NationStates Jolt Archive

This dates back to January, but I thought it might start an interesting discussion.


The Australian writer Donald Horne meant the title of his celebrated book, The Lucky Country, as irony. "Australia is a lucky country run by second-rate people who share its luck," he lamented in 1964, describing much of the Australian elite as unfailingly unoriginal, race-obsessed and in thrall to imperial power and its wars. From Britain's opium adventures to America's current travesty in Iraq, Australians have been sent to fight faraway people with whom they have no quarrel and who offer no threat of invasion. Growing up, I was assured this was a "sacred tradition".

But then another Australia was "discovered". The only war dead whom Australians had never mourned were found right under their noses: those of a remarkable indigenous people who had owned and cared for this ancient land for thousands of years, then fought and died in its defence when the British invaded. In a land littered with cenotaphs, not one honoured them. For many whites, the awakening was rude; for others it was thrilling. In the 70s, thanks largely to the brief, brave and subverted Labor government of Gough Whitlam, the universities opened their studies to these heresies and their gates to a society Mark Twain once identified as "almost entirely populated by the lower orders". A secret history revealed that, long before the rest of the western world, Australian working people had fought for and won a minimum wage, an eight-hour working day, pensions, child benefits and the vote for women. And now there was an astonishing ethnic diversity, and it had happened as if by default: there simply were not enough Britons and "blue-eyed Balts" who wanted to come.

Australia is not often news, cricket and bushfires aside. That is a pity, because the regression of this social democracy into a state of fabricated fear and xenophobia is an object lesson for all societies claiming to be free. In power for more than a decade, the Liberal prime minister, John Howard, comes from the outer reaches of Australia's "neocons". In 1988 he announced that a future government led by him would pursue a "One Australia Policy", a forerunner to Pauline Hanson's infamous One Nation party, whose targets were black Australians and migrants. Howard's targets have been similar. One of his first acts as prime minister was to cut $A400m from the Aboriginal affairs budget. "Political correctness," he said, "has gone too far." Today, black Australians still have one of the lowest life expectancies in the world, and their health is the worst in the world. An entirely preventable disease, trachoma - beaten in many poor countries - still blinds many because of appalling living conditions. The impoverishment of black communities, which I have seen change little over the years, was described in 2006 by Save the Children as "some of the worst we have seen in our work all around the world". Instead of a political respect in the form of a national lands rights law, a war of legal attrition has been waged against the Aborigines; and the epidemics and black suicides continue.

Howard rejoices in his promotion of "Australian values" - a very Australian sycophancy to the sugared "values" of foreign power. The darling of a group of white supremacists who buzz around the Murdoch-dominated press and radio talk-back hosts, the prime minister has used acolytes to attack the "black armband view of history", as if the mass killing and resistance of indigenous Australians did not happen. The fine historian Henry Reynolds, author of The Other Side of the Frontier, has been thoroughly smeared, along with other revisionists. In 2005 Andrew Jaspan, a Briton newly appointed editor of the Melbourne Age, was subjected to a vicious neocon campaign that accused him of "reducing" the Age to "another Guardian".

Flag-waving and an unctuous hand-on-heart jingoism, about which sceptical Australians once felt a healthy ambivalence, are now standard features at sporting and other public events. These serve to prepare Australians for renewed militarism and war, as ordained by the Bush administration, and to cover attacks on Australia's Muslim community. Speak out and you may break a 2005 law of sedition meant to intimidate with the threat of imprisonment for up to seven years. Once described in the media as Bush's "deputy sheriff", Howard did not demur when Bush, on hearing this, promoted him to "sheriff for south-east Asia". Like a mini-Blair, he has sent troops and federal police to the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Papua New Guinea and East Timor. In newly independent East Timor, where Australian governments colluded with Indonesia's 23-year bloody occupation, "regime change" was effectively executed last year with the resignation of the prime minister, Mari Alkatiri, who had the temerity to oppose Canberra's one-sided exploitation of his country's oil and gas resources.

However, it is one man, David Hicks, a spectacular loser in the new Australia, who now threatens Howard's "lucky" facade. Hicks was found among the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 and sold as bounty to the Americans by CIA-backed warlords. He has spent more than five years in Guantánamo Bay, including eight months in a cell with no sunlight. He has been tortured, and never charged with any crime. Howard and his attorney-general, Philip Ruddock, have refused even to request Hicks's repatriation, as is his constitutional right, because there are no Australian laws under which Hicks can be charged. Their cruelty is breathtaking. A tenacious campaign by his father, Terry, has ignited a kind of public shame that is growing. This has happened before in Australia, such as the march of a million people across Sydney Harbour Bridge demanding justice for black Australians, and the courageous direct action by young people who forced the closure of notorious outback detention camps for illegal refugees, with their isolation cells, capsicum spray and beatings. Asylum seekers caught in their leaking boats by the ever-vigilant Australian Defence Force are now incarcerated behind electric fences on tiny Christmas Island more than 1,000 miles from the lucky country.

Howard faces no real opposition from the compliant Labor party. The trade unions, facing a rollback of Australia's proud record of workers' rights and up to 43% youth unemployment, have stirred, and filled the streets. But perhaps something wider and deeper is coming from a nation whose most enduring and melancholy self-image is that of disobedient larrikins. During the recent Ashes series, Ian Chappell, one of Australia's most admired cricket captains, walked out of the commentary box when Howard walked in. After seeing for himself conditions in a refugee prison, Chappell said: "These are human beings and you can't just treat them like that ... in cricketing parlance it was like cheating. They were being cheated out of a fair go."


(link (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1994045,00.html))

I don't agree with everything said here, but first I'm curious to see comments.

I don't see it as entirely fair on the man. Howard is a liar, a cheat and a muckraker, and those are his good points, but to blame him for much of this is unfair - and some of what he's done has been good.

The boat people situation, for instance, was not his fault, or it was only in the sense of "There go my people - I must hurry and get in front of them, for I am their leader." The vast majority of Australian were fed up to the gills with unwanted, unasked for illegal immigrants washing up on their shores every month - and even more fed up with bleeding-heart activists who insisted they be welcomed with open arms, free accomodation and jobs for the asking. Howard rightly spotted that these carpet-baggers were wealthy people looking to circumvent the immigration laws, so he created a regime that made Australia an undesirable destination - and what do you know? There haven't been any new boat people here for some time. The policy worked - and despite a lot of attempts to make it look inhumane by the media, the general populace never really spoke against it.

Further, I would support his "anti-Sorry" policy. Did the Aborigines get a raw deal? Certainly. Should we do what's possible to rectify the situation? Within reason, yes.
But to apologize is to admit wrongdoing, and that I will not support. Howard was right - his government had nothing to apologize for. An apology by him would have been meaningless.
Even better, this seems to have gotten us past the "isn't it terrible?" stage of acknowledging a past wrong. This happened, yes, but it cannot be allowed to control everything the country does for the rest of time. Sooner or later, the book must be closed, and life move on. The sooner, the better.

The Guardian article focuses on the scandals of the Howard government, and tries to paint them all black. But the truth is otherwise.

The boat people situation, for instance, was not his fault, or it was only in the sense of "There go my people - I must hurry and get in front of them, for I am their leader." The vast majority of Australian were fed up to the gills with unwanted, unasked for illegal immigrants washing up on their shores every month - and even more fed up with bleeding-heart activists who insisted they be welcomed with open arms, free accomodation and jobs for the asking. Howard rightly spotted that these carpet-baggers were wealthy people looking to circumvent the immigration laws, so he created a regime that made Australia an undesirable destination - and what do you know? There haven't been any new boat people here for some time. The policy worked - and despite a lot of attempts to make it look inhumane by the media, the general populace never really spoke against it.

Are you seriously suggesting that none of the many people recognised as genuine refugees fleeing persecution were in fact genuine refugees fleeing persecution? You are aware, I hope, that almost all asylum-seekers parked in Woomera or Christmas Island or Nauru are eventually recognised as genuine refugees and granted access to Australia? Howard has pulled the wool down over the eyes of racists and xenophobes, making them believe that people with yellow or brown skin are being kept out. It gets him votes, while asylum-seekers are kept in inhumane conditions... until they're finally recognised as genuine, and quietly allowed into the country. Howard has created a mirage to please public opinion, and it's worked.


Further, I would support his "anti-Sorry" policy. Did the Aborigines get a raw deal? Certainly. Should we do what's possible to rectify the situation? Within reason, yes.
But to apologize is to admit wrongdoing, and that I will not support. Howard was right - his government had nothing to apologize for. An apology by him would have been meaningless.

This issue is tricky, but Howard has tried to blur it by saying precisely that: that an apology by the current government for the horrific crimes committed between 1789 and the 1970s would be meaningless. He's missing the point. Nobody's asking him to apologise in the name of John Howard the individual; what's requested is an apology in the name of the State and the Crown. This has precedents, notably in New Zealand, where the Crown has apologised for violations of the Treaty of Waitangi, and more recently the government has apologised (in the name of the State and the Crown) for past racist policies against New Zealand's Chinese minority.


Even better, this seems to have gotten us past the "isn't it terrible?" stage of acknowledging a past wrong. This happened, yes, but it cannot be allowed to control everything the country does for the rest of time. Sooner or later, the book must be closed, and life move on. The sooner, the better.


Yes. But you can't do that unilaterally. Reconciliation must be a process which involves both sides in a satisfactory, constructive and consensual manner. For instance, a Treaty would be one way to do that. It would enshrine Aboriginal sovereignty and ownership of the land prior to invasion, and it would provide a bipartisan basis to address current issues plaguing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It would legitimise the non-Indigenous presence and national government. Australia would be well-inspired to look to the example set by New Zealand.

Are practical issues more important? Yes. But many Aboriginals have expressed the need for an official and symbolic apology, recognition and/or treaty, as a basis enabling them to move on in concrete and effective partnership with the government. If you want to achieve anything, you cannot unilaterally decide that you're going to ignore and reject the deep-felt needs and wishes of Indigenous Australians.

To be perfectly clear: John Howard as an individual has nothing to apologise for when it comes to crimes that were committed before he came to power. What's needed is an apology by the State and/or Crown as institutions, similarly to what was done in New Zealand.

I'm always shocked by how immoral some of the things said by Australian politicians like John Howard seem, and how people like him still retain such a significant influence. I don't know enough about Australian politics to be sure, but I get the impression that the reason is that all the influential politicians seem to be sub-par, and it's a matter of choosing who is disliked the least. The last time I was over there Kim Beazley was still the opposition leader, and I heard some approval ratings. Howard was at something like 40% while Beazley was at around 35%.

The problem with talking about immigration is it's very easy for people with racist views to use the issue to cover them up. It would be nice if everyone could move to whichever country they want, but unfortunately this is just not practical, and could never work. Although some politicians may claim they push for certain immigration laws for logistical reasons, I'm sure the real reason in many cases is prejudiced.

Even if some are a bit obsessed over the past failures with aborigines, the current ones must not be ignored. The figures for alcoholism, drug use and poverty in aborigines are too extreme for the problems to be ignored, and whereas I would usually be in favour of treating all citizens in exactly the same way in matters like this, there is clearly something that is causing this, so perhaps the government does need to give them preferential treatment in some ways. Education could also be a big part of the solution, and this may have to take into account the history. Perhaps the hardest part of this (other than actually solving the problem at all) is preventing both racism and political correctness from influencing things too much.

Are you seriously suggesting that none of the many people recognised as genuine refugees fleeing persecution were in fact genuine refugees fleeing persecution? You are aware, I hope, that almost all asylum-seekers parked in Woomera or Christmas Island or Nauru are eventually recognised as genuine refugees and granted access to Australia? Howard has pulled the wool down over the eyes of racists and xenophobes, making them believe that people with yellow or brown skin are being kept out. It gets him votes, while asylum-seekers are kept in inhumane conditions... until they're finally recognised as genuine, and quietly allowed into the country. Howard has created a mirage to please public opinion, and it's worked.

My understanding was that roughly half of those interred were eventually refused entry, but I have to admit I haven't looked deeply into the situation. If you have any links, I'd like to take a look.

And either way, the policy HAS dried up the flow of illegals to a trickle.

This issue is tricky, but Howard has tried to blur it by saying precisely that: that an apology by the current government for the horrific crimes committed between 1789 and the 1970s would be meaningless. He's missing the point. Nobody's asking him to apologise in the name of John Howard the individual; what's requested is an apology in the name of the State and the Crown. This has precedents, notably in New Zealand, where the Crown has apologised for violations of the Treaty of Waitangi, and more recently the government has apologised (in the name of the State and the Crown) for past racist policies against New Zealand's Chinese minority.



Yes. But you can't do that unilaterally. Reconciliation must be a process which involves both sides in a satisfactory, constructive and consensual manner. For instance, a Treaty would be one way to do that. It would enshrine Aboriginal sovereignty and ownership of the land prior to invasion, and it would provide a bipartisan basis to address current issues plaguing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It would legitimise the non-Indigenous presence and national government. Australia would be well-inspired to look to the example set by New Zealand.

Are practical issues more important? Yes. But many Aboriginals have expressed the need for an official and symbolic apology, recognition and/or treaty, as a basis enabling them to move on in concrete and effective partnership with the government. If you want to achieve anything, you cannot unilaterally decide that you're going to ignore and reject the deep-felt needs and wishes of Indigenous Australians.

To be perfectly clear: John Howard as an individual has nothing to apologise for when it comes to crimes that were committed before he came to power. What's needed is an apology by the State and/or Crown as institutions, similarly to what was done in New Zealand.

I wouldn't object, but I feel such an apology should be given only by the people, in the form of a plebiscite. That way, it's truly an expression of the will of the people, not activists and pressure groups.

My understanding was that roughly half of those interred were eventually refused entry, but I have to admit I haven't looked deeply into the situation. If you have any links, I'd like to take a look.


I'd have to find the source, and I really can't remember what it was. I can probably find it (it must be in some press article I've saved on my computer) when I have time; I'll let you know. Anyway, as I recall the figure was significantly higher than 50%.

Hence my point that Howard has pulled wool over people's eyes, by convincing them that these refugees don't actually get to settle in Australia. They're subjected to inhumane treatment for a very long time before (in most cases) being recognised as genuine refugees, and therefore being allowed in anyway. It's a smokescreen policy, to trick and please public opinion.


I wouldn't object, but I feel such an apology should be given only by the people, in the form of a plebiscite. That way, it's truly an expression of the will of the people, not activists and pressure groups.

That would make sense, yes. Holding a referendum on an apology and/or a treaty.

Don't worry, Howard will thrown into the dustbin of history within the next few weeks and all his reforms gone.

Howard has precided over the greatest abuse of executive Government power in Australian history.

We've lost personal rights under so called "anti-terror" laws.
WorkChoices has destroyed 100 years of workers rights.
We are now big targets for terrorists due to our one-eyed support for the USA.
Government is increasingly centralised in the federal government with ministers getting more and more discetionary powers
Laws get bulldozed through the senate without any real scutiny
The middle class are becoming the "working poor" while the rich get richer

We've lost personal rights under so called "anti-terror" laws.
Agreed.

WorkChoices has destroyed 100 years of workers rights.
Hardly.

We are now big targets for terrorists due to our one-eyed support for the USA.
Not as much as the government will try to tell you.

Government is increasingly centralised in the federal government with ministers getting more and more discetionary powers
Agreed.

Laws get bulldozed through the senate without any real scutiny
Agreed.

The middle class are becoming the "working poor" while the rich get richer
Are we living in the same country?

Anyways, the article is from John Pilger, so it has to be taken with a grain of salt. I happen to agree with a lot of it though. I'm not entirely sure whether Howard is to blame though, the whole right-wing establishment has taken over. What gets the ratings? "Border Security: Australia's Front Line" and "Today Tonight".

But Chaser does too, so not all is lost. Maybe it wouldn't be too bad to have a real interest rate spike to drive all those bogans-come-suburbanites back where they came from: irrelevance.

I am hoping the Greens will get the balance in the Senate though, even if Labor wins majority in the house I still don't trust them without Senate overview, Howard's last term proved how dangerous it is for a government to have an absolute majority in both houses.

I am hoping the Greens will get the balance in the Senate though, even if Labor wins majority in the house I still don't trust them without Senate overview, Howard's last term proved how dangerous it is for a government to have an absolute majority in both houses.

Oh, please no. I don't mind the Greens, but Bob Brown is such an idiot...

Oh, please no. I don't mind the Greens, but Bob Brown is such an idiot...

It's most likely, the Democrats are going to loose they're seats and the Greens will most likely pick them up plus more. I actually support Bob Brown and the Greens, they have been a party for decades now and have become quite a political force without compromising on their principles once. When thinking about the Liberal Labor who will sell out to the highest bidder, I admire them. The Democrats showed they couldn't 'keep the bastards honest' when they sold out and let Howard give us the GST, the Greens are the only independent left-wing party left for us.

Anyways, the article is from John Pilger, so it has to be taken with a grain of salt. I happen to agree with a lot of it though. I'm not entirely sure whether Howard is to blame though, the whole right-wing establishment has taken over. What gets the ratings? "Border Security: Australia's Front Line" and "Today Tonight".

Howard is the right-wing's vehicle. I think he's a member of the "Exclusive Brethen" who seem to donate to the Liberal party. Everything he's done seems to feed pro-Business and pro-neo-Christian lobby groups which fund the Liberals. The business lobby seems to be stacked with ex-Liberals or vice-versa.

I think if he gets back in, then the real agenda will be unleashed.

Howard is the right-wing's vehicle. I think he's a member of the "Exclusive Brethen" who seem to donate to the Liberal party. Everything he's done seems to feed pro-Business and pro-neo-Christian lobby groups which fund the Liberals. The business lobby seems to be stacked with ex-Liberals or vice-versa.
The Liberal Party basically has two wings: one liberal wing and one conservative wing.

The former is Costello and Turnbull. I don't mind those guys, they'd be happy to keep out of legislating social policies and free up the economy, which I agree with.

The latter is Howard, Abbott etc. They're just about the worst politicians in the country (right up there with Hanson and Family First). And because the Liberal Party has this wing, and it's so powerful, I can't support it, even though I'd prefer the liberal wing to the ALP.

The Liberal Party basically has two wings: one liberal wing and one conservative wing.

The former is Costello and Turnbull. I don't mind those guys, they'd be happy to keep out of legislating social policies and free up the economy, which I agree with.

The latter is Howard, Abbott etc. They're just about the worst politicians in the country (right up there with Hanson and Family First). And because the Liberal Party has this wing, and it's so powerful, I can't support it, even though I'd prefer the liberal wing to the ALP.
Well the Liberals really were never a socially liberal party, I mean back in their early days they were just a repressive paternalistic welfare capitalist party, and economic liberalism has been a long time below the radar in the party, in fact most of Australia's economic reform and opening the economy to the world was done by Keating, a centre-left PM, under the 'Third Way' model, the economic liberal (and possibly social) lead by Costello is relatively small. Remember that Howard didn't come to power over Keating because of economic reasons, deregulation had already happened under Keating, a big part was that Howard is a strict social conservative (authoritarian would be more appropriate).

Another interesting article:


IT was a chilling phone call from his boss that made diplomat John Campbell realise the rules for Australia's public servants were changing fast. Campbell was in Geneva, serving as Australia's ambassador for disarmament in the late 1990s. A veteran diplomat of 35 years, he knew the boundaries of what he could say and what he could not. Or so he thought.

"Then one day I got this phone call (from my superior)," recalls Campbell. "He said there were rumours that during a lunch I hosted in Geneva, I had said publicly I did not understand why John Howard did not apologise to indigenous Australians. I then found out that the department had already launched an investigation into it behind my back."

Campbell did not make the comments at a public lunch but in private with some Aboriginal leaders who were in town.

Even so, he knew a line had been drawn through his name. He had not anticipated the changing breeze from Canberra about the limits of free speech and independent thought in the public service.

"It made me realise how the culture was changing," says Campbell, who was later forced out of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade after clashing with Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. "Howard has demanded much tighter control of government at all levels and he and his ministers do not accept any form of dissent."

Just how little dissent the Government is willing to broker has been on display this week. The conviction for contempt of two journalists on Monday follows two high-profile government-backed legal witch-hunts against public service whistleblowers.

The convictions would not have caused such alarm had the journalists or the whistleblowers jeopardised national security by revealing Australia's military secrets or disclosed information that undermined life or safety. The only injury they caused was political: the information disclosed embarrassed the Government. This, it seems, is reason to spend millions of dollars in taxpayers' money to prosecute them.

"You know, one doesn't expect this sort of thing in Australia," convicted whistleblower Allan Kessing says. "I was looking forward to the usual golden retirement, pottering around the garden, a little bit of travel, a small but adequate superannuation payment. I was looking forward to, yes, a wonderful life, and now it's been just shattered."

A former middle-ranking Customs officer, Kessing, 59, spent more than half his superannuation payout defending charges that he leaked a Customs report to The Australian. The report, which had been ignored by his superiors for two years and had never been seen by a minister, detailed serious security weaknesses at Sydney airport.

The 2004 story severely embarrassed the Government, which - after initially denying the problem - subsequently spent more than $200 million upgrading airport security. The nation's airports are safer because of the leak.

"This man should be feted. They should be throwing rose petals at him," says John Hartigan, chairman and chief executive of News Limited, publisher of The Australian.

Instead, Kessing was hunted down by the Australian Federal Police, charged and found guilty of breaching the Commonwealth Crimes Act, and given a nine-month suspended sentence.

In a separate case, Herald Sun journalists Michael Harvey and Gerard McManus were this week convicted of contempt and each fined $7000 for refusing to name the source of a story about a federal government plan to cut benefits to war veterans. Public servant Desmond Kelly was convicted but later cleared on appeal for leaking the story.

The plight of these two journalists and two whistleblowers are the toxic fruits of an insidious trend in Australia towards greater government secrecy.

Openness and accountability are being undermined by the changing nature of political decision-making and an Orwellian determination to control the flow of information. The message is clear: journalists and their government sources trade information at their own risk. Gone are the days when governments would treat leaked information as an unpleasant but inevitable part of the ebb and flow of public debate.

Now unauthorised leaks are treated as a crime and their perpetrators prosecuted.

"If some people seem surprised that I have called in the police to deal with leaks, they shouldn't be," says the head of the Prime Minister's Department, Peter Shergold. "I always have and I always will."

The Government says it has a right to expect discipline and loyalty from its public servants. "Public servants do not have a moral responsibility to act on their own judgment of the public interest when they assess the Government has got it wrong," Shergold says.

[...] During the Bob Hawke-Paul Keating era, Canberra press gallery journalists could routinely call people inside government departments and ask questions. Now all media inquiries must be referred back to a central spokesperson. Public servants caught speaking with journalists without clearance risk punishment. Those who leak information without permission risk jail. Therefore the information outlets are almost entirely controlled at a central point by ministers.

[...] The Government's hard line on whistleblowers means that, without a change to the laws, journalists will increasingly end up in court. Their refusal to divulge sources - a rock-solid ethical practice - will lead to more convictions of journalists guilty of doing their jobs.


It's an old article I have on my computer, by Cameron Stewart of The Australian, from June 27. The url was this (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21973855-7582,00.html), but the article is no longer online.

Yes, the current government is like a useless Gestapo. They try to plug information leaks but the ship is sinking anyway.