Well, well, the government’s ‘Who cares?’ cover was blown big time yesterday, with revelations that John Howard and Max Moore Wilton are showing obsessive interest in the children overboard inquiry hearings. Cozy personal chats in the PMs office between Howard and a public servant in the middle of her evidence, no less. Cozy, except that Max and Howard’s top minders listened in. One of the men Howard doesn’t want to give evidence, his foreign affairs adviser Miles Jordana, told the poor woman that so far in her evidence she was “handling it OK”. Feel like handling some questioning yourself, Miles?
The hearing resumes the week after next, when Labor will have hopefully got over its nerves and self-interest and ordered Reith to appear.
Webdiary’s media critic Jack Robertson has joined the weblog scene in the cause of bolstering the left’s presence in the blogging war. “I’m at jackrobertson these days. It may not be your cup of tea – without the leash, I’ve been lobbing bombs like a foaming nutter lately. (And I seem to have been being very rude to boomers, too.) But the blogosphere has been positively teeming with Tim Blairites while you’ve been away, and I was f…ed if I was about to just sit around getting sneered at. Happy to pitch a Meeja Watch your way from time to time.”
Today, Daniel Maurice and Webdiary strategist Tim Dunlop take me to task on my piece in Redrawing maps of home. Their critique is invaluable if we bleeding hearts really want to influence policy on refugees or anything else. Tim Dymond confirms that “elite” is off the abuse list. Polly Bush, Webdiary’s rep at the Walkley’s last year, creates a questionnaire to be passed before joining the Bleeding Hearts Club, andKieron Convery decides to join. (Given the flack I’m getting for wanting a definition of a bleeding heart and asking for nicknames for our pollies, I’ll put responses to these self indulgent topics in their own entry tonight so you earnest types can avoid them.
But first, Webdiary satirist Don Arthur explains Shane Stone’s attack on the media last weekend, admitting that “I’ve been reading too many right wing columnists – it’s starting to affect my writing style.”
Don Arthur in Perth
“As I was growing up on a housing commission estate in Wodonga,” said Liberal Party Federal President Shane Stone, “I would never for one moment have contemplated that the public career I embarked upon was possible”.
That’s our Shane, a battler who made it to the top. And good on him – he’s not going to have a bunch of university educated, Pinot Noir sucking snobs lecture him on his morals. No way. So let’s see if we can help write the party pres a little speech. That’s it mate, crack open another VB, light up that cigarette and let’s get started.
Here’s the plan. First let’s make sure the transcript of this opening address to the Liberal Party Federal Council thing has a few spelling mistakes in it – make sure some of the journo’s names don’t get printed quite right. That should have some of the Howard-haters scoffing at the defects of a state school education. So you’re stupid if you can’t spell ‘Salusinszky’? Well then, you’ve just called the majority of Australians stupid. Good work. I’ll bet we snare that idiot Gerald Henderson with this one.
Second, things have quietened down a little since that whole Tampa thing – the whole reffo issue is getting a little stale. And mate, you and I know that if those rotten journos get bored they’ll start thinking about the budget figures, they’ll start pouring over everything Peter Costello says and then, naturally, they’ll start speculating about the leadership. That’s why we need to distract them – throw them a bone over the fence, give them a cat to chase.
Nothing gets a journo’s attention faster than dropping their name. You can see their pointy little ears prick up. Some of the vain bastards spend half their bosses’ time doing data base searches on their own names. So the thing to do is make a list – friendlies and unfriendlies.
We’ll give all the friendlies a pat on the back – tell them how fairminded and insightful they are. Like that sarcastic bloke with the impossible last name – ‘Salusinsinszky’ is it? (Better cut and paste that one from the Herald just to make sure we get it right). And the unfriendlies, like that awful whinger Hugh Mackay, we’ll wind up a little bit. We’ll rub their noses in their ridiculous election predictions and idiotic election analysis. Make them a bit cranky.
Yeah, this is going to be great. They can’t win can they? If they have a go at us about this reffo business they’ll just make themselves unpopular with the punters We’ll sound all reasonable and they’ll look like stuck up whiners. What was that great Howard line? … “if I can invite whom I want into my home, then I should have the right to have a say in who comes into my country” … er… hang on… maybe that was someone else. Doesn’t matter – you get the idea.
And then, on the other hand, if those complaining broadsheet scribblers try to ignore it they’ll feel like they’re giving in. Either way we win and they lose. We really ought to rub that in. The punters love us and they hate you…nah nah nah nah nah!
You and me mate, we don’t care about social status. All that wanky academic, broadsheet reading, SBS watching truckload of crap. We don’t play that game. Those Zegna suit wearing, clock collecting “we stole the children” snivelling snobs try to make us feel inferior but we’re the winners now. And they know it.
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BREAKING YOUR OWN RULES
Daniel Maurice
Welcome back, but pity there’s no change of attitude. Your article in Redrawing maps of home talks in the same breadth of “social progressives” and those who hold a contrary view as “the enemy”. Shane Stone is right – you just don’t get it. Bleeding Hearts like to portray themselves as tolerant, but as your description reveals, at the heart of their thinking is a deep-seated intolerance of other viewpoints. You’ll only start to turn things around in winning the hearts and minds of ordinary Australians when you accept that many of them who do not agree with you are not evil, they’re not your moral inferior, THEY JUST SEE THINGS DIFFERENTLY. You have to start by acknowledging their legitimacy.
I replied: That was the point of the piece – to acknowledge their legitimacy, and accept that most people have a different view. Seeking to change their view is OK, isn’t it?
Daniel: Not sure how describing people who disagree with you as ‘the enemy’ acknowledges their legitimacy and takes you very far in getting them to change their point of view.
I look forward to an article from you where you admit the possibility that many people who broadly support current policy on boat people are not racist or ignorantly afraid of the unknown, but genuinely believe it’s a practical, if harsh, way to deal with an incredibly difficult issue.
If you want to change views, drop the offensive and inaccurate labelling of your opponents, get off the moral high horse and describe, in detail, an alternative solution. That means not ducking the hard questions. If you believe that anyone who arrives here by whatever means claiming to be a refugee should be accepted, say so. Explain what happens what we do if the number of such arrivals grows beyond our capacity to take them. If you accept that some form of check would still be required to deal with the people who (inevitably) would abuse such a liberal policy, explain how these checks would work, what would be the appeal mechanism and what we do with people who are found not to be genuine refugees. If we don’t have detention camps, tell us what what we would do with illegal immigrants who ‘disappear’ into the community while awaiting a determination. Acknowledge that if funding all this generosity means an increase in taxation or diverting resources from other government activity that you would support this.
Along the way use your column to call on Australian muslims to publicly commit to equal rights for islamic women in this country and to actively work for the establishment of democratic, open, socially and religiously tolerant societies in their former homelands. (Which Islamic country would you like to live in, Margo, in preference to Australia?)
Only honesty and real answers will win the debate, not sloganeering and name calling.
I replied: I agree that offensive labelling should be out, and that a credible alternative should be worked out – as I wrote in my piece. You’ll recall that I’ve gone on and on about the counterproductiveness of the discourse of many bleeding hearts. I concede your point on the use of “enemy”. I didn’t mean that as a term of abuse – just using war language as a metaphor. In summary, point taken.
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Dr Tim Dunlop in Washington (our dairy deregulation guru has just got his PHD, on the role of the intellectual in democratic debate)
Sorry to start by taking issue, but I must. First up, can we get the ‘woe is me’ lefty whine out of our voice, all this stuff about ‘realising we are in a minority’, defining people who disagree with us as ‘the enemy’ and engaging in fruitless conversations about definitions of ‘bleeding hearts’?
Progressives are always in a minority, or at least that is where we start until we win the arguments. Big deal. Sometimes we deserve to be a minority; sometimes we don’t. It’s just the territory we operate on. The question is, if we’re so clever and right about everything, why can’t we make other people see it? Start to answer that – honestly and without whining – and we might be on our way to changing things.
I was interested to see Stephen Holt draw a comparison with the US civil rights movement in Taking the rap. Martin Luther King’s wrote in his famous ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ (1963) that there are 7 principles of civil disobedience or ‘constructive law-breaking’ and the Australian left could do worse than adapt them to its own needs. They were:
1. Collect facts to establish there been a serious injustice not corrected by the law. I’d consider this crucial. Whatever the topic at hand is, we have to understand it inside out and be able to argue the case on its merits. We don’t need ‘leaders’ or ‘intellectuals’ to do this work for us (though they help with the process) but all should commit ourselves to knowing what we’re talking about.
2. Investigate one’s motives, purging any purely selfish or destructive aim.
3. Negotiate with officials over the injustice. This means making representations to governments and obviously depends strongly on the first point.
4. Take ‘direct’ action as opposed to indirect actions like voting or pamphleteering, in order to target a specific wrong. So things like the protest at Woomera are on the right track.
5. Act openly. That is, show up at protests like Woomera, don’t just send private letters to people like Philip Adams and think you’ve done enough.
6. Act lovingly. What King had in mind here, I think, was not to spend time attacking ‘ordinary people’ for their supposed culpability in oppression. Just concentrate on the issue, make your case effectively and win people over to your cause. You need them more than they need you. It also relates strongly back to point 2.
7. Show a willingness to accept the penalty’s for one’s act. That is, show up at Woomera, protest, and don’t then run away and hide. (This willingness to cop the consequences is one of the reasons Bob Brown is impressive and effective.)
These are tough criteria, but they worked. I wonder if the ‘bleeding hearts’ are up to anything remotely as challenging?
My main point is, let’s know what we’re talking about and do something about actual issues, one at a time if need be. Let’s stop congratulating ourselves on our superior sensibilities (which is what all talk of ‘we’re in a minority’ actually is). And let’s stop wasting time on ‘defining’ ourselves with stupid, confected labels.
Stop whining. Talk issues.
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ELITES NO MORE
Tim Dymond in Perth
Like you, I hope people won’t be unduly detained by the subject of ‘elites’ this year. Actually it seems that even the Right is having difficulty with the idea. In the current edition of ‘Quadrant’ (the one with the pink cover) Andrew Norton, late of David Kemp’s office, acknowledges that the names of pro asylum seeker ‘elites’ don’t show up in many lists of top 100 corporate executives, or in leadership positions of the major political parties.
Nevertheless they apparently still show ‘elite-like’ characteristics. He emphasises the number of QCs in newspaper petitions who identified themselves as a ‘QC’: proof, says Norton, of a preoccupation with social status. Whether or not you are a QC surely has nothing to do with your attitude to asylum seekers, therefore you must just be a snob!
He also emphasises the moralistic tone of the elites – placing anyone who does not agree with them beyond the pale. Too bad the elites can’t adopt the even-tempered, moderate and inclusive attitude of a Paddy McGuinness.
I guess the point I am trying to make is that the whole ‘elites’ argument must well and truly be running out of puff if this is the best its proponents come up with.
However Norton does make one point. In discussing Julian Burnside’s offer of a ‘room for a refugee’, he snidely observes that no similar offer was made to a local homeless person. While I don’t doubt Burnside’s sincerity, and Norton’s crocodile tears, it is the case that people’s social conscience is more likely to be fired up over a spectacular issue like detention of asylum seekers, than the more ‘humdrum’ deprivation in one’s own backyard. Social justice worthy of the name can’t be chauvinistic, but it can’t be short-sighted either.
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JOINING THE BH CLUB
Polly Bush in Queensland
Prospective Bleeding Hearts Club Requirements
1. Qualities:
– must have a heart therefore to bleed
– should have a high threshold for disappointment
– must be proud to declare bleeding heart status in own environment
– extra points for dry retching after reading anything by Tim Blair
2. Basic Entrance Test:
(i) How did you vote in last year’s Federal election?
Greens (5 points)
Dems (5 points)
Labor (-10 points)
Liberal (-10 points)
Independent (Please specify – 5 points for the electorates of Calare, Warringah. Kennedy – please try the diseased bananas from the PhilipYnes club)
One Nation Party (automatic disqualification, please see terms of agreement in fine print in my head)
(ii) If you voted Labor, who do you find more appealing?
Carmen Lawrence (Regain 10 points)
Kim Beazley (Sorry, you lose. Please proceed to the applications for the Alternative Liberal Party; see also ALP)
(c) If you voted Liberal, who do you find more appealing?
Philip Ruddock (Find the Temple of Doom, remove heart immediately)
Greg Barns (You’re alright)
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Kieron Convery in Hobart
Gee thanks, Margo. Just when an ill-educated, working-class Mick like meself finally gets to be called ‘elitist’ by the establishment, you come along and tell me they’ve given it up! Now what? Bleeding Hearts? Great!
Oh well, I never really believed I was part of the elite, not on my income.
Though I’ve only lived in Australia since 1986, I read enough to know this is hardly the first time in Australian history that the race card has been played by a devious government, of whatever shade. Nor the first time the bulk of the Australian population has appeared terrified at the notion of waves of ‘others’ arriving to infect us with their filthy ways.
Indeed, some kind of weird relief might even be drawn from the fact that the ‘others’ the Howard Government demonised at least weren’t the indigenous people. Remember how close we came to THAT race election?
It’s still so disheartening, though, to see this vein so easily tapped by what I consider the nastiest government I’ve ever lived under (and I include Thatcher’s in this).
The damage is not easily repaired. It will take courage within the ALP, should they return to government any decade soon. And somehow, when you consider their gutlessness and lack of political skill last time, you feel they’ll look more to Blair’s England than Whitlam’s Australia for inspiration. In which case I can only say my heart bleeds for Australia.
Welcome back. Sign me up.