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

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

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

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

    What should be the key elements of a humanitarian policy?

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

    The government has failed in many respects.

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

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

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

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

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

  • Myth-busting. John Menadue

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

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

    First the International Monetary Fund.

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

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

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

    Second, the Parliamentary Budget Office.

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

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

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

    “Over two thirds of the five percentage points of GDP decline in structural receipts over the period 2002-03 to 2011-12 was due to the cumulative effect of the successive personal income tax cuts granted between 2003-04 and 2008-09. A further quarter was the result of a decline in excise and customs duties as a proportion of GDP. Significant factors driving this trend included the abolition of petroleum fuels excise indexation in the 2001-02 budget and the decline in the consumption of cigarettes and tobacco over the period.”

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

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

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

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

    The myths continue.

     

  • Japan: Renaissance? Guest blogger: Walter Hamilton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

     

     

     

     

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

     

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    There is good news around despite the public debate.

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

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

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

    John Menadue

  • Truth, Trust and the Media. John Menadue

    Our mainstream media is in a downward spiral. Its decline is driven by new technology and a growing sense by readers that we can no longer trust the media.  We have a lot of spin, but very little well-informed debate. Ken Henry has commented that he can’t recall a time when public debate was so bad.

     An Australian election study 1997/2010 rated trust in the following institutions as follows:

    • Armed forces – 91%
    • Universities – 80%
    • Police – 79%
    • Banks and financial institutions – 56%
    • Major Australian companies – 54%
    • Political system – 53%
    • Public service – 41%
    • Trade unions – 29%
    • Television and newspapers – 17%.

    The survey found that the least trusted in the media was talk-back radio.

    In June last year, Essential Research reported as follows.

    “The ABC retains its undisputed title as Australia’s most trusted media. Trust in ABC television news and current affairs grew two points to 74%, its fourth straight rise, and ABC radio lifted two points to 69%. … The Age (76%) and the SMH (69%) are the most trusted of the major newspapers. … The Australian suffered a 9% fall in trust, down to 60%. The Herald Sun in Melbourne fell to 51% as did the Courier Mail in Brisbane which fell 14 points to 51%. The Daily Telegraph is the least trusted at 59%.”

    Nothing surprising there.

    In March this year, Essential Research found that only 30% of Australians trust TV news and newspapers. The High Court, Reserve Bank and the ABC were trusted by over 60% of respondents.

    Reading our media this week about the budget, one could not possibly avoid the conclusion that we are on the verge of economic and financial collapse. Yet we have one of the best performing economies in the world – solid growth, low inflation, low unemployment, low debt and a AAA credit rating by the three world rating agencies. John Howard commented only a few days later that “our resilient economy is in better shape than most… We are still fortunate with our unemployment rate…and that the Australian economy was better than Japan, US and Europe”.

    The Australian Financial Review has become a barracker for business rather than a reporter about business.  The headlines on two successive days this week were ‘End Budget chaos – business’ and then ‘Labor, business at war’.

    Supported by business commentators, the BCA has been conducting an incoherent and partisan campaign against the government. If it tried it could not do more to damage business and consumer confidence. But perhaps as a proxy for Tony Abbott, damaged confidence is just inevitable collateral damage.

    Crikey reported Paddy Manning a business reporter on the AFR as saying that there was a “contract” between the AFR and business for “high level access in return for soft coverage” He was sacked for saying what many people  would regard as  obvious.

    The Minerals Council with the aid of business journalists helped corrupt the debate about a profit tax on large mining companies. How ironic it is that the Minerals Council with its obsession with the Labor Government didn’t keep its eye on the inefficient state mining royalties that have increased five-fold since the early 2000s. A real own-goal kicked by the Mining Council.

    The media and particularly News Corporation which lost its moral bearings long ago have been campaigning to get rid of the ‘hung parliament’. But the parliament will see out its three years and with a considerable legislative program to its credit.

    The media and again, particularly News Corporation, has been part of a misinformation campaign about asylum seekers. Obsessed with boats and pictures of boats, the media has continually misinformed us about the small number of asylum seekers coming to Australia compared with other countries and that more asylum seekers come to Australia by air than by boat. The Australian Press Council drew attention to the misinformation by News Corporation publications, over use of the term ‘illegals’ and its inflammatory language.

    The media, including notably the ABC facilitated the dog whistling over the miniscule problem of boat arrivals. The dog whistling in the run up to the next election will be about deficits and debt despite Australia having one of the lowest net debt ratios in the world. Where will the media be in ensuring an informed debate? I will not be holding my breath.

    With its whimpish attempts to curtail abuse of power by the media, the government was subject to an extraordinary tirade of abuse dressed up by the media as the public interest. Minister Conroy was depicted in News publications as a new Stalin or Pol Pot.

    Filled with revenge that he was not made Prime Minister after the 2010 election, Tony Abbott decided that if he couldn’t get his own way he would do his best to wreck everything. The media let him do it and in the case of News Corporation, encouraged him to do so.

    There is public concern about truth in public life as surveys show. The delicate fabric of our society depends on trust and telling the truth. Our society will break down without a general acceptance of what is honest, fair and reasonable.

    Truth is a bedrock issue and the media is not helping us to know the truth or is particularly trustworthy itself. No-one should be surprised that so many readers, viewers and listeners are losing trust in the “old media’ and going online.

    Truth is being eclipsed in public life. The media is a major contributor to that eclipse. It is getting quite dark.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    El Tee Kay from Kuala Lumpur

     

  • Does Catholic Health really want to destroy Medicare? John Menadue

    In his submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration on February 15, 2013 Martin Laverty, the CEO of Catholic Health wrote.” Another option (to achieve a single funder in health) would be to embrace the Medicare Select proposal put forward by the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission. Medicare Select would enable Australians to choose a health and hospital plan best suited to their needs. They would be able to be insured by Medicare or instead opt out to be insured by a private health insurer or one operated by a non-profit organization…”

    Medicare Select envisages all Australians being enrolled in a Government funded plan, but with the opportunity of opting out and moving to a selected plan to which Government funding would be directed on a capitation basis, and which could involve extra services funded by private insurers.  The ‘plans’ would be managed by private corporations or not-for-profits.

    In effect this would be a 100% PHI rebate – not 30%, not 40% that we have at present, but 100%.

    Forty seven percent of Australians have private hospital insurance coverage and 55% have private general treatment coverage.If those who presently hold private health insurance(about 50%) opted for Medicare Select, over $30b presently spent by governments would be channelled through the high cost financial intermediaries, the Private Health Insurance funds. It would be goodnight Medicare.  Make no mistake about it, Medicare Select is designed to cripple and displace Medicare and give a widened role for PHI.

    A colleague of mine Ian McAuley has highlighted major problems with Medicare Select.  He notes that it appears first to have been designed to secure a privileged place for private insurers who would impose a bureaucratic overhead on healthcare without adding value.’ Second, it is based on a misunderstanding of “choice” for we cannot know what our future healthcare needs will be. Third it is likely to result in cost escalation to the benefit of providers; this is an inevitable outcome of the intrinsic “moral hazard” associated with all insurance. And fourth, it makes it easy for a Government to redefine Medicare, the Government program, as a bare bones program for the poor or indigent, thus establishing a two-tier health system”

    Medicare Select is not an “option” being floated only by Martin Laverty .It is being insinuated as a firm proposal of the NHHRC which was chaired by a senior executive of BUPA. The PHI lobby is continually extolling the virtues of Medicare Select which would greatly expand their business and cripple Medicare. It would take us further down the path of private health insurance which is destroying equitable and efficient health care in the US. Warren Buffett has described private health insurance as the “tape worm “in the US health system.

    But that seems to be the path that Martin Laverty wants to take Catholic Health and destroy Medicare in the process

    Is that what the Stewardship Board of Catholic Health want in “advancing the healing ministry of Christ” as set out in its Charter? , This not an academic issue particularly as Catholic Health is the largest provider of non-government health care in the country with 19 000 aged care beds, 9,500 beds in 75 health care facilities, 8 dedicated hospitals and palliatives care facilities and 35,000 employees

    The Medicare Select option is a long way from the “option for the poor” which the Catholic Church espouses. It is an option to advantage the rich.

    (See a speech I gave on this and particularly the damage PHI is doing and will continue to do. ..:” Now is the time for all good people to come to the aid of Medicare”… October 2009 on my web) publish.pearlsandirritations.com/health/html_files/VHA.html

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Euthanasia – A denial of human dignity. Guest blogger Dr Joanne Wright

    It is concerning that The Greens and organisations such as GetUp have seen fit to re-ignite the debate about the legalisation of euthanasia.  I am a doctor.  I worked in palliative care and now work with the elderly.  I have seen first hand the complexity of the issues at the end of life. In reality, most people who say they agree with euthanasia have little understanding of the issue at all.  The term as it is intended by pro-euthanasia activists refers to the intentional termination of life by another at the request of the person who wishes to die, not the withdrawal of futile care or “life support”.

    It is ironic that those with a pro-euthanasia stance refer to euthanasia as “dying with dignity”. I don’t know what is dignified about one person intentionally killing another or providing the means for their suicide.  It must change the person who does the deed irrevocably.  On the other hand, I have seen many dignified deaths.  Dignity has nothing to do with whether a person is faecally incontinent, disfigured, emotionally disturbed or unattractive.  Dignity has to do with the respect we accord every individual, regardless of personal characteristics or their current state of health.  Accepting death when it naturally occurs is quite different to condoning or encouraging the intentional killing of or suicide by another.

    Harvey Chochinov, a Canadian psychiatrist, has written extensively about dignity at the end of life and his views are valid in this context.  He describes the all-important interpersonal dimension to dignity.  Dr Chochinov’s model affirms the basic truth that human beings are relational and that what accords us dignity is how we are treated in a relationship.  The legalisation of euthanasia alters the interpersonal relationship between the vulnerable patient and their carers.  If the patient does not volunteer to be euthanased perhaps the patient is being selfish by remaining burdensome to others.  The idea that we can prevent subtle “coercion” through legislation shows a lack of understanding of the realities and subtleties of human relationships. History has shown that the people most commonly euthanased “voluntarily” are women, the mentally ill, socially isolated and socioeconomically disadvantaged.  These are the usual victims when society fundamentally loses its respect for human life.

    Having worked in palliative care, I have had requests from relatives and carers to euthanase dying people. What was evident was that these “observers” were suffering and wanted their own suffering to end. Vulnerable and sick patients often believe that they are a burden to those around them.  So do elderly people. I hear it from them all the time. We know that suffering is a reality in life.  Palliative care and modern medicine relieve most suffering but cannot relieve all.  When carers are able to rise to the occasion with conscientious caring for a vulnerable person, the dignity of that person is affirmed.  Much anxiety in the patient is also relieved.  For those few who really do suffer extreme and unrelieved existential anxiety at the end of life, good palliative care offers the option of sedation.

    It is widely recognised that Western Society has become detached from death.  We tuck away dying people in hospices or hospitals and often don’t have effective rituals surrounding death.  We shield our children from death.  As a society, we are in “death denial”.    We have a belief that modern medicine can, or at least should, cure every ill – this is false.  If we acknowledged the certainty of death perhaps we wouldn’t be panicked into the issue of euthanasia, or into continuing with futile and uncomfortable medical treatments.  We might have conversations with our relatives about our values and the situations in which we would want treatment to be withdrawn and even draw up legally binding Advance Care Directives.

    There are times in life when we must give care – and times when we must graciously accept it.  We must not as a society define the worth of individuals by their functional abilities or level of independence.  We must not decide that the means justifies the end or that our right to make autonomous decisions trumps our instinctive understanding that it is wrong to sanction the deliberate killing of another.  If we as a society and as individuals cannot accept that at times we have to face difficulty, then we cannot face the realities of life.  We also will not foster the qualities in society that make us civilised: empathy, compassion and the protection of the most vulnerable.

    Dr Joanne Wright

     

     

     

  • Our better angels. Guest bloggers Brenda, Edith and Elizabeth

    Dear Elizabeth,

    At our church, Liverpool South Anglican Church, we have befriended some men from Sri Lanka who have been released from the Curtin Detention centre. They are setting up house in Sydney. We held a BBQ and cricket match on Anzac Day and about 30 men came along.

    Our Minister explained to them about Anzac Day and why it is important to Australians.

    Another minister preached the gospel message to them in Tamil.

    We heard from about 5 of the men about the story of their trip to Australia.
    They were very grateful. It was the first celebration they had been to in Australia.

    Then today 15 came to church and we provided lunch. But we have not got enough blankets to give them.

    Do you think that Wraps With Love might be happy to provide about 20 wraps?

    Regards
    Brenda and Edith

     

     

  • Curbing health costs starting with pathologists and radiologists. John Menadue

    In discussing the looming budget deficits there has been focus on the rising costs of healthcare. And so there should be.

    But before addressing some of the factors leading to increased costs, we should keep in mind that Australia spends about 9% of GDP in health. That compares with France 12%, Germany 12%, Canada 11%, New Zealand 10% and UK 10%. The OECD median is 9%. The US at 18% of GDP is ‘off the charts largely due to private health insurance.

    Thus 9% of GDP spent on healthcare in Australia is not excessive in world terms. Medicare for all its difficulties has laid a solid basis for efficiency and equity in healthcare. We would change it at a great cost to the nation.

    I will be writing about some areas in future where cost reduction is necessary and possible e.g. the costs that are incurred because of different commonwealth and state responsibilities (e.g. patients going to an expensive Emergency Department when it would be cheaper and better to go to a GP), antiquated work practices and clinical errors.

    A central problem is that we all see our doctor too much and we have too many tests. The following table shows how all medical services per 10,000 of population have increased dramatically in the ten years to 2011/12

    These figures are derived from Medicare Australia-Statistics-Medicare Benefit (MBS) Group Statistics.

    All Medicare services by category per 10,000 of population 2001/02 to 2011/12

    Medicare service

    2001/02

    2011/12

    Increase

    % Increase
    Professional attendance

    606,240

    677,504

    71,264

    11
    Therapeutic procedures

    66,308

    88,102

    21,794

    33
    Diagnostic imaging

    63,032

    89,247

    26,215

    42
    Pathology

    336,214

    503,613

    167,399

    50
    Total

    1,090,878

    1,460,460

    369,582

    34

     

    These figures show the dramatic increase in medical services per 10,000 of population over ten years by 34%. The increase in diagnostic imaging services has been 42% and for pathology services, 50% Together with many specialists, including in church hospitals they have been making a motza..

    The government has attempted to restrain these increases particularly in imaging and pathology, but there is a long way to go. There are several reasons for the escalating number of services.

    • Advancing technology will result in more and better pathology and imaging services, for example. GP’s will naturally want to use them
    • General practitioners run more possible professional risk in ordering too few tests than too many.
    • With increasing corporate takeovers of general practice, there is more vertical integration between the general practitioner and specialist services such as pathology and imaging. There is a clear conflict of interest when a general practitioner employed by a corporate orders a battery of pathology tests from the same employer.
    • Fee-for-service is particularly inappropriate for services with high fixed costs and low variable costs, such as imaging. If fees are set on an average basis, including fixed costs, then the contribution to overheads and profits is high giving an incentive for high use. This has clearly been happening.

    There are actions that the government could take.

    It could set budgets for general practitioners when they prescribe drugs, order pathology tests or imaging services. Germany is doing some of this already to curb escalating costs.

    Improved means tested co-payments would be another way to place more financial responsibility on the patient to restrain spending

    The Government could also offer contracts to General Practises as an alternative to fee for service. It could be surprised at the take up of contracts. Many GP’s are tired of turnstile medicine. They want to work as part of a professional team with opportunities for upgrading of skills and sabbaticals. Fee for service is a driver of over servicing. It is a perverse incentive where quantity rather than quality of service is rewarded. It must change if quality of service is to be improved and costs contained.

    As in so much of health services in Australia, vested interests in such areas as imaging and pathology together with their lobbyists are very effective in protecting their interests at the expense of the patient and the taxpayer. So much of the time of the Minister and the Department of Health is taken up in managing the demands of the vested interests rather than addressing structural problems and costs in the health service. The Minister and the Department are no match for the powerful vested interests –the AMA, the Pharmacy Guild and PHI sector. It is because of the failure of existing governance of the health service – the ministerial/departmental model – that I have recommended for many years  a statutory commonwealth health commission composed of independent and professional people (like the Reserve Bank in the financial field) to administer health services in Australia, subject to guidelines determined by the government.

    An important role for such a commission would be leading an informed public debate about the changes that are necessary in health care. Without an informed community, governments are not going to have the polical courage to confront the powerful vested interests that in many respects have a veto on reform. We can’t leave it to the “market” to sort it out because there is no open or free market in health services. Outcomes are rigged by very powerful providers. They hold all the cards. It is really about power in the health sector and how that power is exercised

    There will not be effective cost containment unless this is addressed

    John Menadue

  • Are wage rates to blame? John Menadue

    We have read a lot recently from retailers and restauranteurs about high wage rates particularly at weekends that are said to be a major burden for business. But is this the full story? There are several factors that we need to consider.

    • Do we have too many retailers and restaurants? Restaurants seem to be opening every second day, driving out mixed-businesses, green grocers and butchers from our shopping streets. Has the proliferation of retail outlets and restaurants reduced profit margins and put pressure on business rather than wages?
    • Our lives are being driven by the 24/7 craze. Do we really need to keep shops and restaurants open like this? What has happened to the desire of many who still value the weekends for family and recreation? Sunday is no longer ‘a day of rest’. But I am probably old-fashioned! I recall that the union campaign for an 8-hour working day featured ‘recreation’ as a key objective. It is now largely forgotten.
    • Retailers have failed to respond adequately to online shopping and the concerns many of us have for the lack of service in retail outlets. The retailers’ case was not helped recently by the managing director of Myers telling us that the levy to pay for the disability scheme would mean less money to spend at Myers.
    • The household savings rate in Australia declined steadily from about 10% in the mid-1970s and falling to below zero by the mid-2000s. This private spending and debt binge couldn’t last and Australians are wisely saving more.  Retailers and restaurants should not have expected that the spending and debt binge would continue.
    • Some retailers and restaurants pine for the US model of flexible and low wage-rates. In the US this has resulted in great inequity and very low wage rates for the working poor. Fortunately we have not gone down that path.

    With the softening of the mining boom and restructuring of the economy, there will need to be restructuring including in retail and restaurants. But we should not point the finger at wage rates alone.

    John Menadue

  • National Party fails farmers. John Menadue

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

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

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

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

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

    John Menadue

     

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

     

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

     

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

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

     

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

     

     

  • A canary in the coal mine. John Menadue

    When environmental activist, Jonathon Moylan, sent a hoax email concerning Whitehaven Coal to the ANZ in January this year, there was outrage and tut-tutting by business journalists about his action.

    A few months later, it is becoming clear that the future of new thermal coal mines is doubtful. Australian resource companies have let over-optimism skew their investment decisions.

    Would any sensible investor take not only the political risk but also the financial risk of investing in new thermal coal mines in Australia?

    The case for continuing investment in coking coal for steel making remains strong, but not for coal to produce electricity. The case against thermal coal is growing.

    • The Australian Climate Commission this month reported that ‘levels of greenhouse gasses from the combustion of fossil fuels have increased almost 40% since the beginning of the industrial revolution, causing the earth’s surface to warm significantly. … All weather events are now occurring in a global climate system that is warming and moister than it was 50 years ago. This has loaded the dice towards more frequent and more severe extreme weather events’.
    • Professor Ross Garnaut warned recently that China was moving away from coal electricity generation to a new, less resource intensive phase of growth which would trigger a plunge in Australian mining investment. Last year, China bought 20% of Australia’s thermal coal exports worth $3 billion.
    • European consumption of coal has fallen to below 2007 levels and will fall further when new air pollution requirements apply from 2016.
    • The US Energy Information Administration shows that coal output in 2016 is likely to be lower than in 1990. Many US power companies using thermal coal have been shut down since 2009.
    • Bloomberg reported in February that Australia is unlikely to build new coal-fired power stations because of tumbling prices for renewable energy and the rising cost of finance for emission intensive fuels.
    • As a result of the Fukashima disaster Japan will need more thermal coal in the short term. But the Abe Government will progressively restart its nuclear reactors which have been closed since the disaster. These restarts will result in reduced output from coal-fired generators. Before the disaster about 25% of Japan’s power production was from nuclear energy.
    • The Climate and Health Alliance in Australia, in referring to a review by health experts at the University of Illinois said ‘the review adds to a suite of papers that point to the effects on human health of electricity generation from coal’

    Belatedly, we should acknowledge that Jonathon Moylan was telling us something about the future. The canary in the mine was more on the ball than those business economists who criticised him for his irresponsible behaviour.

    John Menadue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    John Menadue

  • Tony Abbott keeps telling us that boat people are illegals and by inference, criminals. John Menadue

    Last week on radio Tony Abbott was at it again, repeatedly referring to illegals and illegal boats. It cannot be ignorance to keep calling asylum seekers illegals. He must know they are not illegals, but by using this language he inflates fear and hatred of people in distress.

    We cannot presume that boats are illegal because they are exercising passage through our territorial waters. The Law of the Sea makes that clear. And people seeking asylum are not illegals because of our commitments under Article 31 of the Refugee Convention.

    The Centre for Policy Development has just published ‘Refugee Facts’. It includes comments by the Australian Press Council to guide journalists about the use of terms such as ‘illegals’. It draws particular attention to some of the gross incitements to fear that New Limited publications have consistently used. See

    ”

    Ethical journalism on refugee issues

     The Australian Press   Council notes:

    “The legal status of people who have entered Australia by boat without a visa is complex and potentially confusing. Their entry is not legally authorised but is not a criminal offence. The Australian Government usually refers to such entrants as “unauthorised boat arrivals” or “irregular maritime arrivals” but they are also “unlawful non-citizens” under the Migration Act.”

    Read the complete guidelines here

    Journalists are advised to avoid describing people who arrived by boat without a visa in inaccurate terms. This can arise, for example, if the terms can reasonably be interpreted as implying criminality or other serious misbehaviour on the part of all or many people who arrive in this manner.

    Depending on the specific context, therefore, terms such as “illegal immigrants” or “illegals” may constitute a breach of the Council’s Standards of Practice on these grounds.

    Several recent adjudications by the Press Council have upheld complaints about the treatment of asylum seekers by media outlets.

    On 26 November 2011, The Daily Telegraph ran the following headline on its front page: ‘Open the Floodgates – Exclusive; Thousands of Boat People to Invade NSW’. The Press Council was asked to make an adjudication on this and concluded ‘that the use of the word “invade” was gravely inaccurate, unfair and offensive because of its clear connotations of forceful occupation’. It upheld the complaint for ‘an especially serious breach of its principles.’ The Council also concluded that use of the words “open the floodgates” and “deluge” were inaccurate and unfair.

    In adjudication number 1498 in June 2011, the Australian Press Council (APC) considered complaints about three opinion articles by Greg Sheridan that appeared in The Australian on 23 and 28 October 2010 and 5 March 2011.

    The APC upheld the complaint. The adjudication included the following comments on use of the term ‘illegals’:

    “The Press Council’s Guideline (No. 288) notes that the descriptor ‘illegal(s)’ is very often inaccurate and because it typically connotes criminality, it is unfair. It recommends that the use of the term ‘asylum seeker’ as a widely understood descriptor and generally a fair and a sufficiently accurate one. The Australian acknowledged that it was aware of this suggested usage. Indeed, the Council upheld a similar complaint against The Australian as recently as July 2009. Despite that, the disputed expression appeared in the three articles subject to this complaint. … The fact that some people may use what may be considered inaccurate terminology should not be used to justify inaccuracy or unfairness in reporting. The Council holds the view that opinion articles are no different to other articles in their need to ensure accuracy and to avoid unfairness and that these articles failed to do so. Accordingly this aspect of the complaint is upheld.”

    An article headlined ‘Boat people in our suburbs’ that appeared in the Herald Sun on 26 November 2011 was the subject of an adjudication in April 2012. The front page had a pointer to the article reading ‘Revealed; boat people to flood our suburbs’.

    The APC upheld this complaint. The Council concluded that “the words ‘flood the suburbs’ connoted an overwhelming, widespread and adverse impact on the general community. The implication was misleading and unfair, especially when made so boldly in the front page pointer and so prominently in the opening sentence of the article.”

     

    The APC guidelines are a vital point of reference for journalists and editors covering refugee and asylum seeker issues. As these recent adjudications make clear, the Council is inclined to take a dim view of sloppy and unethical reporting of asylum seeker issues, with a particular focus on terminology.

     

    Like Scott Morrison, Tony Abbott seems to have little concern for the “stranger” and the injury and injustice he inflicts on vulnerable people. I suggest that before he utters another word on asylum seekers and illegals, he reads

    The Refugee Convention Article 31 that makes clear that penalties should not be imposed on people who enter another country, seek asylum and do so expeditiously

    The APC guidelines and adjudications on the term “illegals”

    He might also look at Matthew 23 ‘I was a stranger and you took me in’.

    We are in for a very ugly political period…

    John Menadue

  • An Excel coding error with tragic consequences. John Menadue

     In 2010, just after the Greek financial crisis, two respected conservative Harvard economists, Reinhart and Rogoff, published a paper ‘Growth in a time of debt’ that said that once debt exceeded 90% of GDP, economic growth drops off sharply. Their thesis added great weight to those urging austerity on such countries as Greece, Spain and many others.

    Paul Krugman in the New York Times of April 18 has drawn attention to a major flaw in their ‘tipping point’ theory for national debt. According to Krugman, Reinhart and Rogoff, allowed researchers at the University of Massachusetts to examine the spreadsheets that helped produce this precise 90% ‘tipping point’. The researchers found that some data had been omitted, they highly questioned statistical procedures that had been used, but most importantly of all they found that Reinhart and Rogoff had made an Excel coding error.

    After corrections were made for these mistakes there was confirmation that there was a relationship between high debt and slow economic growth, which almost all economists agreed with, but there was no confirmation of the 90% ‘tipping point’.

    Unfortunately the Reinhart and Rogoff thesis has been influential in the conservative case for governments, particularly in Europe, to enforce more and more austerity on the public. Greece now has an overall unemployment rate of 27% and a rate of 59% for young people aged 15-24. In Spain the unemployment rate is 57% for the same 15-24 age group.

    Hopefully the flaws in the Reinhart and Rogoff analysis and thesis will force a rethink by the ideologues who keep espousing austerity to reduce deficits and debt, regardless of the tragic consequences for millions of people. There is surely no particular virtue in a government surplus or deficit. In some situations a deficit is more appropriate; in other circumstances a surplus is more appropriate. Surpluses and deficits are means to an end, particularly full employment and stable prices.

    But the conservative economists and commentators will surely think up other reasons for austerity at the expense of vulnerable people.

    John Menadue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     

  • There’s nothing basic about basic nursing care. Guest Blogger: Professor Mary Chiarella

    The Minister for Health and Ageing, Mark Butler has announced a new aged-care workforce compact which will result in 350,000 workers receiving supplementary payments of 1% over and above award increases. This amounts to $1/hour more for each worker – the lowest paid workers in the health care industry. Why is “intimate” nursing care, for the purposes of distinguishing it from technical nursing care, identified as not needing qualified nursing staff and relegated to care workers? Furthermore these care workers, the mainstay of our nursing homes and residential aged care facilities, may only have the support of a single registered or enrolled nurse to care for as many as 60+ patients.

    Yet today the people we see in our nursing homes would have filled a medical ward in the ‘70s. There will be increasing numbers of elderly people to look after, with chronic and complex care needs, so surely there is a need to rethink and recognise the complexity of intimate nursing care and have it performed by appropriately qualified nurses? For proper remuneration? I can’t remember who said it, but the elderly are the only group against whom we discriminate to which we will eventually belong.

    This intimate nursing work, described usually as ‘basic nursing care’ is, in reality, far from basic and you need skilled nurses to perform it well. When they do, its value and necessity transcends its physical messiness. Despite what those who don’t do this work might think, it is not basic—it is extremely psychologically complex. Cleaning patients who are soiled with excreta, blood, or vomitus, who feel ashamed of themselves for being ‘dirty’ or for ‘losing control’, and restoring both their hygiene and their sense of self worth in the process, requires the highest order of skill. Nurses know its worth, yet understand society’s abhorrence of its reality.

    But the paradox is to recognise that other people simply don’t want to acknowledge the worth and complexity of the work. Better to imagine it’s “basic”. It is also a given that nurses who do this work don’t discuss it. Nurses do things to other people which have the potential to strip them of their dignity. One of the reasons why, most of the time, nurses don’t do so is because what transpires behind the screens will never be discussed in public. Good nursing care is eminently forgettable. Nurses manage to be almost ‘invisible’ as they perform the most private of functions for the patient. Listen to this description as a nurse washes a patient’s genitalia.

    Jane is looking intently at the scrotum, lifting carefully the folds to ensure a thorough wash, and painting lotion gently on the grazed area. The penis is washed with equal care and their conversation continues throughout. They could have been having this conversation in a sitting room, it is so unselfconscious[1].

    Nurses, for entirely professional reasons, don’t discuss these aspects of their work. If we did, how could the next patient feel comfortable? The view that any ‘nice’ person can deliver this kind of care diminishes the sensitivity and skill required to manage such situations.  Maybe this is partly because nurses have always done this intimate work, and usually only changes to practice are considered to deserve increased pay. But this provides an unsatisfactory model for re-assessing work value when this work was never valued originally. Furthermore the nursing management of sensitive issues of the body is not granted the same status as  – say –a psychiatrist handling sensitive issues of the mind. Because it involves manual work, ‘getting your hands dirty’, it is considered to be menial or domestic. Yet to practise such work without intellectual engagement would be crass, and could cause psychological damage. If the courts and tribunals were to value this work similarly, the entire award system would need to be revisited.

    Can we finally acknowledge how complex and difficult this work is? Let us not just admire (oh they’re wonderful –I don’t know how they do it) but also reward the people who do it with more than $1/hour. Let us recognise that intimate care of people who are old and sick (and it might be us one day) is actually extraordinarily skilful and requires a great deal of sensitivity.

     Professor Mary Chiarella

    [1] Taylor B, Being Human: Ordinariness in Nursing Churchill Livingstone: Melbourne (1994).

  • The Wars we would rather forget. John Menadue

    Aboriginal Wars

    The Australian War Memorial records as follows:

    “When it became apparent that the settlers and their livestock had come to stay, competition for access to the land developed and friction between the two ways of life became inevitable. As the settlers’ behaviour became unacceptable to the indigenous population, individuals were killed over specific grievances. These killings were then met with reprisals from the settlers, often on a scale out of all proportion to the original incident. … It is estimated that some 2,500 European settlers and police died in this conflict. For the aboriginal inhabitants the cost was far higher: about 20,000 are believed to have been killed in the wars of the frontier, while many thousands more perished from disease and often unintended consequences of settlement. Aboriginal Australians were unable to restrain – though in places they did delay – the tide of European settlement; although resistance in one form or another never ceased, the conflict ended in their dispossession.” (www.awm.gov.au/atwar/colonial.asp)

    Where are the memorials to this tragic war?

    Maori Wars

    The State Library of South Australia records these wars as follows:

    “Between 1845 and 1872 just over 2,500 Australian volunteers saw service in New Zealand. The majority of these volunteers came from the colonies of New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania.

    The cause of all conflict between whites and the Maori people was land. … British forces were sent from Auckland to defeat and capture Maori Chief Hone Heke but the Maori chief and his warriors were skilled in the art of war, but it took [many steps including] a local militia and troops rushed in from Australia … to conclude the first Maori war.

    By 1860, the grab for land again sparked conflict between whites and the Maoris, this time in the Waitara River area. … Again, the Australian colonies were asked for urgent assistance. The colonies rallied and sent troops. The colony of Victoria even sent its entire navy which comprised the steam corvette HMVS Victoria. New South Wales also sent gun ships to support the troops.

    Only later war broke out again, this time in the Waikato area. And again Australian troops came to the aid of local British forces.

    Soon after the Waikato war, the New Zealand Government decided to form a more permanent force and actually recruited troops from among the Australian colonies. They were offered land in exchange for service in the armed forces. Some 3,600 Australians took up the offer. They were formed into the Waikato regiments.” (www.guides.sisa.sa.gov.au/content.php?pid=76180&sid=594745.  The Australian War Memorial has a similar account of Australian participation in the Maori Wars)

    Some may claim that all this occurred before Australia was federated and we were still colonies. I do not think that this can obscure the fact of Australian participation in the Maori wars. The first association between Australian and New Zealand forces was not at Gallipoli in 1915. It was in the Maori wars 70 years earlier.

    John Menadue

     

     

  • The blame game over schools: a way through the impasse. John Menadue

    The Commonwealth and the States will blame each other for failure to agree on Gonski ‘light’. It is a pattern we have seen so often over many years, particularly in health.

    Federalism is just not working for us. It has become an obstacle to good government. The Commonwealth financial dominance will continue. The States are poor but proud and reluctant to concede jurisdiction.

    Kevin Rudd threatened to hold a referendum in association with the 2010 election to give the Commonwealth power to fund and run State public hospitals. But he was persuaded not to persist as it was very likely that a referendum would fail. The Government’s health ‘reforms’ have since turned out to be a continuation of the muddle or a ‘dog’s breakfast’ as Tony Abbott used to describe divided responsibility and the blame game in health.

    But I suggest a compromise is possible that would improve the funding and operation of schools in Australia. We should establish a Joint Commonwealth/State Schools Commission in any State where the Commonwealth and a State Government could agree. It would require the political agreement of the Australian Prime Minister and at least one State Premier to get the ball rolling in a particular State. With political will such a Joint Schools Commission (JSC) would be relatively easy to establish. Hopefully with success in one State/Territory, others would follow.

    In my view, a Commonwealth takeover of Commonwealth funding and management of all schools in Australia would be the best course, but it is just not politically possible.

    The key features of a Joint Schools Commission in any State would be:

    • The JSC would consist of say three Commonwealth and three State representatives with an independent Chair from outside the State who would be appointed by the Federal and State Ministers for Education.
    • The JSC would pool all school funding from both the Commonwealth and State Governments. There would in effect be a single funder in the State.
    • The JSC would have a clear governance role in the coordination of all school funding, its distribution and oversight  within the state
    • Existing providers-public, private and Catholic – would continue to operate and provide services within the JSC state wide plan.
    • The administrative funding for the JSC would be kept to a minimum consistent with the JSC’s essential but limited responsibilities. The small increase in bureaucracy must be strictly contained. It would however be a small price to pay for improved state-wide funding, governance and performance monitoring of schools.
    • The JSC would be guided by principles agreed by the Commonwealth and the State Minister for Education, e.g. equal opportunity for all children, social solidarity and subsidiarity whereby administration would be as local as possible  consistent with State-wide standards.
    • There would be maximum transparency in the work and reporting of the JSC in order to involve public comment and public confidence in the process. There would need to be agreed dispute resolution procedures.

    Under such a proposal we would still have separate JSCs in each State/Territory. But it would be a significant advance on the divided responsibility and blame-game that dogs federalism in Australia

    With political goodwill between the Australian Prime Minister and at least one State Premier, I suggest that these bilateral type arrangements are the best and perhaps the only way forward to improve governance and funding for all our school children within a particular state.

    The Commonwealth Government should not provide any additional funding to the States except through an agreed JSC.

    Six years ago, I proposed a similar arrangement to address the blame game in health . I called my proposal a ‘Coalition of the Willing’.   (See publish.pearlsandirritations.com, Click on ‘health’, March 2007)  That proposal could be updated and applied in a Joint Schools Commission in any State where there is political agreement.

    John Menadue

  • Where has the Business Council of Australia been? John Menadue

    The BCA President, Tony Shepherd, was at it again on Wednesday 17 April at the National Press Club attacking the Government for many failures – a lack of focus, the need for politicians to sacrifice their jobs for the national interest and that old perennial of his, reform of the labour market. His comments were loudly supported by the Australian Financial Review which now reports on behalf of the business sector rather than about business.

    In my blog on March 14, (‘Productivity and Skills’ see below) I drew attention to the failure of the BCA to make its case on productivity and labor market reform. I also highlighted that whilst the BCA wanted to upskill the Australian workforce, it didn’t think that it should upskill itself, having in mind that there is hardly a senior executive or board member of BCA’s top 100 companies who can fluently speak an Asian language.

    It is true that the Government has not been performing well in recent months. Most of the problems are self-inflicted.

    There are policy problems ahead, but Tony Shepherd is wide of the mark in much of what he says.

    • Our partisan mining industry would not agree, but only a few days ago Behre Dolbear, a century-old and well-respected mining advisory firm based in the US, ranked Australia as the top country in the world for mining investment and activity. As the top-ranked country Australia was ahead of Canada, Chile, Brazil, Mexico and the US in that order. On the seven criteria that Behre Dolbear used for its ranking, Australia ranked equal first on its ‘economic system’; equal second on its ‘political system’; top on ‘social issues’; top on least ‘delays’ in decision-making; equal top on least ‘corruption’; equal top on ‘currency stability’ and an also-ran on ‘tax regime’. Overall it was a strong endorsement of Australia as the best place in the world for mining activity. I wonder if Tony Shepherd has read it!
    • Three separate rating agencies – Standard and Poors, Fitch Ratings, and Moody’s – have all ranked Australia in the top eight countries with a triple A rating.  Fitch Ratings was particularly complimentary about Australia’s economic management, a strongly performing economy, low public debt, a floating exchange rate, liberal trade and labour markets and with Australian banks among the strongest in the world. There are certainly reservations about rating agencies but Australia could hardly do better than the ratings most recently achieved
    • Under the Rudd/Gillard Governments we have had six years of uninterrupted economic growth even through the Global Financial Crisis.
    • Some of Tony Shepherd’s own member companies have not been performing well. The giants BHP Biliton and Rio Tinto have been badly managed, with world record write-offs of failed investments. Has Tony Shepherd taken them aside and told them to lift their game? What has he said to his colleagues about executive salaries and the need for sacrifice in the national interest?
    • Interestingly the IMF reported in January this year that the most wasteful Government spending in Australia came in the Howard years. It was not during the governments of Whitlam, Hawke, Keating, Rudd or Gillard. Has Tony Shepherd read the IMF report?

    In Japan last week I heard from many people their admiration about the strength of the Australian economy, particularly compared to their own. What the Japanese couldn’t understand was how the Australian Government was in political trouble.

    Last month Ken Henry criticized the quality of public debate in this country. I am sure Tony Shepherd’s contribution would not have changed his mind.

    We could do with a lot more rigorous policy analysis by the BCA

    John Menadue

  • Report of ‘Clerical celibacy in context’

        A few nights ago, some fifty people went to the Veech Library, at Strathfield, to hear a retired history professor, Ed Campion, give a lecture entitled Clerical Celibacy in Context.  The next day people telephoned the library to get copies of this lecture but there was none to be had because the lecturer performed without the safety net of a text.

    He started with the story of the Mass, showing how the clergy became more and more dominant in worship.  Parallel to this, their privileged civil status grew until by the time of Thomas Becket and Henry II they were a separate entity in society with their own courts, tax system and much besides.  This growth accentuated the division between clergy and laity, giving the clergy power over other Christians.  Clericalism was about privilege and power.  Prohibitions reinforced this distinction, keeping the clergy out of pubs and theatres, tonsuring their hair and dressing them in drab clothes, and barring them from trade, the money market, surgery and warfare.

    Compulsory celibacy was perhaps the most significant element in the development of a separate clerical caste.  Most history, especially grassroots history, is simply lost.  It is clear, however, that in the parishes the ban on clerical marriage was widely ignored.  The Norman Conquest (1066) brought into England Norman bishops eager to further the reform agenda of the papacy, who had supported the invasion for this purpose.  It was a slow process because bishops needed the coercive power of the Crown to succeed and Kings seemed happy to let priests keep their wives on payment of a fine.  The second Lateran Council (1139) drew a line in the sand for it made clerical marriage invalid as well as illicit – after that, a girl couldn’t marry a priest any more than she could marry a tree.  Spare a thought for the clergy consorts, Ed Campion urged:  the church treated them harshly in its attempts to clean up its act.

    But public opinion was against the consorts, as respect for monks and their vows grew alongside the development of education and regard for the law.  As well, there was an expansion in reverence towards the Eucharist when theologians went deeper into the mystery of Christ’s presence there.  This impacted on the lifestyle of priests:  the Body on the altar was the same as that born of Mary;  and since Mary was a virgin so the priest should be celibate.

    Then the Counter-Reformation came up with the idea of seminaries, where youths would be isolated from the world and enculturated as clerics.  The dominant culture of the seminaries, clericalism, is a source of the current sex abuse tsunami – clericalism that uses its power for personal gratification whether its targets are children or adults.

  • Privatisation on the wane. John Menadue

    From the days of Maggie Thatcher, Ronald Reagan and John Howard, the assumption has been that the private sector will grow in relation to the public sector because it is more efficient and contributes more to the public good. The political correctness of the political Right assumed that privatisation would carry all before it.

    But not any more. The market failures of many key players in the private sector are clear. It is not just Wall Street, but our own local giants, BHP, Rio Tinto and others, who have lost tens of billions of dollars in shareholders’ funds in recent years. There has been clear company overstretch and management failures.

    Campbell Newman, the Premier of Qld, has rejected the proposals of Peter Costello to privatise Qld energy and ports. He is clearly hearing the views of all Queenslanders who disliked the privatisation program of the previous Premier, Anna Bligh. As Campbell Newman put it recently ‘Queensland hearts are not in (privatisation) … it is a political reality’.

    Only last month, Essential Research reported that the public believed that the following industries would be better run by governments. (In all cases there was a significant “don’t know” response)

    • Electricity – 52% of respondents
    • Water – 69%
    • Trains/buses/ferries – 64%
    • Motorways – 66%
    • Community services like child protection – 75%
    • Hospital and health services – 71%
    • Schools – 68%
    • Prisons – 73%
    • Universities – 81%
    • Ports – 60%

    The evidence seems quite clear that the public does not want more privatisation without a very good case being made.

    Essential Research also reported recently that the three most trusted institutions in Australia are public institutions – The High Court, ABC and Reserve Bank.

    Some public institutions are much more efficient that their private sector counterparts. Because of scale, Medicare has administrative costs about one third of those of BUPA.  If we compare like with like, public hospitals are just as efficient as private hospitals according to the Productivity Commission.

    The Hawke and Keating Governments also took us down the privatisation path. But in retrospect, what has the privatisation of the Commonwealth Bank brought us in terms of public benefit. It now sits cosily alongside the other three major banking groups with little variation in the products it offers to the public.

    As CEO of Qantas, I was a reluctant supporter of privatisation because I came to the view that the government was not a good shareholder. Paul Keating deliberately set out to starve Qantas of equity in order to force privatisation. Has privatisation of Qantas been a success?

    Has the privatisation of Telstra by the Howard Government brought the benefits we were led to expect.

    I cannot see that Maggie Thatcher’s privatisation of British Airways has been successful. BA is a very ordinary performer. To make a financial and political success of BA’s sale,the Thatcher Government entrenched the market dominance of BA, helped get rid of competitors like British Midland, gave route advantages to BA particularly on the Atlantic and strengthened its control of gates at Heathrow. Aviation in the UK would have been advantaged much more if the market had been made more competitive.

    In the modern economy, we need to get the balance right between the public and private sectors. The community is quite clearly of the view that the balance has swung too far in favour of privatisation and private companies.

    Competitive markets are more important than ownership.

    John Menadue

     

  • Post card from Kyoto

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    John Menadue

  • Reviving Malaysia. John Menadue

    As I pointed out in an earlier blog (27 March 2013), the Nauru/Manus ‘solution’ is not working to deter asylum seekers. The government foolishly adopted Tony Abbott’s proposal.

    With the failure of Nauru/Manus, the Minister for Immigration, Brendan O’Connor has spoken about the need to revive the earlier proposal on Malaysia. Last weekend the SMH published an editorial headed ‘Time to revisit the Malaysian plan’.

    Arja Keski-Nummi and I have consistently supported the Malaysian plan. We did not see it as perfect by any means, but it did provide a basis for developing a regional arrangement. We are glad to see that at last the merits of the Malaysian plan are being examined again.

    We wrote an article on 13 August 2012, entitled ‘Creating a safe place – Malaysia Mark II’. It was published in the Melbourne Age (see it on my website publish.pearlsandirritations.com, click on ‘refugees’ and go to article of 13 August 2012).

    The Government should urgently renew its efforts to negotiate an improved Malaysian arrangement and introduce legislation to implement it. Perhaps the Greens will think again. Their opposition to the Malaysian arrangement has delivered us the failed Nauru/Manus plan. The perfect became the enemy of the good.

    There are two important issues that we must keep in mind in dealing with the issue of asylum seekers. There is no one single ‘solution’. There must be a comprehensive package addressing the problems in source countries such as Afghanistan and Pakistan and in transit countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia.

    The second is that UNHCR must be an important partner in what we undertake. The UNHCR said that it would not have a bar of Nauru/Manus, but it will cooperate on an improved Malaysian plan.

    John Menadue

  • Fear of Asia. John Menadue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    For the same reason, I have been a strong supporter of working holiday programs in providing opportunities for young Australians to travel and work in Asia for extensive periods. Unfortunately recent Australian governments have not seen the long-term benefits of these programs. The first working holiday agreement in Asia was with Japan in 1980. We didn’t have another in Asia until the 1996 agreement with the ROK. In the last ten years, there have been another six working holiday agreements with Asian countries, but most of them have caps of 100 persons per annum. We still have no working holiday agreements with China, India or Vietnam.

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

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

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

     

  • More punishment for asylum seekers and refugees. John Menadue

    The Coalition has announced that in government, it would deny boat arrivals access to an independent review of their claims for refugee status.

    It is another way of punishing vulnerable people and winning political points.

    • There will be no change in appeal rights of asylum seekers who come by air. The punishment will only be for boat arrivals.
    • 82% of initial rejections for refugee status were overturned in 2011/12 by the Refugee Review Tribunal. This has been the pattern for several years. This suggests that there is some fundamental problem with the way primary decisions are made by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.
    • One of the recommendations of the Houston Report was that the Refugee Status Determination system should be reviewed. DIAC says that it is doing this. The figures on overturning of DIAC decisions suggest that this is an urgent problem.
    • Over 90% of asylum seekers who come by boat are found to be refugees. But only 44% of asylum seekers who come by air are found to be refugees. Thus the Opposition proposes to penalise the group that historically has had much stronger claims to refugee status.

    The announcement by the Coalition is consistent with its policy of highlighting only boat people and punishing them wherever possible. It is obviously a policy that is paying political dividends for the Coalition.

    There is also I suspect a mistaken belief that by denying appeal rights to boat arrivals, it will act as a deterrent for boat arrivals. This is despite the fact there is no evidence whatsoever that policies to deter asylum seekers by receiving countries has any effect. The persecution and tragedy which asylum seekers face and which force them to flee their country has far greater force than any ‘deterrent’ policy that we can throw at them.

    Only last month on February 5, the Australian Parliamentary Library reported on ‘factors affecting asylum seekers choice of destination country’. The report pointed to the failure of policies designed to deter asylum seekers. It said

    ‘It is clear from the existing literature that opportunities for governments to curb asylum flows through policies of deterrents are extremely limited. Asylum seekers are often simply unaware of policy measures aimed at discouraging their arrival. Where they are aware of such measures, they respond to them in complex and often unpredictable ways. This represents a considerable challenge for policy makers charged with stemming the flow of asylum seekers and appeasing a public which is increasingly demanding for various reasons that the government “stop the boats”.’ (p.12)

    Once again politics and demonization of asylum seekers is put ahead of fact-based policies and the dignity of very vulnerable people.

    John Menadue

  • Child sexual abuse: who are the abusers? Guest blogger, Professor Kim Oates

    The awareness of the existence of child sex abuse, particularly its frequency, has only occurred in relatively recent times.  Now, we read or view daily stories about it. Whether this widespread public awareness of the problem has done much to prevent it and to help the victims is questionable, but it is better than our previous state of ignorance.

    Child sex abuse is not a new phenomenon. There is no good evidence that it is more common now than in the past.  However, before it started to be studied and publicised in the 1970s, it was hardly ever recognised and rarely discussed. This was mostly due to two factors.

    The first is that child sex abuse is done in secret. There are no corroborating witnesses. Only the victim and the offender know about it and the child’s secrecy is often bought with threats of dire consequences if the child ever reveals what has been happening to her.  If a child ever found the courage to say she had been sexually interfered with, she usually wasn’t believed.  Instead, she was likely to be punished for saying such a terrible thing.  This is still a problem for many children today.

    The second factor is denial. Child sexual abuse is an unpleasant topic.  It is a fact too hard, too unpleasant for most people to entertain or comprehend. In the past we didn’t see it, we didn’t recognise it and we didn’t believe it when we were told about because that made life too uncomfortable, too threatening.

    We are no longer ignorant but there is still a degree of denial. We now know it exists but we want it to be somewhere else, something that involves other people, other families, other institutions just as long as it’s nowhere near us.

    The much needed Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse may reinforce that view in the community and give us some degree of comfort that child sex abuse is someone else’s problem, not ours.

    However, a wide body of research, including research done in Australia, shows that most sexual abuse of children, boys as well as girls, occurs in or near their own homes, committed by people they are related to, who they know or who their families trust.

    Seventy five per cent of child sex abusers are people the child knows and trusts.  Contrary to some views, most offenders are not fathers. Approximately 15% are fathers or stepfathers, 30% are other male relatives of the child, 15% are family friends and 15% are acquaintances of the child and family. The remaining 25% of child sexual abuse offenders are strangers who have not met the children before.

    It is the group of 15% of offenders who are acquaintances of the child and family which includes those adults who have access to children in religious and other institutions and who use that trust to abuse a child.

    The current focus on the response of institutions to child sexual abuse is timely. It is essential.  But let’s not forget where most child sexual abuse occurs.  The uncomfortable fact is that for most children who are sexually abused, the abuse occurs in or near their own homes. And it is caused by people they know and who their families trust.

    Professor Kim Oates