Running scared
Morrison and his fearful paranoid bunch are running scared.
Parliamentarians elected by the people are closing in,
They are closing in on the perverts who want to continue to,
to continue to promote intolerance and religious persecution.
The cross-bench is angry that the refugees are incarcerated
on offshore gulags where they are being driven mad by isolation,
mental anguish, torpid surroundings and indifference to their plight.
Morrison says he’ll close down parliament rather than face debate.
Where do the Liberals think they can hide?
Don’t they ask why we’re not on their side?
Why they are right when we are wrong?
Just a pathetic sight and we are strong?
They claim they’re protecting law and order
do they think they can get away with murder?
We will win out there’ll be no surrender
then we will cast the Liberals asunder.
6/12/18
Santo Santoro*
First published in Australian Socialist Vol.16, No. 1 page 23
The editors noted that Santo Santoro Minister for Aging in the Howard ministry was forced to resign over a share scandal.
also published in New Community Quarterly Vol. 5, No.2 page 72, 2007
The Liberals are crazy, they scuttle back and forth, while Iraq is burning
and voters take flight as Labor hides its delight, their course is turning.
As the seagulls rest on the cold cannon nest, the sea is churning.
The seagulls have landed on the head of Santo Santoro.
The working folk sweat, Work Choices regret and anger a-burning.
As share dealers hold sway at the end of the day, the rest of us mourning.
But the boy on the shore is throwing pebbles no more, he runs a-warning.
The seagulls have landed on the head of Santo Santoro.
Aborigines wait, their chances not great, and consciences sleeping,
Howard and Brough yawn, opportunities gone, and children a-weeping.
While more troops land in far Afghanistan, and villagers dying,
the seagulls have landed on the head of Santo Santoro.
The relentless sun dries up the last of the dams and the rivers,
the cloud of dust sows as climate change grows, and hopes are in slivers.
Uranium mined and false hopes outlined, whilst optimism withers.
The seagulls have landed on the head of Santo Santoro.
Time for Liberals’ old tricks, their stories all fixed, but Labor is smiling,
because voters are tired, of the lies that were tried, and times are a-changing
the unemployed wait, to get in the gate, fed up with short-changing.
The seagulls have landed on the head of Santo Santoro.
Refugees are detained, without reason constrained, razor wire compounding,
their anguish is heard, like the song of a bird with bravery resounding.
Justice denied, decency tried, and people’s rights confounding.
The seagulls have landed on the head of Santo Santoro.
While women and Greens are building new dreams, hope is a-growing
that at the end of the day, the truth will hold sway, we’ll see rivers flowing.
As the Liberal light fades, we’ll be Jacks of all trades, when Liberals are going.
The seagulls have landed on the head of Santo Santoro.
*This song is inspired by and can be sung to the tune of
“The Marines Have Landed On The Shores Of Santo Domingo” written by Phil Ochs.
Save the Mary
Let the Mary flow free
from the mountains to the sea
saving the Lungfish for eternity.
Yes, let the Mary flow free
protecting the Cod fish
for you and for me.
Let the Mary flow free
securing the Turtle
for posterity.
Let her water flow free
from Borumba through Gympie
past Tiaro and Widgee
all the way down to
the warm Fraser sea.
We don’t need to dam it
for electricity
we need it for farmers
to run to the sea.
We need it for tourists
who’ll all come to see
the might of the Mary
when it’s allowed to run free.
Written in 2009.
Saving the planet – one meltdown at a time
Fukushima.
Day-night screamer.
“Nuclear power can save the earth”
just forget Three Mile Island
disregard Chernobyl
turn away from Nagasaki
turn your back on Hiroshima.
Fukushima!!!!
Written in 2011 don’t know if it was published
Saying Sorry
First published Green Left Weekly 2001.
You peer insensate from the parapet
like some myopic gargoyle
one eye blinded by the future
the other averted from the past.
And from your twisted spout- regret.
Deep and sincere, no doubt:
but, not sorrow: yet.
Gabbling grotesque glyph
distorting the story of settlement
disguising deeds malign
by asserting good intent.
Denying invasion of this continent.
The small steps of the minuet
meant to reconcile at last
what happened in the past.
Practical reconciliation
must surely be enough
to end the hate
and to placate
the conscience of the nation,
for all the land,
lives and children taken.
And as such
you don’t ask much
just that they demonstrate
their mutual obligation.
Seeking asylum
We all will seek asylum
at some stage in our life
some from the travails of every day
some from war and civil strife .
We are all asylum seekers.
We are all refugees.
Some of us may not know it
as we placate and please.
Some think we have made it.
Some just strut and tease.
Some hope for liberation,
some pray for workhouse stew.
Some rely on others
to help build this world anew.
We all will seek asylum
at some stage in our life
some from the travails of every day
some from war and civil strife .
It’s time to get to know the other
stranger, father, child or lover,
to live in peace with one another
and acknowledge the earth is our mother.
First published in the Bayside Bugle August 2005, p.7.
Slogans
I was asked the other day
if I would work without any pay
on slogans to help the NT
get tourists to prolong their stay.
So with thoughts congested, I suggested
they might like to try.
“Mandatory sentencing is
something for the whole family.”
or
“Get sedated.
Visit Darwin’s jails
and see where southern taxpayers’
money is being wasted.”
or
“Come to the Northern Territory
it ‘s better than purgatory.”
or
“Visit the Uranium Province because
you’ll never, never glow
if you never, never go.”
or
“You’ll find Darwin charming
not at all alarming
Have a swinging time
at Don Dale Jail.”
They were not impressed
and I got quite distressed
when they said
“I’d stolen their time.”
I asked was that a property crime?
Would I have to walk the line?
They just told me to
“hang in there”.
Written in the early 2000s to draw attention to too many Aboriginal deaths in custody in the NT.
Social Justice
John would ask you to consider whether in any decent society there can ever be an honourable alternative to social justice. Deciding on a socially just course is never straightforward but there are some consistent basic directions to guide us:
- It is unjust to treat equals unequally.
- It is similarly unjust to treat unequals equally.
- There must be procedural justice.
- A socially just policy is one which advances the interests of the least advantaged the most.
- A socially just policy attempts to meet everyone’s basic needs in an egalitarian manner.
- Ideally there would be a general sense of fairness whenever socially just policies are implemented.
- As in any triage system priority must always be given to those with the greatest or most urgent needs.
Social Justice
It’s the armless and the harmless
the senseless and the lame
who always pay the social cost
who always get the blame.
It’s the snivellers and the chisellers
the swindlers and the vain
ripping off the profits,
and it’s always been the same.
When I speak of social justice
you ask “What will it cost us?”
Advance Australia fairly.
Advance Australia squarely
and let us reach the further shore
in the best way that we can.
Social Security and Taxation
Dear Dr Henry
I write in relation to the reviews of the Australian social security system and taxation system. My submission is in the form of a proposal to construct the social security system in a way which would improve equity and remove inefficiencies.
Essentially, I am proposing that:
- the main income support system is paid by Taxation, as was the case between 1910 and 1927.
- the main income support is in the form of a universal Basic Income paid to each
individual permanent resident; it is paid irrespective of marital or other social status, irrespective of income or wealth, and irrespective of whether the individual works or not; and would have no conditions attached other than the need to establish permanent residence. - Ideally, no distinction would be made in the rate of payment on the basis of age (but I do accept that in the short term, in order to garner widespread acceptance, a lower rate might be needed for children living in the family home). A Basic Income along such lines will promote egalitarian solidarity but would not on its own ensure equity, some residual services and payments will be required to be provided by Federal and state governments and by non–government not for profit agencies in order to deal with issues of disability, illness, child and other care responsibilities.The rate of payment would have to be slightly above the single age pension rate if some poorer people are not to lose in the changeover. Thus, under a Basic income many poor people currently discriminated against, by the existing social security system, will be lifted out of poverty.The rate of taxation required in the short term would be in the order of 43-47% and would be payable on the first through to the last dollar earned (the Irish Government has done a lot of work in this regard see their September 2002 Green Paper entitled Basic Income).
Because each individual receives the equivalent of the age pension the net rate of taxation on earned income would be slightly less than under the existing system for all workers earning up to the average male weekly earning (two thirds of all workers); those earning more than the average wage would pay slightly more tax and those on high incomes significantly more.
Those who currently receive superannuation do not pay tax and this system could continue – but if they wished to receive the Basic Income, they would have to pay the full rate of tax on their superannuation. It would, however, be simpler to treat superannuation as income and pay everyone the Basic Income.
I am attaching my latest paper “Individual rights, collective rights and Basic Income” which looks at some of these issues but there is a vast body of literature on the subject of Basic Income which can be found on the Basic Income Guarantee Australia website: http://www.basicincome.qut.edu.au/index.jsp
Of particular relevance to the current Australia inquiries is my e-Book: Income Insecurity: The Basic Income Alternative
http://www.basicincome.qut.edu.au/interest/e-books.jsp
Basic Income Guarantee Australia is a national affiliate of the Basic Income Earth Network On whose web site a huge array of academic papers can be accessed. http://www.basicincome.org/bien/
The Basic Income debate is intensifying in many parts of Europe, Latin America, Southern Africa and Canada. The last time there was as much international interest in the income maintenance debate Australia (through the Henderson Poverty Inquiry and Treasury’s Priority Review Staff) made a significant contribution. It would be a pity if we sleep through this revival in interest in Basic Income throughout much of the world.
Yours sincerely
Inquiries into Social Security and Taxation 2008 http://taxreview.treasury.gov.au/content/submissions/pre_14_november_2008/Tomlinson_J ohn.pdf
Social Struggle
John’s mother remembers him at the age of 5 trying to drag her into the Gympie Police Station arguing that they should go in and “help the man the naughty policeman had been hitting”. He has always chosen to side with the underdog. The first demonstration he attended, in 1962, at the age of 19 was staged to try and stop the deportation of Willy Wong, a Chinese national who had worked for 8 years in Australia but did not have a residency permit. He became leader of Student Action at the University of Queensland and campaigned against the death penalty and the vagrancy laws. Also at this time he worked with Oodgeroo Noonuccal in Indigenous struggles and visited Indigenous communities on Cape York in 1963. He was battered unconscious by a copper at an Indigenous demonstration in the early 1970s.
In Darwin, he helped set up the Coalition of Low Income Earners (COLIE) and the Darwin Unemployed Workers Union. His paid and unpaid activities brought him into contact with many people who were homeless and he has campaigned in their interests in Darwin, Canberra and Brisbane. His involvement with the Northern Territory Council of Civil Liberties led to charges being laid over a dispute with the Police Commissioner about the editing of a TV tape he had provided to the Commissioner showing police torturing an Aboriginal youth unconscious on the main street of Darwin. He was convicted of hindering police in the ACT.
He has been opposed to the incorporation of West Papua into Indonesia since 1961, the Vietnam War, the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan and our military involvement in many other places. He was charged in 1975 with attempting to get supplies to Fretlin Resistance fighters in East Timor after the Indonesian invasion.
Some reasons why Australia should abolish the detention of asylum seekers
by Jocelyn Lock, Malia Quenault and John Tomlinson
CPACS Occasional Paper No. 02/1, First published in March 2002 by the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
In an ideal world people would be as free as capital to move in and out of countries without restrictions. Australia incarcerates individuals who seek sanctuary from genocide, slavery, torture and intractable poverty when they arrive on our shores without valid entry visas. The paradox here is that Australian governments consistently claim Australia to be a liberal democracy, which is committed to humanitarianism and the protection of freedom (Hughes 1998, pp.138-139). This perception of the Australian State is not shared by many in need of asylum, having survived political, economic or social tyranny. The Minister in charge of migration matters whilst addressing the Young Liberals Conference in Melbourne in January 2002 said “In the main, people who have sought to come to Australia and make asylum claims do not come from a situation of persecution…. They may not be able to go back to their country of origin but they are making a lifestyle choice (cited in Crossweller and Saunders (p.2).” The Prime Minister reinforced Ruddock’s hard line in his campaign launch when he declared “we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come (Howard 2001).” Such a stance is a considerable retreat from his pious hope in his Federation Address a year earlier when he said “I look to an Australia in 2010 in which our unmatched reputation for achievement, for tolerance, for understanding and compassion…. has been even further enhanced.”
It would seem that current Government is not responding to humanitarian compositions presented by organisations such as the Refugee Council of Australia. Rather, arguments that involve economics and guarantee strengthened foreign ties appear to be of primary importance. Bridgman and Davis (2000) discuss economic, social, and legal frameworks for policy analysis, and underscore the importance of politics. This paper will attempt to argue for changes to the treatment of asylum seekers through examination of these frameworks.
The Economic Framework
The essential feature of the capitalist world economy is production, for sale in the market, where the goal is the maximization of profit. According to Schuurman (1996), the restructuring of international capitalism from the mid 1970s effectively emasculated the state and created a global hierarchy in which exploitation of the periphery by the core economies escalated, rather than alleviated, many of the economic problems experienced in the Third World. Hoogvelt (2001, p.121) says that the consequences of globalisation in the Third World, including debt repayment and deregulation have only served to enmesh the wealth of the Third World elites into the global economy, while states remain impotent in endeavours to invigorate national redevelopment projects. Therefore, it should come as no surprise, that unlike any other period Australians are witnessing the movement en masse of people fleeing from countries ravaged by civil war, the resurgence of racialised state policies, environmental catastrophe and extreme poverty. There is a “new world order” where refugees and asylum seekers have faded into geo-political insignificance. Figures from the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR 2001) estimate the number of displaced persons under their mandate to be currently around 22 million.
Hoogvelt (2001, p. 124) says the economic objective is the freedom to move capital wherever it is needed worldwide, to allow the capital-owning international bourgeoisie a decisive advantage over the mass of workers who are restricted in their movements and migrations by the passports they may or may not carry. Privatisation has left westernised countries with a reduced public sector, rising unemployment, and inadequate welfare systems, with far greater competition between workers in the labour market. In Australia, there has been a long-held tradition of blaming immigrants for unemployment and undermining an already overburdened welfare system.
During the Keating Labor Government the first major cutback in social security entitlement reflected such misperceptions of immigrants. Migrants arriving in Australia found they had to wait six months before they were able to claim social security. The Howard Government extended this waiting period to two years in its first term of office. In October 1999 unauthorised arrivals, successful in their applications for refugee status in Australia, were no longer granted permanent residence but instead given a three year temporary entry visa. After three years, they have to apply again for refugee status (Mares, 2001, p. 8). This creates two classes of refugees with differing entitlements. Permanent visa holders have much the same social service entitlements as other Australians. Temporary visa holders have only limited access to benefits paid through intermediaries such as the Red Cross. Temporary visa holders have:
- to pay full overseas fees in universities,
- no right to obtain English language classes,
- no right of re-entry if they leave Australia,
- no access to family reunion,
- no access to most DIMA funded programs (Refugee Council of Australia, 2000).
- Many of these lesser entitlements restrict the capacity of temporary visa holders to find employment and a place in Australian society, and
- when released from detention asylum seekers are issued with a statement of account, at a rate of $ 147.50 per day of confinement (Burnside, 2002).
The OECD (2001) report on migration and growth equivocates about the macroeconomic impact of migration on systems of production, the labour market and the welfare system of host countries. The report suggests that as economies globally enjoy sustained recovery after a period of slow economic growth, some member countries are resorting to greater inflows of foreign labour in order to maintain growth. The report also states the proponents of migration point to the positive economic role that migrants can play because they fill shortages in the labour market, resulting from a lack of skill in the host country or the inability of an aging population to participate in the labour market. In addition, migrants also create a demand for goods and services produced by the host population, stimulating the labour market, rather than stultifying it. Figures from the report support this by highlighting small net gains for the US economy, equivalent to 0.1 percent of GDP or $10 billion per annum. The benefits are not necessarily evenly distributed and some groups are disadvantaged. This may have more to do with the general distribution of wealth in capitalist economies rather than as a result of shifting labour flows.
Australia’s policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers entering the country without visas cost taxpayers in the order of $104 per day per person, with the total annual cost in the 1999-2000 period being approximately $97 million (Purcell 2001, p. 15). In addition to these direct costs there have been recent policy initiatives undertaken by the Government which include financial assistance to countries of origin and first asylum; increasing the holding capacity of detention facilities, and an extensive information campaign to deter people from seeking asylum in Australia. These are all very costly initiatives. In late 2001 the Australian Government spent at least $148 million, in two months, setting up refugee processing camps on Pacific Islands (Personal communication with the Refugee Council of Australia). This did not include the cost of using the Navy to transport asylum seekers from the Tampa and subsequent vessels to these Pacific locations. Some estimates of the annual cost of the “pacific solution’ top $500 million (ABC 2002).
In addition to the direct costs of detention, the national economy also forgoes the productive capacity which asylum seekers could contribute were they free to work. Over the last few years, between 50% and 80% of asylum seekers arriving from Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran have been granted temporary refugee visas and many may stay in the country permanently. If Australia is to maximise the economic utility of asylum seekers it is in Australia’s economic interests that the level of trauma they experience after arrival should be reduced to the lowest possible levels. Yet as we will show later in this article, many observers of asylum seekers’ treatment in Australian detention centres believe that the standard treatment of detainees induces trauma. At times of unrest in the camps even greater trauma is inflicted (O’Brien 2001). Even when released, the process of being granted temporary residency rather than permanent residence further exacerbates the uncertainty in such people’s lives (Rees 2001) and this further limits their productive capacity. The poor educational opportunities, particularly for older children in the camps, adversely affects asylum seekers academic and hence productive capacity.
If, as Morgan (1999) states, the market is a self-regulatory system that rewards economic efficiency, then the spiralling costs of deterring, detaining and processing asylum seekers would seem to undermine the goal of economic efficiency. The failure to maximise the economic potential of asylum seekers further weakens their potential economic efficiency. This suggest that short-term political rather than economic imperatives have inspired these initiatives.
The Political Framework
Hughes (1998, pp.138-139) notes that the Australian Government believes the Government should have minimal interference in people’s daily lives. This belief is violated by mandatory detention of asylum seekers. It could be argued that the Government’s responsibility extends solely to citizens or that the outsourcing the detention of asylum seekers means that the Government is not directly involved in the refugee’s daily lives. However, these are both weak arguments.
In addressing the argument of citizenship, one only has to look at Australia’s history of exclusion. The 1901 Immigration Restriction Act was clearly an attempt to maintain a “white” Australia (Capling, Considine, Crozier, 1998). In addition, until the 1960s, Aborigines were considered non-citizens (Capling et al., 1998). However, the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA, 2001.b) boasts the abolition of the “white Australia” policy, and claims to “celebrate our cultural diversity”. DIMA’s claims need to be considered alongside the fact that “If you are a European refugee, your chances of being granted refugee status or a humanitarian visa in Australia are 14.7 times greater than if you are from the Middle East. (Stevens, S. 2002 p. 9, also Mares, 2001, p. 20).” Such claims of celebrating cultural diversity and the abolition of the white Australia policy are further thrown into doubt by the existing Australian practice of mandatory detention of asylum seekers, temporary visas for ‘boat people’ and the so called ‘Pacific solution’. The detention and, therefore, the interference in the daily lives of asylum seekers are consistent with the historical agenda of keeping Australia white. This is reinforced when one considers that 50,000 plus people are overstaying their visas in Australia at any one time yet they are not automatically detained when discovered; over-stayers are predominately white (Background Briefing 2002 February 3). The Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs 2000 edition Protecting the Border Immigration Compliance which shows that citizens from the UK and the USA make up the largest group of overstayers, with 10.1% and 8.1% respectively (p.58).
With respect to the argument that outsourcing means the Government is not involved in the daily lives of refugees; it is clear that, though the Government stands one step removed from the day to day interactions with refugees, it retains ultimate responsibility for the actions of its contractors. The proposition that the Government is not then interfering in the lives of asylum seekers really amounts to a semantic loophole which conveniently provides the Government with power over refugees lives and the claim of little responsibility (Paton, 1998).
The quest for a just and humane society is not realised by detaining refugee applicants. A humane society does not violate human rights. Australia’s mandatory detention of asylum seekers would seem to violate several of the freedoms outlined by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948). Article nine of the declaration states “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile”. The government may argue that detainment is not arbitrary, as all “queue jumpers” are detained. However, the Cambridge Dictionary (2001) defines arbitrary not only as “based on chance”, but also as “disapproving, based on personal power without considering people’s wishes”. Arguably, mandatory detention is arbitrary. Human Rights Watch (2002 p.11) deplored the treatment of the Tampa asylum seekers and others who were removed from Australian waters on an Australian warship and subsequently landed on Nauru or Manus Islands for refugee processing. The Australian Government has recently resorted to retrospective legislation in an attempt to justify its actions in relation to the Pacific solution. This organisation is also critical of Australia’s turning away refugee boats nearing the Australian coast. Much of Australia’s current asylum seeker policy would seem to be in breach of a number of international instruments Australia has signed and ratified.
Throughout December 2001 the Australian media was filled with reports of Australian Government’s support for America’s attack on the Taliban, whom it viewed as oppressive and as actively supporting terrorist action. In early January 2002 the Migration Minister called on the UN Refugee Agency to delay announcing the refugee status of Afghani asylum seekers it was processing on Nauru. On the one hand, the Government supports the notion that the Taliban is an unjust, tyrannical government, yet on the other hand, it refuses to accept asylum seekers attempting to escape this tyranny. Whilst asylum seekers are processed in Australia they are held in mandatory detention.
The Australian Government’s actions are at variance with Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (United Nations, 1948), which states that:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
The Australian Government’s automatic detention of those who come on boats without valid entry permits is hardly a recognition of their dignity or rights, nor is it treating them in the spirit of ‘brotherhood’.
Bridgman & Davis (2000, p.63) note the importance of asking, “How this would look in tomorrow’s headline?” In today’s global world, it is important to look at this both in terms of national and international responses. Headlines that show a government acting in a tyrannical manner toward those who are desperate, impoverished, exiled as a result of brutalities in their home lands does not paint the picture of a government that cares about people. Rather, it paints a picture of a government that does not honour Conventions Australia freely signed and ratified. Such international instruments commit it to provide protection and support for people however they arrive in Australia who are in need of resettlement due to persecution in their home country or are subjected to “gross violation of human rights in their home country” (DIMA, 2001,a). All Australian ex- Prime Ministers, since 1973, have criticised the current Australian asylum seeker policy as has the Pope ( Daley 2002), Oxfam Community Aid Abroad (2002) and the International Secretariat of Amnesty International (2002). Mary Robinson, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, had her request to send an investigator to visit the Woomera Detention delayed for between 4 and six months because in the words of Foreign Minister Downer “We don’t want ….a procession of people from the United Nations, and all its instrumentalities, wandering through the detention centres followed by a mass of media. But we have nothing to hide (Lewis and Patrick 2002, p.4)”.
In today’s global community, international relationships are important. The answer to the question “how would this look in tomorrow’s headlines?” is revealed in recent articles in the Boston Globe, the New York Times, and China Daily. For example, the New York Times (Lyall, 2001) reported that the High Court ruled Britain to be in violation of the law with respect to the detention of four Kurdish asylum seekers in Oakington. Its portrayal of Britain was not positive, and foreign media’s response to Australia’s refugee treatment has not been any better. One day later, the Boston Globe (Carney, 2001) condemned Australia’s mandatory detention of asylum seekers as being “profoundly destructive” to the asylum seekers’ well-being. Asia Today has been following the treatment of the ‘boat people’ closely. The world’s eyes are on the treatment of asylum seekers. There has been widespread criticism of detention centres. Australia was roundly condemned by much of the European press in the wake of the Tampa crisis. Human Rights Watch (2002) roundly criticised the recent actions of the Australian Government for turning away boatloads of asylum seekers, the Pacific solution and its mandatory detention policy towards asylum seekers. Several Australian organisations and writers reinforce such criticisms (De Jong et al, 2001; Manne, 2002; Mares, 2001; Oxfam, 2002; Refugee Council of Australia, 2000).
The Legal Framework
When considering social policy, it is also necessary to consider whether the government is acting in accordance with the law (Bridgman & Davis, 2000). While the Migration Act gives the Government the power to detain refugees under specific circumstances, it also ensures the rights of detainees (North, 2001). However, even when asylum seekers are “legally” detained, there are often aspects of their detention which seem in conflict with the intent of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission Act of 1986. This Act when it was drafted was designed to give effect to much of the intent of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Article 10 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, “all persons deprived of their liberty shall be treated with humanity and with respect for the inherent dignity of the human person”. Silove, Steel, Mollica, and Sultan (2001) argue that the abuses, psychological trauma and physical trauma that detained refugees endure are in violation of Article 10. In addition, Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees says “the state shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees, provided they present themselves without delay to authorities.” But Australia does discriminate between applicants for refugee status on the basis of their manner of arrival. Human Rights Watch (2002) condemns the policy of mandatory detention of refugees, but points to the global trend of xenophobic and anti-refugee sentiment, as states buckle under economic strain and perceived threats to national security.
The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s report entitled , Those Who’ve Come Across the Seas: Detention of Unauthorised Arrivals (1998, p. 229) states that detention is detrimental to the mental, physical and social well-being of detainees, particularly for people incarcerated for long periods of time. The report confirms the high incidence of psychological problems such as depression, self-harm and suicide attempts, as well as physical ailments and disorders. The act of self- immolation by Shahraz Kayani in April, 2001, as well as incidences of self-mutilation by detainees, are desperate cries for help, and not, as Mr Ruddock and Mr Howard seem to suggest, bizarre practices peculiar to alien cultures (Taylor & Forbes, 2001, p.1).
Although refugees and asylum seekers are not citizens, much Commonwealth law is still applicable. Perusal of court decisions demonstrates cases where non-citizens are convicted under criminal law. If the Crimes Act and the Migration Act are applicable to asylum seekers, then surely the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Act is too. Lastly, it is important to note that legal treatment is not equivalent to ethical treatment of asylum seekers.
The Social Framework
Jamrozik (2001, p. 71) states the development of migration policies has been characterised by the perception of Australia as a competing duality of “migrants” and “Australians”. Kapferer (1996, p. 258) suggests that in the same way assimilationist policies failed, so too will multiculturalism policies fail, because they promote national identity, rather than human identity. In trying to appreciate the diversity of national and ethnic uniqueness, policy makers face the very antagonism that nationalism produces by encouraging a commitment to homogeneity and monoculturalism. However, Huntington cited in Hoogvelt (2001, p. 198) says that economic modernisation and social change throughout the world means that people are being separated from long-standing local identities, and the nation-state itself is becoming diluted as a source of identity.
At the heart of the issue, according Paul Kelly, cited in Dixson (1999, p. 76) is reconciling the Asianisation of Australia with the maintenance of the dominant Anglo-Saxon Judeo-Christian identity. In the early part of the 20th century, it was viewed as necessary for white Australians to promulgate nationalist ideology, based on the principle of protecting white Australia within an Asian region, exemplified in the passing of the Immigration Restriction Act (1901), or as it is more commonly called the White Australia Policy. The Australian Government has recently been able to resurrect this ideology which has been given credence by the events of 11 September 2001 in the United States of America. The outcome of the Australian election of 2001 would seem to indicate the Australian people were convinced that the stereotypical Middle Eastern asylum seeker is precisely the type of undesirable alien influence they need to guard against.
During the run-up to the 2001 Federal election, Australians were exhorted to imagine asylum seekers and refugees, not as individuals, but as a group with identifiable, ineradicable features. Some were demonised as “terrorists (The Age, 2001, p. 23)”. Most were described as “queue jumpers”. This portrayal of asylum seekers became a carefully constructed idiom that confers on a mass audience, ideas and values that perpetuate inequality and oppression. As Althusser (cited in Dixon, 1999, pp. 128- 138) says, these identities are illusions that serve to perpetuate prevailing ideologies, in particular, racism, and legitimise the existing political, social and economic milieu. These false images of “queue jumpers” provide “potent and marketable justification for the government’s tough asylum policies (Mares, 2001. p.149).” In addition, these images of asylum seekers and refugees crowd out other images of refugees as mothers, fathers, daughters, sons, who are willing to risk upheaval, incarceration and even death – as occurred in October 2001 with the drowning deaths of 350 refugees on an Indonesian boat bringing asylum seekers to Australia (Head, 2001), just to experience the life that Australians take for granted.
One of the most oppressive aspects of the policy of granting 3 year temporary visas to people arriving without a valid entry visa is they can’t leave Australia and subsequently return. This forces some people, judged to be refugees, to choose between being with their families and staying in Australia. One survivor of the Indonesian shipwreck who lost children in the disaster had a husband, with a temporary visa, in Australia who was prevented from being with her in this time of crisis. The failure to find a way to avoid such an outcome could not be described as a humane or compassionate response.
A poll, reported in Migration News (2001) reported that 77 percent of Australians concur with the Prime Minister and his position on refugees, with only 9 percent in support of allowing all would-be migrants to land. However, conservative rhetoric is being challenged, and not just by those whose tradition it is to confront and resist, but also from those within establishment ranks, suggesting that for even the most ardent adherent, there are potential problems with the current line of policy. Mike Steketee (2001), lists several former prominent Liberals, including Malcolm Fraser and John Hewson, all of whom who have voiced their concern at Australia’s current refugee policies and the lack of true political will and leadership in dealing with a global phenomenon .
Dixson (1999) says that it is necessary to analyse Australia’s history before it is possible to understand the extent of racism in Australia. A nation builds its identity on its past but it is argued that history is largely a man-made configuration that pays little heed to the subjective experiences of its protagonists. Australia’s identity is a melange of metaphors and symbols that validate that which is seen as quintessentially ‘Australian’, most notably perceptions of heroism, anti-authority and egalitarianism.
However, women who have experienced institutionalised oppression in historical structures such as the political and economic systems, which are hierarchical and patriarchal, would question the authenticity of these images (Dixson 1999). Similarly, the experience of Indigenous Australians who have been dispossessed of their land and subjected to policies of genocide and assimilation are a seldom acknowledged part of white man’s history (Reynolds 1999). The recent debates about Mabo, Wik, The Native Title Act, the 10 Point Plan, Hindmarsh Bridge (Bell 1998), the Stolen Generations (HREOC 1997), Indigenous sovereignty and a treaty reveal a reluctance by the Government to come to terms with Indigenous Australians’ perceptions of these issues. Kapferer (1996, p. 206) says that to romanticise Australia’s heritage and conceive of Australia’s past in reverence, delimits our knowledge of institutions, practices and policies as they really are.
Australia aspires to be seen as a liberal and humanitarian State. It is frequently asserted that in this country all have equality before the law. The frequency of such claims seems unaffected by the reality of cutbacks in legal aid, the disproportionate representation of Indigenous people in custody (Cunneen 2001), the frequent harassment of young and poor people in public space (White and Perrone 1997) and mandatory detention of asylum seekers. Parekh (2000, p. 263) says, the liberal, who insists on equal rights, hesitates when it is suggested that positive discrimination favours minority groups or the marginalised. Before Australia can truly be regarded as fully liberal and humanitarian it will need to develop enforceable legal mechanisms which are capable of respecting the human value and worth of each person, most importantly in relation to those who have suffered the most from discriminatory practices and dispossession.
Ethical Framework
Although Bridgman & Davis (2000) do not include a ethical framework in their paradigm, we feel that it is important to consider this additional dimension. A society’s moral strength is reflected in the humane treatment of its most vulnerable individuals (Silove et al, 2001). Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers demonstrates that there is some distance to go before the Government can claim an “unmatched reputation for achievement, for tolerance, for understanding and compassion (Howard 2000)”. De Jong et al (2001) demonstrated that many people seeking refugee status suffer from post traumatic stress disorder. In addition, Swan (2001) reports “high rates of major depression, untreated psychosis, attempted suicides, and repeated self mutilation.” Lastly, there have been allegations of brutality, excessive discipline including forced sedation via injection and injuries from the use of physical constraints (Silove et al, 2001). This treatment represents a further abuse of those who are vulnerable and those who have been severely persecuted and traumatized in their homeland.
The ethical imperative of government should be to protect the most vulnerable in society. Children who are refugees are children first; their classification as “refugee” or “illegal” and the particular connotations aroused from these labels does not overshadow this fact. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (article 37 [b]) states that the detention of a child should be for the shortest appropriate period of time. The Australian Government is encountering difficulty sustaining the argument that it is taking seriously its responsibility as a signatory to this Convention. Children are incarcerated for extended periods of time. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission estimated that, as of 23 November 2001, there were 582 children, including 53 unaccompanied minors, detained in remote and urban detention centres (HREOC, 2001).
The UNHCR (Refugee Children: Guidelines on Protection and Care) states that a child’s physical and psycho-social development can be adversely affected by the disruption and upheaval that forced migration causes. This is compounded when children have witnessed horrific acts of violence or other atrocities. Children placed in migration detention camps are often deprived of normal human relationships that guide social and cultural development and without such role models, become susceptible to identity crises and lose their continuity of experience that links them to their culture, and their sense of self.
Throughout 2001, in the face of wide spread pressure from progressive refugee advocacy groups, the Australian Government maintained and even hardened its line on mandatory detention of asylum seekers. The only small crack to appear in the policy was the release of a small group of mothers and children from the Woomera Detention Centre to be housed in the Woomera community as ‘an experiment’. In the wake of hunger strikes and a ‘lip sewing’ campaign, the Federal Government removed from detention some unaccompanied minors and threatened to remove some children from their parents claiming the children had been forced to sew their lips together. The Federal Government’s decision to remove the children of detainees, and place them in foster care, is highly controversial and reminiscent of the removal of Indigenous children from their families (HREOC, 1997). The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (2002) considers the Woomera detention facility
“places the Commonwealth in breach of its obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, particularly (but not restricted to) Article 19(1) “State parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the children from all forms of physical or mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, whilst in the care of legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child.”
A full ethical assessment of Australia’s asylum seeker policy would require much more space than is available here. But even this cursory glimpse at some of the ethical conundrums demonstrates a clear failure to act in line with accepted international human rights instruments. Australia has signed and ratified international instruments which oblige it to accept applications from asylum seekers who land on its shores. It has made a verbal commitment to provide refuge to those who meet the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees criteria (DIMA, 2001), and it has a responsibility to meet this commitment in a manner that is ethical, compassionate, and which does not violate human rights.
Conclusion
The authors of this article consider that the mandatory detention of people in jail-like centres demonstrates a lack of compassion for the suffering of other human beings but in this paper we have argued a number of propositions which go beyond the simple humanitarian argument. Kymlicka, cited in Parekh (2000, p.99) describing the basic principles of liberalism, says that human beings have an interest in leading a good life, in accordance with their beliefs about the value of life but they should also be free to question and revise this as they become more perceptive. Reiman (1997) makes the point that western philosophy depends on rationalism and liberalism and it is that which provides the capacity to be continually reflective. It is this liberal tradition that frees citizens to critique government, its ethnocentricity, its maleness and its whiteness. The prolongation of humanity depends on governments and citizens, to affirm each other’s sense of common humanity, to challenge cultural illogicality and historical residues which perpetuate polarity and inequality in society.
The extent to which a society provides sanctuary to an equitable share of the world’s stateless people and behaves towards all who request asylum in a manner which is in line with internationally accepted instruments on the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees, the closer it is to becoming a genuine liberal and humane democracy.
In this paper we have provided some evidence of the gap between the Australian Government’s claim to be behaving towards asylum seeker in a humane and compassionate manner (Howard 2000, 2001) and the traumatising reality of its mandatory detention regimes, both in Australia and as part of its ‘Pacific solution’. We have provided an argument which suggests that there are a number of economic, legal, ethical, political and social cohesion reasons why a government, keen to be seen by its populous and the international community as a humane liberal democracy, might wish to dismantle policies which insist that asylum seekers are subject to mandatory detention.
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Sovereignty
Our Prime Minuscule shrinks in stature everyday he is office. He spent yesterday at a United Nation’s meeting in New York strutting his claim that Australia has a generous and humanitarian refugee policy. He argued he would be able to be even more generous but for the fact that he has to pander to an electorate which needs constantly to be assured that the government is in total control of our borders and capable of protecting our sovereignty.
At no time in the last 228 years have non-Indigenous Australians established a legitimate claim to sovereignty of this nation. We have not signed a treaty with the Indigenous owners of this land. We have not come to just accommodation with the original owners of the land.
Our claim to sovereignty is based on the rights of an interloper. We have supplanted the system of governance that was in place prior to our arrival. In our own minds we have not been able to go beyond the lie of terra nullius.
Until we come to a just treaty with all the Indigenous Aboriginal nations in Australia then all non-Indigenous people living here will have to admit that our right of residence is tenuous in the extreme. It is a right based on theft, invasion, genocide and dispossession. I would not want to have to defend our right to continue to occupy Australia on such a basis at the International Court of Justice in the Hague.
Written in 2016.
Special !
PLATYPUS FILLETS
Fresh from Obi Obi Creek MALENY
Available from WOOLWORTHS – THE FLESH FOOD PEOPLE
Woolworths in Queensland decided to build a supermarket on the banks of Obi Obi Creek at Maleny near Nambour. The site they chose had Platypus burrows in the banks of the creek but Woolworths went ahead anyway. I developed a habit of visiting my local Woolworths and leaving this poster on the shelves and walking out without buying anything.
Spreading democracy
First published on the Synaptic Graffiti Collective website
http://scart69.net/synapticgraffiti/Pages/spreadingdemocracy.html
also published in New Community Quarterly Vol.3 No.1 p.37.
I heard George Bush’s “State of the Nation.”
It filled my heart with agitation.
I know he’s dyslexic, I know he dissembles
I can think of some things he closely resembles.
He said he’s spreading democracy
Guantanamo Bay, Fallujah, Abu Ghraib?
Could he mean he’s shedding democracy ?
May be he means he’s spreading autocracy.
The only place he’s spreading democracy
is under the tracks of Abraham tanks.
Star Chamber style Work Choices tribunals set to make a return
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate
Posted Wednesday, 6 January 2016
In the few days before the New Year Prime Minister Turnbull convinced Jamie Briggs, then Minister for improving Cities for rich people, to resign. The story went something like this “A Briggs walked into a nightclub in Hong Kong …and after two enquiries he realised that he had not lived up to the low ministerial standards expected of ministers in the Turnbull Government”. They are quick in the Liberal Party.
A few minutes later Mal Brough, Minister for ensuring the highest ethical standards in the Turnbull Ministry stood aside after stalling for weeks in the face of a concerted Labor-led attack on the propriety of his remaining in office. The attack was mounted following a police raid on Brough’s home seeking material relating to his role in the downfall of Speaker Peter Slipper. The story went like this “Dear Diary how I weep to see you fade away so soon, as yet the early rising sun has not attained its noon in a Canberra winery.”
As his supporters keep telling us “Malcolm Turnbull is not Tony Abbott”. One Bill Shorten spent two years boasting that he wasn’t Tony Abbott either, if fact he banked his entire election strategy on pointing out that he wasn’t the budgie smuggler. Julia Gillard was absolutely certain she wasn’t Tony Abbott in 2012, so much that she declared “I will not be lectured on sexism and misogyny by this man” whilst pointing to a glaring figure with cauliflower ears sitting near Julie Bishop.
Nearly every politically aware person in Australia is convinced that “Not being Tony Abbott” is helpful to his or her political career. There is the odd, and I use that word advisedly, Liberal Senator from Tasmania who is yet to be convinced. However, as Bill Shorten has now realised, whilst it is helpful to one’s political aspirations not be Tony Abbott, that fact on its own is insufficient to launch a successful political attack on the Coalition Government.
Malcolm Turnbull, has yet to comprehend that his current political chameleon performance creates a conundrum, he hints that he is not anything like Tony Abbott by avoiding the cheap jargon of “death cults” and “shirt fronting”, he is after all a far more entertaining, urbane and intelligent man than the budgie smuggler, but he has yet to distance himself from the “coal is beautiful” and the “cuts to social, educational and medical programs” of his predecessor.
Whilst the left was distracted by the removal of the two Bs, Brough and Briggs, the antiquated conservative industrial relations investigatory machinery created by Abbott and Co in the form of a royal commission came to its anticipated end. Its own ex-judge, looking for all the world like he was wearing a death mask, found out that some union officials and some business executives have been very naughty boys and girls and they have been dispatched to the headmasters office.
The Labor Party has long maintained that if union officials and business executives are breaking the law they should be referred to the police and other prosecuting authorities. However this is not enough for the hysterical Senator Michaelia Cash in her role as Employment Minister. She wants to return to the days of crushing workers dreams by introducing Star Chambers such as was established in the days of the Howard Government’s Work Choices regime.
Michaelia would have workers believe that their union leaders, are ripping them off and that she is from the government and therefore she is here to help them. If workers are misled into believing her then they deserve all that Michaelia and Malcolm will dish up to them. Clearly some union officials have been shown to have their hands in the unions’ coffers but they are a small minority.
Most of the “crimes” the union officials have been accused of relate to their being aggressive towards the bosses on building sites and being too enthusiastic in pursuing the rights of workers.
Neoliberal economics, the creed of the Coalition Government, has since the mid-1980s succeeded in destroying the working conditions of half of the Australian workforce. Now only 17 per cent of the workforce is unionised. The conservatives and the bosses conspired to destroy the industrial protection offered by unions so as to make their assault on the working conditions of working people much simpler.
Certainty has disappeared from most workplaces in Australia, it has been estimated that over half the jobs now in existence will disappear within a decade.
Over half the workforce is now in precarious employment: part-time, casual, on-call or forced to pretend they are independent contractors. This is still not enough for the Malcolms and Michaelias who infest the Coalition Government. They want to extract the last millilitre of blood from the industrial stone. They want to ensure that unions are kept off worksites in order to water down safety protections and to prevent unions checking that workers receive their full entitlements. They don’t want unions interfering with bosses’ capacity to enforce compliance from a docile workforce.
Federal Liberal Parliamentarians when they moved against Tony Abbott understood he was unpopular. However they mistook the symptoms for the disease. It was not the singer it was the song he was singing that the Australian public wanted changed. At the moment the Liberals have turned to Turnbull to be their leader but unless they adopt more egalitarian, humane and just social policies Turnbull will, just like his predecessor, become electorally unpopular.
Many Canberra Liberal Parliamentarians are blindsided by the Neoliberal “greed is good” mentality and are wedded to the socially conservative policies that Abbott promoted. They are determined to keep Turnbull marching to same tired old conservative tune, which though it sounds like music to their ears, strikes a discordant note to most Australians.
Sensible Australians will join with unions, non-government parties and civil organisations to resist the push to destroy the social and industrial conditions that have made Australia what it is today. If we are to build a socially just future, we need to join those organisations fighting to come to an appropriate reconciliation with Indigenous Australians and those struggling to free asylum seekers from the concentration camps on Manus, Nauru Christmas Island and the mainland they are now incarcerated. The fight is on for decent social welfare and working conditions – if you don’t fight now you lose. Soon it will be too late.
State of the nation
Malcolm’s right
call it foresight
but there has never been a more exciting time to be an Australian.
Jobsen Groeth, a country oaf, standing by his side
answers to the name of Barn-a-bee
a wannabe from Oonagarlby.
Tax loopholes for the filthy rich
leaving the poor to itch and bitch.
Malcolm leads a mob of climate change deniers
the Reef is safe and coal is good, and they say
they are doing everything they should.
Mangroves aren’t dying in the Gulf
they’re resting – grey,
and going to stay that way
for a very long time.
As for the bleaching of the coral
I demur, I have no quarrel
but Malcolm says it’s lovely, light
it’s nice and bright, a pleasant sight.
They are thinking of calling it
Adani Carmichael white.
The poor don’t need welfare
they don’t need housing
they need discipline
and to learn to respect their betters.
Those who are the real go-getters
those who are doing fine
those who own the mine
not those choking on black lung disease.
So to the denizens I say
go tug your forelock
smile and pose for selfies with the Liberals
cheer as they drive by
you had your chance to vote them out –
you blew it.
Written just after the 2016 election.
Stolen Wages
I asked them for my wages
they said to ask the boss.
He said he didn’t know,
he was at a bit of a loss.
I asked him where my money went
each and every cent
he said he’d given it to the mission
and to the government.
Protectors of Aborigines in Queensland, mainly missionaries and police and bureaucrats, defrauded Aborigines of $500 million in the first three quarters of the 20th century. written 2003.
Stop the dam Mary River Dam
First published 25/10/2006 Green Left Issue 688
and in Union Songs
http://unionsong.com/u433.html
Mary River – childhood home
I’ve seen your banks eroding
watched farmers plough your loam
now there’s a dark foreboding
because of the pending dam,
which will block your waters,
the gentle waters where I swam.
It’s going to dislodge farmers
force families from their land.
Let’s stop the political charmers.
Struggling farmers need a hand.
Mary River you once flowed free
from Boorumba to the sea.
You are a very scenic river;
to drought and flood you’re prone
I’ve surveyed your raging torrents
and observed you dry as bone.
I’ve watched your Lungfish playing
and caught your Eastern Cod,
admired the Black Ducks flying
whilst on your banks I stood.
I’ve waded in your waters,
fished Mullet at the overflow
and in floods of ’55
nearly drowned in your undertow.
I’ve eaten your Silver Catfish
devoured your Eel Tailed Jew
and watched drought-breaking rains
make you flow anew.
Lungfish are totally protected
except from these dam engineers
safe for 150 million years
but not from political careers.
They claim they need your water
to flush down sewerage mains
to build more concrete jungles;
I wish they’d use their brains.
They’ll kill the mighty Lungfish,
devastate the Eastern Cod
they’ve the hide to call it progress
cause Mammon is their God.
It’s environmental wilfulness
as they reap so shall they sow
the destruction they will cause means
that these politicians have to go.
Stop the Reithkrieg
The bosses delighted
shouldn’t get excited.
They’ll always be defeated
by the workers united.
Peter Reith be assured
we’re not bored,
we’ll fight for the award
till judgement day.
We are here to stay
We’ll fight you all the way.
We’ll fight for decent pay
come what may.
You can try your best
we’ll put you to the test
you’re a nuisance
you’re a pest.
You can send
balaclavas or guavas
guard dogs or hedge hogs.
We’ll beat you in the end
you’re no friend.
Peter Reith was a minister in the Howard government driving industrial relations – Dubai trained ex-soldier for the wharfs was just one of his cappers. 1999.
Submission to Senate Select Committee on the Administration of Indigenous Affairs 2004
Dear Secretary,
I wish to make this submission to the Senate Select Committee on the Administration of Indigenous Affairs. I have been involved with Indigenous people and organisations since 1963 in Queensland, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and the ACT. I was a social worker employed by the Welfare Branch in Darwin 1965-68 and 1973- 77. My Masters of Social Work was conducted in association with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders Community of South Brisbane.
Brief Summary
The main points I wish to make are that:
(a) seldom, since the invasion in 1788, have governments – state, local or federal – dealt with Indigenous Australians on just terms,
(b) the reason for this stems from many motivations,
(c) from the early 1960s until 1996 there was a growing recognition that Australians (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous) needed to resolve outstanding issues and injustices,
(d) since 1996 there has been a retreat from this recognition, which has gone hand in hand with the increasingly shrilly-expressed notions of racial superiority,
(e) mainstream government agencies consistently fail to understand Indigenous people, their needs or their aspirations,
(f) this has lead to gross misperceptions of the reasons the health of Indigenous Australians is a national disgrace and why on many social and economic measures, the majority of the Indigenous population can be found in the bottom decile, and
(g) coupled with failing to understand Indigenous people, their needs or their aspirations, has come a series of state and federal government misinterpretations of the social factors impinging on poor people generally and Aboriginal people in particular.
Points (a) seldom, since the invasion in 1788, have governments – state, local or federal – dealt with Indigenous Australians on just terms,
and (b) the reason for this stems from many motivations.
I have discussed these points elsewhere (Tomlinson Income Insecurity:2003, Chapters 4 & 5. There have no doubt been non-Indigenous individuals who acted with the best of intent (Reynolds 1998) but the overwhelming majority of non- Indigenous people who lived on the frontiers were driven by greed and feelings of racial superiority (Reynolds 1981, McCartney, Lincoln & Wilson 2003). Those on the frontier were at the sharp end of the dispossession, rape and genocide but they were supported by a non-Indigenous population who were, with few exceptions, motivated by racism or indifference (Beams 2003/4). One of the interesting features of hegemonic racism, which has existed since before the 18th century and which continues to pervade Indigenous and non-Indigenous interactions, is that non- Indigenous writers tried to explain such racism as being inspired by “social Darwinian thought” as if this somehow made it all right in the past. Such an analysis conveniently ignores the fact that Darwin did not publish The Origin of Species until 1859 and Indigenous Australia had by then experienced 80 years of racist assaults.
Point (c) from the early 1960s until 1996 there was a growing recognition that Australians (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous) needed to resolve outstanding issues and injustices.
The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines (which was subsequently renamed The Federal Council for the Advancement of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders) built upon State and Territory based Indigenous action groups and it began turning around some of the more violent and racist attitudes in Australia. The success of the 1967 referendum that allowed Aborigines to be counted in the Census and also allowed the Commonwealth Government to make laws in respect of Aborigines, freed many Australians to start to come to terms with our past. The overwhelming vote demonstrated that non-Indigenous Australians wanted to come to an accommodation with the original owners of this land.
Point (d) since 1996 there has been a retreat from this recognition, which has gone hand in hand with the increasingly shrilly-expressed notions of racial superiority,
The divisive campaigns waged by the Liberal and National Parties, mining companies and pastoralists in the wake of the Mabo Judgement undermined the Keating Government’s attempts to move Australia towards coming to a reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous citizens. Then came Pauline “please explain” Hanson and John Howard as Prime Minister both determined to win the culture wars. Howard who had exposed his anti-Asian racism in 1988 used Hanson as a battering ram to defeat decency in the Wik /Ten Point extinguishment Plan. The widespread detention of asylum seekers, the assaults on the social wage, the cuts in social welfare, and the run down of public health and education when coupled with increased competition and globalism came together in an uncaring conglomerate which Howard called a “social coalition” inspired by “mutual obligation”.
Points (e) mainstream government agencies consistently fail to understand Indigenous people, their needs or their aspirations,
and (f) this has lead to gross misperceptions of the reasons the health of Indigenous Australians situation is a national disgrace and why on many social and economic measures, the majority of the Indigenous population can be found in the bottom decile.
Since the 1960s all but the most obtuse bureaucrat or politician should have been able to see the failure of mainstream government agencies to effectively serve the interests of the Indigenous people of this country. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission has documented many failures of mainstream Departments and agencies in their dealings with the original owners of this land.
The current results of 216 years of “mainstreaming Indigenous services”:
- Indigenous health is appalling.
- Incarceration rates are horrific.
- Unemployment – once you take out the CDEP (a form of work for the dole) is anywhere between 20% to 90% in many Indigenous communities.
- Well over 100 communities don’t have clean drinking water.
- It would take more than $3 Billion to abolish the housing backlog faced by Indigenous people.
- Schooling is not provided in a way which is attractive to the majority of the Indigenous community, and there are many other social pressures on Indigenous communities.
If this is mainstream success then it will be even worse when Indigenous agencies such as the Aboriginal Legal Service, the Aboriginal Health Service, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission etc are disappeared.
Point (g) coupled with failing to understand Indigenous people, their needs or their aspirations, has come a series of state and federal government misinterpretations of the social factors impinging on poor people generally and Aboriginal people in particular.
What this racist Howard Government is saying is:
“It must be the grog, it can’t be the government.”
The present Federal Government is so devoid of sensible ideas that it mouths the inanities of Noel Pearson as if there was some scientific justification for his pronouncements about Indigenous “welfare dependency” (Tomlinson 1999). The Howard Government is so duplicitous that it is difficult to decide whether:
- they have just conveniently forgotten that it was ex-Minister Jocelyn Newman (who received 3 parliamentary superannuation pensions) who started the current round of myths about “welfare dependency”, or
- that it is just useful to use Pearson’s lack of knowledge about Indigenous social welfare to promote ill-informed racist views in the wider community.
Conclusion
Whilst Australian governments refuse to come to a just agreement with the Indigenous owners of this land there is no way that decent Australians can feel pride in this country. I am ashamed by the criticisms, levelled by various United Nations bodies, of Australia’s treatment of Aborigines in relation to the 1998 Native Title Act amendments and of our treatment of refugees.
The Howard Government failed to apologise for the Stolen Generations, it has at every turn undermined the reconciliation process, it refuses to allow Indigenous self- determination, it has abolished many Indigenous representative agencies and refuses to try to understand the symbolic issues impinging upon the Indigenous community.
Since 1996 it has persevered with its narrow “practical reconciliation” policies which have done little if anything to improve the social or economic situation facing Aboriginal Australia. The average age of death is the same now as in 1986 for Indigenous people (Tomlinson 2004).
It’s time to adequately fund an elected Indigenous body with a charter to abolish the differentials in health, housing, educational, employment and social welfare that exist between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The 216 years of mainstream government agencies pretending they can assist Indigenous Australians must end.
Bibliography
Beams, N. (2003-4) a ten part article which investigates racism in Australia.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/sep2003/hist-s16.shtml
McCartney, C. Lincoln, R. & Wilson, P. (2003) Justice in the Deep North. Bond University, Gold Coast.
Reynolds, H. (1998) This Whispering In Our Hearts. Allen & Unwin, St Leonards.
Reynolds, H. (1981) The Other Side of the Frontier. University of James Cook, Townsville.
Tomlinson , J. (2004) “The inherent flaw in the concept of ‘practical reconciliation’.” http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=2056
Tomlinson, J. (2003) Income Insecurity: The Basic Income alternative.
http://www.basicincome.qut.edu.au/interest/e-books.jsp
Tomlinson, J. (1999) “The Importance of Trust.” Paper given at the 6th National Conference on Unemployment, University of Newcastle, 23&24 September.
Submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee Inquiry into the provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Bill (No 2) 2005.
Dear Senators,
I wish to make this following submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee Inquiry into the provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Bill (No 2) 2005. The submission consists of two articles the first has been published at On line Opinion http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=100
the second has been submitted for publication to another publisher.
The triumph of paranoia over experience
In subscribing to John Howard’s terrorism package the state and territory Labor Party governments have avoided a short term electoral disadvantage. The Australian public has clearly bought the Federal Coalition government’s line that we are facing a terrorist threat. But the Labor Party have handed the Howard Coalition a long term electoral advantage. The Federal ALP, by agreeing with the Howard agenda on terrorism, will find it harder to mount a serious challenge to the present Coalition government at the next election. This is because agreeing to such joint action means it is harder for the opposition to differentiate itself from the Howard Coalition. Bomber Beazley’s background as an expert in military strategy predisposes him to accept the inane advice which emanates from the misnamed “intelligence establishment”.Since the start of the cold war, ASIO and the rest of “spooks incorporated” have pursued a pro-US and anti-progressive agenda. “Spooks incorporated” finds it easier to attract funds whenever they can manufacture a crisis. Proponents of progressive agendas in the 1950s and 60s found they were subsumed within the “reds under the beds” anti-communist drive. Other examples were the crackdowns on those opposed to the US and Australian invasion of Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s, the dreaded anti-nuclear protestors, pro-Timor activists, environmentalists, refugee advocates and anti-Middle East war demonstrators more recently. These people all become grist to the “intelligence establishment’s” mill.
The strategic experts are never wrong. They are, after all, experts. Few of those who believe that there is real threat of terrorism in Australia stop to ask, “If they couldn’t find the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, might not the ‘intelligence establishment’ have misled us? If they were capable of coming up with the advice which the Howard Government wanted them to provide on weapons of mass destruction, is it not then possible that they are doing the same now?”
It might just be time to stop and take stock. We might ask how many Australians (anywhere in the world) have died at the hands of “terrorists” in the last two decades. The answer is fewer than 200 dead. We might like to ask how many Australians have been killed while in police custody in the same period. The answer is at least double that number. We might put along side that figure the people the Australian military forces have killed in Afghanistan and in the two Iraq wars. We can add at least another half a million Iraqi people who died as a result of the decade long blockade of that country maintained by Australia and its allies.
We might like to ask how many asylum seekers have been driven mad by the brutal mandatory detention policies of the present federal government. We could try to calculate the number of East Timorese who died because of Labor and Coalition governments siding with Indonesia in return for lucrative oil deals in the Timor Sea for over 20 years. It would amount to 200 a hundred times over. We could ask how many people are killed or have their lives ruined as a result of domestic violence each year in Australia – thousands. We need to ask why then is domestic violence not given a greater priority than Ruddock’s home detention for people suspected by Mister Plod of being likely to carry out an act of political violence. If the same logic was applied to domestic violence as is being used to justify the new anti-terror legislation then it would be necessary to take all Australian men into preventive custody – they are, after all, the prime perpetrators of domestic violence.
We might ask how many people in poorer suburbs die prematurely because of the failure of the government to ensure decent health and community services. We may even be sufficiently recalcitrant to ask why it is acceptable in the 21st century to have Indigenous Australians dying 20 years younger than other Australians. The reasons Indigenous Australians are dying at such a young age are known – the failure of governments to ensure that adequate water, nutrition housing and sanitation services can be accessed by Indigenous people. If over 1,000 Indigenous people die prematurely each year because of government inaction, neglect or sheer indifference why is this not regarded as a greater cause for concern than the possibility that some political extremist might kill a few people with a suicide bomb.
We don’t know how many unemployed Australians breached by social security are made homeless or commit suicide each year. We do know that in 2001/2 there were 386,946 breaching orders issued by Centrelink. The thousands of disability support pensioners and single parents whose youngest child is at school after June next year and who will have their income significantly reduced by the Howard Government, might be more interested in justice than terrorist legislation.
Perhaps the “intelligence establishment” has convinced the Howard Government that, irrespective of the real level of terrorist threat in this country, Australia should play along with the anti-terror games of Britain and the US just to show it is a good friend of our great and glorious allies. If Australia wanted to be a good citizen of the world it might meet its pledge to the United Nations to lift its foreign aid budget to 0.7 per cent of gross national product. Then we might be in a position to do something about the 42,000 people who die of hunger and malnutrition each day on this planet.
If all this is too much to ask and Australians would rather believe the fairy stories about 800 fanatical suicide bombers just waiting round the corner to attack then there are much cheaper ways of combating terrorism than employing over-paid ASIO operatives. The most effective method is to rip up yesterday’s newspaper into small pieces and release them out of car windows one piece at a time. I assure you it works. I’ve been doing it for years and so far have succeeded in keeping Australia relatively free of terrorists.
If you meet a nice ASIO person then be alert and very alarmed
The Howard-Ruddock’s “We did it to the refugees and now it’s your turn” Acts are being rushed through the parliament. If you are questioned you should state your name address and date of birth. You might also give your serial number in the Class War. In case you’ve forgotten, everyone’s number is “one”. You should at this point mention that you are relying on the protections provided by the Geneva Accord. It is then unwise to answer any further questions until you have had time to research the various acts and regulations which are being used to provide the pretext for questioning you. It is equally unwise to refuse to answer questions as this will be used by the spooks against you. You need to make it clear that you are willing to answer the questions after you have completely clarified your legal situation.
Spooks incorporated will probably refuse to provide you with copies of the relevant legislation and regulations. By the way, inform them that you will need to have a copy of the Acts Interpretations Act, which has recently been updated, to assist you to understand what the other acts mean. You will of course require all the current “terror” legislation plus drafts of foreshadowed legislation. The reason you need to have copies of the foreshadowed legislation is because it may subsequently be made retrospective.
Mr. Plod will tell you that you can rely on your lawyer (who specialises in conveyancing most of the time) to be fully on top of this “terror” legislation arguing there is no need for you to have access to the legislation. Stick to your guns, failing to know the law is not a defence in Australian courts – let alone the soon to be set up Kangaroo courts. It would be unwise to even answer the question “How are you?” with the response of “Ok.” This is because, if you were to fall ill during a subsequently interrogation you could be charged with providing a false answer to an ASIO agent.
Of course, it is not wise to discuss any of your activities which might constitute your defence with anyone whilst you are being detained. Besides saying anything before you have had time to read and digest all the relevant legislation is not smart. Let your lawyer advise you but keep your own counsel whilst incarcerated, because ASIO will be listening to every word you say. Lawyers don’t like going into court hearings without knowing the grounds you are planing to use as a defence – but you’ll have time to discuss that with your lawyer in the court room itself. Make sure you indicate, to which ever macropod is presiding over the Wallaby tribunal that you need to talk with your lawyer in the court room itself. ASIO is not yet game enough to place electronic bugs in court rooms.
ASIO operatives, Mr. Plods and their assorted hangers on will, no doubt, tell you that by “not cooperating” you are lengthening the time you’ll remain in custody. Such advice is designed to con you into saying something which can then be used against you and should be treated with the contempt it deserves. The forthcoming industrial relations changes and the Liberals war of terror legislation are driven by a similar “control the powerless” mentality. Howard and Ruddock want to silence all opposition to them. So if we are picked up then “silence should be our firm rebuke”.
Taken hostage*
*Dedicated to peace and the hope that Margaret Hassan taken hostage in Iraq will be freed.
She wasn’t.
First published Union Songs 11/11/2004
http://unionsong.com/muse/uionsong/u240
Hostage maker, hostage taker
the life blood of our war.
Hostage maker, hostage taker
what are we fighting for?
Is it to protect the lies
we told before the war?
To the lies and the rubbish
you’re adding blood and gore.
When will we finally stop
trying to settle up the score?
Hostage maker, hostage taker
what are we fighting for?
Are we fighting for the lies
that went before the war?
Are we fighting for the past
or a future that won’t last?
Pre-emption, redemption;
without the slightest apprehension
that we’ll resist your condescension.
We could fight for our liberty
fraternity and equality
restoring human dignity
and displace your stupidity.
Are these things we can ignore
in the face of endless war?
Hostage maker, hostage taker
neither a mover nor a shaker
just an old fashioned faker
and a bloody peace forsaker.
Takeshi
Takeshi, Yannick and Karl
Greetings from Australia
I apologise for including colloquial (slang) expressions in the article. I will try to explain what I meant.
George Monbiot (when he wrote):
rightwing movements thrive on their contradictions, the leftwing movements drown in them. Tea Party members who proclaim their rugged individualism will follow a bucket on a broomstick if it has the right label … Instead of coming together to fight common causes, leftwing meetings today consist of dozens of people promoting their own ideas, and proposing that everyone else should adopt them.
What he meant was that rightwing movements such as the Tea Party in the United States have no difficulty putting forward a number of contradictory statements simultaneously and then find no difficulty believing that two or more contradictory statements are simultaneously true – for example illegal migrants will destroy our economy, illegal migrants are lazy, illegal migrants with take white peoples’ jobs because they will work for very low wages, illegal migrants undermine our social structures etc.
Whereas leftwing activists will squabble over subtle nuances in interpretation of quite similar ideas; that is leftwing movements often split over minor points of interpretation.
Monboit makes the point that rightwing Tea Party members proclaim their individualism yet will line up in large numbers in support of uninspiring political candidates providing that those candidates appear to proclaim ultra conservative political positions, that is the correct political label.
On the other hand leftwing activists (despite all their talk of unity, solidarity commonality) are frequently too busy pushing their individual idiosyncratic narrow interpretation of public policy to join with others in the common struggle.
Please feel free to get back to me if there is anything else which is confusing in the article
Happy christmas and may 2012 be a good year for you all
john
Talking Policy: How social policy is made
Talking Policy: How social policy is made.
Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin. 2006 ISBN 174114518X
Book review published in Australian Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 40, No. 4, Summer 2005: 569-570.Judith Bessant and Rob Watts are academic colleagues and friends with whom I have discussed social policy issues over many years.
Talking Policy is an interesting and informative book which will make a contribution to Australian social policy debate. It is predominantly aimed at the undergraduate students. The book begins with a very useful 10 page glossary of terms and concepts which the authors employ. The glossary is simply written and will undoubtedly assist students in their first couple of years of social policy studies. I read the glossary before starting on the text and found it a useful guide to the way the authors were using some concepts.
At the back of the book there is a “Timeline of events 1890-2004.” This concise social and political history of Australia I also read prior to reading the text, and was surprised by how many events I misremembered as having happened in different years.
Talking Policy has an introduction followed by 10 chapters and is divided into two sections: the first deals with ways to think about social policy and the second looks at how social policy is made. Chapter I, in the first section of the book, sets out how the authors conceive of the theory of social policy and some first year readers may find this a little tough going but provided they have read the introduction and use the glossary they’ll manage and will find it is a downhill ride for the rest of the book. I found the authors’ attempt to respond to the post-modern assault on social policy interesting. They have moved further from a structuralist approach than I’d feel comfortable with but they have balanced that by maintaining the importance of economic and historical analysis.
Chapter 2 compares the Australian welfare state with other types of welfare states and explains how we have come to adopt a highly targeted, means-tested, categorical system of income support we have. At one level the book is a sustained polemic against the obligations which, since the late 1980s, are increasingly imposed upon recipients of income support. Chapter 3 looks at the history of Australian welfare provision. There is little discussion in the first part of the book about the impact of welfare policies on Indigenous Australians. The authors note that the 1967 referendum “Aboriginal people won the right to be counted as inhabitants of Australia in the census, and they won the vote (italics added pp. 98-99).” The first of these statements is correct. The fact is that Aborigines gained the vote a few years earlier. What the 1967 referendum did was to provide the Commonwealth with the power to make laws in respect to Indigenous people.
Chapter 4 discusses the essence of Australian liberalism, the rise and fall of Keynesian economics and the restoration of neo-classical economics. Chapter 5 provides an insightful exploration of inequality and the current ‘justifications’ for the increasing inequality which is being inflicted on our nation. It also discusses mechanisms behind the failure of the welfare state and the taxation system to address the growing inequality. Chapter 6 pulls together some of the earlier themes by placing them in the context of poverty, ethics and social policy. There is a very readable discussion about the ethics of negative and positive freedoms. In this Chapter, the authors expose several short-comings in the utterances about the need for Howard’s ‘mutual obligation’ regime emanating from Peter Saunders of the neo-conservative think tank, the Centre for Independent Studies.
The second part of the book discusses, in an accessible manner, the way social policy is made. I found the most useful part of this discussion was provided by the lengthy analytical case studies provided at the end of each chapter. Case study 1 is a discussion of mandatory sentencing in Western Australia and the Northern Territory 1991-2004. It amply demonstrates the force of racism which exists in these two places and the propensity of governments to act in breach of international covenants Australia has signed and ratified in order to pander to such racist feelings in the electorate. Case study 2 is an exploration of the role of the media in relation to chroming and drug policy in Victoria. Case study 3 is a historical analysis of university fees and the Higher Education Contribution Scheme.
The title of Chapter 10, the concluding chapter, provides an insight into the authors motivation in writing this text. The title is “Conclusion: On truth, the state and social policy.” In this chapter, there is a section entitled “Truth, the Howard government and the Stolen Generations” which deserves to be read by all Australians who want to understand the depth of racism in this government and in this country. In the penultimate paragraph of the chapter the authors warn “The problems of persistent unemployment and under-employment are not likely to go away. Inadequate income and increasing unequal distribution of wealth are promoting the slow erosion of the rough and ready kind of egalitarian values and practices that were once widespread.”
The authors entitled their book Talking Policy because “Talk is one of our most engaging social activities, far outweighing other activities like eating, sleeping, having sex or even watching TV (p.293).” This observation, if it accurately describes what is happening in Australia, might well account for the declining birth rate but it seems to me to be a case of misplaced priorities.
On a more serious note, Talking Policy is a useful book and it deserves to be read by social policy practitioners if for no other reason than it will make them rethink some of their positions. But there is a better reason than that to dive into this text and that is that if enough social policy workers get swept up in its optimism and ethics we might finish up living in a better country.
Taxation
It is not possible for a government to provide advanced social welfare, community services, education or health services without an efficient taxation system. Governments need a steady flow of revenue for lots of other things as well: defence, public administration and so forth. Governments choose to spend money on other items too such a subsidies to industry, farmers and others.
As far as John is concerned there are important equity questions to be considered in relation to all this. From whom to raise the taxation and to whom to supply services, benefits and subsidies.
In the 17th Century, Jean Baptiste Colbert said, “The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least amount of hissing.” Fairness is an ever-present question in relation to taxation as the hapless Joe Hockey found out after he brought down his 2014 budget.
Terra Nullius
Yes Terra Nullius
made fools of all of us,
legal fiction and our greed
became our overwhelming creed.
We stole their land
and watched them bleed.
Their rights to land
we would not concede
insisting on proper title
and English deed.
Terror Bush
Plip plop, skip slop look at me
I’m imposing democracy.
Slip flop, hip-hop, flip flop me
I’m forcing people to be free.
Hip-hop, slip slop, flip flop me
I’m bombing people out of poverty.
I’m bombing people out of poverty.
Can’t stop, won’t stop, silly me
sending the evil ones to eternity.
So the good ones then can all be free
and share their oil with little ole me –
and share their oil with little ole me.
Written 2004 not published
Terrorism: The Bush track leads into the wilderness
Politics in the Pub at The Elephant and WheelbarrowHotel, Fortitude Valley 3/3/2003
Tonight I wish to put forward six propositions:
- War waged by nation states is more violent than non-State terrorism.
- War waged by nation states often sustains violence for decades.
- Terrorism is the crime of the relatively powerless.
- War is the crime of the powerful.War, deprivation and injustice causes terrorism rather than the reverse.
- And if we want to end terrorism we must be prepared to forsake war, injustice and gross inequality.
Proposition (1)
War waged by nation states is more violent than non-State terrorism
Whether it was the Spanish conquistadors genocide in the Americas, King Leopold’s slaughter of 8 million people in the first decade of the Belgium Congo, the US war on Native Americans, British / Australian genocide of Indigenous people here, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the bombing and defoliation of Vietnam – THIS IS STATE VIOLENCE.
Pilger quotes researchers Herman & O’Sullivan who suggest that State terror has resulted in the deaths of over 2,500,000 people since 1965.Professor David Kennedy of Stanford University ( Background Briefing 30/12/2001) said that at least since the second world war the US has systematically attacked civilian targets rather than troops in order to weaken the resolve of troops to fight. The Blitzkrieg on Baghdad will be no different – it too will be a war crime.
Proposition (2)
War waged by nation states often sustains violence for decades
The US in the first Gulf War in 1991 intentionally destroyed much of the sanitation infrastructure and left over 300 tons of depleted uranium and other hazardous chemicals on Iraq’s soil. Following that war there has been a12 year blockade of Iraq.
Arundhati Roy in The Algebra of Infinite Justice asks “How many dead Iraqis will it take to make the world a better place?” The half a million or so Iraqi children who have died as a result of US-enforced United Nations economic sanctions since 1991 is apparently still not enough for some — Madelaine Albright, former US ambassador to the UN said “the price is worth it” in 1996. Political inflation has upped the cost and now it will take hundreds of thousands more Iraqi lives.
British Playwright Harold Pinter at Turin in November2002 said “ The US believes that the deaths in New York are the only deaths that count…. They are American deaths. Other deaths are unreal, abstract, of no consequence.
The same day the planes flew into the world towers and the Pentagon killing 2,500 people the 2 millionth person in the war in Southern Sudan died. Each day 40,000 people in the world die of malnutrition.
Sanctions are killing more people in the post Cold War period than weapons of mass destruction. Sanctions are imposed by Nation states.
Proposition (3)
Non-State terrorism is the crime of the relatively powerless
If anyone doubts this just consider two recent events:
- Chechen rebels held hundreds of civilians hostage inside the Moscow Opera House (killing one) the Russian President Vladimir Putin was quick to authorise the use of calming gas to subdue them resulting the death of over 300 people including all the Chechens.
- The current Palestinian Intafada began because the Palestinians were frustrated at their lack of progress at the Peace talks and Israel’s refusal to end the Occupation. There is much the publicity given to Palestinian suicide bombing. Yet Israeli military forces have slaughtered at least 5 times as many Palestinians as Palestinians have killed Jewish Israelis.
Proposition (4)
War is the crime of the powerful
Forget the film Black Hawk Down the reality was that 10,000 Somali’s trying to oppose the US agenda were killed by the US Military in 10 months. This was supposedly a peace making operation.
Two days after September the 11th 2001 I wrote:
The enemy is everywhere
Star Wars will save us.
The armed forces will save us.
The nuclear arsenal will save us.
Retribution will save us.
Economic rationalism will save us.
So long as we remember the simple truth that:
peace, humanity and solidarity are the enemy.
Proposition (5)
War, deprivation and injustice causes terrorism rather than the reverse
George Bush declared an unending war on Terror in the wake of September the 11th 2001. If he was serious about ending terrorism he could have shut down the US Army’s School of the Americas in Fort Benning. This School trains Latin American soldiers in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics. Graduates of the School are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America.
Non-State terrorism sprouts with injustice, it grows in poverty and it is fertilised by superpower geo-politics.
Proposition (6)
And if we want to end terrorism we must be prepared to forsake war, injustice and gross inequality
Arundhati Roy again
- “Terrorism is the symptom, not the disease. Terrorism has no country. It’s transnational, as global an enterprise as Coke or Pepsi or Nike. At the first sign of trouble, terrorists can pull up stakes and move their ‘factories’ from country to country in search of a better deal. Just like the multi-nationals.”
If you want to defeat terrorism
then there are some sacrifices which will need to be made.
You’ll have to give up:
arrogance
imperialism
excessive privilege
military tyranny overseas,and
police tyranny at home.
In a sentence – “you’ll have to give up violence at home and abroad”-
that is: no more caring conservative death penalties.
There will need to be a more equal sharing of the world’s resources amongst all the people of the world.
By the way Comrades that means no more: poverty,
no more biopiracy,
no more malnutrition,and
no more starvation.
Approved forms of globalisation will consist of the following:
weapons destruction,
disbanding of military forces,
debt forgiveness,
foreign aid,
free flows of labour,
peace keeping,
negotiation,
land mine removal,
peace treaties, and
globalised love.
Well that might get us out of trouble in the short term
but we also have to look after the world’s ecology
we’ve got to avoid:
ageism,
classism,
sexism,
ableism,
racism,
&
urbanism
..and on the way we’ve got to have fun as we care and share and learn to appreciate the other people with whom we share this life raft.
Common cause
If we’re going to build a new world from the ashes of the old
the first thing we have to do is ignore what we’ve been told.
The workers and the workless, the young and very old
will celebrate their union and join the common fold.
We will need to talk to people and to give away our gold
and refuse to join a system where lives are bought and sold.
For those who find they’re hopelessly tied to yesterday
we’ll show the path to victory, that there is another way.
From the city and the country, from women and from men
joined together in the struggle, together we will win.
We’ll pool our strength and disability building mutuality
and bound in our unity we’ll find creative solidarity.
The included and excluded, those marginalised from birth
will come to share resources, to find their place on earth.
Each must give their utmost, as much as they can spare
so we can build a commonwealth for everyone to share.
When people come together, when we march hand in hand
Black and white together will make others understand.
When people join together, rich and poor throughout this land
we’ll show whoever’s watching – we are beyond command.
The art of taxation
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate
Posted Friday, 1 April 2005
According to the Macquarie Dictionary the word “re-form” is a verb meaning “to form again”. Whereas the word “reform” is a noun meaning:
The improvement or amendment of what is wrong, corrupt, etc: social reform … to restore to a former and better state; improve by alteration, substitution, abolition, etc. to cause (a person) to abandon wrong or evil ways of life or conduct … to put an end to (abuses, disorders, etc) … to abandon evil conduct or error.
Politicians use the noun “reform” as if it were a verb. Whatever alterations they intend to the make to the welfare system, no matter how draconian, are announced as “welfare reform”.
In 1975, the Whitlam Government seemed to accept the suggestion by Professor Ronald Henderson in the First Main Report of the Poverty Inquiry that the social security system of income support be changed into a two- tiered Guaranteed Minimum Income scheme. Such a scheme would have resulted in $900 million dollars being transferred from more affluent Australians to low income Australians. Had such a Guaranteed Minimum Income been introduced, then that would have been real welfare reform. Instead, since 1975, Australia has become a far more unequal society.
Recently, Treasurer Costello has been speaking about “tax reform” and just like his welfare colleagues, is confusing “re-form” and “reform”. He simply asserts that cutting taxes improves the tax system. The welfare system and the tax system are intimately linked. There is no difference to the budget bottom line between evading tax and fraudulently claiming social security. Governments can whip themselves into a salivating lather pursuing welfare clients over quite small amounts of money yet happily ignore the $8 billion in tax that the rich in this country evade each year. The social security system pays welfare payments to some families and the tax system is the vehicle used to pay other families. Until 1927 the Taxation Department administered all social security payments.
The tax debate in Australia is invariably plagued by partisan pundits preaching to an ill-informed populace. It is widely believed that Australia is a high taxing country. Compared with many OECD countries we are a low taxing country. Part of the public confusion derives from the fact that Australia relies substantially upon federal income taxes but does not have the death, wealth, ecological or other taxes that many comparable countries have. It is for this reason that much of the focus falls on the rate of income tax rather than on the total tax take.
The other side of the debate is what is done with the taxes that are raised. Australia does not provide the range of health, welfare and community services which other OECD countries, particularly continental European countries, supply to their citizens. Any sensible tax debate should take account of how taxes are raised, from whom they are collected and on what they are expended. The ways in which the tax and welfare systems interact should also be considered.
In Australia, many families and individuals face very high effective marginal tax rates precisely because of the abysmally designed multiple withdrawal rates of the tax and welfare systems. A large part of the problem is created by having a “means-tested” rather than a universal social security system. Another part of the problem is the progressive income tax regime. The effective marginal tax rates are even more of a problem for some when extra income places them in a higher tax bracket and leads to withdrawal of social security simultaneously. In addition some low-income recipients can also lose pharmaceutical and other concessions or services at various steps in the income ladder. As a result some low-income earners can lose 200 per cent of extra income earned.
The solution: real reform of the tax and welfare systems
Julie P. Smith in her book Taxing Popularity makes the point that progressive rates of taxation were “a distinctive Australian invention – along with the stump jump plough”. The purpose of having those with higher income paying a greater percentage of tax than those on lower incomes is to increase equity. For some taxpayers this system works but others find ways around the system. Many higher earners in fact pay a lower percentage of their income in tax than those who earn much less.
What is needed is a fair system of taxation and welfare that is widely understood and respected. To reinforce this point Julie Smith quotes Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619-83) who said, “The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the least amount of hissing.”
It is possible to improve the tax and welfare systems simultaneously and to increase knowledge, compliance and efficiency. Instead of the all too easy to evade progressive tax system we currently have, it is possible to build equity in to the system up-front, by paying all permanent residents a universal Basic Income and partly financing that with a flat rate income tax. All tax-free thresholds would be abolished so tax would be paid on the first through to the last dollar earned. If nothing else changed, the rate of the flat tax necessary to pay for a basic income would be in the order of 45-50 per cent. But equity could be further enhanced by increasing consumption taxes and by adding wealth, environmental and death taxes. Such additional taxes would lower the required flat rate income tax to below 40 per cent. These taxes would fall on people who could afford them and at a time when they had the capacity to pay.
The necessary level of the universal basic income would be the base rate of the single age pension plus $500 per year to help compensate for the loss of pensioner tax-free thresholds. Children under the age of 16 years living at home would be paid half the basic income rate. All income support payments: pensions, benefits and allowances would be abolished. The failed attempt to build fairness into the targeted social security system through means and asset testing would be consigned to the dustbin of history. Everyone would pay tax and all would receive welfare.
After paying tax and receiving the basic income:
- those on lower incomes would be advantaged compared with the present system;
- people who earned between $20,000 and the average income would be in about the same position as they are now; and
- richer Australians would pay more tax.
Because worker and workless would be paid a basic income this would put an end to the corrosive downward envy which has been eating away at our humanity in this country for the last nine years. It would end the moral panic about “people getting something for nothing” and the ridiculous suggestion that if a government gives people without income enough to live on, they are obliged “to give something back”. A basic income would put an end to perverse incentives to remain on welfare because, unlike the present system, people will always be better off whenever they earn extra income.
Governments would not have to pay the administrative costs of maintaining an exceedingly complex welfare system. There would be greater compliance with the tax system because it would be understood, people would see they get something as a result of their permanent residence in this country and they would regard the system as fairer. In addition the government would be better placed to monitor tax collection once it lets go of its obsession with chasing welfare cheats.
Such a change to the tax and welfare systems would be a reform in the sense meant by the Macquarie Dictionary. A Basic Income would ensure no one lives in poverty. It would allow people to know what they are paying in tax and what everybody is getting as a right of membership of this society and it would provide an efficient base on which to build a more productive and decent country.
The bell tolls for us
First published Green Left Weekly 29/10/2003
and on the same day under the title “We must do something” in Al-Moharer
www.al-moharer.net/moh149/john_tomlinson149.htm
It was published in the Sri Lankan newspaper The Island on 19/1/2004, p.2.
The rise of economic fundamentalist ideas has created a sordid situation for poor people here and overseas. I will trace some of the effects of this onslaught and to point to ways in which each one of us might play a part in undermining the damaging impacts of such policies.
The areas of the society on which I shall concentrate are the industrial arena, social welfare, personal freedom, Indigenous policy, refugees/asylum seeker policy and foreign aid. I shall attempt to show that for each day we let such policies go unchallenged Australians are moving inexorably towards a day where we will find there are none to help.
Essentially the cure lies in the recognition that the pseudo-scientific appeal of economic solutions to social problems does not absolve ordinary citizens from making considered ethical judgements about the impacts that such ‘solutions’ have upon those on whom they are imposed. It also requires that citizens of Australia rediscover their belief in themselves as moral beings and hopefully such a rediscovery will lead them to act in solidarity with those whom the economic fundamentalists would have us neglect.
We can no longer turn our back and pretend that we just do not see: the marginalised, the dispossessed, those relegated to unemployment, precarious employment, or sweatshop conditions, those incarcerated in immigration concentration camps, those forced into ‘work for the dole’ programs and other exploitative ‘mutual obligations’, Indigenous Australians relegated to the margins of the society and those in the third world who are dying of preventable disease or starvation. They are there. They are not a mirage. They are real people. Their suffering is real. Not only do we have a right to assist but also we have an obligation to assist and we have the capacity to assist.
There was once a time when I may have argued that people of good will should act compassionately towards others less affluent than themselves out of a sense of noblesse oblige. Those times have past. We have reached a time when if we don’t act to incorporate the excluded and marginalised then one by one we will become them. The first step is realisation; the second step is to experience revulsion; and the third step is revitalisation.
The stink tanks and the Murdoch media
The Howard Government came to power partly through the combined efforts of the Liberal Party, right wing think tanks and the media’s constant attacks on the values which underpinned the Labor administration and partly because of the failure of the Labor Party to keep Chifley’s ‘Light on the Hill’ illuminated. The economic fundamentalist agenda has slowly been incorporated into both Labor and Liberal political parties since the mid 1970s. Howard’s industrial regime, his cutbacks in public education, health and social services are simply a more ruthless application of similar policies first implements by the Fraser and Hawke/Keating Governments.
Howard’s major contribution to the political debate has been to create an amalgam of conservative and neo-liberal philosophical positions. He spelt out his particular amalgam of these positions in his 1999 Roundtable Paper; in which he explained he was going to ardently pursue economic fundamentalist industry and fiscal policies, and would take from the conservatives their repressive social policies. What was not as clearly spelt out was his intention to ignore the conservative idea of the importance of the ‘common good’ and to usurp it with an absolute belief in the supreme importance of the self-providing individual.
With the assistance of the right wing think tanks, the Murdoch media, and Pauline Hansen he has ceaselessly waged ‘the culture wars’ against supporters of Indigenous people’s rights, decent provision for welfare recipients and justice for asylums seekers. In short he is waging a war against humanity and decency.
‘Dole bludgers’
The unemployed of Newcastle and Wollongong are not unemployed because they are ‘work shy job snobs’ they are unemployed precisely because they spent 20 plus years working for BHP in their coal mines and blast furnaces. Many ex-wharfies are unemployed because they worked for years in ports that are now closed or where the loading facilities have been Patrickised and where the stench of Lynch’s Dobermans and balaclavas still hangs in the air. The Company and the Government not only ‘downsized’ the demand for labour they downsized the morality of this nation.
Unemployed people in each and every part of this country have been subjected an economic fundamentalist nightmare. And the best that many can hope for is casualised part-time precarious employment interspersed with further bouts of unemployment. Australians are not lazy. A greater percentage of working age citizens are members of the labour force now than at any previous time in Australia’s history. Australians are eager to accept paid employment yet we have experienced consistently high levels of unemployment in this country since 1975. This is because it suits government and industry to have such high levels of available labour. Governments and industry don’t want the acrimony of the Patrick’s type showdown on the wharves if they can manage to tame the workforce with threat and innuendo. But if the workers won’t buckle under then the promoters of the economic fundamentalist agenda won’t shy away from such violent confrontations at your workplace.
The distortion of meaning
The language is massaged and sanitised. People aren’t sacked anymore they are made redundant, downsized, provided with a 7 day weekend or whatever. The effect of getting a pink slip in the pay envelope is still the same: demoralisation, feelings of failure and inadequacy and alienation. There was a time when if this happened and the worst came to the worst unemployment benefits would be provided until a new job was found. Nowadays the economic fundamentalists demand you jump through increasingly stigmatising ‘mutual obligation’ hoops before you are deemed worthy to get the pittance they now call ‘Newstart’.
The present Prime Minister has the gall to boast that, if those for whom the Government and industry can’t or won’t find paid work are to be given a below the poverty line income support payment, “it is only fair that the unemployed give something back in return”. This is about the equivalent of throwing a dollar into a blind man’s cup and demanding that if he does not regain his sight immediately you’ll take back 80 cents. Leading ethicists from Professor Robert Goodin of ANU to Pam Kinnear of the Australia Institute have suggested that Centrelink’s demand that the unemployed “comply or starve” is an equivalent immorality to that of the highwayman’s “comply or die”. Pam Kinnear accuses the Prime Minister of ‘taking without giving’.
The road to immorality is paved with good intentions
Prime Minister Howard is always quick to claim virtuous intent. After the Bringing them Home Report exposed the crime of stealing generations of Aboriginal children; Howard was eager to suggest that, whatever happened to the children, the non-Indigenous people who took the children from their families had done so “with the best of intentions”. When it comes to the reasons why his Government is imposing increasing obligations upon unemployed people, lone parents and those with disabilities Howard and Co. again claim to be doing this to assist the unemployed. In this case, he suggests that such obligations help the unemployed remain ‘job ready’, ‘maintain self-respect’ and avoid ‘welfare dependency’. At least he is not claiming his imposed obligations cure dandruff and tinea.
When good intent is just not enough, Howard appeals to superior knowledge, as he did in the case of the, yet to be found, weapons of mass destruction. He claimed superior knowledge as his justification for the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. In the US and the UK the citizens are realising that their leaders might not have been entirely frank in the lead-up to the war in Iraq.
It is perhaps that the Australian public has been so impressed with Howard’s forthrightness on such matters as the children overboard affair, his involvement in the ethanol scandal, the SIEV X sinking and so forth that they can not bring themselves to believe that dishonest John could lie to them. Or it may be that many have become so inured to Howard’s moral turpitude that they don’t care about things unless the Government’s decisions affect them directly.
I hope it is not entirely the latter, because if it is, we are fast approaching the stage where most of my fellow citizens are like the frog in gradually heating water. That is, we will just sit there waiting to be boiled. Rather, I think it is partly we have avoided making such ethical judgements by putting them in ‘the too hard basket’ or ‘the they may know better than me basket’ or that other basket labelled ‘surely you are not saying the government would intentionally ignore our best interests’. In addition, many are compromised by their acceptance of knee-jerk short term solutions such as the mandatory detention of asylum seekers, the Pacific disillusion, the redrawing of our boundaries for the purposes of the migration act. Some may have been even stupid enough to believe that asylum seekers would pay thousands of dollars to bring their children 5,000 kilometres on leaky boats just so they could have the pleasure of throwing them overboard when the first Australian warship hove into sight. Some of course have just been baffled by the bullshit.
Sledging and wedging
There is enough of the larrikin in most of my fellow citizens to enjoy a modicum of sledging between two evenly matched teams on the oval. But the Howard Government has taken to sledging the unemployed, lone parents, the young, those with disabilities, asylum seekers, Indigenous people, the frail aged and other relatively powerless citizens. They have not done this out of any sense of sportsmanship rather they use sledging and wedging as grubby tactics to demoralise those whom they abuse and to drive a wedge between them and other citizens. Once the wedge is inserted it is easier for the Government to generate downward envy.
Those lucky enough to have a full time permanent job bemoan the fact that the Government pays the unemployed an income. They whinge that their work income is not much greater than the poverty line income of the unemployed. I suppose that it is easier to attack the relatively powerless unnamed unemployed when compared with the alternative strategy of organising with unions and fellow workers to take on a struggle with their employers to raise their salary. Smart low paid employees would campaign for more generous unemployment payments with few attached conditions for two very personal reasons. Firstly they are the employees most likely to encounter prolonged unemployment in the future and secondly if the rate of payment for unemployed people goes up so too will the minimum wage rates.
The rich frequently engage in downward envy but in a different form. They happily, albeit ignorantly, assert the existence of hoards of dole bludgers who refuse to accept the multitude of well paid jobs that exist somewhere out there. Or they might suggest that the payment of lone parent payments ‘encourages teenage immorality’ and the breakdown of ‘family life’. Whatever their particular bitch they always conclude that such welfare payments ‘encourage welfare dependence’, ‘undermine the desire to work’, encourage ‘slough and licentiousness’, and lead governments to ‘raise unnecessary taxes to pay for them’. They usually proffer the simplistic economic fundamentalist solution ‘cut taxes by abolishing welfare’. Then they suggest that not only will everybody live happily ever after, but because business will be so much more efficient and profitable that everyone will have a job.
Whether you are rich or low paid, the engaging in downward envy is self-defeating because it distracts your mind from addressing the real issues, which are making you unhappy, and deflects you from identifying the real source of your oppression. The Government is happy so long as it can deflect citizens’ attention from the real issues facing them. This is especially so if there are things which the Government is failing to do to improve the life of all citizens. The Howard Government has been a most vituperate sledger of the powerless and a most successful wedger of the people. It has managed to divide: city and country people, men and women, Indigenous from non-Indigenous citizens, worker from welfare recipients, even managing to have some welfare recipients competing with other welfare recipients and has succeeded in relegating asylum seekers to the brigades of the forgotten whilst they rot in concentration camps in the outback or on Nauru.
Foreign aid
The increasing wealth of this nation has been accompanied by an accelerating decrease in the amount of peaceful foreign aid we have distributed to the underdeveloped world. What is worse is that we are not alone. Many Western countries have followed similar paths.
The policies of the West have exacerbated the difficulties experienced in the underdeveloped world. There are now 500 billionaires in the world and each year 35 million people will die of starvation. There are 23 million asylum seekers and displaced people in the world. One billion people constantly live on the brink of starvation whilst many in West experience health difficulties from over-eating.
The underdeveloped world is forced into a Western controlled ‘free trade’ system that is not free but designed to exploit the underdeveloped and developing world. Fair Trade might go some way to solving many of the problems of the underdeveloped world but such policies are fiercely resisted in Washington, London, Tokyo and Paris.
This is the ethical crisis facing the world. We need to act justly so that many might just survive long enough for the developed world to come to see that it has a responsibility to lift all people in the world above the poverty line.
Ethics
The economic fundamentalists suggest that efficiency is the be all and end all and that the market should be the final arbiter of good taste because it is, in some never specified way, able to come to ‘objective’ determination of ‘good’. The economic fundamentalists suggest that there is no place for moral or ethical qualms. That values get in the way of ‘objective’ decision-making. Their preoccupation with efficiency usually amounts to a fixation on target efficiency, that is, how quickly and cheaply can we chop down the last remaining stand of Wolemi Pines in this forest. For them questions about the desirability of making a species extinct are simple irrelevancies. Hence the Howard Government could, in the 2001-2002 financial year, happily impose 386,946 social security breaches on some of Australia’s poorest citizens in an effort to make social security recipients meet their alleged obligations without even wondering whether this was an effective ethically responsible manner in which to run its welfare policy.
Ethics amounts to more than a zero sum game where everyone’s values cancel out every body else’s values. Moral relativism cannot have reached such a low point that the values that sustain egalitarian social support are no more valued than those of hedonistic self-actualised dog eat dog world that so attracted the shopkeeper’s daughter. Maggie Thatcher may have asserted that “there is no such thing as society” but her assertion does not make it true let alone something for which it is worth striving.
Some lessons from history
The 17th Century liberal philosopher Thomas Hobbes described the life that existed in Thatcher’s no society as “nasty, brutish and short”. Surely Australians in the 21stCentury can aspire to live in a social community somewhat in advance of such a Hobbesian nightmare. If we need to go back to the past to discover a moral future then let’s start with John Donne’s 1623 For whom the bell tolls
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
To Donne we might append the 19th Century writer John Ruskin assertion in Time and Tide that “The first duty of a State is to see that every child born therein shall be well housed, clothed, fed, and educated, till it attain years of discretion.” This of course would force us to look seriously at the possibility that the Howard Government’s cutting people off from any form of social security because they had failed to comply with the petty dictates of some Centrelink operative is unconscionable. Their failure to live up to international agreements on the treatment of asylum seekers that previous Australian Governments have signed and ratified would be seen as morally reprehensible. We might gain an understanding that the Howard Government’s failure to honour the internationally agreed Law of the Sea in relation to the Tampa puts every Australian seafarer at risk as well as being ethically unjustifiable.
The way forward
I am old enough to have lived through all of the stultifying 23 years of the Menzies, Holt, Gorton and McMahon Coalition Governments. But am young enough to remember the inspiration of Gough Whitlam’s It’s Time campaign. Well, it’s time again to embrace: our humanity, our compassion, our decency, our justice and our sense of commonality. It’s time for us to act in solidarity with all those less well-off than ourselves.
The last 7 years demoralising years of the Howard ascendency is coming to an end. Should enough of my fellow Australians agree with me that the demise of Howard can’t come soon enough then we can, and I believe must, spare no effort to hasten his removal from office.
The most effective way we can do this is communicating our disillusion about Howard’s divisiveness to our families, workmates, fellow travellers and anyone else who will listen. We need to get to know and communicate with asylum seekers, Indigenous Australians, people who are unemployed or in other ways presently down on their luck. We need to express our solidarity with them – to incorporate them in our lives, communities and neighbourhoods. We need to reject the failed economic fundamentalist prescriptions and the socially repressive ‘mutual obligation’ regimes. We need to accept an egalitarian future based on ethically justifiable behaviour. In addition we need to accept ourselves and our interdependence with our fellow residents of this country. We need to campaign for fair trade and greatly increased peaceful foreign aid. We need to forego pre-emptive aggression against anyone here or overseas. Above all we need to accept that the bell tolls for us.
The best hope for world peace
Written on 20 March 2003
The United States and Britain have already stepped up the bombing of areas of Southern Iraq in their unilaterally imposed ‘no fly zone’. They do not have sufficient decency to wait until their unilaterally imposed deadline for war expires. In relation to the coverage of the war the western press is, with some notable exceptions, behaving like a cheer squad in the run up to a grand final.
I had hoped that ordinary people who turned out in unprecedented numbers to oppose this war might have been able to deflect the Bush/Blair/Howard crusade of white Christian capitalism against the Iraqi people.
If their invasion of Iraq is accomplished with little loss of US, British and Australian lives then very shortly several other countries will be invaded. The best hope for world peace is that tens of thousands of US, British and Australian soldiers are killed. If this occurs this might dampen the American, British and Australian Governments enthusiasm for going round the world meeting lots of nice people and then killing them.
The Big Lie of World War I
There have been many lies told about all the battles in which Australians have taken part. That is why the Morrison temporary government has decided we need to piss up against the wall another half a billion dollars to expand our monument to eternal war in Canberra. But perhaps the most egregious lie told in 1914 was that “This war will be the war to end all wars”.
The bastardry, brutality and buggery of the trenches was only matched by the stench of dead and dying bodies on the battlefields. The futility of the fighting pales into insignificance when one considers the mythology of the significance of the sanctity of the eternal flame or the sea of knitted red poppies littering Parliament House in Canberra.
Alistair Hulett got it right when he wrote:
“A bayonet is a weapon
wi a working man at either end.
Betray yer country.
Serve yer class.
Don’t sign up for war, my friend.
Don’t sign up for war.”
When I was growing up in Gympie on the day before every Anzac Day the entire school would be lined up on the oval and the maths teacher Mr. Konkie would be asked to provide us with middle C so that we could sing “God save the Queen” in tune and then proclaim that:
“At the going down of the sun
and in the morning
we will remember them.”
The entire proceedings were presided over by the head master Harry Peg who regularly molested the senior girls until he happened upon the daughter of the local member of state parliament. Peg was soon to find himself despatched to an all-boys school in Brisbane.
I have an indelible memory of being repeatedly told that “In both wars our troops went away to war to safe guard the freedoms that we so jealously guarded and to protect our way of life”. Given the number of times since then that we have despatched our troops to fight on foreign soil, it must be that by now have greatly expanded freedoms and a magnificently protected way of life.
However, it would seem not to be the case. Australia has some of the most repressive anti-terror legislation in the world. Our civil liberties are constantly being eroded. Governments have become addicted to increasing the length of prison sentences. Law and order regimes are the order of the day. People who have lived here most of their lives and who have committed relatively minor offences are increasingly being deported. Asylum seekers are turned back on the high seas and incarcerated in off shore concentration camps even when they have been found to be refugees. Their crime, it would appear, is that they came to our country in small vessels rather than on a cruise boat or aeroplane.
We force unemployed people, who apply for social security, to work for the dole and survive on below poverty line benefits. Aboriginal people, living in remote communities, are subjected to even more draconian work for the dole conditions. Asylum seekers are increasingly being deprived of any form of social security.
We have ex-politicians and ex-senior public servants being given lucrative jobs by Woodside Petroleum because of past favours done in forcing East Timor to agree to allow Woodside to extract their oil. The people, Witness K and his lawyer, Bernard Collaery who were instrumental in exposing Australia’s bugging of East Timor’s cabinet room are currently facing trial on drummed up charges in secret proceedings organised by the Attorney General, unChristian Porter.
So, I say to Morrison and Co, go wrap yourself in your stupid flag, worship your medals and if you have none then your lapel pins, walk on the crocheted poppies and proclaim yourself to be the epitome of a scoundrel, promise to remember them and issue medals to the families of the fallen, give plastic cards to veterans, sing “Advance Australia Fair” and smile like the gormless idiot you are. I will hum “Waltzing Matilda” and plan your demise.
written November 2018
The Bush agenda in Iraq
Discussion at Politics in the Pub, Sea View Hotel Shorncliffe, Queensland
11/3/2003
A few weeks ago I was asked by an ex-student if I was writing lots of antiwar poetry I replied “No; essentially because the rationalisations for war coming out of the Bush/Blair/Howard orifice were so surreal that I was reduced to satire and analysis.”
Tonight I want to put two sets of Propositions:
The first set of propositions deal with why we should not go to war:
(1) There is no ethical reason sufficient to justify the evasion of Iraq.
(2) There are no self-defense reasons for America/Britain/Australia to invade Iraq.
(3) It is not in Australia’s economic interests to invade Iraq.
The second set of proposition deal with the real reasons for the invasion:
(4) The US wants to control Iraq’s oil.
(5) The US believes that it has a divine right to impose it desired geo-political outcomes on the rest of the world.
(6) Iraq has a considerable amount of water; Israel and perhaps other countries want to access that water.
Why we should not go to war
(Proposition 1) There is no ethical reason sufficient to justify the evasion of Iraq.
Invasion will just result in a large number of deaths it will do nothing to promote Justice.
Neither in terms of the “problem” Iraq creates for the West nor in terms of the relative weaponry does a US led invasion meet the test of Proportionality.
Invasion will result in a repeat of the Yugoslavia break-up. Turkey will be in control of Kurds. To be ethical the war would have to improve the lives of people not make them worse.
The US has no right or obligation to intervene in the affairs of another country.
The widespread killing of non-combatants (which would be a direct result of the xenophobic enforcement of this white Western Crusade against Muslims) has no moral or ethical basis on which to rest.
(Proposition 2) There are no self-defense reasons for America/Britain/Australia to invade Iraq.
Iraq has no capacity to attack any of these 3 countries intending to invade its territory.
It has not attacked any country in the last 12 years.
There has been no evidence produced which establishes that Iraq still has weapons of mass destruction.
There is no evidence that Iraq has either the intention or the capacity to attack its neighbours.
Colin Powell and Ari Fleischer responding to remarks by chief weapons inspector Hans Blix that his teams had not yet found a smoking gun in their of inspections in Iraq
When we came down the stair today
We saw a gun that wasn’t there
It wasn’t there again today
That’s why we must blow Saddam away.
(Proposition 3) It is not in Australia’s economic interests
WAR is very expensive- we can’t afford one- we’ll just have to put it on lay-buy. Australia by attacking Iraq puts into jeopardy the $800 million annual wheat trade with Iraq.
If the Yanks succeed in toppling Saddam Hussein’s regime the US will take over the wheat trade; if the Baath Party remains in office they may well choose to purchase their wheat from countries which don’t go around attacking Muslim countries.
The issue of trade goes beyond wheat to other goods and services that Australia might want to export. Our live meat trade to the entire Middle East might be put in jeopardy.
Our tourist trade with Asia and the Middle East could also be damaged.
There may well be a substantially increased refugee/asylum seeker outflow and given the current Australian policy stupidity on refugee/asylum seekers this will be very expensive.
There may well be an increased number of people who, in the wake of a second Gulf War, are prepared to launch terrorist attacks on those countries which invade Iraq.
The real reasons for the invasion
(Proposition 4) The US wants to control Iraq’s oil.
US control of Iraq’s oil is simultaneously a metaphor for the entire US geo-political interests in the region and lucrative commodity which the US would like to control.
“Too much of a good thing” George Monbiot, February 18, 2003 The Guardian (UK)
“Underlying the US drive to war is a thirst to open up new opportunities for surplus capital.”
“Attacking Iraq offers the US three additional means of offloading capital while maintaining its global dominance. The first is the creation of new geographical space for economic expansion. The second …is military spending (a process some people call “military Keynesianism”). The third is the ability to control the economies of other nations by controlling the supply of oil.”
Read John Pilger, Robert Frisk, The Guardian, The Independent, Z Net, Green Left.
(Proposition 5) The US believes that it has a divine right to impose its desired geo-political outcomes on the rest of the world.
“Out of the wreckage” by George Monbiot February 25, 2003 The Guardian (UK)
“The US is planning to build a new generation of nuclear weapons in order to enhance its ability to launch a pre-emptive attack. This policy threatens both the comprehensive test ban treaty and the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.” He notes also that the US has recently attacked the UN Security Council, and NATO, and ignored its promises to the WTO . “By tearing up the global rulebook, the US is in fact undermining its own imperial rule.”
At first the US was demanding destruction of Weapons of Mass Destruction, then it was suggesting that Iraq had close links to Al-Quida, then it was regime change, then it was total disarmament, now it is establishment of democracy throughout the region. The US is gleefully oblivious to the fact that you can’t bomb people into Democracy. Democracies grow out of the exercise of liberty.
The US wants to be able to enforce its every whim on Arabs in the region. US geo-politics equals Yank tyranny. It is very hard to tell the difference between a Yank and a jerk.
(Proposition 6) Iraq has a considerable amount of water; Israel and perhaps other countries want to access that water.
In Water Wars, Vandana Shiva uses her remarkable knowledge of science and society to analyze the historical erosion of communal water rights.
In Water Wars, Shiva reveals how many of the most important conflicts of our time, most often camouflaged as ethnic wars or religious wars, such as the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, are in fact conflicts over scarce but vital natural resources.
Israel has already engaged in hostilities in the region over access to water.
Conclusion
Should the US attack Iraq and set up its own puppet regime allegedly to plant the flower of democracy in the Middle East. The weed garden which will grow wont bare any resemblance to the ideal western democratic form rather it will look more like Palestine where 6 out of 10 Palestinians are currently living on less than $2.00 per day due to the Israeli occupation and devastation of their country.
It will just lead to a further round of exploitation and terrorism.
However it does not have to be this way we could settle for something like the French, German, Chinese and Russian position and have disarmament and…
Peace
We can beat the bastards.
We can stop the war.
There is no need to bomb the kids
to bathe in blood and gore.
But each of us has to act as one
to join in common union;
oppose all war for ever more
and seek just resolution.
The cancer of imperialism
Written in 2005 not published.
Amerikan globalisation wants to fill the valleys of third world poverty
with the mountains of rotting garbage from the first world.
Amerikan militarism wants to smother the third world’s anguished cries for freedom
by dropping bunker busters and daisy cutters manufactured in the first world.
Amerikan indifference wants to obliterate the groans of third world hunger
by turning up the sound of their first world home entertainment centres.
Amerikan spin-doctors want to confuse first world thinkers
by denigrating the evidence of genocide educed by third world activists.
The choice is easy
Written in 2004 not published
Shall I look you in the eye
or hang my head and heave a sigh?
The choice is dead easy.
What do I do, what do I buy
do I tell the truth or do I lie?
The choice is dead easy.
Confront you till the day I die
or turn away and say goodbye?
The choice is dead easy.
In the name of patriotism you stole my country’s pride
In the furtherance of your racist desire
you changed the law to steal Indigenous land.
The day that guilt died
Written in 2002.
President Sharon declared suicide bombers “guilty”,
those who fund attacks on Israel “guilty” and
those who stay silent about terror attacks in Israel “guilty”.
But this is from the man who:
assassinates Palestinians from Apache helicopters,
has the Israeli Army bulldoze Arab houses,
authorises Mossad to deploy car bombs in Ramallah and
stopped the world investigating the massacre in Jenin.
He is leader of a nation which expelled a million Palestinians.
This country daily builds new settlements on Palestinian land.
And now threatens to ethnically cleanse the West Bank and Gaza.
Sharon is the murderer who dares to mention others guilt
but who cannot silence the accusations of guilt:
not from Arabs, but from Jews and Gypsies
who died in Nazi concentration camps.
His mind’s eye sees the accuser’s finger.
His ears ring with the claim that some Jews
did not do all they could to douse the fires of
Buchenwald and Auschwich.
Who is to share the guilt for those
who died in Hebron and Bethlehem?
Who must bare the guilt –
the guilt of Sabra and Shatila?
But enough of guilt and revenge.
Grow up Zionists.
Grow up Sharon.
Even adolescents dream of peace.
I hope we’ll see the day –
the day that guilt dies,
and no one cries,
when we are allowed to move on.
The dead don’t vote
There are many forms of democracy
not all protect against tyranny,
just across the Timor Sea
people are hoping to be free.
25 years of militarisation
has not crushed this tiny nation.
Indonesia offers integration,
it’s just code for annihilation.
Already 300,000 dead,
Timorese demand instead
an act of self-determination.
After 25 years of sorrow
people vote tomorrow:
and just to keep it fair
to soldiers everywhere
they arm one side but not the other.
What do you think of that, brother?
Militias at Liquicia
soldiers at Bacau
and police and thugs
with guns and clubs
are laying siege to Dili
slaughtering willy nilly.
Our Government says no to armed peace keepers
they are the friends of these grim reapers.
Timorese are voting for a nation
they will reject forced integration.
Just across the Timor Sea
people are voting to be free.
Independence by a country mile,
the dead may not vote
but they will smile.
Written in 1999.
The decent thing to do
The Abbott Government is loudly proclaiming that it is acting lawfully on the high seas. How would anyone know if what they are doing is lawful. They are doing everything they possibly can to prevent journalists from observing what they are doing. They are making it virtually impossible to get to Nauru and Manus to interview asylum seekers who have been chucked in the hell holes paid for by Australian people’s so that we don’t get to hear what is happening to the men, women and children in our offshore holding camps. They refuse to reply to the Indonesian Government’s requests that they confirm or deny that they paid people smugglers to return asylum seekers to Indonesia.
What we do know is that psychiatrists believe that prolonged detention of asylum seekers in the offshore and onshore camps is causing and/or exacerbating mental health problems of the children, the women and the men. We know that in the camps people are not safe from sexual and other assaults.
At the very time when the Abbott Government is getting ready to make a minister for immigration able to strip suspected supporters of terrorist organisations of their citizenship without adequate judicial safeguards and even without having a conviction recorded against them it is saying that what it is doing on the high seas is within the law. It is preparing legislation to ban health professionals telling anyone what they have witnessed in our concentration camps.
It is probable that it was agents of Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) who paid the money to people smugglers. As Paul Bongiorno said on Fran Kelly’s Breakfast Program ABC Radio National these agents specialise in the “dark arts”. The Australian Secret Intelligence Service website proclaims that:
ASIS is Australia’s overseas secret intelligence collection agency. Our mission is to protect and promote Australia’s vital interests through the provision of intelligence services as directed by Government.
What it does not say is what they really do they a bunch of spooks who are on a much freer leash than their national counterparts the Australian Secret Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). They are the people the government uses to when it wants to organise a drone strike overseas. There is virtually nothing they wont do provided the government tells them to do it. They are our extra-judicial arm – our militia.
One option before us is to sagely nod and say “Well Tony’s the prime minister I’m sure he’s doing what’s best for Australia”. We might feel a slight unease about our turn back the boats policy in the face of the Amnesty International Report that reveals that the world is facing the worst humanitarian crisis since the Second World War with 50 million displaced persons and asylum seekers on the move.
Alternatively, we might demand that our government act as a responsible advanced capitalist society and take our share of those fleeing war, famine and persecution. In the face of this humanitarian crisis it is not a tenable response to slash our foreign aid and incarcerate those fleeing persecution who attempt to come to our country on boats.
Even if Abbott is correct in the assertion that Australian officials have acted within the law – this is not the question that should be addressed. We need to ask “Is what we are doing on the high seas the right thing to do, is it just, is it humane and is it the decent thing to do”.
Circulated June 2015.
The guilt industry
Don’t talk to me or guilt or want.
Don’t tell me where I’m in default.
Your country now is mine by right
of English law and oversight.
Blackburn did terra nullius decree
for mines and pastoral industry.
Don’t come here with modern law
or telling what Eddy Mabo saw,
or what Australia’s High Court found.
The past is ours, it’s safe and sound.
Don’t talk of Aboriginal sovereignty
of genocide or tyranny.
We have the power to enforce our will
it’s a pity that guilt lingers still.
The Howard Government’s response to asylum seekers, refugees, Aborigines and welfare recipients.
Paper given at The Social Change in the 21st Century Conference, Brisbane
22nd November 2002
This paper will trace the continuity and discontinuities in policies affecting refugees, asylum seekers, Aborigines and welfare recipients from the invasion of this continent to the present day. It will draw heavily on research conducted by my students and myself over the last few years.
Some isolated historical features
- Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776.
- Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species in 1859. However, views about the racial inferiority of non-white people, which later came to be called ‘social Darwinism’, predated this book by several centuries.
- The British invasion of Australia started in 1778.
- The first codified English Poor Law was in 1601.
- One of the first pieces of legislation passed by the Commonwealth Parliament in 1901 was an Act to restrict non-white immigration.
- Jane Kelsey published The New Zealand Experiment: A World Model for Structural Adjustment? in 1995.
- The Howard Government came to power in 1996.
- For much of the post Second World War period until 1974, unemployment remained below 1 percent. Since that time full employment has not been a prime policy of any government.
Ongoing Indigenous dispossession
Australia was, until 1788, a multicultural land. Various Indigenous nations, based on language groups owned this continent. Trading routes extended for thousands of miles. At various times some religious movements maintained influence over considerable areas of the continent – one such stretched from Broome into central Arnhemland. For over four hundred years Macassan seafarers made annual visits to the northern coast from the Gulf of Carpentaria to the North West of Western Australia. Contact was maintained across the Torres Strait. Extraordinary cultural diversity existed. Complex mechanisms existed for maintaining peace and resolving conflict. These helped mediate land, interclan and interpersonal difficulties. Religious, cultural and family arrangements combined to ensure that no one starved, whilst there was food to eat. Indigenous Australia maintained a finer welfare system than exists today.
From 1788 on, invasion, theft, rape and genocide was the British contribution to cultural diversity. There has been 214 years of continuing race war waged by the invaders since that time (Tomlinson 2001 Ch. 6). The Howard Government’s policies of ‘practical reconciliation’ and its 1998 revisions to the Native Title Act exemplify the repugnant Australian tradition that allows Indigenous Australians use of land and resources until such time as white Australians desire them. In the old days guns and poison were the tools of civilisation, nowadays progressive dispossession of Indigenous property rights can be just as effectively achieved by the grant of mining leases or by legislative amendment.
Fear of invasion
From the earliest days of colonialisation, the ‘new chums’ feared others coming to and taking over this continent: first the French or the Russians and later the ‘Asiatic hordes’ which became, by the time I was growing up, the ‘yellow peril’. The current bogeymen are Muslim refugees.
The white Australia policy was not dropped as official policy until just before the election of the Whitlam Labor Government. In the first decade of the 20th Century attempts were made to repatriate Kanak labourers and Asians, particularly the Chinese.
The end of the Second World War saw a huge influx of migrants brought from Europe driven by Australian Government’s desire to “populate or perish” in the face of the perceived threat from Asia.
Following the Vietnam War a considerable number of Vietnamese people settled here. Many of the early arrivals had arrived by boat. It was the Labor Minister for Immigration Gerry Hand who introduced the policy of mandatory detention for refugees and asylum seekers arriving on our shores without visas. Keating Labor also introduced a six-month social security waiting period for newly arrived migrants.
The construction of the Australian income support system
The first Federal social security payments were the Age and Invalid Pensions introduced in 1909. Asian Australians were not paid social security until the 1940s. Child Endowment in 1942 was paid, even in respect of Aboriginal children, not living on missions or settlements. By the late 1960s Aboriginal people living in the cities were paid social security and this was extended to include rural and remote Aborigines by the mid 1970s. Unemployment benefit is still not paid on many Aboriginal communities, instead a form of ‘work for the dole’, the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP), was installed in its place.
Throughout most of the 20th Century the system of welfare income provision became more widespread, generous and comprehensive. But with the exception of the 1947 consolidation of social security legislation, there was little effort made to conceive of it as a unified system of income support (Joint Committee of Public Accounts 1983).The first serious attempt to cut back on the comprehensive nature of income support began under Brian Howe’s reign as Minister for Social Security.
The light on the hill: The period from the very late 1960s until the early 1980s
After Menzies relinquished the Prime Ministership, Australia began to adopt more socially progressive attitudes towards people of colour, Indigenous people, migrants and women. The equal pay cases in respect to both women and Aborigines in 1967 resulted in at least formal equality with white men. However, because of the gender segregated nature of Australian industry, income equality between men and women has yet to occur. The Aboriginal equal pay judgement was hedged around with slow worker provisions and a three-year phase-in period. It also resulted in many Aboriginal people being driven off their traditional country by infuriated white pastoralists who could no longer avoid paying Indigenous workers in their employ.
In 1967 the Liberals agreed to hold a referendum to change the constitution so that the Commonwealth could pass laws in respect to Aborigines and so it could count them in the Census.
The Whitlam Government came to power with ideas of building a multicultural society, getting out of the Vietnam war, promoting gender equality, improving the welfare system, introducing a national health insurance, improving the lot of Indigenous Australians and promoting the idea that ordinary people (including those receiving welfare payments) had rights which could and should be enforced.
The Whitlam Government drafted, and the Fraser Government passed (a slightly less progressive version) of the Northern Territory Land Rights Bill.
Between 1973 and 1978 sole parents who had custody of children were included under the social security umbrella. In the last years of the Fraser and the early years of the Hawke Governments, a system of financial support was introduced for low- income families who worked. This was the last major improvement in income security provision, although during the early Hawke Government, Don Grimes introduced substantial improvements in disability service delivery.
This period, from the late 1960s until the early 1980s, was the closest Australia has come to being able to glimpse Ben Chifley’s ‘light on the hill’. Yet throughout this period there was a contest between a welfare system based on noblesse oblige and a fully articulated system of rights. There seemed to be a feeling that even when people spoke about rights that they were driven by sense of “There but for the grace of God go I”. That is, in the minds of many politicians and bureaucrats, the rights were not securely anchored to international covenants and conventions or to a clear ideological commitment to ideologies predicated upon support for equality, mutuality and freedom or justice.
The market rules
The situation, which culminated in the Howard ascendency, has a long lineage in Australia. Some writers point to the Hayden 1975 Budget as the first step on the slippery slope. Certainly there were economic fundamentalist tendencies observable during Malcolm Fraser’s rule. By the time Hawke came to power, the views of Milton Friedman, Hayek, Thatcher, Regan, and a multitude of right wing think-tanks (George 1997) were influencing Australian Government thinking (Pusey 1992). These ideas were soon to be imposed in New Zealand under Labour’s Rodger Douglas, only to be massively expanded by the New Zealand Nationals when they came to office, with economically disastrous consequences (Kelsey 1995). Howard, prior to being elected, promised to replicate the New Zealand experience here. A much more organised and centralised trade union movement has so far impeded much of his anti-union industrial agenda.
The Howard agenda
Howard has boasted that he is the most conservative Prime Minister in Australia’s history. He most clearly articulated the Government’s domestic policy orientations in his 1999 Roundtable paper and his 2000 “Quest for a decent society” article in which he set out the argument for his type of social coalition. This coalition is between government, business, the church, the family and individuals. He sees the cement for such a coalition being what he terms ‘mutual obligation’ – whereby those who receive something from the Government are expected to give something back. He defines his political orientation as an amalgam between social conservatism and neo-liberal economics.
Howard provided a clear warning to informed Australia that he wished to replicate the New Zealand economic fundamentalist experiment. Unfortunately, too few Australian voters had read Jane Kelsey’s 1995 analysis:
By 1995, after a decade of radical structural change, New Zealand had become a highly unstable and polarised society. It’s under-skilled, under-employed, low wage, low inflation, high exchange rate, export-driven economy was totally exposed to international economic forces (p.350).
In addition middle Australia, like their Aotearoan counterparts, had imbibed too much of the economic fundamentalist think-tanks’ mystification. The Hawke/Keating Labor Party had also internalised the nostrums of the Chicago School of Economics and their associated right wing think-tanks (Pusey 1992, Vintila, Phillomore and Newman 1992, Rees, Rodley and Stilwell 1993, Stilwell 2002, George 1997).
Labor had ruled out introducing ‘work for the dole’ as had been done in New Zealand by the Nationals – yet Keating maintained the CDEP for Indigenous communities and had, in 1994 in his Working Nation document, moved to impose a less oppressive form of ‘mutual obligation’ which he termed ‘reciprocal obligation’. Under Labor there was a greater commitment to train, find work and ultimately, after 18 months of continuous unemployment, to supply a job for 6 months.
Despite Howard’s (1999, 2000) fine words, about the mutuality in ‘mutual obligation’ the Government sees itself has having fully met its obligation to unemployed people by simply paying below poverty line income –the obligation is then on the unemployed person to meet ‘their obligation’ to Government. Any extra assistance comes in the form of mandatory ‘dole diaries’, compulsory literacy and numeracy training, having to apply for 10 jobs a fortnight, participation income and other breaching mechanisms. Last year 380,000 breaches were imposed on the poorest Australians often for a minor infringement such as being late for a Centrelink appointment (ACOSS 2002). Many researchers have described the philosophical underpinnings of participation income as unethical (Kinnear 2000, Goodin 2001, Hammer 2002, Tomlinson 2002[a], [b]). The practical outcomes for those who are breached are socially disastrous (Senate Community Affairs References Committee 2002, ACOSS 2002, 2001, Schooneveldt 2002, Tomlinson 2001 [a], [b]).
The various Howard Cabinets have contained a fine bunch of bullyboys (and girls) determined to berate the unemployed for their failure to find non-existent work. Perhaps the most blatant example of this comes from ex-Minister Jocelyn Newman’s 1999 paper The Challenge of Welfare Dependency in the 21st Century with her suggestion that “good economic policy is good welfare policy (p.2)”. This paper provided the tracks on which the McClure Report (2000) ran and on time. The concept of ‘participation income’ is a euphemism for compulsory labour. There has been a constant chorus of denigration of people who are forced to rely on social security because of the failure of the Government and industry to create sufficient jobs. Whether it is Howard’s 2000 “social coalition”, Abbott’s “job snobs”, Brough’s “losers and cruisers” or his claims that “Compliance is a strong motivator and it also flushes out dole cheats” (Brough 2001 p.2), the message is the same depressing monotone. The hysterical denunciation of ‘welfare dependency’ and particularly intergenerational ‘welfare dependency’ is based on a myth. There have been no intergenerational studies of long-term social security receipt in Australia. Recent overseas long-term panel studies do not support such assertions (Goodin, Headey, Muffels and Dirven 1999 pp.260-261).
The McClure Report (2000) obsequiously recommended that not only were unemployed people be compelled ‘to participate’ but that single parents and people receiving Disability Support Pensions should also be compelled ‘to participate’. The 2002/3 Budget foreshadowed transferring 180,000 Disability Support Pensioners, who worked 15 or more hours a week, to an unemployment benefit paid at $52 a fortnight less than the pension. This is allegedly being done as a way of helping them back into employment. Such a claim flies in the face of the fact that there have been no net full- time jobs created in Australia in recent years (ABC 2002, Gregory 2000) and that anyone, who has a significant impairment, makes a substantial contribution to society and the economy by managing to work the equivalent of 2 full days each week. The Budget proposal blithely ignores the fact that income received by pensioners is more generously means tested than income received by unemployment beneficiaries. Introducing such a change would decrease the financial incentives for people currently receiving Disability Support Pensions to maximise their hours of work. The extra “mutual obligations”, reporting responsibilities and breaching regime imposed on unemployment beneficiaries would invariably lead, many of these 180,000 Disability Support Pensioners, to experience increased income insecurity.
Indigenous Australians
The last officially organised punitive raid was carried out, in 1942, in the North of South Australia (Rowley 1972 p. 204). [Though police and settlers continued to kill and maim small groups of Aborigines in remote Australia until at least the early 1980s (NT News 21/7/80 p.1). In cities, with the notable exception of incidents like the slaughter of David Gundy, the police content themselves with severe bashings of Indigenous Australians (ABC TV 1996)].
There have been few honourable moments in white Australia’s treatment of Indigenous Australians:
- The 1967 Referendum.
- The 1976 Northern Territory Land Rights Act.
- The High Courts Mabo Judgements No. 1 & 2.
- Paul Keating’s 1992 Redfern Speech.
- The Native Title Act 1994.
- The Corroboree 2000 Bridge Marches.
Each of these events stand in sharp contrast to the Howard government’s 10 point plan in the wake of the Wik judgement (which he implemented in his 1998 amendments to the Native Title Act). Howard and his Government acted to remove the property rights which the High Court found Indigenous Australians to have retained after 200 odd years of colonial invasion. They did this in order that they might give those same rights to pastoralists and miners who (the High Court had found) did not own them. In the political double speak of the day; the Prime Minister declared he was acting to provide “certainty” for pastoralists. This political and moral obscenity was captured in the following song.
The ten point scam
The racist scum are on the bum
they need our help again
to protect the interests
of our rich and famous men.
Working folk are on their arse
treated as if second class
it’s not for the likes of you
or me that he’s predicting certainty.
It’s the movers and the shakers
not the Salvos nor the Quakers
looking after rich and famous men
who would steal our common wealth
with their lawyers and their stealth.
It worked before, let’s try it on again,
looking after rich and famous men.
The racist scum are on the bum
they have a ten point scam.
That coward Howard asks, what is the moral question?
Who do you think I am?
As Minister for State,
spreading lies and fear and hate,
he slams the station gate –
for certainty.
I wouldn’t mention Minchin
if you are penny pinchin:
he can’t hear the hungry cry
nor see old people die,
though you might like to try
he’s got bigger fish to fry.
He’s looking after rich and famous men.
The racist scum are on the bum
they need our help again
to protect the interests
of our rich and famous men.
It’s the Sultans of Brunei
not the likes of you or I
for whom they stride.
It’s that wacker Kerry Packer
MacLachlans and McBride,
each of them has wealth on their side.
They need certainty
for all eternity –
secure land title is all that they desire
and no drought, or flood, or fire;
and perhaps, should it transpire
that the markets have a down-turn
governments should do a u-turn
and provide a subsidy:
just a bit more certainty.
It is what you would expect when
You’re looking after rich and famous men.
The racist scum are on the bum
they have a ten point scam.
That coward Howard asks, what is the moral question?
Who do you think I am?
The racist scum are on the bum
they need our help again
to protect the interests of our rich and famous men.
(Tomlinson and Hancock 1999)
Whether it is:
- the response to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racism Report condemning Australia’s 1998 amendments to the Native Title Act,
- Ruddock’s on-going attempts to remove the Aboriginal Tent Embassy from outside of the old Parliament House,
- the failure to do something about the 20 year differential between white and Indigenous average age of death,
- the inordinately high imprisonment rate of Indigenous Australians (Cunneen 2001),
- the appalling decision not to apologise to the stolen generations (HREOC 1997),
- the $3 billion Indigenous housing backlog (ATSIC News 2001, p. 3),
- the promotion of a welfarised ‘practical reconciliation’ over self determination,
- the refusal to countenance the signing a treaty with Indigenous Australians, or
- the finding of new ways to remove property rights from IndigenousAustralians this Howard Government is depressingly consistent.
Perhaps the best measure of the intensity of racist hatred of Indigenous people which inspires this Howard Government was revealed by the Commonwealth Government’s counsel who, during the Hindmarsh Bridge Case in the High Court, whilst being examined by Mr. Justice Michael Kirby, suggested that the 1967 Referendum would allow the Commonwealth to introduce Nazi style racially discriminatory legislation.
Responses to asylum seekers and migrants
Fear of other races has not been far beneath the surface of white Australian consciousness since 1788.
Just when you think the Howard Government can’t sink any lower into the racist quagmire which it calls its migration policy along comes the Tampa, ‘the children overboard’ distortions and ‘the Pacific Solution’. The international opprobrium which followed our flouting of the International Conventions of the Sea in relation to the Tampa may not influence the Howard Government but it will cost the Australian people dearly (Lock, Quenault and Tomlinson 2002).
Howard came to power with the promise of smaller government (Jamrozik 2001) – yet as Stilwell (2002) points out:
Whether it all adds up to ‘slimming the state’, as its proponents commonly claim, is a debatable point. The implementation of economic rationalist policies usually involves a change in the functions of the state – a shift from service provision to regulation of private providers, for example (p.205).
Yet in relation to the Migration Act the Howard Government can justly claim it has not only made the Government smaller it has made Australia smaller by its exclusion of off shore islands and at the same decreased the moral regard the rest of the world has for Australian citizens. The Howard Government exemplifies the old saying that small governments appeal to those with small minds and to the lazy.
The connection between Australian troops travelling around the world meeting lots of nice people and then killing them and subsequent refugee outpourings from those countries has long been acknowledged (Uso 1991). Interestingly enough this has not led the Howard Government to be wary of entering new theatres of war or to taking a sympathetic approach towards asylum seekers from countries it has invaded or blockaded. The Government is refusing to assist many refugees from Afghanstan and Iraq. It is currently moving to send home 1600 Timorese with temporary visas even though they have been here for 10 years. At the same time Howard has joined with the British Prime Minister in the role of cheer leader for George W. Bush’s new war on Iraq.
To update an old Donovan song
“Iraq now your latest game
you’re playing with your blackest queen.
Seagull I don’t want your wings
I don’t want your freedom in a lie.”
Discussion
The Howard Government has dedicated itself to installing what Kemsall (2002) terms a ‘market welfare state’ where the only fully functioning citizens are self-providers and the rest are marginalised or stigmatised. It totally rejects the idea of creating what Sztompka (1999) calls a ‘moral community’, based on trust, preferring to individualise risk and creating a ‘do it yourself welfare state’ (Klein & Millar cited in Page 1998 p.307). It has totally forsaken Beveridge’s desire to abolish the five giants of ‘squalor, want, ignorance, disease and idleness’ (Timmins,1995) which inspired the 1947 consolidation of social security legislative provisions in Australia. The Howard Government has replaced the ideology of noblesse oblige with a compelled conservative compact: one which is becoming increasingly more prescriptive and proscriptive. Its breaching regime is reminiscent of the deserving and undeserving divide enshrined in the 1601 and 1834 Poor Laws (Tomlinson 2002 [a]).
It has imposed this strict regime on Australia’s poorest claiming to be inspired by the highest motives of facing The Challenge of Welfare Dependency in the 21st Century (Newman 1999) and imposing “tough love”. It is interesting to note that Henriques (1979), writing about the Elizabethan poor law administration discusses ‘secular Puritanism’ and notes:
The association of words which implied that the destitute, especially those who could be called ‘able bodied’, were destitute by their own fault quietened the conscience of those who suffered from or feared the growing cost of poor relief…the whole moral justification of the deterrent workhouse was that it would drive those able to work into finding employment (p. 23).
Of course, at its base the entire moral justification of economic fundamentalism and neo-liberalism rests on a similar mystification; sometime expressed in terms of the unseen hand guiding the market, sometimes as market equilibrium, sometimes as efficiency, sometimes as survival of the fittest, sometimes as the just reward of high intellect or hard work but always expressed most shrilly when denouncing the feckless, the sloughful and the licentious who ‘after all are only getting their just deserts’.
The Howard Government is determined to maintain Indigenous Australians in their time honoured role of ‘native’ and to refuse to recognise their claims to sovereignty. It will continue to welfarise Indigenous struggle through its declared policy of ‘practical reconciliation’. The alternatives of self-determination, a treaty, an apology, economic self-sufficiency, land rights, secure native title and decolonisation are totally verboten.
It will, whenever able, reinforce downward envy. Nowhere more so than in the way it responds to asylum seekers and refugees. Recent questioning by Senator Falkner (2002) clearly suggests that it knowingly or unknowingly was a party to the sabotage of the Siev-X in which 353 asylum seekers drowned. There may have been at least four other ships sunk as the result of sabotage by agents (operating in Indonesia) who were employed by the Australian Government.
Howard would prefer to hide behind the lie that the ‘little Aussie Battler’ is a racist who must be appeased than to accept that low-income workers are struggling to comprehend an increasingly globalised and insecure world. In such a situation a more progressive leadership might attempt to increase income security for those on low incomes and work to defuse racism, sexism, ageism, disableism, classism and urbanism. It could do that by introducing a universal Basic Income and by adopting a full employment policy, expanding humanitarian refugee policies and coming to an accommodation with Indigenous Australians (Tomlinson 2001[b], 2002[a],[b]).
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The Howard Government’s disabling policies
Social Change in the 21st Century Conference, 28 October 2005,
Queensland University of Technology
Since 1996, the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has twice condemned Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers and Aborigines. In 1998, the Coalition Government stopped paying benefits to unemployed 16-18 year olds adversely affecting 46,000 people (Horin 1998). Recipients of unemployment benefit were the first to feel the sting of the Howard Government’s increased breaching and mutual obligation regime which has subsequently been extended to single parents and Disability Support Pensioners. The Government has waged a relentless campaign to curb the power of the Federal Arbitration Commission and the union movement. It is moving to weaken further the bargaining power of workers. Private insurance has been promoted over public programs: the undermining of Medicare and bulk billing are two obvious examples. The Government has used the threat of terrorism to take away civil liberties and as an excuse to invade other countries.
The purpose of this paper is simply to describe several of the social policy changes installed by the Howard Government so as to provide a basis for understanding how such changes have cumulatively eroded Australians’ sense of solidarity. It does not attempt to locate such insights within a reified conceptual paradigm; rather it is content to describe how such policies have impacted adversely upon long established social, economic and political conceptions of citizenship. It will outline preferable social policies and suggest ways in which these alternative policies might be achieved.
Citizenship
This paper essentially adopts T. H. Marshall’s approach to citizenship as set out in his 1950, 1975 and 1981 texts. Marshall conceived of modern citizenship as embodying a more complex collection of features than the franchise or even broader political rights: for him it includes social and economic rights. The analysis utilised in this paper is informed by some recent thinking about citizenship and Basic Income. In addition Marshall’s approach is interpreted within an Australian context and relies on my earlier study of citizenship and sovereignty (Tomlinson 1996) and a forthcoming paper “From paupers to citizenship” (Tomlinson, Dee and Schooneveldt).
International reputation 1901-1996
Australia once had a fine international reputation, at least among predominately white nations, for having developed an advanced system of social support. Its aged and invalid pension legislation (1908) coupled with the fact that its industrial relations were presided over by an Arbitration Commission led, in the first two decades of the 20th century, to Australia being regarded as a “social laboratory” where the French slogan “socialism without doctrines” seemed applicable (Roe 1976, p.4). Perhaps Australia’s reputation as a civilised nation was underserved. Our treatment of Indigenous Australians between 1788 to the 1960s was brutal (Bennett, 1957, Rowley 1972 [a], [b], [c], Reynolds 1972, 1981, 1989, 1996, 1998, 1999, Roberts 1978, Robinson and York 1977). The first major piece of legislation passed by the Federal Parliament established a ‘White Australia’ immigration policy (Roe 1976, p.14). Reviewing the treatment of the original owners of this continent and the ‘White Australia’ policy provides substantial grounds to argue that Australian nationalism, rather than being inspired by liberal democratic thought, emerged from a cauldron of smouldering racial hatred and fear.
During the Second World War Labor Governments consolidated the provision of social security and this was further expanded by subsequent governments over the next forty years. The 1907 judgement of the Arbitration Commission, in relation to Sunshine Harvester Company, introduced a national basic wage system sufficient to support a man, his wife and two or three children. Women were paid between two- thirds and three-quarters of that wage until the equal wage case of 1967. Indigenous Australians were not included in such judgements until 1967. Francis Castles described the combined social security and Arbitration Commission system as constituting the “workers welfare state” (Castles 1985, 1994).
Aborigines, if they were paid wages at all, were paid at much lower rates set by state government agencies charged with the responsibility for Indigenous affairs. In most States the bulk of Aborigines’ wages were paid to ‘protectors’ many of whom stole a significant proportion of such trust funds. The wages of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders stolen by the ‘protectors’ who were appointed by the Queensland Government or withheld by the Queensland Government itself remains an issue to this day. It should be apparent to white governments that the issue of the missing wages cannot be justly resolved when, as in the case of Queensland, the Government is offering only one-tenth of the missing wages by way of reparation (Kidd 1997, Stolen Wages Campaign 2005).
In 1967 the Liberal Coalition Government held a referendum to allow Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders to be counted in the Census and for the Federal Government to be able to pass laws in relation to Indigenous Australians. From the beginning of the Whitlam Government in 1972 to the end of the Keating Government in 1996, Indigenous people made gains in relation to social security, legal aid, access to health services, education and land rights.
Refugee and migrant policies were approached in a bipartisan manner from 1945 to1996. From the late 1960s the White Australia policy was no longer ‘official’ policy. From 1972 to 1993 reasonably humane refugee policies prevailed. The Keating Government introduced a six month waiting period before migrants became eligible for social security payments. It also introduced mandatory detention for asylum seekers who arrived without a visa.
Asylum seekers
In 1996 the Liberal Coalition regained the treasury benches. Asylum seekers who arrived without visas were granted three year Temporary Protection Visas rather than permanent protection. A system of concentration camps, euphemistically referred to as Immigration Detention Centres, proliferated. These camps were usually located in remote and inhospitable places. Then, in 2001 came the Tampa with its cargo of 430 asylum seekers which the crew had rescued from the Indian Ocean. Howard responded with his ‘Pacific solution’ which began a policy of incarcerating asylum seekers, who had not set foot on Australian soil, in camps on Nauru and Manus Island. White racist groups here and in Europe praised the Australian Government but in other circles the ‘Pacific solution’ was roundly condemned (Maley 2004, Marr and Wilkinson 2004, Brennan 2003, Lock, Quenault, and Tomlinson 2002).
The Government’s refusal to let the Tampa unload its human cargo at Christmas Island was a political master stroke in Australian electoral terms. The local capitalist press turned itself into a cheer squad for the Government on this issue. The Opposition led by Kim Beasley, went to water and a number of opinion polls in the aftermath of the Tampa showed 80% support for the action taken by the Government. I monitored the European press at the time and found overwhelming opposition to the action taken by the Australian Government (Tomlinson 2002 see also Media watch 2001). The captain of the Tampa received international human rights awards and support from many parts of the world.
In the run up to the 2002 election, Howard, Ruddock and Reith, claimed asylum seekers had thrown their children into the water in an attempt to force the Navy to let them go aboard Navy vessels. Such claims were, after the election, shown to be totally unfounded by the Report of a Senate Select Committee (23rd October 2002 Chs. 3-6). This Report investigated the Tampa, the ‘Pacific solution’ and the sinking of the SIEV X. The SIEV X was an Indonesian fishing boat with 400 asylum seekers on board. It “sank in the Indian Ocean 50-60 nautical miles south of Sunda Strait” (Kevin 2004, p. 3) with the loss of 353 lives. This area of the Indian Ocean was at the time being regularly patrolled by Australian maritime surveillance aircraft, the crews of which allegedly found no trace of the SIEV X. Tony Kevin (2004) accuses the Australian Government of employing agents responsible for the sinking.
The privatised concentration camps established in many arid parts of Australia have been the setting for hundreds of incidents of self-harm every year, many people have been driven mad by their incarceration, cells have been set on fire, asylum seekers have sewn their lips together, families have been torn apart, and riots have been ruthlessly suppressed. Australia’s oppressive treatment of asylum seekers in the camps has been criticised by a number of United Nations Committees, particularly the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), and by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) here (CERD 2005, HEROC 2005). For too long all this made little impact despite every Australian professional health association warning of the destructive impact that such indefinite incarceration was having on inmates.
Gradually refugee advocacy groups (Rural Australians for Refugees, Chilout, Spare Rooms for Refugees and many others) made an impact on public opinion. The story about the young boy Shayan Bedarae being driven mad inside a detention centre and shown on Four Corners (2001) made an appreciable dint the wall of indifference. But, after the Coalition Government was returned to office in 2004 and was given control of the Senate from July 2005 it seemed that there would be little change in asylum seeker policy. Then came Cornelia Rau, Vivian Solon, the Palmer Inquiry, the Giorgio Bills, the Prime Minister’s initial stone-walling and subsequent relaxation of some of the most punitive aspects of refugee policy.
Clearly, there are many improvements which could be made to Australia’s asylum seeker policy: the end of mandatory detention, the closure of Baxter, the end of off- shore processing, the end of detention beyond initial health and security checking (say 48 hours), the removal of the exclusion of off-shore islands from our immigration zone, the provision of Medicare and social security to asylum seekers awaiting determination of their refugee status but at least Australia seems to have turned the corner and these struggles lie ahead.
Indigenous Australians
The refusal of Howard to say sorry to the Stolen Generations reveals the extent to which this Prime Minister is committed to a white blindfold, rather than a black armband view of history. The present Government is committed to what it calls ‘practical reconciliation’ despite some equivocation in a speech at the 2005 Reconciliation Conference held at the Old Parliament House in Canberra about symbolic reconciliation (The Sunday Age 2005 Editorial 5th June).
Senator Tchen was born in China and was elected as a Liberal on One Nation Preferences in 1998 (Graham 2005). In his Valedictory Speech on the 22nd June 2005 he commented:
Under the leadership of John Howard, this government has been determined to change that situation, and we are starting to see results. We are starting to see the Indigenous community becoming reconciled to us. Reconciliation has never been about us becoming reconciled to the Indigenous community. We are here and they must become reconciled to our presence here, and that is what we are working towards. We are lifting their living standards and education standards and giving them hope so that they can become part of the Australian community as equals. That is true reconciliation—and I am glad to see that we are on our way.
Perhaps the best test of how much notice the Prime Minister is prepared to take of Indigenous aspirations is provided by the his method of consultation at a national level with elected Indigenous representatives. William Jonas, the previous Social Justice Commissioner, and Darren Dick (2004, p 11) deplore the Howard Government’s abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, replacing national Indigenous elected representatives with an appointed advisory body as being in breach of Article 5 of the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination which Australia has signed and ratified. Apart from human rights issues, “what is of particular concern is the significant shift away from the recognition provided by the ATSIC Act in 1989 of the appropriateness of representative structures to maximize Indigenous participation in government decision making processes” (Jonas and Dick 2004, p 10).
The essence of ‘practical reconciliation’ is the provision of at least basic health, nutrition, sanitation, education and community services. No non-racist would oppose Indigenous Australians being assisted to gain access to decent shelter, nutrition, clean drinking water, safe sanitation facilities, appropriate community and educational infrastructure. Such a happy outcome has not occurred, however, despite 8 years of Howard’s ‘practical reconciliation’ policy (McMullen 2004, Savage 2004, Tomlinson 2004[a]). Altman and Hunter (2003 [a]) compared Indigenous employment, education, income, housing and health in 1991, 1996 and 2001 and concluded that the position of Indigenous Australians relative to other Australians has hardly altered except that they were doing better prior to 1996 when John Howard imposed his ‘practical reconciliation’ on them. The Howard Government is busy increasing pressure on Indigenous people through its Shared Responsibility Agreements and expanded ‘mutual obligation’ programs (Karvelas 2004). If mutual obligation was really mutual, it would be incumbent on the Government to ensure Indigenous and non-Indigenous health profiles were on a par.
On average Indigenous Australians die 20 years younger than other Australians and this statistic has remained virtually unchanged for two decades (Jonas 2003 Appendix 1, Table 5). In Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, three-quarters of Indigenous male and two-thirds of Indigenous female deaths occurred before the age of 65 years compared with one-quarter of male and one-sixth of female deaths of all Australians (ABS and AIHW 2003, p183). Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR 2004) points out that “the Indigenous health crisis is both solvable and preventable. In similar countries, such as New Zealand, the US and Canada, the health of Indigenous peoples has been rapidly improved by determined government action over the last 25 years” (See also Jonas 2003 Appendix 1, p 5). Research in the Northern Territory (Condon, Barnes, Cunningham and Smith 2004) in the period 1967-2000, demonstrates the gap between the average age of death of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people is widening, particularly for those in their middle age. Henry, Houston, and Mooney (2004) writing in the Medical Journal of Australia assert that the Australian healthcare system is institutionally racist (See also Taylor 2001).
If this Government was serious about providing the practical assistance which Aborigines require, it would do all in its power to ensure the obstacles in the way of Aboriginal people obtaining land titles to their traditional land were removed. However as CERD (2005) found, it has done little to address the land rights issues condemned in earlier reports (European Network for Indigenous Australian Rights 2005). Sections of the Liberal Party aim to weaken the Wik legislation (Maiden 2005). “Senator Minchin endorsed a motion passed yesterday (26th June) by the Liberal Party’s federal council in Canberra that calls on the government to reform the Native Title Act to make it ‘more timely and user-friendly for local governments, pastoralists and miners’ and ‘less open to abuse’ by claimants” Breusch and Taylor (2005). Any such move by the Government would fly in the face of the United Nation’s criticism of Australia. More extensive criticism of this Government’s Indigenous policies can be found at (Tomlinson 2003 Ch. 6, Tomlinson 2005 [a], 2004 [a])
Social insecurity
From 1908 until 1987 there was a gradual expansion in range of social security benefits provided by Australian governments. Admittedly Asians were not paid until 1940 and, with the exception of child endowment introduced in 1942, Aborigines were not paid social security benefits or pensions until the 1960s in the cities and towns and not until the 1970s in remote Australia. There was not a vast difference between Labor and Liberal administrations in this area of social policy. Castles’ (1985, 1994) description of the system of income support as the ‘workers welfare state was an accurate one. Yet, in 2001, Castles reviewing the cutbacks in social security and industrial protection which had occurred in the previous decade, suggests:
the McClure Report will complete the process of tearing down the edifice of Australia’s distinctive welfare state. What will remain will be a system of mean, discretionary and moralistically charged benefits, wholly inappropriate to an advanced democratic nation (p.29).
Since 1987, eligibility for social security has become increasingly targeted, more selective, more rigidly policed, and more obligations have been added (Tomlinson 2003, 2004 [b]). John Howard has honed such tactics into an art form. Social security benefits are targeted to those whom the government has decided should be paid. Complexity, stigma, system failure and recipients’ lack of sophisticated knowledge about bureaucracies results in many eligible people not receiving their proper entitlements. The Brotherhood of St Laurence and St Vincent de Paul 2003 report entitled Much Obliged asserts that people who become long-term unemployed have so much of their time taken up just meeting the obligations imposed on them by the Government that they don’t have time to find work: the report concludes the mutual obligation regime “is failing the most disadvantaged job seekers. Overall the system operates…not as ‘welfare to work’ but ‘welfare as work’ (Ziguras, Dufty and Considine 2003, p.43)”.
Unemployed people face compulsory ‘work for the dole’ and other ‘mutual obligations’. If they fail to meet the totality of Government requirements they can have their social security payments suspended for up to 6 months. Such breaching has a number of socially destructive effects (Schooneveldt 2004). But this has been a harbinger for cutbacks facing single parents and disability support pensioners announced in the 2005/6 Australian Budget (Galvin 2004, Tomlinson 2005[b]). From July 2006 Australians applying for either of these payments will be drawn into the Howard Government’s mutual obligation quagmire.
Presently, someone applying for a Disability Support Pension has to establish that, because of a permanent incapacity, they are not capable of working 30 hours a week. They are then entitled to a pension, for as long as their serious impairment continues. If they work part-time, their means test is more generous than that of the Newstart unemployment payment and allows them to work full-time during periods when they are well enough to do so.
At the present time, a sole parent caring for a child under 16 years of age whose income and assets are under the specified amount can obtain a Parenting Payment. If they work part-time, their means test is more generous than Newstart and allows them to work full-time for short periods when they don’t have parenting responsibilities.
From July next year, once the youngest child of an applicant for Parenting Payment turns six, they will be moved to the “enhanced” Newstart and be required to seek at least 15 hours work a week. Applicants for a Disability Support Pension after July 2006, will, if they are considered capable of working 15 hours a week at award rates, go straight on to Newstart. If they are deemed to be incapable of working 15 hours a week at award rates, they will go to the ‘enhanced’ Newstart payment. The ‘enhancement of Newstart’ is simply Orwellian double speak for the abolition of benefit continuity.
From July next year sole parents living on Howard’s Animal Farm, with a child over six, will be paid $20 less per week than at present and new applicants for a disability support payment will lose $40 a week compared with present payments. Both lone parents and those with a disability will be subjected to all the subtleties that Centrelink’s “mutual obligation” enforcers can muster.
Because the means test for Newstart is calculated on fortnightly income and the means test for the other two payments are calculated over a considerably longer period, shifting lone parents and those with disabilities onto Newstart means they will gain less from any employment they obtain. Those working 15 hours a week will lose up to $93 a week according to the Australian Council of Social Services (2005).
Australia over the last two decades has been converted from a reasonably caring, mixed economy with a frugal but comprehensive social security safety net into a country where private provision, “individualisation of risk” (Lerner, Clark & Needham 1999, p. 11) and a “do it yourself welfare state” (Klein & Millar cited in Page 1998, p.307) is the order of the day. The Government has intensified the rhetoric about the evils of “welfare dependency” as a way to decrease the legitimacy of claims for government assistance. In doing so, it has foisted the obligation to support those in financial need back onto families.
Private health, education and welfare
Since the Liberal Coalition Government came to power in 1996 there has been a dramatic decline in the percentage of visits to the doctor which have been bulk-billed. Howard even declared that it was never the intention that everyone should be bulk- billed under Medicare (Schubert 2003 p.1). Public hospital waiting lists have lengthened and the public system is facing a major funding crisis (McQueen 2004). The dental health scheme for low income earners was abolished in the first Howard Budget. Yet the Government subsidises the dental health services of people with top of the range private health insurance. One-third of the cost of private health insurance is now subsidised by the Government. The majority of Australians with private health cover are those on above average wages and the $3 billion which goes to subsidise their health insurance would be better spent on shortening the elective surgery waiting lists of public hospitals.
Private schools are getting an increasing amount of government funds and students are paying considerably more in fees in universities and technical colleges. For-profit childcare is increasing whist community-based child care is declining. More and more of the welfare sector is being privatised. Australians have been subject to increasing inequalities in income and wealth distribution during the last two decades due in large part to a general acceptance of economic fundamentalist ideas and governments’ enthusiasm for deregulation and globalism (Goonan 2005). Michael Costello (2003), former Secretary of the Department of Industrial Relations, succinctly summed up the changes occurring in Australia when he wrote “If you were hard up, you used to get a hand-up from government. Now you get the back of its hand.”
Assaults on worker’s entitlements
In faded photo, like a dream,
A locomotive under steam
Rolls with the ranks of marching feet
And union banners on the street….
They won the eight-hour working day,
They won our right to honest pay,
Victorious their banners shone,
How dare we lose what they have won? (Warner 1997)
At the 2002 Social Change Conference, I pointed out that:
Howard provided a clear warning to informed Australia that he wished to replicate the New Zealand economic fundamentalist experiment.
Unfortunately, too few Australian voters had read Jane Kelsey’s 1995 analysis:
By 1995, after a decade of radical structural change, New Zealand had become a highly unstable and polarised society. It’s under-skilled, under-employed, low wage, low inflation, high exchange rate, export-driven economy was totally exposed to international economic forces (p.350).
Job insecurity has increased; the Government is determined to weaken the fair dismissal legislation. The officially recognised unemployment level has dropped below 6% but if people who are underemployed, discouraged unemployed and disguised unemployed are taken into account the real level of unemployment is in the order of 12 to 18% of people of working age. Unemployment and the weakening of the social security safety net are real issues for low-income wage earners because people in the bottom 30% of income distribution are the ones most likely to experience periodic unemployment interspersed with short stints in casualised, part- time and precarious employment.
Captains of industry are gaining disproportionate rewards – the ratio between Chief Executive Officers’ salaries and those of workers has risen from 3 times workers’ salaries in the 1970s to 74 times workers’ salaries in 2002 (Shields, O’Donnell and O’Brien 2003). Increasingly arduous work “flexibility” arrangements are being imposed. The industrial arbitration commission and the union movement are constantly challenged by Government attempts to impose a draconian industrial relations regime.
The Australian Services Union Victoria ASU [Vic] (2005) has set out some of the changes which it claims the Prime Minister, Treasurer and the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations have publicly announced, namely:
- Create a single national unitary industrial relations system;
- Increase the number of workers on individual contracts;
- Slow or freeze increases in minimum wages;
- Abolish many guaranteed conditions available to workers through the award system;
- Make it easier for employers to dismiss workers particularly those in small businesses;
- Reduce the AIRC’s role in setting minimum wages and conditions and resolving disputes;
- More closely link pay rises for workers to productivity improvements in their workplace;
- Encourage more workers to become ‘independent contractors’;
- Restrict the capacity of unions to enter workplaces; and
- Severely restrict the operation of unions in the building industry.
Supporters of the recent Howard Government’s industrial relations changes seem oblivious to the life experiences of low paid workers’ revealed in the Australian Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union’s (LHMU) submission to the Senate Inquiry into Poverty (2003). There is very little recognition of the demoralisation that follows in the wake of working full-time yet still being in poverty, or only being able to gain casualised, poorly renumerated, precarious employment.
Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) and Pre-emptive War
In response to the attack on the World Towers in New York the Howard Government has passed draconian legislation which allows ASIO agents to hold people in custody for a week if they believe they might know something about a terrorist activity. That person can be jailed for five years for refusing to answer questions. If they tell anyone about what happens to them this is a further offence. (Media watch 2005, Australian Muslim Civil Rights Advocacy Network 2004). By any measure the ‘war on terror’ legislation is a significant erosion of the civil liberties of Australians (Stephen 2005).
Since coming to office The Howard Government has taken part in the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. The latter war was waged without any mandate from the United Nations. Both wars are ongoing.
Alternative approaches
Under the previous Labor Government, low paid workers were compensated for declining real income from employment by increases in the social wage. The current conservative Howard Liberal Coalition Government recently elected for a fourth term and now with ‘control’ of both houses of the parliament has assaulted the social wage. The universality of Medicare has been weakened, the dental service for low- income earners abolished, and the social security safety-net has been undermined. The 2005/6 Budget outlined the Government’s determination to get single parents back into the workforce once their youngest child is at school. Likewise, it has reinvigorated attempts to move people off disability pensions onto unemployment benefits with onerous ‘mutual obligation’ requirements (Galvin 2004, Ziguras, Dufty and Considine 2003). Since coming to office in 1996, this Government has undermined the dignity and rights of Indigenous Australians and asylum seekers.
It would be possible to return to the middle ground of industrial relations, respect the judicial independence of the Arbitration Commission, control the private press monopolies which are forever pushing pro-business agendas, start investing in people’s education, reinvigorate the public health system, move to humane asylum seeker policies, come to a decent agreement with the original owners of this country, forgo the desire to attack other countries, adopt less abusive controls on suspected terrorists which embody all the traditional legal protections Australians have enjoyed and develop a progressive social security system. I will examine just one of these alternative policies.
Selective, categorical, targeted welfare, with its imposed obligations and breaching has failed to ensure that all Australians in severe financial need are assisted. Many fall through the holes in the existing safety net. The Howard Government has demonstrated that it can generate sufficient downward envy to support the removal of any group of people from the system of social protection (Tomlinson 1999). The alternative is to move towards a universal system of income support; under such a system, because everyone benefits, entitlements are much harder to erode (Goodin & Le Grand 1987).
There have been many universal income guarantees proposed since that of Thomas Paine in 1795 (Cunliffe and Erreygers 2004, Van Trier 1995). The first book length proposal for a British Basic Income was that of Dennis Milner in 1920. A number of Basic Income schemes have been proposed for Australia (Basic Income Guarantee Australia [BIGA]) and in other parts of the world (Basic Income Earth Network [BIEN]).
A Basic Income would ensure that income support was in the form of a truly universal payment to all as a right of citizenship/permanent residence. It is a far cry from the present Australian Government’s prescription for what it terms “welfare reform” with its enforced obligations, highly targeted benefits and tighter surveillance of recipients. Under a Basic Income there would no work or any other social requirement (Tomlinson, Harrington & Schooneveldt 2004).
In 1992 Robert Goodin described a Basic Income as a minimally presumptuous social welfare policy; in the sense that it presumes nothing about and asks nothing from the recipient. Rather the justification for receipt of benefits relies solely upon the duty that the collective owes to the individual citizen. In our case, this means that the Australian state owes each permanent resident the right to sufficient income to sustain a modest life. Basic Income advocates believe it is not necessary to compel people to work or make other contributions because the overwhelming majority of people will do so out of their sense of social solidarity with the collective.
Some researchers (Whiteford 1981) have argued that if a Basic Income was put in place workers would stay away from work in droves. Whereas other researchers have argued the exact opposite (Widerquist 2004, Van Parijs 1997, Tomlinson 2003). The only study conducted in Australia into the impact on work willingness (where low-income families were provided with a guaranteed minimum income), showed these families experienced no decline in work willingness (Liffman 1978). Van Parijs (1992, p.229) claims that because a Basic Income is paid, irrespective of all other sources of income, it can be used by those who desire work as a wage subsidy; yet, because it provides sufficient income on which to live, it does not compel any potential worker to work under conditions which that worker finds unacceptable.
Another feature about a Basic Income is that it is paid to each and every individual resident. In Australia, means-tested eligibility for most social welfare benefits uses the family as the unit to be assessed. A Basic Income because it is paid universally has no means or asset test and is paid to the individual. In some suggested Basic Income schemes, children living at home would get a lower rate of payment than adults.
Much of the argument about the efficiency of a Basic Income has concentrated on the supply of benefits, in the least stigmatising fashion, to all who need them. A Basic Income regime does away with the need for the entire government income support surveillance apparatus, creating savings to government expenditure. Exponents of a secure and equitable income support system therefore regard a Basic Income as politically efficient.
There are broader aspects of efficiency that can and should be mounted in support of an unconditional Basic Income.
- A Basic Income requires the least interference in the lives of citizens.
- It supplies all permanent residents with equal assistance.
- It is the most inclusive form of income support payment and the most secure, thus enhancing citizenship.
- It provides sufficient income to allow people to explore their creative capacity.
- It removes many of the obstacles to a reinvigoration of industrial, technical and computing infrastructure.
It allows the State a fuller understanding of the impact of its other social wage policies.A universal Basic Income is not a utopian idea. It is an efficient, affordable way to ensure no Australian permanent resident remains in poverty. However, a Basic Income is just that – an unconditional universal income guarantee. It delivers an income floor without impeding productivity. It is a vast improvement on categorical, selective social services. It is an advance on all social insurance and private provision schemes which invariably result in the “individualisation of risk” and as a result create a “do it yourself welfare state”.
Bibliography
ABS & AIHW (2003) The Health and Welfare of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, ABS Cat.4704.0
Altman J & Hunter B (2003) Summary of Discussion Paper No. 254 “Monitoring ‘Practical’ Reconciliation”, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, ANU ANTaR (2004) “Healing Hands: the Indigenous Health Crisis: An Overview” http://www.antar.org.au/health/Failure_of_Practical_Reconciliation.PDF
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The inherent flaw in the concept of ‘practical reconciliation’
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate
Posted Tuesday, 9 March 2004
The Howard government says Indigenous Australians will be assisted by what it terms, “practical reconciliation”, rather than by pursuing what Co-chairman of Reconciliation Australia Fred Chaney calls “the symbolic aspects” of the Indigenous struggle. The Government claims that it is a pragmatic government and demands that Indigenous Australians put to one side the déclassé concept of a rights-oriented reconciliation process. Any discussion of a treaty is totally verboten.
With the exception of the many “bridge marches” that followed Corroboree 2000 Australia’s reconciliation process has been in retreat since December 1993 when Paul Keating delivered his “Redfern Speech”. So few are the tangible advances nowadays, that Chaney claims it is significant that Prime Minister Howard had acknowledged the traditional owners at a recent function in Kalgoorlie. Quoted in an article by Jobson in The Age, February 9, 2004, Chaney claimed that this “acknowledgement” demonstrated that John Howard recognised “you cannot divide off the symbolic from the practical aspects of reconciliation”.
It is worth recalling what former Prime Minister Keating said at Redfern:
The starting point might be to recognise that the problem starts with us non-Aboriginal Australians.
It begins, I think, with the act of recognition. Recognition that it was we who did the dispossessing. We took the traditional lands and smashed the traditional way of life. We brought the disasters. The alcohol. We committed the murders. We took the children from their mothers. We practised discrimination and exclusion.
It was our ignorance and our prejudice and our failure to imagine these things being done to us. With some noble exceptions, we failed to make the most basic human response and enter into their hearts and minds. We failed to ask: how would I feel if this were done to me?
The Keating government implemented the 1994 Native Title Act and attempted to give momentum to the Reconciliation process. Then came the Pauline “please explain” Hanson phenomenon. In the wake of the backlash the Howard government moved to deliver, in the words of the then Deputy Prime Minister Tim Fischer, “bucket loads of extinguishment” of Indigenous land ownership. The 1998 Ten Point Plan revision of the Native Title Act did just that. Around this time, the Howard government committed itself to “practical reconciliation” as away to limit the Indigenous rights agenda.
Practical reconciliation was initially defined in terms of practical assistance to improve health, housing, education and employment opportunities. At various times “practical reconciliation” has been promoted as a way to decrease Indigenous truancy, alcoholism, family violence and the number of people in prison. In his Kalgoorlie speech John Howard said:
All the theories in the world will not replace the value of employment; will not replace the value of sustainable economic opportunities; and will not replace the value of the embracement of the Indigenous people as part of our economic future. And that is why my government has placed such a great emphasis on what I call practical reconciliation, on giving all of the people of this country, irrespective of their background or their heritage, economic opportunity. And the greatest measure of that, of course, is to give people employment.
Few One Nation politicians could state it as eloquently.
The practical outcomes flowing from “practical reconciliation”.
As a panacea for all the ills that have befallen Indigenous communities “practical reconciliation” has patently failed.
- Family violence has not decreased. Alcoholism is still a major problem facing Indigenous communities.
- Unemployment remains between 40-80 per cent of the Indigenous labour force, once the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP) is recognised as a “work for the dole” program, not as employment..
- The number of Indigenous people in custody continues to increase, according to Cunneen, in Conflict, Politics and Crime: Aboriginal Communities and the Police.
- The backlog in Indigenous housing has been costed at $3 billion.
- Increased fees and charges are discouraging Indigenous education, and Aboriginal mortality and morbidity figures disgrace this nation in the eyes of the world.
- Indigenous Australians are dying on average 20 years younger than other Australians and this statistic has remained virtually unchanged for two decades.
- Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation point out that “the Indigenous health crisis is both solvable and preventable. In similar countries, such as New Zealand, the US and Canada, the health of Indigenous peoples has been rapidly improved by determined government action over the last 25 years”
Jon Altman and Boyd Hunter in a summary of Discussion Paper, No. 254 Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, ANU, compared Indigenous employment, education, income, housing and health in Australian Bureau of Statistics figures in 1991,1996 and 2001 and concluded that in relation to all of these social features the position of Indigenous Australians relative to other Australians has hardly altered except that they were doing better prior to “practical reconciliation”.
What stymies the government’s “practical reconciliation” attempts to assist Indigenous people is that “practical reconciliation” amounts to the imposition of a unilateral white technocratic solution to a complex multicultural situation. It is not even a white social solution. Implicit and often explicit in such efforts is the “we, the non- Aborigines, know best”. Any community worker could have told the Howard government that once the community’s voice is silenced, the community members will resist involvement in the imposed solution. Indigenous people have experienced 214 years of white indifference and/or oppression. Because Indigenous people have seldom been allowed to control their social life they have become very skilled in avoidance and non- involvement techniques. Indigenous community members need to be free to determine the direction and pace of change if they are to maintain self-respect. It is they who must control the processes in their communities or non- involvement or unrest will be the result.
Of course it is possible, at one level, to distinguish conceptually between the practical and symbolic aspects of reconciliation. As an academic exercise it might even have some use in that each part of the reconciliation process can be analysed. But Chaney is correct in his assertion that the practical and symbolic aspects of reconciliation are inseparable and that you can’t have one without the other in any meaningful or practical sense.
That being the case it is necessary to ask to what use has Howard put his “practical reconciliation?
First, “practical reconciliation” deals with the problems that Indigenous Australians confront. It points directly at the deficits in Indigenous communities such as their poor health, lack of material possessions, inadequate education, overcrowded houses, their inordinately high incarceration rates and low rates of employment. “Practical reconciliation” blames the victims of government policies and exaggerates the generosity of government assistance.
Second, and more importantly, by concentrating on their problems and our assistance, attention is deflected from the symbolic aspects of reconciliation. This is particularly so in relation to the question of rights. If the government were to take the question of Indigenous rights seriously then it would have to recognise their right: to self-determination; to promote Indigenous cultural beliefs; to land; to have their stolen wages returned to them in full; and to reparation for land alienated from the Aboriginal nations.
In the current political climate, following nearly a decade of the Howard/Hanson line, it will be hard to rediscover the spirit that inspired Keating’s Redfern Speech. Unless Australians wish to maintain the lie of Terra Nullius, the lie that this country was settled peacefully, the lie that there were no stolen generations and the lie that all the difficulties that confront Indigenous people in the 21st Century are entirely of their own creation, then this nation will need to address such symbolic reconciliation issues.
It is a pity that Henry Reynolds’ This Whispering in our Hearts won’t be read by all Australians. While Rabbit Proof Fence has been seen and moved many, we are still waiting for our very own Dances with Wolves movie. After 214 years of denial, lies and guilt-ridden half truths, “It’s time” to face our past invasion of this continent, the frequent rape of Indigenous women, the crimes perpetrated against the stolen generations and the theft of Indigenous land and wages.
Once we have done what Keating asked us to do and recognise that the problem resides with non-Indigenous Australians, we need to ask “How would I feel if what is being done to Indigenous people were done to me?” The practical aspects of reconciliation must proceed hand in hand with the symbolic/rights features of a just reconciliation process. It is we who must work with Indigenous people to ensure that Aboriginal employment prospects are as good as any one else’s. We must no longer tolerate Indigenous people dying on average 20 years younger than other Australians. We must work to lower the inordinately high Indigenous incarceration rates. We must engage with the Indigenous community to ensure that Indigenous Australians have adequate housing.
Recognition of the importance of unifying the practical and symbolic aspects of the reconciliation process can only occur when Indigenous Australians are allowed to take an equal place at the negotiating table.
The intentional underdevelopment of Aboriginal communities
First published in Income Insecurity: The Basic Income Alternative Basic Income Guarantee Australia website 2003.
This chapter will examine the reasons why Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders are the most economically disadvantage people in 21st century Australia. It is present day structures and actions which inhibit indigenous people economic success rather than some aspect of Indigenous culture or psychological make-up. It is further contended that those obstacles and earlier equivalent impediments have been put in place by mainstream Australia. Before such propositions can be assessed the history of race relations during the last four centuries needs to be briefly canvassed.
The history
Until about the time of the Second World War the prevailing orthodoxy was that the ‘natives‘ were primitives incapable of reaching a similar level of civilisation to whites. Aborigines needed to be ‘protected’, they could be useful as unpaid labour but were probably destined to die out in the face of a superior culture determined to develop Australia (Reynolds 1989 Chs. 1-4). During the 1920s and 30s the allegedly ‘liberal’ response to the perceived decline of the indigenous population in many parts of the continent was to ‘smooth the dying pillow’. The Chief Protector of Aborigines in the Northern Territory, Dr C. Cook, at the initial conference of Commonwealth and State Aboriginal authorities in 1937 declared “If we leave them alone they will die and we shall have no problem” (cited in Bennett 1957, p.13). That is, the eventual extinction of indigenous Australians was believed inevitable and, as it was unavoidable, the humane response was to make their ‘passing’ as comfortable as possible. It seems to have escaped the notice of such ‘liberals’ that a policy which accepted the disappearance of an entire race as a result of their dispossession by an allegedly ‘superior’ culture is genocide. There were Europeans who took a determined stand along side Indigenous people and who attempted to ensure Indigenes had shelter and adequate nutrition. Sometimes this was done because the Aborigines were needed as labour, sometimes out of a sense of justice, out of a desire to expand Christendom or for other reasons (Reynolds 1990).
Even well into the 1950s there were many Australians who believed that Aborigines would ‘disappear’. The widespread acceptance of Aboriginal people’s eventual demise led Dr. Charles Duguid to warn in an address to the Anti-slavery Society in June 1954: “It can be said quite fairly that if Aboriginal people die out now, it is because we are willing that they should”(cited in Bennett 1957, p.10).
Professor Elkin, was for many years in the middle of the last century, accepted as a foremost authority on Australian Aborigines. He set out a number of stages through which he considered Aborigines would progress before they became assimilated. The most detailed elaboration appears in an article “Reaction and Interaction: A Food Gathering People and European Settlement in Australia” (1951) and a simplified version appears in his book The Australian Aborigine (1961). The simplified version retains the core argument of the more detailed account. Elkin suggests that five stages of development would be experienced; they were – Clash, Pauperism, Intelligent Parasitism, Protection and Assimilation (pp.321-338).
Clash and its associated pacification by force share with the other stages of ‘development’ the fact that they are frequently referred to as part of the cultural and historical explanations of the Aboriginal failure to ‘develop’. Elkin does not take a cultural perspective very much into account, until he comes to examine protection. If there is any ‘cultural explanation’ to be found in the clash stage it must be in the explanation of the European exploitation rather than in the Aboriginal reaction. There is little purpose in searching for cultural reasons as to why people who had their land invaded fought back. Likewise, the cultural explanation does not add to the understandings of why a people who had their total resources stolen became paupers. It was political and economic factors which sent whites to Australia, and particularly economic factors which caused whites to invade the Aborigines’ land.
The cultural explanations of Aboriginal pauperism usually commence from the point where the Aborigines are defined as a dispirited, displaced collection of individuals or groups. It is contended that because of the traumatic experience they have undergone, as a result of the clash phase, they no longer have sufficient social resources to capitalise on the opportunities which do occur. The real facts are that, throughout the history of Aboriginal contact with whites, the Aborigine has never been left with nor provided with the necessary prerequisites with which to build a sound economic base. Even the locations on which they have been placed or have been allowed to remain have usually been chosen because that country was not wanted, at the time, by whites.
An attempt by Aborigines to hold on to land in the early stages was not seen as a self-help endeavour but as proof that they stood in the way of progress. Whatever attempts were made to help Aborigines escape pauperism, prior to the mid 1970s, were made in the style of the ‘welfare approach’ by missions and government rather than by encouraging the development of Indigenous control of the local economy (Pearson 1999 [a] & [b].
Intelligent parasitism
Elkin is known popularly for his phrase ‘intelligent parasitism’. When he applied this phrase to Aborigines he meant it purely as a descriptive term to cover that part of Aboriginal life which involved ingratiating oneself with whites in order to be fed and clothed by them in return for work. In the early stages it meant that Aborigines who did not want to fight any more would make themselves useful in order that the farmer might protect them against other whites. Once the land was taken, Aborigines were left with little to ‘contribute’ to whites apart from their labour and their wives. In some instances they had information of use to whites.
The introduction of the term ‘intelligent parasitism’ has had unfortunate consequences because the wider Australian society is one in which the middle classes on the whole believe they must be careful to avoid the threat of being enveloped in a ‘welfare state’. The middle classes fail to acknowledge that they are in receipt of numerous welfare benefits. For this reason the mainstream have come to accept the term ‘parasite’ when applied to Aborigines, but the ‘intelligence’ of the approach is denied. If one of these terms has more relevance than the other it is the ‘intelligence‘ of the activity. It is not credible that a group of people who considered the Aborigine as a ‘rural pest’ (Rowley 1972[a] ) one year attempted to shoot them out, is going to turn around the next year and put up with them ‘hanging around the station growing fat on white men’s work’. At the Arbitration Commission in the Northern Territory hearing in 1967 which has since become known as the Aboriginal Wage Case,
Professor Elkin’s ‘intelligent parasitism’ was used so continually …by pastoralist, Union, Commonwealth and the Commission itself …to draw such different conclusions that I am inclined to think Professor Elkin will never want to want to hear it again (Stevens 1967, p. 21, quoting Professor Stanner).
Protection and assimilation
Protection and Assimilation are both stages which tell us more about the cultural attitudes of Europeans than of Indigenous Australians. Both were policies drawn up by whites – at no time were Aborigines consulted. To claim that Aborigines’ failure to develop despite the best intentions of the protectors or the assimilationists is due to cultural factors, is gross ethnocentrism. People who have little power to put their point of view frequently engage in non-compliance as one method of resisting change.
The Queensland Protection Act of 1897 and its revisions in 1939, 1965 and 1971 provided limited protection for the lives of Aborigines, but the Act continued even into the 1970s to be repressive of civil liberties, paternalistic and badly designed to encourage initiative. The implementation of the Act by the Department of Aboriginal and Island Affairs was consistently criticised by a wide range of informed opinion. Irrespective of any cultural problems that Aborigines might encounter in ‘developing’, they had imposed upon them legislation and administrative procedures which even the then Courier Mail editor considered likely to interfere with development (editorial, 16th. February 1971).
Assimilation was defined at the 1961 meeting of Federal and State Ministers in charge of Aboriginal affairs:
The policy of assimilation means in the view of all Australian governments that all Aborigines and part-Aborigines are expected eventually to attain the same manner of living as other Australians and to live as members of a single Australian community, enjoying the same rights and privileges, accepting the same responsibilities, observing the same customs and influenced by the same beliefs, hope and loyalties as other Australians. (cited in Pittock 1969, pp.12-13).
In 1965 the definition was changed in response to pressure:
…so that now the policy officially seeks (rather than means) that all persons of Aboriginal descent will choose to attain (rather than are expected eventually to attain) a similar (rather than the same) manner and standard of living. The words ‘observing the same customs’, are omitted, and so too is reference to their ‘being influenced by the same beliefs’.” (Pittock 1969, p. 13) (italics in original).
The system of ‘protection’ afforded Indigenes did not assist them to take control of their communities in a way which would have allowed Indigenous autonomy. Aboriginal people’s initiatives to fit into white capitalist systems have been undermined by many of the very people who were supposed to ‘protect’ them. There has been a deliberate policy to leave underdeveloped Aboriginal land until white capitalist interests were ready to acquire it. There are clear connections between these past events and Mabo, Wik, and the Howard ten point plan (Kerruish & Purdy 1998).
In order to dispel any suggestion that the present analysis is only possible because of recent publications, many texts from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s which provide a similar analysis to the one made here are cited. That is, the defence cannot be mounted that white Australia did not have the opportunity to come to a just accommodation with Indigenous Australians because the continued exploitation of Aboriginal Australians was unknown. One example of this approach is the extract from the Dougie Young (1995) song quoted below which was widely available when it was recorded by Gary Shearston in 1965 on a CBS label.
Hegemonic themes
- The first theme in white Australia is that Aborigines can live on the land as long as it is not required by white interests.
- The second theme is that if the land is required by white interests Aborigines are expected to vacate it.
- The third theme is that if Aborigines put up a fight to retain the land then the choice is between extinguishing the Aborigines or more recently extinguishing their property rights.
These themes still have application at the start of the 21st century. This chapter looks at their impact on both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. These hegemonic themes have, from the beginning of the colonial experience, helped ensure the underdevelopment of areas which Aboriginal people are deemed to control. Aboriginal communities are, as a result underdeveloped and marginalised (Davies & Young 1996, Jackson 1996, Lane & Chase 1996, Bennett 1957). Indigenous people are, as a part of this process, assigned low status roles thus weakening their capacity to garner mainstream support. But Indigenous people in Australia have tenaciously clung to those parts of the continent from which they have not been forcibly alienated and have waged a relentless resistance to the colonial process. In the words of Aboriginal song writer Dougie Young (1995):
Now they laugh in my face.
They say I’m a disgrace.
They say I’ve got no sense.
The whiteman took this country from me.
He’s been fighting for it ever since.
Henry Reynolds (1998, 1999) describes how the failure of the bulk of the white population to acknowledge what was and is occurring to Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders allows inhumane practices to continue. The mechanism of denial which is exemplified in John Howard’s refusal to apologise to the Stolen Generations or more generally white Australia’s refusal to acknowledge what it has done to Indigenous people, allows governments, corporations and non-Indigenous individuals to escape provision of adequate reparation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and thereby provide a sound basis for a just reconciliation.
The Prime Minister’s 10 point plan and the one point plan of Queensland’s National Party Premier Borbidge to extinguish native title on pastoral leases, which followed the High Court’s Wik Judgement, only make political sense if Indigenous Australians are conceived of as separate from and of lesser importance than other Australians (Reynolds 1996, Tomlinson 1996).
Governments, during the 1950s and 1960s, maintained Aborigines as natives by institutionalising them on segregated reserves ‘for their protection’ (Elkin 1961, Turnbull, 1974 contra Kelly 1966, Walker 1971, Black Resource Centre Collective 1976, Coombs 1994, Frontier 1997, Kidd 1997). Aboriginal people who resided off reserves and who were not assimilated into white society, were relegated to fringes of country towns (Rowley 1972[a], Malezer 1979, Bropho 1980, Edmunds 1989, Day 1994) and ghettos like Redfern and South Brisbane (Rowley 1972[b], Tomlinson 1974[a], Buchanan 1974). They were assigned a welfare / charity role which encouraged their being pitied as ‘victims of their own inadequacies’. In rural areas the women continued to be exploited sexually and the men utilised as seasonal workers. In both city and rural areas they were marginalised. Indigenous issues were perceived by the general public to be of little political importance until the period leading up to the 1967 referendum. Professor Stanner in his 1968 Boyer Lectures described the failure of white Australians to seriously consider the situation confronting Indigenous Australians as ‘The Great Australian Silence’. This is the recent historical background which generates current perceptions of
ndigenous Australians.
Misperceptions
When Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders are conceived of as an entity – white Australia uses the term ‘Aboriginal race’, or the pejorative epithets ‘abos, boongs, gins or jackies’. None of the diversity which exists, within and between, Indigenous Australians is appreciated. There is little recognition of the major cultural differences between groups such as:
- the Yolngu of north eastern Arnhemland,
- the Pintubi of Northern Territory / Western Australian border,
- the Nyungar of the south west of Western Australia,
- the Kooris of New South Wales and Victoria,
- the Nunga of South Australia, or
- the Murris of southern Queensland
are groupings of diverse clans and language groups. Certainly many of the original owners of this country see some political advantage in maintaining a common identity as Indigenous Australians but the development of such a pan-Aboriginal identity has been a long time in the making. Similar formulations of wider regional identities, even continental identities, have been a driving force in the anti-colonial developments in Africa (Cabral 1973, Fanon 1967) and Asia.
Non-racist white Australia recognises, that ‘seen one blackfellow seen the lot’ mentality is an inadequate description of Indigenous diversity. It is common to encounter people who talk about ‘traditional Aborigines who maintain their culture (who live somewhere in the great outback) and urban blacks who are just drunks and no hopers’. One they might see from the tram the other they know they’ll never meet until they retire and go on the big round Australia trip. This assessment of Indigenous Australians is a late 20th century distortion of the earlier distinction made between Rousseauan noble savages and those who have failed the test of social Darwinism. Since the early 1970s mainstream society also recognises the victims / trouble maker divide as existing within the Aboriginal community.
Health
The health of Indigenous Australians should shame any citizen (National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders Health Clearing House 1999, Bennett 1957, Kalokerinos 1974, Moodie 1973, The Royal Australian College of Ophthalmologists 1980). The life expectancy of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders is about 15 – 20 years lower than that of their non-Indigenous counterparts in Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory: “In most States and Territories, their babies are about 2 – 3 times more likely to be of low birth weight and about 2 – 4 times more likely to die at birth than are babies born to non-Indigenous mothers” (McLennan & Madden 1997 p. 1).
Between 1988 and 1994 the gap between Aboriginal and total Australian mortality rates widened, especially for women. ….About 30 percent of maternal deaths occur in Aboriginal women and Torres Strait Island women who constitute only about 3 percent of confinements” (National Health and Medical Research Council 1996 p.3).
During the early 1990s, on Cape York women were dying at a younger age than was the case in 1979 (Fischer 1993). Governments claim to be promoting dramatic solutions, yet Access Economics has shown health expenditure on each Indigenous person is lower than that provided for the non-Indigenous population, and the level of underspending on Indigenous health has stayed remarkably constant over the last 20 years (Kilham 1995, Deeble et al. 1998).
After viewing a number of Aboriginal settlements in the 1930s world-renowned Australian ophthalmologist, Professor Dame Ida Mann, when asked what drugs she would prescribe for outback Aborigines with so much trachoma remarked: ‘Drugs? I’d prescribe water. If governments were to put the water on, nobody would have trachoma.’” (National Aboriginal Health Strategy Working Party 1989 p. vii).
In 1979 the first recommendation of the report of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal Health was that “the highest priority be given and immediate action taken to provide clean and adequate water supplies to all Aboriginal communities.” (p. xv). In 1996 an ABS survey estimated that 7% of rural indigenous households did not have running water (McLennan & Madden 1997 p.13, National Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islanders Health Clearing House 1999). There are still at least 100 Aboriginal communities in remote Australia which do not have access to clean drinking water.
It has not been a recent discovery that Indigenous Australians die younger and are more frequently sick than non-Indigenous Australians essentially because in many places they do not have access to clean running water, decent nutrition (Bennett 1957) and adequate housing with safe sanitation systems. None of these essentials is beyond the capacity of Australian governments to provide. The failure to provide this basic infrastructure, unconscionable as it is, can only be explained within a paradigm of institutional racism. White Australia:
- stole the land,
- introduced stock which depleted traditional nutritional sources (Heppell & Wigley 1981 p. 5, Penny & Moriarty 1976, Frith 1976, Bennett 1957 Chapt. 3),
- destroyed traditional sanitation practices and
- failed to put in place alternative health mechanisms (Rowse 1995).
In 1971 the cost of the housing backlog in Aboriginal Australia was estimated by Francis Lovejoy to be $ 3,000 million. In 1972 the Whitlam Government was regarded as overly generous when it announced it would spend $30 million each year for ten years to solve ‘the Aboriginal housing problem’ (Heppell 1979). This amount would, on its own, hardly keep pace with the increased housing demand from population increase. In 1999 one third of housing, managed by the 707 indigenous housing organisations, was reported to be in need of major repair or replacement (ABS 2000). Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders have the lowest socioeconomic status of all segments of the Australian community (McLennan & Madden 1997).
In December 1997 the Howard Government promised several billions dollars in loan guarantees to assist the International Monetary Fund prop up the economies of Indonesia, Thailand and Korea. On the 21st of January 1998, the day following the Government announcing it had put aside an additional $300 million to provide insurance assistance to Australian exporters trading with Korea the Federal Health Minister, Michael Wooldridge, was presented with a report commissioned by the Australian Medical Association and the Australian Pharmaceutical Manufactures Association. This report detailed the reasons behind the appalling Aboriginal morbidity and mortality figures in rural Australia. The report argued that limited access to and the high cost of fresh fruit and vegetables was a prime cause of Indigenous health difficulties in remote Aboriginal communities. Faced with this report Wooldridge (who was, at the time, visiting rural areas of the Northern Territory) responded, by saying “It is difficult for a Commonwealth Government to do much about fruit and vegetables in local stores” (ABC TV News 21st January 1998).
Incarceration
The first detailed academic documentation of police harassment of Aborigines was carried out by Eggleston (1976). Young men are many times more likely to be in remand centres than are their white counterparts. Aboriginal people are 27 times more likely to be in police custody and 11 times more likely to be in prison than other Australians (White & Perrone 1997 pp. 157-8, Wilson 1982). In 1974 the Queensland branch of Amnesty International produced a monograph entitled Institutionalisation: A way of Life in Aboriginal Australia (Tomlinson 1974[b]). Two decades later, on the 17th. October 1996, Amnesty International’s London Office published a condemnation of Australia’s treatment and inordinate incarceration rates for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.
Just how determined white Australia is to maintain the subordination of Aborigines is revealed by the twelve volume Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody published in 1991: it recommended many ways of keeping Aborigines out of custody in order to decrease the number of Black deaths in custody. A follow up report (Office of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner 1996) established that Aborigines were being incarcerated at a greater rate than in the period 1980 -1989 and more Aborigines are dying in custody as a result. “Although Aborigines represent only 1.4 percent of the adult population, they accounted for more than 25 percent of all deaths in police and prison custody during the year to June 1996” (Amnesty International 1997).
Police killings of Aborigines in Australia have a long lineage. Officially sanctioned police punitive raids did not end with the 60 to 100 Aborigines slaughtered in the Coniston massacre in 1928 (Young 1981) but continued in the North of South Australia at least until the early 1940s (Rowley 1972 [b] p. 204). Police and settlers continued to kill and maim small groups of Aborigines in remote Australia until at least the early 1980s (NT News 21/7/80 p.1). In cities, with the notable exception of incidents like the slaughter of David Gundy, the police content themselves with severe bashings of Indigenous Australians (ABC TV 1996). The police play an important political role in relation to Indigenous Australians; they are the front line of social control, they are the group which selects individuals to be criminalised (Tomlinson 1994), they in large part determine who will be “jailed and killed” (Walker 1971, p.34), they are an essential element in political marginalisation of indigenes.
In recent times many Australian state and territory governments have adopted ‘law and order’ policies which have impacted disproportionately upon Indigenous communities. Mandatory sentencing is just the latest in a long line of such legislative provisions.
The failure to implement many of the Royal Commission into Black deaths in custody recommendations which aim to decrease the number of Indigenous people in custody, for example by not decriminalising drunkenness, has led to increases in the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in jail. Coupled with this have been policies such as ‘truth in sentencing’ and the imposition of mandatory jail sentences for minor offences such as petty theft ( Land Rights News, Feb 1998 p.13, Bessant 2000 [b]). All of these policies have led to a dramatic increase in the number of Indigenous people in custody.
In early 2000 a death in custody in Darwin of a young Indigenous minor offender, whilst serving a mandatory sentence, lead to an international debate and minor changes were forced on the Territory Government (Land Rights News 2000 [a] March, pp.16-17).
The United Nations Committees on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and Human Rights made adverse finding against Australia over mandatory sentencing, the Howard Government’s response to the Stolen Generation and the ten point plan.
Fringe camps, missions, reserves and settlements
The system of having a protector of Aborigines whether in Tasmania, Victoria and New South Wales or in more sparsely populated regions such as Western Australia never led to the consistent protection of Indigenous people or their interests. From its beginnings in the 19th century the protection system may have tempered some of the more extreme acts of violence but too often it led to dispersal and dispossession of the original inhabitants (Cannon 1990). Throughout much of rural and remote Australia the protector of Aborigines was the local police officer. So, even for those not confined to the government or church controlled reserves, the State was omnipresent. The local protector controlled much of the lives of those Indigenes not exempted from the status of ward. In May 1957 the following notice appeared in the Government Gazette:
I, James Clarence Archer, The Administrator of the Northern Territory, in pursuance of the powers conferred on me by the Welfare Ordinance 1953-55, do by this notice declare to be wards the persons named in this Schedule to this declaration, being persons who, by reason of their manner of living, their inability without assistance adequately to manage their affairs, their standard of social habit and behaviour and their associations, stand in need of such special care or assistance as is provided for by the said Ordinance.
After this preamble there followed a list of 12,000 names of Aboriginal people. Only one fifth of the people of partial Aboriginal descent were exempted from the Ordinance.
Similar arrangements existed over the entire northern half of the continent at this time. Aboriginal workers who were paid had, by law, to pay into bank accounts held by their protectors a fixed percentage of their wages. In Queensland money held in these accounts was transferred to a special Aboriginal welfare account, when this account was eventually wound up in the 1980s there was a $30 million shortfall which the Goss Labor Queensland Government held to be non recoverable, none of the ‘protectors’ have been charged.
There is the problem of money and when you look at it more clearly it is a matter of human rights. The Queensland Act is supposed to protect black people. In fact it is to control them, to make them as white as possible, as quickly as possible, in line with their policy of assimilation. (Walker 1971, p.33).
This ‘leakage of funds from Aborigines bank accounts’ was part and parcel of their administration from the earliest days (Kidd 1997 pp. 85-86,132-133, 148, 177-178, 266. Consultancy Bureau 1991, Family Services and Aboriginal and Islander Affairs 1991). Money in this system was supposed to be used for the benefit of Indigenous people. In the early 1960s following a series of dysentery epidemics on the reserves of western Cape York the government said it had insufficient funds to upgrade the health clinics on the reserves but did see its way clear to borrow from the Aboriginal Benefit Fund account an amount of $100,000 which it lent to the Redcliffe Hospital Board to help build this city hospital (Kidd, 1997, Consultancy Bureau 1991, Tomlinson 1963). The absence of upgraded health facilities at places like Weipa and Mapoon was one of the issues which the Queensland Government used as part of the effort during the period 1959 -1962 to force Mapoon people from their land and thus to facilitate Comalco’s bauxite mining (Roberts with assistance of Russell & Parsons 1974). The Government claimed the absence of decent health facilities meant the Mapoon people were endangering their children’s health (Kidd 1997 pp. 214-227).
Land Rights & Miners
Goot and Rowse remind us that at the 1983 election the Federal Labor Party set out five principles which were to underpin its national land rights policy: these principles included inalienable freehold title, mining vetos or else the power to set conditions, fair royalties, compensation and sacred site protection (1994 p. 1). After 13 years of Labor Administration little progress was made towards implementing such promises. After two terms of Liberal/National Administration the idea that such principles might underpin the Government’s approach to land rights policy is but a receding pipe dream. The Howard Government in May 2000 rejected the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation’s recommendations for reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
In the wake of the High Court’s Wik Judgement the language of confrontation has again assumed centre stage. Pastoralists and miners claimed that the granting of native title would bring economic development in Australia to a halt. On the 23rd. of December 1997, Ian Henderson an economic correspondent for The Australian wrote:
Mineral exploration spending is expected to hit a record $500 million in the second half of 1997, blunting claims that uncertainty about native title is wrecking mining industry plans.” (p. 4).
This figure was drawn from Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) compilation of mining companies expectations. But, as Henderson points out:
As actual spending exploration usually far outstrips industry expectations, miners appear likely to set a further record, spending $650 million to $700 million on exploration in the second half of 1997 (p. 4).
He supported his assertion by noting the previous day… the ABS reported that mineral exploration in the March, June and September quarters of 1997 – after the Wik decision – had exceeded spending in the corresponding quarters of 1996 – before Wik (p. 4).
The absence of an honest assessment of what is actually happening by spokespeople for the mining industry is not accidental. The continuation of the language of confrontation is designed to weaken the bargaining power of the Indigenous owners of this land in order that what ever ‘contribution’ miners are forced to make to Indigenous communities, in return for not obstructing mining, is a lesser amount than would have been the case had the negotiations taken place on an equal footing where Indigenous people were conceived of as partners in a project.
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander struggle for their land has been waged relentlessly for centuries. The Yir Yorant were recorded to have driven off a Dutch expedition from the Western shores of Cape York in 1606 ( Roberts 1981, Sharpe 1952). The High Court’s Wik decision was brought by Aboriginal people whose traditional land lies not far from the country then occupied by the Yir Yorant. The Indigenous peoples moral claim for reparation was strengthened by the High Court’s Wik decision. The Wik people’s claim in the High Court was upheld because the Queensland Government was seen to have failed to exercise its fiduciary duty in relation to people it was ‘protecting’.
An insight into the way ‘protection’ was interpreted by the Queensland Government is provided by the way it treated the people of Mapoon in the late 1950s and 60s (Roberts, Russell & Parsons 1974). In 1963 the people of Mapoon were taken by boat from their land by armed police who burnt their houses. They were deposited at Bamaga on the very tip of Cape York or at the Wiepa Mission. Weipa people, a short distance to the South of Mapoon, had their reserve decreased to 124 hectares (Suchet 1996, p.204). What had been Aboriginal reserve lands amounting to nearly 6,000 square kilometres was, in 1957, converted into a mining lease for the transnational alumina company Comalco. That is “93 per cent of land which had been officially reserved since the 19th century for the Aborigines of Mapoon, Aurukun and Weipa” (Kidd 1997 p. 204) was alienated. This theft of Indigenous land was debated in the Queensland Parliament. Suchet (1996) notes in relation to the resulting Commonwealth Aluminium Corporation Pty. Limited Act 1957: “Nowhere does this Act protects the rights of Aboriginal people (p.204).” Some members on both sides of the Parliament took advantage of a preferential Comalco share offer (Roberts 1981, Roberts assisted by Russell & Parsons 1974, Roberts, Parsons & Russell 1975, Roberts & McLean 1976, Stevens 1981, somewhat less critical accounts are provided by Rogers 1973 and Cousins, D. & Nieuwenhuysensen, J. 1984).
Extinguishment of native title rights may seem to be an insignificant price to pay for ‘progress’ but the loss of land is as deadly to some Indigenous people as any settler’s bullet (Wilson 1982, Suchet 1996, p.204). Whilst the current Indigenous struggle for land is being waged using economic, political and legal weapons rather than spears; the ongoing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander struggle for land is as determined now as at any time in the last 400 years. Just one example from Cape York provides an insight into the distance Indigenous peoples have come and the length of the road ahead. At Napranum, the Aboriginal name for the old Weipa Mission, determined attempts are being made to reassert the Indigenous voice back into issues affecting the community. The outstation movement is alive and well, cultural activities are restoring Indigenous pride, efforts are being made to modify Comalco’s actions so as to mitigate damaging side effects of mining and modify regeneration efforts so as to increase the availability of ‘bush tucker’ (Suchet 1996 pp. 207-212). At the start of the 21st. century many obstacles remain in the way of Indigenous people’s attempts to access ‘bush tucker’. The traditional owners of Weipa and Mapoon still need Comalco’s approval before they can collect their traditional food from land which is part of the Comalco lease (Suchet 1996 p.212).
Three hundred kilometres to the west of the Wik people’s country a transnational conglomerate’s subsidiary (Century Zinc) in 1997 beat into submission the Waanyi people. Murrandoo Yanner, Coordinator of the Carpentaria Land Council, was convicted twice for unlawful assembly within an eighteen month period. He has faced continual harassment by mining company officials, police and other state government officers. In March 1998 the Supreme Court of Queensland determined that Yanner did not have the right to take crocodile on his clan country. The Supreme Court action was initiated on appeal by the anti-Aboriginal Borbidge Government after a magistrate in 1997 had dismissed charges against Yanner for taking the crocodiles (ABCTV 7.30 Report 9/3/98). The Government purports to have taken the action in order to protect wildlife. The effect of the action, which Yanner successfully appealed to the High Court, was to limit the right of Indigenous people to hunt and gather traditional food. Had the Queensland Government’s case succeeded then this would have significantly restricted Aboriginal Australians (living in remote parts of this country) access to a major source of nutrition. Numerous studies have shown that communities which utilise traditional food to supplement their diet have better health profiles than those which do not (Health Advancement Standing Committee of the National Health and Medical Research Council 1997).
Yanner was prevented (by Senator Herron [Liberal], Minister for Aboriginal Affairs) from taking up a position as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commissioner ‘because of past convictions’. When Yanner appealed this decision in 2000 to the Federal Court the Queensland Labor Party Mines Minister McGrady wrote to the Judge hearing the case in an attempt to influence the outcome. McGrady is known locally as Minister for Mount Isa Mines.
The Century Zinc company has begun work on the mine, one of the largest zinc reserves in the world, despite the fears of conservationists and Indigenous people about ecological damage to Dugong feeding and breeding areas in the Gulf of Carpentaria. That is, the Queensland Government is determined to prevent Aboriginal people taking ‘protected species’ even by traditional means from their traditional land, but is prepared to allow a trans-national subsidiary to endanger the breeding and feeding areas of Dugong by letting the Century Zinc dredge channels to assist barges to carry zinc ore to ships waiting off shore.
After the traditional owners agreed to the mine going ahead, the Queensland Government announced that, as the Aborigines had agreed to allow Century Zinc to mine their land, they could be provided with the kind of social infrastructure which white Australia takes for granted. The total project is estimated to be worth $9 billion. The mining company offered $60 million as compensation. Of this $30 million is to be controlled by the Queensland Government to develop social infrastructure like schools, community centres, health centres and roads (Yanner 1996). The very essentials which white Australia takes for granted.
Failure to provide the development infrastructure which would promote health, well being and education has been part and parcel of the Queensland governments’ approach to Aboriginal areas in the north of the State for the last 40 years (Kidd 1997, Roberts, Russell & Parsons 1974, Tomlinson 1963, Bennett 1957). In recent times a new health clinic has been erected at Napranum but seriously ill people still need to travel the 14 kilometres to the hospital in the ‘white’ town ship of Weipa.
Still in the Gulf country, but over the Northern Territory Border, in 1993 Mount Isa Mines (MIM) was granted a lease to mine McArthur River lead/zinc deposits, another huge ore body. The Commonwealth and Northern Territory Governments had fast tracked the development. The Commonwealth guaranteed to support the Northern Territory legislation. Ciaran O’Faircheallaigh (1995) wrote about the offer, designed to weaken local Aboriginal resistance to the mine going ahead:
Under the agreement the Commonwealth undertook to purchase on behalf of the (local Aboriginal) Association the Bauhinia Downs pastoral station and, through the Department of Employment Education and Training (DEET), to provide an employment package designed to benefit residents of the McArthur River district
…MIM’s non-participation means that all the costs involved fall on the Commonwealth, not on the company as the developer of the resource.
…the agreement itself does nothing to ensure that the company (MIM) will endeavour to make employment and training opportunities available to local Aboriginal people. ….initiatives similar to those taken by the Commonwealth might have occurred under general policy initiatives in the absence of resource development (p.10).
The decision to proceed to mine an area controlled by Aboriginal people has many consequences and it may be that assessing the effects of a development, as O’Fairchaellaigh (1996) asserts, are far more complicated than looking just at the impacts of mining. Because issues such as what other benefits accrued to locals, the manner in which negotiations were carried out, protection of sacred sites, respect for Indigenous culture and interpersonal relations all play a part. But it is equally true as he acknowledges: the economic status of Indigenous people is generally very low, most communities have only one resource extraction project on their land and if they fail to succeed in maximising returns from this resource they will remain poor (O’Fairchaellaigh 1996 p.198). It also needs to be acknowledged that Indigenous communities are often highly pressured by governments which don’t understand their interests or needs. Governments are essentially responding to much wider constituencies. Indigenous communities are also frequently subjected to intense pressure by corporations whose prime interest is maximising returns to their share holders. Governments and corporations often combine to force Indigenous communities to accept development on their land (irrespective of Indigenous communities best interests) because it is far easier for government and industry to understand and accept each others needs than it is for either of them to understand Indigenous perspectives or accept that Indigenous perspectives have any utility (Bradbury 1997).
The assistance which governments provide to mining companies to proceed with mineral extraction (even in areas where the mine will damage conservation values or may undermine the ecology of an area) stands in sharp contrast to the way it treats some of the most impoverished Indigenous people in the remotest parts of this country.
The Registrar of Aboriginal Corporations in 1999/2000 invigorated a program to liquidate many small Aboriginal Corporations for failing to lodge returns. In order to be granted land the members of these Indigenous communities were require to register as a corporation. Many of the office bearers, of corporations in the process of being liquidated, are aged traditional owners who don’t read English, live in remote areas of the country and are bureaucratically unsophisticated. Once their house and land are sold as a result of actions taken in ‘law’ courts in far off capital cities the owners wont be able to collect bush tucker because they’ll be evicted from their traditional lands (Land Rights News 2000, March p.5, Downing 2000, 12th. April, p. 13)
Employment, infrastructure and development
In 1963 I visited Yarrabah, near Cairns, shortly after the Church of England handed control of this mission to the Queensland Government. Housing, whilst basic, was nearly sufficient to house all the people living there. The Aborigines had run a saw mill and built most of the houses. But the mill closed and by the time I returned 15 years later there was a shortage of houses and the houses which were being built were fabricated largely by mainstream contractors. What had been an isolated settlement was being encroached upon by a growing urban sprawl. This erosion of Indigenes’ capacity to develop their own territory has been repeated in many parts of this country during the last 100 years. Sometimes it takes the form of protectors stealing money from the personal accounts of Indigenes (Kidd 1997). In the Northern Territory in the 1970s and 1980s it often took the form of the manager of the community store defrauding the entire community by overcharging or just absconding with the funds. Sometimes Indigenes were displaced from employment, and therefore income, by an influx of European employees. At Maningrida in the mid 1970s this led to major Aboriginal unrest which resulted in the Indigenous community reclaiming their jobs and community control (Gillespie, Cooke & Bond 1977).
There have always been some European Australians driven by a sense of justice, religious beliefs, a desire to have a healthy workforce, paternalism, the need for or love of a sexual partner or for other reasons who have worked with Indigenous Australians in an effort to assist them to remain on and/or develop land (Bennett 1957, Reynolds 1998). Some have formed partnerships with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in fishing, pastoral and more recently mining ventures. Some of the early mission efforts resulted in incorporation of Aboriginal people into the vital life of the communities on which they lived.
One of the remarkable features of Aboriginal affairs in Australia is that the pictorial records of places as far a field as Hermannsburg (NT), Maclean (NSW), and Lake Tyres (Vic) at the turn of the 20th. century show Aboriginal people well dressed and playing an important part in the life of the community (Reynolds 1989, pp.148 -151 1990, Jackomos and Fowell 1991). By the 1960s many Aborigines in these places had become impoverished. Perhaps the most credible explanation of why many Indigenous communities ‘lost heart’ is portrayed by the documentary Lousy little sixpence (1997). In this documentary the point is made that the New South Wales Aboriginal Welfare Board in the early part of the 20th. century removed the right of Aborigines to own and use land on reserves (Goodall 1996, Ch. 11). At Cumeroogunga Reserve Aborigines had been granted land, cleared and ploughed it, only to have the Aboriginal Welfare Board sell it to white farmers (Lousy little sixpence 1997). Events of this nature occurred all over Australia (Goodall 1996, Kidd 1997, Rowley 1972[a],[b],[c], Reynolds 1989).
Under the auspices of government and mission control of Aboriginal reserves there was insufficient investment in technological or development infrastructure to ensure these areas would become productive. Aborigines were shifted off their land to allow pastoralists to have it. People from many clans were herded together to suit white Australia’s convenience. They were not adequately assisted to develop the land on which they were placed. The areas which white Australia wanted and on which Indigenous people lived were frequently sold or leased to white farmers. This happened at Mona Mona mission in the 1960s. The official story was that the land of the old mission was going to be flooded by a dam which still has not been built. The residents of Mona Mona were packed off to Seventh Day Adventist Church owned houses on the fringes of Kuranda (Kidd 1997, p. 212).
The administrative skills of most of the people who were sent to manage reserves were not high. Aboriginal initiative was stifled. These reserves were welfarised, many were run like British Poor Law work houses. The food, housing and health provision were inadequate. Disputation was treated as if it was rebellion. Inordinately repressive powers were given to superintendents to jail people, remove people from a reserve and divide families. Anger, frustration, intimidation, depression, alcoholism, and disputation became an everyday feature as the documentary Mr Neal is entitled to be an agitator (Ronin Films1991) revealed. The mechanisms of control on Aboriginal reserves shared many common features with the repression carried out in other outposts of Empire by the colonial authorities.
The controlling mentality of typical externally imposed colonial structures is firstly the promotion of the interests of the ‘metropolitan’ country, secondly ensuring the interests of the expatriate workers and entrepreneurs prevail over the interests of local entrepreneurs and those of the ‘natives’. Australians who have not had the experience of living in the more northern or remote parts of this continent during the 1950s, 60s and 70s may not conceive of white / black relations in this continent as resembling a colonial interface. But the language which governments of the day employed to describe their administration of Indigenous matters is not dissimilar from that of the British Raj. Until 1966 the Queensland Government used the title of the Department of Native Affairs (FSAIA 1994, p.10). During the 1950s, at the Federal level, the official policy was one of assimilation until 1963when it became integration and then in 1974 during the Whitlam Government became self-determination.
More than any other feature, widespread unemployment and failure to pay award wages to Indigenous workers guaranteed their communities remained impoverished and underdeveloped. When Indigenous workers got seasonal jobs away from the reserve they had to pay a fixed percentage of their money into the bank accounts held by the protector. Those who worked on the reserve were generally paid a ‘training allowance’, if they were paid anything other than rations. In 1967, I calculated that many workers and their dependants on training allowances, in the Top End of the Northern Territory were receiving less each week on training allowance that would an equivalent sized Darwin family living on welfare assistance. Many of these ‘trainee’ workers were the sole bread winner in their families. Eventually training allowances were replaced by the Community Development Employment Program (CDEP), a ‘Work for the Dole’ scheme which, until the Howard Government, only applied to Indigenes.
Each community was paid on an estimate of how many participants would be attracted to the CDEP in their area. Some communities found that there were more people wanting to work than there were places: as a result it was not uncommon for CDEP workers to receive less than they would have had they been in receipt of unemployment benefit. On other communities people got slightly more than unemployment benefits. Either way when coupled with widespread unemployment it meant that for many communities over 90 per cent of the people, who received any income, survived on social security levels of income. This guaranteed that the possibility of developing economically viable communities was extremely limited. It almost ensures underdevelopment because the communities do not generate sufficient economic activity which could in turn lead to the creation of award rate jobs. If award rates jobs had been created on communities rather than training wage / CDEP wages then through the multiplier effect enhanced economic activity would have likely occurred.
In December 1997 the Human Rights and equal Opportunity Commission conducted a study of the CDEP specifically investigating human rights difficulties (Antonios 1997). Though the Commissioner found some benefits flowed to some participants compared with social security recipients and that the CDEP did not breach the Race Discrimination Act she was concerned that there was:
- no legislative basis for the scheme,no adequate appeal against decisions of bureaucrats,
- no certainty that people moving between social security payments and the CDEP would not have exceedingly long waiting periods imposed (a finding which supported the Commonwealth Ombudsman in the One size does not fit all report of August 1997),
- no guarantee of a minimum income to participants, and in fact many people had very low or no income,
- no opportunity for people to relinquish their Disability Support Pension and transfer to the CDEP
- no consistency in the way the various departments such as Tax, Social Security, and Employment treated income received from the CDEP, and as a consequence,
- no clear government policy as to whether this was employment, a training allowance scheme, an employment program or a welfare program. (Antonios 1997)
Perhaps an extract from the resolutions of the initial conference of Commonwealth and state Aboriginal authorities held in 1937 might provide an insight into the failure of governments to ensure Indigenous Australians were enabled to gain employment in jobs which paid similar award rates to other Australians. The resolution read:
That this Conference affirms the principle that the general policy in respect of full-blood natives should be-
To educate to white standard children of the detribalised living near centres of white population, and subsequently to place them in employment in lucrative occupations, which will not bring them into economic or social conflict with the white community [Italics not in original]( cited in Bennett 1957 pp.11-12).
Perhaps the only thing holding back present day administrators from succeeding in finding employment for all Aboriginal people is that they are still searching for those elusive jobs with lucrative remuneration for which Indigenous Australians would be in demand and which will not inspire envy from other Australians.
The overwhelming majority of Aboriginal people have been:
- consistently denied the opportunity to own land,
- denied access to award wage labour,
- refused, until the 1960s, similar social security entitlements to other Australians,
- denied similar social security entitlements to other Australians until 1976 (Antonios 1997, p.6) if they lived on missions or government settlements, and
- until the late 1970s, denied control of Indigenous communities.
The political struggle
The Indigenous struggle for land, life and liberty has been long and bloody (Murray 1962, Reynolds 1972, Roberts 1981, Rowley 1972[b], Evans, Saunders & Cronin 1975, Robinson & York 1977). Many white Australians believe the Indigenous land rights struggle began with the Tent Embassy outside the Federal Parliament in 1972 or the Gurindji struggle at Wattie Creek in 1966 (Hardy 1968). This ignores:
- the 1960s Pitjantjatjara endeavours to retain land in South Australia.
- the Yirrakala petition presented to Federal Parliament by Aborigines on the Gove Peninsular in 1963,
- the on going struggle of the Mapoon people since 1957,
- the resistance of Don McLeod’s Mob – the Nomad Mining Company – in Western Australia in the Pilbura 1946 (Rowley 1972[c]),
- the Lake Tyres and Framlingham contests in Victoria in the 1950s (Andrews 1962),
- Ferguson, Cooper and Patten’s efforts to obtain a better deal in NSW in the 1930’s (Horner 1994),
- the battles waged by the indigenous Tasmanians ( Reynolds 1996, Turnbull 1974), and
- hundreds of similar contests for rights or land in other parts of Australia.
In fact white Australia’s perception of their ‘history’ ignores the reality of the Indigenous struggle.
In The Other Side of the Frontier Henry Reynolds (1981) set out another way of viewing the interchange between invader and indigene. Very conveniently the invaders make a distinction between the clash / invasion / dispossession phase and subsequent Indigenous unrest designed to keep some control of Aboriginal interests. The Indigenous reality is that the land rights struggle has been an integral and unceasing part of Aboriginal existence for the last 400 years (Roberts 1981). It is a political struggle which at times has had a military component. Sometimes it involved attacks on the instruments of the / or the invaders themselves. Unfortunately it sometimes takes form in a sense of loss which can lead to acts of self abuse or self destruction. Garrarrwuy Yunupingu in an address to the National Press Club in Canberra in February 1997 summed up the desperation which many indigenous people feel when he said:
Same thing you mining companies. You dig my country and you make your money and you go laughing all the way to the Swiss bank, but you leave me a hole and the pollution. No thanks, but you take all the goodness out of my land and you leave me nothing. But I’m not disappointed. I might be a bit angry with you, the way you treated me and being unfair. But I’m still sitting there nursing the hole and the pollution you left me behind.
I will not go away from that hole and that pollution because it is my right to die in that land. (p.21).
Indigenous people realise they were not all dispossessed by our forebears at some convenient time in the past, say 1770 or 1788. They are aware that many Indigenous groups are today being dispossessed by mining companies, governments and pastoralists – Century Zinc mine got its go ahead to mine in 1997. The traditional owners of Jabiluka are opposed to mining but as this book is being written the Federal Government is preparing to give the go ahead to open this uranium mine in Kakadu. In August 1997 Aborigines reached an agreement with miners to open up 44,000 square kilometres of their land in the north of South Australia for mineral exploration (PM 1997 18th. August). Howard’s ten point plan, designed to weaken Indigenous rights on pastoral leases, is a 1997/8 phenomenon. The 1967 Referendum gave the Commonwealth the power to make laws in relation to Indigenous Australians. Howard’s ten point plan to revise the Mabo / Wik Native Title legislation returns to the states power to make decisions about native title land questions.
City Aboriginal people are often portrayed in the popular media as drunken no-hopers and their country cousins are presented as living in humpies surrounded by children with snotty noses and flies in their eyes. These stereotypical images have not changed much since the days when whites were preparing to ‘smooth the dying pillow’. However in recent years two other images compete for time in the media one is of an articulate, determined but reasonable leadership the other is of angry Indigenous protesters clashing with police.
Since the 1960s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have succeeded in raising public consciousness about their struggle more successfully than at any previous time. As a result there have been some significant changes in the way governments have responded to Indigenous people and the original owners of this country have won some substantial victories. Prior to the late 1960s very few people of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent were paid social security and it was the late 1970s early 1980s before Aboriginal people in many parts of remote Australia got anything like equivalent access to social security entitlements as other Australians (Social Security 1982). The 1967 referendum at which 92% of Australians decided to allow the Commonwealth to make laws in relation to Aborigines (Middleton 1977) was seen at the time as being as important a watershed as was the High Court’s Mabo decision in 1992 (Attwood 1996).
For some Aborigines state legislation has been at least as important as actions taken on the national stage. As Charles Rowley put it:
the epoch-making Lands Trust Act of 1966 aroused considerable resistance in the Legislative Council, which succeeded in removing the provisions for mineral rights, although these would not have been revolutionary in South Australia, where proprietors of land grants made before 1880 have retained mineral rights alienated from the original grants (1972[c] p. 280).
The Commonwealth’s Northern Territory Land Rights Act drafted by the Whitlam Government in 1975 amended and then passed by the Fraser Government in 1976 provided Aboriginal people who had maintained close links with their traditional lands the opportunity to reclaim unalienated crown land in the Northern Territory. The South Australian legislation and the NT Land Rights Act have been the vehicle by which Aborigines in these two regions have recovered ownership of considerable areas of land and have consequently been able to start to develop a secure economic future (Crough 1993).
Greg Crough (1993) building on earlier work of Kelly (1966) and Stevens (1974) shows that even where Aboriginal business enterprises prosper in capitalist terms they are rendered invisible to an invader blinded by the need to see the failure of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders. The North Australian Research Unit revealed that “there is an ‘Aboriginal economy’ which contributed at least $428 million to the economy of the Top End of the Northern Territory in 1994-95 (this is 2.65 times the amount expended by the Northern Territory Government on Aboriginal people).” (Land Rights News 1997, p. 6). Despite many examples of Indigenous business enterprises gaining financial success -usually in association with their regaining of some or all of their tribal land, there are a disproportionate number of Indigenous Australians who are living in poverty.
The experience in the rural and remote parts of the Northern Territory evokes one possible explanation for the widespread poverty of Indigenous people over the length and breadth of this country. Perhaps Indigenous poverty has been exacerbated by the continuing failure of governments, developers, and many other Australian institutions to come to a determination of Indigenous peoples’ rights over land which both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people would consider just.
In Broome and Darwin it is assumed that Aboriginal people’s relationships to country are mere encumbrances on development, or that their silence on land use matters indicates concordance with the views of the dominant public. The prevailing attitude among state and development interests is that the urban landscape must be cleared of such encumbrances (Jackson 1996 p.96, Day 1994).
The Minister responsible for Aboriginal welfare in the Northern Territory told the Federal Parliament in 1952:
If any part of a native reserve has ceased to be necessary for the use and benefit of the natives, it may be severed from the reserve and, if mining should take place on the severed portion royalties will be paid into a special fund to be applied to the welfare of the natives…(cited in Bennett 1957 p. 30).
Not much has changed 40 years later at the Lockhart River Aboriginal Reserve. Lane and Chase (1996) describe the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) lodged, in the Queensland Mining Warden’s Court, by the company wanting to mine 200 million tonnes of the high grade silica in Shelburne Bay:”…the EIS denied the Wuthathi people any current interest in the area on the basis that a lack of physical presence in the area constituted a dereliction of interest” (p.175). Many Wuthathi people lived less than 80 kilometres from the site and regularly accessed the area to gather’ bush tucker’.
The Stolen Generations
In much the same way as white Australia took Indigenous land for farming, pasture, forestry or mining; and took Indigenous women for sex; and took Indigenous men for their labour (Stevens 1974): white Australia attempted to complete the process of dispossession by taking Indigenous children from their communities (National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families 1997, Forde 1999). The taking of indigenous children has not stopped but now instead of the ‘protector’ just riding up to the ‘blacks camp’ and loading the children into cars and driving off with them excuses are needed. The two main ways of removing indigenous children from their community currently employed are criminalising them or having human service workers claiming it is in the best interests of the children to be removed (Cunneen 1997, Cunneen & Libesman 2000, Tomlinson 1994).
Prime Minister Howard consistently refuses to apologise on behalf of the Government for the actions of all Australian Governments during the period of the stolen children’s generations because his present Government, he said, was not responsible. Against the recommendations of the Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families (1997 Appendix 9) the Howard Government has steadfastly opposed the paying of compensation to the children or their families. The Government has again done this on the grounds that this Government was not responsible for the taking of the children. Adam Jamrozik (1997) commented that the “Howard Government was not responsible for the Second World War either but it continues to pay War Pensions”.
It is a pity that the Prime Minister had not read and understood the article by Hal Wootten written in response to white backlash in the wake of the High Court’s Mabo decision:
We hear a lot about guilt these days, but only from people who are denying their guilt. Some say they should not be called upon to do justice to Aborigines because they are not personally responsible for what happened to them. They work themselves into positive paroxysms of guiltlessness. In what other sphere of public affairs do we regard guilt as the only reason for action? Should Granville Sharp and Wilberforce have ignored slavery because they had not caused it? (1993 p. 2)
The real policy question which must drive any substantial reconciliation process is justice in the present rather than guilt in relation to past activities. This prescription is not an endorsement of Pauline Hanson’s call for all Australians to be treated equally. Rather it is a demand that Australians are treated equitably. Given the great disparity in wealth, income, health, housing, incarceration rates, and age of death of Indigenous and white Australians, then to treat both Indigenes and invaders equally would not be justice. Justice is more than the imposition of the welfare mentality of Prime Minister Howard’s ‘practical reconciliation‘, designed to make minor improvements to health and education. Justice would require reparation for past wrongs coupled with a sincere commitment to partnership in the future.
The hegemonic themes underlying Indigenous / non-Indigenous relations for the last 200 years still apply at the start of the 21st century
During the 1990s many Australians have developed an understanding of what it is that governments, pastoralists and miners have done to the original owners of this land. This came about partly as a result of the Inquiries into Black Deaths in Custody and the Stolen Generations but also because during the 1980s and 90s an emerging articulate Indigenous leadership has been able to command the attention of the press and through that the public’s interest. There is a growing sense of the injustice done in the past. There is also an emerging understanding of the link between past wrongs and the present:
- social,
- economic,
- health,
- educational, and
- employment
situation confronting Indigenous communities. A significant proportion of Australians living in cities are coming to question the basis on which rich white Australia has inflicted ‘development’, read dispossession, upon Indigenous Australians. Over 700,000 Australians, 2,000 in Alice Springs, marched for reconciliation in 2000.
Australians are increasingly questioning the hegemonic themes which have structured Indigenous / non-Indigenous relations since the invasion:
- Indigenous people can hold land provided it is not required by white interests,
- if the land is required then Aborigines areexpected to vacate it, and
- if they fail to leave the land then either
- they or more recently their interest in the land will be extinguished.
These themes which underpin black / white relations are becoming more widely challenged by both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The reason these themes of development have been so resistant to change is that Indigenous Australians despite their being recognised by 92 percent of voters as entitled to citizenship rights in the 1967 Referendum have not been ceded full economic rights. This is because they have not really been accepted fully as citizens in their own land (Reynolds 1996, Tomlinson 1996). When they are used as labour they are often treated not as Australian workers but as if they are ‘guest workers’ in much the same way as Turks in Germany. In a month or so when the work is over they are shunted back to their camps on the fringes of country towns.
There have been few examples in this country of joint partnerships with the Indigenous population. Australia has rarely seen the development of a major resource where a corporation agrees to the Indigenous community having 50 per cent equity in the project simply because they have provided the land on which the activity takes place. There has been a failure to acknowledge that the only contributions many Indigenous communities can make is the labour of their people and the provision of the land on which the development takes place. In Australia in the past both the Indigenous labour and the land have been intentionally devalued. Companies have not worked to add value to the available labour through effective training nor have they added value to the land through adhering to strict environmental practices and processing of the materials on site. As neither workers nor the land is accorded an appropriate value companies retain greater profit. Because the Indigenous population is not defined as part of the Australian situation they are not included in the distribution. Such racism is reinforced for as long as people can get away with it because it funnels the surplus profit extracted from a development to fewer people (shareholders).
Where to now?
The ideologies which drove colonial Australia, whether as protector or exterminator, were directly linked to the extraction or exploitation of a resource. They took:
- the land,
- the women,
- the labour, and
- the children.
On the way they assaulted:
- the environment,
- Indigenous culture,
- the adults and
- the children.
At various times the actions taken by white Australia were explained in terms of:
- the necessities of war,
- pest removal,
- self defence,
- separation,
- ‘protection’ of the natives, and
- then assimilation.
All of these explanations amount to the removal of the Indigene from the presence of whites. Even assimilation amounts to removal of the Indigene and his or her replacement by an Australian with a Black skin. It is as if Australia never signed the United Nations Treaty on Genocide in 1947.
The reality of race relations for many in this country has not fundamentally changed since the invasion. The race war commenced in 1788 continues. Aboriginal academic Lillian Holt (1997) described the present Australian Government’s administration of Aboriginal affairs as ‘designer label dereliction’. The pastoralists’ spokespersons in the aftermath of the High Court’s Wik decision demanded extermination of the remaining property rights of Indigenous Australians on pastoral leases. Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders are not truly regarded as citizens in their own country (Reynolds 1996,Tomlinson 1996,1997). Aborigines still are only allowed to ‘own’ land until white Australian companies or their transnational friends have found a use for it.
Through the work of many community organisations, indigenous organisations, indigenous leaders, progressive journalists, some academics and the many indigenous and non-indigenous Australians of good will attitudes are slowly changing. For the foreseeable future many indigenous people will continue to have their land taken on non-Indigenous corporations terms, their young will be incarcerated in non-Indigenous prisons and children’s institutions (Cunneen & Libesman 2000), their employment prospects will be circumscribed by government and corporation’s indifference and they will experience substantial income insecurity. Like poor non-Indigenous people they will have to rely on an outmoded welfare income support system. Those who live in remote areas will experience the lack of service provision in the bush. Those who have disabilities will confront an ableist Australia whose indifference to the specific needs of Indigenous people who experience disability Ted Smeaton (1998) has described. The question of disability and income support will be canvassed in the next chapter.
It is clear from the analysis presented in this chapter that Indigenous people’s economic base was removed, the areas on which they were confined were underdeveloped, their entry into mainstream employment was often blocked by government regulation, intention or indifference. They have not had the opportunity to obtain housing, health, social security, welfare and educational services in a manner commensurate with white, and in particular city, Australians. The reason why Indigenous people have not succeeded economically at anything like equivalent rates to non-Indigenous Australians has more to do with the structural impediments which the non-Indigenous community has placed in their way than to any cultural or psychological feature of Indigenous society and individuals.
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The iron law of terrorism prevention
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate
Posted Monday, 19 October 2015
The more spooks, spies and spivs we employ to spy on our and other citizens the outcome, in terms of the safety of our citizenry, is diminished. The number of ASIO operatives employed in Australia has doubled in recent years. They have been provided with far more extensive search and control powers. We’ve had take from the poorest to meet their merest whim. They are now out of control.
We have made matters even worse by voting in authoritarian personalities such as Abbott, Dutton, Morrison, Michael Keenan (Minister for Counter Terrorism) in fact most of the Coalition’s front bench and coupling that with a servile Labor Opposition. The reason that this exacerbates the problem is that this allows the government of the day to extend the legislative reach of terrorism provisions.
It creates a surveillance society where secrecy and subterfuge are the by-words. Everyone is a threat and everyone is at risk. None are to be trusted. The East German Stasi is the ultimate example of the potential for countries to slide into a repressive panopticon.
We now have idiots, such as the afore mentioned Michael Keenan, running round the country telling anyone who will listen that if they suspect that a young person (read Muslim) is being radicalised then they should immediately ring the National Security Hotline and dob them in. Hand in hand with that you have the Australian Federal (read Feral) Police warning that they have applied for terrorism restraining orders against a 12 year old Australian citizen.
If the counter terrorism personnel in this country were even half smart they wouldn’t be crapping on about young people being “radicalised” they would have moved in and shut down our previous Prime Minister when he started mouthing off about death cults, Team Australia, Muslim leaders not being serious about peace and all the other nonsense he spouted which alienated young Muslims. We don’t need to be militarising customs and immigration and dressing the Borderfarce employees in uniforms remarkably similar to Benito Mussolini’s Black Shirts. We don’t need to be repressing asylum seekers in offshore camps.
We don’t need to threatening to close down hundreds of Aboriginal communities in remote Australia. We don’t need any of this control and denigrate nonsense.
If we want to live in a peaceful Australia where people are free to go about their lives in ways that they desire. We have to build that Australia from the ground up. What is more, we are off to a bad start. Modern Australia was founded on the slaughter, rape, genocide and dispossession of Aborigines. We need as a first step to make adequate reparation.
In addition since the Second World War we have invaded Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and God know where else whenever our colonial masters asked. We have connived with the US in the murder of well over one thousand people by drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Syria and various parts of Africa by giving the US access to Pine Gap and other surveillance bases.
In 1961 we refused to intervene in West Papua when Indonesia forcibly incorporated its people into Indonesia. The West Papuans are still trying to gain independence from their colonial overlords. In 1975, we stood by when Indonesia invaded East Timor and subsequently killed one third of the population. It took a misjudged letter from John Howard to President Habibie to set East Timor on a path to independence. But this did not stop Australian spies bugging the Timor Cabinet room to gain information that advantaged Australia in its negotiations over oil royalties in the Timor Sea.
Australian spies have scuttled boats, intended to take asylum seekers to Australia. Other boats have been sabotaged some of these may have left Indonesia and sunk en route to Australia drowning the passengers – we will never know for certain. Australian officials have paid people smugglers to return to Indonesia with their asylum seekers.
We do know that many things are done in our name which are violent and which would be illegal were you or I to carry them out but the Australian Parliament under both Labor and Coalition administrations have passed laws which mean that no penalties attach to these actions if carried out by officials acting under orders of the government of the day. There is little recognition that the Nuremberg Military Tribunals held that simply obeying orders did not absolve one of war crimes.
Those officials who handed back Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers to the Sri Lankan Navy certainly committed war crimes. Those who sabotaged boats in Indonesia may well be guilty of acts of piracy. There are other similarities between what Australian officials have done/are doing and those of terrorists.
Tony Abbott was looking around for a counter terrorism tsar he chose Moriarty totally unmindful that over a century earlier Sherlock Holmes had exposed Moriarty as a criminal mastermind. The last time a community was subjected to a military-style invasion in Australia was that of Palm Island where following the killing by police in the watch house of an Aborigine and a subsequent riot during which the police station was torched, the police paramilitary invaded pushing pregnant women, old ladies and children to the ground at gunpoint. They know that governments will ensure their excesses are overlooked either by a compliant judiciary or by legislation or by a frightened public.
It is now the turn of the Muslim community to be pushed around, mugged, harassed. Some will be fitted up with dodgy charges. The law will be modified by a supine parliament in order to change what was legal yesterday into something illegal today. If all else fails then retrospective additions will be made. Macropods will be placed in charge of special courts. Once the terrorists have been sentenced to a year or more in jail they will then be deported if they were not born in Australia.
Eventually, we will reach a stage where the two most common charges brought against people will be:
“Failing to plead guilty as charged” and
“Attempting to prove innocence.”
The issue is not terrorism but violence
When the conservatives within the Liberal Party blew up the Government, many Australians were relieved that Morrison rather than Dutton assumed the helm of the sinking ship. Morrison was considered less dangerous, but the unity ticket he and Dutton are on in relation to “terrorism offences” demonstrates how ignorant they both are.
There has been a proliferation of new “terror offences” in Australia in the period since the attack on the World Towers which the Americans refer to as 9/11. We have more anti-terrorism legislation than any other Western country.
They now want to be able to deport anyone who has been convicted of a terrorist offence, whom the minister believes can claim citizenship in another country. The law currently only applies to dual citizens convicted of an offence with a sentence of six years or more in prison.
Michelle Grattan pointed out on the ABC Breakfast Program that we stop people considered to be likely to go overseas and commit acts of violence by taking away their passports because we have decided that we will not allow Australians to commit terrorist acts overseas. She went on to point out that there is a cognitive dissonance between preventing someone whom it is considered might commit a terrorist act from leaving Australia and deporting people whom the courts have been found guilty of terrorist crimes.
Dutton and Morrison have decided that if someone whom they believe should be deported gets a court to stay their deportation on the grounds that they would be stateless then they should be held indefinitely in immigration detention. This ex-Queensland copper and son of a New South Wales copper have not learnt that such contempt for the rule of law in unjust and self-defeating. It diminishes our supposed liberal democracy.
“In a joint letter to the department of home affairs, obtained by the ABC, the directors of public prosecutors of every state and territory warned that the measure could endanger the community by encouraging ‘non-citizens [to] travel to Australia for the specific purpose of committing criminal offences, knowing that they would effectively be rendered immune from prosecution and the consequences of conviction by making a request for removal’.”
The Guardian Australia reports that:
“Under the changes the minister can strip a convicted terrorist of Australian citizenship regardless of the severity of the conviction and need only be “reasonably satisfied” that the person would have another citizenship.
The president of the Law Council of Australia, Morry Bailes, said the measures “challenge key legal principles on which our democracy was founded, and therefore demand very careful consideration”.
“The proposed automatic loss of citizenship and subsequent administrative action do not provide sufficient safeguards to accord with the rule of law, the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial and the right of appeal,” he said.
Morrison rebuked the Law Council of Australia saying he was not bothered.
“Terrorism expert Greg Barton was dubious about the likelihood of the plan securing parliamentary support. ‘It’s hard to imagine a situation where it’s going to stack up politically, legally or morally,’ he told The New Daily.”
Morrison and Dutton keep pointing to the two Melbourne Burke St outrages as the justification for their attitudes. It needs to be remembered in the first car rampage in Burke St 6 people were killed and over 20 seriously injured the man driving that car was a deluded Christian. The second violent attack was initiated by a deluded Muslim man and his attack resulted in the death of one person and the serious wounding of two others. He was shot and killed by police at the scene.
I abhor all violent acts carried out against unarmed people. Each week in Australia a woman is killed by a partner or an ex-partner. Hundreds of others are violently attacked by their partner or an ex-partner each week. Almost daily children are killed or badly injured by family members. The issue is not terrorism but violence and no government in Australia has succeeded in doing much about it.
Morrison and his associates are running a government which leaves one in ten children living in poverty. They daily discriminate against the Indigenous people of this land. They run offshore concentration camps which are driving hundreds of asylum seekers and refugees slowly mad. They sell armaments to war criminals.
It is time for the Morrison government to stop playing political games with our future, our democracy our international reputation and get serious about violence.
The Left is Right: Community, community work and the creation of opposition
Paper given at “Windows on the World” conference of the Community Development Society, World Congress Centre Melbourne, 21-24 July 1996
Much of what is called “Community Work” in the 1990s is aimed at getting the populous to conform to the desires of the powerful: landlords over tenants, government departments over welfare agencies and welfare agencies over the people they are set up to help. The standard fare is for a Housing Commission to arrange “community consultations” when they want to redevelop a suburb – code for urban infill – the locals are talked at and hopefully into submission by “experts”, if the locals try to speak to their own agenda they are ignored.
This paper will look at the processes which might be useful in developing a climate of resistance and rejection. The paper will stress the importance of decent analysis and the need for action flowing on from the analysis. Beginning with a description of policy issues which rely heavily on a poetic interpretation I will try to show that resistance and rejection are positive rather than negative processes in progressive community work. To borrow a slogan from the feminist movement “What part of the word ‘No!’ don’t you understand.” The paper will concentrate on Australia in the 1990s with particular emphasis on the issues of Aboriginal sovereignty, East Timorese liberation and unemployment. The paper will conclude by looking at strategies and tactics which might be utilised to promote opposition, resistance and rejection.
The Australian context
In my country soldiers tell judges what to do
but if 1 were to be born a thousand times
it is there that 1 would be born.
And if 1 were to die a thousand times
it is here that 1 would die.
Pablo Neruda.
In Australia the national armed forces leave the culling of the Indigenous population and those experiencing mental health difficulties to the state police forces. Victorian police have become the leading exponents of the art.
I should like to be able to love my country and still love Justice.
Camus.
Australian society is structured by racism, classism, sexism, ageism, urbanism and by the way it treats people with disabilities (Tomlinson 1996). This country was founded on invasion, murder, rape, theft and genocide – sanctified by the legal fiction of terra nullius.
Terra Nullius
made fools of all of us,
legal fiction and our greed
became our overwhelming creed.
We stole their land
and watched them bleed.
Their rights to land
we would not concede
insisting on proper title
and English deed.
Powerful forces in this country are alienating Aboriginal land and stealing Aboriginal children. There is a race war going on in this country as we speak. White liberals sipping their chardonnay and shiraz socialists contentedly point to the High Court Mabo Decision (1992) and the Native Title Act as putting to an end the theft of Indigenous land. This decision and this Act are just the legal mechanisms utilised by the squattocracy and transnational conglomerations to legitimise past theft of Indigenous land and sanctify the ongoing theft of Aboriginal resources. Anyone who doubts this only has to look at the way the Queensland Government, aided by the Queensland Labor Opposition, and the Federal Government combine to back the Century Zinc Mining Company against the Waanyi people – the traditional owners of this land. Mining companies claim that those who oppose their mining of Aboriginal land do so because of some misplaced sense of guilt as a result of something which happened a long time ago when the reality is that dispossession of vast tracts of Indigenous land is occurring now.
The guilt industry
Don’t talk to me of guilt or want.
Don’t tell me where I’m in default.
Your country now is mine by right
of English law and oversight.
Blackburn did terra nullius decree
for mines and pastoral industry.
Don’t come here with modern law
or telling what Eddy Mabo saw,
or what Australia’s High Court found.
The past is ours, it’s safe and sound.
Don’t talk of Aboriginal sovereignty
of genocide or tyranny.
We have the power to enforce our will
it’s a pity that guilt lingers still.
Currently Aboriginal people are 26 times more likely to be in police custody than are non-Aboriginal people and “are over-represented by a factor of 15 in Australian prisons.” (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission 1994 p. 10, Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation 1993 Key Issue 6). The Deaths in Custody Royal Commission investigated 100 Indigenous deaths in custody which occurred in the decade preceding its report (Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody 1991). , Its main recommendations were aimed at decreasing the number of Aboriginal people in custody yet in 1996 the number of Aboriginal people in custody is greater than it was when the Royal Commission reported. In 1996 Aboriginal people continue to die in custody in increasing numbers (Green Left 24/1/96 p. l.)
Deaths in Custody
Swinging in a watch house cell
escaping from a living hell ?
Stolen from his mother
taken from his father.
“You call it suicide.
We call it murder.”
Grandfather shot
grandmother poisoned.
Land stolen by squatters.
Sister raped by coppers.
“You call it suicide.
We call it murder.”
Didn’t do well at school
often made to look the fool.
Couldn’t find a job
no one heard him sob.
“You call it suicide.
We call it murder.”
We saw the coppers bash him,
we saw the coppers thrash him:
threatening to hang him
may as well have sang him.
“You call it suicide.
We call it murder.”
Aboriginal kids continue to be disappeared from their community by two main methods: welfare removal for ‘neglect’ or through the aptly named criminal justice system (Imlah 1993, White 1990, Adler 1992 pp 21-28, Federation of Community Legal Centres- Victoria, 1991). These methods have remained remarkably similar for over a century. This removing of Indigenous children is recognised as genocide under the United Nations Convention on Genocide of 1948, which Australia has signed and ratified (United Nations 1948).
Aboriginal ill health is increasing in many parts of Australia. For instance Indigenous women are dying at an earlier age on Cape York than they were in 1979 (Fischer 1993). The most telling feature about Indigenous health is that the number one priority of the First Aboriginal Health Strategy which reported in 1989 was the supply of clean water to all Aboriginal communities (National Aboriginal Health Strategy Working Party 1989). An aim which in 1996 has not been achieved for at least 100 Aboriginal communities in rural and remote Australia (Late Line 27/2196, Kilham 1995).
For Olive Brown
Land rights, decent health
and equal sharing of our wealth.
Too much to ask Australia?
Or is it.
It’s 1993
the U.N. Year
of the Indigene.
Rape, killing, theft,
chopping down what’s left.
In our town
an Aboriginal Embassy
talk of reconciliation
but no thought of sovereignty.
Too many friends have gone
But the struggle will go on,
For land rights, decent health
and equal sharing of our wealth.
There is no way to make amends
or say goodbye to absent friends;
Roy Marika in Gove,
Fred Hollows in Sydney,
or Olive here.
East Timor
During the last World War between 40,000 and 60,000 Timorese died helping Australian soldiers prevent the Japanese mounting a land attack on Darwin. How did we repay them? When Indonesia invaded East Timor on the 7th December 1975 we acquiesced, we have colluded with Indonesia in the theft of Timorese oil whilst over 200,000 East Timorese (about one third of the population) have died (Dunn 1983, Aarons & Domm 1992, Tomlinson & Wesley-Smith 1994).
Australians all let us rejoice for we are young and free!
No need to heed the genocide across the Timor Sea.
Their shores abound with oil and gas Australia wants to share;
Let Indonesia kill at will, Advance Australia fair.
With brutal friends and greedy ends
Advance Australia fair!
Ian Hodges/Green Left.
Timor
Obrigado, thank you, grazie East Timor will be free
the people of this troubled world will end their tyranny.
Don’t look away
don’t hide your eyes
or turn your faces to the wall
200,000 Timorese have died.
They all answered freedom’s call.
We steal their oil
we compromise
and listen to Indonesian lies
while Timor dies.
The generals of Jakarta
authorise the murder
Australian politicians
sanitise the slaughter.
We do it in the name of export trade
investment and of foreign aid
supplying guns and hand grenade
lethal weapons, Australian made.
Then strut the stage the whole world wide
pretending that right’s on our side
and human rights our greatest pride,
rape and murder we try to hide.
Indonesian troops in Dili
barracks in Baucau slaughtering willy nilly
Los Palos to Liquica.
While on the hill a rebel still
a gun held in his hand
asks each of us the question:
When will we understand
you cannot hold a people down
freedom is not a passing whim,
that it is not ours to command
it’s theirs – their battle hymn.
At the time of writing this paper four East Timorese, waiting within the grounds of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta, had been refused political asylum in Australia because neither the Labor nor Coalition Governments of this country were prepared to honour their international obligations for fear of offending the Indonesian Junta.
The Class War
There is a class struggle being waged in earnest in this country (Rees, Rodley & Stilwell 1993, Rees & Rodley 1995, Vintila, Phillimore & Newman 1992, Omerod 1994) More Australians now die at work than on the roads. This is a direct result of the wilful neglect by employers and the lack of resources provided by “responsible” governments to monitor lethal dangers in the work place.
Despite the obvious economic feasibility of ensuring work for all, mainstream Australia is prepared to chuck the jobless and the bodies of the suicided workless on to the economic rationalists’ cattle cars rattling to our own Auschwitz (Langmore & Quiggin 1994, Littlemore 1996).
If you don’t want to be a part of this uncaring excess, then work with your local
Unemployed Workers Union and try to turn Australia into a country which insists on work for all who want it and a country which provides a guaranteed minimum income for all who are excluded from the mode of production (Van Parijs 1992, VCOSS & Good Shepherd 1995, Goodin 1992, Watts 1995, Tomlinson 1995).
Australia 1996
Good morning Australia
tell me it’s not true
you’ve sold out to the capitalists
turned from red to blue.
The Timorese can languish
while we steal their oil
and Australian men and women
aren’t wanted for their toil.
The unemployed will have to wait,
they’re locked outside the factory gate
the rich though needn’t hesitate
there’s always food upon their plate.
While BHP in PNG
rips the heart out of Ok Tedi,
pours pollution down the Fly
and trees along its banks all die.
Tailings slowly make their way
destroying lives both night and day
ignoring what land holders say
and politicians would deny.
CRA in Bougainville
sowed contempt – mined ill will
all the while there’s killing still,
men and women they’re killing still.
Another Australian company
is about to mine Lihir
we’re deaf to cries of ecocide
profit is the news we’ll hear.
With Alitas we’ve signed a pact
a security treaty, that’s a fact
to make sure we feel secure?
Or is it just the need to obscure
that at Freeport we collaborate
and West Papuans exterminate.
For justice they’ll have to wait
dispossessed of all but hate.
We choose to ignore Aboriginal health
while miners steal their land by stealth,
pastoralists continue to occupy
and all the while native title deny.
We stole their country yet criminalise
their young, with legal tricks and lies
and in custody yet another young man dies
it’s little wonder they despise –
us.
And are Australians gaining
from the misery we’re creating?
Is the society we are making
inclusive and earth shaking ?
One where there is work for all
if ill fate should befall?
Are we helping all in need
with minimum incomes guaranteed
or are we just guaranteeing greed?
Community workers must:
- Do the analysis.
- Act on the analysis.
Your first job is to help your community to start to question what your society is doing. You then need to build on this questioning in order to create a feeling of unease. By presenting further information you help your community move on to expressing its concern. Through continued work you will create a process which develops opposition and resistance then rejection.
If the analysis results in anything like the story revealed in East Timor, or is similar to the ongoing repression of Indigenous Australians or anything like the treatment meted out to our fellow Australians who are excluded from the labour market then the action required, at its most peaceful, is militant. The struggle for social justice is not some part time activity, carried out for people to whom we are unconnected The struggle for a Free East Timor, respect for Indigenous Australians and the fight for full employment are not disconnected distributional issues, they are not something we can hope to address through some sort of pluralist trade off, something we can do for those groups which are somehow dissociated from ourselves. For as
Galper told us back in 1975, “the struggle for economic’ justice for others is inseparable from the struggle of all people, including the radical, to be treated as people and not as commodities. The solution for others is the solution for all. The radical vision eliminates the possibility of a personal refuge for some, or of piecemeal solutions, and places the radical’s personal solutions in the context of basic change for all.” (Galper, 1975 p. 80)
We need to place the solutions within a wider analysis because to do otherwise leads to divisiveness, isolation and defeat. The 1996 election saw a fish and chip shop owner in the seat of Oxley gain a 25% swing largely on the basis of her ill-informed views about Aborigines getting too much social welfare when compared with poor whites. In this seat there is massive unemployment and by playing the anti-Aboriginal card Pauline Hanson harnessed unemployed people’s alienation into a vote for her as the ‘disendorsed’ Liberal candidate.
The seductiveness of social justice as a social democratic or liberal paradigm with its four pillars of equality of rights, participation, access, and equity (Keating & Howe 1992, Salvaris 1988) needs to be put alongside the socialist conception of social justice which includes as well as the aforementioned pillars – solidarity. Without a solidarity with all people in this nation, and preferably the world, we just play into the pluralist game of trading off one part of the population against all other parts in a zero sum welfare redistribution game rather than moving the nation and the world towards a more equal, equitable, accessible, and participating humanity whose solidarity cements the inclusion of all in a just and progressive manner.
Tactics
If you have any journalistic skills and can’t get progressive stories into mainstream media – write for Green Left or other progressive publications. In some countries activists throw their bodies under tanks, I’m just asking that you throw your body in front of a computer. If you write songs or poetry do that and try to get them into print or read them to people.
- If you are a good public speaker – address meetings. If you are a cartoonist – draw.
- If you are an artist – paint. Remember Picasso and Guernica.
- If you can make documentaries or films which can assist progressive movements – produce films.
- If you can sing – sing.
- If you can march – march.
Hopefully you’ll be able to do lots of these things simultaneously but if you have few of these skills you might be reduced to giving papers at national and international conferences.
John Howard wants to return us to the 1950s with a picket fence around every house in the suburbs – I urge you to put a picket around every factory which exploits its workers, every welfare agency which lacks respect for its clientele, and totally blockade those companies which attempt to exploit indigenous people or engage in ecologically harmful practices in this country or overseas.
If you have research skills – start researching the corporate excesses in this country and expose them, then corporate leaders might follow Laurie Connel’s lead and die in mysterious circumstances.
- If you have speculative funds and want to invest in Australia’s future start by donating it to local, national or international progressive groups.
- If you have access to sufficient funds set up a Welfare Crimes Tribunal to prosecute those who carry out atrocities against low income earners – do so.
Read as much of the progressive community work literature as you have time to, build up a personal library of “how to do it books” like Community Action Book (Flood & Lawrence 1987) and keep up with useful recent publications like Susan Kenny’s Developing Communities for the Future: (Kenny 1994). Publications such as Jim lfe’s Community Development, even with its inadequate analysis of the role of the welfare state, help to develop and maintain a critical community work perspective (Ife 1995).
Spend your time working with progressive groups and organisations to confront racism, classism, sexism, urbanism, ageism and to change the way we marginalise people with disabilities.
Community Work
There are only two reasons why people organise – to try and make something happen or to stop something happening. Of course, most community groups are simultaneously campaigning for some things to happen and to stop other things occurring. There needs to be a compatibility between the issues on which a group is working if consistency is to be maintained and a clear identity developed. A group might be fighting to prevent a freeway being driven through their suburb and working to develop recreational facilities in their area contemporaneously – or they might be attempting to stop industry polluting a river and attempting to encourage alternative ecologically sensitive industries to set up in their town. There is a consistency between these issues.
A choice most community workers have to confront is the question “are they working in the interests of the powerful or the powerless in their community”. If, as I hope, they choose to work with and in the interests of the powerless then this will define, in large part, their relationship with powerful people and groups in their area. To what extent do community workers relate to and compromise with powerful people and organisations in their neighbourhoods? It is unreasonable to assume that all people in their town with wealth, status and power are the forces of darkness yet most will constitute the forces they are fighting. If you are working with poor peoples’ organisations then the extent to which you compromise with rich people undermines the trust that poor people should place in you. But it must be remembered that even Kari Marx had to rely on Frederick Engels’ family wealth to sustain himself and his family.
The old slogan “Think globally and act locally” is seductively attractive to community workers who want to maintain a clear progressive ideological focus; yet the maintenance of ideological purity is the very thing which divides many a community group. In What is to Be Done? Lenin railed against those he accused of being overly concerned about the economic conditions of the working class instead of concentrating on their political education (Lenin circa 1930 p. 165).
Without a clear ideology community work often degenerates into mindless activity easily deflected. Organising to get low income earners better treatment at the local welfare office might be a good thing in itself but without a clear commitment to developing an inclusive equitable society how does a group decide what is “better” treatment.
The temptation is to stop once the clear abuses of clients end – but this is not an act of liberation it is an act of containment. The other side of this coin is that it is that low income earners who have to find an accommodation with local welfare officials. It is they who live day by day vulnerable to the excesses of officials. It is they who receive the crumbs which drop off the welfare table, therefore it is they who must decide what battles to fight, with whom and for how long.
In 1996 it would seem that Labor was on the nose, working class and middle Australia did not share Keating’s vision of incorporation into Asia, as Brian Toohey said, after the March 2 election, the last time Australia was opened up to the world on such a scale was in 1788 and no one would argue that this benefited all the people who were here then (Toohey 1996). In the 1996 election racism was the issue which put the icing on the cake for the opposition. Keating was associated with the Mabo decision and had set up the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Inquiry into the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families. The informed public had witnessed Bob Katter screeching about “femo-Nazis and slanty eyed ideologues” and his playing on the belief that Aborigines received massive benefits from the welfare system. This point was reinforced by the new member for Oxley (Meryment 1996, Johnstone 1996, 7.30 Report 7/3/96, Background Briefing 17/3/96). Graham Campbell retained his seat of Kaigoorlie after being disendorsed by the Labor Party for racism directed primarily towards Asian immigrants. Robert Tickner the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs lost his seat with a swing 4% higher than the New South Wales average.
Let’s say you are working with a community group trying to ensure that Aboriginal children do not continue to be disappeared from their families and from their community. Unless you and your community understand the depth of racism, particularly racism directed at the Indigenous people of this country, you will be placed behind the eight ball when you try to prevent any child being taken “by the hard cops (police) or soft cops (welfare)”. Certainly a simple understanding of hegemonic forces in this country like racism, without an equally critical appreciation of the particular circumstances of this child and this family won’t equip you to fight in the Children’s Court in any particular case. It is a case of having to understand both the global and the local aspects of the situation. Settling for an appreciation of just one level of understanding will undermine any community effort in which you are involved.
Conclusion
In order to build an opposition capable of confronting powerful forces in any society determined to push through with their agenda, you must start with an analysis expressed in words and concepts which can be understood by ordinary people (Glaser, B. & Strauss, A. 1967). The concepts you employ need to make sense in your community not just illuminate the class consciousness of left over Marxist eggheads and other wackerdemics. Though you are attempting to build opposition it must concentrate on positives: if you want to stop a factory polluting a river then concentrate on the benefits of clean water, improved health, the potential to reinvigorate wildlife diversity, and create more accessible recreational facilities. This should of course go hand in hand with forecasts of the destructive effects of allowing the factory to continue to pollute.
If you are trying to prevent a governmentadopting even more targeted forms of
income maintenance, introducing more stringent activity testing to qualify for unemployment benefits, or adopting other presuming policies in relation to income maintenance then you need to convince people of the need to introduce universal income guarantees in order to free people’s creativity and increase their liberty (Goodin 1992, VCOSS & Good Shepherd 1995, Watts 1995).
The analysis has to be thorough, it must confront negatives with positives, it must be clear and the tactics and strategies chosen need to be exciting and innovative. The entire campaign must be militant, inclusive, fun, supporting and supportive. And finally, you must be prepared to throw all your energy into it and keep at it.
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Lenin, V. (circa 1930) What Is To Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement. Sydney, Modern.
Littlemore, S. (1996) Media Report. ABC, Radio National 18 th March.
Meryment, E. (1996) “Aboriginal mum challenges her new MP.” Courier Mail
5 March, p. 1.
National Aboriginal Health Strategy Working Party (1989) A National Aboriginal Health Strategy. Canberra, AGPS.
Omerod, P. (1994) The Death of Economics. London, Faber & Faber.
Rees, S. & Rodley, G. (1995) The Human Costs of Managerialism. Leichhardt, Pluto.
Rees, S., Rodley, G. & Stilwell, F. (1993) Beyond the Market. Leichhardt, Pluto.
Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody (1991) National Report. Vol. 1-5. Canberra, AGPS.
Salvaris, M. (1988) Canberra: Planning A Fair Community. Canberra, ACT Administration. 7.30 Report (1996) ABC T.V. March 7.
Stilwell, F. (1993) Economic Inequality. Leichhardt, Pluto.
Toohey, B. (1996) “Peter Thompson’s Breakfast Program” Radio National, ABC
4th. March.
Tomlinson, J. (1995) “Building a real workers welfare state.” Paper given at the Asia – Pacific Regional Social Services Conference, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, November.
Tomlinson, J. (1996) “Citizenship and Sovereignty.” Australian Journal of Social Issues. Vol. 31, No. 1, Feb.
Tomlinson, J. & Wesley-Smith, R..(1994) “East Timor; 20 years of ALP Betrayal.” Green Left. 14 September, p. 32 & p. 9.
United Nations (1948) Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. 9 th December.
Van Parijs, P. (ed.) (1992) Arguing For Basic Income. London, Verso.
VCOSS & Good Shepherd (1 995) Income Support in an Open Economy. Basic Income Revisited. Melbourne, VCOSS & Good Shepherd.
Vintila, P, Phillimore, J & Newman, P. (1992) Markets Morals & Manifestos. Murdoch, Institute for Science & Technology Policy.
Watts, R. (1995) “Unemployment and Citizenship:” in Hicks, R., Creed, P. Patton, W. & Tomlinson, J. (eds.) Unemployment: Developments and
Transitions. Academic, Brisbane.
The Liberals’ Family Policy
We’ll decide which family members come to this country.
We’ll decide the manner in which they come.
We’ll decide who is a refugee
And who’ll be sent home to face the gun.
Written in 2005 not published.
The military solution
It’s a war on terror
from forty thousand feet.
Dropping bombs
is pretty bloody neat.
You don’t see
faces in the street.
Who cares if
it ends in our defeat…….
We can fight again somewhere else.
Written in 2002.
The News
First Published in Al-Moharer 19/4/2005 Vol. 221
http://al-moharer.net/mohhtm/j-tomlinson221.htm
We start tonight with live coverage of a dead pope.
Victorian police shoot another civilian.
A military helicopter on a mercy mission crashes –
medals all round.
Another 42 thousand poor people died of starvation today.
Janjaweed militias continue to kill in Darfur – we continue to ignore it.
The price of oil rises. Corporate profits lift.
A bank sacks more workers. The stock market soars.
Hope of releasing asylum seekers from concentration camps plummets.
Indigenous people continue to die 20 years earlier than other Australians.
George Bush continues to spread democracy –
under the tracks of Abraham tanks.
John Howard declares he intends to be sincerely insincere again.
Australia is sending more troops to help steal Iraqi oil.
Australia receives $1 million each day from the sale of East Timor’s oil.
Now it’s time for the business, sport and weather reports.
The Northern Territory In(ter)vasion
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate
Posted Wednesday, 14 October 2009
The Federal Howard Liberal Coalition Government, with Mal Brough as Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, launched the Northern Territory Intervention in Aboriginal communities on June 21, 2007. They claimed to be acting to save the children from alcohol-fueled violence and pedophilia and to be protecting women from violence and being humbugged for money.
The then Federal Government pointed to the failure of the NT Government to respond to The Little Children are Sacred Report as the justification for the intervention. Notably the government needed to suspend the Racial Discrimination Act in order to control welfare payments to Aborigines without affecting white welfare recipients. The army, police, welfare officers and medical staff were rushed in to communities.
It resulted in a tragic farce with Brough threatening to have doctors conduct forced physical examinations of children to see if they had been sexually assaulted. On some communities there were doctors and nurses employed by the intervention examining children who had already seen doctors at the local Indigenous medical clinic just down the street. While other communities, which had no health clinics, were being told they’d have to wait.
Some critics of the intervention saw it as the last throw of the dice of a dying government in the run-up to the 2007 Federal election (Tomlinson, J. (2007) “We are having a ‘save the Aboriginal children’ blitzkrieg”, On Line Opinion). Of the early critical interpretations, the most prescient was Coercive Reconciliation, a collection of essays edited by Jon Altman and Melinda Hinkson: their far-sighted predictions warned of the disruption, dislocation and disappointment to which many Aboriginal communities would be subjected (Tomlinson, J. (2008) February 20 “220 Years of saving the children”, On Line Opinion).
Throughout most of the last 200 years of Australian frontier history (once the invasion of Aboriginal land has resulted in near total dispossession of the original owners) five main sub-themes have been played out:
- stealing women for sexual and/housekeeping services;
- forcing men into unpaid or poorly remunerated labour;
- segregating surplus labour on reserves in order to prevent them becoming an obstacle to white “pioneers” accumulating wealth and land;
- “dispersing” troublemakers by armed police; and finally
- saving Aboriginal children from the “savagery” of their community.
From the first decade of the 20th century many of the police and mission “protectors” of Aborigines adopted, what Arthur Daly would describe as “a nice little earner”. They began pocketing much of the money paid by employers into the bank accounts of Aboriginal people which the “protectors” held in trust.
The first three sub-themes have fallen from favour in recent times. The fourth is now left largely to police tactical response units responding to riots that occur in the wake of isolated police killings at places like Redfern and Palm Island. This leaves governments having to fall back on the idea of saving Aboriginal children from the “savagery” of their community.
The Labor Opposition in the run-up to the 2007 election was determined not to frighten the horses. Rudd set out to prove he was a born-again fiscal conservative, a steady hand on the tiller, who would ensure that the unions would not get in the way of capitalist accumulation. Aspirational voters were assured they could sleep soundly in their middle class bedrooms. Rudd even promised to maintain the intervention for at least a year.
It was generally assumed by progressive voters that after a year the moral panic stirred up by Howard and Brough would evaporate and Labor would be able to get on with implementing decent child welfare, housing, employment, community development and self-determination policies in Indigenous communities. It was further assumed that the Rudd Labor Government would be less jackbooted in its implementation of the intervention. How wrong we were.
Rudd is a much cleverer political operator in the area of Indigenous affairs than his predecessor. Unlike Howard, he is not rusted on to long lost symbolic views of colonial Australia. On February 13, 2008, he made a national apology to the “stolen generations” in the Federal Parliament. It was an apology which entailed no promise of compensation thereby avoiding angering the rump of white racists who remain in the Labor Party. He followed this, on April 3, 2009, by endorsing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples yet has done little to honour such commitments.
He runs the danger that he will come to be seen as paying lip service to the symbolic issues but only coming-up with empty gestures.
Rudd appointed Jenny Macklin as his Minister for Indigenous Affairs and she claimed the administration of her portfolio would be based on evidenced-based research. She persevered with the NT Intervention in much the same manner as her Liberal predecessor who, incidentally, lost his seat at the 2007 election. After 12 months she appointed Peter Yu to head a review into the intervention (Gartrell, A. (2008) “Peter Yu to head NT intervention”, The Age, June 6).
The review recommended winding back the hard-line aspects of the intervention particularly ending the compulsory income management system and only quarantining welfare payments of those parents who actually neglected their children. It recommended the reinstatement of the Racial Discrimination Act and the payment of compensation to those communities who had their land compulsorily acquired. (Karvelas, P. & Toohey, P. (2008) “Pressure on Government to soften the Northern Territory intervention”, October 14).
The Rudd government dug in its heels and said it intended persevering with the intervention in its existing form for at least another year. Macklin claimed that conversations she had had with store managers and some Central Australian women’s groups led her to believe that the intervention was working (Tomlinson, J. (2008) “Mad Macklin follows Mal Brough”, On Line Opinion). It seems to have escaped the Minister’s attention that such anecdotal recollections of conversations do not constitute evidence-based research in the realm of social science.
In August 2009 the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Human Rights, Professor James Anaya completed an 11-day tour of Indigenous communities. He found that the measures of the NT Intervention:
… overtly discriminate against Aboriginal peoples, infringe their right of self-determination and stigmatise already stigmatised communities.
And that:
The emergency response is incompatible with Australia’s obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination and the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights; treaties to which Australia is a party. (Hawley, S. (2009) ABC, PM program “UN Official slams NT intervention”, August 27).
National Indigenous Times reported on September 16 that no new houses have been built in the Northern Territory since the 2007 election despite expenditure of $45 million. Now that is what I consider is evidence-based research.
Running in parallel with the NT Intervention is the Queensland Government’s own version of a “welfare reform” experiment. The $48 million experiment (funded by Queensland and Federal governments) has been championed by Noel Pearson from the Cape York Institute. On April 2, 2008, doctoral student Philip Martin suggested that, “By focusing primarily on community dysfunctions and individuals’ deficits …and imposing … behavioural obligations which tie Aboriginal people to services they already know to be … inappropriate, Pearson’s Family Responsibilities Commissions (FRCs) threaten to add yet another complicating factor to the bizarre daily spectacle of law and order in communities.”
On September 30, 2009, Noel Pearson declared the welfare experiment to be a success because the Family Responsibilities Commissions’ review had found that:
… school attendance has increased in Aurukun, which had an average attendance rate of 37 per cent 12 months ago and now is achieving an average rate of 63 per cent, while Mossman Gorge rose from 60.9 per cent to 81.6 per cent.
Attendance at schools in Coen and Hope Vale have experienced a slight reduction, with Coen’s attendance rate falling from 96.8 per cent to 93.6 per cent, and Hope Vale’s attendance falling marginally from 87.6 per cent to 86.9 per cent. Those two communities have remarkably high rates of indigenous attendance compared with poor attendance rates in remote schools across the nation. (Robinson, N. & Elks, S. “Welfare tough love works as quarantining parent payments cuts indigenous truancy”, The Australian.)
Responding to exactly the same report Dr Chris Sarra, an Indigenous educator, who had substantially increased Indigenous children’s attendance when he was the Principal of Cherbourg Community School, questioned Pearson’s analysis of the review.
He said: “If you focus on Aurukun, there are serious questions there about whether the improvement in attendance is the result of the welfare reforms or whether it’s the result of the injection or the investment in quality leadership and quality teaching”, which was part of the stronger, smarter educational program Dr Sarra is helping to implement at Aurukun and some other communities in Queensland.
The “stronger, smarter way is about developing exciting school cultures that embrace the positive sense of Aboriginal student identity, it’s about working cooperatively and respectfully with communities, it’s about high expectations of … teacher-student relations. (Guest, A. 2009 “Dispute over improved school attendance”, The World Today, ABC, September 30)
Such diametrically opposed interpretations of social welfare experiments are not uncommon and this is all the more reason why the public should be very wary when ideologically driven Ministers claim to be making policy decisions based on “evidence”. They are often simply choosing the most politically convenient interpretation of the statistics. To pretend that Macklin’s interpretation of the intervention is based on evidenced-based research is simply a nonsense.
On October 1, Natasha Robinson revealed that “Not one parent who chronically fails to send their child to school has had their welfare payment suspended under a federal government trial aimed at lifting woeful school attendance” at six schools in the Northern Territory. This trial has been proceeding all this year. (“No welfare cuts for parental slackers”, The Australian). It would seem that the public servants are smarter than Minister Macklin who announced the intended punitive action against truancy in January.
The intervention has resulted in thousands of Indigenous Territorians having half their welfare payments “income managed” despite the fact that they properly care for their children and ensure they go to school. Governments can only apply such policies in Aboriginal communities because they have suspended the Racial Discrimination Act.
The great pity is that no one in authority in the Rudd government has bothered to investigate a very different welfare trial being conducted by the Lutheran Church in co-operation with other national Namibian non government agencies. They selected the small township of Otjivero-Omitara largely populated by displaced farm workers where alcoholism, petty crime, poverty and low school attendance was rife. In this trial “All residents below the age of 60 years receive a Basic Income Grant of Namibian $100 per person per month, without any conditions attached (p. 2).” (Haarmann, C., Haarmann, D., Jauch, H., Shindondola-Mote, H., Nattrass, N., van Niekerk, I. & Samson, M. (2009) Making the Difference! The BIG in Namibia. Basic Income Grant Coalition, Windhoek.) People over 60 get a government aged pension.
After the first year “food poverty” in the community fell from 76 per cent of residents to 37 per cent, the rate of those engaged in income-generating activities rose from 44 per cent to 55 per cent and underweight children declined from 42 per cent to 17 per cent. Before the payment of the Basic Income grant almost half the children did not attend school now the parents of 90 per cent of children have paid their school fees, substantially more residents visit the local health clinic than before, average household debt has fallen from N$1215 to N$ 772 and crime rates fell by 42 per cent. The criticism that the Basic Income Grant is leading to increased alcoholism is not supported by the empirical evidence (ibid pp. 13-15). These remarkable results were obtained without any form of compulsion.
The leading social scientists conducting this evidence-based research in Namibia would, no doubt, feel that we have a long way to go in Australia while our welfare Ministers are tied to concepts of reciprocal obligation deriving from a 19th century poor law mentality.
The saga of the Intervention will continue until Prime Minister Rudd appoints a competent Minister for Indigenous Affairs who can relate to Aborigines in a way which respects their dignity, listens to what it is they have to say, and upholds their rights to have the same protection against racial discrimination as other Australians. Such a Minister might even try to act in ways which are compatible with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The on-going struggle
Mourn not the dead…
But rather mourn the apathetic throng
The cowed and meek
Who see the world’s great anguish and its wrong
And dare not speak!
Ralph Chaplin (a US workers’ rights advocate and conscientious objector World War I) cited by Robert Green, A thorn in their side: The Hilda Murrell Murder. Rata Books Christchurch October 2011.
The other side of terrorism
Bin Laden is my brother-
the Red Army Faction my friend-
Bader Meinhoff my cell mate-
not because they’ve killed and maimed
but because we share a concern for humanity.
You may not appreciate our solidarity.
You may deny our rationality
but each of us dared stand with the underdog.
The Pacific solution
First published in Al-Moharer 24/8/2004.
http://www.al-moharer.net/moh190.htm
It sounds so reassuring to talk about the Pacific solution.
Images of peaceful coral atolls and sun-drenched beaches
with dugout canoes which children paddle on still blue waters,
and coconut trees sway in gentle breezes whilst island women dance.
Yet we recoil in horror at the mention of “the final solution”
because we associate that metaphor with Adolph Hitler:
we are reminded of the choking gasses of Auschwitch,
and the hunger and terror of the inmates in Buchenwald.
The Pacific solution is no final solution.
Though it may seem an eternity to those in barbed-wire enclosures,
three years separated from their family,
daily tramping bulldozed coral rubble.
The Pacific solution will not last, it cannot last, its time is past.
The Australian people will throw John Howard overboard,
they are tired of deceit and no longer want this liar as overlord.
It’s time to vote for peace, justice and decency at last.
The problem with pre-emptive strikes
Written in 2003
George Bush justifies his attack on Iraq as necessary to:
- prevent Iraq attacking another country,
- get rid of weapons of mass destruction, and
- disarm that country.
Well Mr Bush you are the leader of the United States of America. Should the US attack Iraq this would constitute an attack on another country.
The United States has more weapons of mass destruction than any other country on earth. It will use depleted uranium, long distance missiles, cluster bombs, electro-magnetic bombs, chemical weapons and other mass killing weapons in its attack on Iraq. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people will be killed in the event of a war against that country.
I suppose that the United States military can claim that its launching its Cruise missiles at Iraq is one way to get rid of its weapons of mass destruction. But it does not explain why it is ok for a super power to use weapons of mass destruction but totally illegitimate for other countries to even have them.
On the 22nd of January 2003 George Bush said he was tired of Saddam Hussein stalling for eleven years on disarmament. It is possible that the Iraqi people are tired of 11 years of sanctions and blockades which the United Nations calculates have resulted in the malnourishment of the majority of the population and the deaths of more that half a million Iraqi children under the age of five. The Iraqi people might just be growing a little tired of having their air defence systems bombed by British and American planes on a daily basis.
For most of my life the cold war between Russia and the West was a testimony to failure of both the West and Russia to disarm. We somehow managed to get through that period without the Americans or Russians obliterating the world with their nuclear weapons. Someone should tell Bush that stalling on disarmament may not be peace but it sure is a lot more peaceful than invading another country. This “stalling” actually means that Iraq has not invaded another country for 11 years. It is probably useful to remember the second last time that Iraq went to war the US was their ally.
Most independent observers are suggesting that the planned US invasion of Iraq has more to do with controlling Iraq’s oil than disarming Iraq. If this is so, then the Howard Government, by agreeing to supply troops to assist with Bush’s attack on Iraq without United Nations authorisation, is making our troops firstly guilty of murder and secondly complicit in the theft of Iraq’s resources.
If we, as a nation, go along with this pre-emptive invasion of Iraq in breach of agreed international conventions and United Nations protocols, then to whom do we turn should some other country decide that we should be disarmed because we present a threat in the region? Australians once foolishly believed that our great “friend” the United States would come to our aid if we are attacked or need military assistance. We saw that when it came to the liberation of East Timor that our American friends did not come to our assistance because it did not suit their wider geo-political interests at that time. A wise public will remember the lessons of Timor.
If we feel we can ignore the opinion of the rest of the world and invade other countries when it suits the US, then we should not be surprised if we become the target of increased military operations by either formal or informal agencies.
The racist slaughter of the people of Gaza
Written in 2009 but not published.
Some of my best friends are Jewish
but none of them are Zionists.
Israel’s attack on the people of Gaza is not a war
it is a pogrom – the killing is too disproportionate;
no sane person would glorify it by suggesting it is a just conflict.
It is a holocaust amongst the refugee camps of Gaza.
There is no Israeli honour to be won.
The Israeli military are not soldiers and airmen
they are the murderers of children and their families.
It is a collective punishment of Palestinians
after all they voted for a leadership which Israel can’t control.
Rabbis infected with religious rabies
encourage reservists to kill babies.
Massacres consume the living,
massacres just feed the grieving.
We haven’t forgotten Shetila or Shabra;
we remember Mei Lai, Hiroshima, Nagasagi;
we still speak about the sinking of the Luisitania and the Belgrano;
we can’t sleep for the crying of the children of Rwanda;
we are awakened by the cries of the starving children of the Congo;
we are sickened by the rape of the women of Darfur;
or the children blown to pieces in Lebanon by cluster bombs.
Now we have more slaughter in the back alleys of Gaza city to keep us awake.
I yearn to sleep, and wish you had the humility to weep.
Surely after sixty years of Israeli ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their own land
it is time to call a halt, to reflect, to seek forgiveness.
Surely your god does not need any more settlers to dispossess
still more Palestinians from their land, their olive trees or their houses.
There is Prime Minister Olmert,
The mad yahoo, Benjamin Netanyahu
the ruthless Ehud Barak, Minister for Killing
and the sly Shimon Peres.
They are always prepared to kill
apart from their cunning it’s their only skill
nothing matters to them so long as they can hold on to power
Tzipi Livni, Foreign Minister;
Tzipi Livni, something sinister.
Some said she should be PM.
that was enough to encourage her
to brutalise and to condemn.
She has the face of a young woman
but the curse of Dorian Gray
has visited her and now holds sway.
To know what her god thinks of her soul
just look at her heavily lined scrawny neck –
the neck of an old disfigured hag.
The plastic surgeons may have saved her face
but they can’t save her soul or the rest of her.
In some ways Tzipi Livni is a metaphor for all of Israel.
Her ruthlessness may kill Hamas leaders and Palestinian women,
it can suppress and obliterate angry young men with homemade rockets,
it can delay the tide of justice, it can interfere with the United Nations,
it can pull the feathers out of the wings of peace doves, but
it can’t ensure enduring security for Israel and the rest of the Middle East.
The task of creating a peaceful Middle East requires something more than ruthlessness –
it requires courage and trust, humility and foresight, forgiveness and honesty:
it demands intellect and justice, patience and understanding and something else –
it needs love to bind the wounds.
The real class war
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate
Posted Monday, 9 May 2016
The Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has accused the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, of engaging in class warfare. The basis of his accusation relates to comments Shorten made about tax breaks given to those earning above $80,000 a year and tax breaks to medium sized businesses and Labor’s policy of restricting negative-gearing to those with existing negatively geared homes and continuing negative-gearing only to new homes in 2017.
The Prime Minister thinks that Bill Shorten is attacking aspiration, taking a wrecking ball to Liberal fiscal rectitude and is about to end civilisation, as we know it by not applauding Treasurer, Scott Morrison’s “jobs and growth” budget.
A closer inspection of the 2016 budget might just reveal some infelicities of style. Perhaps even some significant shortcomings. There may even be some legitimate grounds to believe that the ghosts of ex-Treasurer, Joe Hockey’s 2014 budget still reside in the Government’s budget.
Just for starters
The Government has retained most of the $80 billion cuts to health and education foreshadowed in Hockey’s budget. It has come up with $1.3 billion to partially fund the proposed Gonski school reforms.
It has extended by a further two years the freeze to the GP rebate for bulk-billed consultations. This will, as Professor Brian Owler, President of the Australian Medical Association says, cause many General Medical Practices to cease bulk-billing and thereby harm the health of those who are poor and/or chronically ill.
The 2014 Hockey Budget had large tax cuts for the wealthy and small tax cuts for those who are struggling. The 2016 Budget has tax cuts for those earning over $80,000 annually and nothing for those earning less than that.
There are cuts for some families earning less than $80,000 but they are not tax cuts – they are cuts to family payments. The Labor website notes that:
- Individuals who earn the most will get a double tax cut – someone on $1,000,000 will get a $16,715 tax cut tonight while three quarters of Australian taxpayers receive absolutely nothing.
- A couple with a single income of $65,000 with three children in primary school are $3,034 worse off a year – and receive no tax cuts.
- A single mother with an income of $87,000 with two children in high school is $4,463 worse off per year as a result of tonight’s Budget.
By any measure such disparities in the treatment of low income earners and the well-off cannot be described as equitable, just, fair, even-handed, egalitarian or deserved. Nor would such unequal treatment be considered conscionable, fitting or without prejudice. Clearly Morrison is rewarding those most likely to donate to the coffers of the Liberal Party.
There are words that could adequately describe Morrison’s budget treatment of the big end of town and the battlers. The words that first come to mind are invidious, self-serving, improper, egregious, distasteful and, dare I say it, unjust.
The budget throws billions at the contractors charged with running the concentration camps that the government incorrectly calls the “Pacific Solution”. The refugees and asylum seekers incarcerated in these hellholes are slowly but surely being driven mad. Two people detained on Nauru have self-immolated in recent days. One died and as I write the other is struggling for her life. While Dutton without a shred of evidence claims it is not the situation that the refugees find themselves in that is causing them to self-harm but the urging of asylum seeker advocates. These camps are not peaceful and they are not a solution. The Australian Broadcasting Commission’s program “The Minefield” explored this tragedy in an insightful way on the 5th of May 2016.
It would be cheaper to place them on Christmas Island. Cheaper still to place them in camps on the mainland and much cheaper to place them in the community and give them the right to work while their refugee claims are being assessed.
To add insult to injury, a further $224 million has again been taken from Australia’s foreign aid. As Robin Davies points out:
In the 2015 budget, for financial year 2015-16, Australia’s aid was cut by A$1 billion – a massive 20%. …
The big drop in Australia’s generosity is not merely a relative one. It has much more to do with Australia’s cuts than with other countries’ increases. Between 2012 and 2016, Australia’s foreign aid as a share of national income has fallen steeply from 0.36% to 0.23%.
Despite our excessive bastardry overseas the budget does not totally ignore the poor here for as ANU Professor Peter Whiteford says:
Also built into the forward estimates is a range of savings measures that have not yet been passed by the Senate. These include cuts to family payments for low-income families, reductions in Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme concessions, the higher age pension eligibility age, the one-month waiting period for young people to access income support, and lower payments for many young unemployed people.
These policies of infinite wisdom mainly stem from the 2014 budget.
What is the wash-up?
From Malcolm Fraser to Malcolm Turnbull every Liberal Prime Minister has repeatedly told us that Australia has to live within our means. They frequently suggest that there is a direct comparison between a household budget and the federal budget.
Morrison in his 2016 budget laid out a blueprint for dropping company tax to 25% by 2026. But the budget papers did not reveal what such magnanimity towards the big end of town would cost. David Speers, political editor of Sky News, asked the Prime Minister what such largesse would cost over the ten years. Turnbull refused to provide an estimate but insisted it was affordable because the budget predicted a return to surplus by 2021.
The secretary of the Treasury, John Fraser, told the Senate estimates hearing on the 6th May that Treasury thought the cost of the company tax cuts would cost $48.2 billion.
Several other economists have suggested amounts well in excess of $50 billion. More alarmingly there have been reports that:
The world’s second biggest rating agency has once again cast doubt on the government’s promised return to budget surplus, projecting a debt and deficit blowout as the cost of federal spending programs overwhelms tax revenue.
It is important to realise that since the global recession rocked our 2010 budget treasurers have been claiming to be about to return the budget to surplus but have not succeeded in doing so.
But when it comes to hospitals, dental health, nursing homes, social security, community services, schools, universities and homes for the homeless that is where we have to watch our pennies.
The real class war
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate
Posted Monday, 9 May 2016
The Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has accused the Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, of engaging in class warfare. The basis of his accusation relates to comments Shorten made about tax breaks given to those earning above $80,000 a year and tax breaks to medium sized businesses and Labor’s policy of restricting negative-gearing to those with existing negatively geared homes and continuing negative-gearing only to new homes in 2017.
The Prime Minister thinks that Bill Shorten is attacking aspiration, taking a wrecking ball to Liberal fiscal rectitude and is about to end civilisation, as we know it by not applauding Treasurer, Scott Morrison’s “jobs and growth” budget.
A closer inspection of the 2016 budget might just reveal some infelicities of style. Perhaps even some significant shortcomings. There may even be some legitimate grounds to believe that the ghosts of ex-Treasurer, Joe Hockey’s 2014 budget still reside in the Government’s budget.
Just for starters
The Government has retained most of the $80 billion cuts to health and education foreshadowed in Hockey’s budget. It has come up with $1.3 billion to partially fund the proposed Gonski school reforms.
It has extended by a further two years the freeze to the GP rebate for bulk-billed consultations. This will, as Professor Brian Owler, President of the Australian Medical Association says, cause many General Medical Practices to cease bulk-billing and thereby harm the health of those who are poor and/or chronically ill.
The 2014 Hockey Budget had large tax cuts for the wealthy and small tax cuts for those who are struggling. The 2016 Budget has tax cuts for those earning over $80,000 annually and nothing for those earning less than that.
There are cuts for some families earning less than $80,000 but they are not tax cuts – they are cuts to family payments. The Labor website notes that:
- Individuals who earn the most will get a double tax cut – someone on $1,000,000 will get a $16,715 tax cut tonight while three quarters of Australian taxpayers receive absolutely nothing.
- A couple with a single income of $65,000 with three children in primary school are $3,034 worse off a year – and receive no tax cuts.
- A single mother with an income of $87,000 with two children in high school is $4,463 worse off per year as a result of tonight’s Budget.
By any measure such disparities in the treatment of low income earners and the well-off cannot be described as equitable, just, fair, even-handed, egalitarian or deserved. Nor would such unequal treatment be considered conscionable, fitting or without prejudice. Clearly Morrison is rewarding those most likely to donate to the coffers of the Liberal Party.
There are words that could adequately describe Morrison’s budget treatment of the big end of town and the battlers. The words that first come to mind are invidious, self-serving, improper, egregious, distasteful and, dare I say it, unjust.
The budget throws billions at the contractors charged with running the concentration camps that the government incorrectly calls the “Pacific Solution”. The refugees and asylum seekers incarcerated in these hellholes are slowly but surely being driven mad. Two people detained on Nauru have self-immolated in recent days. One died and as I write the other is struggling for her life. While Dutton without a shred of evidence claims it is not the situation that the refugees find themselves in that is causing them to self-harm but the urging of asylum seeker advocates. These camps are not peaceful and they are not a solution. The Australian Broadcasting Commission’s program “The Minefield” explored this tragedy in an insightful way on the 5th of May 2016.
It would be cheaper to place them on Christmas Island. Cheaper still to place them in camps on the mainland and much cheaper to place them in the community and give them the right to work while their refugee claims are being assessed.
To add insult to injury, a further $224 million has again been taken from Australia’s foreign aid. As Robin Davies points out:
In the 2015 budget, for financial year 2015-16, Australia’s aid was cut by A$1 billion – a massive 20%. …
The big drop in Australia’s generosity is not merely a relative one. It has much more to do with Australia’s cuts than with other countries’ increases. Between 2012 and 2016, Australia’s foreign aid as a share of national income has fallen steeply from 0.36% to 0.23%.
Despite our excessive bastardry overseas the budget does not totally ignore the poor here for as ANU Professor Peter Whiteford says:
Also built into the forward estimates is a range of savings measures that have not yet been passed by the Senate. These include cuts to family payments for low-income families, reductions in Pharmaceutical Benefit Scheme concessions, the higher age pension eligibility age, the one-month waiting period for young people to access income support, and lower payments for many young unemployed people.
These policies of infinite wisdom mainly stem from the 2014 budget.
What is the wash-up?
From Malcolm Fraser to Malcolm Turnbull every Liberal Prime Minister has repeatedly told us that Australia has to live within our means. They frequently suggest that there is a direct comparison between a household budget and the federal budget.
Morrison in his 2016 budget laid out a blueprint for dropping company tax to 25% by 2026. But the budget papers did not reveal what such magnanimity towards the big end of town would cost. David Speers, political editor of Sky News, asked the Prime Minister what such largesse would cost over the ten years. Turnbull refused to provide an estimate but insisted it was affordable because the budget predicted a return to surplus by 2021.
The secretary of the Treasury, John Fraser, told the Senate estimates hearing on the 6th May that Treasury thought the cost of the company tax cuts would cost $48.2 billion.
Several other economists have suggested amounts well in excess of $50 billion. More alarmingly there have been reports that:
The world’s second biggest rating agency has once again cast doubt on the government’s promised return to budget surplus, projecting a debt and deficit blowout as the cost of federal spending programs overwhelms tax revenue.
It is important to realise that since the global recession rocked our 2010 budget treasurers have been claiming to be about to return the budget to surplus but have not succeeded in doing so.
Morrison and Turnbull have both claimed we have a spending problem and that we don’t need to raise the level of net tax. But when it comes to 12 new submarines or strike fighters rounding up the readies is not a problem. Likewise overly generous tax cuts for business presents no problem. Allowing the well-off to continue to rort negative-gearing – that’s the way we protect the perks of the well-off.
But when it comes to hospitals, dental health, nursing homes, social security, community services, schools, universities and homes for the homeless that is where we have to watch our pennies.
The reason Howard stays on as leader
National Indigenous Times. Issue 113 – 7/9/2006
http://www.nit.com.au/Opinion/ story.aspx?id=7739
Now that the hullabaloo surrounding Prime Minister Howard’s decision to remain as Leader of the Liberal Party has died down, the background to that decision can now be revealed. John Howard spoke exclusively to National Indigenous Times about his reasons for staying.
There is a widespread public perception that Howard was desperate to regain the Party’s leadership after Dr John Hewson’s Fightback ended in a knockout and Alexander Downer demonstrated he was not credible on domestic violence by referring to wife-bashing husbands as “the things that batter”.
The Prime Minister assured this intrepid reporter that he never really wanted to lead the Liberal Party again and that the only reason he agreed to do so was to give the Party time to find someone decent to take the helm. Howard revealed that back in 1995 he had considerable qualms about his capacity to provide humane leadership to his Party and the nation.
“I tried then to get Peter Costello to demonstrate to his colleagues and public that he was a capable and courageous leader. I told him that many of my ideas were fast becoming worn-out remnants of a by-gone age and that one and a half to two terms was all that I was prepared to serve” John Howard said.
Mr Howard went on “You may well ask why I am still Leader. Clearly, no-one, who has been watching the way I’ve responded to desperate asylum seekers fleeing persecution in overcrowded boats, would suggest that such policies are a humane response for a civilised, affluent country in the 21st century. Again, when it comes to the stolen generations, self-determination, native title or Indigenous health, any objective observer would declare my response to be more in line with 18th or 19th century thinking than that of the 21st century.”
Your intrepid reporter put it directly to the Prime Minister that Peter Costello had claimed that Howard was desperately clinging to power because he feared that once he stepped down he would lose his relevance. The Prime Minister scoffed “Do you think that any political leader who feared losing office would privatise Telstra, introduce a GST and provide generous tax cuts to the rich at the same time as he was cutting welfare benefits to lone parents and disability support pensioners.”
The Prime Minister raised himself to his full height, declaring “I did all these things trying to alert the Liberal Party to need for a change in leadership. They have not woken up but I have not given up hope, particularly since my new Work Choices campaign directly sets out to attack the battlers.”
Mr Howard added “I have spent most of the last decade desolately searching for someone…anyone capable of replacing me. At one stage, I became so despondent I even considered Tony Abbott…but just imagine Labor going on day after day about the comedy team of Abbott and Costello leading the Party. Bronwyn’s kerosene baths knocked her out of the running. Admiral Nelson had to have two goes at bringing one dead soldier back from Iraq.
“But Mr. Howard”, your reporter insisted, “if you really wanted to hand over the reins to someone else why not just resign and let the Liberal Parliamentary Party vote for a new leader?”
Tears whelmed up in the Prime Minister’s eyes as he confided “I don’t want to make the same mistake as Sir Robert recklessly did when he handed over to Harold Holt. The Liberal Party must be run by a strong leader and that is why I have been trying to groom the Treasurer as my successor. He’s passed many of the tests I have set for him and I’ve told him there is only one remaining hurdle for him to cross. It is a test which will finally prove whether or not he has the stamina to swim against the tide. I have told Peter I will step down if he passes…but he is reluctant to take the test.
“What is the test Mr. Howard?” your reporter inquired.
The Prime Minister said “I want him to demonstrate that he is capable of going spear-fishing at Cheviot Beach, near Portsea, on a day of my choosing.”
The right-wing Christian voter
First published in Al Moharer Vol. 203 No. 213 1/12/204
http://www.al-moharer.net/moh203/j-tomlinson203.htm
also by the Synaptic Graffiti Collective. 20/4/2005
http://scart69.net/synapticgraffiti/Pages/therightwingchristain.html
Born again, praise the Lord,
Jesus is my friend.
When I die I’ll go to heaven,
my life will never end.
If it’s true it’s in the Bible
Mathew, Mark, Luke and John
for the answers we are liable
to move this world along.
I want a life that’s simple
that will really set me free
to do what I want when I want-
that’s my new theology.
Born again, praise the Lord,
Jesus is my friend.
When I die I’ll go to heaven,
my life will never end.
I don’t love that other Jesus,
Jesus of Galilee,
who asked us all to stand up tall
and to love humanity.
I don’t love that other Jesus,
who’d turn the other cheek,
who would fight the rich and powerful
for the humble and the meek.
Born again, praise the Lord,
Jesus is my friend.
When I die I’ll go to heaven,
my life will never end.
I don’t love that other Jesus,
who spurned the money makers.
I’ve fallen for a new God,
the God of the money takers.
The poor are down, they’re down and out
and the homeless have no clout.
None of the struggling find a friend.
So don’t ask for charity- it may offend.
Born again, praise the Lord,
Jesus is my friend.
When I die I’ll go to heaven,
my life will never end.
The rise of the ‘precariat’ and the decline of living standards
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate
Posted Wednesday, 20 August 2014
Guy Standing is Professor of Development Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. As well, he is a co-president of the Basic Income Earth Network. He was for many years a senior researcher with the International Labour Organisation in Geneva. He has written extensively on precarious employment, his best-known book in this area is The Precariat: The new and dangerous class published by Bloomsbury in 2011. This year, Bloomsbury published a sequel entitled A Precariat Charter: From denizens to citizens.
A Precariat Charter is really two books in one volume. The first 126 pages constitute an explanation of how, in the OECD, the uncertainty, insecurity, mass unemployment, the spread of casual employment, the decline of working class solidarity, the hollowing out of the middle class, the stagnation of wages and the disproportionate growth of wealth of the rich and the super rich has occurred since the 1980s, and particularly in the wake of the 2007-8 global recession. He explains the intimate connection between imposition of austerity policies, the rise of what he terms “utilitarian” democracy and expanding inequities and inequalities. He is particularly distressed by the rise in Workfare with its increased impositions of applications for benefits and the growth of precarity traps where “Life is built around queuing, form-filling, providing extensive documentation, frequent reporting for interviews, answering trick questions” and he goes on to say that “taking a low-wage job lowers the probability of obtaining a career job later, a trap made worse by the threat of benefit sanctions if the low-wage job is refused (pp.27-28).”
In the second part of the book, Standing lays out an agenda which the precariat might follow if it wishes to escape the worst excesses of the neo-liberal onslaught which ordinary workers have encountered since the mid- 1970s.
At page 34, he writes:
When the neo-liberal project took off, the defining features were liberalization, which meant opening up national economies to global competition; individualization, which meant re-regulation to curb all forms of collective institution (notably trade unions and occupational guilds); commodification, which meant making as much as possible subject to market forces (notably through the privatization of public services); and fiscal retrenchment, which meant lowering taxes on high incomes and capital.
Throughout the book Standing provides a plethora of examples attesting to his arguments. A couple of striking examples are the fact that “In 1999, China’s exports were less than a third of the USA’s. By 2009, China was the world’s largest exporter (p.37)” and that “the World Bank in 2013 concluded that by 2030 half the global stock of capital will be in today’s developing countries, compared with one-third in 2012…China and India together will account for 38 per cent of global gross investment (p.45).”
In Australia, we have a Treasurer, Joe Hockey, loudly proclaiming that the Age of Entitlement is over and that everyone must contribute to bring the budget back into surplus. But Standing points out that: “In the UK, while the government claimed that all must share cuts to living standards, inequality rose further. Between 2008 and 2012, the richest 1,000 people increased their wealth by 155 billion pounds, more than enough to pay for the government deficit of 119 billion pounds (p 59)”.
Standing notes that:
The moving sentiment of the religious conservative is pity. And as David Hume pointed out, pity is akin to contempt. Losers are failures, worthy of help as long as they show gratitude and earnest endeavour…The road from one thought to the next is well trodden.
By contrast, a progressive starts from a sentiment of compassion. That could be me over there if I made a couple of bad calls or had an accident (p.98).
These alternative approaches to social services are the moral dilemmas of our age: whether to opt for a deserving/undeserving system of workfare saddled with enforced obligations, means-testing and surveillance or to provide a universal income floor as a right of citizenship or permanent residence.
In much of the OECD since the 1980s the values of social solidarity, “compassion, empathy and reciprocity were replaced by pity, contempt and individualism… Ironically, those who claimed to believe in curbing the role of the state led the way in demanding more state regulation of those in need of support… Modern utilitarianism has several guises, but each seems to justify actions in favour of a majority against a minority (pp.101-103)”.
It is of little surprise that Guy Standing opts for an approach based on rights, entitlement and universalism and justifies his approach by relying on five principles:
…a policy… is socially just if (1) it improves the security of the most insecure … (2) it does not impose controls on some groups that are not imposed on the most free groups … (3) it strengthens rights and does not increase the discretionary power of those dealing with citizens … (4) it promotes the capacity to pursue work that is dignifying and rewarding … and (5) it does not impose ecologically damaging externalities (pp. 123-124).
Standing then proceeds to examine 29 separate aspects of life which impinge on those experiencing precarious, casual, insecure employment and underemployment as well as those eking out a living on today’s welfare benefits. By utilising his analysis of what brought us to this point in history and viewing each aspect through the prism of his five principles he builds a useful charter of rights which those in the precariat might do well to fight for.
Take for example Article 25, which argues that:
For workers and the precariat to have an adequate income something like a basic income is essential… The amount should be sufficient to cover basic material needs… for that reason it should be linked to median income, so that it does not freeze a minority in poverty… it must be paid individually…in cash…unconditionally, without behavioural rules… (and) must be universal (pp. 317-318).
He goes on to suggest a moral reason for a basic income is that the wealth of anyone is much more the result of our forebears’ endeavours than our own (p.318-319).
He declares that subsidies to business are distorting, inefficient and fail to assist poor people whereas a universal basic income provides certainty to the low paid and would encourage increased participation in employment because workers are never worse off under such an income guarantee system. “The real disincentive to labour is means-tested benefits, as poverty and precarity traps make it irrational to move from benefits to low-wage labour (p.324).
Guy Standing’s book deserves to be read by anyone who wants to understand how we got from the egalitarianism and optimism of the mid-1970s to where we are now and by all who hanker after a citizenship based on equality, mutuality and freedom.
The treatment of Haneef is beyond belief
Published in Lawyers’ Weekly, 27 July 2007
http://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/articles/23/0C04E923.asp
The principles of modern democracy are rapidly being undermined by laws that place ministerial discretion above due process
On 2 July Dr Mohammed Haneef was detained for questioning under Australia’s terrorism legislation following his second cousins being implicated in an attack on Glasgow’s airport terminal building and a failed car bomb attack in London. An old mobile phone SIM card Dr Haneef had owned was allegedly found in the vehicle that was used in the failed attack on Glasgow airport.
Eleven days after being detained for questioning Dr Mohammed Haneef was charged with recklessly supporting a terrorist organisation. Three days later, Dr Mohammed Haneef was granted bail on a surety of $10,000 and on condition that he reports three times a week to police and stays away from international departure points. He had previously surrendered his passport.
The legislation under which Dr Haneef was held reverses the normal bail presumptions and only allows bail to be granted in “exceptional circumstances”. The magistrate gave eight grounds for finding that “exceptional circumstances” existed. She concluded that the prosecution had not established a direct link between Dr Haneef and a terrorist organisation and that there was no evidence that his SIM card had been used in a terrorist attack.
Australia is dependent on overseas-trained doctors, and this will continue to be so for the next decade. This is particularly so in rural towns. Many of those overseas-trained doctors come from the Indian subcontinent.
The police have raided several overseas trained doctors’ homes and seized files and other documents. They have taken several doctors in for questioning only to have subsequently had to release them as there was no evidence against them.
The current police raids are inspired by Islamophobia or a more generalised racism. The police’s action in rounding up so many people for questioning is hardly an example of intelligently using the draconian provisions of Australia’s terrorism legislation, and it may lead to overseas-trained doctors avoiding Australia.
Abuse of due process
In the afternoon following the court case in which the magistrate held that the prosecution had not provided evidence of a direct link between Dr Haneef and a terrorist organisation, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Kevin Andrews, announced he had, on character grounds, cancelled Dr Haneef’s visa and that Dr Haneef would be taken into immigration detention.
“In particular, a person fails the character test if – and I quote – ‘the person has or has had an association with someone else or with a group or organisation whom the minister reasonably suspects has been involved or is involved in criminal conduct’,” he said.
The minister claims that he had come to this decision after information was supplied to him by the Australian Federal Police. Such information was, presumably, identical with that placed before the magistrate who set Dr Haneef’s bail conditions. Alternatively, the minister may be relying on information which is hearsay or so flawed that it cannot be put before a court. This is, after all, a country where the Prime Minister claimed that refugees were throwing their children overboard and took us to war in Iraq to remove non-existing weapons of mass destruction.
Julian Burnside QC of Liberty Victoria criticises the minister’s actions as an abuse of due process and natural justice.
Burnside points out that the minister is not using his wide discretion in this case to place Dr Haneef in immigration custody for the purpose of removing him from the country. Rather the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship is using his discretion to make it impossible for Dr Haneef to exercise his right to bail and supervised liberty in the Australian community.
The minister has gone so far as to claim that even if the courts find that Dr Haneef has not committed any offence he could still be deported at the conclusion of his trial.
On 18 July The Australian newspaper revealed it had been supplied a full transcript of the early police questioning of Dr Haneef. But the minister continued to withhold the information as to the grounds for his decision to revoke Dr Haneef’s work visa.
Few if any Australian citizens would have any idea whether or not the people and organisations they have contact with are involved or have been involved in criminal conduct.
Australian-born citizens who do not hold dual nationality may have little interest in what the minister thinks of their character. But all permanent residents who weren’t born in Australia could – on the grounds that “the person has or has had an association with someone else or with a group or organisation whom the minister reasonably suspects has been or is involved in criminal conduct” – be stripped of their permanent or temporary visa.
In recent years people who have lived almost all of their lives in Australia have been deported by the Howard Government. The government has the capacity to remove the Australian citizenship of people who were born overseas but who subsequently took out Australian dual citizenship. It would only be a small step to remove an Australian-born citizen’s right to remain in Australia if they had subsequently taken out dual citizenship in another country.
The ruthless nature of Attorney-General Philip Ruddock became apparent during the time he was in charge of the immigration portfolio. He has since told the ABC’s Lateline on 17 July that he was going to tighten the bail provisions of his terrorism legislation to make sure that people in Dr Haneef’s position were not granted bail.
This will mean either that “exceptional circumstances” will become so circumscribed the term will become meaningless or that bail will be denied to anyone charged with a terrorism offence. Such interference in the judicial process has the potential to change Australia from a Westminster-style democracy to one where ministerial fiat becomes the order of the day.
The truth’s gone overboard again
Drafted February 23, 2019
The first time you told me that
refugees were throwing their children overboard
from leaky boats in dangerous seas
I tugged my forelock and thanked you
my leader and my overlord.
You decided who came to this country
and the manner in which they came.
I was at one with you in 2001.
Then it appeared that Ruddock and Lynch
were lying, dissembling, covering-up.
After the election the navy said it did not happen
refugees were just holding their children
up so that they could be seen
it wasn’t child abuse, or other things obscene.
Now you want me to believe that Karen Phelps
the rest of the cross bench and the Greens
are conspiring with naughty Mr Billy Shorten
to start up people smuggling by the scores
to bring millions of asylum seekers here
from far and distant shores.
But you are not John Howard comrade
just as tricky, yes, but only half as smart
rumours have it comrade,
that in a country toilet
you could not organise a fart.
The twin issues of need and control
Written circa mid 1980s
A recurrent theme in discussions about the welfare system in Western democracies which requires discussion is that of the relationship between need and control. Marxists and feminists express considerable concern about the amount of control which is exerted on beneficiaries; this issue is also raised when dealing with the role of the family in social policy and in relation to categorical versus income guarantees. Conservatives, and to a lesser extent classical liberals, see the control functions of the welfare system as a benefit in so far as they help assure stability, conformity, and maintain traditional relationships.
The needs based approach to welfare
The needs based approach has been a central component of welfare relief since before the Poor Law was introduced. The concept of less eligibility which lies at the heart of the method of determining who shall be assisted and who will be refused can be identified in the Speenhamland system’s restriction of assistance to labouring families. The various charity systems which operated in English parishes (prior to the Poor Law) only assisted the worthy, leaving those considered undeserving to die. The process of determining whose behaviour and circumstances warranted relief allowed the parish, and later the state, to exert controls on behaviour through the distribution of largesse.
Needs based welfare programs are those in which the agency provides minimal clarification of its eligibility requirements. Agency pronouncements can be as general as “we will assist people in need” without setting out under what conditions and at what rate, an approach allowing frontline welfare workers or their immediate superiors enormous discretionary power.
Such a needs based approach is claimed, by its supporters, to be the most cost effective method of removing poverty. It contains a number of technical assumptions and is grounded in an ideological network in which residuals definitions of welfare are a prime part. The assumptions on which such assertions are founded are:
(a) those in need can be identified,
(b) need can be understood and satisfied,
(c) take-up by the needy will be near total,
(d) the greedy will be prevented from receiving benefits, and
(e) the impact of processes such as stigmatisation are not socially costly.
These assumptions have drawn serious criticism from a range of writers on the left, from social democrats to Marxists, all of whom have pointed to the lack of empirical support for such assumptions. Despite this they continue to have a strong influence on welfare practice.
The desire to assist all those “in need” is in effect a determination to refuse assistance to all those whose circumstances do not fit into some societally approved, arbitrarily defined (albeit undeclared and somewhat flexible) set of rules.
It is possible to define need to mean purely financial need and to clearly specify what constitutes financial need in relation to some arbitrary level such as Professor Henderson’s Poverty Line (Henderson 1975, Social Welfare Policy Secretariat 1981, Manning 1985, Fincher & Niewenhuysen 1998). In such circumstances it would be a simple task to specify the levels of financial assistance considered appropriate to satisfy such need.
Current practices in welfare departments have for many years allowed inordinate discretion to the people who determine whether to assist and what level of assistance to provide: these procedures are still justified as a way of ensuring that the Department will be able to address the needs of individuals in the most appropriate manner. Griffiths (1975) did not mince words when he declared “Discretion as it applies to the present provision of emergency relief is a euphemism for discrimination.”(p.27). Even many statutory income maintenance provisions are dependent upon the assessor determining the need cum worthiness of the applicant.
Even when eligibility requirements and rates of assistance are specified, as are Social Security payments, it is still possible to create situations where the discretionary powers of officials are substantial. This was apparent in the so-called “dole bludger” campaign orchestrated through the press by conservative forces aimed to limit the number of out of work people who would apply for and/or obtain unemployment benefits.
Despite the claims made by Centerlink personnel that they rely on Federal legislation and regulations, the general rule of law, and legal precedents, many officers of that Department have refused to interpret the cohabitation rule in line with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal ruling, preferring to stay with the old Departmental instructions which are more moralistic in tone and application.
Need – a non-explanation
The generally nebulous nature of needs based assistance coupled with the obvious difficulty encountered by expert committees in coming to an adequate definition of need requires us to ask why administrators and other service providers continue to use the concept of need to explain their everyday actions in assisting their clients. I would argue that there is a conscious reliance by administrators and other service providers (who operate on a needs based response to clients) on the concept of need so as to mystify the restrictive nature of the assistance provided. The reasons why this happens probably differ between administrators and social workers: the administrators simply seeking to limit expenditure, the social workers using this method of operating to extend professional power over both their clients and the junior administrative levels in the agencies.
Clearly the expression of eligibility for assistance in such nebulous terms as “being in need” allows agencies to avoid publicising just how restrictive their assistance programs are. Agencies know that the more precisely they specify their eligibility requirements the greater will be the take-up rate by eligible people. If people do not know their entitlements they are less likely to attempt to enforce their rights and will be more likely to see whatever assistance they are given as reasonable(Mishra 1981, p.37, George & Wilding 1976, p.124).
Stigma is what many agencies rely on to ensure they see only the most “needy”. It is the most determined rather than the most financially “needy” who are advantaged by needs based welfare programs.
The take-up rate of benefits could be raised by increasing efforts to inform potential clients of their eligibility, and making the eligibility requirements and ways of applying simple; through removing stigma; by presentation of the benefit as a right rather than as a privilege; by making eligibility dependent upon financial rather than social considerations; and also by defining eligibility in general rather than specified categories (Cass 1985).
Generalised statements about helping the most needy ensure that not all of those who would meet that definition (in financial terms) apply for assistance. The failure to specify exactly what services are provided and on what terms allows agencies to avoid admitting the restrictive nature of the services provided. Further, the power of the workers in welfare agencies is increased vis a vis the client if the client is not certain as to what his or her actual entitlement is.
I chose to concentrate on needs based welfare programs because in these programs the judgemental aspects of eligibility determination, the disregard of common or shared features between clients, and the excessive concentration on individual differences (often of an inconsequential nature) all show clearly how the determination of need is used to restrict service delivery. Although it is often not as obvious, eligibility determination in categorical programs, such as the Widows Pension, rely as heavily upon judgements made about personal attributes. Such a process differs markedly from income guarantee programs where only a person’s financial status is examined.
Whose needs?
Spokespersons for the welfare industry, when they reflect on the motivations of staff, speak in terms of their “altruism” as they go about the task of satisfying the needs of their clients. Not all observers of the way social workers and welfare officers behave see it in these terms. McKnight (1977) has put the relationship that exists between professional and client as follows:
Removing the mask of love shows us the face of servicers who need income, and an economic system that needs growth. Within this framework, the client is less a person in need than a person who is needed. In business terms, the client is less the consumer than the raw material for the servicing system. In management terms, the client becomes both the output and the input. His essential function is to meet the needs of servicers, the servicing system and the national economy. The central political issue becomes the servicers’ capacity to manufacture needs in order to expand the economy of the servicing system (p.74).
For the same reasons that most Marxist sociologists (Corrigan and Leonard 1979 , pp.104-105) reject the notion that the state is simply the Committee of the Bourgeoisie, I discard the suggestion that administrators and social workers are simply agents of social control (that is, they are the Welfare Committee of the Bourgeoisie). Many of the people working in social welfare agencies are genuinely trying to liberate people and provide them with benefits. Such people are often articulate exponents of liberal or socialist philosophical positions and are committed to limiting the excesses of the state and of capital. For example, the workers in some women’s refuges around Australia are engaged in a constant battle to counter patriarchal control of women’s lives and the workers in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander run agencies are engaged in a daily struggle against racism.
On the other hand, the intimate connection between welfare personnel and the bourgeoisie or the petty bourgeoisie cannot be overlooked. There are many aspects of decision making occurring in welfare agencies which are clear expressions of the operators’ role as agents of capital.
Benefit and control
The majority of Marxist and socialist commentators argue that social welfare provisions are the result of the struggle of the working class (or some particular segment of it) with either capital or the state. The main thrust of such pronouncements is that the state in a quasi-Bismarckian style grants concessions to head off protest and to aid production. The ruling class is seen as benefiting through increased legitimisation; for the working class and welfare recipients in particular the question is one of benefit versus control.
Drawing on both socialist and Marxist reasoning, I share the view that the delivery of social welfare benefits allows the state to control beneficiaries and, in the short term, limits the capacity of the working class to demand a fair distribution of surplus value.
However, there are writers, such as Pemberton (1982) who suggest that it is unlikely that the ‘control’ thesis can be maintained because:
In Australia social work and welfare is mainly about assistance to the elderly, the handicapped, widows, and war veterans; to that extent the radicals’ ‘control’ thesis simply seems irrelevant. For instance, why do the elderly need ‘controlling’ by welfare? This has not been made clear in the radical analysis of welfare. And, if the elderly (or widows, or single parents, or the disabled) have been controlled by welfare, what were they doing (or were likely to do) to necessitate such ‘control’? Answers to these questions must be forthcoming if the radical critique is to be salvaged even in modified form. Where the control thesis might be thought to be appropriate, in the case of the unemployed, we have seen that strong counter argument and counter evidence exists (p.34).
Pemberton himself has not always held such views. For instance, he wrote:
Social workers play a crucial part in the management of systemic conflict by alleviating the more severe effects of the unequal distribution of economic resources and political power that exist under capitalism. They are among the ‘technicians of consent’; the range of understanders, adjustors and instructors, from the industrial psychologist through to the primary school teacher, who defuse the discontented and ‘train’ the potentially rebellious (Pemberton & Locke, 1971, p.101).
The payment of welfare benefits may not be necessary to prevent an uprising by such citizens, but in a country where federal elections have been held on average every couple of year, citizens do not need to mount the barricades. They can bring down a government with a pencil in a voting booth. Any government wishing to stay in power has to ensure it does not alienate its citizens – the maintenance of their support is a form of control.
The control process
Apart from feminists, the most articulate exponents of the control thesis have been Marxists or socialists. Writers of these persuasions see the welfare system as an integral part of the capitalist mode of production, not an appendage “one step removed from” the productive aspects of that mode. They see the welfare system as the means by which the working class obtains concessions from capital – via the state (Gough 1979, pp.58-59), – and the way the state ensures for capital, the reproduction of the working class (McIntosh 1979, Mishra 1981, p.82). Such writers see the welfare system as the method both of distributing the social wage and of ensuring internal peace in society.
George and Wilding (1984) in The Impact of Social Policy consider the basic components of the welfare system which the state utilises in order to control the workless to be: its reliance on the establishment of individual need, its imposition of non-challenging definitions of social problems, its support for authority and hierarchy, and its constant attempt to replace class conflict with group competition (such as home owner/tenant, old/young (pp.194-220).
This analysis is extended by Baldock (1983) who argues that control is exercised through artificial segmentation of the workforce on the basis of alleged differentiation of skills resulting in the destruction of working class solidarity. She notes that such segmentation is reinforced by ideologies of race and gender, dividing workers from workers, and, in turn, workers from the workless. The artificial divisions between different categories of welfare recipients is effective, in her view, in controlling the poor, just as skill differentiations are among the working classes. In her words:
A most effective aspect of bureaucratisation, effective that is as a form of social control, is the development of artificial divisions between different categories of recipients by means of varying eligibility criteria and slightly different formulas for payment.
Feminist writers are particularly conscious of the twin aspects of control and benefit delivery and have identified the major purpose of the control functions stemming from the needs of patriarchy.
Central to feminist concern about the control aspect of the welfare system is their analysis of dependency, implied and real. The most obvious example of this is provided by the rules and regulations applying to the supply of benefits to unmarried mothers and deserted wives. Feminists argue that the eligibility for Social Security benefits is so structured that it allows the state to become “a more jealous husband than the man they left”(Glassman 1970, pp.102-103).
Many writers who have looked at the social welfare system and its effects on groups such as Aborigines in Australia; Asian and Caribbean immigrants in Britain; or American Indian, Black and Spanish Americans in the United States, have pointed to racism as an underlying ideology supporting social control (See Chapter 3##).
Whether the perceived need to control the recipients derives from patriarchy, racism or ruling class fear of the less affluent, it may be argued that there is a propensity in modern social democracies to use the welfare system rather than military or para-military forms of social control whenever possible. Althusser (1977) expressed this idea as the State’s preference for ideological rather than repressive control. This use of welfare operatives to pacify or deflect unrest, to make recipients feel they have a stake in the future, to present the state (or a department of the state) as a caring institution, has been recognised by many writers in social work circles and is referred to as the “soft cop role”.
Leonard (1979) operating from a Marxist perspective has pointed out that:
The concept of the welfare state as a humane response to need has performed an invaluable ideological function in the control and discipline of working-class populations, for in the name of welfare much can be achieved which would be impossible by more direct methods of repression (p.vii).
In Western democracies, such as Australia, the control exerted by the state is seldom exemplified in overt police or paramilitary forms – Bowral following the Hilton bombing, or the regular showdowns between Aborigines and the police notwithstanding. Repressive tolerance was the term coined by Marcuse (1964, 1968) to account for the gentle but firm control exercised over the populace. Gramsci (1977, pp. 53, 170-172, 185-189, 1978, pp. 233-235, 255-266, 443-459) pointed to the importance of the development of hegemonic forces by the ruling classes to underpin the enforcement of their will. Poulantzas (1978) argued that the ruling classes rely on ideology rather than direct repression in their efforts to control the working people. All these accounts share a common feature. They all maintain that the state and the ruling classes ensure that a ruling class version of the ongoing reality is accepted by the bulk of the citizens by means of ideological control.
But welfare recipients and those refused welfare assistance, encounter far more obvious control than do any other section of the citizenry. This control is manifested in the policy that the nuclear family shall be the “recognised” economic unit and shall be the locus for primary welfare help, as well as responsible for the reproduction of the next generation of workers and workless. Whether the state exemplifies its control functions by the enforcement of the work ethic, by being a more jealous husband than the man a woman has left, or by enforcing particular child care policies, the state is omnipresent in the lives of welfare recipients.
In supplying benefits and in containing dissent the welfare system serves a legitimating function for capital. By the way the welfare system delivers its benefits; the circumscribed nature of much social welfare research; the use particularly of residualist definitions of who will and who will not be helped; the very real limitations to the redistributive functions; and several other aspects of need determination; the welfare system serves to disguise the privilege of the more affluent and acts to support the status quo.
Bibliography
Althusser, L. (1977)For Marx. (trans. Brewster, B.) Verso, London.
Cass, B. (1985) “Poverty: Issues for further research and social policy” in Targeting Welfare Expenditures on the Poor, Policy Co-ordination Unit, Department of Community Services, Canberra.
Corrigan, P. and Leonard, P.(1979) Social Work Practice under Capitalism: A Marxist Approach. Macmillan, London.
McKnight, J. (1977) “Professionalised service and disabled help” in Illich, I. et al, Disabling Professions. Marion Boyers, London, 1977
Mishra, R. (1981) Society and Social Policy. Macmillan, London, 1981, p.37.
Taylor-Gooby, P. and Dale, J. Social Theory and Social Welfare, Edward Arnold, London, 1981, p.32
The war of terror
First published Al-Moharer 1/10/2008 http://www.al-moharer.net/mohhtm/tomlinson264.htm also published on the same day
on Union Songs website. http://unionsong.com/u568.html
Chorus:
Our great and glorious friend,
in the war without any end,
I see through the haze
as I sing in praise
of our great and glorious friend
fighting the war without end
ignoring the message we send.
Though the war mightn’t make any sense,
we attack them at enormous expense,
the fighting’s intense, we call it defence
though time and again it causes offence.
It’s a war without recompense.
“You’re either with or against us”, they say
as our soldiers go marching away
to the crusade that’s now drawing nigh
they fight, they’re wounded, they die.
The truth is distorted and bodies contorted
with humanity thwarted as the war is reported
and decency aborted; the Treasury’s rorted.
God’s eye is averted and justice perverted,
as the President’s false claims are asserted.
“God, please turn your eye – I don’t want to die”,
I hear women and men cry
and I wonder why we believed the lie
in the first place.
The way back: ‘moving forward’ in a progressive direction
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate Posted Wednesday, 13 November 2013
Shortly after the dismissal of the Whitlam Labor Government on the 11/11/1975 a colleague of mine, Alec Pemberton, suggested we should write a book alerting our fellow Australians of the danger to social solidarity that the new right economic fundamentalists posed. I reassured him that these economic fundamentalists were a flash in the pan and that Australia would return to the progressive social trajectory it had been on since late in the first decade of the 20th Century. How wrong I was. Every government since Whitlam’s has been worse than the last.
There has been more extensive means-testing of social security, fewer universal payments, greater scrutiny of recipients, ever-increasing obligations imposed on recipients of social benefits. A larger percentage of Australians are living in poverty. The morbidity and mortality rates for Indigenous Australians remain a national disgrace and most Indigenous people earn significantly less than do other Australians. Their rate of incarceration is ten to fifteen times that of other Australians depending on what part of this vast brown land they live. “The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoner population in the Northern Territory comprised 84% of the total prisoner population, while Victoria had the lowest proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners (8%)” (ABS 2013). The increasingly vicious treatment meted out to asylum seekers who come to this country on boats sans papers should shame every one of us who calls Australia home.
In 2010 Australia’s only female prime minister, Julia Gillard, launched her re-election campaign with the slogan “Moving forward” but she was incapable of selling a vision of this country which embraced social solidarity in a compelling way. She pandered to those in her party who wanted increased means-testing and increased obligations demanded of social security recipients, harsher treatment meted out to asylum seekers and the continuation of the Northern Territory Intervention. She waxed lyrical about “the simple dignity that work brings” whilst at the same time cutting the number of disability support pensioners and slashing payments to single parents and their children.
As the 2013 election approached, she was replaced by the member for Griffith, whom she had removed from office in 2010. This happened because it had become obvious to the majority of Caucus members that, were she to remain as leader, the Labor Party was in for a trouncing.
Abbott, the Leader of the Opposition, resolutely attacked her at every opportunity from the moment that Gillard had been able to form a minority government (with the assistance of the independents and the Greens). His dog- whistling assaults on her credibility were brazen and encouraged the loony right shock-jocks and cartoonists to engage in extreme misogynist attacks upon her.
Rudd, immediately upon regaining office, experienced a surge of popularity in the polls and should have immediately gone to an election. Within a couple of weeks it became clear to the electorate that the new Rudd was the old Crudd. Abbott’s three word policies suggesting he’d “stop the boats “and “axe the tax” cut through. Abbott has a substantial majority in the House of Representatives but a hostile Senate until July 2014.
Labor and the Greens will lose their control of the Senate after that date and Abbott will have to negotiate with a very mixed bunch of new senators who got there because of a very silly upper house preferential voting system. It delivers senatorial positions not on the basis of the popular will but rather on the basis of how clever some pretty strange bedfellows were in negotiating preferential deals. After at least 6 senators are selected, optional preferential voting above or below the line would make much more sense and would more closely reflect the popular will. This system would advantage the major parties, the Greens and possibly Palmer’s Party.
Abbott is very unlikely to support it. Not because he is concerned that it might be seen as an undemocratic move by the supporters of the Sex on the Back of Motor Bikes Party but rather because any advantage that would accrue to the Coalition Parties would not be as great as that of the Greens. Very little electoral reform has occurred in Australia on the basis that it is good policy or that it is more democratic. The party that thinks that it will benefit the most from any particular change introduces change to electoral laws.
The next two and a half years
People who think that the Abbott Government is in for an easy ride to victory at the next general election are kidding themselves. There are considerable divisions within the Coalition over:
- the possible sale of GrainCorp to an American Company,
- the sale of farm land to international entities,
- the amount of support for the car industry,
- the treatment of asylum seekers, and
- marriage equality.
Palmer has shown with his recent trenchant criticism of the Newman Government’s assault on Queenslanders’ civil liberties and his attitude towards asylum seekers that there are many things he wants which will not mesh with Abbott’s agenda.
Abbott was the most successful Leader of the Opposition in Australia’s history. He had the capacity to cut through with a simple message. There wasn’t a day went by when he was not at some factory or other driving home his inane self-serving carbon tax message. He was able to maintain discipline in the ranks of his parliamentary party. But being in government is a much more difficult a task than being Dr No.
On his front bench he has some very experienced and competent ministers like Ian Macfarlane. But Macfarlane is constantly undermined by hard-line anti-subsidy advocates with who sit on the front bench. There are several cabinet ministers who don’t seem to understand how to avoid travel-rorting. Abbott has so far managed to navigate smoothly from being Leader of the Opposition to Prime Minister but he does have an inbuilt capacity to go off the rails.
His biggest danger in the foreseeable future is the hard men of the Liberal Party. Abbott knows this and has tried to control them by demanding that before Ministers consent to a media interview that the PM’s staff must clear it.
Whether he can keep the extreme industrial relation agenda of people like Senator Eric Abetz under wraps is an open question. Scott Morrison, who as Shadow spokesperson for denigrating asylum seekers flooded the airways with hourly interviews, now only appears from under his rock once a week and then with the intention of avoiding most of the questions asked of him. He’ll get away with that ploy in the short term but eventually he’ll have to tell the truth about what is happening on the high seas and in our offshore processing concentration camps.
The other thing that will eventually bring down some of the Cabinet highflyers is the difference between their statements on social and sexual matters and their actions. But who cares in the end? They’ll shuffle off this parliamentary stage to “spend more time with their families” or because of “their ill health”.
The overturning of Labor’s plan to tax superannuation income in excess of $100,000 per annum and scrapping of Labor’s $500 a year superannuation contribution to low income earners will ensure that there will never be a sizable contingent of Abbott’s battlers.
The untested question which Australians will be interested to have answered is can Shorten and Plibersek lead a united Labor team into the fray and whether they can build a coalition based on trust and respect with the Greens. Labor and the Greens attempt to appeal to a similar electoral base and often their past coalitions have been riddled with distrust and hostility. If they are to defeat Abbott at the next general election they must act in unison or at least in a mutually supportive way.
The Woomera hunger strike
I want to tell a story,
want to share with you the mail
about a group of people
whose struggle mustn’t fail.
They were seeking asylum
from civil strife and war.
They came in overcrowded boats
and were knocking on our door.
But we put them in detention
in Australia’s great outback
and searched for excuses
to send the buggers back.
This tale’s about intolerance
and persecution too
what governments do in our name
affects them and me and you.
It’s about a group of people
who came across the sea.
They didn’t have a visa,
didn’t dress like you and me.
They were fleeing persecution.
They were fleeing rape and war.
The Australian Government asked them
“What have you come here for?”
They said they’d come for freedom,
for humanity and more,
and they wanted to make a new life
on this far and distant shore.
They couldn’t get an answer
though they pleaded and they cried.
They were growing desolate
because everything was tried.
For month on month they languished
behind Woomera’s razor wire
The Government was stunned when
they set their cells on fire.
They were becoming desperate
to escape this desert hell
the Government just ignored them
locked in their prison cell.
So they sewed their lips together
and the children joined them too
they were told “That’s unAustralian,
it was not the thing to do.”
The press got the story out
and Australia’s conscience stirred
in cities and in country towns
we realised we had erred.
The news of what is happening
is causing apprehension.
There has got to be a better way
than mandatory detention.
Yes.
There has to be a better way
than mandatory detention.
Written 2002.
The words they are a-changing
First published in Union Songs 11/7/2007
http://uionsong.com/u500.html
I’m old enough to remember when a rendition was the singing of a song
and old enough to remember when we knew right from wrong
when clusters referred to gems not bombs
when the Bushes were places that birds hid in
when collateral damage meant you’d lost assets
when civilian casualties caused concern
when daisy cutters were used to mow meadows
when climate change meant it might rain
when we paid countries for their oil rather than invading
and I’m young enough to remember that those were better days.
The writers dilemma
Written circa 2004 unpublished
I have tried to articulate a critique of what I observe happening around me. But that is not enough. I have acted when I could to the extent that it would not jeopardise my capacity to continue to criticise what I witness. But I know that this is not enough. I despair when others do not want to share my view of the world and join me in opposition. I am trapped by my failure to inspire with my words yet driven to keep writing. I am undermined by my desire to maintain my relative privilege. I am frustrated by my failure to change the things I rail against. I am thrilled when someone listens, understands and is moved by what I write. The choice which preoccupies me is to keep writing, speaking and acting however impotently or to end it all in one desperate act. That way you only fail once.
There’s a change
First published New Community Quarterly, Vol.3 , No.2 Winter 2005, p.55.
There’s a change. There’s a change.
There’s a change on the way.
People are troubled they’re starting to say:
There’s a change. There’s a change.
There’s a change on the way.
Evolving times, the options vast
for the rich the die is cast.
Profits first and people last
is an idea whose time has past.
There’s a change. There’s a change.
There’s a change on the way.
We’re going to learn to share and then,
we will learn to care again;
don’t know how, don’t know when
but we’re all coming home again.
There’s a change. There’s a change.
There’s a change on the way.
Humanity will take its place,
we’ll rejoin the human race –
somehow softer with ease and grace –
and dignity will set the pace.
There’s a change. There’s a change.
There’s a change on the way.
No razor wire and cells on fire,
inordinate wealth and self desire,
humanity will alone inspire
as we struggle for justice, we will not tire.
There’s a change. There’s a change.
There’s a change on the way.
People are smiling they’re starting to say:
There’s a change. There’s a change
get out of the way.
There’s a change. There’s a change
that’s going to stay.
They had a Commissioner in Canberra
Pete Hancock & I wrote Too Many cops in Canberra which mentioned the Winchester murder. It contained the lines:
‘Had a Commissioner here in Canberra
who shot him we’ll never know.
But it’s one cop less
it caused no distress.
it seems the way to go.
The coppers they blamed a pensioner,
the people they blamed the police.
But the bourgeoisie of the ACT
told us “that’s not very nice”.’
The pensioner referred to was David Eastman who had been pensioned out of the public service. In the story below you will find details of David’s acquittal. I believed then and still do that Winchester was shot by corrupt Canberra coppers:
Too many cops
There are too many cops here in Canberra,
coppers who lie and who cheat.
But the bourgeoisie of the ACT
wants more of them on the beat.
There are too many cops here in Canberra
coppers who bash and who maim.
But the bourgeoisie of the ACT
wants more of them all the same.
Had a Commissioner here in Canberra
who shot him we’ll never know.
But it’s one cop less
it caused no distress.
it seems the way to go.
The coppers they blamed a pensioner,
the people they blamed the police.
But the bourgeoisie of the ACT
told us “that’s not very nice”.
I went down to the Hotel
to hear Kevin Carmody sing.
The biggest mob of cops turned up
oh what a wondrous thing.
Kevin’s a Murrie from Queensland
his weapon it is a guitar
the welcome the cops gave him
ensured he wouldn’t go far.
Migrants and Aborigines
get the rough end of the stick.
The rich live well in Canberra
and coppers here are quick-
or thick
or sick.
Now the copper’s they pulled out their batons
and rushed up the stairs towards me.
I held out my hand said “You don’t understand
It’s a concert by Carmody”.
The coppers were there by the door
They’d come to hassle the poor
They came from Aidex
They wouldn’t take cheques
They were there to settle the score.
To the Magistrate’s court I was brought
the coppers refused to be bought.
For the bourgeoisie of the ACT
it was certainly food for thought.
The coppers they lied to man
as only a copper can
all their stories were straight
though some had come late.
They lied when they said I resisted
They lied when they said I kicked out
for the bourgeoisie of the ACT
I am another lout.
They’re cutting the service in health
to increase police budgets by stealth
corruption and fraud is by coppers ignored
and welfare we can’t afford.
There are too many cops here in Canberra
cops never go out on their own.
So if you’re poor, or you’re Black
from the wrong side of the track
then don’t walk the streets here alone.
So ignore your betters and then
please listen to me till the end
if you’re down on your uppers
you can’t trust the coppers
cause here they’re all rotters my friend.
(with Peter Hancock)
David Eastman cleared of Canberra police chief’s murder in dramatic retrial
by Christopher Knaus Thu 22 Nov 2018 11.48
David Eastman, a man who spent 19 years behind bars for the assassination of the Australian Capital Territory’s police chief, has been cleared of the crime in a dramatic retrial.
The verdict marks the end of another chapter in a case that has consumed Canberra since the night of 10 January 1989, when Colin Winchester was shot to death as he got out of his car outside his Deakin home.
Winchester, an Australian federal policeassistant commissioner, remains the highest-ranking police officer to have been murdered in Australia’s history. The AFP said at the time that his murder marked “the end of the age of innocence for Australia”.
The case has seen it all. From evidence suggesting a Calabrian mafia revenge plot, to bogus forensic evidence, wrongful imprisonment and allegations of police misconduct in their almost three-year investigation.
At the centre of it all was Eastman, an economist and public servant who was charged with Winchester’s murder in 1992.
Eastman quickly came under suspicion after Winchester’s killing. The former Treasury official was facing an assault charge over a dispute with his neighbour.
The economist, fearing that the charge would ruin his career, tried desperately to have police drop it, and made representations to Winchester which were rebuffed. This, it was alleged, was Eastman’s motive. Evidence allegedly suggested that Eastman had made threats on Winchester’s life, had scoped out his home, and bought a gun that police believed to be the murder weapon.
Eastman was tried and convicted in 1995, and spent 19 years behind bars. He spent those decades protesting his innocence and fighting the charge in every conceivable forum, leading to a string of appeals and inquiries.
In 2014 an inquiry into his conviction declared that he had probably been responsible but had not received a fair trial. The inquiry completely debunked a crucial piece of forensic evidence used by police to link gunshot residue found in Eastman’s boot to the murder scene.
The evidence was presented to the then jury as near-irrefutable proof that Eastman had been at the scene. Even the then trial judge, Ken Carruthers, paid tribute to the strength of the forensics when sentencing Eastman to life in November 1995.
“This investigation must surely rank as one of the most skilled, sophisticated and determined forensic investigations in the history of criminal investigation in Australia,” he said.
Eastman was freed in 2014 but placed on trial again, with prosecutors arguing there was enough residual evidence, even without the forensics, for a jury to find him guilty. The retrial was strongly supported by Winchester’s remaining family.
It is another day of mourning for the AFP and the Winchesters
John Hinchey
The retrial in the ACT supreme courthas spent months hearing from more than 100 witnesses this year, and a jury began deliberations last week, initially appearing to struggle to reach a verdict.
On Thursday morning they found Eastman not guilty.
Eastman said “thank you” to the judge after the verdict was read out.
The retrial had heard new evidence, largely in secret, about the possible involvement of the ’Ndrangheta – or Calabrian mafia – in Winchester’s killing.
Winchester had headed an undercover operation that brought down the mafia’s cannabis crop operations near Bungendore, in New South Wales, in the 1980s. The mafia had believed Winchester was a corrupt cop who had granted them protection.
Police have always maintained that they investigated the mafia links thoroughly at the time but could find no evidence of their involvement.
The Winchester family issued a statement saying they were “extremely disappointed”.
The ACT’s former victims of crime commissioner, John Hinchey, said police would also be heartbroken by the verdict.
“They would be heartbroken, I would believe, and grief-stricken, again,” he told reporters outside court. “It is another day of mourning for the AFP and the Winchesters.”
.
They say frigate – I say frig it
Blue Mountains Union News 26/2/2106
http://bmuc.blogspot.com.au
also Brisbane Peace group 26/22016
They are raising our military spending to two per cent of our GDP
they are going to raise the money from the likes of you and me.
They’ll have to cut back pensions and unemployment benefits
they have to cut back education and increase budget deficits.
They’ll have to close some hospitals and sack a thousand doctors
but we will be so happy when we see their brand new helicopters.
They are going to buy twelve submarines and they are getting drones
they’ll be able to kill at will for fun and thrill, I feel it in my bones.
Be empowered to capture asylum seekers and impoverished refugees
to torture them and drive them mad on Islands overseas.
They’ll be able to pollute the skies and stuff up our clean seas
and on the way they’ll guzzle fuel – raising temperatures by degrees.
They are mad of course – it’s sad of course,
they will make everything much worse.
Thoughts on Hiroshima Day
Science is a one way street
down which man blindly wanders
encountering faces
coming the other way.
Timor and Australia: World War II till now
When the Japanese invaded
why did we tell a lie?
Why did 40,000
Timorese have to die?
On a hillside outside Dili
we built a monument,
carved with an inscription
which said “we won’t forget”.
When Indonesia invaded
why did we hide our eye?
Did we know 300,000
Timorese had to die?
Though the inscription has now faded,
why did we build this monument?
There are some things you cannot hide,
why did we say “we won’t forget”?
Was it in our national interest
for us turn away?
Wasn’t it time for Timorese
to finally have their say?
Did we save them to betray them,
just to steal their oil;
or was there another reason
which led to their downfall?
Australia’s actions have revealed
our ever-present greed;
despite their malnutrition,
their hunger and their need.
We could save them – not betray them.
We could acknowledge it’s their oil.
Help them build a decent future,
That is free from grinding toil.
Written but not published in 2004
To a man in the crowd
On Saturday the 27th August 2016 I was standing outside the Sydney Town Hall at a rally in support of closing the internment camps on Manus and Nauru and bringing the asylum seekers and refugees to Australia.
I listened intently as speaker after speaker denounced the various Australian government policies enforced upon asylum seekers this century. Several speakers made the point that it was fifteen years since John Howard despatched SAS troops to prevent the Norwegian commercial vessel The Tampa unloading at Christmas Island, the 438 asylum seekers its crew had rescued. This was the closest landmass with sufficient medical facilities. As such the decision of the captain to offload them at Christmas Island was in line with best international practice and the law of the sea.
Other speakers reflected upon the fallacious claims of Howard government ministers that asylum seekers had thrown their children overboard from another vessel. Still others spoke about Howard’s 2001 election speech in which he proclaimed, “we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.”
The brutal regimes that are a constant feature of these camps were outlined including the rape and other sexual assaults on women and children that are regular occurrences.
Some speakers spoke about the ongoing suicide attempts, deaths and the killings of asylum seekers. They spoke about the desperation of many who are slowly being driven mad by deliberate government policies designed to force, even those found to be genuine refugees, to return to the countries from which they fled.
The full horror of the policy that Australian government spokespersons call “The Pacific Solution” was laid bare.
It was not the first time I had heard these facts. For the last 20 years or so I have campaigned against various versions of both Labor and Liberal government treatment of asylum seekers who arrive by boat seeking our protection.
As I stood there listening I became aware of tears running down my cheeks. I had an overwhelming sense of, what my Aboriginal friends would call, a shame job. I was embarrassed by what my country had become. I despaired for what was being done in our name and about how far we, as a nation, had sunk into a quagmire of desperation and fear.
I was distressed by the impotence of decent Australian people to convince our governments to behave decently, honourably or even attempt to live up to the international obligations Australia has, in the past, freely agreed to and ratified.
The tears kept rolling down my cheeks. A man standing next to me at the rally, who probably had been born overseas, gently gripped my bicep in an act of solidarity. I did not speak to him. I was afraid of how emotional I was. Later as he walked away with his wife I noticed his white cap had a little kangaroo embroidered at the back. I wished I’d said thank you to him for his act of sympathy, understanding and solidarity.
I hope that one day we will manage to build a country that befits such acts of humanity.
Tourism in Timor
First performed just prior to being thrown out of the Garuda Airlines Booking Office in Brisbane in 1999.
Visit Militia City,
admire their home-made guns,
count the dead
from your hotel bed;
daughters, mothers, sons.
Tour the burnt out suburbs,
fondle a hand grenade,
bury a battered body –
democracy, militia-made.
You can bathe in blood and gore.
Shoot the fleeing by the score.
See freedom delayed
and justice betrayed.
There is a whole lot more.
We’ll show you Kopassus compassion.
You can dig an unmarked grave.
Teach you how to kill the wounded.
It’s cheap you’ll save
and save.
Traveston
Note: The Queensland Labor Government was planning to dam the Mary River at Traveston.
Written 2005 to the tune of Glen Campbell’s song Galveston.
First published in New Community Quarterly Vol.7 No.2 Winter 2009. p. 42.
Traveston, oh Traveston,
I still hear your river flowin
I still see your lung fish blowin
I was 16 when I left Traveston.
Traveston, oh Traveston,
I still hear your cod fish thrashing
While I watch your turtles flashing
I wipe a tear and dream of Traveston
I still see the dam wall’s slaughter
Backed up, stagnant pools of water
Congealed slime strangling nature’s daughter
On the bank were we used to run.
Traveston, oh Traveston,
I am so afraid you’re dying
Before I dry the tears you’re crying
Before I watch your black ducks flying
in the sun at Traveston, at Traveston
Turdbull’s Government
The time has come to talk of kings and cabbages and the Turdbull Government. The leader of this government, Malcolm of Point Piper, is the least inspiring member of the government. He has engaged in anti-Chinese rhetoric claiming we are subject to undue influence from Coke Cola Communists. He wants you to register as an agent of a foreign power if you dare speak to anyone who might pass on foreign ideas, particularly ideas which might increase disharmony and lead to a loss of support for neo-liberal fascism.
You can talk to Indian coal miners who want to destroy the Reef in fact he is in the process of working with Adani subcontractors to fund rail infrastructure which will facilitate not only Adani’s mega mine but the lovely dainty Gina’s mine and others in the soon to become the biggest hole in Queensland. This area is currently home to a number of threatened species and the traditional lands of several Aboriginal groups. Gosh Frydenberg, environment denier, has pointed out that, once the Great Barrier Reef is no longer there, there will be less hazards to shipping and as a result the price of exporting coal will go down.
Now, I have to admit that I once talked to a foreign looking person who, with malicious intent, encouraged me to oppose neo-liberal racism, downward envy, and the denigration of non-affluent people so I guess unless he can be identified by Peter Glutton’s Borderfarce or Un-Christian Porter’s office as an Strayan then I will have to register as an agent of a foreign power. But which one? I have passed his underpants size on to the Glutton and Un-Christain and am hoping they’ll be able to track him down.
But I am worried by the logic of their proposed foreign conspiracy legislation. If I talk to a Strayan person who may not resemble the Glutton and that person encourages me to oppose neo-liberal racism, genocide, continuing dispossession of Aborigines, indifference towards asylum seeker languishing in our offshore gulags and downward envy then shouldn’t I have to register as an agent of Straya?
If I advocate policies not totally approved of Michaelia Cash or Malcolm or the Glutton will I be taken hence forth to the Traitors Prison? What will happen to me should I do or say something likely to perturb some of the least intelligent Strayans who are members of the Young Liberals?
I think it’s best I just run and hide in the disused doldrums of the Institute of Pubic Affairs or some other right-wing Stink Tank.
written October/November 2018
Union
First published in National Indigenous Times. 2005
http://www.nit.com.au/secure/story.aspx?storyid=5483
also in The Woodstock Journal CMFEU Tasmania, No. 34 September
We’ll build a mighty union
throughout the Commonwealth
to stand up for the workers
against those who rob by stealth.
Black and white will gather
men and women too
old and young together
will build this world anew.
Fighting for the rights we’ve won
that they would take away;
fighting for each other
our union’s here to stay.
In our mighty union
there’s room for every one
we want bread and roses
and our place in the sun.
The bosses class wants workers
bowing to their will,
we’ll tell them they can stick it
that we are fighting still.
They’ll not lash us to their yoke
we’ll stand solid like a tree,
they’ll never break our struggle
united in our dignity.
We’ll safeguard the workers
confined to the scrap heap:
they’ll not conscript the unemployed
to get workers on the cheap.
Rich and poor together
town and country too,
single parents and their kids
will build this world anew.
Yes, we’ll build a mighty union
throughout this wide brown land,
each of us together
will make them understand.
Workers are not fodder,
Australians are not fools,
we’re flesh and blood with feelings
not their lifeless tools.
Union is strength
I’ve seen my brothers standing
with my sisters hand in hand.
Together we will make
the government understand
that they can’t control the people,
we have a will of our own,
we’ll build a mighty nation –
’cause this land is our home.
We’re not just cannon fodder
for their satanic mills,
we’ve humanity and dignity,
we’re not just bloody dills.
A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay
is what our fathers used to say
when they fought for the eight hour day
with social justice holding sway.
We won’t kowtow to deregulation,
we won’t bow down in trepidation,
we’ll fight for decent arbitration
much to the bosses consternation.
Flexibility has gone awry
screwing workers on the sly,
unions will smash this twisted lie,
we’ll fight, we’ll win, we’ll always try.
Precarious part-time employment
provided for the bosses’ enjoyment
doesn’t lead to a healthy nation,
just embittered confrontation.
Workers all, our time has come
to end the cheating bosses’ run
we’ll do the work, then have our fun
and celebrate the victories won.
I’ve seen my brothers standing
with my sisters hand in hand.
Together we will make
the government understand
that they can’t control the people,
we have a will of our own,
we’ll build a mighty nation –
’cause this land is our home.
First published in Al-Moharer Vol.246b 9/8/2006 http:www.moharer.net/mohhtm/tomlinson246b.htm
also published in The Woodstock Journal Vol.38 September 2006 CMFEU Tasmania
Universities: Factory or Varsity?
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate
Posted Monday, 8 November 2004
My father, who described himself as a “language master”, frequently regaled me with tales of his life at the varsity. In 1960, after an exceedingly mediocre year 12 undertaken at night school, I went to orientation day at the University of Queensland. I looked at the beautifully constructed sandstone structure of the main Arts building and was impressed by the inscription carved over a doorway which read, “This is a place of Light, Liberty and Learning”.
Later that day I attended a seminar at which someone asked Dennis Prior, Professor of Classics, to comment on the discussion to which he replied, “There is no point in asking me, I have not read anything in the last 600 years”. On that first day, I thought I had arrived at the varsity. At a student rally a decade later, protesting the Administration’s assault on academic freedom I recalled my original impression of UQ and informed the audience that I had no complaints about the lighting.
Whatever middle-class donnishness I inherited quickly withered as I became involved in left-wing student and anti-racist politics. Such pretensions were further eroded once I was confronted by the reality of the struggles of my clients at Social Security in Brisbane and the Aboriginal Welfare Office in Darwin.
Fees
Like John Dawkins who introduced HECS fees for tertiary students in 1989, I benefited from the Whitlam Government’s abolition of university fees. I denounced the reintroduction of fees at the time – comparing such an imposition on less well-off students with the actions of Nazi book-burners – on the grounds that both book- burning and imposing fees restrict opportunities for enlightenment. In 2005, some students will be paying in excess of $100,000 for their degrees. Such fees limit the aspirations of less well-off, rural and Indigenous students. For many, the existence of such fees is an insurmountable hurdle and they just give up on further education. Except for the BMW sports driving set, the HECS debt accumulated by the end of their period of study interferes with purchasing a home and raising a family. A sensible educational policy would abolish such fees (see On Line Opinion article).
Jobs
Increasingly, students are trying to juggle getting an education and working. Some are trying to raise a family, work and come to university. Actually getting to lectures seems an impossibility for many due to competing pressures. Some students seem to think the lecture notes which go up on university online teaching sites are all they need to read to get them through a subject. At the same time, universities are increasing the amount of assessment. Most of my students are under enormous time pressures and universities add to those pressures with excessive assessments. Considerable numbers of students don’t want an education; they want a credential- a job ticket. Students don’t seem to have anything like the amount of time past generations had to sit around with colleagues disputing and discussing: politics, their courses, areas of interest and solving the problems of the world. They are so busy rushing they don’t have time to think and reflect.
The corollary is that, increasingly, students are defining themselves as “customer” rather than “student” and are intensely competitive about their marks. It would seem that if they don’t get the top grade for an assignment then obviously the teacher has failed to educate them properly and they turn up at university customer service departments in considerable numbers. In my undergraduate years, we said if you were getting more than a pass you were working too hard.
Have standards fallen?
For those of my colleagues who decry the demise of the good old days when one could take a sojourn to Oxbridge and discover 14 ways of serving potted shrimp I say, “Bad luck old chap”. There have been examples in recent times when the fiscal clout of full fee-paying students with university administrators has over-ridden the maintenance of decent academic standards. But whilst this threat is a real and present danger, the National Tertiary Education Union has mounted a very strong defence of academic standards.
The standard of academic knowledge and the research skills of most students I teach today are generally higher than when I started at university.
Life-long learning and the right to learn
Recently, Treasurer Costello has returned to his preoccupation about the need for older Australians to work till they drop. If such “work” is to be more than a devious method of preventing them from accessing social security entitlements and to keep them from wandering the streets during working hours, there needs to be a reinvigorated effort to involve older employees in university and TAFE training to update or upgrade their skills. If this option is not taken then many older workers will spend these extra years in the workforce becoming increasingly disillusioned and will be far less productive and innovative than they could be. The University of the Third Age concept which now brings retired workers into universities could be extended to include TAFEs and be offered to all over the age of 45 or 50 years.
In a perfect world, everyone would have the right to learn to their maximum potential. I live in Queensland, which Premier Beattie is trying to market as the “smart state”. Yet its spending on education, disability and community services lags behind most other states. Australia’s expenditure on social services is towards the bottom of the tables which compare us with other OECD countries. There will not be a general acceptance of a universal right to education in this country in my lifetime. The right to basic income security, free speech, right of assembly, freedom from arbitrary arrest and the opportunity to socially meaningful occupation all come further up my list of demands of a decent country.
Train, educate or both?
Some of my colleagues talk about declining levels of academic performance and seem preoccupied by whether universities should be educating or training. Having taught in TAFEs, community colleges and universities and enjoyed all three, I don’t see the distinction between training and educating as amounting to much. Surely training is teaching applied skills and the best of education involves inculcating conceptual skills. In the modern world, many professionals conceptually consider which theoretical techniques to use and how best to apply their skills. In both areas we try to train people to think. We are a factory and a varsity too.
The corporate university
The modern university administrator (which could be more accurately spelt admin-is- traitor) is so preoccupied with down-sizing, measuring efficiency gains, putting out revised guidelines and imposing what they quaintly call “continuous improvement” that they have little time at all for education. However, they are little more than an obstacle on the road to enhanced educational outcomes that we have to avoid.
At a personal ethical level, universities have worked hard to control excesses such as plagiarism and an “A for a lay”. Racial, religious and sexual harassment is actively discouraged and this has made life at universities far more pleasant. Universities have started to come to terms with disability and workplace safety questions. Yet, at the same time, administrators drive staff to produce more, ever more, in the fine tradition of the Rockefellers and other robber barons.
The broader ethical standards of administrators, staff and students have plummeted, but in a neo-liberal world obsessed by narrow economic efficiency rather than social and ecological justice, it is a little rich to single out universities for blame. Academics do have some responsibility to hold out alternative options, but they are not solely to blame for the decline in public morality.
The real issues of the world: the war in Iraq, the one billion people in the world facing starvation, maldistribution of wealth here and overseas, the humanitarian crises in such places as West Papua, Darfur and Chechnya, income insecurity, unemployment and looming ecological disasters resulting from overexploitation are no longer heatedly discussed in staff common rooms or on campus lawns. These issues have been obliterated by egocentric discussions about interest rates, home improvement, movies and sport. It is this mind-numbing moral vacuum that is the real threat to maintaining a vital and challenging academic community.
Up the long ladder
Chorus:
Up the long ladder
and down the short rope
to hell with John Howard,
he’s stolen our hope.
We’ll tear them in two,
with the Liberals we’re through
let them hang from the ladder
and swing on the rope.
The workers united will never be defeated
All the pollies and bosses can get overheated.
Together we’ll stand and together we’ll fight
together united we’ll fight for what’s right.
The workers united will never be defeated
the struggle we’ve started we will see completed.
We’ll not be deflected and we’ll not be abused
you’ll see our struggle each night on the news.
There’s more of us than there are of them
the bosses class is pretty dim.
There’s more of us than there are of them
United, we will always win.
A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay
there will never be another way.
If we stand together we’ll hold sway
and others will join us along the way.
The bosses class can kiss our arse
we’ve all got a decent job at last.
A full time job on award rates of pay
that is the real Australian way.
First published in The Word 21/10/2005.
Vacating Kirribilli
John’s gone, he’s gone
and I’m forlorn.
The unemployed must cope without his scorn.
Workers smile
and bosses frown,
why did the voters
let them down.
Eleven long years
of blood, sweat and tears have given way
to workers’ cheers. Bennelong voters
so it seems
exceeded all
my wildest dreams.
Published in Green Left 30 Nov 2007 http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/734/3836
Wage justice
Queensland built on racist hate.
Stolen wages built this state.
The good news is it’s not too late
justice doesn’t have to wait.
From Aurukun to old Mapoon
from Lockhart with a broken heart
from Bamaga and an old guitar
to Palm and a worn out psalm
work was done till the setting sun
rations paid and housemaids laid.
Where did the wages go?
Where did the wages go?
From Woorabinda to Babinda
Cherbourg then dry as a cinder
long days work, long hungry nights
local shows: Jimmy Sharman fights.
Little to know and less to show
just a curse: the protector’s blow.
Where did the pensions go?
Where did the pensions go?
Bosses said they’d sent money home
may as well have sent it to Rome.
Forced to work all night and day
just for rations; there was no pay.
I’m wondering now why it was so
how could protectors take our dough?
Where did the child endowment go?
Where did the child endowment go?
Queensland built on racist hate.
Stolen wages built this state.
The good news is it’s not too late
justice doesn’t have to wait.
First published Al- Moharer Vol.242 18/4/2006 http://al-moharer.net/mohhtm/tomlinson242.htm also published in The Korri Mail 7/6/2006 p.23 also published in Union Songs 9/8/2006 http://unionsong.com/u352.html
also published in New Community Quarterly Vol. 4 No.2 Winter 2006
War
First published in Al-Moharer Vol. 248 11/9/2006
http://www.al-moharer.net/mohhtm/tomlinson248.htm
Also published in New Community Quarterly Vol. 4 No.3 Spring p.27
I heard the call to arms it seems
it penetrated all my dreams
when I heard the anguished screams
before the bullets fired.
I declared myself against the war
it made all the generals sore
peace is something they abhor
until their killing has expired.
In my mind’s eye I saw bombs drop
I really wanted them to stop
to catch the killers on the hop
and war mongers retired.
War Budget, 2016
What do we want?
War!
Would you like increased Health spending?
No!!!
We want more money spent on war and Defence
Would you like increased spending on Education?
No!!!
We want more money spent on fighting Terrorism
and blockading Iraq!
Would you like increased Welfare spending?
No!!!
We want more money spent shifting out welfare cheats
and making the lazy bastards
Work for the Dole!
What do we want?
WAR!!!
When do we want it ?
NOW!!!
War is peace
First published in Green Left Weekly under the title “Hearts and minds”, 28/8/2004 p22
In Iraq the Americans are winning the hearts and minds – again.
A week ago they batonned a man senseless
he refused to remove a poster from his car:
the poster was a picture of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al Sadr.
Were the Americans protecting free speech?
Were they demonstrating their version of religious tolerance?
Unfortunately the man, Salem Hassan, died from the beating,
I suppose the Americans would call his death collateral damage.
I say to the Americans “Keep digging: the hole must lead somewhere.”
War Letter
Written just before the Second Gulf War 2003 but not published.
Dear Editor
The Courier Mail
It is clear that Iraq does not want a war but the US and Britain do. The obvious solution is to let Britain fight America.
Dr. John Tomlinson
Deagon
War of Terror
John is a peacenik not a pacifist. Ever since he reached his teen years he has opposed every war Australia has engaged in at the behest of our great and mighty colonial masters, Britain and Amerika. We are currently involved in a modern day crusade in the Middle East to curry favour with them.
We cheer on President Obama as he murders, with drones, those who are opposed to US hegemony. We lock up young men who have committed no crime apart from wanting to go and fight for the other side in the Middle East. We ignore Israel’s murder of Palestinians. We are unmindful of the fact that there is a memorial in Canberra to those Australians who went and fought on the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War.
The questions are not simple but if we are to emerge as Australians, rather than as automatons mindlessly and subserviently following our colonial masters, then we should be developing our own foreign policy.
Was there ever – will there be?
Written 2002
Was there once a time when,
we knew and understood
what was right and what was wrong,
what was true and good?
When the answers were simple
and everyone played fair,
and politics was decent,
here, and everywhere?
When the rich and powerful
worried about the poor,
and none would turn a stranger
away from their kitchen door;
when people found injustice
they confronted it what’s more?
Where the unemployed were found work
and helped to pull their weight,
and workers didn’t find themselves
locked outside the factory gate?
When we shared the wealth of Australia
between the White and Black
and we didn’t lock up refugees
in this country’s great outback?
The answer to these questions
is a deep resounding no.
Is this the way it has to be
again the answer’s no!!
Will there ever be a time when
we’ll know and understand
that peace, justice and solidarity
come alive throughout this land?
When we’ll say hello to strangers
who pass us in the street,
and we’ll ensure that everyone
has enough and more to eat?
A time when asylum seekers
will be welcomed one and all
and together we will struggle
to answer freedom’s call?
John Tomlinson & Penny Harrington
Watching John Howard set the record straight on Sir Robert Menzies.
Ex-Prime Minster, Howard made much of Menzies’ anti-Communism and his clever tactics in encouraging the split in Labour ranks in 1955. Howard said that at the 1961 election Sir Robert had had to rely on Democratic Labor Party preferences to win the election.
It is true that Menzies could not have retained government had Labor not been divided and that the Democratic Labor Party usually favoured the conservatives over the ALP. But what the little twerp omitted to mention was that Menzies did not win a majority until Jim Killen had won in the seat of Morton by 130 votes after receiving 93 vital Communist votes. A partner in Jim Killen’s old legal firm, Max Julius, had stood in Morton and directed preferences to Killen.
Menzies, like the present Turnbull administration, governed with a majority of one following the 1961 election.
Written in 2016
We are having a ‘save the Aboriginal children’ blitzkrieg
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate
Posted Friday, 29 June 2007
The first Howard Government Budget 1996-7 removed $400 million from the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission. In 2004 he abolished the Commission in its entirety.
Howard claimed he was going to solve the practical problems which prevented Indigenous people taking their place in modern Australia. He claimed he would end “dependence on welfare”. Howard attacked those he accused of promoting a black armband version of history. He refused to say “Sorry” to the stolen generations. He consistently argued that issues of symbolic importance to Indigenous people paled into insignificance when compared with his determination to seek practical solutions to the problems facing the Aboriginal community.
Confronted by the Wik High Court Judgment he launched his 10 Point Plan attack on Native Title legislation in order to give pastoralists and miners “certainty”. He eroded some significant autonomy promoting provisions of the Northern Territory Land Rights Act. He has criticised legal recognition being given to customary law and bilingual education.
He, assisted by his Minister Mal Brough, has coerced some Indigenous communities to sign over their communally owned land to 99-year leases. At the United Nations he has opposed efforts to recognise Indigenous self determination. He claims to have set out to mainstream the administration of Indigenous affairs.
In this, his 11th year in office and in the run-up to the next election it is timely to review his progress towards practical reconciliation. This is all the more relevant now as he has just launched his “save the Aboriginal children of the Northern Territory” blitzkrieg. Soldiers and police are being rushed into Indigenous communities as the vanguard to doctors and child protection officials who will follow.
The reality on the ground
Indigenous Australians are dying on average 17 to 20 years earlier than other Australians. And it has been like this during his entire period in office. At every stage of life Aboriginal people experience more illness and injury than other Australians. Indigenous Australians are considerably more likely to live in over crowded housing than other citizens: 15 or more people to a dwelling is the rule in many Aboriginal townships across northern Australia.
Indigenous unemployment is rife throughout most parts of rural and remote Australia. In the Northern Territory, there are 8,000 Community Development Employment Program (CDEP) workers. This is an Indigenous “work for the dole” program. The Howard Government has not had the wit to create sufficient meaningful employment in these communities nor the common sense to realise that without sufficient money to sustain industry and commerce, widespread poverty is the only guaranteed outcome.
There are many jobs which need to be done in these communities. The lack of sufficient housing is a major priority which could be addressed by training local Indigenous people to build and maintain their own housing. When I visited Yarrabah and Hopevale communities in 1963 all the housing had been built by Indigenous workers. They had even processed local timber in their own saw mill. I saw similar examples in many parts of tropical Australia.
There are many other important jobs which need doing in Indigenous communities which could be done, and in many places are being done, by local people: care for children and older people, supplying food, running tourist enterprises and community stores, vehicle maintenance, ensuring decent sanitation services, and so forth. The Government has had 11 years to train people if that were necessary – it has not done so. Surely this would have been a good place to start on its alleged path to practical reconciliation.
Instead of attacking the teaching of children in local Aboriginal languages, the Government could work to ensure that people become literate in at least one language: if only because once people become literate in one language, they can more easily learn to read and write in other languages. English is certainly a useful language to learn in Australia but, in many remote communities, English is not the lingua franca.
The Howard Government has not been able to end “dependence on welfare”. It may have been able to impose harsh “mutual obligations” on many social security recipients but to what end? “Mutual obligation” is a self- defeating policy. The Government has denigrated Indigenous people who have sought to build their self-esteem and to pursue issues of symbolic importance to them and their communities.
If the present Government was not so mired in its celebration of western capitalist contractual arrangements, it might realise that people exercising autonomy have a far better chance to gain dignity and cultural success.
Indigenous people may not want to celebrate the arrival of Captain Cook, the achievements of Don Bradman and the Anzac soldiers – they might want to celebrate Land Rights heroes, Elly Bennett, Cathy Freeman and Indigenous service men and women. They might prefer to worship their own language group’s Dream Time ancestors rather than celebrate mass. A truly democratic, multicultural society would welcome such cultural diversity.
The grog and sexual abuse
Australians are being told that the Federal Government has had to take control of Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory because of the “rivers of alcohol flowing through Indigenous communities”, the neglect and sexual abuse of children and rampant pornography.
If governments fail to create sufficient meaningful employment while denigrating attempts at self-help in communities and, on top of this, impose “a nice white mutual obligation” regime, it is little wonder that alcoholism is a problem.
Alcoholism won’t be cured by John Howard denouncing Aborigines for failing to meet their “mutual obligations”. The impact of alcoholism could be lessened by providing decent work, proper pay, adequate housing, good health staff and alcohol rehabilitation services (see also Tomlinson, J. (2005) Must be the grog can’t be the Government (PDF 235KB)).
Police and soldiers can’t, on their own, stamp out neglect and sexual abuse of Indigenous children. Only the Indigenous community, working in conjunction with children’s services and health workers (ultimately backed up by police authority), can achieve that and this will only happen when these services are available and the community has come to trust the workers. However, while 15 to 20 people are crowded into one house then domestic disputes, violence and inappropriate sexual behaviour are an ever-present danger.
Howard has not learnt his history lesson
The old quip that John Howard preferred a white blindfold view of history to a Black armband one might not be too wide of the mark. The story of the stolen generations revealed in the Bringing Them Home report showed again and again that at least some of the white families who took the children, removed from their Indigenous mothers, thought they were acting in the best interests of the children. It is a strange view of family which allows people to believe that you have to destroy one generation to save the next.
Throughout Australia, the various pieces of legislation used to control Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders were commonly referred to as Protection Acts and the people who administered them were “protectors”.
In Queensland, the Act was originally called the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897. By 1939, it had been renamed the Aboriginals Preservation and Protection Act. The degree of a misnomer such titles bestowed was noted by Professor Charles Rowley who commented in relation to Section 36(3) of this 1939 Protection Act that “An almost incredible provision was that if a person were charged under the Queensland Criminal Code with carnal knowledge of an Aboriginal girl under the statutory age of consent, ‘it is a defence to a charge of any of the offences defined … to prove that such a girl had developed a state of puberty’” (Outcasts in White Australia, Pelican, Harmondsworth).
The Protection legislation in all its various forms remained in place in Queensland until 1975. The “protection” which such legislation afforded Indigenous citizens was not sufficient to ensure the “protectors” or the Department of Native Affairs paid Aboriginal workers the wages which white employers of Indigenous labour, were required to pay to the “protectors” or the Department (See Kidd, R. The Way We Civilise, University of Queensland, St Lucia 1997).
In Queensland, the Beattie Government accepted that this was the case and has made a paltry offer of partial repayment of up to $4,000 (Kidd, R. Stolen Wages – A National Issue (PDF 56KB))
Conclusion
Howard’s failure to address the practical problems confronting Indigenous people is a disgrace. Over the last 11 years the Government he leads has not significantly improved the health, housing, sanitation, employment, nutrition and even access to clean drinking water confronting the majority of Indigenous Australians in most rural and remote areas.
To rub salt into the wound he has denigrated those who have requested he come to terms with the need for symbolic reconciliation. He has refused to say “sorry”. He has demonised those who have sought self- determination for Indigenous Australians.
Now, in the dying days of his government, he is again attempting to stir up a storm of moral panic about the mess that confronts many Indigenous communities in rural and remote areas of this continent. It’s time he admitted that his government’s policies and actions are a substantial part of the practical problems facing Indigenous Australians.
We gave her and her parents asylum in Australia
Written 2011 in response to the Gillard Labor Government’s attempts
to get Malaysia to accept asylum seekers who had travelled to Australia. Not published
It’s a sleazy deal we can reveal –
not a treaty or agreement –
just an aspirational document.
Without justice, a slippery slope
betrayal, connivance and false hope.
Our dignity betrayed – humanity delayed.
The Light on the Hill has been stolen
by political opportunists – golden.
Well may be, just yellow.
So paint Julia black and send her back
to Malaysia.
See how she goes and if she crows
on her return to Australia.
We must find the courage to speak
One hundred and eighteen children in detention
in Australian concentration camps.
Eighty-seven children in detention
on the hell-hole of Nauru.
This highlight’s Australia’s humanity
because these kids have committed no crime,
they didn’t ask to have to risk their lives
in leaky boats on raging seas.
It was not their fault their parents had to flee
from injustice, persecution and inhumanity.
Both major political parties support
their imprisonment, their incarceration,
this is an indecency.
Government and opposition say
they are inflicting this pain on families
to stop others risking their lives by
trying to come to Australia by boat.
This is not justice.
This is not fair.
This is collective punishment
of all refugees
of all displaced persons
of all sans papers
of all who flee war, injustice and persecution.
This is not justice – it is retribution
for not waiting for Australia to
understand their need to escape
the unbearable conditions in their homeland
and harassment in the neighbouring countries
to which they first escaped.
This is collective punishment
for shining a light on our inhumanity.
And for good measure we let guards
prey on the vulnerable
to demand sexual favours from children
to drive people mad
all in a calculated effort
to convince them to abandon claims for asylum
to return to persecution or death
because it is more bearable
than living in an Australian run camp.
This is what Team Australia is all about.
It is time we stopped averting our eyes
some might even concentrate their minds
long enough to realise that our politicians
are committing crimes against humanity,
crimes against humanity in our name.
They don’t speak for me
I can’t believe they speak for you.
It is time we found our voice
to speak for ourselves.
We might even have the impertinence
to speak for our politicians
because what they are saying to asylum seekers
is not worth listening to.
written in 2011 not published
We should be turning back, not turning our backs
Written in 2007 not published.
We’ve turned our back on justice
and wonder why none trust us.
We’ve ignored the wisdom we were taught,
And the rights for which our forbears fought,
to live in a world with danger fraught,
where peoples lives and souls are bought.
When it comes to Indigenes,
asylum seekers and refugees
or anyone from overseas
we look away and sneer.
Cries for help we cannot hear,
we’re happy in our land of fear.
We’re having a whale of a time in Japan
Was it part of your culture
to turn citizens of captive nations
into comfort women?
Is it part of your culture
to woodchip our forests?
Is it part of your culture
to steal Aboriginal resources?
Is it part of your culture
to kill the largest marine creatures
still living in Antarctic oceans?
Is it part of your culture
to destroy ecosystems
throughout South East Asia?
Well, if it is, then
stick your bloody culture.
Western fundamentalism 2006-style
Fundamentalists have a
❂ Belief in truth
The Truth
and righteousness
Fundamentalists have a
❂ Bi-polar view of the world
Good
❂ versus
Evil
Fundamentalists have a preference for
❂ Revealed
over
❂ discovered
truth
Fundamentalists have an Intolerance of
❂ ambiguity
❂ confounding ideas
❂ opposition
Their dislike of opposition often leads to
❂ Xenophobia
❂ fear of other
even
❂ racism
❂ violence
Whilst holders of any particular ideologies
❂ claim their belief system is congruent
❂ presents a consistent explanation
❂ a world view
❂ they often actually hold conflictual even contradictory ideas simultaneously
For example
❂ Migrants are untrustworthy
❂ incompetent
❂ lazy
and therefore
❂ aren’t worth paying award wages to.
❂ Migrants undercut wages
❂ will work for next to nothing
❂ they get rich quick
There is little recognition that in Australia the non-Indigenous population are all migrants
George Mikes, the Hungarian Jewish writer says
a migrant is someone who comes down the gang plank
after you
Western fundamentalists suggest
Refugees and asylum seekers
❂ are some form of non-human
❂ they don’t have as many rights as dogs and cats in this country
❂ the RSPCA at least takes an interest in such animals’ welfare and does not jail them for having the wrong paper work.
“We will decide who comes to this country and the manner in which they come.” [Howard at Liberal campaign launch Sydney 2001]
❂ Phillip Adams on Late Night Live 20/2/2002
said the best letter on throwing children over board
and Hollingsworth’s handling of sexual abuse complaints
suggested that……
❂ If Howard had any ethics he would sack Hollingsworth
and
❂ if Hollingsworth has any ethics he would sack Howard.
What are the constituent parts of authority?
ON LINE opinion – Australia’s e-journal of social and political debate
Posted Thursday, 3 August 2006
We sometimes refer to a person as being an authority on some aspect of human existence. This is usually because most informed people regard their writings in a specific area of study as truly insightful. John Rawls on ethics, Philippe van Parijs on basic income and T.H. Marshall on social citizenship are but three examples.
Other writers might contribute significant ideas to the debate but we can choose to discuss their work or ignore it. With the three writers just mentioned, however, were we to be writing in the area of their expertise, we would be wise to acknowledge their authoritative contribution and indicate our general acceptance of, or intellectual departure from, their position. Implicit in this recognition is one sense of authority, authority as guidance. This meaning of authority is authority at its least oppressive.
We sometimes talk about authority figures. By which we mean people whose direction we must follow or suffer some penalty: police, military officers, prime ministers, teachers and parents being some examples.
John Howard as prime minister committed us to wage war in Iraq even though public opinion was running strongly against the war. He is the parliamentary leader of what is claimed to be a “representative democracy”. In his deciding to go to war, he confused his role as our leading representative with that of our “absolute” ruler.
Authority figures sometimes exercise their authority by persuasion:
- parent: “It’s for your own good”;
- teacher: “It will help you to understand”;
- police: “It’s the law”;
- Howard: “Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, they are developing nuclear weapons and they will pass them on to terrorists”; and
- army officer: “It’ll save the nation from terrorism”.
But if you or I choose to ignore such entreaties the authority figures’ authority relies ultimately upon the extent of power at their command:
- parent: “If you don’t do it, you’ll get belted”;
- teacher: “If you don’t read books, you’ll fail”;
- police: “If you don’t do what I say, you’ll be arrested”; and
- military officer: “If you don’t stop, I’ll shoot.”
Of course, some teachers, parents and police kill people. This fact usually brings them to the attention of other, more powerful, authority figures. Even on the odd occasion, the killing of an unarmed civilian has led to the police being charged, but courts and juries are inept at handling such cases and most police killings are whitewashed. So-called independent judicial inquiries amount to a small hindrance. Still such killings are not lawful uses of authority.
Authority here is being used in two main senses: persuasion, force … though some find force persuasive.
If the aim is to instill compliance then, at one level, it is of little consequence whether one is persuaded or compelled, although many people find persuasion is more appealing than compulsion. We know that people who can be persuaded are far more likely to comply in the absence of the authority figure than those who, though unconvinced, can be forced to comply in the presence of a figure of authority.
We know about the policy of redemptive “pre-emption” and the coalition of the killing’s invasion of Iraq. According to George W. Bush, they won the war some time ago. But American troops are still getting killed in Iraq. Over 2,500 American troops have died as of June 2006. Here we see an example of people who were initially forced to comply by the overwhelming force of the invaders have not been persuaded of the righteous authority of the American imperialists’ claim to be imposing democracy.
Many politicians in the West claim that those who would kill such fine upstanding examples of American youth must be terrorists. We have conveniently forgotten the French resistance movement who fought the Nazi occupiers of their country and whom we then regarded as heroes. Whether it is the Chechen militants, Palestinian fighters, Afghani resistance fighters, or Iraqi resistance groups, they, we are told, must be terrorists. First, they are predominantly, though not entirely, Muslim; second, they are opposing the established order of either the Americans or the Americans’ current “best friends”; and third, we don’t like the fact they won’t do what we want them to do.
We have little understanding of those:
- who would stand in the way of the new world order (which is dedicated to the liberation of Iraq “one barrel of oil at a time”);
- who are driven by desperation or poverty or both to use whatever weapons they have at their disposal; or
- those who are prepared to sacrifice themselves for the liberation of their homelands.
We see suicide bombers as crazed psychopathic killers, yet we ignore:
- the Israeli Army’s demolition of homes, the regular assassination of militants and the shooting of civilians and combatants throughout the West Bank and Lebanon;
- the repeated US invasion of any country they decide needs to be “democratised”; and
- Australia’s involvement in the 11-year blockade of Iraq that led to the deaths of 6,000 Iraqi children each month.
We welcome home our servicemen and women, acknowledging them as heroes, after they have dropped bombs on other peoples’ cities. If we were consistent, we would recognise that those we call terrorists and those we call servicemen and women are both killers. If we want to distinguish between them, I would suggest we adopt the terms our killers and their killers.
About 40,000 people in the world die each day of hunger and malnutrition, yet there is enough food in the world to feed everyone. It is not as if those in authority don’t know about the starvation and maldistribution. In fact they choose to let “The hunger of the many fill the bellies of the few”.
If we diverted one-twelfth of the military expenditure of all the countries in the world (from guns and bombs) and used it to fight hunger then we would have enough money to feed, house, clothe, educate and provide basic health services for all poor people on the planet. If we refuse to be sucked into the “profits first, people last” mentality and struggle to ensure that no poor person goes to sleep hungry then we might have sufficient moral authority to convince people that we really do want to live in a better world.
Any authority which coerces proclaims to the world that it lacks sufficient “moral” authority to persuade. Some coercive authority figures attempt to enforce their authority by suggesting that they derive their authority from some higher power: God, democracy, the national interest, the common good, the general will or the rule of law. But when they do make such claims, we should remember the old demonstrators’ slogan that says, “When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty”.
When does neglect, indifference and intentional avoidance morph into absolute racism?
Many Australians are indifferent to the plight of their less fortunate neighbours. Others would rather turn away than attempt to come to an understanding of what is happening to fellow citizens. Indigenous Australians bare the brunt of much of this neglect, indifference and avoidance. Recently arrived asylum seekers are daily pushed to the edge of despair by being excluded from below poverty line handouts by the current Coalition Government. Others who arrived by boat after Kevin Rudd’s arbitrary cut-off point languish on Manus and Nauru, even though they have been found to be refugees in need of our protection.
The current Australian government is in breach of numerous international conventions, agreement and protocols which previous Australian governments have freely entered into, signed and ratified. Some of my fellow citizens may well say that this is of little consequence, times have changed and that we should just get on with the new order of things.
However, is it justifiable just to ignore current acts of inhumanity when they result sending people slowly mad and in driving some people to suicide on distant prison atolls? Can we really believe that it is ok to deprive vulnerable Australian citizens of food and shelter when United Nations conventions we have signed and ratified require us to ensure sustenance? If there are any who claim that it is alright to do so then I am at a loss to know on what moral authority that is so.
Some recent research
Many studies have been conducted into “work for the dole” programs. What is clear from many of them in 2018 is that whatever downsides there are to compelled labour in our cities and larger towns they pale into insignificance when compared with the brutal “work for the dole” regime inflicted upon rural people. The over whelming majority of rural “work for the dole” recipients are Indigenous.
“According to the ANU Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, there has been a 740% increase in financial penalties since the (current “work for the dole” program replaced the previous remote job and communities program in 2015. Remote workers are 25 times more likely to be penalised than non-remote jobseekers, and 50 times more likely to have a serious penalty imposed, which can mean up to eight weeks with no payment…..
But between 2015 and 2017 there has been a dramatic drop in participants “that cannot be accounted for by job placements or movement between regions”, according to Lisa Fowkes from the ANU. Almost 6,000 people may not be receiving any income support at all, Fowkes said. Almost 60% of those disengaging with the scheme were under 25, and a further 31% were 25- to 34-year-olds.”
This study was not alone:
“Remote work-for-the-dole scheme a ‘national disgrace’, former Fraser minister says Former deputy Liberal leader Fred Chaney says Community Development Program a ‘scandalous failure of policy’…“It’s another assimilationist, bureaucratic, irrelevant approach that will inflict more hardship, hunger and dysfunction on Aboriginal people…
“Aboriginal people in remote Northern Territoryface many barriers to complying with the type of work programs involved in the scheme,” the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency said. “These barriers include language considerations, lack of accessible Centrelink agents, excessive wait times on the phone, limited to no access to mobile reception and internet, high rates of illness and disability, and difficulties accessing even basic healthcare.”
The Coalition Government is not content with just excluding Aborigines from “work for the dole” payments it has other ways of pandering to powerful white interests in 2018 it was reported that “Indigenous affairs minister Nigel Scullion has given almost half a million dollars’ worth of funds earmarked for alleviating Indigenous disadvantage to fishing and cattlemen’s groups in the Northern Territory. The grants will go towards legal fees for the groups to argue how they might be negatively impacted by land rights claims, he told a Senate estimates hearing”.
It is pertinent that Scullion was the Minister whose interest was not piqued by the tear gassing of young Indigenous detainees in Don Dale Prison by guards.
I think that whilst some might want to describe this assault on the economic viability of Aboriginal people as an oversight – it could be more accurately described as part and parcel of the race war which the invaders have been inflicting on the Indigenous population since the 26th of January 1788.
It is not only a race war but is also a class war which the Liberal Party is waging against poorer Australians
There has been the robo debt standover debt recovery where by paid commercial debt collectors are souled onto people to “Recover fictitious debts” which the Government says they owe.
In 2019 it was pointed out that “One in five parents on the government’s contentious job-ready scheme for disadvantaged parents had their payments suspended in the program’s first six months, new data reveals.
As the Australian Human Rights Commission argued the ParentsNext program was “manifestly inconsistent with Australia’s human rights obligations” and social services and legal groups call for the program to be overhauled or scrapped, departmental figures show thousands of parents are having their payments cut under the new program.
More than 16,000 parents received a payment suspension between July and December 2018, representing 21% of the 75,000 participants. The suspension rate for Indigenous parents – who are targeted for eligibility and make up 19% of participants – is higher at 27%.”
- “NDIS payments down $2.5bn, reflecting lower than expected numbers of participants entering the NDIS and lower utilisation of participants’ individual support packages
- Age pension down $894m, reflecting the ongoing impact of the previously implemented measure to increase the age pension qualifying age from 65 to 67 years of age
- Family tax benefit payments down $790m, reflecting lower than expected average payments and reconciliation payments driven by improving economic conditions
- Jobseeker payments down $335m, reflecting lower than expected average payments and recipient numbers attributable to the strong labour market”
Well doesn’t that just show the Liberals are better managers of the economy than Labor?
It’s certainly an off quoted assertion by Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, and his Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. And in a sense, it is a debatable assertion. Certainly, in the short term, it may be in best interests of the big end of town. But in the longer run such policies destroy the fabric of society. They impoverish substantial pockets of less well-off citizens, drive some towards criminality and undermine solidarity. Such policies lead to far more unequal societies, increase health problems and often costs. These, in turn, lead to the need for more police and prisons. Everyone’s wellbeing is undermined until gated communities become the order of the day and people are left to hide behind their own insecurity in isolating complexes guarded by privatised security guards. It is a sort of rich man’s prison where humanity atrophies.