourse got diverted into a whole range of divisive and secondary issues.
There are several reasons why the government failed so badly in driving a regional framework.
In the refugee field, Arja Keski-Nummi and I highlighted this major gap or paralysis on refugee discussion in our submission to the Expert Panel.
The inter-governmental and multilateral dialogue on displacement and people smuggling has grown over recent years. The Bali Process has had a positive impact on this. But a great deal remains to be done on regional cooperation following the agreement between President Yudhoyono and Prime Minister Rudd.
Unfortunately little attention is given to engaging with civil society in Australia (including NGOs) and yet in many ways such engagement holds one of the keys to supporting the development of a stronger refugee protection framework.
It is both timely and important to start the process of developing a framework that engages civil society as an important partner in the process. ASEAN has led the way in such engagement with the model it uses for the development of the ASEAN Human Rights Instrument.
A successful model has been used in the security dialogue in Australia. It has adopted the concept of a “Track 2” approach. This involves both government and non-government players as equal partners, recognising the complementary strengths that each brings to the table.
While building such a dialogue takes enormous effort and commitment the dividends can be many:
As a first step a local track 2 dialogue on refugees could be initiated in Australia bringing together the key experts from government, the region, international agencies and civil society to map out approaches and strategies for the future. This dialogue would be funded by the Government but would not be part of Government. The Minister should appoint the chair.
The modest government funding for this should be provided as a matter of urgency and could be channeled through a university as is done for the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP) in the security dialogue or through an agency such as UNHCR or IOM that have strong records in this type of work.
This dialogue should be expanded into a regional approach sitting alongside or under the Bali Process.
We need a much wider and better-informed dialogue on refugee issues than we have had in recent years. Because of the lack of an informed and robust discussion on refugee issues the government should not be surprised that it has made so many mistakes in this field. It badly needs to listen to a much wider range of informed advice. A ‘track two dialogue’ would be a great help.
We often ponder why Kevin Rudd has remained so popular even through his three years in the wilderness.
A blog ‘The Piping Strike’ explains to me the phenomenon better than others. It says ‘The uncomfortable answer is that Rudd is popular because he encapsulates the electorate’s distrust and even dislike of the political system’.
The kid with the glasses in the library doesn’t seem like the normal politician. He is attractive because of that. This makes it hard for the political class, both politicians and journalists, when Kevin Rudd doesn’t play the game the same way as others. The more machine politicians and the media pile into Rudd, the more his anti-politician stance attracts people in the community.
He was chosen as leader in 2007 not because the political machine liked him but because he seemed popular with the community. He made mistakes as PM but when he was seen as no longer any use to the machine – think Paul Howes and Bill Ludwig- acted to get rid of him. He wasn’t as easily controllable and predictable as they had hoped. Not surprisingly when he was chosen leader again, a few weeks ago one of the first things he did was to attack the control of the factional politicians and their minders in some of the big unions. Much remains to be done but quick action on the NSW ALP branch was entirely predictable. Kevin Rudd is not beholden to any party machine as Julia Gillard was. His strength as an anti-politician is in the community. And the community to date is clearly responding.
Gough Whitlam bucked the party machine and survived because he was strong in the electorate. People outside the inner circle of politics loved what he was doing in confronting the factions and the party machine.
Queenslanders, like Kevin Rudd have a particular reputation and earn respect by bucking the party system. Think Bob Katter and Pauline Hanson. Peter Beattie’s strength in Queensland was in part because he kept running against the ALP machine.
Rudd’s non-party support is revealed not only in being mobbed in shopping centres, but also in the social media. He has 1.2 million twitter followers. This is almost 10% of voters. Tony Abbott has 131,000 twitter followers and Malcolm Turnbull 170,000 followers. My grand-daughter tells me that these figures can be manipulated, but the scale of Rudd’s connection through social media is remarkable.
Google searches in recent days reveal the same interest and enthusiasm for Kevin Rudd. Even talk-back radio listeners are showing interest.
Kevin Rudd may not win the election but he has certainly thrown it wide open. His appeal is that he is a different sort of politician who is not beholden to the political system. The public so far seem to be responding. The machine politicians and the media don’t seem to understand. They look at politics through a different prism. The public distrusts the political system. So does Kevin Rudd or at least he doesn’t respect it the way that political insiders do. That is his appeal.