This blog has been banging on for years about the tendencies within the extreme rump of the Coalition to tap into One Nation style politics. Howard did it, Turnbull did it, and now Abbott is doing it. I suspect the latter has been pivotal to the strategy from day one.
As I commented on a Poll Bludger posting recently:
"I notice a lot of comments about Abbott’s mouthing of Oldfield’s nastiness. This is not surprising as Oldfield and Abbott used to be chums, with Davey boy working on Abbott’s staff. Pauline was a Liberal, and when she got out of hand as a rogue trader Howard commissioned Abbott to pull her down. No doubt Oldfield was able to supply some of the ammunition. Its like the goanna chasing & swallowing its own tail; their all round bully boy/girl antics keep being regurgitated as the tail is coughed up."
The MSM have finally picked up on this tendency within the Coalition. This has been studiously ignored by many within the political commentariat, to their ever-lasting shame. A report in The Age today highlights divisions within the Liberals on asylum seeker policy. I wrote last year:
"Abbott's macho, pseudo religiosity and manic physical self-flagellation clearly appeals to many of the 'me me journalists' and the crypto-Hansonite set but it makes my skin crawl. What does it say about the psychological health of a country that goes within a whisk of electing a major political party that had as the centrepiece of its electoral pitch the punishment of a few miserable refugees? It beggars belief that in the 21st century our body politic can be so trivialised".
Shame on you, shame on me, shame on all of us....read some of the comments on this piece in The Australian to have your stomach truly churned.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Labor tackles racism and reprises multiculturalism
Click here to view Ch 10 News item
The dog whistling politics of the Coalition has come back to bite it on the bum. It is about time the sunshine was let in on this grubby corner of the extreme right's campaign to win office on the back of fear and division. It's an Abbott speciality of course and those out there peddling this racial vilification stuff are doing his bidding. An anti-Islam campaign has been festering for some time within the bowels of the Coalition and now its ugly shape is being revealed.
As I wrote in a post last year, Abbott ran "...for the highest office on a platform of unbridled entitlement politics, encouraging division, selfishness and 'get out of my way' pitches to people who think Government is about nothing more than serving their narrow interests. Labor had to tip toe through an electoral mine field of electors easily in thrall to hate-mongering, which has become an acceptable political tool when you have little else to convince the electorate you are fit for government."
Nothing has changed....
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Why do we tolerate nastiness toward asylum seekers?
Has anyone noticed an improvement in 2011 in the treatment of refugees? I have'nt. I turned on ABC24 this morning to find the Liberal spokesperson on immigration, Scott Morrison, attacking the Govt. for assisting financially the families of refugees killed on Christmas Island to attend the funerals of their lost relatives. How low can this polity sink? Even Hockey found this a nasty too far. The meanness of spirit behind this base politics continues to disgust me. Sometimes I can barely bring myself to look at and listen to the horror of our treatment of asylum seekers.
I once worked for a government that sold its soul to a devil. Our enthusiastic complicity in an illegal war, our rank hypocrisy in hectoring other countries about human rights, and our systematic violation of the rights of refugees was more than I could stomach; I withdrew gradually my services and then myself from the professional world I had inhabited for nigh twenty years. I found myself in a fog of depression that threatened to destroy my life. Everywhere I looked I saw Islamophobia, sanguineness in the face of abject cruelty to our fellow human beings, bureaucratic solutions to human suffering. People I had loved were sprouting the poisonous stuff of ethnic demonization and the mindless slogans of hate and intolerance.
I set myself on a path of healing but I am constantly set back by the reality of hate politics; the mindless characterisation of people on the basis of religion and/or ethnicity.
I kept thinking of two people I loved, and who had seen me through earlier difficult times, when a good friend was all that stood between me and dangerous depression. One of these great friends was a colleague who died in the Jog Jakarta air disaster; the other was a refugee from Iran who I met at University in India and who migrated to the US. Both of these wonderful human beings were/are great humanists with a zest for life. Oh yes, and they were/are Muslims...
I once worked for a government that sold its soul to a devil. Our enthusiastic complicity in an illegal war, our rank hypocrisy in hectoring other countries about human rights, and our systematic violation of the rights of refugees was more than I could stomach; I withdrew gradually my services and then myself from the professional world I had inhabited for nigh twenty years. I found myself in a fog of depression that threatened to destroy my life. Everywhere I looked I saw Islamophobia, sanguineness in the face of abject cruelty to our fellow human beings, bureaucratic solutions to human suffering. People I had loved were sprouting the poisonous stuff of ethnic demonization and the mindless slogans of hate and intolerance.
I set myself on a path of healing but I am constantly set back by the reality of hate politics; the mindless characterisation of people on the basis of religion and/or ethnicity.
I kept thinking of two people I loved, and who had seen me through earlier difficult times, when a good friend was all that stood between me and dangerous depression. One of these great friends was a colleague who died in the Jog Jakarta air disaster; the other was a refugee from Iran who I met at University in India and who migrated to the US. Both of these wonderful human beings were/are great humanists with a zest for life. Oh yes, and they were/are Muslims...
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Merry Christmas and could we do better on the human rights front in 2011?
As this tumultuous year comes to a close I have been pondering the direction of our moral compass when it comes to the human rights of refugees:
. We still see children behind bars because their parents or guardians had the courage & temerity to arrive on our shores unannounced
. Many accepted refugees struggle to find public housing and to get a toe hold on the economic ladder
. Asylum seekers in the twilight limbo of our detention centres are self-harming again out of desperation with a system that grinds painfully slowly and which treats them like criminals
. Trash language such as 'illegals', 'boat people', 'queue jumpers' and the rest of the nasty lexicon continues to pepper our air waves and be bandied about by politicians, shock jocks and right wing pamphleteers so as to press the buttons of the permanently credulous and the pygmy intellects of the lumpen mob
. A promise to reprise the Pacific Solution and to punish refugees with reinstatement of the draconian TPV regime remains a centre piece of the Coalition's policy platform - twin violations of international human rights and refugee instruments
We have moved quite a way from the dark years of the Howard ascendency, which shamed Australia on the human rights front, but the repressive tendencies just beneath the surface of our open democracy are writ large in the report card on refugees and continue to diminish us all.
. We still see children behind bars because their parents or guardians had the courage & temerity to arrive on our shores unannounced
. Many accepted refugees struggle to find public housing and to get a toe hold on the economic ladder
. Asylum seekers in the twilight limbo of our detention centres are self-harming again out of desperation with a system that grinds painfully slowly and which treats them like criminals
. Trash language such as 'illegals', 'boat people', 'queue jumpers' and the rest of the nasty lexicon continues to pepper our air waves and be bandied about by politicians, shock jocks and right wing pamphleteers so as to press the buttons of the permanently credulous and the pygmy intellects of the lumpen mob
. A promise to reprise the Pacific Solution and to punish refugees with reinstatement of the draconian TPV regime remains a centre piece of the Coalition's policy platform - twin violations of international human rights and refugee instruments
We have moved quite a way from the dark years of the Howard ascendency, which shamed Australia on the human rights front, but the repressive tendencies just beneath the surface of our open democracy are writ large in the report card on refugees and continue to diminish us all.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Asylum seekers and our democracy - Manne, Lake, Burnside, Megalogenis
Four of the nation's leading thinkers on the subject explore the asylum seeker issue (and don't always agree): on the ALP's problems dealing with it; the historical and cultural baggage; and the political difficulties inherent in taking a progressive approach.
Chaired by Dennis Altmann (Director, Institute for Human Security, La Trobe University), the panel consists of: Julian Burnside QC, Barrister and asylum seeker advocate; Marilyn Lake, Professor of History, La Trobe University; George Megalogenis, Senior Journalist, The Australian; Robert Manne, Professor of Politics.
Presented by the Ideas and Society Program, La Trobe University, October 2010.
Click on the link to watch this La Trobe University event on Slow TV.
Chaired by Dennis Altmann (Director, Institute for Human Security, La Trobe University), the panel consists of: Julian Burnside QC, Barrister and asylum seeker advocate; Marilyn Lake, Professor of History, La Trobe University; George Megalogenis, Senior Journalist, The Australian; Robert Manne, Professor of Politics.
Presented by the Ideas and Society Program, La Trobe University, October 2010.
Click on the link to watch this La Trobe University event on Slow TV.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
Asylum seekers in Australia - High Court rules in favour of boat people
In a landmark decision, the High Court has ruled that two asylum seekers were denied "procedural fairness" in the review of their rejected refugee status claims.
The bovver boys and girls are already out, lambasting the Government for 'failing to protect Australia's borders', but everyone with a brain knows the Howard Government excised as much as the country as they could manage - in an alarming Pythonesque parody of power run amok - to undermine procedural fairness; bribed a failed state to be complicit in systematic violation of the rights of asylum seekers on Nauru; and, commissioned the building of the latest gulag on Christmas Island. This all happened on Howard's watch and underlines the dangers to democracy when demagogues seek to sideline the rule of law in favour of executive authority.
David Marr has written an interesting piece on this today, an excerpt of which follows:
"...A decision in favour of the men could halt dozens of deportations and change the fate of thousands of boat people held in camps across Australia. The "excision" system that ships them all through Christmas Island would become redundant. The court might put in doubt every negative finding of the so called "non statutory" Refugee Status Assessment system that has decided the fate of every boat person for a decade.
It's big. Few decisions of the court have been so anxiously and eagerly awaited. All will be clear this morning, but when lawyers gathered in August to argue the case in Canberra, judges on the bench indicated they were ready to make a big call: that boat people cannot be detained and processed outside the law..."
Yes, its big and overdue. Hopefully an opportunity will arise for many of those persecuted under the various mandatory detention regimes to seek recompense through the courts.
The bovver boys and girls are already out, lambasting the Government for 'failing to protect Australia's borders', but everyone with a brain knows the Howard Government excised as much as the country as they could manage - in an alarming Pythonesque parody of power run amok - to undermine procedural fairness; bribed a failed state to be complicit in systematic violation of the rights of asylum seekers on Nauru; and, commissioned the building of the latest gulag on Christmas Island. This all happened on Howard's watch and underlines the dangers to democracy when demagogues seek to sideline the rule of law in favour of executive authority.
David Marr has written an interesting piece on this today, an excerpt of which follows:
"...A decision in favour of the men could halt dozens of deportations and change the fate of thousands of boat people held in camps across Australia. The "excision" system that ships them all through Christmas Island would become redundant. The court might put in doubt every negative finding of the so called "non statutory" Refugee Status Assessment system that has decided the fate of every boat person for a decade.
It's big. Few decisions of the court have been so anxiously and eagerly awaited. All will be clear this morning, but when lawyers gathered in August to argue the case in Canberra, judges on the bench indicated they were ready to make a big call: that boat people cannot be detained and processed outside the law..."
Yes, its big and overdue. Hopefully an opportunity will arise for many of those persecuted under the various mandatory detention regimes to seek recompense through the courts.
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
Asylum seekers in Australia - Bartlett nails the lie behind refugee hysteria
Andrew Bartlett has penned a piece to expose the nonsense behind the hysteria whipped up in Australia over refugees by our dishonest brood of politicians. An excerpt follows:
"Despite all the significant economic, human rights, environmental, social and security issues which are important in our future relations with our neighbouring countries, the issue of a few thousand asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat each year is the one which is dominating most Australia media coverage of the Prime Minister's current visits around the region.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has finished her first East Asia Summit, had bilateral discussions with the Vietnamese government and has been to Malaysia for discussions there. Indonesia comes next. This transcript of the media conference she gave in Vietnam after the Summit shows that fully half of the questions related to asylum seekers, with most of the other split between the issue of human rights in the region and a local political story in Australia.
The issue also dominated the coverage by ABC radio of the Prime Minister's Malaysian talks, with just a brief mention at the end of the story about the possibility of a Free Trade Agreement. By contrast, this article about the visit from a Malaysian news agency makes no mention of asylum seekers or people smuggling at all, focusing instead on economic opportunities and how this links with tertiary education and training opportunities offered in Australia."
The shameful xenophobia whipped up in the Adelaide Hills recently is typical of the nastiness spawned by Coalition politicians to shore up electoral support. They pander to a dark underbelly, where sub-cultures lurk that frequently find voice through an 'easy racism'. One Nation tapped into this phenomenon and a key legacy of the Howard years sees Coalition politicians exploiting this tendency ruthlessly. Misrepresentation of facts and ethnic stereotyping are the calling cards (or ‘dog whistles’) of ‘culture warriors’ within politics and the media, pandering to the ignorant and misinformed. One fella turned out on the media to tell us the refugees would be more likely to be at risk in the case of bushfire because they could not speak English, despite the fact the asylum seekers are subject to the authority and care of several federal agencies. Perceived threats to security, health services, water, schools are straws in the wind, served up by the self-appointed spokespersons of affected communities to justify their bigotry and fear of the 'other'.
Our 'easy racism' remains our collective shame and makes of us a laughing stock in our region, where refugee issues really bite.
"Despite all the significant economic, human rights, environmental, social and security issues which are important in our future relations with our neighbouring countries, the issue of a few thousand asylum seekers coming to Australia by boat each year is the one which is dominating most Australia media coverage of the Prime Minister's current visits around the region.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has finished her first East Asia Summit, had bilateral discussions with the Vietnamese government and has been to Malaysia for discussions there. Indonesia comes next. This transcript of the media conference she gave in Vietnam after the Summit shows that fully half of the questions related to asylum seekers, with most of the other split between the issue of human rights in the region and a local political story in Australia.
The issue also dominated the coverage by ABC radio of the Prime Minister's Malaysian talks, with just a brief mention at the end of the story about the possibility of a Free Trade Agreement. By contrast, this article about the visit from a Malaysian news agency makes no mention of asylum seekers or people smuggling at all, focusing instead on economic opportunities and how this links with tertiary education and training opportunities offered in Australia."
The shameful xenophobia whipped up in the Adelaide Hills recently is typical of the nastiness spawned by Coalition politicians to shore up electoral support. They pander to a dark underbelly, where sub-cultures lurk that frequently find voice through an 'easy racism'. One Nation tapped into this phenomenon and a key legacy of the Howard years sees Coalition politicians exploiting this tendency ruthlessly. Misrepresentation of facts and ethnic stereotyping are the calling cards (or ‘dog whistles’) of ‘culture warriors’ within politics and the media, pandering to the ignorant and misinformed. One fella turned out on the media to tell us the refugees would be more likely to be at risk in the case of bushfire because they could not speak English, despite the fact the asylum seekers are subject to the authority and care of several federal agencies. Perceived threats to security, health services, water, schools are straws in the wind, served up by the self-appointed spokespersons of affected communities to justify their bigotry and fear of the 'other'.
Our 'easy racism' remains our collective shame and makes of us a laughing stock in our region, where refugee issues really bite.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Human rights & the Afghan war debate - an alternative take!
I was casting an eye over this piece in Crikey and thought it was a fairly shallow take on the Afghan war 'debate'. Whatever the strategic rights & wrongs of our engagement this is about the American alliance, pure & simple. If you expected a clear enunciation of geo-political and military strategies from either side of the political divide you were delusional. There is bipartisan support for the alliance and neither party will muster the backbone to challenge US hegemony. So we listen endlessly to that Killcullen chappy telling us about the inner logic of 'counter-insurgency' and, basically, talk amongst ourselves.
The Abbott nonsense about civilisation conflict reprises the twaddle peddled by the neocons justifying the 'war on terror'. Like the 'war on drugs' this war will fail miserably, leaving the situation worse. As one commentator put it recently, you do not buy into the 'messianic' philosophy of al Qaeda and its off-shoots as a counter measure. You counter the message with the rule of law, good governance and community development. You emphasise soft diplomacy and human rights - you do not actively undermine the very things you purport to stand for if you don't want to be seen as hypocritical occupiers and carpet-baggers.
Only a political solution will work in Afghanistan. We are currently supporting a regime that is so corrupt I am reminded of US support for a series of corrupt leaders in South Vietnam as a precursor to defeat in that disastrous war. They ran the country as a personal fiefdom to be plundered by themselves and their client cronies. The Karzai family are doing the same thing. The only way to counter the taliban is through genuine democracy, good governance across all areas of public administration, emphasis on civil society and a fair & equitable distribution of resources. This is not rocket science. The current disproportional division of military and civil assistance of 9:1 needs to be reversed. And we need to stop playing footsies with corruption.
Legitimacy is everything in the struggle for hearts and minds. Can anyone honestly say that Karzai has earnt legitimacy? The taliban support the violent overthrow of his corrupt and thoroughly compromised regime. Meanwhile, he steals elections and is at the peak of a regime that tolerates systematic looting and pilfering of public monies.
When visiting Kenya in 2006, Obama said the following: "Ethnic-based tribal politics has to stop. It is rooted in the bankrupt idea that the goal of politics or business is to funnel as much of the pie as possible to one's family, tribe, or circle with little regard for the public good. It stifles innovation and fractures the fabric of the society...It divides neighbour from neighbour".
This insight could apply equally to Afghanistan. If you can address these issues you have the best hope of counter-insurgency!
The Abbott nonsense about civilisation conflict reprises the twaddle peddled by the neocons justifying the 'war on terror'. Like the 'war on drugs' this war will fail miserably, leaving the situation worse. As one commentator put it recently, you do not buy into the 'messianic' philosophy of al Qaeda and its off-shoots as a counter measure. You counter the message with the rule of law, good governance and community development. You emphasise soft diplomacy and human rights - you do not actively undermine the very things you purport to stand for if you don't want to be seen as hypocritical occupiers and carpet-baggers.
Only a political solution will work in Afghanistan. We are currently supporting a regime that is so corrupt I am reminded of US support for a series of corrupt leaders in South Vietnam as a precursor to defeat in that disastrous war. They ran the country as a personal fiefdom to be plundered by themselves and their client cronies. The Karzai family are doing the same thing. The only way to counter the taliban is through genuine democracy, good governance across all areas of public administration, emphasis on civil society and a fair & equitable distribution of resources. This is not rocket science. The current disproportional division of military and civil assistance of 9:1 needs to be reversed. And we need to stop playing footsies with corruption.
Legitimacy is everything in the struggle for hearts and minds. Can anyone honestly say that Karzai has earnt legitimacy? The taliban support the violent overthrow of his corrupt and thoroughly compromised regime. Meanwhile, he steals elections and is at the peak of a regime that tolerates systematic looting and pilfering of public monies.
When visiting Kenya in 2006, Obama said the following: "Ethnic-based tribal politics has to stop. It is rooted in the bankrupt idea that the goal of politics or business is to funnel as much of the pie as possible to one's family, tribe, or circle with little regard for the public good. It stifles innovation and fractures the fabric of the society...It divides neighbour from neighbour".
This insight could apply equally to Afghanistan. If you can address these issues you have the best hope of counter-insurgency!
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