Emails to burn, too many to publish. Today, your reaction to the question: “What will I do?” after on-the-ground polling day reports.
I’ve just heard Howard on the 7.30 Report say for the very first time that the boat people on Nauru found NOT to be genuine refugees could be kept on the island, with our government’s financial support. The problem is, of course, that Iraq won’t accept Iraqis back and Afghanistan is at war. You’ll recall that by written agreement, we promised to get all the boat people off Nauru within a reasonable time. The goal post’s just shifted. It looks like we’re now going to pay Nauru to keep people there.
One liners
David Palmer in Adelaide: Prediction for the next federal election. Simon Crean leads the ALP to one more defeat OR Lindsay Tanner leads the ALP to victory.
John Clark: The people have spoken and the bile begins, led by Keating, the number one Howard hater. And why? Because Howard humiliated him in 1996 and again over East Timor. Labor is self destructing – I reckon Howard can probably win the next election as well.
Jock Jones: What are we to do? What has happened to this country? Who will lead us out of the conservative political desert, or is this Thatcherism OZ-style? And if it is, just maybe there is a Tony Blair somewhere out there? This is the shred of hope I’m clinging to this morning.
Dan Flanagan: What shall we do? Unlike you I didn’t really expect John W to be re elected. Somehow I retained more faith in `us’ than that. My grieving only started on Saturday night. What now for Labor? An unchecked NSW Labor, no Kim, what option?!
David Hannaford: It’s not all bad news. Pauline is finished; Campbell is unelected, and their thesis -that Australia is captive of an Lib/Lab/Media elite obedient to New York rather than to our Constitution – will be heard no more.
Bill Cotis: My father, a man of 70, of a Greek background, whose family first arrived in Australia in the early 1900’s, a man who has endured much racism as a child and as a young man working in London, a man who is still self employed and working hard, barely spoke a word on Sunday. For him the Australia he once knew and jokingly referred to as `God’s own country’ disappeared for ever.
ON THE GROUND
Sue Mueller
I was heavily involved in the ALP campaign for Robertson (north of Sydney, marginal Liberal). . We had a wonderful candidate, head and shoulders above the Liberal incumbent. We had massive swings against us in booths we would normally win. The only conclusive win in the whole of the electorate was in a total battler area.
We did nothing wrong, we followed the line that head office told us to follow. The Liberals outspent us by a huge margin running on issues which were questionable at best. The last days were characterised by a huge advertising blitz on Howard’s tough stand on refugees. Some members of the party described handing out how to votes at polling booths as being in the “deep south”, such was the encouragement of Liberals to vote for Howard.
The trouble was we had no come back. We were unable argue that most of the boat people would be found to be genuine refugees, that the notion of a queue was ridiculous as there were something like 3 million refugees in camps in Pakistan, that we took so few refugees in the first instance.
What were we left with? Nothing. We couldn’t defend it and we were warned by head office not to oppose it. But we all hated it.
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Con Vaitsas
As I handed out my how to vote ALP fliers in a safe ALP seat, I was thinking about my decision of how I was going to vote. The woman next to us handing out the Liberal fliers was baiting us with some of the most outrageous statements I had ever heard at a polling booth.
She said to people helping out and voters that the refugees are rich queue jumpers who should never be allowed to land and not like her family who had to apply to come here many years ago. To people who refused to take her flyers and made remarks to her about the Libs, she shouted obscenities to them. In all the years of helping out I had never witnessed this type of behaviour of real hate. Sure there has been mud slinging and arguing points of policy, but even though you didn’t like what they stood for you wished them well as people (not for their party) at the end of the day.
I was feeling confident during the day as we were getting a good response. The only difference I noticed this time was that the Greens were actually getting positive responses from the public. Not once did I hear anyone say “Why don’t you go hug a tree” or something of that nature – instead some actually asked, “Is there someone from the Greens here”?
I had already convinced my whole family that the only honourable way to vote this time was send a strong message to the ALP. Vote Green, which we all did in both chambers. For all of us a first. And I felt good about it.
Obviously a lot of others in our seat of Grayndler – your seat as well Margo – did the same – the Greens received about 15% of the vote.
WHAT WILL YOU DO?
Phil Krilin
I cried for my country on Saturday night. I woke up Sunday morning with a new determination to keep fighting for my view of Australia.
I will join a political party and join a refugee protest movement. On Saturday morning my family discussed what we would do if John Howard won. I described myself as the sort of person who doesn’t join groups, preferring to get my information from a wide variety of sources. I am now joining the Labor Party, to try and make a change from within. I am joining Amnesty International to try and help make a difference.
I attended the Phillip Adams election special in Ipswich. I had never spoken in public before. I stood and rather inarticulately said my piece. I did so because I wanted to know I did everything I could. I woke up during that night with the question I should have asked. How do we win the hearts and minds of those who supported John Howard over asylum seekers?
I believe this is still a valid question. How do we win the hearts and the minds of those who supported John Howard over asylum seekers?
John Symons in Greenwich, Sydney, John Howard’s electorate
What will I do? I am 30, I have a BSc, a Dip Ed and a Master of Environmental Planning. Does that make me an intellectual? I don’t know. I certainly don’t feel particularly intellectual but I suppose I am part of Paddy McGuinness’ “chattering classes/ elites/chardonnay socialists”.
My wife (a Swede and an occupational therapist with 2 degrees – is she an intellectual too?) and I can’t bear the thought of being here for even more of Howard’s Australia and we are going to live in Sweden for a while, if only to get our faith back in humanity.
I imagine one day we’ll come back but we are just feeling so profoundly depressed about the state of affairs in Australia we have to go. I am one of the lucky ones – being married to a citizen of the EU allows me this escape.
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Yvette Elliott in South Perth, Western Australia
What to do? The most important thing we need to do is bring down this intellectual elite vs rural redneck conflict. Howard is already capitalising on it with his people.
What you said on Radio National last week about Paddy McGuinness’s intellectual elite comments – that the intellectual elite haven’t articulated their side enough – is exactly right. The people who have picked up this prejudice against the intellectual elite do-gooders and civil libertarians (like that’s something we should be ashamed of) are simply labelling what they don’t understand, what they fear.
Therefore our task as the new public enemy number one is to make sure we don’t lose our human face, to show them that do gooders are so inclined because they are compassionate people, not because they are a snobby bunch of intellectuals.
In practical terms, we need to ring up commercial talkback radio and write as many letters as we can to the less enlightened editors of this country, in ways that show our views are born out or compassion, in ways that don’t antagonise them further. We could organise groups that focus on mass letter writing and phoning commercial radio.
If our leaders won’t educate them, then we have to. We need to talk to the people around us and practice articulating our explanations in ways that they can understand and relate to. But most of all, we need to understand and forgive their ignorance. Once we practice that understanding and forgiveness within ourselves, we can be sure that Howard hasn’t succeeded in turning us into little people as well.
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C Crowther
My vision of Australia has died. There’s no other way of putting it except to be more personal about it and say that my vision of Australians has died too.
I’m not sure what I’ll do, but it will probably reflect my overwhelming reaction: more than anything else I feel lonely. I feel suddenly that I can’t identify with other people at all. I watched on saturday as people not only accepted our refugee policy, but celebrated it. How is that possible? It’s not something that I can imagine. lonely.
Am I overdramatising? Maybe, but commuting this morning I was looking at people around me and thinking, I don’t understand people and where does that leave me?
I very recently joined a party. I can volunteer at the local refugee legal service. I can email Margo. I can surround myself with the minority who think a bit like me, to remind myself And if I’m going to run up against this feeling more and more on issue after issue, I may as well take it head on.
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Gary Malcolm
I’ll tell you what I’ll do. Firstly I will stop reading Webdiary and the mindless drivel contained therein. Secondly I will stop reading anything about politics for the next two years. I will also turn off talk back radio of any type, either ABC or commercial radio.
Why? I consider myself a fairly charitable and tolerant person. As I write this one of my siblings is visiting Japan to see his girlfriend who desperately wants to live in this country. She had to return there when her visa expired. To return here she has to fill in a thousand forms and hope like hell. I doubt she will make it and even if she gets another visa she can’t work anyway.
So because of this I am prejudiced. I am vehemently against illegal immigrants and queue jumpers. Oh and by the way I’m sick of being told by the likes of yourself that my morals are inferior. That’s why I voted for someone I don’t like too much at all. Because of the likes of you. But you still don’t get it do you?
Your ilk are responsible for the election result. You, and no one else. By the way, read Brian Toohey’s column in the Sunday Herald. It was written especially for you.
Margo: I have read it, and agreed. I argued the same thing in my book, published in 1999, and since. The Webdiary is a response to the problem.
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David Boen in Coorparoo, Brisbane
I guess I was wishing against all hope that the latent xenophobia (and let’s face it – racism) that’s out there in Voterland would be supplanted by a bit of thought and commonsense. Silly silly me. I love watching election telecasts but by 7:30pm I couldn’t stand it any more.
My first thought was: “How ironic – the day before Remembrance Day Australia chose to kill off the Anzac spirit – to show the courage to meet adversity head-on with determination and without fear of anything or anyone”. I guess fear is out there and it’s understandable, but it shouldn’t be all-consuming.
And you have to hand it to John Howard – he has the thickest hide in town. His campaign advertising was full of “WE will decide who comes to this country….” etc.etc. – now he feigns surprise when it’s suggested that the boat people issue was what won the election for him.
What will I do?? I guess what Howard wants us to do – crawl under a nice doona, curl up into a tight little ball, close my eyes really, really hard and wish that those nasty boat people would just go away.
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David Stanford in Paddington, Sydney
As a Liberal voter, I thought Beazley rang a very strong campaign but was poorly served by ALP strategists. I hope they don’t make the mistake of electing the unelectable Simon Crean when they have got a real potential winner in Jenny Macklin who was always their leading light in Parliament and could win an election on health and education issues.
For the benefit of your readers who don’t understand the term elites as it is used in the media it refers to self appointed elites i.e. Robert Manne, Philip Adams, Donald Horne, David Williamson, Hugh McKay as opposed to elected elites who have submitted themselves to the will of the people at the ballot box.
Many highly educated people like myself who have university degrees and consider themselves neither stupid nor intolerant take offence at continually being patronised as being dumb rednecks. This hardens resolve and rusts your vote on to a party that in this election was both incredibly pragmatic and ruthlessly manipulative. The Libs learned their tactics from Labor in the Hawke/Keating years and are not about to forget them.
Bob Brown was the best campaigner this election, and the Greens will get much stronger over the next decade at the expense of Labor and the Democrats. Hopefully the Libs will move back towards the centre and be more environmentally proactive (bye bye Wilson Tuckey). I don’t see much change in foreign policy until Costello arrives.
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Colin Long
John Howard has created a lot of dangerous people, and I’m one of them. I have absolutely no respect for the elite of this country – the main political parties, the business `leaders’, most of the journalists, radio hosts and editors, the so-called voices of common people such as Bolt and McGuinness (and these are the real elites – the people who have privilege and the ability to have their voices heard – not the internationalist, multi-culturalist lefties like me who have been so thoroughly disenfranchised and howled down).
I don’t feel I have any stake in the system as it is. I view these elites with contempt. These are, I would think, dangerous ways to think. I’m sure there are lots like me out there.
But I won’t be leaving the country. It is about time we started to fight back against the far right revolution. We need to take to the streets at every opportunity, to demonstrate (peacefully) our resistance to Howard’s destructive agenda. No more making small targets of ourselves. Take a stand, as Bob Brown so successfully did, and fight the bastards.
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Derek
Some words have unfortunately been subverted by the political process. “Elite” is one, as is “racist” and “divisive”. John Howard makes a statement or puts forward a policy or wins an election, not everybody agrees with him, so it’s “divisive”.
Let’s be honest though. Looking at the last 13 elections (from and including Gough in 1972), the government elected has on average attracted 51.94% of the two-party preferred vote, with Fraser’s 1975 win (in exceptional circumstances) the most popular at 55.7%. Therefore around 48% on average would prefer a different government. Division at this level is inevitable and presumably permanent.
I doubt that I would even want to live in a country where the government received 70% of the vote. (One could note in passing that the government in increasing its TPP vote has in fact reduced the division in Australia but that would somewhat trivialise the momentous issues that we must still deal with.) Our lower house electoral system works to create the illusion of landslides.
In its most positive light, divisiveness is a healthy reflection of democracy at work. That two groups can be divided by a difference of opinion and nevertheless peacefully decide on the way forward is a “good thing”. An airing of all points of view is most likely to lead to the best outcome (although I wouldn’t be so naive as to claim that this is what happens in our parliament).
What then are the dangers of division? Division is a “bad thing” when it becomes the defining characteristic of a group or the way in which a member of one group pre-judges or interacts with a member of another group. It’s a bad thing when one group becomes voiceless or suffers genuine and gross loss.
I don’t think history will judge the division over “boat people policy” as a bad thing. (Note that it never meant the end of a refugee immigration program – 12,000 will continue to flow through it, year in, year out.)
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Jim Tsihlis in Belmore, NSW
I’ve spent my entire morning scanning the web engrossed with the political fall-out of the election. Though I loath to use any term coined by right-wing commentators, I do note that the “commentariat” are definitely upset by the result, and their supporters are in full swing, with one emailer on another site describing the the return of the Howard government the result of a “bigotted, small minded, uninformed, unintelligent electorate”.
Come on, that is a bit rough! Labor supporters have lost an election, doesn’t mean they have to spit on the nation for not going “their way”. I recall many years ago when George Bush Senior lost to Bill Clinton he got up and said to his supporters: “I know none of you a very pleased with the result, but we must step aside and show our respect for the majesty of democracy and the wishes of the people.” It was the first and only time I have heard a politician tell his people “how it is” in a democracy, and it did the man much credit.
In Australia it is more to the point: we are ALL FORCED TO VOTE, so generally speaking everyone has had their say, and they have basically said “status quo” They digested what both sides had to say, for good and for bad, and in that “market place of ideas” they decided to buy the Coalition product. That’s the way it is.
To the Labor party: Look at your Sydney heartland please!!! Why did you abandon it? Where are your people? Why are blue collar nominal union members voting for a right wing government! Doesn’t this disconnection between the proponents of social democracy and those who should follow and benefit from it shock anyone?
It reminds of PJK, that great son of Bankstown who preferred to live in Woollahra. That is the problem with the Labor Party today, and to put harshly but I think honestly, Margo, you represent this problem. Higher income earners within the left focusing on issues that are essentially well meant but meaningless to families mortgaged to the hilt in the western electorates.
On top of that, these voters are lectured to, attacked as racist, and now have to deal with your “grief” over a “lost Australia”. Oh please Margo, a little faith!
Frankly, social democracy means getting your hands dirty out there in the west, not caucusing with the uni-set in the east. Labor MPs have to get out there, and actually live in their electorates, and be like Jackie Kelly et al. Sure they are “twits” in the worldview of the Articulate Affluent Left,
but they are ordinary Australians who basically reflect the opinions of the electorate.
Take my seat of Watson, the safest Labor seat in Sydney. I have never seen Leo McLay near my electorate over the 27 years I have lived there! Where is he? He now is officially a resident of Canberra, and get this, the convenor of the ACT Labor Right! Why does he hold this seat in Sydney!? Moreover, why does Labor support his preselection each time: he has never risen to ministry, never shown the brilliance of a Mark Latham or Michael Lee, but there he is, plodding away, and occasionally falling off his bike. A mediocre representative, without any connection to his electorate, dolely anticipating his next term without effort.
The Labor party that should be at the heart of all working people of Western Sydney is estranged from it because the people who run the Labor Party do not venture any further west in thought or deed than Leichardt! Three million people live out there!
Don’t blame Australia for the election. It’s a democracy. It’s what the people wanted. Your party just couldn’t get it ideas across because it hasnt spoken to its people on an EQUAL FOOTING for a very long time. They have only themselves to blame.
MARGO: I have not blamed Australia. The Labor Party is not my party. I see myself as a small l liberal in philosophical terms.
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Yolanda Newman
I cried on reading your piece this morning. Saturday was my first time to vote using my birth certificate name. After not inconsiderable troubles in my life I was thinking excitedly if immaturely that this was a bit of a milestone – something to celebrate.
It didn’t take long for those feelings to pass. Faced with the green and white papers I had the same sinking feeling I used to have when it didn’t seem to matter what you did in Queensland – union activism, street and protest marches – because Joh Bjelke Petersen was reelected.
I felt powerless and hopeless. I loved the Olympics even if I didn’t understand the rules and don’t play anything – the opening and closing ceremonies with their inclusivity and beautiful young people seemed to symbolise real hope and strength. The volunteers quietly sweeping here or standing there seemed to symbolise a willingness to just get on and make something work. It was a wonderful 2 weeks even if Australian journalists ignored many wins outside of Australian ones.
But now? I don’t know where to start. I have spent my professional life teaching English to migrants and refugees, I have worked in unions, I have joined political parties and been involved in various community and activist groups. I feel like giving up. Maybe I will feel better tomorrow.
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Susan Metcalfe
I don’t agree with many of the criticisms of Kim Beazley. For me he symbolised human decency and the complexity of the issues we face, both in our personal lives and in the bigger issues faced by of country.
In spite of Kim Beazley’s seeming agreement with the government on the asylum seeker issue, I believed that his decency and intelligence would have prevailed to find humane reponses to the current situation. As much as I would have loved him to make a moral stand I do have some understanding of his impossible position between a rock and a hard place.
John Howard has made those who shout the loudest and with the least logic stand taller. I know from heated conversations that I have had on this issue how difficult it is to present factual and complex information to people fueled by xenophobia, racism and economic insecurity. I am still reeling from those last few days of debate on whether or not the refugees were some sort of sub- human species who abused their children.
It has now become elitist to have an informed opinion, to be interested in other cultures and most distressing of all to me, to feel compassion for fellow human beings. To what horrible depth have we sunk when John Howard can accuse those who have stood up for the humane treatment of asylum seekers as being elitist. He has succeeded in marginalising our humanity.
For the first time in my life the outcome of an election has stripped me of everything I value and taken away from me the country I had taken for granted. In the past, even if things weren’t perfect at least we always seemed to be heading in the right direction. There are many who yesterday and today seem to be asking the question you have asked.
I feel that because of John Howard and his re-election I have no choice but to now devote my life to fighting for those who he most oppresses and for a re-humanising of those who he has so horribly defamed. Personal issues will now have to take a back seat to restoring the integrity and rights of those who Howard continues to exploit and defile.
A kind of damage control will need to occur for at least the next few years. I would hope that a strong grassroots movement will emerge to counteract the Howard regime but it will be another couple of weeks I think before we can all re-group and make plans. Something has died.
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Diann Rodgers-Healey
I am lost for words about the election debacle. I spent so much time being enraged about the refugee crisis and the absence of any real alternative, that I feel empty and exhausted. I knew Howard would win for all the reasons you have written about recently.
I like what you have written about the new `elite’ and about articulating core Australian values. The danger would if all that has emerged through this election that is racist and isolationist is swept out of sight in a quick fix manner to heal wounds of division and despair. I feel that we need to use it as a catalyst for debate and evaluation on a wide scale so that those who are leading never have the opportunity of taking us down this path again as they did this time in a roller-coaster manner that thrashed and ignored the voices of reason and human rights.
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Gavin Mount in Canberra
I would have thought the first time I wrote to you I would come over all serious but I just can’t bring myself to really think about it. Like you, I lost complete faith after hearing and reading the two campaign launches. Before that, I didn’t know what would be worse – a Coalition vindicated on a xenophobic agenda, or a morally inept, poll driven Labor government vindicated by their silence.
On Saturday night I was playing a gig (lounge-funk band, CooCoo Fondoo) at the Gypsy Bar in Canberra. I had the unenviable task of having to get up and play music after Beazley’s speech. The only solace I could find in all of this was to dedicate the opening number – “Lady Love” (a cheesy Lou Rawls classic) -to the grandest lady of ’em all, Mama Nature.
The Canberra Greens campaigners had their election party at the Gypsy and I figured they deserved to give themselves all a big slap on the back – or disco twirl – for achieving such a good result.
What is going to happen to the green movement now? How do we `read’ Tasmania in all of this? Please suggest some mental health strategies for dealing with: a) the smug use of the word `mandate’ by our newly elected leader; b) reconciliation; c) salinity/deforestation/green house and; d) the prospect of an opposition lead by an equally shwarmy Simon Crean?
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Jonathan Nolan in Bondi, Sydney
Oh what can we do?! Like you Margo the whole thing was so predictable I couldn’t even cry. I somehow fooled myself that the “small target” tactic of the Labor Party was akin to Tony Blair’s New Labour of 1997 but I was wrong and now the prospect of Crean as leader is just hopeless and I need something decent to hope for.
I will gatecrash a few Labor meetings to see what they are up to, to see if they have any gall to change and I mean change BIG TIME! I want to see if they have any sense of how disaffected we all are and if they plan to become a proper party for this century.
When Major got in for a second time I left England for a country that I thought offered hope, genuine multiculturalism and a better view of the future. I worked on the Games making presentations to sponsors and overseas visitors spouting grand statements that I now realise were untrue about the sharing, caring, inclusive, society.
Now I’m horrified and saddened and can see why the young here don’t even think about politics. I’ll either leave (I’ve already booked a trip for Europe and will be considering my options) or consider becoming a true Aussie – forgetting politics and just losing my head totally in sport!
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John McCulloch
You ask what will I do? At the moment I’m shattered and and feeling totally gutted. Not only from the result, which like yourself I realised midway through last week, but from the way the Labor Party conducted itself through the campaign. This is not the Labor Party that I knew; it has become a hollow shell of political opportunism. No ideals, no vision, just let’s get elected by fooling the public.
The crunch came for me last night at work, when we were discussing the result (I work as a truck driver, very blue collar!) and a colleague said: “I didn’t vote for Beazley, the fat *%@#, all he wanted to do was give the country to the bloody Abos and to the bloody reffos. At least Howards’ going to keep the bastards in their place!”
That comment got the nod of approval from a majority of others. I just got up and walked out. I’m sick of arguing and defending a position that is not even supported by the party that was once entrusted to enshrine the principles of human decency. How low has this country fallen in that it now embraces the fears and xenophobia of right wing shock jocks.
My fear is that the marginalised will now strike out, as they have no hope, no real future and their only recourse is through anti-social behaviour, or worse, violence.
So what will I do? I don’t know at the moment, maybe time will give me a better understanding. In the meantime I might just pray to the better angels in our midst to rise like the phoenix and steer us to a more enlightened era.
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David Davis in Switzerland
What will I do? Ride roller-coasters in Europe!
In the end I was most interested in seeing how close the coalition victory could come to my outlandish prediction of a margin of 20. Champagne was to be consumed regardless. We had that and then rode all the fun fair rides at the 531st Basel Autumn Fair. Then we had some heated herb wine and felt sick. Hours of election coverage, escapism, wild rides and too much booze. It was a potent mix!
I joined Australians Against Racism last week and will be in contacting the Edmund Rice Centre this week. It is attacking problems from different angles. I am not prepared to let go but I have no plans to come back. I’ll remain an irrelevant, carping “elite” exiled in Europe!
Yesterday I was in Karlsruhe, Germany looking at some of the first books ever printed at the Baden State Museum. Karlsruhe itself was one of the first cities to be built without walls. Other cities of enlightenment like Basel had walls from earlier periods but people could be free once they got inside. Walls can be physical or they can come from the heart or the head. Where ever you turn in Australia at the moment, walls are under construction or nearing completion.
PS: Kim Beazley’s concession speech was either utter denial, great acting or …….. I am not sure what. What if he had directed so much POSITIVE PASSION toward an alternative view on Tampa?? I reckon he could have convinced enough people to get there. A convincing rousing call to compassion and decency could have got him over the line. He could have done it. I honestly believe he could have.
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Aden Ridgeway, Democrats Senator for NSW
Press statement (leadership play?)
After six years of this Coalition Government we now find ourselves in a similar intellectual climate to that which the members of this Government claimed existed before they won office in 1996.
That is one in which there is no room for debate, no room for expression of ideas and no room for difference on any topic that doesn’t accord with the politically correct government line. The political climate is charged with the destructive forces of racism and intolerance.
But maybe those now expressing shock at the race card turning up on the electoral table, should look a little more closely at the deck from which its being played.
I was elected to the Senate in 1998 after 18 months of a Native Title-inspired race based hysteria campaign whipped up by the Howard Government. Now I see those same divisive sentiments being fanned in this so-called debate about refugees.
I echo the concerns being expressed by many public figures including the old-guard of the Liberal party and commend their courage in calling for leadership on this issue. Never have we needed it more.
As an Australian Democrat Senator, I have witnessed manipulation and abuse of the legislative process that resulted in immigration legislation being passed which breached Australias international commitments to basic human rights.
I have witnessed a government that has been able to inflame antagonism towards all refugees by distorting the facts and painting them as potential terrorists and drug dealers.
I have witnessed the talk back radio test being the only the determinant of public policy, with both parties allowing themselves to be totally intimidated by perceived popular opinion.
This lowest common denominator policy has been the hallmark of this government’s performance and we cannot expect anything better from either of the two old parties.
I believe there are many Australians who want to see their political representatives take up the fight against racism in this country – whether its racism against Indigenous Australians, migrants or refugees.