The lost boat crossing our endless divide. Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

John Howard is on the ropes. His tactic to keep himself upright – telling his troops to prepare for an early election – is defensive, not aggressive. He needs his MPs to cheer him on during what could be the worst week of his political career.

Simon Crean has painstakingly built a platform for a potentially devastating assault on Howard’s fitness for office as blind press gallery courtiers rave on about Howard’s ‘golden moment’ and Bob Carr’s tilt at windmills.

Let’s start with Manildra. If the Senate does not pass legislation by Thursday to endorse Howard’s giveaways to his mate Dick Honan, his latest exercise in crony capitalism will collapse. Honan will keep his taxpayer subsidy and be entitled to a refund of $20 million in excise he’s paid the Government. Honan’s competitors could import ethanol from Brazil once again and claim compensation for their massive losses after Howard scuttled their last import attempt.

The Senate has only one condition to pass the Howard/Honan law – the release of documents surrounding the deal. Howard won’t do it. Why??? What is in those documents that is so damaging he’s willing to see his deal collapse? Mike Seccombe’s recent Sydney Morning Herald scoop on Howard using our diplomats to spy on Honan’s competitors could be a clue, as could the famous minute of the meeting between Howard and Honan before Howard ordered that Honan be protected from competition. Howard lied to Parliament about that meeting – assuring the Australian people more than once that it never took place (Howard meets Honan: You be the judge whether he lied about it and Competitive Capitalism versus Crony Capitalism: The Difference Between Labor and Liberal). He was sprung by an honest public servant who released the minutes under an FOI request, but large parts of it were blacked out. The Senate wants the black removed.

John Howard does not want the Australian people to know the truth about this matter, and it seems he’s prepared to trash the deal he said was so vital to the future of our ethanol industry to avoid them finding out.

Tony Abbott is major headache number two, and again the crux of the issue is Howard’s desire to keep the public in the dark. Abbott hasn’t been himself in Parliament since his hypocritical murmours of sympathy for Pauline Hanson saw him hit in the face with his key role in her downfall through his preposterously-named Honest Politics Trust (HPT). Exposure of his lies and the secrecy of his donors didn’t stop the heavyweights of political journalism frightening reporters off chasing the story of the inexcusable failure of the Australian Electoral Commission to fulfil its duty to voters to enforce political donation disclosure laws in the case of the HPT. Webdiary has revealed that the AEC backed down on its 1998 demand to Abbott to disclose AHP’s donors without asking him a single question, seeing his legal advice, or taking its own (AEC took Abbott’s word for it to keep ‘honest politics’ donors secret).

 

 

Labor, freaked out by hostile media reaction to its attempt to press the issue, its own guilty secrets on disclosure and threats by Howard to fight fire with fire if necessary, saw Labor leave it alone last week.

But Pauline Hanson’s letter to broadcaster Alan Jones (Pauline Hanson: truth will set me free) has lit a fire under the story at a time when the AEC is fighting to restore its credibility in the light of suggestions that Abbott could have misled the AEC about his slush fund, a criminal offence (Tony Abbott: No such thing as the public’s right to know, More questions for Abbott on honest politics trust and Dear Margo …. Tony Abbott writes).

Think about it – Pauline Hanson is in jail for three years for misleading the Queensland Electoral Commission!

In addition, Democrats Senator Andrew Murray told the ABC Insiders program today he had provided information to the AEC about similar search-and-destroy missions against his Party in Western Australia by two of the same Liberal Party players involved in the HPT. Murray thinks this will help persuade the AEC to order Abbott to disclose his donors (Call for names of donors to ‘honest politics’ fund, Tricks of the trade).

Abbott’s recent exposure as a serial liar means his credibility is shot to pieces (Now Abbott lies about lying, copies Howard’s Manildra). That means Howard’s manager of government business in the House of Representatives is a dead duck in a week when Howard will need all the help he can get. Why is it so important to keep the donors secret that Abbott is prepared to die a slow political death to avoid the disclosure of their identities?

Then there’s the really big one. The leak of intelligence whistleblower Andrew Wilkie’s top secret ONA report on Iraq to Government-friendly journalist Andrew Bolt in June began to haunt Howard last week after his government brazenly briefed government backbencher Sandy Macdonald on its contents to hit Wilkie over the head with in the parliamentary inquiry into Howard’s pre-war intelligence.

The leak of Wilkie’s report is a serious breach of security and a criminal offence which went unnoticed back in June. The Macdonald drama lifted the lid on the scandal, revealing that ONA had referred the leak to the Australian Federal Police for investigation on July 4. NINE WEEKS later, the AFP had not interviewed Bolt! The AFP now joins Australian Electoral Commission as an ‘independent’ body under strong suspicion of having been so politicised under John Howard that it no longer performs its duty without fear or favour.

I rang the AFP last week to ask when the investigation began and why Bolt had not been interviewed. The reply: “Following a thorough evaluation, the AFP moved into investigation phase YESTERDAY.” The AFP said it was also investigating the use of top secret material by Macdonald. In other words, a government MP is under criminal investigation and the leaker could well be a government staffer or minister guilty of a serious crime and a serious breach of security in a security-conscious Australia.

I was the subject of an AFP investigation many years ago when I was leaked a Simon Crean Cabinet submission. These types of leaks – unlike leaks of classified security documents like Wilkie’s – are usually ignored, because often it’s politicians doing the leaking. I was interviewed at the Canberra headquarters of the AFP within days of Crean’s referral, and said “no comment” to all questions asked because my source was confidential. But the police had good reason to interview me. I could have got the document anonymously in the mail or found it in a rubbish bin, and in either case could and would have been frank with the AFP. So why wasn’t Andrew Bolt interviewed? Two reasons spring to mind – either the police already knew who leaked it and didn’t want to pursue the matter, or had decided not to investigate at all.

This is an intolerable situation and, as other writers have pointed out, makes a despicable comparison with Australian defence force officer Merv Jenkins, who took his own life in Washington after vicious government retaliation for his failure to obey a directive not to give US intelligence contacts information on East Timor prior to the independence vote despite government-to-government agreements to do so (see Mike Carlton’s A leak by the bucketful and Michelle Grattan’s It’s no secret: let he who is without spin…).

But the significance of the Government’s Bolt play is much greater than further proof of its entrenched double standards and dangerous politicisation of Australia’s core democratic institutions. If it’s OK to leak intelligence to discredit the whistleblower, why isn’t it OK to release intelligence to refute Wilkie’s accusations that Howard lied about his reasons for invading Iraq? Why not declassify the intelligence which would prove Howard’s constant claims in arguing the case for war that invading Iraq would REDUCE the risk of terrorism, REDUCE the risk of WMDs finding their way into the hands of terrorists, and make the world a SAFER place forAustralians? Why won’t Howard disprove Wilkie’s assertions by proving his own case?

He sure needs to now. Sensational documents just released by the British parliamentary inquiry into Blair’s stated reasons for war reveal what the British Joint Intelligence Committee told Blair (and the Australian intelligence services) six weeks before the war:

“The JIC assessed that al-Qaeda and associated groups continued to represent by far the greatest terrorist threat to western interests, and that threat would be heightened by military action against Iraq,” the British parliamentary report says.

“The JIC report, ‘International Terrorism: War with Iraq’, also said there was no evidence Saddam Hussein wanted to use any chemical or biological weapons in terrorist attacks or that he planned to pass them on to al-Qaeda. “However, it judged that in the event of imminent regime collapse there would be a risk of transfer of such material, whether or not as a deliberate regime policy.” (Australia was told: war will fuel terror).

Wilkie made these very points upon his resignation from ONA before the war. Why did Howard invade? Didn’t he care about increasing the threat of terrorism? Did he judge that our security reliance on the United States was so large that he had to agree to a request from a mad president? So large that he ignored the best available intelligence and passionate warnings from Indonesia and and other neighbours that invading Iraq without UN sanction would greatly destablise the region, thus increasing the risk to the safety of Australians?

Howard’s spin is starting to turn on him in dangerous ways. Why spend hundreds of millions to invade a country of no threat to us, taking the risks of a transfer of WMDs to terrorists and the creation of new alliances between terrorist groups? Why not spend all those millions on improving our internal security to keep us safe?

Last week’s revelations that Howard took the threat of terrorism so seriously that outsourced private firms had access to areas containing crucial security information about transport and customs checks raise questions about his good faith on terror. Big questions. Our airports are still insecure. Experts have been warning for months that nothing has been done to protect trucks carrying chemicals from terrorist attack. What is going on?

There could be an early election alright, but if there is don’t see it as a sign of strength. Howard’s rainbow has faded. He’s on the run, and his best bet to preserve his regime is to go to an election before Labor gets its leadership act together.

Peter Costello announced on Thursday that he’d travel to the Middle East to meet Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Costello’s preparing for leadership big time. A Howard early election play could be Howard’s last card to stop Costello becoming Prime Minister by the end of the year.

The latest intelligence revelations out of Britian are in The Observer: Revealed: new doubts on Blair’s Iraq dossier

 

Serenade with a drunken assassin. Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

G’Day. It’s been yet another frenzied, feverish week in Australian politics, where dots continue to be joined and political certainties continue to unravel. The aspect I’m working on – the Tony Abbott slush fund – has entered a digging-in phase. There’s been a few developments which I’ll report to you in another entry – today’s Webdiary is dedicated to your input and my responses to your questions and criticisms. Sorry I’m so far behind on reader emails – there’s a lot going on. Long time Webdiarists Robert Lawton and Hamish Tweedy reckon I’m on the wrong track with Abbott, and Robert also reckons Webdiary’s going in the wrong direction. My response has turned into an essay, so I’ll publish their critiques and my response in another entry. Otherwise, I’m drawing a line under Abbott emails sent to date, so if I’ve missed a corker please resend.

The SMH online now has an Abbott slush fund archive.

The Age political correspondent Annabel Crabb reported this week that Hanson could stand for political office once she gets out of jail even if her appeal against her conviction for fraud fails. That’s come as a big surprise to the government. See Hanson still has future in politics.

I’m still working on a list of questions to send Mr Abbott in the light of More questions for Abbott on honest politics trust and his response to that piece, Dear Margo …. Tony Abbott writes. In response to my request for reader’s questions, Mike Mackay suggests: “Why did he repeatedly tell Parliament recently that Wilson Tuckey was a ‘fine Australian’?”

Marilyn Shepherd’s questions are:

* Was John Howard or any member of his family a contributor?

* If yes, is that why Abbott won’t come clean?

* Is any member of the executive of the Liberal party a donor?

* If yes, who?

* Is any current member of the parliament for the National or Liberal party a donor?

* If yes, who?

* How much did each member of parliament give?

* What did they understand the fund was for?

* Did any donors/contributors understand that people could be put in prison?

* Did any donors/contributors believe it was a Liberal party fund?

***

Pascal Grosvenor

Margo, I’m pleased to see you naming the spokesmen for Abbott and for the AEC. Hopefully other journalists will start doing the same, then these spokespeople/spin doctors might start feeling some of the pressure personally and it will be harder for ministers, departments, etc to hide behind them.

***

Geoff Eagar

I have been a long time reader of Webdiary. Recently you published a request from a reader to reduce the political content of your site which prompted you to invite contributions from us on the theme of new directions.

I thought about this, and your job description as political online editor seemed an obstacle. Yet I must confess to feeling a little jaded with the constant stridency and intellectual conceit of many of the contributions published, however much I agreed with the sentiment. What really dismayed me was the fact that it was all talk. Lots of people seemed to have wonderful ideas about Reconciliation yet it seemed little more than talk. The chattering classes indeed.

Yet now I see a site where contributors have fired off letters to Justice Morling sparking action. A great start. But perhaps …

Howard criticises the judiciary’s activism – do we now have journalistic activism? I have no time for Minister Christ or his political God the Father who’s just been reported as having boastfully declared the History War’s over because noone’s asked Him for an Apology lately. But, journalistic activism? Is your site creating news? I hope you know what I’m getting at – Christ has created the story Himself of course, but how far can you go? If all the way, let’s go it then!

So for new directions, I’d like to nominate some journalistic activism be fired off on Reconciliation and the Apology, Aunty ABC, the environment, ending State Aid to private schools…..

***

Daniel Moye in Roseville, Sydney

In Who’s who in Abbott’s slush fund zoo Anthony Loewenstein asked the question whether Abbott was acting as a private individual or as a Liberal member? Surely it is almost impossible for a Minister of the Crown to act as a private individual in almost every circumstance. I would have thought, by definition, as a Minister of the Crown Abbott acts almost always as a public person. Surely there is only small and discreet examples where a Minister is not acting as a public person. Perhaps you could argue along those lines.

By the way, the last thing we need is Bob Carr in Canberra. He has even better spin than Howard.

***

Michael Hessenthaler

Hi Margo. I thought I’d pass on the reply from the AEC to my email on September 2 (first published in AEC claims secret political donations no business of voters).

Dear AEC

I am a customer of the AEC because I am an enrolled voter.

Could you please advise me on the status of your “further inquiries” in relation to the topical issue of Tony Abbott and your original decision that he did not have to comply with disclosure requirements pertaining to the Australians for Honest Politics Trust.

When do you envisage that you will, in accordance with your stated Corporate Goals, be transparent about the outcome of your inquiries?

Thanking you,

Regards

Michael Hessenthaler

*

AEC Reply, Sent: Tuesday, 9 September 2003 4:53 PM

Mr Hessenthaler,

Thank you for your e-mail below.

The AEC does not believe that Ms Margot Kingston’s article ‘Australian Electoral Commission in the Dock: Why won’t it come clean’ (Herald website, 1 September 2003) fully recognises the complexity of the issues surrounding this matter.

The AEC is committed to its core values of: independence and neutrality, integrity and accuracy, mutual respect, respect for the law, service and transparency. The AEC’s actions on this matter have been and continue to be fully consistent with these values.

However the AEC asks its clients to appreciate that in dealing with legislative compliance issues the AEC must give due regard to confidentiality. Unnecessary publicity may prejudice their further investigation.

The AEC has a policy of considering matters that are raised with it either directly or through public forums such as the media. The AEC treats these matters seriously and as such, must ensure that it deals with them in a consistent, considered and equitable manner.

Accordingly, the AEC does not offer comments on matters until it has had the opportunity to research and consider all information available and has come to an informed conclusion.

Kathy Mitchell

Director Funding & Disclosure

*

Michael had a strong response to my report of the interview I did with Tony Abbott on September 5 (Tony Abbott: No such thing as the public’s right to know):

Margo, whilst reading with trepidation your latest in SMH I was struck by something so obvious that I am ashamed not to have recognised it earlier – this fellow Abbott is NOT FRANK AND OPEN!

Perhaps I don’t deserve a reward for recognising the obvious. Perhaps we all think it, but I think it also needs to be addressed loud and clear with the sly politicians we have to suffer.

It struck me what a painstaking, drawn out process it is for you to have to analyse and triple-analyse everything Abbott is saying. You did some clever foot work and interviewing to get Abbott to slip on his own dirt and you laid it out so well for all us readers.

But why? Why should it have to be so painful?

As a factual investigator well versed in insurance policies and insurance law, I often faced tricky claimants trying to carefully word their answers (al la Abbott, Reith, Howard, etc) so that maybe, just maybe they can get away with their false claims. Some of them feel quite smug at how clever they are in the use of the English language.

I faced them with the obvious, that is written into law and into the policy (being a “contract” between two parties) – YOU HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO BE FRANK AND OPEN. I explained to them that I am not paid to outsmart them with trick questions, that I don’t have to play cat and mouse games, but that they must tell me the information relevant to their claim in a frank and open manner. No misleading, not double-meaning terms, no reversing sentences, no struggling with “Oh God, what did I say 12 answers ago, will this fit in or can it be misconstrued and held against me” kind of stuff.

Given that we (stupidly) elected these people that lately give us indigestion, given that they made promises and presented themselves as nice and good people, they consequently now have the OBLIGATION to be frank and open, in the true meaning of the words, when answering our probing questions. No trick fancy contorted smart-mouthed smirking replies, but frank and open answers!

Isn’t it time we reminded Abbott, Howard, etc that we are not all stupid people and that we deserve to be treated like proper people, not like Silks fighting it out in the Supreme Court. We are not paid to play cat and mouse legal games and I don’t believe you should either have to play such tricky games with a basically dishonest, immoral and objectionable fellow like Tony Abbott.

If it’s good enough for insurance companies (and later courts) to knock back claims and even prosecute claimants for fraudulent actions, why should it not be good enough for the Abbotts of this world?

I do wish, Margo, that I had the opportunity to investigate an insurance claim made by Abbott.

***

Tim Gillin in Kensington, Sydney

I know the Abbott/Hanson thing has been done to death, and I certainly don’t regard Hanson as a political prisoner as per R.J. Stove’s recent article at vdare. Hanson and Ettridge did break the law and their sentence does seem more or less in line with other punishments handed out in similar cases.

But there is a difference. The other cases seem to have been genuine internal party disputes ultimately adjudicated by the courts. In this case a major party has egged on and subsidised an action by disgruntled members of a minority party against their own leadership. We need to be concerned about the precedent here, and how it affects the rules of democratic fair play.

When public funding of election campaigns was being advocated in the 1970s, its proponents saw it as a means of enhancing democracy by promoting a more level playing field. It looks like the playing field has evolved into a mine field, and the big boys encourage the new kids to play hopscotch there.

This time it is One Nation, next time it will probably be the Greens. Maybe it’s time public funding of election campaigns was ended before democracy gets hurt.

***

Humphrey Hollins in Perth

I have just asked my local member, Liberal MP Julie Bishop, for the second time to tell me the truth about Abbott’s activities.I asked who paid his fares to Queensland whilst stalking Hanson and also whether he was working in his ministerial or electorate time or during annual leave. She refused to answer and suggested that I ask Abbott. What has happened to our democracy when ones local member refuses to answer a question?

Margo: Julie’s no friend of Abbott. She’s a moderate, and a Costello supporter. She probably doesn’t want to waste her time defending Abbott’s activities.

***

Norm Martin

Margo, keep up your excellent coverage of this saga. I have a strong feeling you will eventually draw some blood. Indeed, there seems to be a lot of parallels here with the strange happenings in NSW in the 1980s. You recall the excesses of power of several politicians, magistrates, and police.

***

Stephen Feneley

Poor old Tony. It’s not like Tony was trying to bring down an ideological opposite. What we have here is a factional dispute. One of Tony’s loyal staff abandons him for Pauline, so Tony sets out to get even. Tony wasn’t opposed to Pauline and One Nation, he was just pissed off that she’d stolen not only a valuable staffer but also a lot of the right of centre political ground that Tony and Howard regarded as being rightly theirs. You can just imagine them screaming: HEY THAT BITCH HAS GONE AND STOLEN OUR FEARFUL WHITE SUPPORT BASE. IF SHE DOESN’T GIVE US BACK OUR RACISTS, WE’RE GUNNA FIX HER REAL GOOD.

And then they did.

***

Nick Smith in Newcastle

Margo, you have just made my day! I have been simmering at an unhealthy pre-steam level for ages now about this government I was fooled into helping elect. Imagine if all the lies they have been saying do make them accountable – what a twist that you can lie to Parliament, the Australian people, the ABC and the SMH but not the Public Service! Lie to the PS and feel the full weight of a criminal proceeding! YABADABADOO. Can’t wait to see them in the witness box. (See More questions for Abbott on honest politics trust.)

But hang on, who will prosecute? Thought it was too good to be true. Back to simmer level.

***

Michael Kennedy in Bringelly, NSW

In Tony Abbott: No such thing as the public’s right to know, Workplace Relations and Public Service Minister Tony Abbott argues that “I just believe private conversations should be private.”.

Yet the Minister has hired Nigel Hadgkiss, ex Wood Royal Commission investigator and Federal Police electronic eavesdropping expert. Hadgkiss is the manager of The Building Industry Commission Taskforce that came out of The Cole Royal Commission. There has already been allegations about the unauthorised monitoring of building industry ‘private conversations’. Perhaps the Minister should put his money where his managerialist microphone is.

Margo: Website Thomson Workforce reports:

Building taskforce head Nigel Hadgkiss has been forced to defend remarks he made in an April 8 presentation to Clayton Utz in a Senate estimates committee hearing this week. Hadgkiss came under fire from ALP senators Kim Carr, Penny Wong and Nick Sherry for making references to Baghdad and equating building industry participants with rape victims. Senator Carr said the CFMEU was incensed with comments the taskforce would be crossing the Yarra and heading up Swanston Street in Melbournes CBD. The unions Victorian branch is located on the street, but Hadgkiss said there were also a number of building sites on it. “It also [includes] the town hall, but I was not trying to offend the mayor of Melbourne,” Hadgkiss told the committee. He said his comment that “tanks would be entering the city” was made in a moment of levity and was aimed at employers, not unions. The ex-NCA director said the culture of the building industry had similar characteristics to the “world of organised crime”, and some participants were “extremely frightened”. He said that like to rape victims, these were “people who will not come forward and need to have their hands held to go through the fairly traumatic experience known as the justice system”. He defended the taskforce against accusations of bias. “I have said time and time again that we are not about bashing unions,” he told the senators, pointing out that a number of current investigations were against employers.

***

Jill Whittaker

I found this reported in the Christchurch press:

PARIS: Australia will take a leading role as the United States and 10 allies step up plans to intercept ships suspected of carrying weapons of mass destruction despite a warning from China that the move could be illegal.

Then I come to the Sydney Morning Herald where Tony Abbott thinks it is OK for those seeking Honest Politicians to hide like dishonest men and that there are some things the public doesn’t need to know. Obviously Tony Abbott and John Howard don’t want Australians to feel that Australia is a more dangerous place because of their actions so have decided to leave us uninformed on the new risks they are exposing us to.

***

Hamish Tweedy

Margo, is Jack Robertson’s point in Permission to lie from the print press quislings that:

* the court got it wrong and there was no fraud committed;

* politicians shouldn’t expose fraud because although uncharged they are guilty of fraud themselves;

* the Liberal Party shouldn’t expose fraud because it was self-serving for them to do so as they have adopted Pauline’s policies for themselves;

* big parties exposing fraud only further alienates people already disillusioned with the political process; or

* all four?

I’m afraid it still doesn’t make sense to me.

And finally why do you need to know the names of the donors? For instance, would it be sufficient for the AEC to confirm that the Liberal Party wasn’t one of the donors or do you need the names and addresses of the people who contributed to AHP? If having forced either the AEC or Tony Abbott into betraying assurances of anonymity, will you then publish the names and addresses and if so for what purpose?

Margo: Hi Hamish. Perhaps Jack can answer your first set of questions? Re donor disclosure, the Australian Parliament passed laws designed to create transparency of political donations so the Australian people are fully informed about who’s backing who when casting their vote. Prima facie the HPT looks like an ‘associated entity’ of the Liberal Party, meaning donor disclosure is required. That’s why the AEC wrote to Abbott requesting donor disclosure when it read about the HPT in the newspapers.

The big parties try all sorts of legal tricks to avoid their disclosure obligations to the Australian people. The AEC’s job is to try to enforce the law and discourage donor disclosure avoidance. The AEC is the enforcer of political donor disclosure on behalf of voters just like the Australian Tax Office is the enforcer of everyone paying their fair share of tax on behalf of the Australian people. The ATO is the representative of taxpayers, seeking a fair share of tax to raise the money to look after our defence, security, services and welfare. The AEC is the representative of Australian voters, seeking to keep the electoral system fair and transparent on their behalf. Because rich and powerful people try to avoid their tax and disclosure obligations, the AEC and the ATO must be vigilant to ensure that the law works to the limit of its capacity against avoidance mechanisms.

As you’ll see from my interview with Abbott at Tony Abbott: No such thing as the public’s right to know, he did not guarantee confidentiality to his donors. If the donors are disclosed then I would publish the names and quantum of the donations they made. That’s what transparency is about.

***

KylieAnn Scott in Haberfield, Sydney

I couldn’t agree more with Jack Robertson’s comments about the media coverage of the Hanson issue missing the point. Even the illustrious Phillip Adams really let his listeners down the other night with his discussion with Paul Bonjiorno about the Pauline Hanson issue. I now understand why it is called ‘Canberra Babylon’ because it is covered by old time dinosaurs.

Even Phillip missed the point, missed the story. It is not about us all feeling sorry for Pauline about the fraud and the 500k, it is about the blatant disregard that Howard and Abbott have for the people of Australia by thinking that they know what is best for us and undermining the democratic process (if you could call it that) in this country. That is what will be remembered, the Underhanded Undemocratic Undermining of our right to choose for ourselves which party and policies we want to vote for in an Election.

I wonder what kind of funds have been established against other little independents and minor parties. A former National Party member turned independent comes to mind.

The Labor and Liberal Party machines and their ambitions to wipe out other parties and thus silence alternative policies and ideas has to be exposed, and the people providing fuel for these machine have to be exposed. We need to revisit just what DEMOCRACY really means for each Australian again.

No wonder both Howard and Crean’s popularity plummeted last week. We Australians don’t like either of them.

***

Malcolm B. Duncan in Sydney, a lawyer

I know to my considerable personal cost the effect of litigation in the political arena. See Duncan v Moore [1999] NSWLEC 170; [1999] NSWLEC 152; [2000] NSWLEC 64. Nevertheless, it is sometimes necessary to resort to the law to affect political behaviour for the better.

While making no difference to the Labor [sic] Party, the Liberals or the Greens, my actions at least stopped Clover Moore from erecting campaign posters in Bligh at the last NSW State Election in contravention of NSW laws (until the night before the election anyway).

As to the contribution of electoral law lecturer Mr Tham in When litigation’s just another way to play politics, he and most legal commentators miss the point about the Hanson matter. The real question is whether Abbott’s indemnity for Sharples’ finding himself the subject of a costs order (and he did) constitutes either Champerty or Maintenance. Arguably it does. (See Hanson to sue Abbott?)

The gravamen of that is that they both breach the common law. That would lead to a question of when and where the offer was made, because Champerty and Maintenance have been abolished in NSW and some other states.

Nevertheless, there is Federal Court authority for the proposition that public policy would still prevent someone maintaining another person’s action for a collateral purpose.

The question then moves to whether a member of parliament (who also has a law degree) is a fit and proper person to continue to sit when he takes action which he knows or ought to know is contrary to public policy. If the Prime Minister, also a lawyer, knew of the scheme, he might be drawn into the same quagmire.

Let them contemplate that as the NSW Legislative Council debates the fate of the hapless Mr Malcolm Jones.

Margo: The Australian Financial Review’s legal editor Chris Merritt recently proved that Abbott is aware of the law on Maintenance and Champerty. Here is the text of a piece in his ‘Hearsay’ column:

Until this week’s debate about Tony Abbott’s involvement in encouraging litigation, very few people would have been aware that in some jurisdictions, this can amount to the ancient torts of champerty and maintenance. But Abbott should have known something.

On April 4, 2001, the Workplace Relations Minister answered a question in parliament concerning legal advice on the subject of champerty. While both champerty and maintenance aim to prevent people from encouraging litigation in which they have no interest, champerty is directed at cases that result in a pecuniary benefit for the tortfeasor. Maintenance requires no such benefit.

Abbott replied to a question on notice by reading a statement that had been made by his predecessor, Peter Reith. He quoted Reith as saying: “My department further advises that the funding of one party to take forward the legal action on behalf of another party could appear to be an example of champerty – the illegal sharing in the proceeds of litigation by one who promotes it, or where one party gets direct benefit from legal action undertaken on its behalf by another.

***

Herbert Thornton

The more I read about the dubious legitimacy of the slush fund to attack Pauline Hanson, the more I get the impression that there has been, among various people involved in the fund – and even in the AEC – a consensus (nudge wink) that the whole operation should be concealed from public scrutiny, and thus escape legal penalty.

At this point I cannot help asking myself whether some of the people concerned committed the crime of conspiracy as defined in the Queensland Criminal Code:

CHAPTER 56 – CONSPIRACY

543: Other conspiracies:

(1) Any person who conspires with another to effect any of the purposes following, that is to say –

(f) to effect any unlawful purpose;

is guilty of a misdemeanour, and is liable to imprisonment for 3 years.”

Is it unthinkable that some of Pauline Hanson’s enemies might also be liable for 3 years jail?

***

REACTIONS TO MY SUN HERALD COLUMN LAST WEEK

Barry White

I read your column in last weekend’s Sun Herald, We want convincing pollies – honest, where you write:

Have you noticed the questions journos don’t ask? Why did Abbott pull out all stops to keep his donors secret? Why didn’t he want the Australian people to know who the donors were, and why didn’t the donors want the Australian people to know?

Another question that journalists don’t ask is: Why didn’t the public servants in the AEC examine the application made by One Nation to see if One Nation’s constitution complied with the Act? I would have thought that was fundamental to doing its job. Receive applications for government monies, examine the application for compliance, check the information given and approve or reject the application.

This is what happens in every government department that receives an application from the public. You present the application they reject or approve. They don’t send you to gaol if it does not comply!!!

Margo: Hi Barry. Hanson’s party was registered federally with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), and the validity of that registration has never been challenged. Because she was a member of the federal parliament at the time, there were virtually no requirements for registration. Her problem arose in registering One Nation in Queensland for the Queensland election. Because there were no One Nation MPs in the Queensland Parliament at the time, she had to go through more hoops to register, ie she had to have 500 members. The Queensland Electoral Commission registered the party in 1997 without protest from any political party. Abbott started screaming only after One Nation did so well at the June 1998 Queensland election. He and Howard then realised One Nation could threaten their regime at the federal election due later that year, because it was now due $500,000 in public funding because of the high vote it received. Abbott lobbied the Queensland Electoral Commissioner Des O’Shea to have another look at One Nation’s registration. He did, confirmed its validity, and One Nation got its cash (it had to repay the money after Sharples later won the Court case he instigated at the urging of and with the legal help and and financial guarantee of Abbott). Des O’Shea defended One Nation’s registration in the Sharples case. See Unmasked Howard gets amnesia on Hanson for more on the political background to the Sharples case.

***

Margaret Cleat

Margo Kingston is on a witchhunt and she’s aiming for the wrong target. It’s our political masters who make the rules and legislation about funding for political parties and they should be held accountable. The AEC is the only independent voice in this whole debate. Margo is simply trying to undermine their role. Perhaps she is stirring up the possum to guarantee sales of her next book? What will it be about I wonder?

***

Mike Sanchez

In my many years as an avid reader of the tabloid press, I have never come across anything like the Margo Kingston phenomenon. It’s like witnessing a mental breakdown in print. Miss Kingston’s bile spewed through her pen is frightening. Her hatred of anything resembling neo-conservatism borders on manic. (The) article in the Sun Herald is like a livid, verbal coil, unsprung on the unsuspecting reader. Her pre-menstrual tension is unmercifully cast upon the reader in an un-coherent, illogical, hateful blast of verbal rubbish. No attempt made to deliver an argument, just give-em-a-piece-of-my-mind stuff. Miss Kingston needs help. In the interests of its readers, Fairfax should provide Kingston with appropriate counselling and a few years leave without pay.

John Howard

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Tony O’Hanlon

I just wanted you to know that your comments and column in the SMH give me great relief. For a while now I was beginning to think that the commercial press had become a Government instrument. Like some, I started to believe only Tony Jones, Maxine McKew and Kerry O’Brien would challenge the word of the Government. Thank you for giving me the belief and hope our country will change and once more be a great nation that we can be proud of.

Margo: See troppoarmadillo for law lecturer Ken Parish’s essay on Hannah Arendt’s essay ‘Truth and politics’.

The second anniversary of S11 comes in a week where Anglo-warspin continued to strangle its perpetrators. Thanks to Paul Wolfowitz we now know that “the war is not over” and that George Bush was not saying otherwise when he declared “the end of major combat” back in May. Thanks to Tony Blair, we know the British people must forgive defence minister Jeff Hoon for misleading the public over the infamous British Iraq WMD dossier because he helped “win a magnificent victory in Iraq”. In Australia, we now know that it’s OK for the government to risk breaching the criminal code to supply top secret intelligence reports to sympathetic journalists and backbenchers to attack whistleblowers, but that top secret intelligence reports which could help us decide whether Howard misled us on the reasons for war must remain top secret.

Meanwhile, Webdiary is being invaded by small l Liberals! Dave Green is a member of the Reid Group, formed recently in Sydney to revive the forgotten political philosophy of Liberalism (see Can Liberalism fight back?). Dave’s written a debut piece for Webdiary on the anti-war Howard Dean phenomenon in the United States.

Webdiarist Clem Coleman felt compelled to write about where Iraq’s at two years after S11. The Iraqi government had nothing to do with S11, of course – the Saudis were the closet to blame there – but now it’s the “central front” in the War on Terror. The long-suffering Iraqi people have been abused by stupid white men for hundreds of years and there’s no sign anything will change. Clem introduced Webdiarists to the Russian Iraq war website ‘Velnik’ during the first phase of Iraq in March/April, and describes himself as a bloke with a background in IT Security who scours the net for information and has an interest in the history of conflict.

I asked Dave to introduce himself:

“I started off studying Psychology at Uni and pursued a PhD until it became impossible when I got married and had a son. I got seduced by the money in IT at the tail end of the boom, got made redundant two years later, and now have time to write this stuff while looking for work :). I’m helping out with the Reid Group with the web stuff, which is pretty central to what they’re doing. I’ve always been politically aware, but never quite knew how to express it. I joined the ALP after Tampa, which seemed bizarre to many of my friends and probably was, and every time I’d resolve to get active within it either Carr or Crean would say or do something f…ed that would make me scratch my head and ponder whether there really was something more constructive I could be doing. I realised a while back that the whole thing was an ideological black hole that needed filling. Otherwise – and you’ve identified it too – we could very well be looking at the roots of a nasty western version of fascism. So, basically it’s time for a lazy suburban armchair political theorist to get active. If I don’t, my son might one day ask me why I didn’t. This could be an absolutely fantastic country, and there are assholes out there trying to ensure that it never is. I think I’ve probably got some more stuff to say on the Howard Dean phenomenon – I’ve got some friends in the US working on his campaign, and the dynamics are very interesting.”

 

Is true liberalism beginning to threaten the neo-conservative hegemony in the United States and Australia?

 

by Dave Green

The recent slide in George Bush’s approval ratings has been the focus of much recent media speculation. From a high of 89% in October of 2001, he had fallen to 63% by the time of the unfortunate media stunt on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003. Since then he has dropped a further 11 points (Time-CNN poll). The Zogby has him even lower, at a dangerously low 45%.

George Bush’s address to the American nation this week may contribute further to his decline. At a time when Americans – a large proportion of whom have isolationist tendencies – are facing blackouts due to an outmoded power system, Bush has been forced to announce a further $87 billion dollars in expenditure on a foreign nation’s infrastructure. While the problems faced by populations in areas affected by the US blackouts pale in comparison to those faced by the Iraqis, it is uncertain as to whether the American voters will factor this into their evaluations of the situation.

However Bush’s slide is only part of the story, and not the most interesting part. The decline in support for neo-conservative policy – by all accounts a radical ideology – was inevitable once the blind rage that built up around September 11, 2001 abated. The most interesting element in current US politics is the rising star of former Vermont Governer Howard Dean, candidate for the democratic nomination for President.

Dean’s significance is in what he represents in the current political climate. The former Governer has clearly identifiable liberal tendencies. He supports Universal Healthcare and public education and was a strong critic of the war on Iraq right from the start. As Governor he was supportive of rights for same-sex couples. In recent polling, Dean is pulling 42% against Bush’s 52% – good numbers for a candidate that hasn’t even won the nomination yet. He has been able to raise more money than any of his more conservative Democratic competitors for the nomination.

Dean is the most socially liberal serious contender for the Presidency since George Dukakis and Walter Mondale. He is certainly more liberal than former President Clinton. That such a candidate is even within striking distance of a sitting American President who is prepared to boost poll numbers by dressing in military fatigues and parading around on the deck of an aircraft carrier must be significant.

I believe that this sudden change in political fortunes for progressive forces in the United States is the result of a deeper trend – a reawakening of the liberal consensus that dominated politics for almost a century. I believe, furthermore, that similar political dynamics exist in Australia – although we don’t yet have an identifiable point around which to rally in order to reassert the liberal consensus.

Prior to making my case I’ll need to assert my own definitions for terms, as the tussle of politics is partly about controlling language. The Liberal Party of Australia does not represent a liberalist agenda at all, but rather an opposing, conservative one. Indeed, as the Manildra affair demonstrates, the Liberal Party has pretty much rejected Classical Liberal economics as well.

Liberalism, in my formulation, refers to a set of principles founded on the notion of human equality and individual rights. Conservatives make the same claim, but the distinction is within the mode of thought.

Liberalism is grounded within a rationalist framework – issues are carefully analysed and dissected and a pragmatic approach is determined, always with the objectives referring back to the founding principles.

Conservatism, on the other hand, is based on the notion that societies develop their best traditions naturally, and that these should be respected when determining approaches to issues.

Ultimately – especially in the present climate – Conservatives have it much easier, as their solutions will almost always gel with some preexisting social norm, prejudice, or emotion. Conservatives can appeal to patriotism, to national pride, to God. Liberals will often find such approaches jingoistic at best and deceptive at worst – they are therefore left with a much greater task of explaining a position or policy in its own terms, on its own merits. (For a diferent view of conservatism, see Daniel Moye’s Why conservatives fear John Howard.)

In terms of policy approaches, liberals will always side with the rights of the individual where the actions of one individual clearly do not impinge on the rights of others. This is why liberals will support measures such as euthanasia, same-sex union, drug law reform and so on. If someone wants to smoke a funny smelling cigarette, giggle a bit, then get a craving for a Mars Bar, it’s their business, as it doesn’t impact on anyone else.

With more complex issues such as economics, where the actions of one individual will always, to some extent, affect the rights of another – liberals will adopt cautious, moderate approaches. They seek to balance a sound respect for free market principles within a pragmatic publicly funded framework aimed at guaranteeing equal access to the tools which enable citizens to participate in society – most notably in education and healthcare.

In theory Conservatism is more radically pro-free market, but socially conservative. In practice, the reliance of Conservative parties upon funding from big business often mysteriously coincides with pro-business policies – as opposed to pro-competition policies, a distinction drawn recently by Mark Latham in Competitive Capitalism versus Crony Capitalism: The Difference Between Labor and Liberal).

The Manildra affair comes to mind, as well as the awarding of Iraqi infrastructure contracts to companies associated with US Vice President Dick Cheney. It is not surprising, then, that Conservatism’s latest incarnation – Neoconservatism – has morphed the ideology into a state-centred, heavy spending system.

Until very recently it looked as though the Conservatives had won an unassailable victory, both in the USA and Australia. Now, Bush’s poll ratings are nosediving and in Australia, Howard looks to have suffered moderately from children overboard, SIEV-X, Manildra, Wilson Tucky, and the now regular gaffes on serious security issues (including involving the nation in a war of dubious legality). The difference between the two nations is that within the US, there is a natural rallying point for opponents of neo-conservatism. In Australia there is not. The question: could a truly brave and clearly defined liberal alternative, threaten John Howard to the same extent that it now threatens George Bush?

I believe the answer is yes, and that this is the result of a long term trend which has dominated politics in the USA, Australia, and to a lesser extent the UK, since the end of the Cold War.

Political ideology is the result of individuals making statements about the world based on theory, and in many cases, political necessity. It is not a science. Toward the end of the Cold War, the major political debate in western countries was economic – between advocates of a mixed economy and advocates of a largely privatised economy. On a macro level these distinctions could be drawn between continental Europe and the United States, with Australia and the partially Thatcherized UK lying somewhere in between.

The common view which emerged once the Berlin wall had been demolished and the USSR had collapsed was that the “American way” triumphed. This was due to a Republican administration eager to take credit for this shift in history and to rationalise massive military expenditures undertaken at a time when the USSR was clearly collapsing from within.

I was in Germany at the time of its reunification. One thing that struck me was how stridently the Germans would dispute that those events were the result of a triumph of capitalism over communism, and a victory of the “private” over the “public”. Cited more than once was the fact that a factory worker in the East, pulling a fifty hour week, made less money than a West German on unemployment benefits.

I don’t know if the example was true, but it was a common perception – and demonstrative of the fact that for Europeans the end of the Cold War was seen not as a triumph of the radical Thatcher-Reagan free market model over the radical socialist state, but the victory of the mixed economy over the planned economy. Gorbachev, for example, was quoted on a number of occasions detailing a plan for the USSR which read more like a gradual shift to a Swedish style 60-40 mixed economy than American capitalism.

In history an absolute victory requires a complete a 180 degree political U-turn. If one accepts this, then one should also accept that absolute victory in the Cold War was not in the economic realm. The economics of the Cold War involved populations rejecting a radical state-centred economics that was not functioning in favour of a moderate mixed economics, which functioned to varying levels of success, and in which the state-private mix could be tinkered with. It was in no way a victory of one economic ideology over another, but rather a rejection of economic ideology itself.

The absolute victory of the Cold War was the rejection by millions of people of centralised political power in general, whether that power be manifested in economic planning committees, press censorship boards or state interference in judicial procedures.

I believe that following the collapse of European Communism, the progressive movement in the West either misread or ignored this to a large extent. It is easy to see why it was largely ignored – if part of the lesson from the fall of communism is that power should be devolved, then following this lesson would involve large parties devolving their own power. As a result, the political debate has continued to centre upon economics – taxes, spending, and the “hip pocket”.

Throughout the 1990s, the progressive movement advocated the moderate, mixed economy that essentially won the Cold War, whilst the right has pushed for a more radical set of policies, largely untried. This was most acute in the early 1990s, in Australia with the challenge to the Keating government by the Coalition’s radical “Fightback” manifesto and in the USA with Gingrich’s “Contract With America”.

While moderate governments were initially able to withstand these assaults, they eventually succumbed as radicals learned to package themselves as moderates.

The “mainstream” progressive movement essentially missed the implications of the collapse of communism – that it had been a victory for liberalism. Had progressive politicians fully grasped this and presented populations with governments that were boldly reforming on social issues and devolved political power rather than just marked time, it would have been much more difficult for Conservatives to mount such an absolute, silencing victory over their opponents. Proof of this can be found in recent UK history, where New Labour, with a very moderate and limited set of policies aimed at political devolution, was able to capture the interest of the electorate.

The reasons why the broader implications of the end of the Cold War were ignored by progressive parties are obvious. Real liberalism is politically risky. It requires that leaders take head on the prejudices and fears of entire segments of the voting public, leaving themselves open to opportunistic attacks from competitors.

This pattern is clear in the approaches we saw during the 1990s. Recall John Howard fear mongering over Mabo on ‘Lateline’, and the attacks on Hilary Clinton over her advocacy for universal health care coverage for all Americans. Howard told Australians that a huge percentage of their country would be under claim. Gingrich’s spin doctors painted the Clintons as socialist evil-doers.

Advocates of liberal policy must expend extra energy as they become educators as well as policy advocates, exposing the illiberal and fascistic aspects of our societies without alienating citizens who may adhere to these aspects without fully grasping their implications.

At the same time, real liberalism requires a principled approach – based on a sound view of the importance of individual rights, a politically empowered society, and an economy that is as free and as open as it can be without sacrificing the rights of its citizens – not jumping on every minority cause that looks emotionally correct or popular.

The high level of support for Howard Dean in the USA, despite the fact that America is a largely conservative country in which the sitting President can wrap himself in the flag or the cloak of fear at any time, proves that a strong thread of liberalist sympathy still exists in that country. We can now say with some hope that the neoconservative victory was transient, even hollow – typically based on emotion and fear, rather than founded on the real.

It is too early to say if we are likely to see a President Howard Dean. In the present climate there are too many factors – the war in Iraq, the US economy, activities by terrorist organizations – and it would be a mistake to underestimate the obstacles in the way of a Dean victory. Personally, I find it difficult to see how Dean could head Bush off in the MidWest and Southern states. What is certain, however, is that Dean is seen by Americans as a liberal, and that this liberal has garnered significant support.

In Australia, as yet, there is no obvious way for true liberals to show up in opinion polls. The ALP continues to run a confusing and inconsistent approach on key human rights issues such as asylum seekers and the ASIO laws. The Greens, while principled on human rights, maintain an economic line that has more to do with airing the concerns of the anti-globalisation movement than finding solutions. However, there may well be a latent thread of liberalist thought that has survived years of neglect under the ALP and Howard’s attempts to obliterate it and which is crying out for representation.

This voter pool is comprised of individuals who hold strongly to universality of human rights, the value of hard work and innovation and equality of opportunity, and who prefer rational and detailed policy debates over flag waving. It includes a substantial number of current Labor, Green and Democrat voters who support those parties through gritted teeth. It also includes a significant proportion of Liberal Party supporters who subscribe to the small-l association in the party name and have a family history of voting Liberal.

The emergence of a true liberal party, or Labor shifting boldy in that direction (if such a thing is possible), could cut swathes through Liberal heartlands in major Australian cities.

Liberal supporters who are coming to the realisation that today’s Liberals are anything but should be Howard’s worst nightmare. The sweetest thing is he wouldn’t even see it coming.

***

Star Webdiary columnist Harry Heidelberg wrote of the Howard Dean phenomenon in last month in Will Howard beat Bush? Here’s an update he emailed just before Bush addressed the nation to declare Iraq the “central front” in the War on Terror:

“Hi Margo. I hope you saw the footage of Democrats presidential candidate Dick Gephardt where he repeatedly called George Bush a MISERABLE FAILURE. He says Bush is a miserable failure on foreign policy and the economy. One poll shows Howard Dean going down and Gephardt rising. George Bush is clearly in trouble. Big trouble. It is just after 7.30 pm in Europe and sometime soon George Bush is expected to make an address to the nation. He’s battling for survival. I’ll be interested to watch this address – Address to the Nation or Address to the World? Now there’s even a miserable failure web site! http://www.amiserablefailure.com

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Clem Colman

With another diplomatic stand off starting to develop between the US and European Nations that opposed the invasion of Iraq, this time over the provision of UN Peace Keepers, you have to feel for the people of Iraq. They are screwed however this plays out. And whilst the players in this game all pontificate and spin about why their position is morally defensible one can’t help thinking that the welfare of the people of Iraq is the secondary issue to who gets control of this important middle eastern strategic piece.

The Bush administration has approached Congress seeking another $US100 Billion to help cover the costs of security and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, of which the majority will be spent in Iraq. This amount is more than double what Congress expected, showing just how much the cost of this conflict underestimated. Add to this the ongoing deployment of US units in the area, most of which have been in the Middle East since before the beginning of the conflict, and the energetic diplomatic attempts to involve the soldiers of other nations in security operations in Iraq, and a grim reality begins to emerge.

The US seems unable to establish security and a decisive end to conflict in Iraq. The US is unwilling, either because of political issues or incapability, to deploy more forces to Iraq. Some analysts now say that an increase in ground forces in Iraq would require a reintroduction of the draft. It is also appalling clear from the way things have been managed since “Mission Accomplished” that the Bush administration didn’t have a clue what to do in Iraq after it toppled Saddam. Still, the framing of the US request for UN assistance shows it is not prepared to let go of its easily won, hard to keep, Middle Eastern Prize.

Then there are the French, who in keeping with their tradition of delusions of grandeur, have decided to use their one last piece of real power, their Security Council Veto, to mitigate the extent of US Strategic influence in Iraq and the broader Middle East. Being the world superpower they are (the French that is), any continued ascendancy by the US represents a threat to them, and any chance to pull them back a peg should be taken.

The information from reporters on the ground in Iraq makes it pretty clear that Iraq has had its important infrastructure, including the machinery of industry, almost completely destroyed. Unemployment is rife, the currency is worth nothing, and residents need to organise themselves into armed gangs to protect themselves and their property. Add to that the growing problems in the Shite areas of the country, which were mostly quiet immediately following their subjugation, and we get an uneasy feeling that without the presence of Coalition of the Willing forces there could be outright civil war.

Australia gate crashed the party, but made a special deal that we didn’t need to stay to clean up afterwards. It is a strategic masterstroke that most Australian Forces are out of Iraq and won’t be required to return. But Australians are usually eager to assist when there is heavy lifting to do, and International Law is clear – Australia has a responsibility for peace and security in Iraq at the completion of “the war”.

Australia’s position is largely irrelevant on the world stage (as it usually is), and the main showdown will almost certainly be between France and the US over how and if the US will receive UN support in the form of troops.

So why is the US administration holding onto the idea of holding onto and controlling Iraq when it is so obviously struggling? In my opinion there are two reasons – one goes to the real reason for the war and the other to staying in power.

The US war in Iraq had basically zip to do with the war on terrorism, as most Webdiary readers probably concluded long before the American invasion. It wasn’t about getting Iraqi oil for free per se. It was about a couple of important strategic objectives, including, taking and maintaining a very usefully located strategic staging area from which to put pressure on Iran, Syria, and the whole middle east, as well as securing an important and reliable supply of oil for the US (not free but reliable; watch whilst Iraq is not allowed to participate in OPEC for example).

It is at the core of the ‘Project for the New American century’ philosophy that US control, by force if necessary, of such an important playing piece in the Middle East is just and proper, and that through this control the US can exert pressure for security throughout the region and import its brand of capitalist democracy to the region. (See Think tank war: Why old Europe says no).

The PNACers believe they are right – about everything. It takes bloody mindedness and certainty to invade and destroy a country in the hope that it will make the world a better place. However, with 150,000 troops – a significant chunk of the US Army – required in Iraq alone there are scant resources left with which pressure can be put on Iraq’s neighbours. In fact, rather than being alarmed about what is happening in Iraq, Iran and Syria are probably taking careful notes on how effective resistance has been at bogging the Americans down in a style of conflict they don’t want to participate in.

However, the PNACers are so sure they are right that despite all the warning signs they led their country into a bloody disaster and will keep on pushing on until someone convinces Bush that he has listened to the wrong people (unlikely, they have his ear), or the public decides to let Bush know what they think, assuming they can get a fair count at the polls next time.

The PNAC philosophy is US Dominance. The US cannot surrender Iraq to the UN for administration. That strategy would eventually see US forces having to withdraw from Iraq, and getting them there is the reason the US fought the war.

In terms of the public arena, the US loves a winner. If the US could establish reasonable peace and prosperity in Iraq, the public may be happy to just say they won in Iraq and move on. With the US economy slowly picking up, Bush Jnr may not suffer the same fate as his father provided a “good” outcome can be achieved in Iraq. Of course, how long the “economic” recovery in the US lasts depends on exactly how long it takes for people to realise that the emperor is not wearing any clothes. That’s a topic for another day.

Handing over control to the UN would give the US Administration one immediately good outcome – it could start to rotate troops out of Iraq. However, the Administration did so much to discredit the UN leading into the war that it must worry about how the public would perceive them giving up Iraq to it. And the PNACers are hoping they can convince other countries to come onboard, allowing them the PR win of some troop rotations without having to lose their prize.

So for now the US’s strategy seems to be keep on doing what we are doing and try and negotiate to get troops from other countries into Iraq on US terms. Expect to see Bush approach congress for more funding for “International Assistance” for those “Friends and Allies” who are prepared to help with the cleanup in Iraq. With Bush asking for $100 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan alone Congress may tire of this quickly, but we will see.

Of course, the French (and the Germans, and the rest of the world that didn’t participate in the COW to some extent) can see exactly what is going on. For those most scorned by the US, and the French would have to be close, the temptation to let the US suffer the pain of a situation its own gung ho attitude and wilful ignorance created must be strong. Even for people who are concerned about the welfare of the Iraqi people there must be a strong sense that to give the US what it wants, UN authorised troops without UN control, will only continue to encourage the sort of reckless behaviour this Administration seems intent on.

The French in particular know that at the end of the day they have leverage on this issue. They can, and may, prevent any UN resolution that provides political cover for countries that are keen to take the US up on its offer to put their young people in harm’s way for truth, justice and the American Economy. Time works in their favour, so of course they are in no particular rush.

So the French and the Americans both have their reasons for not wanting to give the other an inch. The Americans because they are still under the impression that they can have their cake and eat it. They need some people to help with carrying the cake and slicing it up, but on the understanding that it still belongs entirely to the Americans. The French, because the US called them nasty names, because they used to have a small piece of the cake the US has now, and because they don’t want the Americans to think it is okay to go around stealing other people’s cakes. The analogy would be moronic if it wasn’t so close to the truth.

You’ll also notice that neither side really has much invested in the welfare of the Iraqi people. They are screwed however this plays out.

G’Day. Who’s who in the AbbottHanson zoo? Antony Loewenstein has agreed to keep an eye on who emerges from where and on whose side as the Honest Politics Trust slowly opens up to public scrutiny and comment. His first report features Peter Garrett (Abbott fund supporter), Trevor Kennedy (fund donor) and Cedric Hampson QC (Hanson’s defender on appeal).

Mutual appreciation society

by Antony Loewenstein

The platitudes and and the recriminations are laced with an air of insincerity. Since the sentencing of Hanson and Ettridge and their failure to gain bail, the individuals behind the original court case are still mired in the shadows.

Weblogger and former Webdiarist Tim Dunlop had PETER GARRETT in his sights last week, after the former Oils frontman supported the actions of Abbott in 1998. So much for the left’s supposed desire for representative democracy. When a hero of the left like Garrett can come out and support a fundamentally antidemocratic movement, spearheaded by Abbott and secretive backers calling themselves Australians for Honest Politics, some serious questions have to be asked about the real motives and desires of those aiming for political office. As for those already in politics, Dunlop writes:

“Fact is, Garrett just sounds like another one of those who pretend to want wide participation in the political process but actually want to limit it to the like-minded. If he wants to rid the world of Hansonite policies, he should try and win the arguments, not endorse what looks like conservative party dirty tricks.”(Abbott’s Garrett)

Let’s examine some of the people so keen to derail the democratic process in the name of avoiding Big Party losses at the ballot box, along with the main players in the Hanson game.

TREVOR KENNEDY

Trevor Kennedy has outed himself as agreeing to “throw in” $10,000 for the fund to take on Hanson. On August 29, The Age revealed that Kennedy had no qualms about the three year jail term for Hanson and Ettridge:

“It took me about three seconds to make up my mind that I would support itv (the HPT),” Mr Kennedy said. “I certainly subscribed to the notion that getting up and denouncing Hanson as a Nazi was not necessarily going to be as effective as exposing the financial shenanigans and the lack of democracy in her organisation.” (Abbott donor: I gave gladly)

Kennedy is a former editor of Kerry Packer’s The Bulletin and head of Packer’s Consolidated Press Holdings.

In a column in Junen this year, Robert Manne detailed the backroom dealings at the ABC to replace Jonathan Shier with Kennedy:

“For the right, the most important move to “reform” the ABC came with the appointment of the hapless and hopeless Jonathan Shier as general manager. Shier must be regarded as one of the right’s more spectacular recent own goals. Following his removal there was an attempt to recover lost ground by the imposition as general manager of Trevor Kennedy of Packer media. The attempt misfired. The chairman of the ABC board, Donald MacDonald, a true conservative and thus a genuine believer in due process and the independence of the ABC, turned down Kennedy’s belated job application. An internal candidate, Russell Balding, was appointed. For the right this represented a considerable defeat.” (McCarthy’s Ghost in ABC attack)

Annabel Crabb of The Age noted in late May:

“Last year, McDonald steadfastly refused to interview ex-Nine executive Trevor Kennedy for the managing director’s job, ignoring helpful public suggestions from the Prime Minister, Treasurer Peter Costello and Alston. ‘”He’s gone native!'” was the cry.”

Clearly the Liberal Government is fond of Kennedy, despite his many years of supporting the Labor Party.

Why was Kennedy a port of call for Abbott in 1998 when passing around the collection tin to help bring down One Nation? And was Kennedy hoping to get out of his ‘donation’? Abbott and Howard claim the slush fund was completely separate from the Liberal Party, but the public support for Kennedy by members of the Howard Government earlier this year raises questions about its transparency, accountability and favours system.

Abbott suggested on the Sunday Sunrise program on August 31 that Trevor Kennedy was a long-time supporter of the Labor Party, without explaining why members of his own cabinet were so strong in advocating Kennedy’s appointment to the ABC board a few months ago:

“Trevor Kennedy is a long-time supporter of the Labor Party. One of the points that I really should make is that there are certain sections of the media and certain sections of the Labor Party who really would like to create, or to recreate, the Hanson phenomenon because for these people something like Hanson is necessary to validate their view of Australia and to validate their view of conservative politics. You see, they have this view of Australia as some kind of dark, disreputable, racist kind of country. If they can point to Hanson and say, “Look, she’s alive,” that validates them. It’s almost as if Hanson has become a sacred monster for sections of the left.”

There’s also a close association between Kennedy and MALCOLM TURNBULL, darling of the Liberal Party, former party treasurer, past head of the Republican movement and potential Liberal MP. In 1998, theSydney Morning Herald reported on the astounding success of the Ozemail computer company, launched by Sean Howard (no relation). The company caught the eye of Kennedy, then boss of Packer’s ACP in 1995. The SMH reported in early April 1998:

“OzEmail will list on the Australian Stock Exchange sometime this year. Not only has Howard got rich on the deal – on paper anyway because he hasn’t sold any shares – but so have Trevor Kennedy and merchant banker Malcolm Turnbull. Both decided to back Howard’s Internet adventure back in 1995 by spending less than $1 million each to grab a little over 15 per cent each. Those stakes are now worth on paper $55 million each. Kennedy became an investor in OzEmail after Howard ran into Kennedy’s secretary at a party. Howard mentioned he was looking for investors and was told Kennedy might be interested. Kennedy then recommended that Howard ask Turnbull to join as chairman.”

These connections prove little and they may all be interesting coincidences. But questions are invariably raised. Was Turnbull involved in any way with forming a relationship between Kennedy and Abbott? When Abbott called Kennedy in 1998 asking for money for his slush fund, was he calling as a private individual or as a member of the Liberal Party? The answer to this question is essential, as the politics and allegiances of Kennedy at the time would surely have determined whether he would have donated $10,000 to the fund. There is no suggestion to date that Turnbull has any role in the Trust.

It seems there are a number of questions that key donors, once revealed, need to answer.

1) When Abbott rang for money, was he ringing as an individual or as a member of the Liberal Party?

2) What did you see as the purpose of the slush fund?

3) Were you a member of any political party when you donated money?

4) What did think would be the effect of legal action against One Nation?

5) What did you think would be the benefits to the two major parties with the (possible) eradication of One Nation?

CEDRIC HAMPSON QC

The Queensland based Cedric Hampson QC leads the Hanson appeal team. In 1991, he worked for the Queensland’s Criminal Justice Commission, taking on Christopher Skase for alleged payments to candidates in the Gold Coast City Council elections.

He rose to national prominence with his involvement in the Fitzgerald Inquiry in the late 1990s. In February 1998, the SMH reported that Hampson was “totally free to concentrate on helping Fitzgerald get to the truth of his inquiries”.

The Queensland Bar News’ biography of Hampson in 2001 paints an intriguing picture:

“At one time or another, Hampson QC has led many of the State’s current judges and senior counsel. To be his junior is an invaluable educational experience – not only for what one can learn from his profound knowledge of the law, his finely-honed forensic techniques, and his wealth of litigious experience, but also for the courtesy and kindness which he shows to his instructing solicitors, his clients, and (above all) his juniors. Anyone who has the good fortune to work with him, or the intellectual challenge of working against him, cannot fail to benefit from the experience.

It is quite impossible to catalogue the extent and significance of Hampson’s contribution to the development of the law in Queensland and Australia, across the vast range of cases in which he has appeared at every level. A perusal of the Commonwealth Law Reports and the Queensland Reports since the early 1960s readily demonstrates, not only the huge number of cases in which he has appeared, but also the extraordinary diversity of those cases – crime, personal injuries, defamation, commercial and industrial matters, town planning cases, property disputes, and constitutional matters. One might say, as Thomas Moore said of Sheridan, that he has “run through each mode of the lyre, and was master of all.”

Highlights include numerous appearances as counsel for the Criminal Justice Commission or as counsel assisting inquiries conducted by that body – including the Carruthers Inquiry and the Connolly-Ryan Inquiry. He been counsel assisting at numerous Royal Commissions and Commissions of Inquiry, including two major inquiries into the illicit drug trade

Whenever members of either branch of the legal profession have found themselves in professional difficulties, Cedric Hampson has been and continues to be their first choice of representation. Some of the most affluent, influential and powerful members of society – along with many thousands of ordinary Queenslanders – have turned to Cedric Hampson for assistance in their time of need.

Another interesting historical coincidence is Hampson’s appearance before Justice Patricia Wolfe in 1998. Sound familiar? She’s the same judge who sent Hanson and Ettridge away for three years. In June 1998 at the Fitzgerald Inquiry, Wolfe made the following statements that show her contempt for sections of the media. In light of her recent decision against Hanson, it would appear she is not one to give in to media pressure surrounding a controversial subject.

In a biting analysis of the inquiry, SMH journo Evan Whitton wrote in 1998:

“Deputy Commissioner Patricia Wolfe appeared to suggest that certain unnamed elements of the media were the tools of the corrupt. What she said was that ‘some elements of the media’ continue to propagate certain myths. The myths she spoke of were that ‘so-called victimless crimes are little more than harmless escapades’.”

Webdiary Meeja Watch announces the informal establishment of the Australian Alliance for an Honest Fair Go in Politics Public Trust Slush Fund. Citizens wishing to donate funds in accordance with the Trust Fund terms and conditions should contact their nearest main party Elected Representative to make their private pledge. For a fuller amplification of these terms and conditions, and information on the history, guiding principles and philosophies of this informal Public Trust Slush Fund, go to onegreennation.

S.J Robertson, Founding Trustee

* * *

1. Third call for a public donation from Mr John Howard, private citizen

From: Jack Robertson

To: The Honourable Tony Abbott, MP, Leader of the House

Date: 7 September 2003

Subject: A Challenge to our Political Leaders – Part III

Information copies: All Australian Senators and MPs (via email)

The Parliamentary Press Gallery (via Webdiary)

Dear Mr Abbott,

As a proud Citizen of Australia, I write to applaud the Liberal Party of Australia for its civic-minded and selfless defence of our beloved fair go, following recent public revelations that your party welcomes the existence, as part of the Public Polity, of a private Trust Fund called ‘Australians for Honest Politics’, one reportedly designed to protect and nurture the vibrancy of our democracy. I am particularly inspired by the example of the various Private Citizens who, apparently out of nothing but their own well-developed sense of civic duty, contributed large sums of money to make this Trust the magnificent instrument of Public Empowerment that I understand it to be. As I have been unable to establish via the Australian Electoral Commission the precise identity of these fine, upstanding Citizens, I would be grateful if you were to pass on my warmest thanks to each and every one of them on my personal behalf.

Mr Abbott, I would also be grateful if you would advise the ‘Australians for Honest Politics’ Trust Fund benefactors that their shining Citizenly example has inspired me, with an almost religious fervour, to open up my own heart – and my wallet – in similar defence of Australia’s majestic democratic system. Oh, it makes me deeply proud, Mr Abbott, to attach for your consideration below: A Challenge to our Political Leaders – Parts I and II, and re-iterate those challenges now to your leader, Mr Howard, a third time.

Mr Abbott, like Mr Dick Honan and many, many, many other Australian Citizens who have donated money to our major political parties expecting nothing whatsoever in return but the warm inner glow that comes with doing one’s civic duty, I am very, very, very keen to give money to the Liberal Party. To that end, could you personally please ensure that your leader, who is obviously so busy defending our democracy that he has not had time to accept my donation so far, sees this now thrice-reiterated personal challenge with his own eyes this time? And then urge him to take it up, thus showing the nation by personal example – in this rapidly privatising world where all the rest of us have now had our retirement financial security placed, by successive governments, in the hands of Market Forces – that he personally has as much faith in the Free Market revolution he has helped bequeath to the ‘rest of us’ as that which the ‘rest of us’ are now expected to embrace with Citizenly enthusiasm?

Thank you very much, Mr Abbott. And keep up the good fight defending our democracy!

Yours sincerely,

Stephen John ‘Jack’ Robertson

Citizen of the Commonwealth, and consumer of the common wealth, of Australia

2. First call for a public donation from Mr Simon Crean, private citizen

From: Jack Robertson

To: Mr Mark Latham, MP, Leader of Opposition Business in the House

Date: 7 September 2003

Subject: A Challenge to our Political Leaders – Part III

Information copies: All Australian Senators and MPs (via email)

The Parliamentary Press Gallery (via Webdiary)

Dear Mr Latham,

As a proud Citizen of Australia, I write to applaud the Australian Labor Party for its civic-minded and selfless defence of our beloved ‘honesty in politics’, following recent public revelations that your party welcomes the existence, as part of the Public Polity, of a private Trust Fund called the ‘Fair Go Alliance’, one reportedly designed to protect and nurture the vibrancy of our democracy. I am particularly inspired by the example of the various Private Citizens who, apparently out of nothing but their own well-developed sense of civic duty, contributed large sums of money to make this Trust the magnificent instrument of Public Empowerment that I understand it to be. As I have been unable to establish via the Australian Electoral Commission the precise identity of these fine, upstanding Citizens, I would be grateful if you were to pass on my warmest thanks to each and every one of them on my personal behalf.

Mr Latham, I would also be grateful if you would advise the ‘Fair Go Alliance’ Trust Fund benefactors that their shining Citizenly example has inspired me, with an almost religious fervour, to open up my own heart – and my wallet – in similar defence of Australia’s majestic democratic system. Oh, it makes me deeply proud, Mr Latham, to attach for your consideration below: A Challenge to our Political Leaders – Parts I and II, and re-iterate those challenges now to your new leader, Mr Crean, for the first time.

Mr Latham, like Mr Dick Honen and many, many, many other Australian Citizens who have donated money to our major political parties expecting nothing whatsoever in return but the warm inner glow that comes with doing one’s civic duty, I am very, very, very keen to give money to the Labor Party. To that end, could you personally please ensure that your leader, who is obviously so busy defending our democracy that he has not had time to accept my donation so far, sees this now thrice-reiterated personal challenge with his own eyes this time? And then urge him to take it up, thus showing the nation by personal example – in this rapidly privatising world where all the rest of us have now had our retirement financial security placed, by successive governments, in the hands of Market Forces – that he personally has as much faith in the Free Market revolution he has helped bequeath to the ‘rest of us’ as that which the ‘rest of us’ are now expected to embrace with Citizenly enthusiasm?

Thank you very much, Mr Latham. And keep up the good fight defending our democracy!

Yours sincerely,

Stephen John ‘Jack’ Robertson

Citizen of the Commonwealth, and consumer of the common wealth, of Australia

* * *

3. A Challenge to our Political Leaders – Part I

From: Jack Robertson

To: All Federal Senators and MPs, the Parliamentary Press gallery

Date: 24 July 2001

Subject: A Challenge to our Political Leaders

Dear Elected Representatives,

Attached please find a challenge to Mr Howard and Mr Beazley. With thanks for your time

A Citizen

A CHALLENGE TO OUR POLITICAL LEADERS

Dear Mr Howard and Mr Beazley,

Like many Australians, I regard the current state of politics with considerable frustration and despair. With both your political groups apparently intent on tackling the upcoming election campaign with the usual mix of muck-slinging and dissembling, I am finding it increasingly difficult to justify a personal Civic Investment in the future of Australia. I understand the conflicting pressures you are under, and the compromises politicians must make, yet I believe that ultimately, the vibrancy of democracy depends mostly on personal leadership by example. This is especially so right now, in a political climate in which all party groups seem captive to the same dreary, economics-driven agenda. I, for one, don’t want any part in creating a future for our kids in which the Almighty Dollar is the only surviving ‘god’.

To that end, I issue the following challenge. I understand that Peter Andren, MP, has been developing a member’s bill that would radically reform your Superannuation arrangements, in particular offering politicians the choice of voluntarily ‘opting out’ of the more generous (and inequitable) entitlements. As an ex-military officer, I am also entitled to a (largely tax-payer-funded) Super sum, worth about $110,000 – fully-indexed, but locked up until I’m 62.

In the interests of demonstrating by example that none of us are automatically beholden to the so-called ‘forces’ of economic self-interest, I challenge either of you to throw your personal weight very publicly behind Mr Andren’s proposal (and not any watered-down version, either). I promise to donate my lump sum to the party of whichever of you does. It won’t be until 2027 – unless you change the rules so I can get at it earlier (like you guys) – but if there is still at least one real democratic party in existence then to accept it, it will be well worth it.

We’ve got to give our kids something more than easy words to believe in. And the only way to do that is for all us grown-ups to start putting our bloody money where our loud mouths are, in my opinion. Come on, you guys – knock some bloody Oz perspective back into us all.

For your consideration, anyway.

A Citizen

* * *

4. A Challenge to our Political Leaders – Part II

From: Jack Robertson

To: All Federal Senators and MPs, the Parliamentary Press gallery

Date: 8 August 2001

Subject: A Challenge to our Political Leaders – Part II

Dear Elected Representative,

Attached please find my repeated challenge to Mr Howard and Mr Beazley. With thanks for your time.

A Citizen

A CHALLENGE TO OUR POLITICAL LEADERS – PART II

Dear Mr Howard and Mr Beazley,

I note your recent, shared public enthusiasm for the lowering of the tax burden in this country, tactics likely to dominate the upcoming election. I can only assume that you and your advisers share fairly bleak assumptions about the role of voter economic self-interest in winning elections. You guys have smarter pollsters than me, I guess. Don’t you?

However, if your opinion-crunchers have convinced you that our hip pocket nerves do hold the key to the campaign – and given the dismissive snickering now inspired by any politician’s promise on tax – surely a far more successful way to exploit the Australian Public’s grasping base instincts would be for a potential Prime Minister to embrace the challenge on MP Superannuation outlined in my last appeal?

I repeat that challenge – I’ll donate my military superannuation to the party of whichever of you wholeheartedly throws his full support very publicly behind Peter Andren’s bill. All this bill proposes is that current MPs get the option of opting into a fairer set-up, so I’m not even [necessarily] asking anyone else to put their own financial future where their gobs are. It’s about defending the long-term credibility of our Parliament. (Frankly, it’s cretinous to pay yourselves peanut base salaries, attracting far too many monkeys, then compensate with gobsmacking Super so that we all think you’re greedy monkeys, anyway. Do yourselves a few favours, you dills!)

My thanks to those elected Reps who bothered to reply to my last email. Senator [MAIN PARTY] fairly pointed out that an ‘anonymous’ challenge is a bit wussy (although you went a bit quiet when I gave you all my details, Senator!). [Staffer MAIN PARTY], I haven’t heard from Senator [MAIN PARTY] yet, mate, and [staffer MINOR PARTY], likewise re: Senator [MINOR PARTY]. Senator [MINOR PARTY], Senator [MINOR PARTY] hasn’t advised of the [MINOR PARTY] ‘position’ on this issue as yet, so I hope you’ll understand when I place all those nice things I said about how you and Senator [MINOR PARTY] are trying to inject some meaning back into politics ‘on reserve’ for now, OK?

This is a genuine challenge. I know it sounds like high moral ground grandstanding, but consider the powerful ‘trickle down’ effect of leadership by example, in this babble-drenched and economically-cleaving age. One [mainstream] pollie – one – could spark a profound social shift (and, what’s more, win the election with a single soundbite.)

At least think about it, you guys?

A Citizen

* * * * * * *���������������

The Australian ‘honest fair go’ means, in the end, nothing more than this: that we ALL play by the SAME rules. As far as the unknown and unknowable future of the ‘New Economics’ revolution goes, that it turn means this: if the living standards of you and I and the ordinary Australian down the street are now going to ebb and sway, in our future retirement, with the vicissitudes and variations of the global ‘Free Market’, then the individual men and women who have remade our Australian society in this way over the last two decades MUST place themselves personally in exactly that same financial boat.

It’s NOT good enough to change the Parliamentary Superannuation scheme so that only TOMORROW’s elected officials will join us in that increasingly-rocky retirement vessel. John Howard and Simon Crean – along with most of the senior leadership figures now running both main parties – have been members of successive Executive governments directly responsible for these radical, largely-bipartisan economic changes. It was all a fait accompli? There was no alternative? Fine. But let’s see either, or preferably BOTH, of these publicly-elected and publicly-paid leaders – for I’ll happily split my miserable $110,000 lump sum between both main parties – now PERSONALLY demonstrate their continuing PERSONAL confidence in those radical economic changes they PERSONALLY helped usher in, by PERSONALLY opting out of their own now ludicrously-disparate, anachronistic PUBLIC schemes, and into PRIVATE ones of the kind the rest of us will have to make do with in our dotages.

Through boom and bust, with growth and ‘negative growth’, for Market better or Market worse.

If our Parliament’s main party leaderships want or need to vote our Federal politicians a huge pay rise and/or up their electoral allowances markedly to make this fundamental systemic change financially feasible for those who may have all sorts of commitments predicated on whopping Super, then I will support them to the hilt. Me, I happen to think we pay our pollies contemptibly low basic salaries, anyway. Me, I happen to think that even a lowly backbencher should be pulling in about two or three hundred grand a year as a very minimum. But what is crucial now – as the strategic economic outlook grows less and less readable – is the principle of manifest systemic equality. What is especially crucial, in a new and uncertain private-public economic paradigm that is only now starting to bed in and bite down on the old Australian certitudes, is that those leaders who rammed those paradigmatic changes upon the rest of us must manifestly embrace their long-term consequences right alongside the rest of us. This, in turn, now urgently requires leadership by personal example far beyond platitudinous inanities about ‘free markets’ and yet more requisite ‘future-securing’ reforms.

A fair go, John Howard? Honest politics, Simon Crean? Maintaining Australian trust and belief in stable, mainstream, two-party Parliamentary Democracy? Trust between voter and voted-in, trust between the private benefactors and the public citizens?

Fine words. But in the end, bullshit walks, money talks. Get your wallets out, boys. I haven’t even got a secure, fulltime job, and I’m itching to lob over a hundred grand into your future Main Party democratic fighting coffers – via this somewhat roundabout, dodgy and informal, ‘fringe party’ backroom funding mechanism I’ve called ‘The Australian Alliance for an Honest Fair Go in Politics’ Public Trust Slush Fund, with a labelling nod to you both. (We Citizens can play ironic little word-games just as easily as your grubby spin doctors and smooth marketeers, y’know.) And I bet there’s other Citizens out here who’d chuck a few bucks your main party way, just for the fun of watching a politician do himself out of an unearned quid for a change, too.

But like all natural-born followers, I require a main party leader to lead the way first. John? Simon? Cabinet? Caucus? Party fundraising ball’s in your democratic court, boys and girls.

September 10,2003

Dear Margo,

I’ve just been given your latest on-line piece.

The important facts remain: the Honest Politics Trust did not endorse candidates, support candidates or fund campaigns. I did not tell donors their names would be revealed when seeking donations because I had no reason to think they would be. I did not tell the lawyer whose advice I sought that his name would be revealed. I have always been upfront about my role in Australians for Honest Politics but don’t intend to say anything about other people’s roles except as required by law. To do otherwise would be to break faith with people who supported a good cause at a difficult time for Australia.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Abbott

G’Day. I’ve discovered an intriguing discrepancy between Tony Abbott’s written statements to the Australian Electoral Commission about his Honest Politics Trust Fund (HPT) and what he told me in our interview on Friday.

I’d left a message at Tony Abbott’s office on Thursday asking him to call after the AEC chairman, Justice Morling, took over the AEC’s investigation of the HPT. I also asked his spin doctor, Andrew Simpson, questions on the legal advice Abbott assured the AEC validated his refusal to disclose the donors to HPT, and Andrew said he’d ask the minister. They were:

* Why didn’t Mr Abbott want the Australian people to know the identity of the donors to his honest politics trust?

* Had Mr Abbott received written legal advice that the HPT was exempt from laws requiring disclosure of political donations to the Australian people?

* Why wouldn’t Mr Abbott reveal the name of the lawyer who gave him the legal advice? (See ‘AEC chief intervenes in Abbott slush fund secrets’ at http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/09/04/1062548956846.html)

Now why would a politician who wanted to hide the truth talk to a journalist who wanted to ask him questions he didn’t want to answer? To his credit, Mr Abbott did call, and we spoke after 6pm on Friday night. (The news story arising out of the interview, also published in abbreviated form on page five of the second edition of The Sydney Morning Herald last Saturday, is ‘Tony Abbott: No such thing as the public’s right to know’ athttp://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/09/05/1062549026867.html

I asked Mr Abbott whether he had given intending donors to the HPT a guarantee of confidentiality. “No. I did not tell them that their names would be publicised.”

So why didn’t the public have the right to know then, since no undertaking of confidentiality was given? “There are some things the public has no particular right to know,’ he replied.

He said two donors had come forward – businessmen Trevor Kennedy and Harold Clough – and that at the time many people thought the trust was “a good thing”. So why wouldn’t the others come forward, I asked?

“It (APT) was set up to prosecute a legal case, and that’s not a political purpose,” he said.

Here’s where it gets interesting. If the trust is a good thing, why was it designed so that its donors would remain hidden from the Australian people, I asked?

“I didn’t design the trust so that donors weren’t required to disclose. I set up the trust to support legal action.”

“I DIDN’T TAKE LEGAL ADVICE ON DISCLOSURE TILL AFTER I GOT THE AEC’S LETTER. I SOUGHT LEGAL ADVICE AND GOT ORAL ADVICE FROM A SENIOR LAWYER.”

I asked for the name of his lawyer. He refused, saying he had not advised the lawyer that “by the way, in five year’s time I’m going to dob you into Margo Kingston”.

“I just believe private conversations should be private,” he said.

I protested that the conversation was not private because Mr Abbott himself had disclosed it in his letter to the AEC as the basis for his refusal to reveal his donors. And only five days before Mr Abbott had released the letter – and thus the conversation with his lawyer – to the public by giving it to the Australian Financial Review.

He responded with a personal attack on me, which I will report in another entry. He did not answer my question. I then asked if his lawyer had seen the trust deed before offering his or her legal opinion? “I’m not going to disclose that,” he replied. Why not, I asked? He said he’d given me enough time and terminated the call.

BACKGROUND: Tony Abbott finalised the establishment of his Honest Politics Trust on August 24, 1998, three weeks after he’d fallen out with Terry Sharples, a One Nation dissident. Sharples had just launched legal action against One Nation after Abbott organised two free lawyers for him and gave his personal, written guarantee to cough up Sharples’ out-of-pocket expenses after a still-secret donor promised to stake Abbott.

The AEC read a news story in The Australian about the HPT on September 1, 1998, which stated that Abbott had already raised meanrly$100,000. As a result, the AEC wrote to Abbott on September 18, advising that the HPT looked like an “associated entity” of the Liberal Party and that therefore donations to it should be disclosed to the Australian people.

Abbott replied on October 20. The full text of his letter and the AEC’s reply is in ‘AEC pulls up its socks, starts serving the people’ at http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/09/04/1062548971030.html. The letter said, in part:

So far, the Trust has raised nearly $100,000 – almost all of which is committed to supporting the action brought by Mrs Barbara Hazelton .

Before seeking donations to the trust I spoke with one of Australia’s leading electoral lawyers who assured me that the Trust would not be covered by disclosure provisions.

See the problem? Abbott told the AEC he had sought legal advice on donor secrecy BEFORE collecting donations. He told me he got his legal advice after the donors had paid up, in response to the AEC’s letter of demand. Has he misled the AEC, or Herald readers?

But there’s another, even more disturbing question. Did Mr Abbott get ‘legal advice’ at all, or just an off-the-cuff first take the lawyer did not intend to be represented as considered advice?

Why won’t Abbott say whether he briefed his lawyer with the HP Trust deed? I am a lawyer by training, and practiced law for a few years. In my experience, no self-respecting lawyer would ever give advice which his or her client intended to be acted upon by the authorities – in this case the AEC – without being briefed with and considering the relevant material.

Did Abbott’s lawyer know that his opinion would be used in this way? Has Abbott misled the commission not only in the timing of his legal advice, but its very status? Remember, the AEC relied on Mr Abbott’s letter to backdown on ordering disclosure. It took his word for it – and did not seek its own legal advice, even though the HPT was a new type of weapon in Australian politics. It was this profound error of judgement – if not breach of its legal obligations to enforce political donation disclosure laws – which the AEC is now scrambling to rectify in its new investigation of the trust. What if the AEC’s decision to trust the word of Tony Abbott was misplaced?

I advised the AEC of this new information yesterday, and AEC spokesman Brian Hallett said he would “send it up the line”. I asked Mr Hallett whether the AEC was now asking Abbott the questions it failed to ask him in 1998.

“I can’t give you a running commentary on what we’re doing,” he said, because the AEC didn’t want to broadcast its strategy. But he assured readers that the AEC was no longer just reading media reports on the HPT, and was now working more actively on the investigation. “We do take our accountability (to voters) very seriously,” he said.

Mr Hallett said the AEC would be happy to consider information on the HPT provided by the public, and their input on what questions they’d like Mr Abbott to answer. The AEC’s Canberra head office number is 02-62714411. Its fax number is 02-62714558

I also asked Mr Hallett what penalties there were for misleading the AEC. He got back to me with the answer that misleading the Commission would come under the Uniform Criminal Code, which makes it a criminal offence to provide false or misleading information to a Commonwealth Government department. “We don’t have a view on whether he has misled,” Mr Hallett said. “We don’t have enough evidence. If you have particular information, you can put that before us.”

Amazing, hey? Apparently it’s an offence for a politician to mislead the public service! I wonder who enforces that law? I’m checking it out – wouldn’t it be wild if Peter Reith could be investigated for misleading the public service over children overboard when he falsely claimed to the public service that a video and photographs proved the allegation? Politicians now get no penalty for misleading the people through the Parliament or the media. Could they be brought to account to the people if they mislead our public service? I’ll get back to you on that one.

I would have telephoned Mr Abbott with my new questions, except that I was advised that after finishing our interview he said he would never take my call again. I’d be happy to take his. In the meantime, I’ll pull together some questions to email to his office. Send me any questions you’d like me to ask on your behalf.

Workplace relations and public service minister Tony Abbott said yesterday he would not reveal the donors to his ‘honest politics’ trust because “there are some things the public has no particular right to know’.

His latest refusal to reveal his donors comes after the Chairman of the Australian Electoral Commission, Justice Trevor Morling, took control of the AEC’s investigations of Mr Abbott’s honest politics slush fund and the AEC commissioned new legal advice on whether to demand disclosure.

Justice Morling criticised aspects of the AEC’s handling of the matter to date, and it is now possible that the AEC will order Mr Abbott to give sworn evidence on the trust.

Asked what things the public had no right to know about, Mr Abbott said: “Where do you start?”

“I don’t propose to nominate a list, I don’t propose to enumerate them. Short of the AEC changing its mind, they are not entitled to know who those donors were unless the donors choose to volunteer that information.”

Mr Abbott also refused to reveal the name of the lawyer he advised the AEC in 1998 had told him no disclosure of donations was required . Asked why, he said: “I just believe private conversations should be private.” Mr Abbott would not comment on why he had detailed this private conversation to the AEC in a letter seeking exemption from disclosing his donors, and this week released the letter to the Australian Financial Review.

The letter also revealed that the honest politics trust, formed in 1998, was not designed only to legally attack One Nation, but also other parties Mr Abbott and the other other trustees saw as a threat. “The object of the Trust is to support legal actions to test the extent to which political entities comply with Australian law,” Mr Abbott told the AEC in 1998.

In 1998 the AEC asked for donor disclosure, but backed down after Mr Abbott told it: “I spoke with one of Australia’s leading electoral lawyers who assured me that the Trust would not be covered by disclosure provisions”. The AEC admitted this week it had taken Mr Abbott’s word for it, and neither asked to see his legal advice or taken its own before backing down.

Mr Abbott conceded to the Herald last night that he had no written legal advice to back his claim that donors should be kept secret from the public, and refused to say whether the lawyer he consulted had seen the Honest Politics Trust document before given his legal opinion.

 

A menagerie of voices. Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www.davies.art.com

G’Day. Noticed the preposterous split in the media over whether Abbott’s slush fund is a story or not? In this entry, Webdiary’s media commentator Jack Robertson names Mr Abbott’s media defenders and explains why they don’t get it.

I rang Abbott’s office yesterday and left a message asking him to call. I also spoke to his spin doctor Andrew Simpson:

Mr Abbott today maintained his refusal to reveal his donors voluntarily. His spokesman, Mr Andrew Simpson, said “he’s been pretty consistent on that right through.”

Asked why Mr Abbott did not want the Australian people to know who donated to the honest politics trust, he said he would ask Mr Abbott.

The Herald asked Mr Simpson if Mr Abbott had received written legal advice that the trust structure successfully avoided laws requiring transparency of political donations. Mr Simpson said he did not know.

The Herald also asked why Mr Abbott would not name the lawyer who verbally advised him that he was in the clear. Mr Simpson said he would refer this question to Mr Abbott. (AEC chief intervenes in Abbott slush fund secrets)

Mr Abbott left this message on my answering machine today:

Margo, it’s Tony Abbott here, the object of your derision and ridicule. I’m returning the call that you put into Andrew Simpson yesterday.

I returned the call and left a message. I’ve just spoken to him and will report to you later tonight.

The United States Supreme Court has just blocked George Bush’s plan to deliver more media power to Rupert Murdoch. The Bush plan would have delivered Murdoch less dominance of America’s media than he ALREADY HAS in Australia’s media. Howard and Alston plan to deliver a media stranglehold to Murdoch and Packer by forcing their cross media laws through the Senate next month. The New York Times report is published at the end of this entry. (See Webdiary’s cross media archive.)

Over to Jack.

Hi Margo. I can’t believe how wilfully blinkered much of the mainstream print coverage of the Abbott matter has been. Most supposedly responsible commentators STILL seem to think that Hansonism was all about Pauline Hanson and One Nation, and that now that she herself is history, everything in Australian politics can get back to ‘mainstream normal’ if only we ‘hysterical conspiracists’ would stop giving her oxygen. They just don’t get it, do they?

Apart from ignoring completely the fact that Howard’s government has adopted so many of Hanson’s specific policies and general stances on social issues that it is now effectively Hanson Lite – and the attempts, by the way, to pretend that Abbott was being a good ‘respectable conservative’ all along in this are laughable – what is more dangerous is that these pundits don’t grasp that the underhand, Big Party business-as-usual way Abbott & Co went about ‘doing’ her is part of the long-term PROBLEM, not the solution, when it comes to the rise of populist-protest movements like hers.

The fact that Howard has taken popularity hits over this, even AFTER so many policy shifts designed to appease her supporters on symptomatic gripes (refugees, land rights, the elites), ought to demonstrate to the press that the REAL Hanson-driving factors lie elsewhere, and are bipartisanly created: by the excluding, bipartisan main party economics; by the excluding, bipartisan main party suffocating of true democratic franchise; by the excluding focus of the press on the main parties alone, and by the excluding arrogance of the Canberra ‘main money-main party-main media’ triumvirate.

Sure, Abbott-ungate might have some standard beat-up elements and ALP hypocrisies, but beyond this, it’s a supreme example of how these three Mainstreamism factors, NOT we supposed ‘flame-fanners on the fringe’, gave birth to Hansonism, and will CONTINUE to do likewise in the future, in whatever other guises may eventuate. Big bucks. Big Party backroom machinations. Big media absolution when they’re caught by the (ABC) public. (And we can’t even find out from OUR AEC who was truly involved.)

They just don’t get it, but they’d better soon, because Hanson may be gone, but the impulses behind Hansonism – and sundry Greens, Independents, global democracy movements, grass-roots groups, non-mainstream ‘antis’ of all stripes – most definitely have not.

Permission to lie from the print press quislings

by Jack Robertson

ABC 7.30 Report, August 27

TONY JONES: So there was never any question of any party funds –

TONY ABBOTT: Absolutely not.

TONY JONES: Or other funds from any other source –

TONY ABBOTT: Absolutely not.

TONY JONES: Being offered to Terry Sharples?

TONY ABBOTT: Absolutely not.

KERRY O’BRIEN: And you’re saying now that wasn’t a lie – not just Liberal Party funds but any other funds?

TONY ABBOTT: I had promised that he wouldn’t be out of pocket, but there’s a difference between telling someone he won’t be out of pocket and telling someone that you’re going to have to pay him money.

***

‘Crying foul at Minister makes ALP look chicken”, Matt Price in the Murdoch-owned Australian, August 28

On September 1, 1998, Brisbane’s Courier-Mail newspaper carried a story about Abbott “admitting having actively raised funds to support two separate legal attempts to shut down the One Nation party”. Abbott declared it his duty “to do everything I can to stop One Nation”. He conceded not everyone supported his new trust fund, Australians For Honest Politics, and that some Liberals had advised him to “pull my head in”. There is no record at the time of Opposition outrage over Abbott’s actions. There are a couple of reasons to be wary about Abbott. The normally pugnacious and assertive minister has these past few days seemed coy about his anti-One Nation crusade. But for Labor to now hack into the minister for nailing One Nation beggars belief. Abbott is accused of “shedding crocodile tears” over Hanson’s jailing. Yet it’s not inconsistent to lambast One Nation as an undemocratic shambles while sympathising with Hanson’s tough three-year sentence…

***

‘With steel in his eye and fire in his belly’, Piers Akerman in the Murdoch-owned Daily Telegraph, August 28

Arsonists are part and parcel of Australian life today, and no less so in the political sphere. Mr Abbott has had opponents trying to light flames under him since he was elected to represent Warringah at a by-election in 1994The Queensland Electoral Commission and Premier Beattie – who now seems to be obscenely and hypocritically trailing his coat in the hope of collecting preference votes from befuddled One Nation supporters – have a lot of questions to answer. Those attempting to demonise Mr Abbott however would be better employed arguing for an overhaul of the nation’s electoral laws to ensure that all political parties are forced to operate with greater transparency.

***

‘Fanning the Flames of Hatred’, Dennis Shanahan in the Murdoch-owned Australian, August 29

The ‘story’ of Abbott plotting against One Nation has taken on a life of its own. And despite the flimsy base upon which it rests the Workplace Relations Minister and the Prime Minister must take it seriously. After all, within this confected whirlwind of opportunism, there could be a bitter harvest of sympathy and support for the rich but defunct One Nation Party… For various reasons, some of the most vociferous critics of One Nation in the past – Queensland Labor Premier Peter Beattie, Simon Crean, Queensland Labor frontbencher Craig Emerson, Hanson’s love-hate biographer and journalist Margot Kingston, and a wounded ABC – are putting Abbott in the dock and fuelling One Nation sympathies

***

‘Protective Custody: coda to a hysterical hate campaign’, Frank Devine in the Murdoch-owned Australian, 29 August

Hanson’s situation is a logical culmination of a near-hysterical hate campaign, reaching its peak between 1996 and 1998, that was mounted against her. The mob (which doubtless contained some mean sheilas) was activated by a nod from patio crusaders in the leafy suburbs of Australia (not entirely free of mean sheilas), and was further inflamed, I regret to say, by the support of media ideologues and opportunists.

***

‘Five years on Labor finally decides to utter a weak boo’, Alan Ramsey in the Fairfax-owned Sydney Morning Herald, August 30

As Wilkinson wrote in her story: “Abbott is supporting Pauline Hanson’s former personal secretary in a new legal move to deregister One Nation in Queensland. If successful the move will block almost $500,000 in public funding from … going into One Nation’s coffers. A new trust, which Abbott has helped establish, called Australians for Honest Politics, will totally indemnify costs in the action. Two other prominent political figures will sit with Abbott on the trust. Abbott told the Herald he was acting as ‘a citizen and a democrat because One Nation is a fraud on taxpayers and must be exposed’.” Abbott was right. Labor thought so, too, at the time. Five years later, in a slow news week, he is still right, despite Labor’s noisy hypocrisy.

***

‘Flawed crusade for good’, by Paul Kelly, the Murdoch-owned Weekend Australian, 30-31 August

How should one judge Abbott? He made some blunders along the way, but his strategic judgment was correct and validated. From what is known of Hanson’s demise, Abbott is more hero than villain. As for much of the media, its recent performance recalls its ignominious efforts over 1996-98 that gave Hanson such a boost, at home and abroad.

***

‘Libs losing their security blanket’, Glenn Milne, the Murdoch-owned Australian, 1 September

…And finally Abbott. The Workplace Relations Minister has been the most forthright player in this episode. He disagreed with Hanson and her policies and went after her. His methods were legal. His guidingprinciple, the maintenance of the integrity of the electoral system, sound. Where Abbott got himself into trouble was some historical economy with the truth about exactly when he set up his trust to bring Hanson down through the courts. And some opportunistic reporting by The Sydney Morning Herald that led to the impression Abbott had hushed up his efforts…

***

‘Pilloried for an act of decency’, Greg Sheridan in the Murdoch-owned Australian, 4 September

Just as Tony Abbott buries the One Nation demon, Labor and much of the press try to resuscitate Hansonism… In this unpleasant but enlightening episode, while he has been viciously attacked by almost every progressive with access to a word processor or a cartoonist’s brush, Abbott has shown the kind of grit, determination, equanimity and, above all, concern for a purpose larger than himself, that marks out a future Prime Minister. The rest of them look decidedly dusty.

***

IN OTHER NEWS, JESUS CHRIST, MP, HAS RETURNED

CANBERRA, ALL MAINSTREAM PUNDITS, AD NAUSEUM: GLOBAL CHRISTENDOM WAS ROCKED TODAY BY REVELATIONS that Jesus Christ Almighty had returned to earth over five years ago, and had since been preaching feverishly in Canberra in a desperate bid to quell the rise and rise of Pauline Hanson’s diabolical One Nation juggernaut.

The presence of the Son of God in the national capital, only now revealed after an exhaustive rewriting of the historical record, has rocked Australia’s Parliament and is sparking calls for a full and public disclosure of Christ’s other political activities in the intervening period since his Second Coming.

“The Australian people have a right to know exactly what His Moral Perfection has been doing all this time, apart from single-handedly slaying the Hansonite Dragon,” complained Labor front-bencher Craig Emerson.

I mean, it’s all very well for Jesus to focus quietly on Pauline, but surely it’s a question of Him getting His global priorities right? What’s He been doing about cancer all this time? What about world hunger, or global warming, or the Iraq War? If this Son of God bloke is the good Catholic lad he’s being cracked up to be, where was He when His Holiness The Pope was condemning as a ‘threat to Humanity’ the pre-emptive invasion in which Christ’s own adopted government played a leading role?

Another Labor MP, speaking on condition of anonymity, was more blunt about what he called Minister Christ’s ‘abject failure to set Himself more relevant, and indeed more achievable, performance parameters’.

Resurrecting Honesty in Australian Politics? I mean, pull the other one, mate. It’s one thing for Jesus Himself to rise from the dead, but it’ll take a f**k of a lot more than Omnipotent Divinity to pull that kind of miracle off. And there’s a stack of more appropriate and realistic goals he could have been using His Divine Powers to achieve all this time, anyway. Peace in the Middle East, unlocking the key to Human immortality, getting a straight answer from the PM in public, making Creany electable. So what does He pick instead? He wastes five long years nobbling Hanson silently and quietly via the courts! Hell, why didn’t He just zap her with a bolt of lightning right at the start and then get on with explaining the meaning of life, or saving the Murray, or something else with a slightly higher degree of civic difficulty? Better still, why not just argue her out of existence in healthy public debate, like those Lib mere mortals Costello and Kennett wanted to do from the start? Seems to me like Jesus went about ‘anti-crucifying’ Pauline in a very convoluted, inefficient and distinctly un-Godly manner.

Supporters of Christ’s tactics argue, however, that Jesus had a ‘higher purpose’ in mind when he set up the Australians for Honest Politics Trust to nobble Hanson: to dramatically and publicly (at least in retrospective description) highlight the ‘pro-immigration, pro-refugee, pro-reconciliation, multicultural, small-l, bleeding-heart image of the Federal Liberal Party and respectable conservatives everywhere, in the wake of the unsettling One Nation triumph in Queensland. Not to mention defending the integrity and health of Australian democracy and civic life as a whole!’

It was such noble aims, according to His financial backers, that inspired them to lob money at the Sharples slush fund, not grubby corporate self-interest or the desire for continued Liberal government access and patronage. Swore one anonymous millionaire donor who refused to be identified in the public interest:

We were absolutely sure that the anti-Hanson Trust had only the most honourable of public interest purposes. And why wouldn’t we? When Jesus Christ Himself comes banging on your door rattling His Liberal Party tin cup while agreeing you’d best keep your name out of the papers, why, one doesn’t need to stop and ponder whether there might be anything cynical, hypocritical, strategically self-defeating or fishy about his preferred mode of taking Pauline on. If sliding the old legal stiletto into Hanson’s back in private, while kissing her policy arse in public was Christian enough for the Son of God, then by golly, it was Christian enough for a son-of-a-bitch like me. Do others before they do you – that’s how the Politics of God goes, right?

A Divine Spokesman said late today that neither the AEC nor Jesus Christ Himself would be commenting further on His lately-revealed key role in Australia’s seven year battle with the Pagan Forces of One Nation, since – despite recent opinion poll evidence to the contrary – Jesus firmly believed that thanks to His good works, Hansonism ‘is now as thoroughly-banished from the Australian political realm as superstitious polytheist worship’.

The spokesman added that the Son of God, who in his current earthly manifestation is also known as Saint Lord King Sir Anthony Abbott, MP, VC, KCMG, and anti-PHON, was resting up in preparation for His next and perhaps most difficult Miraculous Crusade: the struggle to resurrect His own Prime Ministerial prospects. His spokesman said:

Rising from the dead once is a piece of piss, because of course you’ve got the element of surprise. The second time is a little harder, but do-able if you choose a human guise that absolutely no-one is remotely expecting, like a Minister in the Howard government, say. But to come back from the dead a third time? Well, I can assure you that Jesus is praying with all His might that Rupert Murdoch doesn’t ever forsake him. Even the Lord God, after all, can only push a man of clay so far in Australian politics once he’s been publicly-fingered as a rank bloody liar.

***

New York Times, September 4, 2003

U.S. Court Blocks Plan to Ease Rule on Media Owners

By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON, Sept. 3 – A federal appeals court issued a surprise order today blocking the Federal Communications Commission from imposing new rules that would make it easier for the nation’s largest media conglomerates to add new markets and areas of business.

The decision came a day before the new rules, considered among the most significant efforts at deregulation adopted during the Bush administration, were scheduled to take effect. It followed two hours of oral arguments at an emergency hearing this morning by a three-judge panel in Philadelphia and was a sharp setback for the largest media companies and for the commission’s chairman, Michael K. Powell.

Mr. Powell, the architect of the new rules, has emphasized that the commission was compelled to rewrite the old regulations because of a string of federal court decisions in cases brought in Washington by the media companies. Those decisions ordered the agency to reconsider some of the rules.

But today the appeals court voted unamimously to prevent media companies from moving forward with plans to take advantage of the new rules. The court also raised tough questions for the commission and its industry supporters about their efforts to reshape the regulatory landscape. The new regulations are already facing a challenge in Congress, where legislators have taken steps to repeal some of them.

The new rules have been opposed by a broad coalition of groups, ranging from Consumers Union and the National Organization for Women to the National Rifle Association and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Both the House and the Senate have begun the process to repeal at least one of the new rules, the one that makes it possible for the largest television networks to buy enough stations to reach 45 percent of the nation’s viewers, up from 35 percent.

The court’s order, however, blocks all of the new rules from taking effect, at least until the outcome of the litigation, which could be many months away. The order also raises questions about whether the rules will ever be allowed to take effect.

The rules that were blocked by the court include one that would permit the same company to own newspapers and broadcast stations in the same city and another that would allow a company to own as many as three television stations and eight radio stations in the same market.

In the meantime, the commission must use the older more restrictive rules, even though a different federal appeals court, in Washington, ordered the commission to reconsider those earlier rules after a challenge from the television networks.

Officials at the commission said they were surprised by the order. “While we are disappointed by the decision by the court to stay the new rules, we will continue to vigorously defend them and look forward to a decision by the court on the merits,” said David Fiske, the agency’s top spokesman.

The order also came as a surprise to the critics of the new rules, including the plaintiffs in the case, who said before this morning’s hearing that their motion to stay the rules was a long shot. They said courts typically do not issue such injunctions without a finding that the plaintiffs are likely to prevail on the overall merits of a case.

The chief lawyer for the critics who brought the case said after the order that he hoped Congress would act before the court reached a decision on the merits of the rules.

“This action gives us the opportunity to convince Congress and, if necessary, the courts, that the F.C.C.’s decision is bad for democracy, and bad for broadcast localism,” said the lawyer, Andrew Jay Schwartzman, who persuaded the court to issue the order. “Perhaps it will embolden Congress to overturn the new rules in their entirety. That would save everyone a lot of time and effort fighting it out in the court to obtain the same result.”

The court today hedged on the overall merits of the case but strongly suggested through its actions that the critics had a good chance of succeeding.

“I think this is great news,” said Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, who is helping to lead an effort to repeal the rules in Congress. “It stops the process dead in its tracks for now. I think the court must have understood what we know: the F.C.C. embarked on these dramatic rule changes without the benefit of national hearings and thoughtful analysis.”

In a three-page order, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit initially said that it was legally obliged to consider the likelihood of success by the plaintiffs, a group of small radio stations, journalist organizations and the National Council of Churches. The group filed its lawsuit against the F.C.C. and four television networks joined the case in support of the new rules.

The judges refused to handicap the outcome of the case, but reasoned that preserving the old rules, at least for the time being, would give the judges time to consider the arguments before the industry landscape had been changed. “While it is difficult to predict the likelihood of success on the merits at this stage of the proceedings, these harms could outweigh the effect of a stay on respondent and relevant third parties,” said the panel, which consisted of Chief Judge Anthony J. Scirica, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, and Judges Thomas L. Ambro and Julio M. Fuentes, who were appointed by President Bill Clinton.

“Given the magnitude of this matter and the public’s interest in reaching the proper resolution, a stay is warranted pending thorough and efficient judicial review,” the court concluded in the case, Prometheus Radio Project v. Federal Communications Commission.

The groups that brought the case argued that they were likely to prevail in the end because Congress would probably overturn some of the new rules, and because the rules themselves are “arbitrary and capricious.”

For Mr. Powell, the decision could hardly come at a worse time. On Thursday, the Senate Appropriations Committee is expected to approve legislation that Congressional officials said today would include provisions to roll back some of the new rules already stayed by the court. The Senate Commerce Committee has adopted a similar measure.

And six weeks ago the House, by a vote of 400 to 21, approved a spending measure that would block one of the more important new rules that would permit the nation’s largest television networks to own more stations. The White House has threatened to veto that measure, prompting the prospect of a highly unusual showdown between the president and the Republican-controlled Congress.

The new rules were adopted in June by a bitterly divided commission on a party-line vote. The Republican-controlled agency relaxed many of the most significant restrictions on the ability of broadcast and newspaper conglomerates to both expand into new markets and to extend their reach in the cities where they already have a presence.

The rules would have made it easier for the nation’s largest television networks to buy enough stations to reach up to 45 percent of the nation’s viewers. Two networks, Fox, a unit of the News Corporation

The writing of The History Wars (Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clarke) is very important. The book will sit on the shelves of libraries as a sort of code stone to help people understand the motivations of players in today’s contemporary debate. It sheds light on the political battle which is carried on in the pubs and on the footpaths about who we are and what has become of us. For the protagonists and antagonists in academe are now surrogates in a broader political battle about Australia’s future.

We should reflect on this: alone, amongst the peoples of the world, we have possession of a continent, a continent we laid claim to as part of an empire, one we expropriated from another race, but a continent that is no longer an island in a sea of subjugated and colonial places. The Dutch no longer run Indonesia, the French no longer control Indo-China. And the Chinese now run China for themselves.

We occupy a continent surrounded by ancient societies; nations which have reclaimed their identity and their independence.

The Australian story, for it to be a record of continuing success has to come to terms with our expropriation of the land, our ambivalence about who we are and our place in the new geo-political make-up of the region. That is, being part of it, rather than simply being tolerated in it.

History is always our most useful tool and guide. Knowing our past helps us to divine our future.

To see the long strands which denote our character and which have been common in each epoch of our development. And how they may be adapted in our transformation as an integral part of this region, while re-energising our national life.

How do we pick the good strands and the step changes on the pathway to our security?

Because there are only 20 million of us, the primary matter for national policy is how we maintain possession of the continent.

How do we find the pathway to a genuine security, a naturally reinforced one. Security in Asia and not from Asia. Where we are other than a client state perennially searching for a strategic guarantor.

Once, all our faith was in the British Navy. Now it has swung to the American defence establishment.

Those who militantly defend the conservative orthodoxy in Australia see all change as an affront to the past, especially their view of the past. Whereas, knowing the past and seeing it for what it is with all its blemishes, allows us to divine our destiny for our appointment with reality.

And our appointment with reality has to come around. We are no longer part of some empire. We are no longer some passenger on the British Lion. We are no longer protected by their navy to the extent that we ever were.

While people may say we enjoy some protection from the Americans, we have to be clear what reality, in this respect, means.

I have never understood why the Howards and the Blaineys et al are so defensive. So resistant to novelty and to progress. They are more than conservatives. They’re reactionaries.

Conservatives gradually, if somewhat reluctantly, accept change. Reactionaries not only resist change, they seek to reverse it. Understanding and acknowledging the past and moving on to bigger and better things is anathema to them.

They absolutely insist on their view and the lessons they see in our history. Yet in their insistence, their ‘proprietorialness’ their ‘derivativeness’ and their rancour, they reduce the flame and energy within the nation to a smouldering incandescence. What they effectively do is crimp and cripple our destiny. It’s like suffering from some sort of anaemia; robbing the political blood of its energy.

The problem for the Howards and the Blaineys is that their story is simply not big enough for Australia.

No great transformation can come from their tiny view of us and their limited faith in us.

Their failure is not simply one of crabbiness or rancour; it’s a failure of imagination, a failure to read our historical coordinates correctly but usefully to move to a bigger construct, a bigger picture as to who we are and what we can be. That’s the real job of political leadership.

Their timidity not only diminishes their own horizon, it is a drag on the rest of us. The country always has to make its progress despite them. They never help. They have always to be dragged along and they will only accept a new norm when someone else has struggled to put it into place.

But the fact is, their view will not prevail. They cannot win because they have no policy framework to win with. And deep in their tiny, timorous hearts they know it.

The undertaking is simply too big for them.

This is why you get all this thrashing about in the press and why we are drenched in the babble of the lickspittles and tintookies around them. And it’s just that, babble. It’s babble because at the heart of their wrong-headed campaign is an attempt to contain and censor the human spirit, to muffle, muzzle and vitiate it.

Their exclusiveness, whether we are talking about White Australia in the past or boat people now, relies on constructing arbitrary and parochial distinctions between the civic and the human community. Who is in and who is out. Who is owed possession. Who has rights.

If you ask what is the common policy between the Le Pens, the Terrablanches, Hansons and the Howards of this world, in a word, it is “citizenship”. And it has always been. Who is in and who is out. Who is approved of.

Wolfgang Kaspar, writing in Quadrant, was brazen enough to instruct us in the “frictional costs of Australian settlement of Muslims”. This is an example of the new fascism.

Rather than celebrate the successful multiculturalisation of Australia, they seek to shear people off and play on old prejudices by the use of implicitly negative phrases like “for all of us”, when they really mean “for some of us”. This is a government that talks in code.

John Howard does not understand that base motivations run through a community and a polity like a virus, that these things are poison to the nation’s soul. They are part of an anti-enlightenment. He has recalibrated Australia’s moral compass, where due north is only for elites, whoever they are.

A national leader, I think, should always be searching for the threads of gold in a community. Nurturing and bringing them out. Focusing on the best instincts – running with the human spirit and not punishing it.

A growing public morality and probity based on notions of charity and human regard should not be traduced by slurs such as “political correctness”, with implicit support for an official “incorrectness”. It takes a long time to build institutions and to build new norms of behaviour, new acceptances of protocols in any country. But to build them and then have them traduced is a terrible thing.

Those who want to celebrate only our European past, rejoicing in its prejudices, and who want us to be exclusive and cocooned and who employ division and ridicule in their quest, must lose.

Many people are dispirited by this period and they think that somehow the Bolts and the McGuinness’s, the Devines and the Albrechtsons somehow have got the upper hand. They will simply be a smudge in history. What have they put into place which is enduring, which makes the heart skip a beat? Nothing. And, in the end, there will be no punctuation mark in our annals from their paltry efforts.

The game is too big for them.

This is why those of progressive mind shouldn’t despair, arid as this period is. Because in the end, the vapid and heartless messages of the militant conservatives will fail to make any real headway.

Always confronting them will be these things. Who are we? Can we borrow the monarch of another country perpetually? Can we go to the region and say we’ve turned a new leaf but, by the way, we never got to a proper basis of reconciliation with our indigenes? How do we find our security in the region rather than from the region? How do we make our multiculturalism work better? How do we make everyone feel as though they belong, that the place, truly is, for all of us?

These questions are still on the agenda, unsatisfied perhaps and unattended. But still sitting there.

I notice people saying this debate hasn’t harmed us in Asia. I don’t know who they are talking to. The publicity people in foreign affairs departments around the region perhaps, certainly not those who actually run these countries.

The fact is, there are a lot of wise heads in this part of the world; those who see Australia in a longer context and who are waiting for us to recover our equilibrium.

The History Wars rolls out the canvass of this debate. It helps us better understand the battlefield. It gives us some of the infrared we need to discern the shapes in the current darkness. We owe Stuart Macintyre and Anna Clark for that.

It is with most respect that I launch The History Wars and wish it well in its journey to the library catalogues.

Paul Keating made this speech at the launch of ‘The History Wars’ in Melbourne on Wednesday.

For more information about Paul Keating go to http://www.keating.org.au/