January 2002

At first it all seemed so simple. The current wave of boatpeople came from distant countries about which most Australians knew little. Asylum-seekers had no votes or voices in Australian political life. Taking a hard line – locking them up or turning them back – looked like an easy way to win elections, and few politicians on either side could resist the temptation to make the most of it.

Then, the questions emerged. What is actually going on inside Australia's migrant detention centres? Why has the Government entrusted their running to a subsidiary of a foreign multinational corporation with a distinctly questionable human rights record? Why is Canberra seemingly so reluctant to allow independent observers into the detention centres?

Even before these were answered, they were overshadowed by other questions thrown up by Tampa and John Howard's "Pacific solution".. Instead of providing answers, the Government has shrouded its policy in ever-thickening secrecy..

The issue of asylum-seekers is undoubtedly difficult for all governments. But the difficulties should not obscure two simple but vital principles. Asylum-seekers have the right to humane treatment while their claims are being assessed. And the Australian public has the right to information necessary for making reasoned assessments of government policy.

..One disturbing aspect of the asylum-seeker debate is the way it has been framed in terms of "us" versus "them". Acts of desperation by boatpeople and detainees are repeatedly re-interpreted as the peculiar practices of foreign cultures. This creates an image of "them" – alien outsiders with uncivilised ways – as a threat to the cultural purity of "us": Australians, implicitly imagined as homogeneously "civilised" and European.

But the more the crisis unfolds, the more it becomes clear this is not a matter of "us" against "them".

As political thinkers have observed for centuries, human rights are indivisible. Let "their" rights be trampled on today, and tomorrow there will be no safeguards to protect yours. At the moment, it is the detained boatpeople who are experiencing the sharp end of Australia's exclusionist policies. But, ultimately, as far as the need to protect human rights and civil liberties is concerned, we are all in the same boat.

- Tessa Morris-Suzuki - Aust (Jan 29)

Turning Away The Whitlamite Generation
Simon Crean's so-called backflip on the detention of asylum seekers is too little, too late to repair the serious damage being done to Labor's electoral base by its continued support for mandatory detention of would-be refugees. The Federal Opposition leader's call for child detainees to be released from behind the razor wire is certainly welcome.. but his party's continual dithering on policy direction and failure to provide an alternate moral compass on this vexed issue has left a lot of Labor voters angry and despairing - and looking for a political voice.

Ever since the federal election I have been astonished at how many colleagues, friends and former political mates have told me that they simply were not able to bring themselves to vote Labor because of the Opposition's me-tooism on asylum seekers.. And while I can hear the likes of Mark Latham muttering "good riddance" I wonder if Labor really can afford to lose the Whitlamite generation. Those thousands of middle-class, educated people who flocked to the party because of Gough Whitlam have supported the ALP for more than 30 years now. They were part of the transformation of Labor from the narrow-minded, bigoted and frankly racist party of Arthur Calwell's day to the more diverse, outward looking and innovative policy driven party that helped keep it in government throughout the 1980s and early '90s.

A key element in that transformation was the formal burying, in 1965, of the white Australia policy which had been the first plank of the ALP's platform since the party's inception in 1901.. To idealistic young students such as myself, this signified that Labor really had changed and that we could rely on Whitlam to administer a non-discriminatory immigration policy.

It would be both sad and ironic if it was immigration that fossilised Labor once more. It would be a slap in the face to all those migrants who have long supported Labor (some even to the extent of collaborating with some pretty dubious branch-stacking exercises). It would also signal that it is the past 30 years that have been the aberration.

..We already knew from what it did last year with the Tampa that this Government will do absolutely anything to win an election, so I suppose we should have known it would try to pull a similar trick to help out their mates in South Australia who have a difficult state poll coming up.

..We are by now unhappily accustomed to Philip Ruddock's denial-ridden utterances but the performance of the sepulchral Minister for Immigration over the past week has bordered on misanthropy.. Yesterday, he was reported as saying he had been advised that some of the hunger strikers.. could be at risk of suffering fatal heart attacks. "But if we succumb," said the merciless minister, "others will assume that if you want to get a different decision from the Australian Government, then that is all you have to do. Then you would be encouraging more people to involve themselves in life-threatening and life-taking situations."

Never let it be thought that in order to be allowed to stay in this country, all you have to do is kill yourself! ..Why isn't Julia Gillard challenging this Orwellian nonsense? ..Why hasn't Labor demanded a full disclosure of the costs of running the detention centres?

Labor is scared that it will lose support if it challenges the basics of the policy (which of course it introduced in the first place), but what price will Labor pay for failing to oppose a policy that more and more Australians are becoming distinctly uncomfortable with?

- Anne Summers - SMH (Jan 28)

ALP Silence On Woomera Horrors A Disgrace
How long will it be, I wonder, before the Australian Labor Party can summon the nerve to emerge from its fit of abject moral cowardice to do or say something - anything - about the horrors of Woomera?

I put this on Wednesday to Labor's immigration shadow minister, Julia Gillard, a newish Melbourne frontbencher who replaces the appalling Con Sciacca, but she was less than encouraging.

Waffle, waffle, waffle. She bridled at the charge of cowardice but made it plain that her party is still suffering a collective nervous breakdown in the wake of its Tampa election defeat, with any change of its policy on asylum seekers way beyond the horizon. For the moment, to its shame and disgrace, Labor will trudge along in the footsteps of Philip Ruddock, uttering feeble moans of dismay occasionally, but doing nothing.

Yet, from the talkback calls I have had at 2UE this week, I sense the public mood is shifting, partly because the election hysteria is behind us and partly because decent Australians are becoming uncomfortable with the accounts of hunger strikes, lip-sewing and attempted suicide by asylum seekers driven beyond despair.

The ratbags are still there, the lunatics who want "yer Islamics" thrown to the dingoes, but they are not as noisy as they were, and the Government's more rational supporters have begun to sense that this is not, perhaps, how things were meant to be.

The Parramatta Liberal MP, Ross Cameron - no sopping wet do-gooder, he - wrote in his local newspaper this week that "I suspect that in another century, we may look back on our use of detention as a rather primitive and counterproductive response to human problems". More advanced thinkers have reached this conclusion already, but Cameron may yet catch up.

Not the minister, though. If Philip Ruddock was jolted by the principled resignation of Neville Roach, the Government's handpicked chairman of the Council for Multicultural Australia, he managed to conceal it. Outwardly imperturbable, he retreats, as ever, behind the bloodless, desiccated jargon of the lawyer-bureaucrat. He makes appropriate responses, he addresses questions, he manages issues, and - clangorous euphemism, this - the detainees have made lifestyle choices to seek resettlement outcomes. The towering irony is that Ruddock has become a victim himself, a policy prisoner with a lifer's pallor, bound by his Prime Minister's Faustian bargain with the devil of racism in return for an election victory.

And so, out there at Woomera on this Australia Day, those who have come from across the sea are sharing the boundless plains behind the razor wire. If a measure of a society is the way it treats the weakest and most vulnerable minorities in its midst, then we are marked low today.

- Mike Carlton - SMH (Jan 26)

Asylum Seekers' Last Port Our First Priority
The issue that helped John Howard win the election is now giving his Government hell. The grey countenance of the Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock, appears daily on TV, challenged to explain a detention policy that has sparked hunger strikes and sewn lips. Children at risk have had to be removed from Woomera detention centre this week.

The resignation of Neville Roach, chairman of the Council for Multicultural Australia, who lambasted the Government for lacking compassion, carried a special sting. Roach is much respected.

..All this is bad enough. What will be an unmitigated disaster is if, after the lull during the monsoon season, the boats resume. That's why the regional conference on people smuggling in Bali next month is so important to Australia. There's no hope of instant solutions. But unless there's a lot of progress stopping the flow, the Government's troubles will deepen.

.."The people smugglers are saying it's proving very difficult to get clients to Australia," says Downer. "The customers are getting angry with the people smugglers." Another source says some of the smaller operators are looking to give the game away, while the bigger ones are considering how to stay in business.

If these claims are borne out, the chances of the Government softening its line on detainees in any significant way seem zilch. Its philosophy is to screw down the closed door so there is no crack of light visible anywhere.

- Michelle Grattan - SMH (Jan 25)

The Children Behind Barbed Wire Degrade Us All
The children streaming off a school bus look like kids anywhere in Australia. Except after school they are returned to the Woomera Detention Centre where there are few places to play, no trees to climb and an atmosphere of tension and fear. Neither they nor their parents know what the future holds. Some have been in detention for years.

Traumatised, depressed and confused, some detainees have rioted or begun hunger strikes, sewing their lips shut. There are hundreds of children, including some who are unaccompanied, locked away behind wire fences in Australian detention centres.

..Many Australians find it hard to empathise with these people who are homeless and adrift in the world, and whose existence is at the whim of others to determine.

This government must take much of the blame. For the past few years it has run a campaign of misinformation and fear.

The tide of emotion in Australia against asylum seekers that the Coalition last year rode into government, was built on years of demonising these people and telling the public that there is an invasion, a serious threat to our borders from people who are diseased, dishonest, not genuine refugees and not like us. The handling of the asylum seekers has been an example of effective populist politics, but bad leadership.

..The Democrats believe that, while their claims for refugee status are assessed, families should be in group homes outside detention centres and unescorted minors should be in the care of community and welfare agencies. There should be a three-month maximum for detention, except in exceptional circumstances.

..Mr Ruddock desperately demonises asylum seekers, determinedly arrogant, refusing to acknowledge that what the government is doing is wrong. Whatever labels Ruddock uses, it will not fit the children. They are just kids - kids in a hellhole. Get them out.

- Sen. Natasha Stott Despoja - The Age (Jan 24)

Have Our Leaders Learnt Nothing From History?
In England, women went on a hunger strike to try to win the vote. In Ireland, women and men went on a hunger strike to try to win their country's independence.

In both cases they won, eventually, but some died.

In 1938, our politicians turned away a boatload of Jewish people from Brisbane in case their landing increased racist tendencies.

Have our leaders learnt nothing from history?

Are we going to let people die who come here because they chose freedom?

Are we really introducing a regime that equals those they fled? Think again before it is too late.

Anne Macneill - SMH Letters (Jan 23)

China Tops Our Agenda
The war on terror is at the top of the US-Australia strategic agenda as John Howard visits the US next week. That's understandable. But presidents and prime ministers do not have the luxury of dealing with only one issue at a time. We have a big new problem since September 11, but the old ones are still there.

The biggest of these issues is China. Australia's future security will depend more than anything else on the way China develops and uses its growing power, and on the way the rest of the world responds.

If things go well over the next few decades, a rich and powerful China can be an engine of prosperity and an anchor of stability for the region. If things go badly, our region and our country could be dragged back to relive the worst aspects of the 20th century, with endemic hostility between powerful and heavily armed adversaries, and even major war.

..Who wins the debate in China and what the future holds for our region depends primarily on whether America and China can compromise to reach a modus vivendi that accommodates the power and ambitions of both .. These are not questions for the remote future. The outcomes are being shaped right now. And already the dangers of failure are significant. The biggest risk to Australia of a major war over the next few years arises from the potential for conflict between the US and China over Taiwan, in which America would most likely look to Australia for support.

..No country in the world is better placed than Australia to help shape American policy on China, and as America's closest Pacific ally we have a responsibility to do so. If we can't help, who can? ..The place to start is with the two specific issues that are now the key sources of tension in the relationship - Taiwan and missile defence. We should be urging America to do deals with China on these issues, and in so doing lay the foundation for a long-term cooperative relationship.

Australia needs to respond effectively to the challenge of terrorism, but we also need to address the underlying issues that are shaping our region. We do not have much time to get it right.

- Hugh White - The Age (Jan 22)

Butt-Out Strategy A Fatal Flaw
George Harrison's death at 58 from smoking-caused cancer took 17 years off his life expectancy. Television Fat Lady Jennifer Paterson lost nine years when she died of lung cancer aged 71. Much-admired journalist Paul Lyneham was just 55 when he died in 1999 of lung cancer after years of smoking. We all have to die of something, and like most causes, smoking claims its largest swathe of victims in their 70s.

But the sheer number of early deaths puts smoking in a different league. The latest estimate of tobacco-caused deaths each year in Australia is 19,019 – 11 times the national road toll and more than seven times the number of deaths from breast cancer. More than one in five of these (4200) involve people who die before the retiring age of 65. Smoking leaves other forms of drug administration for dead.

..Globally, an estimated 4 million people die each year from tobacco-related illness, compared to 2.7 million from malaria and 2.8 million from AIDS. After deaths from malnutrition (5.9 million) and violence and injury (5.8 million), tobacco claims more deaths than any other single cause. Between 1950 and 2000, smoking caused about 62 million deaths in developed countries. By 2020, because of rapidly increased smoking in poorer nations, the WHO estimates that "the burden of disease attributable to tobacco will outweigh that caused by any single disease".

Those are numbers, well, to die for, but they fail to create a sense of urgency in the media, policy-makers or the public. As Joseph Stalin argued: "A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic."

..The folk wisdom is that a small sum spent on prevention is worth a fortune spent on cures, but cancer charities know which emphasis will see larger banknotes flow into collection buckets. Governments, with eyes firmly trained on the next electoral cycle, continue to give budgetary priority to acute health problems rather than day-in, day-out problems that slowly but non-dramatically kill thousands.

While the federal Government funds illicit drug control at more than $600 million and last week announced $115 million was going into the Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation from beer excise, the 2001 Costello Budget allocated nothing to tobacco control, despite the first sentence in the Government's national tobacco strategy stating: "Tobacco smoking is the single largest preventable cause of premature death and disease in Australia."

- Simon Chapman - Australian (Jan 21)

Taxpayers Stung For O'Chee's Trips
For two years after he was rejected by voters at the 1998 federal election, former senator Bill O'Chee put out his hand to collect taxpayer-funded free travel. In his final claim for the first six months of 2001, Mr O'Chee put in a bill for $13,326.20 for local and interstate travel. The little-known perk, called severance travel, is available to federal MPs and senators who have served three terms.

Although elected only once, Mr O'Chee served in three parliaments and was a member of the National Party's Queensland team for nine years, three months and 25 days.

There was public outrage when he walked away with a $45,000-a-year pension from his $1.4 million parliamentary superannuation after being ousted at the 1998 federal election.

..Peter Andren, Independent MP for the western NSW seat of Calare and a campaigner against MPs' perks, said he had not heard of "severance travel" until the news yesterday. "It underlines the need for a complete overhaul of the system of parliamentary entitlements - I call them privileges," he said.

.."I think we have to ask the question, 'Why are we paying for ex-MPs' travel after they've left Parliament and for what purpose are they travelling?'."

Under present arrangements, MPs who have served 20 years are entitled to a Gold Pass, which gives them free air or rail travel in Australia for life.

..The Sun-Herald was unable to obtain a comment from Mr O'Chee yesterday.

- Alex Mitchell - Sun-Herald (Jan 20)

Phoney War Against The 'Elites' Stifles Debate
When the historians look back at political debate over the past few years, one of the most important things they will have to puzzle over is the sudden, bizarre characterisation of Australia as one divided between the elites and the battlers or aspirationals or whatever they're being called this week.

..How is it that Tony Abbott, Oxford graduate, Liberal political professional and quasi-mediaeval Catholic .. can talk about elites ruining the country, and not be laughed off the stage?

..The notion of elites has followed on seamlessly from the politically correct, un-Australians, the chattering classes and so on, hammered home relentlessly by players like John Howard and Abbott, and by the media shills on their team.

..Increasingly, not only are a particular set of values - republicanism, reconciliation and multiculturalism - capable of being labelled elite and thereby simply dismissed, but now the whole notion of a debate about national futures and possibilities, of a polylogue, is held to be an elite activity.

Not merely the Keating vision but vision itself is represented as something that battlers don't do. That political three-card trick has already had a substantial political effect, particularly as the leadership of the ALP has so willingly, if torpidly, gone for it.

As Don Watson notes in his essay on Australia and the US, Labor jumped on the elites tag like a sloth falling out of a tree. Week by week the scope of what can actually be talked about as a political issue rather than what must be passed over in silence, lest a quasi-mythical silent majority be offended, has grown to the point where nothing but the narrowest matters of economic management serve as grounds for difference.

..Both parties are trying to manage a vision-free politics of lowered expectations, and enforce a process of globalisation that involves a systematic surrender of political power over one's own life and society.

..In the end that will prompt more than a backlash. It will prompt reaction with all that that implies, and the choice of scapegoats may be less open to manipulation than populists and pundits imagine.

- Guy Rundle - The Age (Jan 19)

It's Goodbye And No Thanks For The Memories
It's been said that history is written by the winners. This is not quite the case with the demise of Pauline Hanson's One Nation. One Nation lost their only asset when Hanson failed in her bid to enter the Senate at the federal election. Her departure from the helm of One Nation seals her ultimate failure in Australian politics.

Yet given some of the commentary that has marked her resignation this week, you would almost think she had won.. The facts are that Hanson was a one-term parliamentary representative who became state Labor's best political weapon. The Supreme Court of Queensland found that the registration of Pauline Hanson's One Nation was "induced by fraud or misrepresentation".

..The self-styled mother of Australia presided over a political party that wouldn't allow rank-and-file supporters to be members.

Hanson claims to have ended the era of political correctness by saying what other Australians wanted to say but couldn't.. Hanson did not release a new freedom into our society. She imprisoned the vulnerable and the prejudiced so they could not grow strong or tolerant. She caged the talkback radio listeners (with the complicity of rating seekers) in a world where being a loser was being a winner. Hanson made it all right to blame other people, institutions, countries for the complexities and uncontrollable events of modern life.

Hanson did not help rural and regional Australians one iota. There is no contribution that can be described as a Hanson achievement. Hanson merely prolonged the conversations of the chattering classes and elevated the elites by pursuing wrecking electoral strategies that gave Labor government in Queensland (twice), the Northern Territory and Western Australia. There, One Nation members (now running the party) boasted of getting the Greens into the upper house and giving Labor government.

..Hanson had been off media screens for some time when the government acted on the Tampa issue. To come out after it was all working and claim credit for it and the subsequent election, as Hanson did, is to rewrite history.

..Then there is the far Right. Hanson turned a blind eye to their entrenchment in One Nation, in senior executive positions, as candidates and policy authors.

..Responsible commentary would deplore the actions and effects of One Nation. Beware those who would give credit where none is due – we can't afford a Pauline Hanson martyr. Say goodbye, not au revoir.

- Senator Ron Boswell - Australian (Jan 18)

It's Up To The Nats: Regenerate Or Perish
It's now political folklore that One Nation surfed on to the political stage in the late 1990s on a wave of voter disenchantment. And it was the National Party, competing with Hanson for conservative votes in rural and regional Australia, which bore the brunt of this voter backlash. Federally, over the past two federal elections the Nationals have reached their nadir, attracting just 5.3 and 5.6 per cent of the vote in 1998 and 2001 respectively. State results have been little better. For example, in Queensland - the jewel in the Nationals' crown - the party collapsed at the 2001 election and scored a paltry 14.2 per cent of the vote and just 12 of the Legislative Assembly's 89 seats. In Western Australia, their vote fell to a near-insignificant 3.3 per cent.

But One Nation, too, is on the point of collapse and Hanson's resignation only confirms this. Following a disappointing performance at the Queensland state election, the party halved its federal vote last November to 4.3 per cent. It seems the Hanson group no longer poses a serious threat to the main parties.

..There remains ample evidence that rural anger is yet to subside and that the voice of the agrarian socialist still falls on receptive ears. The loss of such safe National Party seats as Kennedy in Queensland and New England in NSW to independents .. can be directly attributed to voters' resistance to further economic upheaval. Clearly, the National Party's decline is universal and its root causes run deep.

..In the longer term, the party must attract younger voters and members with youth-friendly policies. At present, the Nationals' grassroots membership is ageing. No party can hope to survive without generational rejuvenation.

In the shorter term, the federal organisational wing must heed Anderson's advice and press ahead with administrative reform.. The Nationals must tighten their central control to rein in state branches anxious to wield autonomy in such areas as preference allocation.

But it is the importance of maintaining a policy distinction between the Coalition partners that should remain the party's primary focus. Such reforms as the lowering of primary industry protection and the partial privatisation of Telstra, together with the disappearance of government and banking services, has kept alive an anger in rural Australia not seen since before the birth of the Country Party in 1920.

- Paul Williams - Australian (Jan 17)

Spectre Of Pauline Will Haunt Australia
Hanson has now left the political scene but Hansonism is far from dead as a political movement. After all, the origins of her electoral appeal over the past six years remain.

Studies of voting behaviour by Clive Bean using the Australian Election Study, and other scholarly contributions, indicate that One Nation's electoral appeal defies explanation as merely a vent for hostility towards Asian and Aboriginal Australians. Its sources of support are rooted in economic insecurity, cynicism towards politics and nostalgia for the certainties of the 1950s. In brief, government failure to address growing social inequality was the source of Hanson's appeal.

Howard's first instinct was to approve Hanson's attack on liberal humanism and its demonisation of the elites and special interest industries. It took time for the PM to recognise the economic dimension of her message. Thus, the enduring legacy Hanson leaves is the warning shot she, and her supporters, presented to economic rationalism.

..Hanson presented an odd ideological mix; right-wing populism on race, left-wing opposition to the political economy of globalisation and a predilection for the agrarian socialism of the old Country Party. In many respects she embraced the Australian settlement: White Australia; tariff protection; arbitration and a benevolent role for government. This reflects an older Australian penchant for a rough egalitarianism and the fair go, and with this a dislike of minority group interests.

..The Hanson phenomenon prompted many Australians to depart the port of party loyalty. This is a healthy thing for our democratic life. At least two parties, Labor and the Nationals, are subsequently reviewing their structures. And at the state branch level the Liberal Party faces similar issues. This shake-up is an important development. Less healthy, however, is the sense of legitimacy now given to attacks on alleged proponents of political correctness.

Sure, Hanson's departure from politics may cool down the temperature in political circles. But Hansonism, the political movement, won't disappear as long as social and economic inequalities continue to grow within the regions, and between the regions and the cities.

- Haydon Manning - Australian (Jan 16)

As An Antidote To Terror, Try Well-Targeted Aid
As we embark upon a new year, don't let the initial brevity of phase one in the war against terrorism in Afghanistan trick you into thinking that the nightmare of September 11 will fade away anytime soon. Indeed, to try to hide from the ugly consequences of 2001 would be a catastrophic mistake, as recent events closer to home amply testify.

So significant were last year's events that it is already possible to put 2001 in its historical context. Like World War I, the war on terror marks the advent of a new strategic era... Similarly, the sarin gas attack in Tokyo and the African embassy bombings in the 1990s were the harbingers of the new era of terror-war.

..The past 100 years of ever increasing civilian contact with war reached its apogee in New York and Washington. Combine that trend with recent advances in technology, and the future of democratic capitalism looks much less assured than it did after the collapse of the last global menace.

..The Marshall Plan was created after World War II in direct response to the challenge communism presented in the minds of war-weary and impoverished central Europeans. Together with a range of other financial and strategic arrangements, such as the Bretton Woods exchange rate regime, the World Bank, IMF and NATO, the Marshall Plan was specifically aimed at ensuring those within its remit would consciously choose democracy and capitalism over communism. In the long term it worked.

The West must revive its grand strategy of actively encouraging people everywhere to desire FDR's four freedoms: freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of speech, freedom of worship - in short, contra bin Laden, to desire to live.

..People will only be attracted to ideas when they know they will have something on the dinner table tonight. Postwar planners knew this basic fact and created a comprehensive regime accordingly... Leadership always imposes costs, but managed well, a modern Marshall Plan-style program could help consolidate the gains of democratic capitalism.

- Adam Cobb - Australian (Jan 14)

Distortions Malign A Compassionate Country
Australia is a nation that has a very proud - arguably unrivalled - record of assisting people in great humanitarian need.

We are an active participant in global refugee settlement, with our contribution dating back to the 1930s when we took 7000 German Jews. Since WWII, we have taken 600,000 refugee and humanitarian settlers.

In the past year, under Australia's refugee and humanitarian program, 13,733 people were given visas. This is one of the highest rates in the world, about double that of the US on a per capita basis.

..There are 21.8 million refugees worldwide. Australia cannot take them all but we will continue our efforts to assist those most in need. We will not resile, however, from stopping those acting illegally.

..The Australian Government does not lock up refugees, nor does it detain people for seeking asylum. We do, however, place in detention people who arrive unlawfully until their asylum claims are determined and we find out who they are, where they are from, and whether they have criminal records or health concerns. To do otherwise, and let them free into the community, is to risk their disappearance. Once a person is determined to be a refugee, they are released immediately.

..In Australia, the great majority of detainees spend on average only 15 weeks in detention while their claims are processed. Most of those who stay longer have been found not to be refugees and have chosen to pursue avenues of further review and litigation, lengthening their detention. They need not remain in detention - they are free to depart at any time.

..Many asylum seekers leave their homeland and "first reach safety in neighbouring countries such as Pakistan and Iran"... In so doing, they have already reached a haven in another country: they make a lifestyle choice to travel on to Australia.

In comparison, millions of people in squalid refugee camps do not have this luxury, nor the money to pay criminals to smuggle them across borders.

..Let me make it clear that Australia is a compassionate, tolerant, strong and prosperous nation. Australia's immigration program - one of the few such programs in the world, which this year will grant visas to 93,000 people - reflects these ideals. It does not discriminate on the ground of race, religion, colour or ethnicity.

- Philip Ruddock - The Age (Jan 13)

Bushfires, Civil Society And The Market
The Roman businessman, Crassus, knew a market opportunity when he saw one. When a building caught fire, he would promptly turn up with a team of slaves and offer to buy it. The price would rapidly diminish as the flames spread.

Once the owner settled for something rather than nothing, the slaves would put out the fire and Crassus would add another cheap acquisition to his property portfolio. Eventually, the Emperor Augustus established a public brigade to put out fires without waiting for the fall of the auctioneer's hammer.

The mix of volunteers and professionals who have been fighting the NSW bushfires since Christmas could clearly learn from Crassus. If they didn't want to buy a threatened property, they could offer to put out the fire for a price which escalated as the flames roared closer.

The political lessons from the firefighters' refusal to charge are already evident. The outpouring of support for the volunteers over the past couple of weeks suggests Australians value a vigorous civil society, not always reflected in the dominant market reform agenda of the past couple of decades.

..Once seen as something of an antipodean Thatcher, the Coalition leader, John Howard, has not been slow to get the message. As Prime Minister, he no longer insists he is the toughest economic radical ever to lead the Liberal Party. Instead, he is keen to talk about encouraging traditional civic virtues such as voluntary charity work.

..But all politicians have caught the public mood and are falling over one another to congratulate volunteers for putting out a fire without waiting until the price is right.

- Brian Toohey - AFR (Jan 12)

Mea Culpa Tony, We Have Sinned
According to the gospel of former priest-in-training Tony Abbott, anyone who sees and seeks to remedy flaws in our society is in reality denigrating the nation. That is a piece of illogical, woolly-headed and specious thinking which does a senior minister in the Howard Government no credit whatsoever.

..Today we need more than mischief-making by a senior minister with prime ministerial aspirations to tackle some of the major issues facing the nation.

In his speech to the Young Liberals convention in Melbourne, Manly-based Abbott argued that in spite of the predictions of doomsayers, Australia was in pretty good shape... But then he went for the divisive play, invoking the "elites versus battlers" imagery which has become standard Howard-era weaponry.

..Abbott argued that the republican issue, voted on in 1999, was dead and buried "if not for all time at least for these times"... As Minister for Workplace Relations, Abbott would be forced to act against any employer who sought to fill a job position under the rules applying to our head of state.

The job is filled by hereditary claim; it gives preference to males, and outlaws affinity to all religions other than Church of England, and it precludes any Australian from holding the position.

Abbott condemns the "elites" who say this denies us our final legitimacy as a mature nation, yet he supports the monarchy - the most elite structure of them all.

He argues against an apology to Australia's Aborigines, saying "meaningful reconciliation will be achieved only when Australians are no longer prey to the national insecurity that some reconciliation zealots seem determined to engender".

..Hasn't enough been done to destroy these people? Why do our leaders feel they need to stomp on them more?

..In the repulsive style of his ministerial colleague Philip Ruddock, who says asylum seekers take to the seas in leaky boats because of "lifestyle decisions", Abbott demonises those who seek the safety of our shores.

These ministers show insensitivity beyond words, and, I suspect, the belief of most Australians. The debates on these issues can go back and forth forever – but the tenor of Abbott's speech is what most concerns me. He is making a case for overlooking (perhaps encouraging) many of our flaws... rather than encouraging his audience to try to do better in those areas where we fail to attain perfection, he seeks to justify and maintain the status quo by demonising those who disagree with him.

Abbott is a political warrior, making mischief by promoting ideological division within our society. As a senior minister in our national government, his use of denigration as a weapon is a disgrace.

- Mark Day - Daily Telegraph (Jan 9)

Belittling Our Own Potential
Tony Abbott's speech to the Young Liberals last Friday demonstrates the intellectual bankruptcy of a populist conservatism that prefers to cling to the values and symbols of the past rather than embrace those that define our future.

And there is no better example of this sad state of affairs than in Abbott's defence of the British monarchy's continuing role in Australia... No doubt, if Abbott had been around in the early 1890s, he would have berated Alfred Deakin and Edmund Barton for continuing with their push for Federation when the mood of the times was not in its favour.

...The likely next prime minister on the conservative side of politics is Peter Costello, who has said the nation is "republican in sentiment". The challenge for our political leaders is to find a way of reflecting that sentiment in a constitutionally acceptable form. It is not, as Abbott believes, to hang on to an institution that represents values of sexism and religious discrimination and which sits at the top of an ossified class system.

But, of course, those who argue that Australia should have its own head of state really have more sinister motives and wider agendas to undermine society, according to Abbott... In other words, republicans are part of a Keatingite agenda to "re-engineer" our society! This tarnishing of those who quite justifiably point to the fact that there is still in this country injustice towards indigenous Australians and asylum-seekers and symbolism that is at odds with our desire to be a modern, diverse society in the Asia-Pacific region, is disturbing to say the least.

Perhaps the saddest feature of Abbott's attempt to dismiss the republican cause is its negativity. He appears to see nothing positive in an Australia that wants to give every Australian the possibility to be our head of state and to unambiguously represent our values and aspirations. This is not the outlook of a leader of tomorrow but of one who hankers after a symbol that has long lost any relevance to modern Australia.

- Greg Barns - Australian (Jan 8)

Perils Ahead For Both Sides
Any government risks debilitating complacency after three successive electoral victories; any Opposition equally risks crippling gloom after three successive electoral defeats.

As John Howard and Simon Crean prepare for the 2002 political season, they have good grounds respectively for complacency and gloom. Howard is back, his leadership unassailable, his authority absolute. Crean, by contrast, is by no means a secure leader as the battered Labor Party embarks on a search for organisational renewal.

Yet for both men there is an antidote for complacency or gloom. It is to look back a generation to the Cabinet records of the Gorton-McMahon Government of 1971 just released by the National Archives of Australia and to revisit Graham Freudenberg's marvellous 1977 study of Gough Whitlam, A Certain Grandeur.

Taken together, the main lessons of these historical documents are that the Australian electorate is a volatile animal, that it will vote for visionary parties and leaders who will appeal to their better instincts, and that the electorate will not vote for leaders perceived to be fools or weaklings.

..The broad point is that Howard might well enlarge his own reputation and extend the Coalition's longevity if, in his last term of office, he were to emphasise conciliation and public purpose as much as he has emphasised division and private interest to date. Meanness of spirit is not a necessary element of a conservative mind-set.

..Crean could do worse than follow the three-year timetable followed by Whitlam in his push for power: first year, repair the party; second year, renovate the policy; third year, persuade the people.

..So Crean, like Whitlam, has to win the struggle for organisational reform. He also has to resist the siren call of the so-called third way by developing distinctive new policies based on Labor concepts of fairness, equity and reform. There is no third way. It is a blind alley, a chimera that mesmerises failed politicians.

- Geoffrey Barker - AFR (Jan 7)

Hope Gives Us A Reason To Believe
We're an optimistic lot. Facing an uncertain 2002 with businesses collapsing, conflicts simmering, fires burning and economies around the world teetering, we're feeling good about ourselves. We know, because the pollsters from Gallup and Roy Morgan found Australians and New Zealanders are some of the most optimistic people in the world.

In fact, Australians rank equal fifth with Denmark and behind Kosovo, New Zealand, Latvia and Canada on the international feel-good ladder of nations holding the brightest hopes for the coming year.

To what do we owe these warm and fuzzy feelings?

..In part it's due to our national psyche, the "no worries, she'll be right" attitude... Our isolation has a lot to do with it. For years we sat back on our island home and watched others tear themselves apart. If they thought of us at all, it was just as the isolated country down under with a few good sportsmen and women and a collection of odd animals. But we knew better. We lived in the lucky country.

..Courage in adversity brings out the best in us, as shown in the Christmas and New Year infernos which brought us together once more. Mate helping mate; neighbour helping neighbour; strangers helping strangers. Fire isn't picky about its victims and the firefighters, police, volunteers and neighbours who pitched in to help weren't picky either. Perhaps there's more truth than we realised in those polls.

- Editorial - Daily Telegraph (Jan 6)

Seven Steps To Better Regional Relations
In their private thoughts even John Howard's closest supporters would concede that our regional relationships are at best underdeveloped and at worst rapidly diminishing. Here are seven suggestions for steering them in a more propitious direction.

..Seeking "good diplomatic relations" with countries in the region is..a means to other ends, such as the expansion of democratic and civilian political culture or the promotion of universal human rights, not an end in itself ..Relations should be gradated according to the behaviour of our regional partners towards us and their own populations.

Australia must avoid the identity politics trap. Contriving a sense of cultural and political convergence with East Asia is not necessary, convincing or desirable. Canberra should stop thinking of the region as a club it must join.

..Australia should appoint a Minister for the Asia-Pacific, charged with developing relations with countries within an arc comprising Pakistan in the west, Japan in the north and New Zealand in the south-east.

..Canberra need not fret about changing political frontiers. Order and stability in the region should promote the wellbeing of individuals rather than the territorial integrity of nation-states.

..Attracting foreign investment and expanding trade are largely independent of cultural affinities and close political friendships. Australia, after all, has its most intractable trade problems (agricultural subsidies) with the two regions in the world that we are psychologically and politically closest to (Europe and North America).

..We should project a more cosmopolitan outlook to the region, one that recognises that, on occasions, our national priorities and concerns should be surrendered to a higher ethical conviction: that our primary loyalties are to the whole of humanity.

This doesn't entail a rejection of our domestic concerns, but an acknowledgement that, from time to time, outsiders (such as political prisoners or refugees) have legitimate interests that take precedence over our narrow "national interests".

While institutions and norms are more enduring, leaders are transient. Canberra should avoid investing too much of any one bilateral relationship in the head of the other government. As the Keating-Suharto infatuation demonstrated, progress at a leadership level rarely translates below or outlasts the political life of both interlocutors.

- Scott Burchill - The Age (Jan 3)

Inclusive Approach Is Labor's Best Hope
In her spirited defence of Neville Wran and Bob Hawke against Joan Kirner's call for a more inclusive approach to Labor's organisational arrangements, Janet Albrechtsen [yesterday] gets it wrong.

...Kirner co-founded Emily's List in 1996 not to set quotas but because not nearly enough women were standing or succeeding in being preselected as political candidates. Emily's List gives funding, mentoring and strategic support for progressive Labor women candidates, and researches women's political concerns.

It has nearly 2000 ordinary members and 74 per cent of Labor's women candidates, who are invited to join after they have been preselected if they are clearly committed to women's issues, community campaigning and inclusiveness. Since 1996, Emily's List has helped 68 new women MPs into parliaments across Australia, including the first Aboriginal woman to be elected to any Australian parliament and the first Labor First Minister of the Northern Territory.

...Far from being quota-driven or beholden to any other ideology, Kirner has a track record of pragmatic policy-making. If you quote what Paul Kelly wrote about Victoria in The End of Certainty, cite also his acknowledgement that Keating's brilliant acquisition of the State Bank for the Commonwealth Bank came with Kirner's active support, marking the end of the ideological struggle over government ownership, as Kelly puts it.

...Among her achievements were rape law reform, innovative domestic violence and seniors' programs, educational support programs that for the first time allowed parents of children with disabilities to choose mainstream education for them, if they wished, and achieving the best school retention rates of any state, though Jeff Kennett later threw this away.

...If Labor wants to survive it must change. It is blockheaded to view any other than unions and business as merely interest groups. Albrechtsen asks, rhetorically, whether inclusiveness for its own sake is a virtue. Of course not, she tells us, because that means considering the ideas of the unskilled, untrained, uneducated, inexperienced, "even downright dishonest". But that is what democracy does.

- Moira Rayner - Australian (Jan 2)

Winners Better Guides Than Losers
Joan Kirner's complaint recently that it was absolutely outrageous that the "feudal lords" of the Australian Labor Party, Bob Hawke and Neville Wran, had been appointed to oversee the review and rebirth of the party posts a new high watermark in lack of self-knowledge.

Kirner, co-convener of the affirmative action group Emily's List, complained that Labor's old boys need to be replaced by Labor's new gals on the block. Affirmative action, that old warhorse of the 1970s, has been wheeled out, with Kirner at the reins.

That Kirner can still be influential at all in Labor politics, given her contribution to bringing Victoria to its fiscal knees, is a cause of some wonder.

That she can criticise the contribution of Hawke and Wran, both of whom presided over well-run, financially responsible yet progressive governments, beggars belief.

...Wran did far more than just win an election. "He consolidated, took control, kept winning, demoralised his Liberal opponents, and taught the entire Labor Party that style, moderation and political professionalism was the route to Labor's return."

...Like Wran, Hawke took the Labor Party to new heights in electoral success. He rates as Labor's most successful prime minister, with four successive election wins under his belt.

...Now recall Kirner's contribution to Victoria. Together with her predecessor, John Cain, Kirner oversaw a 7 per cent fall in Victoria's employment rate, a 10 per cent fall in Victoria's output (compared to 0.5 per cent in the rest of Australia) and, not surprisingly, a credit rating that was downgraded every six months.

According to Access Economics, Victoria was responsible for the depth of Australia's recession in the early '90s. The collapse of the State Bank of Victoria, the Pyramid Building Society and the Victoria Economic Development Corporation played a large part in that recession.

...Kirner's attack on the role of Hawke and Wran, read in the light of this history, neatly summarises Labor's predicament. Ideology or pragmatism?

...Kirner would rather have Labor policy determined by persons who meet gender (and other) quotas than by those with a track record of success, such as Hawke and Wran. Unsound policy developed by an appropriate gender mix is to be preferred to sound policy developed by the wrong gender mix.

...If inclusiveness for its own sake is a virtue, where does one draw the line?

Kirner's inability to draw the line between the sensible pursuit of ideology and a pragmatic recognition of the need for sound public policy is precisely what distinguishes her from Hawke and Wran. That and her track record.

Which way will Labor go?

- Janet Albrechtsen, The Australian (Jan 1)

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