On the eve of the anniversary of the Bali bombings, Bruce Power examines the still unanswered question of why our Government did not warn Australian tourists that Bali was a terrorist target. Bruce says of himself:

I worked at the National Nine News Bureau, Parliament House, Canberra during the mid 70s. With the first memorial for the Bali terrorist attack victims only two days away, I’m sure Australians would be interested to hear the truth as to why the Government didn’t warn those Australians who were in Bali or preparing to travel to Bali prior to the terrorist bombings about the dangers they faced there.

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Seventeen days

by Bruce Power

For 17 long days, the US Government, through its Jakarta Embassy, was instructing people to AVOID SPECIFIC LOCATIONS in Indonesia such as Paddy’s Bar and the Sari Club.

AVOID: abstain, avert, bypass, circumvent, divert, dodge, duck, elude, escape, evade, flee, hide, hold off, jump, keep clear, shuffle off, shun, shy, sidestep, skip, skirt, STAY AWAY, STAY OUT, TURN ASIDE, DON’T GO NEAR, KEEP WELL CLEAR OF! Certainly, DO NOT EVEN THINK OF VISITING!

For 17 long days the Australian Government could have relayed the very same message to Australians who were already in Indonesia or who were preparing to travel there, especially to Bali. However, over those 17 days the Howard Government lulled Australians in to a false sense of security by advising them that tourist services in Bali were operating normally.

The Australian Government did issue a warning on September 20th stating:

“In view of the ongoing risk of terrorist activity, Australians should maintain a high level of personal security awareness at all times.”

When you are sitting in a bar, tavern or nightclub and there is a flash of light, instantly followed by a thunderous, deafening explosion, then it is far, far, too late do be aware of your personal security – if you are alive, that is.

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First Bali anniversary, October 12

Since the October 12, 2002 Bali terrorist attack, John Howard has failed to satisfactorily explain how it was that in the weeks prior to the Bali bombings the US Government was warning Americans and Westerners to avoid places such as the Sari Club and Paddy’s Bar while the Australian Government lulled Australians into a false sense of security by telling them tourist services in Bali were operating normally.

The Office of National Assessments (ONA) maintains in its Senate submission that:

“There was no intelligence which provided specific warning of the attack which took place in Bali on October 12, 2002.”

The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), in its last Advisory before the Bali bombing, maintained that tourist services outside of the remote islands of the archipelago were “operating normally, including Bali”.

Yet the US Jakarta Embassy warning notice of 26th September 2002 clearly warned:

“Americans and Westerners should avoid large gatherings, and locations known to cater primarily to a Western clientele such as certain bars, restaurants and tourist areas.”

The US Jakarta Embassy warning notice, issued 17 days prior to the Bali attack, was itself ‘intelligence’ of the highest quality. It represented the culmination of the most extensive and technological advanced ‘intelligence gathering’ endeavours of the world’s most advanced super power.

This warning notice was very explicit that specific locations in Indonesia – bars, restaurants and tourist locations catering primarily to a Western clientele – were being targeted by terrorists.

Why, then, did the PM’s Office, DFAT and Australia’s intelligence agencies FAIL to act upon the US Jakarta Embassy warning notice?

One phone call from ASIO to the US Jakarta Embassy would have elicited the very intelligence upon which the US Embassy warning was based. If both ASIO and ONA had failed to identify any specific threat to Australians, then the US warning issued on September 26, 2002 should certainly have set the alarm bells screaming!

Given the explicitness of the warning by the US Embassy in Jakarta, the Australian Government has never explained why Australian travellers were not similarly warned as American citizens were by their Government.

The US Embassy wasn’t just warning individuals to ‘be alert’ or to be careful about their own personal security, which was the only advice the Australian Government deemed necessary to offer to Australians. The US Government was instructing people to AVOID SPECIFIC LOCATIONS IN INDONESIA!

Mr Downer confirmed this in an answer to a question in Parliament:

In any case, on 20 September a travel advice for Indonesia was issued which did refer to the general threat of bombings by terrorists … “In view of the ongoing risk of terrorist activity, Australians should maintain a high level of personal security awareness at all times.” I had a look at the equivalent travel advice issued by the Americans. Prior to 12 October, their most recent travel warning specific to Indonesia was on 23 November 2001, so it was rather old. Actually, I was surprised that it had been so long since they had issued an update. In relation to their embassy notices, on 26 September 2002 the American Embassy in Jakarta issued an embassy notice that stated: “Americans and Westerners should avoid large gatherings, and locations known to cater primarily to a Western clientele such as certain bars.” (Questions without Notice 17 October 2002 Indonesia: Terrorist Attacks)

As US Today journalist David Kaplin said on ABC Radio AM on October 23, 2002, with respect to the US Embassy warning: “Now if you’re talking about Indonesia, really you’re talking about Bali.”

So the question that still remains unanswered is, 17 days prior to the Bali bomb attacks, why wasn’t the Australian Government warning Australians who were either in, or preparing to travel to, Indonesia to avoid large gatherings and locations known to cater primarily to a Western clientele such as certain bars, restaurants and tourist areas?

Following the October 12 Bali attack, a November 8, 2002 report in The Australian called Hambali’s meeting puts heat on Thais, confirms that US and (by direct implication) Australian intelligence services were fully aware of a looming terrorist attack targeting certain bars, restaurants and tourist areas in southeast Asia.

The story reveals that Kuwaiti-born al-Qa’ida operative Mohammed Mansour Jabarah was at a key meeting, led by Asia’s most wanted man, Hambali – JI’s chief operations planner – in southern Thailand in January, where Jemaah Isliamiah’s plan to target nightclubs and restaurants was developed.

A front-page story in The Australian on December 13, 2002, Bashir was at Bali plot planning, provided the missing dot as to how much western intelligent sources knew prior to the October 12th Bali bomb attacks. A significant detail of the 2nd meeting attended by six members of Jemaah Islamiah’s leadership council was that it was held at a house rented by the wife of Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, an al-Qa’ida operative arrested two months later in Oman.

The Australian reported in November that following Mohammed Mansour Jabarah’s interrogation, the US learnt of that January meeting.

On November 18, 2002 Time Asia Magazine reported:

A chilling account of the meeting in Thailand was given by one of those present, Mohammed Mansur (Sammy) Jabarah, a 20-year-old Kuwaiti-born Canadian citizen, who was arrested in Oman in April and is now being interrogated at an undisclosed location in the U.S. According to sources familiar with an FBI report of Jabarah’s interrogation, details of his testimony – including the dramatic order by Hambali to target bars and nightclubs – were passed on by U.S. officials to all Southeast Asian governments in August, a full two months before the Bali attack.

That the 2nd meeting in Thailand – where Bali was nominated as a terror target – was held at a house rented by Jabarah’s wife now makes it impossible for anyone to believe that Mohammed Mansour Jabarah’s interrogation did not result in the US learning of JI’s plan for a terrorist attack in Bali.

In conclusion, it seems it was Mohammed Mansour Jabarah’s interrogation which resulted in the US gaining the information which Richard Amitage, US Deputy of State was later to describe on the 7.30 Report as “stunningly explicit and specific”.

More recently, ABC Radio’s PM reported on 26 June, 2003:

A Canadian newspaper is claiming that American intelligence agencies identified two Bali resorts as terror targets one month before the Kuta bombings in October last year. The newspaper claims it’s obtained a confidential 48-page report compiled by the CIA, the FBI, the US State Department and a number of security and intelligence consultants. The two resorts named in the article were identified in the report on the basis of information obtained by agencies specialising in interception of communications, suspect interrogations and international surveillance operations. The Federal Government is investigating the claims made by the newspaper, while one former intelligence officer has told PM the language used and the information identified by the report appear to be credible examples of intelligence and analysis.

The Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer cannot credibly continue to claim 12 months on that there was no intelligence which provided specific warning of the attack which took place in Bali on October 12, 2002.

Had the Australian Government simply relayed the US Government warning to Australians already in Bali or preparing to travel to Bali, the number of Australian deaths and casualties could have been substantially less.

The question is: Why didn’t the government do it?

Margo: The last time our government didn’t pass on intelligence about Indonesia to Australians – or to the United States, for that matter – was before the East Timor independence vote. Our intelligence warned of terrible trouble if the East Timorese voted for independence, yet our government claimed all was well. Merv Jenkins, a defence intelligence official, committed suicide after roughhouse interrogation by Downer’s department after he passed on Australian pre-independence vote intelligence to the Americans in accordance with a standing agreement between the two nations.

 

Blustery but sunny. Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

John Howard’s preferred option for Senate reform would destroy the Senate as an effect check on abuse of power by Government and his fall-back option still delivers too much power to the Prime Minister and Cabinet at the expense of Parliament, writes Michael Lavarch. Michael, a member of Howard’s advisory committee on Senate reform, is the Secretary-General of the Law Council of Australia and was Attorney-General in the Hawke/Keating Government.

For many Australians of my generation, the Senate only became front of mind during the life of the Whitlam Government. Prior to this the Senate seemed little more than a retirement home for predominantly faded men. The three years of the Whitlam Government from 1972 – 1975 shattered this sleepy illusion.

The Whitlam Government, like no government before it or any government since, was subjected to Senate obstructionism. Bill after Bill implementing the famous “program” developed over many years in opposition by Whitlam and his colleagues, were rejected. Initially, this led in 1974 to the holding of a double dissolution election to resolve the impasse. This election was then followed by the only joint sitting of the House of Representatives and the Senate to witness the passage of previously rejected Bills.

Then in 1975 the Senate exercised its power to deny the Whitlam Government money to continue the operation of government. The subsequent political and constitutional crisis ended in the dismissal of Whitlam and the subsequent overwhelming election of the Liberal Government led by Malcolm Fraser.

In the nearly 30 years that have passed since the dismissal of the Whitlam Government, the Senate has played a prominent – even dominant – role in the shaping of the Australian political and legal agenda. Few better examples of the positive influence of the Senate can be found than its recent role in considering, amending and then finally passing the Government’s proposal to increase the powers of ASIO.

Firstly a Senate Committee, and then the Senate itself, forced compromise on the Government which was seeking to empower ASIO to detain and question citizens – including children – not even suspected of committing any criminal offence. As originally proposed, this power would have seen people detained for long periods without any contact with family, friends or a lawyer. It is to the great credit of the Senate that this serious infringement of the principles of the rule of law was so dramatically improved.

Both the experience of the Whitlam Government and the recent activities of the Senate demonstrate a number of things about its operation. Firstly, its powers are effectively equal to that of the House of Representatives, where the Executive Government is formed. Secondly, these powers, depending on your own subjective political view, can be used for good or bad.

Clearly, from my world view, the experience of the Whitlam Government demonstrated an extraordinary abuse of power vested not in a truly representative body, but a body which reflects the compromise needed for Australian Colonies to agree to federation at the end of the 19th century.

In contrast, the ASIO Bill experience also clearly indicates that the Senate is a vital, if not the most vital, check on the power of the Executive Government. Our entire system of government is based on the defusion of power between the various instrumentalities of government. Any tampering with the power balances between these instrumentalities should be viewed with caution.

Against this backdrop, how should the ‘Resolving Deadlocks’ proposals put forward by the Prime Minister to reform the Senate be judged? The proposals go to Section 57, which provides the limited circumstances when the House of Representatives and the Senate can sit together to vote on legislation.

His first option would permit the holding of a joint sitting of both Houses during the life of a given parliament. This means if a Bill was rejected twice by the Senate the deadlock between the two Houses could be resolved at the discretion of the Prime Minister seeking the joint sitting. Such a measure would be a radical departure from the current political negotiation process which witnesses most, but not all, Bills passed by the Senate.

His second option allows for a joint sitting of the Houses following a normal general election. This would allow Bills which had not passed through both Houses in the previous parliament to once again be put forward to the newly elected parliament. If the deadlock continued, then a joint sitting could be convened. This proposal does not dramatically change the balance of power between the Executive Government and the Senate, but would certainly facilitate the passage of government measures which had experienced rejection in at least two parliaments.

In responding to the Prime Minister’s Discussion Paper, it is important to bear a number of things in mind. Firstly, Australia has not enjoyed a particularly constructive public debate when it comes to constitutional reform. Very few measures have been successful, and invariably what should be a debate about the long term is hijacked by short term party political considerations. This has been particularly the experience of referendum proposals advanced by Labor governments, which in recent decades have been opposed by conservatives irrespective of the merits of the proposals.

It would be fair to say that the Labor Party has been more willing to constructively engage in constitutional debate even when proposals have been advanced by conservative governments. Mature debate is necessary and this involves separating out the short term political advantage from the long term structural effect which the measure would implement.

The Discussion Paper recognises that a range of strong arguments can be made against the first option. Obviously, the proposal would lead to the effective neutering of the Senate and even if certain safeguards as proposed in the paper are inserted, this unassailable fact remains.

The second option is more attractive in that it allows the Senate a full opportunity to amend or reject legislation during the life of any given parliament without the threat of the Prime Minister being able to convene a joint sitting of both Houses. It provides, however, that at the commencement of a new parliament, measures which were blocked in the previous parliament may be placed before a joint sitting if they are again blocked by the newly formed Senate. The principal attraction of this proposal is that the contentious Bills will have been identified and specifically placed before the Australian people at a general election before further consideration by the new parliament.

In my view, the proposal in the Discussion Paper, while attractive, still tilts the field too much in favour of the Executive Government and against the check on Executive power which is properly exercised by the Senate. Accordingly, there needs to be other measures taken in order to ensure that the appropriate balance is maintained while giving the Executive Government the legitimate capacity to have a program endorsed by the people passed by the parliament.

In my view, this proper balance can be maintained by extending the term of the House of Representatives to four years while reducing the term of a Senator from six to four years. Each Federal election should be of the full Senate and the House of Representatives. By taking this step a number of benefits are achieved.

Firstly, the Senate will have been elected at the same time as the government. In that sense, both the Senators and the Members of the House of Representatives have a equal legitimacy and currency in terms of reflecting contemporary public opinion.

Secondly, an election of the full Senate reduces the quota required for the election of a Senator to 7.69 per cent as opposed to 14.29 per cent at a half Senate election. The result would mean that the Senate would consist of more Senators representing minority views and be more representative of the diversity of opinion in the Australian electorate.

Thirdly, three year terms for national governments are clearly too short. This promotes too great an emphasis on a short term agenda. All states except Queensland now have four year terms and it is time that the Federal parliament followed suit.

The real test of the options for reform of the Senate is whether the measure achieves the right weighting between the political and constitutional mechanisms to resolve conflicts between the two Houses or Parliament. Currently, all the weight is on the political process of negotiation and compromise. As the Discussion Paper identifies, in practical terms the correct constitutional mechanism in Section 57 plays no role beyond the threat that it might be used.

It is appropriate that the political mechanism do the bulk of the work in resolving conflicts between the Executive and the Parliament. That’s why the Prime Minister’s first option fails the test. It would reduce enormously the incentive of the Executive to cut a deal to have a Bill pass the Senate, as a relatively short delay can trigger the joint sitting.

The second option maintains most weight on the political mechanism but gives some real meaning to the constitutional mechanism. It means that a government which wants to govern will need to negotiate to get its legislation adopted. Allowing a standoff to go to the people for resolution in the following parliament has real risks for both the government and the opposition parties in the Senate.

The government might not be re-elected. The Bill might be electorally unpopular, like selling the balance of Telstra, and not the kind of measure the government wants running as a de-facto referendum during an election campaign. The opposition parties face equal pressures of risking electoral setbacks by staring down Bills.

But there will be ‘icon’ type issues which the political mechanism will never resolve. Labor will not accept the sale of Telstra, or the unfair dismissal laws which limit workers job security. On these issues, the government can legitimately claim to have a mandate, while the Senate opposition parties equally claim a mandate to reject them.

Conflicting political mandates over icon issues need a constitutional mechanism to come into play. The second option in the Discussion Paper has the core of the solution, but it needs the four year term component to get the balance right.

The release of the Discussion Paper is the beginning of a public debate. History indicates that this debate will not ultimately see any change to the constitution, nor is it particularly likely that a referendum on the issue will ever be held. But a debate is worthwhile as government in Australia can be improved if we are mature enough to talk about it honestly and without rancour.

 

Father and son. Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

G’day. Tonight Webdiary’s first work experience student, Lachlan Brown, discusses the philosophical underpinnings of Howard’s way by comparing the work of John Rawls and Robert Nozick.

Lachlan is a fourth year media and communications student at Sydney University. He plays the piano and french horn and teaches music to help pay his way through uni. His first piece for Webdiary, Destroying Menzies’ noble revolution, contrasted Robert Menzies’ vision for higher education with that of John Howard. In essence, Menzies believed higher education was a public good – a public asset – while Howard and Costello believe it is a private privilege.

For more on the changing role of government in a world grimly capitulating to corporate interests and values, see Muddying the waters between guardians and traders, Sacrificing humanity on the altar of cheap ideologyand A fair go education system: the advantages for all of us.

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Rawls-v-Nozick: liberty for all, or just the rich?

by Lachlan Brown

In our current society, the study of philosophy tends to be written off quite easily. Philosophy doesn’t provide tangible results like engineering or science. It doesn’t build bridges or cure diseases. It doesn’t feed us or clothe us. It doesn’t even make us laugh.

Philosophers are rarely cited in the Australian media or asked to comment on specific issues. This seems to fuel the perception that philosophers are stuck in ivory towers (or at least behind the crumbling walls of sandstone universities), tucked away from the real world and hidden in a realm of abstract thinking.

However not all philosophy is scorned or ignored. Recently, the Wachowski brothers’ Matrix films popularised some of philosophy’s traditional questions about knowledge by judiciously combining them with Keanu Reeves, digital fight scenes and extended car chases. In these films the big questions are put back on the agenda again. Can we trust our senses? Is our entire life just an illusion? Is the real world run by evil machines who constantly deceive us (or does the Australian public service have another function)?

However whilst questions of knowledge are once again popular, I would like to argue that the philosophies of government and politics are central to political debate. How should governments work? What is their purpose? These questions underpin democracy itself and are of vast importance to society as a whole.

At first glance this debate may look quite boring, so Webdiary readers who would like to submit ideas for a Matrix-style film, outlining the contours of political philosophy are welcome to respond (let’s face it, most philosophy does require some sexing-up). Until then however, here are some musings of my own. These are centred around two American philosophers who have dominated the landscape of political philosophy over the last 30 years.

Most people who have studied policy, distributive justice or government know about an American philosopher called John Rawls. Born in 1921 and educated at Princeton, he published his seminal work in 1971, entitled A Theory of Justice.

This work was groundbreaking in many ways. Not only did it help to wrench philosophy away from its self indulgent preoccupation with language, but it also showed how philosophy could have a real impact on the way society was arranged. The purpose of Rawls work was to create a system of justice from first principles, creating a philosophical basis for a just society.

Rawls accomplished this by grounding his theory in a type of social contract which began with a veil of ignorance. He argued that to work out the basic principles of a society, each of us should pretend that we know nothing about our own social class, current wealth or talents. From this ignorance we are to produce the basic principles about how our society should be run.

Rawls argued that not knowing our position in society would lead to us to be concerned for everyone equally. We would therefore be particularly concerned for those who are least fortunate in society, because it would be possible (under our veil of ignorance) that we could be the worst off along with them!

As a result, Rawls came up with two principles that he thought most people would agree with in this hypothetical. Firstly, the Liberty Principle stated that each person has a right to the greatest equal liberty possible. Secondly the Difference Principle stated that social and economic differences in society could only be justified if they benefited the worst off. Whenever you changed society you had to make sure that things would improve for the people on the bottom of the heap. So the rich could get richer only if the poor were not left behind.

Rawls’ theory was a form of liberalism which provided the foundation for many types of government. Chief among these was the welfare state, in which wealth was redistributed so that the least fortunate would be looked after. Philosophy had provided something a tad more useful than language games or debates about whether the chair really exists. Rawls’ theory of justice began to underpin policy and politics.

That’s where our second philosophical friend arrived on the scene. Robert Nozick was a young philosophy professor in the early 1970s who published a critical reply to Rawls theory. In his first book, Anarchy, State and Utopia (1974) he argued brilliantly that Rawls principles of Liberty and Difference actually contradicted each other.

Nozick claimed that any government which forcibly taxed rich people and redistributed their wealth to help poor people was violating the liberty of the rich. Governments, he argued, had no right to encroach on the rights of individuals by taking their money and giving it to others. Governments shouldn’t act like Robin hood, robbing the rich to give to the poor.

This was especially the case if people’s wealth had arisen through talent or hard work. Nozick held strongly to the rights of the individual, and advocated a minimal state which maintained law and order but did nothing to redistribute wealth.

Philosophical battles might not have the power hitting of World Title bouts or the even catty name calling of celebrity feuds, but the debate between Rawls and Nozick is still sending aftershocks through most of the the western world.

These views have become the basis for opposing political parties. In the US, the Democrats traditionally advocate wealth redistribution whilst the Republicans push for tax cuts and less government interference.

In some places however, it seems as though Nozick’s ideas are garnering more and more support. Many Americans, for example, argue that poverty and unemployment are deserved and that success and fortune are gained through hard work and superior talent (manifested in the American Dream).

Australia has now followed the US down this path, with both sides of politics moving further and further away from Rawls’ welfare state toward Nozick’s extreme individualism. This philosophical shift has been subtle but inexorable, like the movement of tectonic plates under the earths surface. As a result many recent policies have been sold using the user-pays mantra that Nozick championed – why should people be forced to pay taxes for things that benefit others?

As a result we get HECs and full fees for uni students. We are strongly encouraged to pay private insurers for health care whilst the government attempts to dismantle Medicare. We make payments to fund our own retirement. We may asked to pay more for the public transport we use. The ABC is relentlessly attacked as a tax-payer funded institution which only benefits a minority.

Of course, this freedom from redistribution can easily result in a profoundly selfish society where individuals are encouraged to consume rather than to care. Furthermore traditional rights, like health care and education, are gradually transformed into commodities which individuals must pay for.

What’s more, there are good reasons to oppose Nozick’s philosophy. If you don’t redistribute wealth then you get vast economic differences between rich and poor. Interestingly, these differences themselves will lead to a denial of liberty. The poor don’t have the freedom to live where they want. They can’t afford legal representation. Children from poor families are unable to pay for a superior education, which further entrenches the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Quite simply, it is clear that liberty is inextricably linked to economic position. As Nozick affirms liberty for the rich, he appears to deny it to the poor.

My hunch is that we won’t run with Nozick forever. In the near future an ageing group of baby boomers will need looking after. And due to the volatile nature of superannuation schemes wealth redistribution will be put back on the agenda again. The big questions will arise once more. Who will pay for aged care? Who should pay for aged care?

Of course, the next generation will be asked to foot the bill. Ironically, this is the very generation which has been brought up on the user-pays principle. And so the men and women who have spent their lives paying their own way will have to cough up once more for the baby-boomers. For their part, the baby-boomers will get an easier retirement which (like their university fees, health and public transport) someone else has paid for.

 

Media bull strings. Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

G’day. A new Webdiary reader emailed last weekend:

 

I am very grateful to have found this opportunity to say something. I am an ordinary professional person leading a normal life in what I grew up to think was a democracy. Then why am I now taken back constantly to my childhood when the inhumanity of Nazism was a topic of conversation around our dinner table and when democratic values were spoken and lived every day with gratitude that we had won the war, that my father had returned (the only one to do so from his town) and that we could live in peace, confident that goodness prevails in the end?

This government frightens and outrages me. I smell Nazism every day in the news and I want to know where to go to meet like-minded people to talk, to protest, and if necessary in the long run, to revolt. I don’t know where to find people like this. Most of my friends seem passive and only minimally concerned.

Do you know of any action groups or how one can become politically active?

I replied:

Do you believe in liberal values? There’s a new group called the Reid Group in Sydney – former Dems, Labor, Liberal, plus people from the Wilderness Society – all sorts – which you might like to join. I wrote about them in Can Liberalism fight back. Or you could join the Greens! Do you read Webdiary? There’s lot of people who feel as you do. I could publish your email and ask readers for suggestions if you like – would you prefer to remain anonymous?

K.E. (name and address supplied) replied, in part:

Thank you for your reply and information. I have only just discovered Webdiary and am enjoying it immensely. I got onto the political compass and came out as ‘liberal left’. The company is not bad, but I worry we are all a bit too peaceful in that sector of the compass.

Thank you for recommending the Reid Group. I have now subscribed to their newsletter and look forward to participating in future events. I have never been politically active, so there is a lot to learn. However, I do have an interest in corporate cultures and have written on the impact of psychopathy in organisations which led me to an interest in the personalities involved in corporate collapses such as One Tel, HIH, Enron etc. I’m currently reading and researching in this area looking at the effect of power on narcissistic personalities. Our own Mr Ruddock is a prime example.

It would be good to hear readers’ suggestions, as I am also interested in finding discussion groups. So yes, publish the letter and we’ll see if anything comes of it.

Over to you. Can you help?

Here is the editorial in the latest edition of Dissent magazine, lovingly published by journalism stalwart at The Age Kenneth Davidson and his partner Lesley Vick from their home three times a year. It’s essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the motivations of the Murdoch-Howard assault on democracy through cross media changes to go before the Senate again soon. Control the media and who will expose the insider’s spin to the people? Dissent is available in good newsagencies; its email address is dissentmagazine@ozemail.com.au.

How virtual democracies are primed for profit and war

by Kenneth Davidson

Modern democracies have been around for long enough for neoliberal capitalists to learn how to subvert them. They have mastered the technique of infiltrating the instruments of democracy – the ‘independent’, judiciary the ‘free press’, the parliament – and moulding them to their purpose. The project of corporate globalisation has cracked the code. Free elections, a free press, and an independent judiciary mean little when the free market has reduced them to commodities on sale to the highest bidder. (Arundhati Roy, 13 May 2003)

The excuse used by Bush, Blair and Howard to invade Iraq was the imminent threat posed by Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. This claim now appears to have been untrue, not an intelligence failure. If the US military had thought there was an outside chance that Iraq had WMD capable of threatening its neighbours, let alone the US, it would not have massed its main invasion force just over the border in Kuwait – well within range of any WMD worthy of the name. The US is looking for a diplomatic solution to its differences with the North Korean regime of Kim Jong Il – rather than a preemptive strike – precisely because it thinks the regime could have one or two nuclear weapons and the means and will to deliver them.

The post-war exposure of the unproven claims about Iraq’s WMD is undermining the popularity of Blair in the UK and is an embarrassment to Howard in Australia. But Bush’s popularity remains undiminished by the failure to find WMD in Iraq. Why? Are Americans qualitatively different to Britons and Australians or is the difference bound up in the way the war was presented through the media?

Even before Bush’s inauguration in 2000 he and his closest advisors were determined to invade Iraq. What he needed was the pretext which was provided by the September 11 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon. The former NATO military chief, General Wesley Clark, now says that before he was due to go on CNN on September 11 he got a call at home from the White House which urged him to link Baghdad to the terror attacks. He said he declined to do so because he was offered no evidence of the connection. (Margo: Clark has since altered this statement, saying he was called by the group controlled by the Pentagon’s favourite Iraqi-in-exile Chalabi.)

By the time of the Iraq invasion in March 2003, a New York Times/CBS News survey estimated that 42 per cent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the September 11 attacks and an ABC News poll found that 55 per cent of Americans believed that Hussein was directly linked to Al Qaeda. Arundhati Roy commented on these ill informed beliefs:

All of it based on insinuation, auto-suggestion, and outright lies circulated by the US corporate media, otherwise known as the ‘Free Press,’ that hollow pillar on which American democracy rests. Public support in the US for the war against Iraq was founded on a multi-tiered edifice of falsehood and deceit, coordinated by the US government and faithfully amplified by the corporate media.

The media did the Bush Administration’s dirty work. Why?

According to BBC Director, John Willis, who worked for a year as vice president in charge of national programs at WGBH in Boston, the ‘swamp of political cravenness’ which characterised the American coverage of the war was intrinsic to the media’s commercial structure, without the discipline imposed by a strong national public broadcaster. In a speech to the Royal Television Society in June 2003 Willis said:

The lesson from America is that, if news and public affairs are left purely to the market, it is most likely to give the government what it wants.

Reporting war may generate ratings, but it is not good for advertisers. Willis reported:

Chillingly, media consulting firm Frank Magid Associates warned that covering war protests might be harmful to a station’s bottom line. Another consultant urged radio stations to make listeners “cry, salute, get cold chills!” Go for the emotions, and air the national anthem each day. (Murdoch’s) Fox led the way as the military cheerleader, apparently giving both viewers and politicians what they wanted. Contra scandal star Oliver North reported on the ground for Fox. The success of Fox has pushed other stations to the right. There was little or no debate, America’s leaders remained unchallenged and any lack of patriotism was punished with McCarthyite vigour.

As Willis implies, the problem of the American broadcasting media’s failure to cover the issues leading up to the invasion of Iraq is far deeper than the bias of the corporate proprietors. It is unlikely they would have run such a one sided coverage of the Administration’s position in the run up to the invasion if the biased coverage had led to falling ratings and advertising revenue.

The commercial broadcasting media’s prime function is not even to entertain. It is to deliver consumers to advertisers in the right frame of mind to spend on the products and services advertised. This function always sits uncomfortably with broadcasting’s social responsibility to inform and educate. But as the media consultants quoted by Willis make clear, the commercial and social responsibilities of the broadcast media are never so far apart as during the build up to war, especially when the government case for war is built on lies and half truths which should be exposed by responsible reporting.

In circumstances like the build up to the invasion of Iraq, the responsibility of reporters is to deal with the facts, and the competing views surrounding those facts. Done properly, this approach to journalism is likely to unsettle the audience and make it less receptive to the message from advertisers.

For commercial broadcasters, concerned about the bottom line, investigative reporting about war can only occur it the war becomes unpopular due to an unacceptable level of American casualties. This in turn affected the way America conducted the war – with overwhelming firepower from a safe distance – which has ongoing implications for the safety of the occupying forces.

Unfortunately, the displacement of journalistic values by commercial values in the broadcast media is likely to get worse, not better, because of the push to relax media ownership laws in Australia, Canada and the UK, as well as in the US.

In all countries the argument advanced is the same. Developments in information technology have increased the number of broadcasting outlets, which means that competition will be sufficient to preserve media diversity, rather than ownership limits as at present. In none of these countries has there been any pressure from the public to relax media ownership regulation. If fact, to the extent that there has been any public interest, it has been distinctly hostile as people have a well-founded fear that the proposals would increase the reach and power of the major media conglomerates.

In Australia the latest attempt to change the media ownership laws failed in the Senate in June 2003. The Communications Minister, Senator Alston, gave the game away as to the real purpose of the legislation:

The tragic result is that Australian media companies will be denied the opportunity to grow and expand and will be left with little option but to resort to cutting costs and services.

Echoing the arguments made overseas, Alston claims:

Australians in 2003 can get their news and information from a wider range of sources than ever before – one in two households is connected to the Internet. Almost one third of households have pay TV. Digital TV is a reality. There are more community broadcasters than ever.

But Australian Broadcasting Authority research shows that the overwhelming majority of people rely on traditional media as their source of news and current affairs: 88 per cent rely on free-to-air television, 76 per cent use radio and newspapers and only 10 per cent use pay TV and 11 per cent use the Internet.

And where does the content for the pay TV and Internet services come from? According to a research paper by the Parliamentary Library (Media Ownership and Regulation in Australia by Kim Jackson), the content is controlled by existing media operators. The only significant new Australian news service provided by the pay TV operators is Sky News Australia. Sky is owned by the existing networks, Seven and Nine, and British Sky Broadcasting. The latter is owned by News Corporation:

The most popular Australian Internet news sites are also controlled by existing media operators, namely PBL (Packer), News Ltd (Murdoch), Fairfax (Publisher of the Age, SMH and Financial Review) and the ABC.

The only major new operator in Internet news is Telstra corporation. However Telstra’s Australian news service consists of AAP news stories. AAP is jointly controlled by News Ltd and Fairfax.

The Howard government threatens to reintroduce the legislation later this year and make it a trigger for a double dissolution. It may gain the Coalition the support of the media moguls at the next election. If passed it would allow, for instance, Packer to take control the Fairfax Group as well as the Nine Network, and allow Murdoch to bid for control of the Seven or Ten networks while retaining his 68 per cent control of the capital city and national newspaper market.

The new media merger rules announced by the American Republican-dominated Federal Communication Commission in a 3-2 decision in June 2003 abolishes the old rule which prevented TV-newspaper mergers and only allowed TV duopolies in the 60 largest markets if they passed rigorous public interest review. Now TV-newspaper mergers will be allowed in 200 markets where 98 per cent of the American population live, and TV duopolies and even ‘triopolies’ will be allowed in over 160 markets covering 95 of the population and there will be absolutely no public interest review of mergers.

According to the director of the US Center for Digital Democracy, Jerry Chester:

The companies behind the measure include the powerhouses of corporate media power: Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp/Fox, General Electric/NBC, Viacom/CBS, Disney/ABC, Tribune Corp and Clear Channel. (Clear Channel owns 1,200 radio stations in the US and has an interest in Australian Radio Network with eight stations that give it an audience reach of 50 per cent of the population.)

According to Chester:

Not surprisingly, the media conglomerates thirst for more control as they seek to end ownership limits. What this means hasn’t been covered by the media. There has been no TV network news coverage on the impending media give-away.

Even so, there has been strong community resistance to the FCC policy and it may yet be blocked by Congress. If the new FCC rules stand, they are likely to have a profound impact on the structure of the broadcasting industry of other countries, unless those other countries can maintain strong domestic regulation designed to maintain national ownership of broadcasting and print media.

In the UK, the communications bill which promotes media deregulation along the lines proposed by the FCC in the US and Alston in Australia would allow US companies for the first time to buy into ITV or Channel Five. The bill lifts the ban on newspaper owners buying Channel Five. In theory Murdoch’s News Corp will be able to own four national newspapers as well as Channel Five and also remain the main shareholder in Sky, the leading pay-TV broadcaster.

The bill as initially proposed by the government was attacked by the former chief executive of British ITV, Stuart Prebble. He said:

It really is preposterous. Of all the many craven things this government has done in the past this is the most disgraceful. They seem to have allowed this bill to be written by Rupert Murdoch.

The House of Lords threatened defeat of the communications bill unless the government accepted an amendment, (known colloquially as the ‘Murdoch amendment’) drafted by Lord Puttman which calls for any takeover of Channel Five to be subject to a public interest test.

In Canada parliament responded to the pressure to open up its media with an inquiry by its standing committee on Canadian heritage (Our Cultural Sovereignty: The Second Century of Canadian Broadcasting) which rejected the changes proposed in the US, UK and Australia out of hand. In tabling the report in June 2003, the chairman of the committee, Clifford Lincoln, said:

The Committee believes that broadcasting is an essential preserve of the Canadian culture and imagination. Thus, it is opposed to increasing the level of foreign ownership. In essence, the Committee holds to the view that once Canadians give up control over what amounts to our cultural sovereignty, we can never get it back. The committee also took a strong position on the question of cross-media ownership, believing that Canadian democracy is enhanced when there is a diversity of voices and when Canadians have a wide variety of sources to choose from.

The Committee also looked at the structure of the industry to … place a strong emphasis on measures and incentives to ensure that Canadian audiences view Canadian programming. To this end they recommended the Canadian Television Fund be recognised by the government as a central component of the Canadian broadcasting system by directing licensees to contribute to the CTF.

It also recommended that the CBC (the national public broadcaster) “be provided with multi-year funding (3-5 years) so that it might adequately fulfil its mandate (and) the CBC deliver a strategic plan to parliament detailing resource requirements for the delivery of local, regional Canadian programming and new media initiatives”.

Of the group of countries under discussion, Canada is the only one which approached the challenge to broadcasting policy provided by the new digital technologies from the perspective of the interests of the audience. From that perspective Canada looked at the role commercial broadcasting might play and recognised the importance of a well-funded and independent public broadcaster in maintaining standards across all media.

In a functioning democracy, where its parliamentary representatives are concerned to deliver good government, voters should expect nothing less. The US, the UK, and Australia (aka the Coalition of the Willing) have all shown in varying degrees that they are in thrall to the media barons whose vested interests in this issue strike at the very heart of democracy.

Republished with permission

Margo disclosure: I am a member of Xmedia, a group formed recently to try to stop the new cross media legislation being passed by federal Parliament. I have campaigned and lobbied against any further concentration of media ownership in Australia for more than a decade. I am also a member of Friends of Fairfax, a group formed in the 1990s to keep Fairfax independent and stop it being taken over by Kerry Packer. I own shares in Fairfax. The Fairfax board supports Howard’s cross media legislation. For more information on the cross media saga, see Webdiary’s cross media archive.

 

Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

Howard’s Senate ‘reform’ paper is a shocker, as expected. Howard’s way would demolish the Senate as an effective House of Review by abolishing its veto power. It would leave Australians virtually defenceless to protect our precarious rights and freedoms against a dominant Prime Minister converging his short term interests with the public interest and prepared to dump a commitment to truth and ethics to get his way.

Think the extremist ASIO and anti-terrorism bills, for example, where the veto power of the Senate allowed appalled Liberal Senators and MPs to flex their muscles against Howard’s demand to create a police state. On the ASIO bill, see ASIO: Right beats might, again!. On the anti-terrorism bill, see Liberalism fights back on terror laws, where I wrote, in May last year:

Apart from the triumph of Liberalism in the (Senate) report – however short term – the report proves once again that the Senate is vital to protecting Australia’s democracy and ensuring good, considered law is passed by the Federal Parliament. Paul Keating called Senators “swill” and John Howard wants to gut its powers, but it is only through the Senate and its committees that Australians have a chance to discuss proposed laws, and where there is some possibility of arguments being assessed on the merits.

By gutting the power of the parliamentary chamber able to consider legislation on the merits, hear the views of Australians in legislation committees and to insist on maintaining our democratic rights and freedoms unless very good arguments are made to the contrary – because the numbers aren’t in the PM’s pocket – Howard’s fanatical proposals would crush our democracy. Which is what he wants, of course – see Howard’s roads to absolute power.

And yet just two days ago, with a straight face, Howard repeated his standard cliche about our democracy in a speech at the centenary sitting of the High Court in Melbourne. It might have been believable when he first mouthed it a long, long time ago, but after 8 years of his government, and particularly in the light of his Senate wishlist, it’s nothing short of mendacious:

As part of the ongoing political debate about our institutions there is frequent debate as to whether or not this nation should endeavour in some way to entrench formally in its law a bill of rights. I belong to that group of Australians who is resolutely opposed to such a course of action. It is my view that this nation has three great pillars of its democratic life. A vigorous parliamentary system, robustly Australian, responsible for the making of laws; a strong independent and incorruptible judiciary; and a free and sceptical media, free and sceptical often to the discomfort of us but nonetheless an important and integral part of our society.

You’ll get an idea of Howard’s drive to crush “a free and skeptical media” from How virtual democracies are primed for profit and war, published tonight, and my piece just after the Senate rejected Howard’s cross media laws for the first time in June, Governing for the big two: Can people power stop them?

We’re well aware of Howard’s “respect” for the judiciary, most recently shown by his appointment of Philip Ruddock – under investigation in the cash-for-visa and official people smuggling scandals, perpetrator of serial contempt of the Federal and Family Courts on immigration cases and proud trasher of our international human rights obligations – as Australia’s first law officer. And who could forget his condoning of Senator Bill Heffernan’s gutless slander of High Court Justice Michael Kirby. Howard sent Heffernan to the sin bin for a moment after his allegations were shown to based on a fraudulent document, then reappointed him as the PM’s representative on the NSW Liberal Executive.

But the real killer is the Senate thing. Despite wanting to gut our “vigorous”, “robustly Australian” parliamentary system, he still won’t countenance a bill of rights. Bet on it. My take on Howard’s transformation from Senate conservative to Senate revolutionary is at Howard’s Senate strip: All power to him. The view of the crazy brave Clerk of the Senate, Harry Evans, is at Howard’s rubber-stamp democracy. Details of how to participate in the Senate debate are at constitutionalchange.

Tonight, a history of the Senate’s role in our system by John Nethercote. John is a Canberra-based commentator on Australian Government, the parliament and public administration. He edited Parliament & Bureaucracy (1982), The House on Capital Hill (with Julian Disney, 1995) and Liberalism and the Australian Federation (2001). He oversaw publication of Australian Senate Practice (6th ed., 1991) and currently editsAustralasian Parliamentary Review. His first Webdiary contribution – on the death of the public service as a check and balance on untramelled executive power – is at What servants are for.

I’ve done an interview with former Labor Attorney-General Michael Lavarch on why he’s joined the committee overseeing the Senate discussion paper process. He said some interesting stuff about what you’d recommend if you really wanted to improve our system of government, not wreck it, which I’ll report to you tomorrow.

***

Governments and the Senate

by John Nethercote

John Howard’s discussion paper on the Senate will be the newest instalment in one of the longest running controversies in Australian parliamentary politics.

The Constitution-makers provided a parliamentary scheme which would in due course impose a strong bicameral flavour on the conventional party battle. The Parliament they fashioned was remarkable not only for its democratic and elective foundations but for the fact that those foundations extended, for the first time, to the upper house (the Senate) as well as the so-called popular chamber, the House of Representatives.

The Senate’s powers, for the period, were, in a formal sense, marginally circumscribed in the limitations placed on its role in initiation and amendment of financial legislation. But these circumscriptions did not alter its basic powers – no bill could become law without the Senate’s consent.

And because it was a house elected on the same franchise as the House of Representatives, it could exercise its powers with an increasing legitimacy denied to other upper houses, not least the House of Lords. Even in the 1890s, other upper houses, despite their nominal powers, were seen, as Sir Samuel Griffith expressed it in 1891, as “checking and . . . useful revising” bodies.

From the start the Senate asserted its equality with the House of Representatives on matters great and small. This may be explained only partly by its constitutional role and elective foundations.

It also derived from the fact that more than half the original Senators were experienced in lower house politics and thus well accustomed to robust debate. They eschewed the politenesses typical of conventional upper houses aspiring to bring the sober second thought to the business of legislation.

The Senate came into its own with the undisputed emergence of two-party politics.

The elections of 1913 brought a Liberal Government to office, with the slimmest of majorities in the House. The Labor Opposition in the Senate, however, had a very comfortable majority which it proceeded without inhibition to exploit; the practice of using the Senate as a weapon of opposition in the party battle was firmly established in this period.

The prime minister of the time, Joseph Cook, lost little time in establishing grounds for a double dissolution on the basis that Labor’s caucus practices ruled out inter-house negotiation as a means of resolving differences; he was well-placed to know as he had left Labor more than 20 years earlier over adoption of the caucus rule.

There was much reluctance about activating the double dissolution provisions. The Governor-General, Sir Ronald Munro-Ferguson, a veteran of the People versus the Peers battles in the United Kingdom, was most reluctant. In an early case of what might be called the Munro-Ferguson heresy, he sought a resolution on lines of British practice in these matters.

The desire to reshape the Australian Parliament on British lines, with a greatly weakened second chamber, remains strong to this day, despite its inappropriateness. Australia does not need an upper house with powers more like those of the House of Lords; what it needs, in the first instance, is a revitalised House of Representatives for which even the contemporary House of Commons could provide something of a model.

The 1914 conflict was resolved by the people who gave Labor majorities in both houses. But for the next thirty five years the Senate largely slumbered.

There was some sign of life in the turmoil following the conscription split in the Labor Party, when the Senate thwarted Prime Minister Hughes’s attempt to delay elections by means of an Act of the Imperial Parliament. More than a decade later, the Scullin Labor Government was unrelentingly hassled by the Opposition in the Senate but took no steps even to lay the grounds for a double dissolution.

The big criticism of the Senate at this time was the method of election which usually gave huge majorities to the Government; in 1947-49 Labor had 33 of the 36 seats.

The modern era of adversarial bicameralism owes its origins to introduction of proportional representation in 1948, when Attorney-General Dr Evatt gave effect to an idea he had first advocated in 1915. The only reservations about the new system came from Opposition Leader Menzies who perceived that it would be difficult to secure majorities in the Senate under the new method of voting; and that, moreover, this difficulty would be all the greater in elections following double dissolutions.

Thus, under proportional elections for the Senate, deadlocks with the House would be more likely, but their resolution, except by means of a joint sitting, more difficult. Such has been the history since 1974.

Although the Menzies Governments were from time to time troubled by the Senate, it was mainly under his successors that the problems he had foreseen became increasingly manifest.

In late 1967 the Senate had a signal victory when it forced the Holt Government to table documents on the use of the RAAF’s VIP squadron. Its new potency was capped a few months later by Senator John Gorton’s accession to the prime ministership.

For the next eight years the Senate’s role continued to strengthen, not least by means of a comprehensive committee system; perhaps the leading figure in this course of events was Senator Lionel Murphy, Labor leader from 1967 until early 1975.

The revived Senate reached its zenith when it refused to pass budget legislation in 1975, forcing dismissal of the Whitlam Government as well as a double dissolution election.

In the past 35 years, all governments have been troubled by the Senate. This is evident in the number of double dissolutions – though the futility of these has meant that after having had four between 1974 and 1987, there have not been any since.

It has also been evident in the number of referendums about the Senate in the period – it is by far the most likely subject for a referendum. Failed proposals have included abandoning the nexus and adoption of so-called simultaneous elections for the Senate and the House.

One change which did succeed is the doubtfully beneficial provision that Senate vacancies shall be filled by new senators from the same party; as a consequence, resignations from the Senate come at a rate four times that of resignations from the House of Representatatives.

The reason that the double dissolution figures so largely in options for resolving deadlocks between the Houses is the same reason that Cook activated the double dissolution provision back in 1914 – the great difficulty negotiating legislation through a Senate in which party discipline is so strong.

The real inflexibility in Australian parliamentary politics is not the bicameral scheme in the Constitution but the Prussian rigidity of discipline in the major parties, in Parliament itself and as enforced by the party machines outside.

The double dissolution provision – the innovatory provision in the 1890s – is not without problems or deficiencies, but these should not be allowed to cloud the fact that it is party practice rather than constitutional procedure which most needs reform.

 

Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

Here is the interim report of the Edmund Rice Centre into the process and aftermath of Philip Ruddock’s deportations of asylum seekers. The Centre expects to release a final report in December after completing its research.

 

NO LIABILITY: TRAGIC RESULTS FROM AUSTRALIA’S DEPORTATIONS

A project of the Edmund Rice Centre for Justice & Community Education in cooperation with the School of Education, Australian Catholic University.

Research Team: Mr Phil Glendenning, Director, Edmund Rice Centre for Justice & Community Education; Sister Carmel Leavey OAM Ph.d, Mrs Margaret Hetherton MA, Dr Tony Morris Ph.d, Australian Catholic University. School of Education

7 October 2003

Disquiet about the fate of boat people

Reports of death, disappearance, imprisonment and torture, of fear-filled lives spent in hiding, privation and despair have filtered back to Australia about some people Australia has removed after disallowing their claims for protection on refugee or humanitarian grounds.

Disquiet about this situation was expressed to the 2000 Senate Committee [1] by bodies such as HREOC (the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission), Amnesty International, the Refugee Council and various legal aid and trauma treatment organisations.

In 2002 a coalition of religious groups, COPAS, including leaders from the major Christian denominations, Jewish, Moslem and Buddhist groups, petitioned the Federal Government to heed the reports of terrible things happening to some deportees [2] and cease sending people to countries where protection of their safety and rights is very problematic. The study reported here was designed to clarify the situation behind this widespread disquiet.

Government policy

The Government asserts that deportation is a sovereign right and essential to border protection. Removal is seen as the essential sanction for people who come or stay here unlawfully. What happens to people when they are ‘removed’ from Australia is apparently not a concern of Government.

The Government shows no signs of acting on the opinion of the 2000 Senate Committee that some form of monitoring may be the only way in which Australia can be assured that its refugee determination processes are correctly identifying genuine refugees and humanitarian cases.

Nor has the Government apparently taken any action to implement Recommendation 11.1 of the same Senate Committee report – that the Government place the issue of monitoring on the agenda for discussion at the Inter-Government/Non-Government Organisations Forum with a view to examining the implementation of a system of informal monitoring [3].

Few reasonable people would dispute that Australia has a right to protect its borders. However, that right is not absolute. A basic concern for life, human rights and justice underpins most of the concerns expressed to the Government about the way it implements its border protection policies. In addition, Australia is obligated under a variety of International Conventions not to remove people to places in which they are not safe. These legal obligations are discussed later in this report.

What counts as evidence about the fate of deported people?

At the 2000 Senate hearing above, Mr Sidoti, representing HREOC, called for a random sample of returnees to see what is happening in their lives. In this study we found that it is impossible to set up such a sample. A sample has to be based on known numbers. DIMIA (the immigration department) does not publish the statistics on returned persons, which would be the first step in setting up a random sample based study. Even the 2000 Senate Committee recognised it did not have access to the numbers of ‘returnees’, saying only it is certainly in the thousands.

As an alternative, Mr Sidoti also called for random checks based on risk assessment factors to decide where Australia should be monitoring returnees and where not. We decided to follow this approach and interview returnees from relatively high-risk countries of origin or currently residing in high-risk alternative countries.

Initially we hoped to contact returnees through people with whom they were linked in Australia, but few such links survive the deportation process. We then began traveling to overseas countries to contact deportees directly. This is a difficult process, which is continuing.

Methodology

To provide comparable information, interviews were conducted on a standardised format. Where possible we sought corroborative material evidence to check the returnee’s story. Where we could not find this – and to control for any possible collusive fabrication- we looked to see if the pattern of an account was mirrored in independent interviews with other returnees in similar situations. We have also checked the internal consistency of each account given us, a strategy also used by the Refugee Review Tribunal in assessing credibility. We are satisfied that our data provide a reliable case for the Government to answer.

To date we have conducted interviews with returnees in three overseas countries. We have also drawn on reliable accounts from deportee contacts and expert respondents in Australia. This is an on-going study. To date we have interviewed 20 people overseas. We have also drawn on another 8 authenticated accounts. We plan to expand the number of interviews before writing the final report.

Risk factors

Our interviewees came from the following States/ with the high-risk profiles noted below.

Iran

Political and religious dissent is punished very harshly in Iran – often with death or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Rights to freedom of speech, press, assembly and association are severely restricted. Discrimination is experienced by ethnic minorities such as Azeris and Kurds and by religious minorities – Sunni Muslims, Baha’is. Christians, Jews, Mandaeans and Yaresans. Conversion from Islam is not permitted.

The judiciary often acts as an arm of government policy and is not independent. Vigilante groups practise intimidation and violence with tacit support of members of government.

In particular jeopardy are critics of the Shi’ia clergy-dominated government and people who do not conform to the rigid Islamic dress and behavioral codes.

Afghan and to a lesser extent Iraqi refugees are systematically denied the means to subsist by recent Iranian laws intended to reduce the large refugee populations hosted by Iran. Support for this description may be found in the footnoted reports by the US State Department, United Nations, US based Human Rights Watch, The Australian Refugee Council Amnesty International and the Australian Uniting Church sponsored Deportation Task Group [4].

These accounts contrast sharply with the more sanguine report of DFAT’s (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) Fact Sheet on Iran, possibly affected by the desire to protect Australia’s trading interests.

Syria

Syria has not signed the Refugee Convention and has no domestic laws to protect Iraqi, Bedoon or Afghan refugees living there. Iraqi refugees are theoretically eligible for up to six months visitor’s visa. Like over 3000 accepted applicants waiting for UNHCR resettlement, they might just be successful in this claim.

However, many do not make this problematic application because of justifiable fears of long delays and being identified and refouled by the Syrian authorities in the process. They then live very precariously without legal status, with severe restrictions on employment and freedom of movement, denial of access to health care, education and housing, combined with constant risks of arrest, detention and deportation.

Undocumented refugees are very vulnerable to harassment and extortion by the Syrian police, threatening arbitrary arrest or refoulement. This is particularly true of the Bedoons. Support for this description may be found in the footnoted reportsof the US State Department, Human Rights Watch, UNHCR and Amnesty International [5].

Iraq

The official human rights situation in Iraq changed markedly with the fall of the regime of Saddam Hussein but the resultant murderous civil disorder and dislocation of normal services makes it problematic for any returnees. In addition, some are still afraid of reprisals from those who forced them to flee in the first place.

Afghanistan

Despite the establishment of the Hamid Karsai Government ending the tyranny of the Taliban, areas outside Kabul are still considered to be without effective civil government and subject to lawlessness and insecurity. While the UNHCR is encouraging voluntary repatriation of refugees, NGOs like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch are critical of this policy. [6]

Nigeria

Despite being oil rich, most of the Federal Republic of Nigeria’s 120 million population (60 percent Muslim and 40 per cent Christian) struggles for daily existence, suffering prolonged droughts, inflation, high unemployment, official corruption and ethnic tensions among the 250 separate ethnic groups.

Those who have suffered most from a succession of brutal military regimes are the Ibo peoples, who unsuccessfully tried to secede, sparking the Biafran Civil war (1967-70). In this conflict, the Ogoni people, led by the subsequently executed Ken Sara Wiwa, protested against environmental damage and injustice in the exploitation of their oil-rich lands and against the impact of the introduction of the strict Islamic punishment code of Sharia Law in some of the 36 states.

Zimbabwe

The political situation in Zimbabwe has gradually deteriorated since 1996, when Robert Mugabe won another six years in government. At the beginning of 1999, popular frustration with economic mismanagement and increasing corruption led to the formation of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), with a strong base in the unions and support from commercial farming interests.

When the MDC won 57 of the 120 elective parliamentary seats in the June 2000 poll, Mugabe then moved to remove or suppress his opponents in the judiciary, the media and other centres of influence.

Now Zimbabwe is in a parlous state, with the economy all but collapsed and the government manipulating widespread famine so that the people in opposition strongholds suffer most. Strong military backing is used for the forced removal of white farmers in a brutal land redistribution programme, which has earned Mugabe widespread scorn internationally. MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai is now on trial for alleged treason, charged with an almost certainly fabricated plot to assassinate Mugabe.

Research findings

We set out to examine the process of removal, the conditions people were placed in, and their status in the country Australia removed them to. Our initial question we set out to answer in the research was:

1. Is the Australian Government sending or attempting to send refugees to places which are not safe?

During the research process evidence suggested to us that a new theme was emerging, in terms of some of the methods used by Australia in the process of removal. This prompted the need to answer the following two questions:

2. Has the Australian Government encouraged refugees to obtain false papers and is there is evidence of bribery and corruption?

3. Is the conduct of removals consistent with Australia’s legal obligations and values?

1. Is the Australian Government sending refugees or attempting to send them to places which are not safe?

Our answer to this question has to be Yes. We cannot say how frequently it happens but among the 20 people we interviewed overseas, many were in serious danger as a result of our deportation arrangements. For some, this occurred immediately on arrival at their destination or at an intermediate port. For some, the danger arose as they tried to live in the country to which Australia had sent them.

A. In danger immediately on arrival or at an intermediate port on the deportation journey

C5

On arrival in Nigeria, C5 was immediately taken aside for interrogation because of his membership in the Biafra independence movement and connection with Christians opposed to the imposition of Sharia law – the reasons for his asylum claim in the first place. He was told he faced severe interrogation, detention and indefinite imprisonment without trial but was given an escape chance by one officer who seemed sympathetic to the Biafran Liberation cause.

This officer offered him the chance to make a run for it while handcuffed on the drive from the airport to headquarters; the officer said he would pretend that the escape had happened while he was dealing with a flat tyre. All his belongings (suitcases and $1600 US) had to be abandoned in the process (by accident or as a bribe).

C5 escaped further dangers by making contact with friends, who warned him that he was on the most wanted list and got him out of Nigeria and eventually into a First World country to begin a new appeal for asylum.

T1

On arrival in Damascus, T1 was taken from the airport to the Political Security Prison where he was beaten. Relatives paid a bribe for him to be released after a month. T1 believes Australian Correctional Management (ACM) had supplied negative information about him to the Syrian authorities because he had been a leader in the detention centre and had made contact with Australian journalists. We clearly could not verify this allegation although the interviewer noted physical scars and wounds consistent with T1’s story of beatings after arrival in Syria.

P5

In late 2000 in Abu Dhabi on the deportation journey to Syria, an Iraqi deportee P5, was arrested traveling on a false passport (obtained, he alleged, on ACM advice). His passport was recognized as a forgery. In custody he was made to strip naked and was interrogated. He was threatened with being sent to the Iraqi Embassy in Abu Dhabi.

P5 threatened to jump out the window, stating that as a member of the anti-Saddam groups he would be hung if he were to go back to Iraq. This saved him and he was deported back to Australia only to have the Australian authorities again risk his security by deporting him 3 months later on the same forged passport and again via Abu Dhabi where he was held on the plane during transit. The researchers have the passport with the double set of stamps as supportive evidence of this account.

C6

In August 2002, after nearly 3 years of detention, the Australian authorities sent C6 to Kenya. C6 is an 18-year-old Hutu, orphaned eight years earlier in the murderous Hutu/Tutsi conflict. He was escorted under guard to Johannesburg and on to a Kenya airlines plane to Nairobi.

He had emergency travel documents from the Australian authorities but these were taken from him at the airport in Nairobi, an action witnessed by the Christian Brother and lawyer who came to meet him. Once again he became stateless and without documents with the predictable consequence of further imprisonment. [7]

C7 [8]

C7, who has now been granted refugee status in a first world country according to Amnesty International, agreed to ‘voluntary’ deportation after suffering multiple beatings and rape in Silverwater prison in Sydney where he was held following charges of ‘behavioral misconduct ‘ in detention.

He was deported to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) because DIMIA refused to accept that he was citizen of Angola. P&I, a private South African ‘people mover’ company was employed to secure travel documents that showed falsely that C7 was a DRC citizen. In transit through South Africa, C7 successfully demanded to speak with officials from the Angolan Embassy who ascertained that he was indeed a citizen of Angola.

By this chance success C7 avoided landing stateless in the DRC without residence, money or indeed the necessary language, French.

C2

C2 is a young Zimbabwean whose asylum case rested on his involvement in the Movement for Democratic Change, (MDC) and the dangers he experienced through his witnessing and later seeking redress for the political assassination of his father and cousin. He was refused asylum in Australia and told that within a fortnight he was to be deported back to Zimbabwe.

Such a deportation he believed would bring certain death in the light of his previous experience, harassment, near death ‘accidents’ and finally of torture in prison graphically described in his affidavit:

I was kept…for about five days. I had all sorts of things done to me I had electrical cables attached to my feet (toes) and they switched on the power from a low current up to a point when the current was too much for me and I would pass out. On one particular incident / occasion I was kicked in the face while 1 was lying down. This broke my nose, jaw and broke off two front teeth. I thought l would never get out of there alive. I could not eat any solids and just drank water. During those days they kept on driving the point across to me that I should have listened to advice and kept my mouth shut and should not have pursued my father’s murder and kept out of MDC affairs They told me I was going to ‘join’ my father. This torture continued for days but I was later released. The pressure from our family lawyer, my wife and mother, facilitated this. We filed a report to the Police but nothing came out of it.

C2’s deportation to this situation was narrowly avoided with the help of Australian friends who bought tickets for him and his family so that he could go to another first world country where there is some possibility of having his claims for asylum seeker status granted.

B. Dangers After Arrival

Australian authorities seem to have a sanguine view of the prospects of Iraqi, Palestinian and Kuwaiti Bedoon deportees in Syria. Australian officials seem to have been oblivious of the risk to Iraqis of refoulement by Syrian authorities or of abduction by agents of Saddam Hussein before the fall of his regime.

Nor do they seem to have understood the dangers and discrimination faced by people dumped with short-term visas in Syria, in particular Palestinians or stateless Bedoon from Kuwait. Some accounts from our interviews illustrate these perils.

P5’s case for asylum was based on his public opposition to Saddam in the period 1969-1974 and the documented hanging of his associates. He told the interviewer:

The Australian Government said that it was true that Iraq is too dangerous for you but your wife has made it out of Iraq to Syria and you too have lived in Syria. So they said, you can go to Syria. After the 1998 border was opened between Iraq and Syria, Syria was no longer safe for people like me who were enemies of Saddam.

The situation has changed radically since the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime but until that point Iraqi people we interviewed had lived in fear of being refouled by Syria or assassinated by Saddam’s agents who could easily cross the border. Some like P1 and P2 say they still cannot rid themselves of fear.

Once their short-term visas expire in 1-6 months, life for the stateless Bedoon, in Syria is characterized by continual fear, insecurity, loss of basic civil rights, discrimination and poverty. In their common view Bedoon claims before a Melbourne Court were all accepted and those before a Sydney judge all rejected.

The depression is palpable in P4’s typical account. Along with all Bedoons in the Kuwait army, he was ejected and discriminated against, on suspicion of being under Iraqi influence after the Gulf war:

I am very tired. I have no future. I am dizzy from the situation. I cannot go to Kuwait. Also the money my wife’s family sends, $200.00, is not enough to live on. I am dizzy. I do not know what to do. What can I do? Where shall I go? Where shall I stay? I don’t know what to do. In tourists season, I dress like a Kuwaiti man but the rest of the year is a real problem when you can easily be asked about ID. Persecution is a big problem – we are in danger because our accent is different. Some people are informing the police because we have no passport…

That is the reason for persecution. Children cannot go to school because they need a passport to go to school. I take them to the Mosque each day, where there is a school for studying Islam…

They can listen but if someone wants to study then they must have ID. We have no ID so my children have to do unofficial study.

Other Bedoon deportees presented a similar picture. Thus P2 said:

I live like a street person. I have no country. No identity. No money. I carry nothing in my hands. I have an unknown destiny.

T2 says he very concerned about safety issues:

No-one has picked me up yet, but I have to avoid trouble all the time; I need to turn the other cheek if I am in a fight as I do not want to be seen by police.

T2 has changed accommodation 7 or 8 times as he is concerned that Security may be looking at him.

T5 did not report to Syrian authorities after arrival as required as he was highly anxious about what would happen to him. He believed he would be deported.

T5 is currently very anxious about his legal status in Syria and is constantly looking over his shoulder for the Security police. He keeps a very low profile, often not leaving his house for days. Security police have stopped him once and requested papers. He was forced to give a bribe of 500 Syrian pounds to the police to ‘ensure’ his safety.

A Palestinian is similarly living in a security limbo. He is constantly concerned about the Security Police, stating:

I get a scared feeling when I see security or a policeman. I feel scared – it is a real problem.

The researchers have concluded that, at the very least, Australian authorities appear to have acted without care of the dangers they have risked for detainees in the deportation process.

The defence that many of these ‘returnees’ were so called ‘voluntary’ returnees is unacceptable. Some agreed to be returned as a possible lesser of two evils – the dangers of removal against indefinite, life wasting detention in Australia, isolated from family contact. The UNHCR has three times held that Australia’s policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers is in breach of international human rights law. [9]

It is hard to understand why the perceived imperative to remove asylum seekers from Australia outweighed the danger of secondary refoulement to countries where they had been oppressed; and in a number of cases the Australian authorities recognized this oppression.

In other cases, such as that of the stateless Bedoons, people were deported with short term papers. This was done with the apparent knowledge of Australian authorities that such people would face a semi-underground life, excluded from normal employment, in terror of discovery and with active discrimination against themselves and their children in perpetuity. living outside the law in another state.

*

2. Has the Australian Government encouraged refugees to obtain false papers and is there is evidence of bribery and corruption?

This question was not an original focus of this research. It arose as a pattern emerged suggesting that agents of the Australian Government might themselves involved in practices used by ‘people smugglers’. Of the ten recorded interviews with Australian deportees in Syria, six told us that they were encouraged to get false passports. Some declined to do this.

We note that DIMIA spokespersons have publicly said:

There were safeguards to ensure that deportees did not travel on false passports. If there was any doubt about travel documents people have obtained themselves, the department referred them to the ‘relevant authorities ‘ for comment on their authenticity. [10]

This denial has to be put against the fact that six people interviewed separately in Syria told us the same story and gave names of officials who had encouraged them to buy passports from ‘people smugglers’. One such official allegedly told the deportee that if he disclosed this as a complaint, he would be in detention for 10 years. In addition, one interviewee, P5, gave us his now not needed false passport stamped with two deportation journeys out of Australia.

As described above, the second journey was needed precisely because the falsity of the passport was discovered in Abu Dhabi and P5 was returned to Australia. It is not possible to believe that these facts were not known by the Australian officials who organised the second journey on the same passport and made special arrangements to take P5 through several stopover check points with the help of Australian Consular officials.

Further material evidence of the duplicity among some Australian officials comes from a ticket purchased by Australian officials in Canberra for an interviewee to return via Syria to Kuwait. No entry documents were available for Kuwait and the person alleges he was told to enter Syria on the short visitor’s visa and then continue to live there illegally. He was given a ticket purchased by DIMIA for travel from Sydney to Kuwait and included a seven day ‘stopover’ in Damascus. If questioned at Damascus airport he was told to show the Syrian officials the ticket as evidence of the fact he was only staying for seven days. The ticket and plan were only revealed to the deportee on the day of departure from Australia. The researchers have accepted this story as true. The ticket coupon provides evidence; the person is trapped without documents in Syria, and the policy of providing travel documents only at the point of departure is the norm.

Another repeated theme in the stories is the practice of being given currency to put in travel documents to secure acceptance by immigration officers in different countries on the journey. Specific amounts were mentioned that needed to be placed inside travel documents and handed to immigration officials upon arrival. Again, the researchers tend to accept this allegation because it is so is widely told by interviewees in independent interviews.

*

3. Is the conduct of removals consistent with Australian values and legal obligations?

a. Legal Obligations

The 2000 Senate Committee [11] sets out Australia’s critical obligation to people in need of protection. It is non-refoulement. People who are found to have refugee status derive this right from the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol to which Australia was an early signatory. It means they have the right not to be returned to the country where they have a well founded fear of persecution on the grounds of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular group or political opinion – the so called ‘Convention reasons’.

People who fail to establish that they are refugees but are deemed to be in need of protection also have claims for non-refoulement under the 1984 Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) and the 1996 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). [12]

To establish a non-refoulement right under the CAT there must be substantial grounds for believing that a person will be in danger of torture on return. The Convention states that all relevant considerations must be taken into account including a consistent pattern of gross, flagrant or mass violations of human rights. The non-refoulement right under the ICCPR is mainly derived from Article 7 that no one shall be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. This is wider than the definition of torture under the CAT and does not have a nexus with Convention reasons or specific targeting. It applies particularly to people caught up in situations of generalized violence and war.

Australia has never incorporated the non-refoulement provisions of the CAT or the ICCPR into its domestic law. This means that people who seek to rely on Australia’s signing of these international agreements depend on the Immigration Minister’s discretion and that there is no illegality or legal appeal process for apparent breaches of these conventions in Australian law.

There is much disquiet about this in Australia. The 2000 Senate Committee recommended that the Attorney General’s Department, in conjunction with DIMA, examine the most appropriate means by which Australia’s laws could be amended so as to explicitly incorporate the non-refoulement obligation of the CAT and ICCPR into domestic law (recommendation 2.2.). The Government did not respond. Currently, the Senate is enquiring into the exercise of the Minister’s discretion.

The Refugee Convention prohibits countries making reservations about Articles 1 and 33 – the definition of a refugee and the non-refoulement provision. Australia has however, particularly in recent years placed a number of reservations in the Migration Act, which limit the application of our international obligations of which the following are most significant.

In 2001, the definition of persecution was narrowed [13] so that the reasons for persecution set out in the Convention will not apply unless the reason for persecution is essential and significant, it involves serious harm and systematic and discriminatory conduct.

High Court judgments have in the past preferred a wider definition noting that:

Persecution for a Convention reason may take an infinite variety of forms from death or torture to the deprivation of opportunities to compete on equal terms with other members of the relevant society [14].

Recent judgments have criticised Australia’s abandonment of a wider definition. [15] Such narrowing of the definition can lead people with internationally justifiable refugee claims to depend on the CAT or ICCPR. Hence they are protected only by the doubtful exercise of Ministerial unchallengeable discretion.

The Refugee Convention prohibits discrimination so that asylum seekers, or categories of them, are blocked from the same entitlements and services available to other Australian permanent residents. Nevertheless, Australia has a complex system of such discrimination involving mandatory indeterminate long-term detention for people who arrive without a visa – the boat people largely.

It has a variety of visas. The Temporary Protection Visa TPI limits residence (until recently to 3 years) and does not allow family reunion or even temporary departure in family crises. Other visas, e.g. for people who apply late for refugee status limit also the right to work and to access medical, educational and social security benefits and services.

Australia has excised some of its territories from the migration zone so that people arriving in those areas are removed to other countries (the Pacific Solution). Such people cannot apply for protection in Australia except with the Ministers discretion and then only for a TPI. There have also been, attempts to restrict access to the courts by asylum seekers for review of protection visa decisions although these restrictions have been, at least in part, successfully challenged in the High Court. [16]

Whether or not the removals investigated in this research are consistent with Australia’s legal obligations depends largely on the quality of the processes used to determine whether people are at risk as defined by the covenants and conventions of international law above. In turn, the quality of that assessment depends partly on the natural justice of the process, the quality of information available to the decision makers and on the reservations with which the international obligations have been incorporated into Australia’s domestic law.

Enough has been said above to indicate that a persuasive case can be made that Australia has institutionalised a perverted system to define its international legal obligations. The failure to incorporate some key international law obligations into domestic law, despite the Senate Committee’s recommendation in 2000 is also evidence of this perversity.

What this study highlights is the pain and danger inflicted on people who, on the face of it, have claims on our protection. The following section of the report highlights the way in which our harsh and indeterminate detention system, criticised, as already noted, by the UNHCR, pushed people to accept unsafe ‘voluntary’ removal. Hence some went to situations in which they faced the threat of death (P5 and C2) or torture (T1). Others went to a life on the run in terror of the Syrian security police (P1, P2, P4, T1, T2, T5). As a result most have a difficult time surviving financially and can see no end to this problem.

At this stage in the research we do not have access to the records of the determination process through which the protection rights of our interviewees were determined. Nor was this a focus of the research. Without such information it is not possible to make findings about the quality of the process experienced by our interviewees. From the viewpoint of the asylum seekers, however, the process appears as a lottery in which much information was excluded. Thus the kind of protection available in Syria was allegedly misunderstood at the Refuggee Review Tribunal. Bedoons applying in Melbourne were all accepted. Bedoons applying in Sydney were not. These experiences of the interviewees are given in their own words in the next section of the report.

b: Australian Values

Is the conduct of removals consistent with Australian values? How does our national self-image stand up to the experience of the deportees? P2 states:

I went to Australia to seek asylum, not to be tortured. If they had told me in one week whether I was accepted or not, it would have been better. I tried for 1 year and 8 months to leave Australia but I was informed by the Australian Government that there is not one single country in the world that will accept you. We were begging them to give us any document. I feel a gang of people control all of Australia like a Mafia. I don’t know anything outside the razor wire. I have not seen anything good I witnessed suicide attempts, attempts at cutting wrists, cutting chests, sewing lips and jumping onto razor wire.

P4 reflects on Australia and his whole experience. He came “looking for freedom, safety and justice. Instead we found nothing but traps, built of steel bars, bad laws, and dishonest politics”.

They destroyed me, 3 years and 3 months. What crime did I do? There is no reason they put me into jail and then give me $200.00 to go to Syria. My crime was to say ‘I am a refugee’ when I got to Sydney off the plane.

He makes complaint about the ‘lottery’ aspect of the review process – an opinion shared by many lawyers met in the course of this study:

What has made our imprisonment harder to bear is the manner in which our claims have been considered. For some asylum seekers, the process has been fair, but that is more a matter of luck than justice. When two people with identical circumstances are interviewed by different officials, one will receive a visa, while the other will not. Ignorance about the culture and politics of our homelands, flawed translations, and even the temperament of officials have all led to unfair decisions. Whatever evidence we present, whether it is our personal testimony or a report from a respected authority, it can always be ignored or dismissed by an official whose mind is already made up.

Misinformation about Bedoon safety in Syria, the harshness of treatment leading up to deportation, the long delays in processing contravene the Australian values of mateship and a fair go. P4 states:

The RRT told me that I could live in Syria. The RRT accepted that I was stateless from Kuwait but told me that the Syrian government would accept all Arabic speaking people; but the Visa I was issued for Syria was only for 3 months. The government of Australia did not care. The Certificate of Identity had a Syrian Visa that expired after 3 months on 8 April 2002. A member of the RRT, a Sri-Lankan person from Sydney, told me that I could stay in Syria for 15 years and could get Syrian citizenship. The Federal court accepted that I was a Bedoon and said, “you have a case but you can live in Syria”. Australia did not care what happened after I got to Syria.

He quotes the lawyers’ advice:

They said to me, “We know you have a just case but it is finished. Stay here and live like a dog or go from Australia”.

P2 described his own desperate situation:

I had 2 choices: whether I would commit suicide in the detention centre or whether I would leave Australia. As a group, we were considering suicide. We wrote to the media, TV, government and Churches asking “please save us”. When I remember Australia, my heart is torn to pieces.

P3 laments the curious injustice and inconsistency of Australians:

I find it very sad and tragic for Australia that the Government there now, is fighting the war against Saddam and yet this is the thing we were also prepared to do to get rid of Saddam Hussein and for this, I spent 2 years and 3 months in detention.

Some of the processes of deportation contravene common decency standards. Chemical injection undermines a person’s capacity to respond to demands; inhumane treatment denies the dignity of the human person; secrecy and lack of transparency in the actual deportation process screens the Immigration Department from scrutiny by the Australian people who often do not know what is going on.

Explaining his reason why he agreed to go from Australia ‘voluntarily’, P2 said:

I had witnessed what happens to resisters, Algerians, Turkish people. I saw people injected. One Turkish man was provided by DIMA with a false passport and they deported him forcibly. I witnessed a lot of cases like this.

An actual example of injection is graphically described by a former ACM Officer:

… was told we have an ‘extraction’; he’s high risk, whatever that meant. I mean I didn’t know anything then. I just followed orders. We get this guy out of bed early in the morning. We pull the sheet off him. He’s in his pajamas or those long pants that those people wear. He clings on to the bedstead; this is a steel bedstead. My job is to unwind his fingers, struggling, shouting he won’t go. There are nurses. First time I’d seen a ‘chemical restraint’ used. They must have broken about three needles on him. I’m thinking there must be a better way. This bloke’s not an animal.

P2 regards the secrecy of the ACM guards as ‘very strange’:

They took us to the airport. Our friends were to come and say goodbye to us but ACM staff had keys to airport doors and we were taken directly to the plane. We were restrained from seeing anybody.

C4 refers to the inhumane detention of the Iraqis on the Manoora, sent to Nauru after being promised to go to Australia:

We refused to land in Nauru and were kept on the boat for one month in a room large enough for 100 and we were 350. We could not breathe; there was not enough room and the toilet facilities were terrible, terrible. There was not enough food and the food had too much chilli in it so that no one could eat it.

These damning indictments are the views of deportees who have had unfortunate experiences and it could be argued that it is not the only view of Australia. But it does raise some questions. Is this a mirror in which Australians need to look at themselves? For the sake of protecting our borders, was it necessary so to besmirch our image as a freedom loving and just nation? Could we not have protected our borders in more humane and compassionate ways?

In his Jessie Street Trust Lecture of 2001, Marcus Einfeld reminded us that though we are generally a kind and generous people, illusion is always a possibility:

It is just that we are not as good as we say or think we are.

Referring to our treatment of asylum seekers generally, he goes on to say:

Indeed, while this situation persists, we are engaged in an empty, untruthful boast about our supposedly superior standards. [18]

***

Footnotes

[1] Senate Legal and Constitutional Reference Committee, A Sanctuary Under review: An Examination of Australia’s Refugee and humanitarian Determination processes

[2] ‘Some’ is the operative word. Disquiet has been aroused by particular cases and people returning to particular risk situations. It may well be true, as the Refugee Council of Australia told the Senate Committee, that generally speaking people are able to return to their countries without difficulty.

[3] The Senate Committee did not recommend a Government monitoring process. It took into account state sovereignty issues, diplomatic ramifications if Australian officials should formally monitor foreign nationals in overseas countries and potential dangers to the returned persons arising from such official attention. It recognized that UNHCR is not resourced for the task and finally made a recommendation (No 11.1) that the task be undertaken by NGOs in consultation with Government.

[4] US State Department, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices (2001) Iran; UNHCR Report on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran prepared by the Special Representative of the Commission on Human Rights, Mr. Maurice Danby Copithorne Document No E/CN.42002/42; Human Rights Watch By Invitation Only- Australian Asylum Policy 2003; Amnesty International Annual Report Iran 2002; Refugee Council of Australia Report on Second Field Visit To Iran September 2002.

[5] Human Rights Watch By Invitation Only- Australian Asylum Policy 2003; US State Department, Country Reports on Human Rights Practices 2002: Kuwait’ 31 March 2003; UNHCR, ‘ Chapter 6: Statelessness and Citizenship’ in The State of the World’s Refugees: A Humanitarian Agenda, 1997; Amnesty International Index MDE 13/027/2003 7 August 2003(on recent refoulements from Syria to Iran)

[6] Amnesty International, Afghanistan: Continuing need for Protection and Standards of Return of Afghan refugees 25/07/02

[7] One month later, PAUL left Mombassa in search of a more friendly African country, running the risk of detention, or worse, as he crossed more borders without papers. Some Australian friends discovered that in PAUL’s attempt to enter South Africa, he was detained in Lindela prison.

[8] Again this case does not come from our interviews but from Amnesty International sources

[9] Australian Human Rights News 18/09/03

[10] Sydney Morning Herald, September 30, 2003 p2.

[11] op.cit. Chapter 2

[12] The obligation may also arise under other international law instruments such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CROC)

[13] Migration Legislation Amendment Act (m0.6) 2001 (Cth) section 5

[14] McHugh in Applicant A & Anor v Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs [1997] 190 CLR 225 quoted in Australian Lawyers for Human Rights Refugee Law Kit 2003 p 13

[15] Loc.cit Kirby J in Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs [2002] HCA 14 [108]

[16] Australian Lawyers for Human Rights Refugee Law Kit 2003 Chapter 3 provides a summary of these limitations.

[17] This deportation happened during the ACM officer’s first week of employment in the maximum-security section of Villawood IDC. AA was deported to Algeria; this account was told to Ngareta Rossell on October 18, 2002.

[18] ABC Background Briefing Sunday 3/06/01

 

Bob Carr infuriates me to such a degree that I am writing this prior to morning coffee, after tossing and turning all night. Bob Carr was certainly NOT in my political bed this morning when I woke up.

I think he is quite sinister. Let’s ask the question: exactly who is Bob Carr in bed with? I think his bedmates don’t change often. They are always developers.

Cast your mind back to the dying days of the Unsworth Government. Back in the late 1980s, the bookish and at that point almost boyish Environment Minister was Bob Carr. He had one last task before his government was defeated by the Greiner landslide. He approved the development at Circular Quay that infamously became known as the toaster.

Bob Carr loves to flash his environmental credentials by making National Parks at the back of whoop whoop. What about the bloody built environment in Sydney? He doesn’t care about that.

His dream is to make all the foreshores a continuous strip of over priced cafes topped with similarly overpriced apartments. Just wait and see. Those working port areas will become Circular Quay east writ large. It will be truly hideous.

Maybe there will be some mock references to that old thing called “shipping” in the apartment designs or commercial facilities. Like maybe there will be a pub called “The Wharfie” where they sell Americana type food with Australian names. You know, like the Stevedores Burger with upsized Wharfie Fries. It will be truly awful.

Interspersed around the foreshore will the the ubiquitous Sydney cafes. Here they will borrow heavily from Italy. Why, there may even be a whole Italian flavour in a big section of water front. Why not even build an apartment and shopping place modelled after Porto Fino in Italy? The only thing that will be genuinely Italian will be the multinational Milan-based coffee company supplying the endless mountains of beans needed for all this nonsense.

We will end up living in a Disney-like town. There will be references to things that once were, but somehow none of it will be real. A total fantasy land imagined by Bob Walt Disney-Carr.

You will sit at the remodelled Luna Park which would be by then a collection of South American style theme bars, looking at yet another yacht go by. As you stroke your greying beard you will say:

“See that expensive yacht going by – it looks good, but I remember when giant ships would come past here. I remember when this was a working port.

“Ships would come from around the world and unload their cargo. See over there, near that aging block of flats and tired old cafe, that is where once hundreds of people worked. You know, Governor Phillip said it was the finest harbour in the world. For more than two centuries it was a great trading port.

“Then early in the 21st century we had a Premier called Walt Disney-Carr. He decided to kill the port and send coals and ships to Newcastle, which would then come back to Sydney by road.

“See all those old flats? He approved them. Those windswept barbecue areas between the flats that no one goes to – he also approved them. At the time some people thought it was an advance, but we really lost part of our heritage when he did that.

The reality is every night Bob Walt Disney-Carr gets into bed and wakes up with developers. For him there is no confusion, because this is where he feels most comfortable.

Are there no limits to the numbers of flats and waterside cafes in Sydney?

Bob Carr loves to walk, but this nightmare foreshore he envisages is a place he’ll never go. He will stick to the natural walks along the coast by Maroubra, while the rest of us will stroll along poorly constructed fake heritage wharfs, cafes on one side and marinas on the other. Most of the time we will stroll in the shadow of blocks of flats. Oh sorry, I mean luxury apartments complete with high tech security and European appliances.

So many granite benchtops and Miele ovens.

The mind boggles. I’m going to buy some shares in Miele today. Small European ovens have a great future in the small flats of Sydney. I might also buy shares in Illy coffee, a company whose future in Sydney seems assured.

The new cargo cult, courtesy of Walt Disney-Carr.

Please excuse me, I have to rush off to work and earn a living in Switzerland. As I enjoy my morning coffee in a real setting, I’ll also muse about whether Sydney will be worth going back to one day. Maybe I’d rather stay somewhere authentic that cares about its heritage.

See Your say for more reader opinion of Carr ending Sydney’s proud history as a working port.

Harry is an executive at a US multinational company and is based in Switzerland. He writes a regular column for Webdiary.

 

Late bloomer. Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

My bed is starting to get crowded with strange bedfellows.

The other morning I woke up next to Carmen Lawrence, half asleep, half awake as she whispered sweet nothings about education in my ear. Later in the day I realised that Carmen’s sweet nothings were actually fundamental truths totally aligned with my values.

Seldom does one hear such things upon awakening. I realised that getting into bed with Carmen was more my cup of tea than I had previously expected. I kicked bias out the window, focused on common sense and the reality of Carmen’s position. It just seemed so right.

I’m starting to feel a bit groggy, but I’m sure I found Mark Latham in my bed only three days later. It’s all such a blur. He was singing a gentle lullaby about competition and the reform fatigue that has set in. He wants to wake up and get about reforming again. He was talking about making markets work with sensible regulation. He wanted to enable competition where it had never been seen.

In the end I had to ask him to stop. It was like he was reading my mind and playing it back so I have to think it was a dream. How else could I explain his presence in my political bed around the same time as Carmen? It was getting so busy I wasn’t sure who was in and who was out anymore.

Today I woke up next to Robert Coombs from the Maritime Union of Australia. This is beyond twilight zone. Despite the fact that he was there uninvited he was quite matter of fact about it all. He was unhappy that Labor Premier Bob Carr wants to kill Sydney Harbour as a working port.

I agreed with everything he said. I don’t want to turn it over to Sydney mega-developer Meriton. I don’t want working ports Mertonised. I like the heritage aspect – that from day one Sydney Harbour was a working port and the city’s commercial lifeline to the world. Bustling ports are things that maritime workers and dirty capitalists like me really like.

In the end they all seemed to be in bed with me at once. Carmen, Mark and Robert. Education, sensible regulation to enable markets to work properly, and working ports. All things that appealed to me. My bedfellows have been unexpected this week, but I can’t say I was disappointed and somehow all the right buttons were pressed.

It was against this backdrop, Margo that I read you describing me in the Sun Herald as a corporate high flyer and a true blue Liberal.

I didn’t need to be pinched and I don’t appreciate you waking me up. Thanks a lot. Let me live in my dream world where strange bedfellows become welcome friends.

At the time of Telecard I kicked Peter Reith out of my political bed, but I never thought things would turn to such a degree that the MUA would be on the pillow beside me.

It is not just a dream and I’m not making this up. I couldn’t agree more with EXACTLY what these three individuals are saying, and I am not too proud to say so. To me politics is not a religion, it is about making things work in the way that I think makes sense.

Life at the pragmatic centre is hardly boring. It is a very challenging place to be. It is an open place, a marketplace where good ideas are appreciated. Laurence, Latham and Coombs had good ideas this past week, so good that I don’t want to make a single knit picky point about any of it except to thank them for their contributions to our wonderful public life.

Tonight I will get into bed with some trepidation. Who wants to be the next political bedfellow of a confused Liberal?

The Democrats split on same-sex superannuation equity has opened old wounds in a party traumatised by the defection of Meg Lees and the resignation of Natasha Stott Despoja as leader. Tracy Chaloner, former Western Australian Division President of the Democrats and now one of many ex-members, writes that the latest scrap is another example of the �gang of four� wedging the party to take it over. Tracy is a politics and international studies student at Murdoch University.

 

Gang of four dumps eleven year struggle for same sex super equity

by Tracy Chaloner

It looks to me like the Democrats ‘Gang of four’ � John Cherry Andrew Murray, Lyn Allyson and Aden Ridgeway – are at it again (see Coalition heat melts Democrats on same sex super and for the background, Same sex super: how we value love).

First they pushed through the GST against the wishes of the members and balloted policy, then ousted the party Leader Natasha Stott Despoja, again against the balloted mandate of the members.

Now they are derailing an 11-year campaign that finally got up with the support of the ALP and Greens — superannuation equity for same sex couples – doing a backflip of epic proportions and abandoning this important amendment to the superannuation legislation now before Parliament. The Democrats had a long and proud tradition of fighting for the rights of same sex couples. It is an extremely important principle, one of equity and anti-discrimination. Balloted policy is very strongly supported by the party membership in this regard. It seems balloted policy, and the principles and objectives of the party, are no longer worth the paper (or pixels) they are written on.

As a result of this clear abrogation of party policy we now have further confirmation that the ‘Gang’, and the faceless cabal who are the real power behind the Democrats are nothing more than the political opportunists the party was formed to challenge. No wonder they no longer see the old slogan – ‘Keep the bastards honest’ – as relevant. They have ‘reformed’ the party in the image of the bastards, using stealth tactics and wedge politics that John Howard would be proud of. Knowing full well that Brian Greig, and quite likely Natasha Stott Despoja and Andrew Bartlett, will cross the floor on this issue, they have created yet another wedge to leverage power over principle, a wedge that is likely to shatter whatever remaining confidence the electorate and members had in the Democrats as a champion of principle, social justice and equity.

Shame, shame, shame on the ‘Gang’. They may be the public representation and political face of the ‘Democrats’, but I know that they don’t speak for many of the members, whom they and their cabal have rendered powerless – not that there are very many left, by all accounts, after last year’s ‘tug of war’.

The ‘Gang’ and their cabal didn’t need to leave the party in the great ‘schism’ of 2002, as was predicted by the media and many members. They have successfully hatched the parasite that was planted almost a decade ago, and its takeover of the host is now complete. It was touch and go for a while but in reality the comparatively gentle nature of ‘the host’ had no chance against such an aggressive usurper.

There is little or no real participatory democracy left in the Democrats. That is a superficial sham. The real power lies in the hands of the ‘Gang’ and the faceless cabal, who are at liberty to implement any decisions they choose, thanks to the party constitution mandating a ‘conscience’ vote and enabling other processes to be corrupted. My opinion is that these provisions in the constitution were never meant to be exercised in this way.

The loss to Australian politics is profound, leaving a void in the political spectrum that the Greens, and a few progressive individuals, are valiantly trying to fill.

The full ramifications of the cabal’s influence on the Democrats, and Australian politics, won’t truly manifest itself until the next election (if a double dissolution) or the one after, when the party is expected to be decimated. The nature and consequences of the void will then become only too apparent.

Who will ‘keep the bastards honest’? There is no doubt that Australian democracy is in desperate need of it. The Australian ethos of egalitarianism and social justice depends on it, yet the political culture is such that it rewards the ‘bastards’ and crucifies those who are committed to ‘a fair go for all’. The adversarial, hierarchical and secretive nature of Australian politics facilitates and rewards those who will do anything to get ahead, while at the same time renders powerless those who are principled � tagged ‘weak’, ‘fundis’, ‘irrational’, ‘style over substance’ and ‘idealists’, to name a few attractive epithets.

Australians have demonstrated that they no longer want this culture to prevail through an ever-increasing vote for minor parties and independents. However, as we have seen through the actions of the Democrats’ cabal and the ‘Gang’ that is their public face, they cannot be relied upon to be principled or to implement the mandate that the electorate has given them.

We need a new vision for Australian politics, one that is principled and based on humanity and compassion, on a ‘fair go’ for all, and on sharing the wealth of our nation amongst the many and not the few.

While our political landscape is stuck in a ‘two party preferred’ binary vortex, supported by vested interests especially in the media and ‘big business’, this will be difficult to achieve.

There is some hope for a three-way contest as an achievable aim, as the Liberal Democrats have shown in the UK. If it wasn’t for the ‘Gang’, the Australian Democrats could well have succeeded in achieving this outcome under the leadership of Natasha Stott Despoja. So sad that the selfish myopia of a few has derailed any real chance for our democracy to remain vibrant and relevant, rather than subsumed into the vortex of populism and power.

The Greens may well take the Democrats’ place, which is better in some ways than the current limited choice of the two major parties, that are on many fronts barely distinguishable, but in my view there is still a large void in the political spectrum, and culture that needs filling. There are many people who are expressing concern that they no longer know where to cast their vote. I am one of them.

However, it is unlikely that anyone will step up to the plate because anyone intelligent and principled enough to do so also knows that the likelihood of success is just about zero. It would be highly unlikely that they would escape unscathed, whether it in be a new party, or in trying to make cultural changes or retaining the integrity and principle in an existing one. The price one can pay as a result of well connected political witchhunting can be very, very high.

Additionally, the electorate has become increasingly cynical towards politics and politicians, with good reason. Any new endeavours or approaches to changing the culture are likely be treated with similar cynicism, fuelled by a media that is only too happy to lop the head off any tall poppy.

This is a tragedy that will have a lasting impact on Australian civil society and democracy, and one that I plant firmly at the feet of the Democrats’ cabal, ‘the Gang’, and their supporters.

The Democrats are on the verge of another bitter split, after superannuation spokesman John Cherry said his party would abandon its long-held commitment to achieve recognition of same sex couples in superannuation law.

The latest Democrats implosion followed yesterday’s report in The Age that the Government had called the Democrats bluff by threatening to dump its superannuation package rather than give same-sex couples equal superannuation rights.

Senator Cherry told The Age political correspondent Annabel Crabb the party would pass the super reforms when they hit the Senate again next week without the same sex amendment the Senate passed after Labor voted for same sex super rights for the first time. “I think it was worth doing for the moral victory of getting Labor on the record (but) there are plenty of other bills coming up that these amendments can be attached to,” Senator Cherry said.

But Western Australian Democrats Senator Brian Greig told the Herald online he would cross the floor if his Party caved in. “Senator Cherry does not speak for me on this issue. I will not vote for this Bill if the same-sex amendments fail,” he said.

Senator Cherry’s announcement flies in the face of more than a decade of failed Democrats attempts to achieve same-sex equality in superannuation law under both Labor and Liberal governments. Last month’s vote was the first time the Democrats achieved the numbers in the Senate to achieve their goal.

Senator Cherry’s spokesman played down the back-down yesterday: “The Democrats will be moving our amendment when the Senate resumes on Tuesday. We would hope the Government gives it favourable consideration.”

A spokesman for Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett said The Age report was “jumping the gun”, and that “negotiations” were still underway.

But Victorian Democrats Senator Lyn Allyson told the Herald online: “I will be (reluctantly) not insisting on the amendment.”

Senator Greig said a back down would be “profoundly disappointing” given Labor’s first-time support on the issue. He said he was yet to notify the Democrats National Executive (standard procedure for conscience votes within the party) that he would cross the floor.

Greig, an openly gay Senator in a long term same sex partnership, has campaigned against discrimination against homosexuals since he became a Senator in 1998.

Polly Bush is a nom de plume. She is a Melbourne writer and regular Webdiary columnist. Polly’s backgrounder to the same sex super saga is at Same sex super: how we value love.