I begin with Roy Morgan’s summary of his stunning poll taken on September 15 and 16, after the New York bombing. He headed his statement THE BIG SWING.
1. The turnaround began with the government’s strong stance on the Tampa boatpeople issue, and has been driven higher by the PM’s policy statements on the terrorist situation. Gains recorded soon after the US terrorist attacks have pushed significantly higher in the latest poll.
2. Primary support for the Coalition has soared another nine points to 53%, giving it a huge 21-point primary support lead over the ALP (32%, down 7).
3. One a two-party basis the Coalition is up 8.5 points to 60%, opening up a 20-point lead over the ALP (down 8.5 to 40%).
4. This represents the highest Coalition support since January 1976.
5. 777 voters were surveyed for the poll. If an election had been held during the past weekend, the Coalition would have won in a landslide.
6. The image of John Howard, who was in Washington at the time of the outrages, has been enhanced significantly. 67% approve of the way he is handling his job as Prime Minister, the highest result for a Liberal PM since such approval ratings began in 1966.
7. Only 35% approve of how Kim Beazley is handling his job as Opposition leader. Significantly more electors (64%) now believe Howard will make a better PM than Beazley (23%).
In this edition, your response to the polls and Labor’s decision to back the Coalition on refugee policy, and continuing debate on the merits of the new policy.
Contributors on the polls/Labor are: Mark Chambers, Margaret Millar, Brendan, Mem Fox, Christine Vincent
Boat people contributors are: Colin Long, Peter Maresch, Tom Griffiths, Derek, Rosemary Hudson Miller, Paul Sciberras, John Clark
THE POLLS AND LABOR
Mark Chambers
So it seems John Howard is back in favour with the Australian public. Surely he must be the favourite to win the next election (which no doubt will be called as soon as possible).
As such, Labor’s recent policy gutlessness, or “pragmatism”, is a wasted effort. They should instead be trying to insert some reason into the debates, even though nobody wants to listen at the moment. Although this might be unpopular in the short term, at least they will regain some respect once the current mob mentality dies down. This will stand them in good stead for 2004 – especially once the reality of another 3 years of Howard and co sinks in.
Margaret Millar
The Labor Party has no chance of winning an election as a weak lot of running dogs too scared to stand by any morals
or principles. Surely Beazley must know that this is not morally right and that it is better to lose honourably than to lose dishonourably. They will never win trying to copy the policies of the Howard Regime, which is so much better at quasi fascism than Labor anyway.
I remember as a small child my father crying when Ben Chifley died, but who would cry for the demise of any of this lily-livered lot! Some may even cheer. Who on earth advises Beazley? Labor is fast losing its on ground supporters. Even I used to be a member! Never Again.
Brendan (surname withheld on request)
Labor will lose the next election, and they deserve to. When they do they will wring their hands and say that they were robbed by circumstances and Howard’s rat cunning. There will be a witch hunt against the so-called bleeding hearts like me by the party bureaucrats and apparatchiks as they squabble over the spoils of defeat.
Let them squabble and have their illusions. Eventually even they will have to confront their dead dreams of power and ask why they sold their integrity so cheaply. For what have they gained? Merely a place in the ever thickening ranks of the morally compromised and forgotten second raters who make up our political history and who have helped diminish us as a nation.
What we saw yesterday was a complete moral, political and imaginative capitulation to the Government. Labor does not represent an alternative and is not fit to govern. I was astonished to see on TV Beazley talking about his leadership and how tough he is. How deluded! How pathetic to watch! The great strategist!
Labor has built their forthcoming defeat ever since the day they went into opposition. You can track the moments when they had the chance to open up another type of thinking, to challenge the government’s world view, to offer a different vision, to renew themselves, but every time they walked away and hid. They have capitulated to Hanson and Howard, who has succeeded in making Beazley and the Labor party live in his world. For Howard it a strategic victory that will last a long time.
Labor’s support for the legislation is disgusting. We now have the spectacle of Beazley trying to demonstrate leadership by getting as close to Howard as he can and participating in the squalid victimisation of defenceless people who need help. This is a profound failure of imagination and compassion and Beazley as leader must take his share of it.
It will take a long time for them to live that down, and I look forward to reading Beazley’s rationalisation in his memoirs as he tries to explain how circumstances stopped him from becoming Prime Minister. I still think Mark Latham will be the next Labor Prime Minister.
Mem Fox
I feel physically unwell over Beazley’s capitulation into the racism snake pit. He is more despicable than John Howard. I am resigning from the ALP this evening. Who the f..k do I vote for now? The Greens are my only hope. I cannot forgive the Democrats for the GST.
Christine Vincent
Thanks for continuing to be a voice for reason and sanity. As usual I heard you on LNL tonight and support everything you said. In these desperate times when one is bereft of any leadership of decency and compassion it is so important to have a line of communication that is not driven by polls and the electoral imperative.
I am old enough to be a “Shame Fraser Shame” badge carrier, but today, as so often in the recent past, Malcolm Fraser’s words, this time in the SMH yesterday, helped drag me out of my utter misery and despair at the intolerable stance of the current political leadership.
Today’s polls reflect the sharp end of years of inculcation of avarice and greed in our society. We have to close our borders in case those in need come in to share in our spectacularly affluent life style.
BOAT PEOPLE
Colin Long in Cheltenham, Victoria
I do get rather tired of people who think that democracy equates simply to the rule of the majority. It never has and, hopefully, it never will. Fundamental, also, to democracy is the protection of minorities from the oppression of the majority, and fundamental to this task is constraint on the powers of the executive by the rule of law.
Mark Weegen in The boat people and the war is absolutely wrong when he questions Margo Kingston’s contention that ‘the reversal of a court’s decision by the government is a “nail in the coffin of the rule of law”‘ and, thus, anti-democratic. For governments to undermine the independence of the judiciary by implementing legislation to overturn court decisions based on the law is profoundly undemocratic, as is, in nearly all cases, the use of retrospective legislation.
The idea that democracy is simply about the rule of the majority, and the failure to understand the concept of the rule of law are, I suspect, widespread in Australia. It appears, worryingly, that these misconceptions are shared by many of our politicians.
One of the most important issues raised by the mandatory sentencing issue in the Northern Territory was given very little attention in the debate at the time. While the differential impact on Aborigines was widely and appropriately discussed, little consideration was given to the fact that mandatory sentencing involves a fundamental attack on the independence of the judiciary. In fact, mandatory sentencing is about political interference in the administration of justice, and that is very disturbing. In effect, the NT government was replicating the system of justice practiced in the so-called “People’s Courts” of Communist Countries, in which “justice” was administered according to the dictates and requirements of the Party. I find it rather ironic that the Country Liberal Party adopted policies of their alleged ideological enemies.
I suspect with the issue of asylum seekers, too, that many members of parliament do not comprehend the larger issues of democracy and the rule of law raised by what they are doing. This is worrying. But even more worrying is the fact that I’m sure the Prime Minister and Mr Ruddock, not to mention Kim Beazley, do.
Peter Maresch
A lot of space is given to the pathetic plight of the Boat People “fleeing” their homeland, and some people have asked what Australians would do if persecuted in the same way.
I would think that the vast majority of Australians, faced with a Taliban-style government, would rise up and depose such a regime. What sort of Australian would turn and run away from this country? What sort of Australian would destroy his/her identity? I for one would fight to the death for this country.
We must thus question the motives of those who claim to be Afghani. If there are so many of them as to hopelessly clog refugee camps throughout the Middle East, why are they not in Kabul overthrowing the tyrannical Taliban? If they have so little commitment to their own country, what could they offer to this country?
Another question: given the behaviour of the Tampa “refugees” and their subsequent refusal to disembark the Manoora, do we really want such recalcitrant people in Australia?
Another report stated the Iraqis and Palestinians aboard the Manoora “demanded to be separated”. As an example of their suitability to live in a multicultural country, this report speaks for itself.
Tom Griffiths in Newcastle, NSW
Of course when pressed for evidence of the “undeniable connection” between asylum seekers and Afghani terrorists on LNL, Peter Slipper responds that they might be – we don’t know that they are not, therefore they undeniably are…
Howard let’s this go and further fuel racism in the community, continuing to use the language of “illegal migrants” and “protecting our borders”, and now Beazley shows the absolute bankruptcy of the ALP by supporting quite terrifying racist laws.
Of course the critique and leadership offered by Bob Brown is almost completely silenced in the mainstream media.
I’ve gone beyond feeling shame at being Australian.
Derek
You’re at the supermarket. There are two checkouts operating. One has a queue twice as long as the other so you join the shorter queue. Fairly soon though you notice that your queue isn’t moving very quickly. “Price check!” on some obscure item the supermarket didn’t even know it sold. The tedious woman at the front of the queue is paying by cheque, fumbling ineffectually for her cheque book and a pen.
People who joined the other queue after you joined yours now look like getting served before you. The pimply guy at the front of your queue seems to have forgotten his PIN. Time passes. The elderly woman at the front of your queue wanted a subtotal for her friend’s groceries.
It isn’t fair you exclaim silently. Why is my queue progressing more slowly? Suddenly a realization hits you. Why don’t they have just one queue? One queue is fair. Two isn’t.
And the point of all this? It’s a response to Michael Walton’s lengthy dissertation in The boat people and the war, which touched on the offshore queue and the onshore queue. Those who choose (albeit at some risk to themselves) to join the onshore queue are in spirit queue jumpers. In other contexts the mere existence of a second queue, available to a select few, would be considered unAustralian.
Rosemary Hudson Miller, Acting National Director for Social Responsibility and Justice,Uniting Church in Australia
I am hopping mad with the Labor crew as they have allowed this debate to degenerate into a racist farce. I have been working in this area (refugees and asylum seekers) for the last few years, and been involved in social justice for the last 25 or so. It seems to me that we have never had such a dearth of ethical leadership as we have now.
I know and work with many refugees and hear the almost weekly stories of the completely arbitrary nature of the process we call the Refugee Review tribunal – in reality only one government appointed member for each case. How much worse will it be if there are even more limits to judicial review?
Who is going to care for the refugees the USA and we as their allies are about to create? All wars, limited actions and military interventions create refugees. How many will we take from Afghanistan after a bombing or whatever they propose to do?
It is a sick extension of ‘not in our backyard’ – or maybe only in the back yard (Christmas, Cocos and Ashmore reef) but not in the house, in those salubrious accommodation villages at Curtin, Port Hedland and Woomera.
Paul Sciberras in Fitzroy, Melbourne
The notion of people arriving in Australia by boat, usually overcrowded and unseaworthy, seems to elicit an emotional response in the media which is not bestowed on those who simply arrive by air or overstay their visas. Such a reaction is understandable when one considers our experience with Vietnamese refugees fleeing the Communist takeover of South Vietnam.
The Vietnamese refugees came here by boat because they left Vietnam by boat. There was no other way for them to escape. We are in their region of the world, were involved in the war on their country and had a moral responsibility to help them.
Yet the ‘asylum seekers’ who now arrive by boat on Australian territories did not depart the country of their origin, the state from which they are seeking asylum by boat. Most fly on commercial airliners to Malaysia or Indonesia from the Middle East and then hop onto a boat.
The remarkable naivete with which the applicable laws were drafted is such that any Australian Territory will do, hence the popularity of uninhabitable Ashmore Reef or isolated Christmas Island. The only attraction of either is their proximity to Indonesia and access to Australian law. If the boat requires or solicits rescue prior to arrival so much the better – someone needs to know they’re there. They are perfectly capable of flying all the way here but instead use boats to force themselves into our sovereign territory and to force their access to Australian domestic law – at our expense.
There are refugee facilities and the ability to seek asylum in Indonesia. People who travel to Indonesia seeking refugee status, if legitimate, have nothing to fear by using those facilities and applying there under the guidelines of the UNHCR. Or do we just accept those who can pay commercial airfares, people smugglers and lawyers and force themselves in here?
Do we only accept those who threaten to harm their children, feign illness, go on hunger strikes and generally pervert ordinary standards of compassion and decency? How fair is it to apply more favourable criteria and resources to those who demonstrate complete disregard for the laws and wishes of Australia whilst allowing legitimate asylum seekers and legitimate migrants to languish elsewhere? People who demonstrate such blatant disrespect for our laws and for our norms of behaviour do not seem to me to be the sort of people we should be settling within our community.
The East Timorese had a perfectly legitimate right to seek asylum here after the TNI/militia rampage and desecration of their country. Australians would have welcomed them. But what would have happened to East Timor had the Timorese not remained there? Would East Timor exist today?
Do you think we can solve all the world’s problems by accepting any one who wants to come here, irrespective of our wishes as expressed by our democratically elected government? There are billions of impoverished people who would love to live here. I don’t blame them. Do we throw open the doors and take them all? Can you tell me that none of these people are criminals, terrorists, spies, soldiers? How do you know they are refugees? I feel for them, I don’t blame them for trying and I wish them well. But I don’t necessarily want them here.
Please accept that however any one of us voted, we have a national government and it is not led by Natasha Stott-Despoja. I am sickened by the way those who disagree with the Prime Minister, or don’t like him or the Liberal Party, take such obvious delight in trying to embarrass our country in front of the world.
The relish that some journalists have expressed in reporting any negative comment from overseas, however ignorant, is astonishing. The editorial of the Los Angeles Times is a case in point. We need to get over our cultural cringe and recognise we have a national interest and occasionally acting in that interest will displease people and governments in other parts of the world. This includes such lovely (whaling) countries as Norway, and the United Nations.
There are despotic and murderous regimes all over the world and cultures whose affinity for evil and hatred defies comprehension. Yet the peoples who seem to attract the interest of the UN seem to be those of Western democracies and especially Israel.
Do you think the Israelis take such heartfelt notice of what the UN thinks when it acts to defend its people? The US hasn’t paid its dues to the UN for years. I could keep giving you examples of which I am sure you are aware. Remember Merhan Nasseri who lived in Terminal One at Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris for eleven years? Please don’t think that because OUR government has made a decision based on OUR interest, even if that decision were wrong, that the world will stop turning.
I would much prefer to have a Prime Minister who listens to the views of the Australian people and acts accordingly. God knows if our government won’t protect our interests no one else will.
John Clark
Calm down Margo. Get yourself a nice glass of chardonay and think things through a bit more objectively. Have a read of Mark Latham’s ‘Diagnosis reveals a paranoid media’ in the Daily Telegraph today.