Another depressing day in Canberra watching public servants under questioning by Senate estimates Committees – the people’s chance to ask questions. A new boat and thousands of new islands excised from Australia, the Crocodile Man – ‘I love John Howard’ – paid $175,000 to do a government commercial, outsourced Prime Minister and Cabinet department’s information technology sees its entire email back up tape thrown in the rubbish bin and lost, the same department and the PM fail to send Kylie Russell a video or photos of the wreath laying ceremony for her husband they forgot to invite her to.

Horrible days. The good news? The West Australian’s political correspondent Karen Middleton got a tape of the ceremony from the ABC and gave it to Kylie’s MP Graham Edwards to give her.

So tonight, expats (and an Australian resident) talk back, sparked by the Anna Greenup piece Our destiny: an expat’s perspective and the Brandis attack on the Greens. To end, a detailed and informative piece fromRod Sewell in Munich on the truth behind the Brandis/Bolt claims. I asked Anna for a bio, and she replied:

Are you ready for a laugh? I caught up with my cousin’s husband who is in town and he told me that the article was on the front page of smh.com.au. He’d been sent a copy by my cousin (who emailed it to the whole family). I nearly died, as I thought it would be included in web diary but not so prominently.

I’m 36 and currently living and working in Singapore within the software industry as a marketing/communication specialist. I’m single, so I have time to worry about these things that person with a family sometimes doesn’t have the time too. I’ve lived overseas for the past 4 years – 2 in London in the Banking Industry and coming up for 2 in Singapore. I’m not a member of any political groups/associations. I aspire to continue educating myself on all fronts; business, social, cultural, current affairs and personal growth. I hope see a world were people accept differences, rejoice in those differences and see the opportunities these differences bring rather than seeing them as threatening. Yes, I’m an idealist, which is why I could never go into politics.

John Carson in Copacabana, NSW picked up an error in Anna’s piece:

Anna Greenup writes with regard to the Federal government overruling the Northern Territory on euthanasia laws:

“For those who are unaware, the Australian Constitution allows the states to create their own laws, but if a state and federal law are either the same or in contradiction of each other, the Constitution dictates that the federal law will preside [sic].”

In fact, there are basically three categories of legislative authority. 1) those that the Constitution assigns exclusively to the Commonwealth, 2) those that the Constitution grants to the Commonwealth as a shared power with the states, 3) the remainder, which are exclusively state powers (state powers are the “default”, if you will). It is only in category 2) that Commonwealth legislation overrules state legislation to the extent that the two are inconsistent.

The criminal law largely falls under category 3). Had NSW, say, passed the same euthanasia laws as the Northern Territory, then there is nothing that the Federal Government could have done about it (unless it could have argued that the legislation breached some international convention that the Federal Government had signed using its external affairs power). The reason it was able to override the Northern Territory laws is because the Northern Territory is not a state. It is, as the name implies, a Commonwealth territory. The government of the Northern Territory, like that of the ACT, has its authority courtesy of the good graces of the Federal government, and any law it makes can be overturned by the Federal government – indeed the Federal government could abolish the Northern Territory government entirely if it so chose.

Webdiary got the most visitors in October since the height of the Iraq war debate – readers came in a rush to read about Bush, Hu and the aftermath. The ten most read stories were:

1. Parliament greets Bush: A day in the life of our faltering democracy

2. Howard cancels democracy for Bush and beyond: Can we stop him?

3. Snub for war widow

4. Charge of the Lightfoot brigade doesn’t stop Green protest

5. Howard’s elite – the official list

6. Who we gunna turn to now we’re the sheriff, John?

7. Martin Davies gallery

8. The truth tramplers: Media war spin on trial

9. Dominance and its dilemmas

10. War widow’s long wait for PM’s apology

The top five referring websites were:

1. michaelmoore

2. worldnews

3. yahoomediawatch

4. spleenville

5. whatreallyhappened

***

Jackie Hartley in Canada

I thought I would join the brigade of people who “never thought they would write in to a newspaper” but have been compelled to do so because of where Australia is heading. I am a final year Australian law student and I’ve come to Canada for my final semester to study First Nations law. After only two months away I have started having similar thoughts to Anna Greenup. In my first time overseas I am receiving a completely different reaction to my nationality than my seasoned traveller friends told me to expect. When Canadians realise where I’m from, the first question is, “So why did Australia support GWB on Iraq?” The icing on the cake came yesterday when I was speaking to a First Nations woman who is considering studying overseas but has never travelled before. When I suggested Australia she replied: “I don’t want to go to Australia because it’s just like America.”

***

Bruce Blackshaw in Morden, Surrey

Like Anna Greenup, I too am an expatriate, having lived and worked in London for the last six years. I retain a keen interest in what is going on in Australia, and read the SMH online, including Webdiary, daily.

I must protest, however, at Anna’s personal attack on John Howard.

It is one thing to disagree with someone’s politics. I have disagreed strongly with some recent Howard government decisions, particularly those to do with immigration and the Iraq war. And it is my democratic right to do so, and to vote against the government if I wish (well, if expats were allowed to vote!). It is even my right to criticise the government in print.

It is another thing altogether to disparage someone’s character.

Anna starts with a ridiculous shifty eyes comment about John Howard, and goes on to call him a hypocrite. Apparently, he expounds virtues and morals yet he has little to none. This are serious personal accusations, and without a long personal knowledge of John Howard the human being, Anna is ill-equipped to levy them.

I don’t know John Howard personally. I do, however, have some small knowledge of one of his sons, having worked in the same area with him in an investment bank. As a worker and a person, I could not have a higher regard for him, and I believe that is at least partially a reflection of his parents. At least, let’s give John Howard the benefit of the doubt.

Can we lay off the personal attacks, and get back to the politics please?

***

Linda Moctezuma, an Aussie in Abu Dhabi

I like your idea of the diary, but everything I read in it seems to have the same tone – one of moaning about the government. Sure, it may need to be moaned about, but it gets a bit one-sided, and therefore not very credible. That last one from the Greenup lady….not very well written, long-winded, and why does being an ex-pat give her such a crystal-clear view of Australia? I found her, like a lot of your contributors, overly smug.

***

Leigh Bentley in Muswell Hill, London

I too live outside Australia, and I know exactly what your correspondent Anna Greenup is saying. She expresses a dismay for the politician Australians have chosen as their leader which I whole-heartedly share.

I am a great believer in democracy – the electorate gets the politicians that it deserves. We (Australians) went close to getting Pauline Hanson, and we would have deserved her had we voted in large enough numbers for her. Fortunately we’re not that bad – but Australians still deserve John Howard, and Labor voters deserve Simon Crean. Americans deserve George W Bush, even if they deserved Al Gore more.

I feel that until we abandon them completely, today’s ‘opposition’ will continue to believe that it’s time will eventually come as long as they don’t ‘rock the boat’ too much. If we vote for viable alternatives – maybe it’s the Greens, maybe the Democrats and maybe a new political force yet to emerge – sooner or later the opposition will realise that genuinely new ideas and policies are the only things that really turn an electoral tide.

Please thank Anna Greenup for writing her article. It gives me great hope that Australians like her are out there. Maybe she will inspire me to add to your diary.

***

Mark Payne in London

I love your Webdiary and as an Australian living overseas it is great to see such lively debate in our country.

I felt compelled to give a different perspective to Anna Greenup’s well written piece. I have been living in London for a few years now and appreciate the view from the outside.

My first comment is that you do not need to live abroad to understand that Australia is insignificant in terms of economy and politics. It is our lot in life. Further, I agree that despite our size that we have a lot to offer the world. I think Australia and our political system and freedoms are very rare in this world and need to be appreciated.

What annoys me though is the consistent theme that anyone who votes for Howard or the Liberals is deceived by “propaganda” or somehow “complacent”.

We are a liberal society and to suggest that we are approaching dictatorship is laughable not far fetched. If people are concerned about the direction of Australian politics than I think there is a need to moderate the language or else noone will listen!

What we have in Australia is fantastic and worth preserving and I welcome intelligent debate on the subject. But how can you take anyone seriously when they dislike a Prime Minister because he has “shifty” eyes!!!

My main complaint is the constant view that somehow anyone can have an idea of what 20 million odd people think (more like 11 million voting age), this notion of “popular opinion”. Popular opinion (or some unrepresentative poll) can never be a basis for decisions in a democracy. As long as the Government adheres to the constitution and the rule of law then the only way to clearly say whether people approve or disapprove of what they are doing is by voting for them or not at the next Federal election.

I like to bet and I would be more than happy to bet on Howard retaining office in the next election. What does that say about popular opinion about the Gulf War mark II, euthanasia, the children overboard revelations, or any other issue arising in this term of the Government? Either people don’t care anymore about these issues or popular opinion cannot be gauged by a Morgan Gallop poll or how many people turn up to a street march.

Could it be that people keep voting for Howard and his policies not because they are stupid or mislead or complacent but because they have made an intelligent choice based on the alternatives put before them? Am I the only person who gives credit to the Australian voter? Could it just be that people vote for Howard and the Liberals because they approve of what they are doing?

It may be too much for some people to accept but I think a democracy deserves to have the choice of the people recognised no matter how much some people may dislike it.

Finally, I too would like to thank you Margo for Webdiary, but I must say the view expressed is not balanced, as people who are happy with the current system/status quo are always less inclined to write in, that being human nature I suppose. I hope to address that imbalance. I enjoy reading everyone’s views all the same.

PS: Go the Wallabies, because if England win the World Cup there will be a lot of ex-pats coming home!!)

***

Ned Roche in Inverell NW Slopes and Plains NSW

I have come back to reading Webdiary of late because the paid journos are giving us a whole of boring crap on the opinion page of the Herald lately. My summary of Anna Greenup’s article:

* “Australia really is the arse end of the world, thanks Mr Keating.”

* “I’m writing from a high point of legitimacy, a successful Aussie who worked for one of the worlds biggest banks – IN LONDON, not some hideous Asian sub-branch.”

* “Australia is becoming a terrible place controlled by terrible mean-spirited pollies.”

* “I have hope that Australia will be saved when pollies wake up and take my advice.”

Frankly, I have found this obsession with democracy lately in Webdiary a tad amusing. Is Anna going to tell us as an expat what a rich and vibrant political dialogue is happening somewhere else in the world? No, she is happy to tell us how crap we have become, but not really willing to put some other model of nationhood up on a pedestal by comparison.

Why has Anna not been able to find that elusive democratic utopia which she recommends that Australia become? The answer was given by none other than Edina Monsoon: “We’re living in a global shopping mall and you’re the only one that still thinks there’s an exit darling.”

One of the core beliefs of Margaret Thatcher in her fight against the communist bloc in the Cold War was that the people behind the iron curtain should be made to realise that Westerners lived at a higher standard of living and had more and nicer things. It’s not about democracy, it’s about any system that will deliver greater economic benefits.

In 1996 less than half the people able to voted for the office of President in the “World’s greatest Democracy”, America. In 2000 with hundreds of millions of dollars spent on campaigning, no incumbent, and one of the closest races in history up to polling day, they lifted the turnout to 50%.

America is not a democracy, it is a well functioning oligarchy that allows a democratic check on the oligarchy’s power should they not provide benevolent government (benevolent = more and nicer things). Wait and see how many people turn up to vote when there is a bad recession or depression!

Recently the Oligarchy that controls America and the Oligarchy that controls China have leapt into co-operation on the central issue that will keep their populations happy, Trade. Does anyone seriously expect the West to make a song and dance about China being ruled by one political party if that political party can deliver a economic model to 1.3bn people modelled on our own?

More importantly, does anyone really want to deal with the potential chaos of transforming China into a “democracy”? Do we know what the Chinese people would then demand of their leaders, seeing they are the burgeoning power of the world? As long as the Chinese continue to supply fireworks for our New Years Eve Celebrations the vast majority of people (who don’t read this column) don’t care.

In conclusion I would like to explain to Anna why Australia is not a crap place and that in fact it is pretty wonderful.

I was born in 1976 and am therefore a member of Generation Y. I was born onto a farm where living was precarious and my parents could not afford many of the things that other people took for granted back then. Since then, through some wise moves and hard work, they have been able to deliver a good education and stability to our family.

I am a 27 year old gay man running a Pub in a town of 10,000 people West of the Great Dividing Range, I face next to no discrimination and have some really good mates. I have been able to afford to travel widely, meet people from all over the world, and spend my income how I choose. When I was stupid enough to go in a amateur Rodeo event in my small town the taxpayers spent a fortune sending me in air ambulances between hospitals and keeping me alive. I am now receiving a heavily subsidised education in Law at University which I hope will allow me to earn a good income for a long time.

So cheer up Anna. We might not be a great democracy, but future generations might look back on us and not deplore us for that, they might look back at us and jealously think to themselves: “Gee, they had more fun than us.”

***

Rodney Sewell in Munich

From a distance, it must be easy to slander people as Nazis. From a distance it may even make sense. But here in Munich when you pass the places where it began, the homes from which Jews were rounded up and taken to death or slavery, the street block where the Gestapo had its headquarters and its torture chambers, the square where boys and young men were choreographed into de-individualised but oh-so-impressive masses, the court house where those who were luckless, stupid or courageous enough to resist were harangued and insulted in a alegala trial before they were guillotined; when you start to look back into the origins of those who caused all that, of their motivations, of their careers, you begin to wonder if those in comfortable Melbourne or Canberra who sling their slanderous lies about the Greens have any inkling of what they are talking about.

I shall leave the big picture analyses of the “Green=Nazi” campaign to others. My interest is in the detail of some of Andrew Bolt’s and Senator Brandis’s statements.

Three of Mr Bolt’s arguments and two of Senator Brandis’s references are at the very least, misleading. I have limited my research to the specifically German (or German-sounding) references by the two men, assuming that SMH readers can research the English-language references themselves.

I quote from Andrew Bolt’s two articles in the Herald-Sun:

“And the green movement has been this way before. In pre-war Germany, nature-worship was as strong as it is now… Members of Germany’s main nature clubs thrilled to (Hitleras) message, more than 60 per cent of them joining the Nazis by 1939, against just 10 per cent of all men.”

In fact in 1933 independent, social democratic, Christian, trade union and communist-aligned nature clubs were banned. In 1936 the remaining underground nature clubs were mopped up, their leaders landing in prison or concentration camps. By 1939 only nature clubs aligned to the aims of the Nazi Party were allowed. A 60 percent membership crossover between the Nazi party and nature clubs would thus be expected. One could even argue that 60 percent is a bit low.

The Nazis also absorbed the German Youth Movement, the Wandervogel, which talked of our mystical relationship with the earth.

The Wandervogel were founded in 1901 by a group of Berlin high school kids looking for something to do on weekends. Like other German youth groups, it aimed to bring youth closer to nature through camping and hiking. In the 1920s it was brilliantly successful, organising trips to many different parts of the world. In 1933 the Nazis banned the group (some members did join the Hitler Youth (HJ), and from 1933 the HJ had a state monopoly on official campsites and hiking trails).

Other Wandervogel members like Robert Oelbermann objected to the dictatorship controlling all aspects of life and continued to organise and hike in secret. In 1936 he was arrested in the wide-ranging “Operation Destruction of Remaining Youth Groups” and died in 1941 in Dachau concentration camp.

The Wandervogel Group was refounded after the war and exists today. It is (and was) basically a scout group. Its ‘mystical relationship to the earth’ is about as sinister as the feeling most Sydneysiders get when they look at a beach.

One of the three key founders of the German Greens, Herbert Gruhl, said the environmental crisis was so acute the state needed perhaps ‘dictatorial powers’.

I couldn’t find that particular quote on the net, but I don’t doubt that Mr Gruhl was capable of it. Herbert Gruhl was a conservative member of the Bundestag from 1969 to 1980 and for several years the ecology expert of the CDU/CSU federal parliamentary party (the equivalent of the Liberal/National Parties).

Mr Gruhl was involved with the Greens in the late 70s but left the party in 1981, citing its “disturbing drift to the left”. Shortly after he founded the ‘Ecological-Democratic Party’ (OeDP). His extreme right-wing politics caused a showdown in the OeDP in 1990 and Mr Gruhl left that party (the OeDP still exists and has a number of members of local councils in Bavaria).

As well as his interest in ecology, Mr Gruhl was also a passionate opponent of a ‘multicultural’ society. His biography suggests that when there are authoritarian or nationalist tendencies in the modern German green movements, they are strongly and successfully opposed by the rank and file. The German Greens are proponents of Basisdemokratie (‘rank and file democracy’) and diametrically opposed to the Nazi Fuehrer-concept (the idea that one man can knows intuitively what is best for a nation).

In his attack on the Australian Greens, Senator Brandis quoted extensively from a ‘Professor Staudenmaier’:

“Even more illuminating is a work by a person who is known to be on the far left of green politics in Europe, Professor Peter Staudenmaier, who wrote a book four years ago called Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience.”

Peter Staudenmaier is not a professor and does not claim the title. But he is available as a public speaker, and his booking agents have posted the following biography:

“Peter Staudenmaier is a social ecologist and left green activist who has been involved with the Institute for Social Ecology since 1989 (Note, the ISE is not a university, it is a private institute ‘offering year-round, interdisciplinary studies to guide social change, including intensive summer programs in theory and practice, year-round B.A. degree in affiliation with Burlington College, fall, winter, and spring workshops and lectures and other educational resources.’)”

The booking agent continues:

“Currently a faculty member at ISE, Peter lives in Madison, Wisconsin, where he works at a collectively run bookstore co-op. He is also part of a network of housing cooperatives. Peter works with grassroots development organizations in Nicaragua as well as with the German radical green group Ecological Left. He devotes much of his time to independent scholarship and antifascist research. He is co-author, with Janet Biehl, of the book Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience, and has published many articles on anarchism, ecological politics, and the history of right-wing thought.”

Not the sort of person with whom Senator Brandis would often come in intellectual contact, I expect.

And finally a revealing quote from Senator Brandis, part of a claim that the Australian Greens are willing to subvert democracy in order to pursue their agenda:

Let it never be forgotten that the Nazis came to power in 1932 when they won a majority in the Reichstag in free elections.

Senator Robert Ray: They didn’t win a majority.

When they won control of the Reichstag – thank you, Senator Robert Ray – in free elections.

Yes indeed, let it never be forgotten. The first Hitler government was a coalition of right wing and centre-right parties. The ‘Enabling Law’ which then suspended the Constitution and established the dictatorship was opposed only by the centre-left Social Democrats. By the time of the vote, the Communist members of parliament were on the run, dead or in ‘protective custody’ in police cells or labour camps. The Communist Party’s parliamentary seats were annulled. Thus had Hitler his two-thirds majority and could change the Constitution, a sort of Nazi variation on the concept of “joint sitting”.

Mr Bolt and Senator Brandis display a breathtaking ignorance of history and/or a wilful manipulation of the truth. If this is the basis of Senator Brandis’s planned major speech, I look forward to analysing it with a fine-tooth-comb.

Fans of blood sports may appreciate a debate between Brandis, Bolt and Joschka Fischer, Germany’s Green Foreign Minister and still the country’s most popular politician, the next time he visits Australia. Even with the slight handicap of having to speak in English, Mr Fischer would have these intellectual pygmies for breakfast.

 

SAS Trooper Andrew Russell

John Howard today refused to explain to Parliament the “oversight” which saw the widow of Trooper Andrew Russell left off the guest list to hear George Bush speak, meet him at Howard’s barbecue or even watch him lay a wreath for fallen soldiers at the War Memorial.

He also refused to say whether or not he had investigated the cause of the failure.

Asked to explain how the oversight could occur, Mr Howard said that “whatever the circumstances of it” he took responsibility “as the head of the government … as inevitably in these things the head of government must”. Mr Howard thus avoided saying whether he was or was not personally responsible for the failure to invite Mrs Russell.

Kylie Russell’s MP, Western Australian Labor MP Graham Edwards, asked the first question of the week:

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer to what he described as ‘an oversight’ in not inviting the widow of Sergeant Russell to the wreath-laying service at the War Memorial where a wreath was laid in Sergeant Russell’s honour. How does the Prime Minister respond to the statement made by Mrs Russell, in referring to his action, when she said:

“I hope he can live with himself after denying me and my daughter an opportunity to be a part of something we would have remembered forever.”

Has this oversight been investigated and can he advise the people of Australia how such an oversight could possibly occur?

Mr Howard

I say to the member for Cowan and to the House that I am indeed very upset that the oversight did occur. I want to renew to this House the apology that I have extended in writing to Mrs Russell. I want to take the opportunity of saying that, whatever the circumstances of it, as the head of government I accept responsibility as inevitably in these things the head of government must. I also take the opportunity of saying to the honourable gentleman that suggestions made in some newspaper articles – and, indeed, contained in a letter that he wrote to me – that the failure to invite her might have been in some way due to the fact that she had been critical of government policy in relation to benefits for the families of deceased Defence personnel have no substance of any kind – no substance at all. I can only say that I am profoundly sorry that it occurred. I apologise to the lady concerned. It was an inexcusable oversight, and I can assure the honourable member that, whatever the lead-up to it was, it was not malicious. It was a mistake and, as the head of government, I accept responsibility.

***

Mrs Russell has not released a copy of Howard’s letter of apology. Edwards has seen a copy, and told me it was in almost precisely similar terms as the PM’s letter to him, published in Howard’s letter to Kylie’s MP. In that letter, Mr Howard referred to “a most regrettable oversight”.

If that is correct, Mr Howard has apologised far more profusely to the Parliament than to Trooper Russell’s widow, to whom he said he wrote last Monday. He’s got something to hide, that’s for sure.

It was a shame Labor didn’t follow up Mr Howard’s non-answer to either of Edwards’ questions, but it was determined to quickly nail the government’s latest scare campaign on security. Most questions were taken up proving that Mr Ruddocks’s demand for even more power for ASIO to detain people not suspected of a crime without charge in the light of the Brigitte matter was bogus. It was important to Labor to try to nip the next Tampa play in the bud, and to do so Labor dared to state the facts to give the public a chance to assess the merits of Ruddock’s case. It’s rather unimaginative of Howard to cast the same leading man for both tricks, and this time Labor did not follow the scare but stood firm on its principles and challenged Ruddock’s insupportable spin.

The next step in trying to force Howard to be accountable to the Australian people on his failure to invite Kylie Russell to Canberra on Thursday, October 23, is the questioning of Howard’s department – which made the arrangements for the Bush visit – by the Senate Estimates committee. Questions could begin tomorrow, led by Labor Senator John Faulkner.

My Sun Herald column is at No invite, dismissed as an ‘oversight’ and today’s Moir’ cartoon is at cartoon.

Here is an essay on Trooper Russell’s legacy by Robert Sadleir.

***

Remembering Trooper Russell,

by Robert Sadleir

Robert Sadleir served with United Nations Agencies in Ethiopia, Nepal, Bosnia Herzegovina and Afghanistan. He was in the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance Representative in Tehran at the time of Sgt. Russell’s death. He currently works as a consultant in Canberra.

Andrew Russell died a year ago on February 16 2001. He was 33. He died in the most unforgiving spot on earth where the howling sands of Dasht-e-Margo (Desert of Death) engulf the Dasht-e-Jehanum (Desert of Hell): southern Afghanistan.

And if you can escape nature’s perils here then perverse man has engineered another vile fate. The southern region of Afghanistan is, as the Essential Field Guide to Humanitarian and Conflict Zones warns, “the most heavily mined in the country with numerous anti-tank minefields”. In this the heaviest of mined lands. SAS sergeant Andrew Russell died when his Land Rover struck an anti-tank mine.

Like warriors since time immemorial, his country mourned his death in fullness but paid his widow and daughter a pitiful sum for his sacrifice. As the lone Australian soldier killed in action during the Afghanistan phase of the ‘War on Terrorism’, secular institutions are likely to afford a sacred revalorization of Russell’s life, but the fullness of that legacy needs to be conveyed.”

Andrew Russell died prior to the United Nations launching the largest repatriation of refugees in over three decades – bringing the Afghans back home. Russell’s death, though unfortunate, occurred at a time to shape the voluntary repatriation program and ensured only a small number of returnees from Iran were exposed to a hazardous route home.

On March 1 2002, a United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR) organised repatriation of Afghans began in Pakistan. The proximity of refugee camps to major roads and to Kabul meant the repatriation was expected to go relatively smoothly. It proved to be the case. By the end of 2002 over 1.5 million Afghan refugees living in Pakistan had returned home. However, returning Afghan refugees from Iran was far more problematic.

When the ‘War against Terrorism’ began in November2001, Iran closed its 950 km border with Afghanistan to prevent a refugee influx. Tehran claimed that with over a million Afghan refugees within its borders, the boat was full.

Unlike Pakistan, most refugees in Iran were not accommodated in camps. Twenty years had allowed Afghans to integrate relatively well into the Iranian economy, helped by the two nations sharing a similar tongue, Farsi and Dari, and cultural ties. The highly educated Afghans became lawyers and doctors and their children attended local schools. The uneducated found employment easily for their willingness to labour hard on building sites or do menial tasks beneath the dignity of Iranian urban dwellers.

But like refugees the world over, Afghans were scapegoats for modern social ills in Iran, from crime to unemployment. Moreover, both the reformists and theocrats – at loggerheads with one another over everything else in Iran – coalesced around this issue. The Afghans had to return home and the government appointed a hardliner, Ahmad Hosseini, director-general of the country’s Bureau of Aliens and Foreign Immigrants Affairs Office (BAFIA), to ensure repatriation occurred. The plan drawn up under a tripartite agreement signed between Tehran, Kabul and UNHCR was to voluntarily repatriate a target figure of 400,000 Afghans through two border crossing points into Afghanistan.

One border crossing was at Dogharoun in Iran’s northeastern Khorasan province, and the other at Milak in Iran’s impoverished southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province. On the surface this made logistical sense, as both frontier provinces had large refugee populations. Moreover, Dogharoun was a major commercial artery linked by a secure highway to the western Afghanistan city of Herat. From there roads linked to other parts of the country including Kabul.

On the other hand, Milak was not an ideal. Zaranj, the nearest Afghan town, was just across the border, but had little infrastructure to cope with a transiting population. Nestled by a parched lakebed in the Dasht-e-Margo, Zaranj suffocated from howling sandstorms that rendered day into night and reduced visibility to nil. Zaranj was a treacherous 200-odd kilometer drive to nearest major highway. To the northwest in Farah province a former mujahideen commander was feuding with Ismail Khan, the governor of Herat Ismail Khan, over Pashtun rights. And to the east in Hellmand were minefields and bandits eager to prey on returnees carrying with them their life’s possessions.

Yet Milak was chosen for several reasons. Most pressingly, perhaps, refugees had sheltered in this isolated part of Afghanistan for protection and had to be moved to a healthier location.

Also, the UN wished to avoid overburdening the strained infrastructure of Herat which already housed some 300000 internally displaced people in living in appalling conditions in Maslakh camp. The international community had correctly surmised returnees who had lived the past twenty years in urban environment would no longer be attracted to rural life and thus would concentrate in the large urban centres like Kabul and Herat. By routing them halfway between the two cities there might be chance that the returnees would choose other locations.

This was the backdrop in which Andrew Russell died. The exact location of his death was never disclosed, but the international community knew Australian troops were operating in the broad swathes of southern Afghanistan desert. His airlift to Kandahar confirmed the southern location of the incident.

His death became a catalyst for reappraisal of the repatriation plan by international agencies. Why? Trooper Russell’s death was concrete proof – broadcast throughout the region on BBC – of the dangers of travelling in the region, even for the best informed. What fate would returnees face at the whim of truck and bus drivers tempted to spontaneously carve short cuts in the desert to save fuel? Little was known of the location of minefields in the region for the mujihadeen had little bothered to map them in the Soviet era.

The whole repatriation process was called into question. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) felt the voluntary repatriation program was too premature – returning people to a war ravaged economy with little means to earn a livelihood made no sense. Afterall, wasn’t UNHCR responsible for protecting refugees? Political pressure came to the fore. The bellicose Hosseini was calling for an increase in the target repatriation to 600000.

The repatriation commenced in April with Milak crossing point closed. It opened briefly and was closed for manifold reasons during the course of 2002: fighting between Ismail Khan and Amanullah Khan; the belligerent behaviour of Iranian border guards; weather, illness of staff;

But behind these reasons too was the face of a young South Australian who migrated to Perth seeking adventure. By the end of 2002, the number of Afghan returnees crossing at Doghroun was 248 890. The number returning via the Milak, was only 12 413.

The official statement by Minister of Defence Robert Hill upon Andrew Russell’s death included the words: “This soldier has given his life in the service of his country as part of the global effort to make the world a safer place from the threat of terrorism.”

They are heartfelt and true, but do not capture the extraordinary legacy of Andrew Russell’s death.

 

Martin Davies image. www.daviesart.com

“Historians rarely enjoy their fifteen minutes of fame, particularly when their work covers an obscure topic…my scholarship offers little support for the conclusions Senator Brandis reached.” Peter Staudenmaier

G�day. Here�s something special � a piece by historian Peter Staudenmaier, co-author of one of the books George Brandis used to claim the Greens were Nazis in disguise. Peter agreed to elaborate on the email he sent Webdiary which I published in Ashrawi and Brandis: the great debate. After Peter�s piece, the relevant extracts from George�s speech.

 

***

Greens and Nazis

by Peter Staudenmaier

Historians rarely enjoy their fifteen minutes of fame, particularly when their work covers an obscure topic. Even if somebody out there ends up reading what we write, as likely as not we’ll complain that they’ve missed the point. When you’re thoroughly immersed in a subject, it can be hard to convey the nuances and complexities involved in a way that makes sense to a broad audience.

So it’s probably not too surprising that I was less than thrilled to find my work at the center of a political controversy in faraway Australia, a place I have never visited and know little about. When Senator Brandis took the floor of the parliament and quoted at length from a book that I co-authored, he used my writing for purposes that are quite at odds with my own.

There is nothing wrong with that in principle; it isn’t my job to tell others what lessons they ought to draw from the events and movements I study. In this case, however, I think it important to point out that my scholarship offers little support for the conclusions Senator Brandis reached.

He is not the only reader of my work to draw such conclusions. I have heard from a number of conservative political figures in the United States, where I live, who are eager to use my historical work as a weapon in the struggle against what they see as the Green menace. These people refer to my research on ecofascism as a cheap tactic to impugn virtually all varieties of political environmentalism. In my opinion, this is not a serious way to approach important historical questions.

The book that caught Senator Brandis’s attention is titled Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience. Along with my co-author Janet Biehl, I explore there the little-known legacy of right-wing ecology and its appropriation by one faction of the Nazi party in the 1930’s. Our book says quite explicitly that there is no inherent connection between classical fascism and contemporary Green politics. What gave rise to the convergence of ecology and fascism seventy years ago was a specific set of historical circumstances and a specific version of ecological thinking, which our book examines in detail.

The excerpts which Senator Brandis presented to his colleagues ignored this crucial context, and thus failed to do justice both to the very grave history that the book recounts, as well as to the current relevance of these issues in today’s world.

Moreover, the concrete parallels that Brandis emphasized � an ostensible excess of radical zeal on the part of some Australian Greens, as well as their supposedly cynical attitude toward democratic institutions � are at best tangentially related to the ideological commonalities between environmentalism and fascism that my research reveals.

The Nazis certainly did not come to power because the predecessors of the Greens in Germany were too vocal in their opposition to the militarist and authoritarian tendencies of their day.

It is possible that the Australian Greens are indeed awash in mystical and antihumanist ideas, as Senator Brandis’s portrait would have it; to comment on that question exceeds my competence. If such is the case, however, it scarcely means that fascism is on its way.

Perhaps Brandis’s ill-considered invocation of the rise of Nazism will have a salutary effect after all, if it spurs his intended targets among the Greens to study this background further. For the present, however, it would seem that vociferous disagreement with the status quo � even if its tenor is too strident for some � represents a significant bulwark against political demagoguery, not a step toward dictatorship.

That Senator Brandis apparently confused this sort of vigorous dissent with the lack of dissent that allowed fascism to flourish in the first place indicates that we still have a lot to learn from the history of political shortsightedness.

***

Extract from the Brandis speech � full text at Nazi Greens an enemy of democracy, government decrees.

… even more illuminating is a work by a person who is known to be on the far left of green politics in Europe, Professor Peter Staudenmaier, who wrote a book four years ago called ‘Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience’. He, too, drew the comparison between the political technique of the Greens in contemporary Western societies and the political technique of the environmental movementor the naturalist movement, as it was then knownin Germany in the 1920s and the 1930s. The work of both of those scholars caused Patrick Moore, a former head of Greenpeace International, to say: “In the name of speaking for the trees and other species we are faced with a movement that would usher in an era of eco-fascism.”

The commonalities between contemporary green politics and old-fashioned fascism and Nazism are chilling.

First of all – and this is the most obvious point of the lot – is the embrace of fanaticism, the embrace of a set of political values which will not brook the expression of legitimate difference. So, as we saw from Senator Brown’s and Senator Nettle’s behaviour in the House of Representatives chamber last Thursday, they are unable to listen to somebody whose political colour they dislike, whose political views they disagree with, without screaming at them. They will not even brook the legitimacy of alternative points of view. The zealotry – the fundamentalism – we saw from Senator Brown and Senator Nettle last Thursday identified them as true fanatics.

The second feature that we see is so much a common feature –

Senator Brown: Mr Acting Deputy President, I raise a point of order. I thought that standing order 193 had been made apparent to you. I ask that that comment be withdrawn.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Lightfoot): Senator Brandis, perhaps I should invite you to withdraw the term ‘fanatic’ or ‘true fanatic’.

Senator BRANDIS: Mr Acting Deputy President, I am unaware that the word ‘fanatic’ has been ever considered to be in breach of standing order 193 and I invite you to rule that an allegation of fanaticism, which is merely an allegation that somebody holds a political opinion with unreasoning zeal, is not a reflection upon the person but merely a comment on the intensity of their view.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Brandis, that seems to be a discriminatory term and when applied to a senator it is unparliamentary. I would ask that you consider withdrawing it.

Senator BRANDIS: I abide by your ruling, Mr Acting Deputy President.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT :You should withdraw, Senator Brandis.

Senator BRANDIS: I withdraw.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Thank you.

The second feature of contemporary green politics which bears chilling and striking comparison with the political techniques of the Nazis and the fascists is not merely their contempt for democratic institutions but a very cynical willingness to use those democratic parliamentary institutions to achieve antidemocratic ends. Let it never be forgotten that the Nazis came to power in 1932 when they won a majority in the Reichstag in free elections.

Senator Robert Ray: They didn’t win a majority.

When they won control of the Reichstag – thank you, Senator Robert Ray – in free elections. The mechanistic use of democratic institutions – the invocation of the good repute of democratic institutions by those who wish to destroy those institutions – is a hallmark of contemporary green politics, just as it was a hallmark of those who were their antecedents.

The third feature which we see in common between the Greens and the Nazis is a kind of ignorant nationalism, as reflected most obviously in their hatred of globalisation. Professor Staudenmaier, in his book about ecofascism, tracing those values back to their philosophical antecedents, their philosophical roots, writes: “At the very outset of the nineteenth century the deadly connection between love of land and militant racist nationalism was firmly set in place.”

Yet again, another connection that we see between the values which Senator Brown represents and the values which were the antecedents of European fascism is commented on by Professor Staudenmaier and found in the writings of Ernst Arndt and Wilhelm Riehl. Wilhelm Riehl, in a 1853 essay ‘Field and Forest’, said –

Senator Brown: Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. The imputation that my values are the same as precursors to Nazism is abhorrent and should be withdrawn.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Lightfoot): Senator Brown, as far as I was able to ascertain, and I listened intently, Senator Brandis did not refer to you. He did refer to the Greens, but I do not recall him referring to you since the other point of order.

Senator Brown: Mr Acting Deputy President, I invite you to look at the Hansard, because he referred to me by name. You were not listening carefully enough, if that is the case. No member of this parliament – whether it be Senator Brandis or I or anybody else – should have that sort of reflection on them in this place. It is against standing orders and he should withdraw.

Senator Robert Ray: I rise on a point of order. Every time that Senator Brown interrupts Senator Brandis, he gets his second wind and he can read his notes again. He is running out of puff. Can we just hear him finish his speech?

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I would be delighted to so rule, Senator Ray, but I have a procedure to follow.

Senator BRANDIS: Mr Acting Deputy President, I was merely quoting from a learned text and I was making the point, which I would submit to you is not against standing orders, of identifying the common roots of different ideas.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I think the point is, Senator Brandis, that if you mentioned Senator Brown by name then you should withdraw. If you mentioned ‘the Greens’, I understand that term is not unparliamentary. It may be unsavoury to some people but it is not unparliamentary. I ask you to withdraw if you mentioned Senator Brown by name.

Senator BRANDIS: To that extent, Mr Acting Deputy President, I withdraw.

Senator Faulkner: Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. With your extensive knowledge of the standing orders, could you inform me if there is a standing order against pomposity?

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: There is no point of order, Senator Faulkner.

I want to quote to the Senate a fairly long extract from Professor Staudenmaier’s book Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience. He identifies the antecedents of those views in the writings of Arndt and Riehl. He says this:

“Riehl, a student of Arndt further developed this sinister tradition. In some respects his ‘green’ streak went significantly deeper than Arndt’s; presaging certain tendencies in recent environmental activism, his 1853 essay Field and Forest ended with a call to fight for the rights of wilderness. But even here nationalist pathos set the tone: We must save the forest, not only so that our ovens do not become cold in winter, but also so that the pulse of life of the people continues to beat warm and joyfully … Riehl was an implacable opponent of the rise of industrialism and urbanization; his overtly antisemitic glorification of rural peasant values and undifferentiated condemnation of modernity established him as the founder of agrarian romanticism and anti-urbanism.”

These latter two fixations matured in the second half of the nineteenth century in the context of the volkisch movement; a powerful cultural disposition and social tendency which united ethnocentric populism with nature mysticism. At the heart of the volkisch temptation was a pathological response to modernity. In the face of the very real dislocations brought on by the triumph of industrial capitalism and national unification, volkisch thinkers preached a return to the land, to the simplicity and wholeness of a life attuned to nature’s purity. The mystical effusiveness of this perverted utopianism was matched by its political vulgarity. While the Volkisch movement aspired to reconstruct the society that was sanctioned by history, rooted in nature, and in communion with the cosmic life spirit, it pointedly refused to locate the sources of alienation, rootlessness and environmental destruction in social structures, laying the blame instead to rationalism, cosmopolitanism, and urban civilization. The stand-in for all of these was the age-old object of peasant hatred and middle-class resentment: the Jews.

Reformulating traditional German antisemitism into nature-friendly terms, the volkisch movement carried a volatile amalgam of nineteenth century cultural prejudices, romantic obsessions with purity, and anti-Enlightenment sentiment into twentieth century political discourse. The emergence of modern ecology forged the final link in the fateful chain which bound together aggressive nationalism, mystically charged racism, and environmentalist predilections.

That is the text to which the journalist Andrew Bolt referred in his article last weekend and in his earlier article in July. It is, as I said earlier in the speech, a chilling reminder of the common antecedents of late 20th/early 21st century Green politics and early 20th century German fascism. The antirationalism, the perverted mutated naturalism, the mysticism, the hostility to cosmopolitanism, capitalism, global structures and to the global economy are all there to see.

***

Webdiary entries on the Brandis debate:

1.Teeth bared, Howard’s team mauls our latest outbreak of democracy, October 29

2. Howl of the despondent historian, October 30

3. The battle for minds, November 5

4. Expats talk back on the state of the nation, November 5 � a detailed rebuttal of the Brandis claim by Rod Sewell in Munich

5. Ashrawi and Brandis: the great debate, November 6

 

Beauty and the barb, by Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

Here is the letter John Howard wrote to Kylie Russell’s MP Graham Edwards in reply to Edwards’ letter of protest the day after Howard failed to invite the war widow to a wreath laying ceremony by George Bush in honour of our war dead.

I’ve also republished Mr Edwards’ letter, a letter from Gini Hole in The Canberra Times on Wednesday and a reply from the War Memorial’s head of public affairs Ian Kelly which indicates deep dismay at the lack of respect shown by the Prime Minister to Kylie Russell. War Memorial staff are determined to ensure that the snub does not diminish an Australian sacred site.

My Sun Herald column on Sunday is about this matter. In Question Time next week Edwards will ask Howard to reveal who is responsible for the “oversight”, whether the SAS officers invited to attend requested the inclusion of Kylie in honour of their dead colleague Andrew, and how this unforgivable cold shoulder to Kylie and her baby daughter Leisa occurred. In a terrible irony, George Bush chose to dedicate the wreath he laid to Sgt Andrew Russell – the only soldier so far killed during our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – and Howard failed to invite his widow to the ceremony.

I hope Edwards has more success in getting the truth out of Howard than we journos, who’ve been unable to penetrate Howard spin doctors’ cone of silence.

***

29 October 2003

The Hon Graham Edwards MP

Member for Cowan

PO Box 219

KINGSWAY WA 6065

Dear Mr Edwards,

I have received your letter of October 24 about Mrs Russell.

As you may now know, Mrs Russell’s failure to be invited to attend the wreath laying ceremony at the Australian War Memorial last Thursday was a most regrettable oversight.

President Bush had indicated in his speech on the same day that he would dedicate the laying of his wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to her late husband, Sargeant Russell, and the long line of Australians who had died in service for our country.

I can assure you that neither Mrs Russell’s activities nor criticisms of the Government in relation to war widows in any way contributed to her failure to be invited.

I have written to Mrs Russell extending the Government’s deep regret that she was not invited to the War Memorial at which her presence and that of her daughter would have been entirely appropriate.

Yours sincerely,

John Howard

***

Hon John Howard

Prime Minister

Parliament House

Canberra 2600

Dear Prime Minister

I write to urge you to contact the widow of Sgt Andrew Russell and apologise for her not being not invited to attend the wreath-laying ceremony in honour of her husband at the War Memorial.

Mrs Russell was distressed that she had no prior knowledge of this event, until she was advised by media outlets about the mention of her husband in President Bush’s address to Parliament.

I am not sure whether Mrs Russell would have wanted to make the trip. I am sure, however, that she would have liked to have been advised and at least invited.

I contrast your dealings with her to your dealings with the victims of Bali. Those who lost loved ones and those who were victims in Bali have been brought to Canberra on two occasions and quite deservedly treated with a great deal of compassion, sympathy and given much support in the process of healing.

Why was Mrs Russell not extended the same comfort and support at this most important time when both you and the President of the United States made much of the sacrifices of our Defence personnel?

Mrs Russell is a constituent of mine and I know she has been very active in seeking a better deal for war widows and that she has at times been critical of you, your Government and your Ministers.

I believe the people of Australia would be affronted if this is the reason she was not invited to attend the ceremony at the War Memorial or the barbeque at The Lodge.

You may not have known that the President was going to mention Sgt Russell, although I would be surprised if you did not. You certainly knew, however, that members of the Australian Defence Forces who have been involved in the war against terrorism were invited to the Australian War Memorial for the wreath-laying ceremony.

Mrs Russell should have been extended the same courtesy and she deserves your apology.

Yours sincerely

Graham Edwards

***

Canberra Times letters published October 29 and 30

Hearts of steel

How can some of your correspondents carp and complain at Senator Bob Brown’s behaviour towards George Bush when our Prime Minister’s behaviour towards SAS trooper Andrew Russell’s widow, Kylie Russell, was to forget that she existed?

How can the collective memory of the Prime Minister’s department, the War Memorial, the Defence Force and the Embassy of the United States of America overlook the young widow? All the words of gratitude and sympathy fall emptily amongst the grandstanding.

These people must have hearts of steel and short memories.

GINI HOLE, Red Hill

*

Out of the blue

In reply to Gini Hole (CT letters, October 29), the Australian War Memorial would like to reiterate that at no time was it informed President Bush was planning to dedicate his wreath laying specifically to Sergeant Russell.

Like most people, the first we were aware of this was when the President referred to Sgt Russell in his address to the joint sitting of parliament.:

“This afternoon I will lay a wreath at the Australian war memorial, in memory of Sgt Russell and the long line of Australians who have died in service to this nation.”

102,000 Australians have died in the service of their country during war. The Australian War Memorial commemorates each and every one of them.

I can assure Gini Hole that there are no hearts of steel here, and when it comes to honouring our war dead, we have very long memories.

IAN KELLY, public affairs, Australian War Memorial

***

Previous Webdiaries:

1. Snub for war widow, October 27

2. War widow’s long wait for PM’s apology, October 29

3. Kylie’s statement, October 30

 

Martin Davies image. www.daviesart.com

I haven’t heard a speech like George Brandis’s since the one Tony Abbott made just after the 1998 Queensland election when Howard decided to switch from appeasement of One Nation to its destruction by whatever means available (Unmasked Howard gets amnesia on Hanson).

Now it’s the turn of the Greens. After the Greens interrupted George Bush, Rehame reported that 33 percent of talkback callers supported their actions. That’s way too high for such a radical action in normal times. And the Bush show choreographed for Howard’s aggrandisement is gradually being exposed – see today’s Canberra Times for proof that the blanket security was a sham: AFP put clerks on Bush duty: Claim sparks internal inquiry. Something’s gone wrong for the Government, very wrong.

This week the Government began talking up the Democrats. They’re tagging them reasonable people ready to work constructively to get compromises on controversial bills.

The reason? The government knows that moderate Liberal voters have lost faith, having realised that the Liberal Party no longer represents their beliefs. The recent formation and growing membership of the Reid Group in Sydney illustrates the trend. It’s co-founder, former Beazley chief of staff Syd Hickman nailed the disenfranchisement of true liberals in Can Liberalism fight back?

The Brandis attack is designed to persuade disaffected Liberals not to vote Green and to vote Democrats if they can’t bear to stay with the Liberals. It’s a scare campaign, pure and simple. Don’t be surprised at its viciousness – just remember what New York Times columnist Paul Krugman warned about the American government in George John’s exploitation of S11 to get uglier:

Yet it’s almost certainly wrong to think that the political exploitation of Sept. 11 and, more broadly, the Bush administration’s campaign to label critics as unpatriotic, are past their peak. It may be harder for the administration to wrap itself in the flag, but it has more incentive to do so now than ever before. Where once the administration was motivated by greed, now it’s driven by fear.

In the first months after Sept. 11, the administration’s ruthless exploitation of the atrocity was a choice, not a necessity. The natural instinct of Americans to rally around their leader in times of crisis had pushed Bush into the polling stratosphere, and his re-election seemed secure. He could have governed as the uniter he claimed to be, and would probably still be wildly popular.

But Bush’s advisers were greedy; they saw Sept. 11 as an opportunity to get everything they wanted, from another round of tax cuts, to a major weakening of the Clean Air Act, to an invasion of Iraq. And so they wrapped as much as they could in the flag.

Now it has all gone wrong. The deficit is about to go above half a trillion dollars, the economy is still losing jobs, the triumph in Iraq has turned to dust and ashes, and Bush’s poll numbers are at or below their pre-Sept. 11 levels.

Nor can the members of this administration simply lose like gentlemen. For one thing, that’s not how they operate. Furthermore, everything suggests that there are major scandals – involving energy policy, environmental policy, Iraq contracts and cooked intelligence – that would burst into the light of day if the current management lost its grip on power. So these people must win, at any cost.

The result, clearly, will be an ugly, bitter campaign – probably the nastiest of modern American history. Four months ago it seemed that the 2004 campaign would be all slow-mo films of Bush in his flight suit. But at this point, it’s likely to be pictures of Howard Dean or Wesley Clark that morph into Saddam Hussein. And Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has already rolled out the stab-in-the-back argument: If you criticize the administration, you’re lending aid and comfort to the enemy.

This political ugliness will take its toll on policy, too. The administration’s infallibility complex – its inability to admit ever making a mistake – will get even worse. And I disagree with those who think the administration can claim infallibility even while practicing policy flexibility: On major issues, like taxes or Iraq, any sensible policy would too obviously be an implicit admission that previous policies had failed.

In other words, if you thought the last two years were bad, just wait: It’s about to get worse. A lot worse.

The Greens now matter and Howard is out to destroy the latest people’s movement. In this context, it’s worth re-reading Tim Dunlop’s great piece Pauline Hanson’s gift to democracy. The Greens have a long established party structure, so the One Nation technique won’t work with this enemy. Webdiarist Simon Moffitt has tracked the roots of the government’s political assassination technique for the Greens:

Have you wondered where Liberal Senator George Brandis got his Greens/Nazism idea? I’ve been looking into the Psychology of Conservatives vs Liberals and came across Australian academic Jon Ray promoting the line, connecting the ideals of the Left to individuals like Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot. This is the far right conservatism of the Neo-Cons, Bush and Rush Limbaugh. I thought Howard’s behaviour was just desperate opportunism of the worst kind, but now I’m not so sure, and that scares me. For an idea of what the other side is saying from an Australian perspective go to brookesnews.

 

Brandis is a moderate who fought hard against the excesses of Howard’s anti-terrorism and ASIO legislation. He threatened to die in a ditch to stop the executive government getting the power to ban political organisations it didn’t like without reference to Parliament, yet now tags the Greens an enemy of the State.

This is the pathetic position liberal moderates are now in. Howard and co tell them to play attack dog to prove their loyalty, with the promise that upon sufficient proof they’ll get promotion. Chris Pyne’s been at it for years, and so was Helen Coonan until she walked away from the moderates to secure a ministry. Brandis last played attack dog big time in the unthrown children inquiry.

I spoke to an unrepentant George Brandis today. He said he was preparing a major speech further developing his theories. Later today, Howard did his standard trick. Set the hares running then appear to distance himself – he understands George’s attack but wouldn’t have used those words. He stays clean, the hate takes off. Will it work?

Webdiarist Jozef Imrich found this Los Angeles Times piece, In White House Actions, A Troubling Echo of Life in Communist China by Liu Baifang, an American citizen who emigrated from China in 1977. He writes:

Lately, I find myself worrying about my adopted country, the United States. I’m alarmed that dissent is increasingly less tolerated, and that those in power seem unable to resist trying to intimidate those who speak their minds. I grew up in the People’s Republic of China, so I know how it is to live in a place where voicing opinions that differ from official orthodoxy can be dangerous, and I fear that model… I am getting a whiff of the Leninism with which I grew up in the air of today’s America, and it makes me feel increasingly uneasy.

…I could not help but think about China recently during the flap over former State Department envoy Joseph C. Wilson IV, who angered the White House with his finding that documents suggesting Iraq had tried to acquire nuclear material from Niger were in all likelihood forged. The administration went ahead anyway in citing the documents as part of its justification for invading Iraq. After Wilson wrote an article for the New York Times calling attention to the deception, someone in the administration allegedly leaked information to the press that Wilson’s wife was an undercover CIA agent. In China, it was not just one official like Wilson who was targeted for retribution but countless individuals, many of whom spoke unwelcome truths about their country, only to be rewarded with public shaming or prison sentences.

…I also worry about what I see happening to our media and freedom of the press. The Bush administration has repeatedly made clear that it does not welcome skeptical, penetrating questions. White House spokesmen have made it clear that they view the Washington press corps as a corrupting “filter” on the news. Reporters and publications seen as unsympathetic to the administration’s goals find it harder to get access to officials. Recently, Bush made an end run around the entire White House press corps by going directly to regional television outlets in the hopes of being better able to spin the news at the local level.

Indeed, Bush press conferences, which I enjoy watching, seem to me to have become more and more like those held by the Chinese Communist Party: Nothing but the official line is given, and probing questions from reporters, which are crucial to advancing the public’s understanding of the government’s actions, are often evaded or ignored… Open inquiry, freedom of expression and debate are essential parts of a well-functioning democracy. When leaders disdain debate, ignore expert advice, deride the news media as unpatriotic and try to suppress opposing opinions, they are likely to lead their country into dangerous waters.

Jozef also recommends an interview with the Union Theological Seminary’s Joseph C. Hough on the intersection of politics and religion, why it is the duty of Christians, Jews and Muslims to fight growing economic inequality together and why he suspects that the time for a non-destructive, civil disobedience may be near.

At this time, us journos need to remember and apply Paul Krugman’s guidelines for reporting a revolutionary regime outlined in Howard cancels democracy for Bush and beyond: Can we stop him?

1. Don’t assume any policy proposals make sense in terms of their stated goals

2. Do some homework to discover the real goals

3. Don’t assume the normal rules of politics apply

4. Expect a revolutionary power to respond to criticism by attacking

5. Don’t think there’s a limit to a revolutionary powers objectives

Webdiarist Philip Gomes has some calming advice:

Pity the Greens, threatened with being bagged, tagged, and shagged by our Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin and labelled Fascists and Nazis by Liberal senator George Brandis. Clearly the ghosts at the beginning of the last century still stalk us at the beginning of this one. Is this an age old struggle destined to be repeated forever, or are we seeing the death knell for Fascist Corporatism? Do the consequences of the adventurism in Iraq spell the last gasp of tired old men still wedded to these ghosts of the 1930s?

It may be time for some to re-read Umberto Eco’s Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt. And for a view from the last century, see The Danger of American Fascism, a piece written in 1944 by Henry Wallace in the New York Times.

Maybe Senator Brandis should have a good hard look at himself in the mirror in view of this quote by the father of modern Fascism, Benito Mussolini “Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism as it is a merge of state and corporate power.” Sounds like Liberal Party and neo-liberal policy to me.

If it walks like a duck……….maybe it’s time for Steve Irwin to tackle ducks not Greens.

It’s been a big two weeks in Australian political life, I think we’re all a bit tired and emotional.

Did you read Alan Ramsey’s call today for courage in journalism, Crying out for some stirrers of the old school: Where are you, Tom Fitzgerald, when we need you? He wrote: “All this is apropos of a piece of journalism by the celebrated American columnist Russell Baker in a review of a book, The Awful Truth: Losing Our Way in the New Century, by Paul Krugman.” Phil Kendall found the link: nybooks. Phil writes: “The theme is revolutionaries. Ramsey cries out. But it’s all in his hands, and those of a few other “opinion leaders.” THEY could save OUR democracy, just by stopping the bullshit. If they wanted to. Easy”

No it isn’t Phil. Believe me.

Before your reaction to George Brandis, a piece on our democracy by Sean O’Donohue, who writes: “Whilst I don’t always agree with you or the other participants, I invariably feel the need to defend you whenever you are attacked. Such attacks, some so unnecessarily personal, are the price you pay for your independence, I guess. Which is how I found myself devoting an hour or two writing a piece advocating greater democracy. In a way web-diary embodies that spirit of participation. Keep well.”

Can anyone answer a question from Roy Wilke? “Up here in Brisbane last February, if I remember correctly, The Courier-Mail’s front page was dominated with a story over how Iraq’s “weapons of mass destruction” had been loaded onto four cargo ships which were to remain at sea until it was safe for them to return their cargoes to Iraq. Not a word has been said or written since about this. It would be interesting to track this particular yarn down, considering the odyssey of the MV Cormo Express during these past weeks.”

***

Reinventing our democracy

by Sean O’Donohue

Senator Brown’s somewhat muted remarks from the back of the People’s House should be seen as a cri de coeur for participation, even democracy itself. If you and other Webdiary participants will indulge me a little, I would like step back from the immediacy of the fracas surrounding the visits of Presidents Bush and Hu to reflect on the state of that democracy.

I was heartened to see in Debating our democracy, by Webdiarists of all colours that there is an emerging debate on the values that we citizens are seeking in this somewhat overburdened ship of state, Australia Felix.

Communities, even the Leviathan-like communities of modern states like Australia, reinvent themselves with a regularity that is as breathtaking as it is challenging. By and large the modern mechanism of that reinvention is the ballot box. Who would have thought that the extension of universal male franchise to the New South colonials in 1862 would lead to ‘radical social democratic’ experiments that marked the Australian colonies as some of the most progressive administrations in the world of the late 19th century?

Compulsory state-funded education, the beginnings of a state-funded social welfare, the extension of the franchise to women, the minimum wage, the list of achievements is long and impressive. Today, most of us regard them as birthrights – so much part of the social furniture as to be oblivious to their origins.

Without them, democracy is meaningless. Yet each was long-fought-for and hard-won. And each can be considered as an example of democracy reinventing itself. I believe that we are ready for another such reinvention.

Abstract musing on the state of democracy may seem a little ‘off-message’ for comment on the impact of just-concluded visits of the two Presidents. Or do they not provide an opportunity to reflect on the quality of democracy, on what it means to those who so regularly call on it to justify their actions?

For, at its root, isn’t it the absence of democratic legitimacy that so galls opponents of Mr Bush’s sequestration of Iraq? Would not many consciences be salved if the world’s hyper-power had sought to act only with the blessing of the legitimately constituted international body? Undoubtedly.

More than anything, then, Mr Bush represents a basic affront to the democratic principles that putatively justify his own position as President. Those same principles are also the foundation of the Australian parliament’s legitimacy. By analogy, his appearance in our People’s House is an affront those values and those who hold and represent them also, an even greater affront than President Hu’s, whose hypocrisy in insisting on the exclusion of certain members and their guests, at least had the virtue of being rendered transparent by its crudity.

That of President Bush reeks all the more for its appeal to the rule of law and democratic principle. Granted, by all reports, Hussein was a ruthless and bloody dictator whose swift demise is not to be mourned. It is just that it’s very hard to make the case for a change to a more ‘democratic’ regime when those making the case clearly have so little respect for the principles that they are espousing. Which in bypassing the UN is precisely what the Bush Administration did.

As it is at the macro level of international affairs, so it is on the battlefield of Australian democracy. I fear that the shameless invocation of democratic imagery to shroud fundamentally anti-democratic action is gradually seeping in and taking hold of Australia Felix.

After all, what more embodies the egalitarian and democratic ethos of Australia than the barbecue? The familiarity and relaxed bonhomie that the barbie evokes in most Australians was pressed into service not, we now learn, for the Australian State, but rather, the Australian government.

And here I was thinking that Mr Howard and his Liberals were governing ‘for all of us’! Alas no, as the only Australian citizens who were awarded the privilege of tossing shrimps at the proverbial hot plate were not our elected representatives but a hand-picked coterie of largely sporting and business types. (Not a rabble-rousing, chardonnay-sipper amongst them, I hope!)

No doubt the president, with his recently declared love of free speech, relished the opportunity to mix it with the cross-section of ordinary Australians assembled in his honour. And isn’t that what rankles, that the overwhelming majority of our representatives, most notably the leaders of the various opposition parties, were denied the opportunity to present themselves and their (or is that our?) points of view. Not just at the barbecue but in our very own House of Representatives!

Which brings me back to where I started: Bob Brown and his cri de coeur. Much was made of the inappropriateness of his behaviour, of the disrespect shown to both the People’s House and a visiting Head of State. However, if has as been asserted, President Bush’s visit was not to the Australian State but only its government (a distinction that becomes more sinisterly Orwellian with its every repetition) then Senators Brown and Nettle should perhaps be understood as the distant but inexorable voice of those who are not the government.

Or perhaps the barely-audible whisper of democracy itself calling those who would corrupt it to account. After all, Senator Brown was doing no more than reminding democracy’s most strident defender to return to its essential truths: respect for the law and respect for individual rights with respect to two Australian citizens, let alone the countless others unable to avail themselves of the much-vaunted and fundamental rights that form the basis of legitimate US government. He exposed an Australian government (but not a State) either too infatuated or too supine to call them to account. Surely protests like Senators Brown and Nettle represent the best hope for a truly democratic and participatory future.

For isn’t that really what Senator Brown is saying? “Let us participate, let us shape our world by respecting its laws and its institutions?” And isn’t it precisely participation and agency – and by that I mean the capacity to make our world – that is at risk when leaders exclude or ignore alternative voices?

Is that not what also underpins Senator Nettle’s comments on trade? Isn’t that what motivates those who protest globalisation and its excesses?

In a sense, doesn’t it also underpin the rise of right-wing parties around the world, including our own One Nation – the need to participate? And isn’t it the denial of democratic participation, the opportunity to sit down at the table, that spawns hideous bastard offspring like terrorism?

The hallmark of each reinvention of democracy has been a drive toward greater participation, to facilitating the inclusion of as many of a community’s citizens as possible. Isn’t that the reinvention that democracy is now edging towards? And as that reinvention beckons, is it not being resisted by many who supposedly represent its would-be beneficiaries?

Thus, from the dizzy height of his Chesterfield can Mr Howard goad the elites, Mr Bush override international law supposedly to defend it and President Hu doff Mao’s cap to his people, all in the name of democracy.

No, the cri de coeur of Senators Brown and Nettle is a welcome antidote to the spin and downright hypocrisy of the incumbents. More importantly, Senator Brown’s words remind us to return the rule of law to its pride of place. His actions remind us that this is only possible with the active participation of each and every one of us.

***

THE GREENS ARE NAZIS

Jon Hulme

We learn nothing from history. A colleague of mine pointed out that the recent visit by Bush had all the hallmarks of Hitler’s visit to Paris the day after its Fall on June 23, 1942.

While I’m no historian, when I started looking for references to this visit the timing seemed eerie. After the capitulation by France, Hitler flew in from Belgium for a whirlwind tour. While not as regulated as the Australian model, the streets were all but deserted for Hitler’s three hour visit. Hitler, like most sightseers, had his photo taken with friends, architect Albert Speer and sculptor Arno Breker in front of a number of famous Paris landmarks. Very few parisians saw the brutal dictator, as his visit was controlled by aides and security.

From the web: “From the Opera, the motorcade went on to the Madeleine, one of the city’s numerous memorials to the Napoleonic era, then drove around the Arc de Triomphe and stopped near the Eiffel Tower, where Hitler paused for a travel album snapshot with his artist companions. At Napoleon’s Tomb, in the Invalides, the Fuhrer stared at the red porphyry sarcophagus of Europe’s last great conqueror, and murmured, “This is the finest moment of my life.”

The compliance of Australia is no less than capitulation. John Howard’s egotistical attempt to grab the world stage and appease his US taskmasters while placing the country under greater risk of attack frightens the hell out of me. Yet, I find it amusing that the most fearsome, murderous repressive regime is so easily replicated by our so called democracy because of Howard’s vanity. Hitler’s visit was nothing more than sightseeing of a country under his control. Remove Hitler’s name from that last sentence, replace it with Bush and you’ll find a striking parallel to today.

The length at which the media was controlled, the people subdued and the leader’s protected from all criticism is essentially fascism by any other name. If the liberals are calling the Greens Nazis while they systematically undermine all our rights in the name of economics and the terrorism bogeyman we’re in trouble.

The Greens were the only voice of dissent heard during this time. For that I thank them, for representing my views and showing extreme courage where others are too cowardly to speak up or gagged by a opportunistic lying fascist with bushy eyebrows (pun intended).

Look out John Howard, because when my kids read the history books in fifty years, I’m sure that’s how you’ll be remembered.

***

Mike Lyvers in Queensland

Margo, I heard Brandis’s hilarious diatribe while driving somewhere yesterday. Aside from amusement my reaction was: totally ludicrous, but turnabout is fair play given how many ridiculous cries of “Nazi!” I’ve heard from Greenies and lefties directed at Howard and Ruddock in recent years.

***

Marilyn Shepherd in Kensington, South Australia

I listened yesterday with a sort of horrified fascination as George Brandis gave a speech that Senator Faulkner rightly called pompous, overblown and grandiose rhetoric which meant nothing.

Senator Brandis needs to ask himself a couple of serious questions about his deranged rantings:

1. Did Bob Brown or Kerry Nettle lie to the world to blow up an entire country and slaughter thousands of innocent people?

2. Did Bob Brown or Kerry Nettle vote to incarcerate small children in concentration camps in the desert?

3. Did Bob Brown or Kerry Nettle defend the human rights of two Australian citizens who don’t seem to be guilty of one damn thing?

4. Just how many votes did Brandis get – he merely filled a casual vacancy in 2000?

5. How many Liberal senators and members did the scrum contain which held back big, mean Kerry Nettle from giving Bush a letter?

Fair dinkum, anyone listening to Brandis would have been forced to believe that Bob had invaded Poland at the very least. These two democratically elected Senators, unlike Brandis nominated by the Liberal Party, merely spoke for tens of thousands of Australians in our Parliament.

***

Peter Fimmel

Having read most of the piece on George Brandis’s diatribe in the Senate one can only conclude that this unelected Senator from Queensland must be an intellectual midget.

How does he expect anyone to take him seriously when he accuses of being a Nazi someone who is prepared to stand against the tide of Coalition ideologues in drawing to everyone’s attention the plight of two Australians locked up in a 21st century concentration camp. His logic escapes me.

The Senator seems to be trying to raise to the status of high art the substitution of animal chatter noises in place of reasoned argument in political debate.

***

Carolyn Kollosche

Margo, I thank goodness for your column, where the truth is written about things that are going on in our ‘democracy’. Who is George Brandis to talk about democracy – ha! We don’t have one anymore, and it started slipping when the current government forced the peaceful Falun Gong protestors to remove their signs and music when there was a visiting Chinese politician a couple of years ago. This insult to our ‘democracy’ was the beginning of my passionate political views, and it is all just being compounded in the last twelve months, culminating in the events of last week. As for the Greens being Nazis, look in the mirror, George Brandis.

At the next election, many of the disaffected members of our (former) democracy will be voting for the Greens, in support of their courage not to destroy our democracy and put forward the view of ordinary Australians (or, have you forgotten them?)

PS. I find it highly amusing that the devout supporters of our government can only criticise Margo and Webdiary by resorting to crass insults. Thank you Bob Brown and Margo Kingston, for allowing us a voice.

***

Peter Funnell in Canberra

What rock did this Brandis fellow crawl out from under? I was amazed at his outburst against Brown – Howard has certainly collected quite a team of attack dogs. Truth and decency are no obstacle at all. There is a real menace about these people.

On another matter – I really think the Iraq situation has reached a critical phase. The bombings are the visible sign, but it’s the nature of the targets that reveals the breadth of the problem. The US is keen to get out quickly. The UN might have passed the last resolution on Iraq, but noone is obliging the US by rushing to assist.

Can you blame them? It reminds me of Vietnam (remember Vietnamisation) and the only thing missing now are suggestions of an “honorable peace”. The reality is that the war is not yet over. It has just gone into a new phase.

To counter this phase – close to what used to referred to as counter revolutionary warfare – a lot more troops are needed. That is not what the US want to do, and we are nowhere to be seen and simply don’t have the capability available.

I am still amazed at the paucity of planning by the US authorities. Just amazed. It’s much more than intelligence failure, to fail to predict likely outcomes.

Iraq could easily be delivered up to an even greater mess than under Saddam. The sadness is that things won’t get much better until the war is won. There is no way around this one. If possible, it would be good to get some informed observations on this matter.

***

Jenny Green

Thanks again for the amazing job you’re doing of keeping us (those who choose to be!) as informed as possible about the scary, scary times we live in. You’re really brave – yours is almost the only journalistic voice game enough to even start a commentary on this stuff, let alone such an open-minded one – and that must be frightening for you at times!

Who is Andrew Bolt? I have never heard of him. Can you tell me something about his background? (Margo: He’s a rabid right wing commentator who gives speeches at Liberal Party functions and was the person chosen to leak the top secret Wilkie report to in order to smear and discredit Wilkie’s testimony to the British WMD inquiry.)

My head fell off reading his articles – such cunning pieces of propaganda, a small handful of concrete facts twisted to suggest that the Nazi regime was a direct result of loving care of and attachment to the earth. Goebbles would be proud – this Bolt person manages to get away with stopping the story there – aside from the briefest mention of the state of Germany after Versailles. He makes Greens sound like members of a satanic cult.

I don’t believe that his articles are an outpouring of heartfelt conviction. They leave out information I was familiar with by the age of ten. They’re well-constructed propaganda. And as a jew, his link between the Green party and the Holocaust is unforgivable.

I’ve been away for a week or so – had to read all the webdiary stuff since 21/10 in a row. Like Steve Wallace I was certain that Iraq had no WMD, if for no other reason that the country itself was in an increasingly wretched state post Gulf War 1. And I’ve never seen much to convince me that Saddam put any resources or funds into anything but preserving his own and his associate’s personal lifestyle and interests.

I argued and argued and argued with friends and family – yes, I’m the loony leftie in the family – but the only way I could make them believe that I was serious was to have a bet with all of them that 6 months after war was declared the Coalition would not have found WMD. I won.

You know, when this whole thing started with 9/11, I was convinced that I had seen this stage of the history cycle before. (I did archaeology and ancient history at uni.) I was convinced we were seeing the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire – that the white west was growing sterile and complacent and would therefore begin to crumble under fresh pressure. All the art being made seemed to confirm this too – nowdays everything is either decadence or propaganda.

After Iraq, and the amazing lack of response from the majority of Australians (HOW can John Howard not have suffered like Blair over this? Would it take Andrew Wilkie committing suicide, God forbid??)

I reckon that we’re in the last days of the Roman Republic about to usher in the era of dynastic empire. The lineage may be one of political affiliation rather that of blood, but empire nonetheless. I hold out some hope for Old Europe though – I reckon they’re Greece/Byzantium – head down, internally building up power, fostering scholarship.

***

Don Wigan

Senator Brandis’s ravings should be too contemptible to need a response. He was just doing a hatchet job for his party, the same as he did during the Certain Maritime Incident inquiry.

But his and his party’s astonishing hypocrisy demand some sort of reply. In the attack he quotes from that acknowledged crusader for human rights, Andrew Bolt. So fiercely independent is this hack that he was entrusted with the leak of classified material in a futile attempt to discredit Andrew Wilkie. Senator Brown was the first to demand the AFP investigate this crime. Perhaps this attack was payback time, the same as happened in America to the spouse of the person blowing the gaff on the Uranium from Niger fraud.

Nazism? Fascism? And they’re accusing the Greens??? Let us remember:

1. This party’s leader avoided parliamentary debate about the commitment to invading Iraq by pretending that he hadn’t yet made up his mind (even though troops had been despatched) and therefore would not discuss hypothetical.

2. This reluctance did not prevent him at every opportunity heating up the warnings about Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and the threat they posed to the rest of the world, especially if given to terrorist groups. We now know there was no buildup of WMD and that the propaganda about this was essentially lies and distortions.

3. When no WMD were found, the invasion was rationalised as ‘liberating the Iraqi people from an inhumane despot’. On this, they were on firmer ground. Despite the chaos and panic shootings there at present, Robert Fisk confirms the Americans are not in the same league as Saddam Hussein’s thugs.

However, a concern for the Iraqi people is less convincing when no count is kept of the Iraqi killed and wounded, when innocent unarmed civilians and children are killed in dumb onslaughts attempting to assassinate Saddam Hussein, when depleted uranium weapons are used, when cluster bombs are used on civilians – not to mention Shock and Awe. You don’t use weapons of terror on people you are intending to liberate.

4. The Guantanamo Bay prison fiasco makes the Bush and Howard and their followers the most obscene hypocrites when throwing around allegations about their opponents hating freedom. People are held without trial and even without charge. Leaving aside totalitarian dictatorships, the last country notorious for this abuse was Apartheid South Africa. It was rightly condemned in the free world, leading to sanctions and boycotts. Interestingly, Mr Howard opposed such sanctions at the time. And the current US Vice president, Dick Cheney, won notoriety by opposing calls for Nelson Mandela to be released from prison. Funny how the same players keep cropping up.

I hesitate to compare any regime with Nazi Germany, and I do regret Senator Brandis sinking this low. I will say this about the Bush, Howard and Blair administrations. There are disturbing resemblances between their behaviour, especially when their spin doctors are involved, and Orwell’s 1984.

I hope there are enough democratic forces among the lower political ranks and among some of the media to pull them back from the ugly extremes of the past few years.

 

Kylie Russell

Text of the letter Kylie Russell sent to The West Australian newspaper on Friday night, the day after the Prime Minister snubbed her.

Despite ones opinion of George W. Bush and his visit to Australia, he is the President of the United States and as such it is a great honour for me, my daughter and our family for him to honour my husband SGT Andrew Russell in his speech to Parliament and at the National War Memorial. His visit to the war memorial should be viewed as an honour to all those fallen in the name of freedom. It is a shame that the leader of our own country has not shown this same honour to our veterans and widows. This outspoken widow has far from finished the campaign to improve veteran entitlements, and therefore will continue to be ignored by our own government as a result.

***

Correction: In Snub for war widow I said that The West Australian had run quotes from Kylie’s letter to the editor in their Monday scoop that the PM would apologise to her. In fact, The West Australian’s Daniel Clery, a member of the Canberra press gallery, conducted a telephone interview with Kylie on Sunday, and the quotes cited are from that interview. The paper did not publish her letter. Kylie has not been available to the media for comment since that telephone interview.

PM’s apology progress: War widow’s long wait for PM’s apology.

Kylie’s activism: Why SAS widow’s quarrel is a matter of honour.

 

Rats at the feast. Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

“I intend to continue to call to the attention of the Australian people the extremely alarming, frightening similarities between the methods employed by contemporary green politics and the methods and the values of the Nazis.” Liberal Senator George Brandis launches a government campaign to destroy the Greens as a political force.

George Brandis is a Queensland Liberal Senator. The Government chose him to conduct the tactics for and lead a front-on Parliamentary attack on the Greens which asserted that the party was an enemy of the State. The speech responds to a Greens’ motion for an inquiry into procedures for joint sittings of Parliament. Senator Brandis’s political biography is at the end of his speech.

***

28 October, 2003; Senate Hansard

Senator BRANDIS (Queensland) (3.59 p.m.)

I move:

Omit all words after That, substitute the Senate:

(a) condemns the behaviour of Senators Brown and Nettle during the address to the joint meeting by the President of the United States of America (the Honourable George W Bush) on 23 October 2003, in defying the order of the chair and the proper direction of the Serjeant-at-Arms;

(b) considers the behaviour of Senators Brown and Nettle to have been grossly inappropriate, discourteous, lacking in good manners and reflecting poorly upon the Parliament and Australia; and

(c) in light of the behaviour of Senators Brown and Nettle, asks the Procedure Committee to consider what steps should be taken to ensure the proper conduct of joint meetings to welcome foreign heads of state.

Copies of the amendment have been circulated at least to party leaders and have been given to the attendants.

When the people of Australia last Thursday saw the antics and the predetermined sideshow of Senator Brown and Senator Nettle during the course of President Bush’s address, I think most people – I dare say more than 90 per cent of the people of this country – thought that Senator Brown and Senator Nettle were responsible for an insult to the President of the United States and to the American people. Of course they were, but they were guilty of much more than that: they were guilty of a contempt of this parliament.

In the name of free speech, Senator Brown and Senator Nettle sought to deny the freedom of speech of the invited guest of the Australian people – sought to prevent the Australian people hearing what President Bush had to say. In the name of parliamentary democracy, Senator Brown and Senator Nettle sought to suborn parliamentary democracy.

And now they come to this chamber, bleating, awash with crocodile tears and pretending to be the custodians of free speech – pretending to be the custodians of this institution. Their own conduct last Thursday in belittling this institution – in denying the freedom of a foreign head of state to be heard by the Australian people and by the representatives of the Australian people – demonstrates the hypocrisy of their position.

Let us remember what it was in this premeditated, preordained and orchestrated stunt that Senator Brown and Senator Nettle contrived to do. First of all, they interrupted the President three times. Then, in response to a lawful direction by the Presiding Officer, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, operating under standing orders that this chamber had agreed to, they refused to abide the lawful direction of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. Thirdly, when the Speaker of the House of Representatives lawfully and properly directed the Serjeant-at-Arms to escort Senator Brown and then Senator Nettle from the chamber, they refused to obey that lawful direction. So it is not merely a question of bad manners, Senator Brown. That is offensive enough, but it is the least of your offences. It is the premeditated contempt shown by you and your colleague Senator Nettle for the procedures and the standing orders of this chamber, as agreed to by this chamber; the defiance of its presiding officer; and the defiance of its officer the Serjeant-at-Arms. To this day, you have not had the decency to apologiseto purge your contempt of this parliament.

I think until fairly recently the Australian people tended to divide the Greens party into two camps. There seemed to be two points of view about the Greens party. There were those Australians who thought that the Greens were a collection of well-meaning oddballs – and there was certainly a degree of evidence to give comfort to that view.

There were others, I think, in Australia who regarded the Greens not so much as well-meaning oddballs but as a mob of scruffy ratbags. There was certainly plenty of evidence to give comfort to that point of view. But, as their behaviour last Thursday demonstrated, the Greens are not well-meaning oddballs and they are not scruffy ratbags; they are something much more sinister than that. They have introduced into our democracy – one of the world’s greatest and most successful democracies – a new and sinister element. The journalist Andrew Bolt, in a very perceptive piece published in the –

Senator Brown: Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. I have been listening carefully to what the member has said, but I would ask you to be careful to defend the standing order which states that he shall not reflect on a member and to be very careful about the quotation he is about to make, whether or not it is made.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Lightfoot): Which standing order are you basing your point of order on, Senator Brown?

Senator Brown: The standing order which says that he shall not reflect on a member.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT There is no point of order.

In a very perceptive column syndicated throughout Australia in last Sunday’s newspapers, the journalist Andrew Bolt pointed out the striking and very dangerous antecedents of the fanaticism of contemporary green politics in this country, and its commonality and common source with the views that inspired the Nazis in prewar Germany.

In an earlier piece, published in July, Mr Bolt directed our attention to two studies that have been written of contemporary green politics – and I have read them in the last day or so; they make chilling reading – which go all the way to explaining the modus operandi of the Greens last Thursday. The first, by an American scholar, Professor Raymond Dominick, examined the common source of the fanaticism of contemporary greens with the nature worship practised by the Nazis in the 1930s. The book is called The Environmental Movement in Germany.

Senator Brown: That is a clear –

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Lightfoot): Senator Brown, are you rising on a point of order?

Senator Brown: Yes, I am.

Honourable senators interjecting

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Are you rising on a point of order, Senator Brown?

Senator Brown: Yes, I am. If you will control the house, you will hear me say that, Mr Acting Deputy President. I am referring to standing order –

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I will control the house, Senator Brown, not you. What is your point of order, Senator Brown?

Senator Brown: My point of order relates to standing order 193

Senator Boswell: Mr Acting Deputy President, I raise a point of order.

Senator Brown: You can’t. Sit down.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Boswell, I will take your point of order after I have heard Senator Brown’s point of order.

Senator Brown: On the point of order, you can see under standing order 193, ‘Rules of debate’, that a senator ‘shall not use offensive words’ against either house or against members or officers. It also mentions ‘personal reflections’. The senator on his feet has been making references to a very obnoxious regime, and to writers. That goes all the way to the behaviour of Senator Nettle and me last Thursday. That is an objectionable reference; it cannot be countenanced and I ask you to have it withdrawn.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I understand that Senator Brandis is quoting from a media article and, unless I have advice to the contrary, I intend to allow those quotes.

Senator BRANDIS: Mr Acting Deputy President, in speaking to the point of order, may I also observe that the sentence of my speech to which Senator Brown took objection was a remark about contemporary green politics; it was not specific to an individual.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I listened intently to what Senator Brandis had to say. I understand that he was not reflecting on the Senate or on the senators and therefore there is no point of order.

And I intend to continue to call to the attention of the Australian people the extremely alarming, frightening similarities between the methods employed by contemporary green politics and the methods and the values of the Nazis.

Mr Acting Deputy President, I was referring to the book by Professor Raymond Dominick, The Environmental Movement in Germany, but even more illuminating is a work by a person who is known to be on the far left of green politics in Europe, Professor Peter Staudenmaier, who wrote a book four years ago called Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience. He, too, drew the comparison between the political technique of the Greens in contemporary Western societies and the political technique of the environmental movementor the naturalist movement, as it was then knownin Germany in the 1920s and the 1930s. The work of both of those scholars caused Patrick Moore, a former head of Greenpeace International, to say: “In the name of speaking for the trees and other species we are faced with a movement that would usher in an era of eco-fascism.”

The commonalities between contemporary green politics and old-fashioned fascism and Nazism are chilling.

First of all – and this is the most obvious point of the lotis the embrace of fanaticism, the embrace of a set of political values which will not brook the expression of legitimate difference. So, as we saw from Senator Brown’s and Senator Nettle’s behaviour in the House of Representatives chamber last Thursday, they are unable to listen to somebody whose political colour they dislike, whose political views they disagree with, without screaming at them. They will not even brook the legitimacy of alternative points of view. The zealotry – the fundamentalism – we saw from Senator Brown and Senator Nettle last Thursday identified them as true fanatics.

The second feature that we see is so much a common feature –

Senator Brown: Mr Acting Deputy President, I raise a point of order. I thought that standing order 193 had been made apparent to you. I ask that that comment be withdrawn.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Lightfoot): Senator Brandis, perhaps I should invite you to withdraw the term ‘fanatic’ or ‘true fanatic’.

Senator BRANDIS: Mr Acting Deputy President, I am unaware that the word ‘fanatic’ has been ever considered to be in breach of standing order 193 and I invite you to rule that an allegation of fanaticism, which is merely an allegation that somebody holds a political opinion with unreasoning zeal, is not a reflection upon the person but merely a comment on the intensity of their view.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Brandis, that seems to be a discriminatory term and when applied to a senator it is unparliamentary. I would ask that you consider withdrawing it.

Senator BRANDIS: I abide by your ruling, Mr Acting Deputy President.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT :You should withdraw, Senator Brandis.

Senator BRANDIS: I withdraw.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Thank you.

The second feature of contemporary green politics which bears chilling and striking comparison with the political techniques of the Nazis and the fascists is not merely their contempt for democratic institutions but a very cynical willingness to use those democratic parliamentary institutions to achieve antidemocratic ends. Let it never be forgotten that the Nazis came to power in 1932 when they won a majority in the Reichstag in free elections.

Senator Robert Ray: They didn’t win a majority.

When they won control of the Reichstag – thank you, Senator Robert Ray – in free elections. The mechanistic use of democratic institutions – the invocation of the good repute of democratic institutions by those who wish to destroy those institutions – is a hallmark of contemporary green politics, just as it was a hallmark of those who were their antecedents.

The third feature which we see in common between the Greens and the Nazis is a kind of ignorant nationalism, as reflected most obviously in their hatred of globalisation. Professor Staudenmaier, in his book about ecofascism, tracing those values back to their philosophical antecedents, their philosophical roots, writes: “At the very outset of the nineteenth century the deadly connection between love of land and militant racist nationalism was firmly set in place.”

Yet again, another connection that we see between the values which Senator Brown represents and the values which were the antecedents of European fascism is commented on by Professor Staudenmaier and found in the writings of Ernst Arndt and Wilhelm Riehl. Wilhelm Riehl, in a 1853 essay ‘Field and Forest’, said –

Senator Brown: Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. The imputation that my values are the same as precursors to Nazism is abhorrent and should be withdrawn.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT (Senator Lightfoot): Senator Brown, as far as I was able to ascertain, and I listened intently, Senator Brandis did not refer to you. He did refer to the Greens, but I do not recall him referring to you since the other point of order.

Senator Brown: Mr Acting Deputy President, I invite you to look at the Hansard, because he referred to me by name. You were not listening carefully enough, if that is the case. No member of this parliament – whether it be Senator Brandis or I or anybody else – should have that sort of reflection on them in this place. It is against standing orders and he should withdraw.

Senator Robert Ray: I rise on a point of order. Every time that Senator Brown interrupts Senator Brandis, he gets his second wind and he can read his notes again. He is running out of puff. Can we just hear him finish his speech?

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I would be delighted to so rule, Senator Ray, but I have a procedure to follow.

Senator BRANDIS: Mr Acting Deputy President, I was merely quoting from a learned text and I was making the point, which I would submit to you is not against standing orders, of identifying the common roots of different ideas.

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: I think the point is, Senator Brandis, that if you mentioned Senator Brown by name then you should withdraw. If you mentioned ‘the Greens’, I understand that term is not unparliamentary. It may be unsavoury to some people but it is not unparliamentary. I ask you to withdraw if you mentioned Senator Brown by name.

Senator BRANDIS: To that extent, Mr Acting Deputy President, I withdraw.

Senator Faulkner: Mr Acting Deputy President, I rise on a point of order. With your extensive knowledge of the standing orders, could you inform me if there is a standing order against pomposity?

The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT: There is no point of order, Senator Faulkner.

I want to quote to the Senate a fairly long extract from Professor Staudenmaier’s book Ecofascism: Lessons from the German Experience. He identifies the antecedents of those views in the writings of Arndt and Riehl. He says this:

“Riehl, a student of Arndt further developed this sinister tradition. In some respects his ‘green’ streak went significantly deeper than Arndt’s; presaging certain tendencies in recent environmental activism, his 1853 essay Field and Forest ended with a call to fight for the rights of wilderness. But even here nationalist pathos set the tone: We must save the forest, not only so that our ovens do not become cold in winter, but also so that the pulse of life of the people continues to beat warm and joyfully … Riehl was an implacable opponent of the rise of industrialism and urbanization; his overtly antisemitic glorification of rural peasant values and undifferentiated condemnation of modernity established him as the founder of agrarian romanticism and anti-urbanism.”

These latter two fixations matured in the second half of the nineteenth century in the context of the volkisch movement; a powerful cultural disposition and social tendency which united ethnocentric populism with nature mysticism. At the heart of the volkisch temptation was a pathological response to modernity. In the face of the very real dislocations brought on by the triumph of industrial capitalism and national unification, volkisch thinkers preached a return to the land, to the simplicity and wholeness of a life attuned to nature’s purity. The mystical effusiveness of this perverted utopianism was matched by its political vulgarity. While the Volkisch movement aspired to reconstruct the society that was sanctioned by history, rooted in nature, and in communion with the cosmic life spirit, it pointedly refused to locate the sources of alienation, rootlessness and environmental destruction in social structures, laying the blame instead to rationalism, cosmopolitanism, and urban civilization. The stand-in for all of these was the age-old object of peasant hatred and middle-class resentment: the Jews.

Reformulating traditional German antisemitism into nature-friendly terms, the volkisch movement carried a volatile amalgam of nineteenth century cultural prejudices, romantic obsessions with purity, and anti-Enlightenment sentiment into twentieth century political discourse. The emergence of modern ecology forged the final link in the fateful chain which bound together aggressive nationalism, mystically charged racism, and environmentalist predilections.

That is the text to which the journalist Andrew Bolt referred in his article last weekend and in his earlier article in July. It is, as I said earlier in the speech, a chilling reminder of the common antecedents of late 20th/early 21st century Green politics and early 20th century German fascism. The antirationalism, the perverted mutated naturalism, the mysticism, the hostility to cosmopolitanism, capitalism, global structures and to the global economy are all there to see.

It is time that somebody in this country blew the whistle on the Greens. The Greens are not the well-meaning oddballs we thought they were. The Greens are not the scruffy ratbags we thought they were. The Greens are a sinister force in this country inspired by sinister ideas, wrapped up in a natural mysticism – which is hostile and which sets its face against the very democratic values which this parliament represents and then cynically uses the procedures of this parliament in order to give itself political cover so that the sinister and fanatical views represented by Green politicians can grow and gain strength under the cover of democratic forms.

As well – and I will not go too much further into this – we see other common features. We see the very clever use of propaganda. We see the absolute indifference to truth. We see the manipulation of bodgie science in order to maintain political conclusions. We see the hatred of industrialisation. We see the growth of occultism built around a single personality. We see a fundamentalist view of nature in which the integrity of the human person comes second to the whole of the natural system.

My point is that the behaviour we saw from Senator Nettle and Senator Brown last Thursday was not just a publicity stunt. It was not just a random event. It was the very mechanical prosecution in this parliament of a profoundly antidemocratic ideology having deeply rooted antidemocratic antecedents. To hear Senator Brown – and no doubt Senator Nettle in a momentstand up and seek to claim democratic cover for their actions and for their ideology should shock us. It should alert us to their game and it should send a message loud and clear to the Australian people – not just to the 90 per cent of Australians who condemned their behaviour last Thursday but to 100 per cent of Australians – that this is the kind of crypto-fascist politics we do not want in this country.

***

Senator BRANDIS, George Henry

Senator for Queensland

Liberal Party of Australia

Parliamentary Service

Chosen by the Parliament of Queensland on 16.5.2000 under section 15 of the Constitution to represent that State in the Senate, vice the Hon. WR Parer (resigned).

Parliamentary Positions

Temporary Chair of Committees from 18.9.02.

Committee Service

Senate Standing: House from 8.6.00 to 19.3.02; Regulations and Ordinances from 8.6.00 to 1.7.02; Senators’ Interests from 8.6.00 to 19.3.02; Procedure from 1.7.02 to 25.3.03.

Senate Legislative and General Purpose Standing: Community Affairs: Legislation Committee from 8.6.00 to 11.2.02; Employment, Workplace Relations, Small Business and Education: Legislation and References Committees from 8.6.00 to 11.2.02; Employment, Workplace Relations and Education: Legislation and References Committees from 13.2.02 to 19.3.02; Finance and Public Administration: Legislation Committee from 8.6.00; Economics: Legislation Committee from 13.2.02 (Chair from 14.2.02) and References Committee from 14.2.02.

Participating member, Employment, Workplace Relations, Small Business and Education: Legislation Committee from 31.8.00; Participating member, Economics: Legislation and References Committees from 8.3.01 to 11.2.02; Participating member, Finance and Public Administration: References Committee from 8.3.01; Participating member, Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade: Legislation and References Committees from 8.3.01; Participating member, Legal and Constitutional: Legislation and References Committees from 8.3.01.

Senate Select: A Certain Maritime Incident from 11.3.02.

Joint Statutory: Corporations and Financial Services from 14.2.02.

Joint Standing: Electoral Matters from 28.8.02.

Party Positions

State President, Young Liberals (Qld) 1981.

Chair, Constitution and Rules Committee, Liberal Party (Qld) 1993-94 and 1999-2000.

Chair, Agenda Committee, Liberal Party (Qld) 1993-95 and 1997-99.

Vice-President, Liberal Party (Qld) 1994-95.

Chair, Ryan Federal Electorate Council 1996-99.

Life Member, Young Liberal Movement.

Personal

Born 22.6.1957, Sydney, NSW.

Married.

Qualifications and Occupation before entering Federal Parliament

BA(Hons), LLB(Hons) (Qld).

BCL (Oxon.).

Barrister from 1985.

Publications

Liberals face the future: essays on Australian liberalism (with T Harley and D Markwell), Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Australian liberalism: the continuing vision (with Y Thompson and T Harley), Melbourne: The Liberal Forum, 1986.

Source: Parliamentary handbook of the Commonwealth of Australia

 

Snubbed war widow Kylie Russell could have to wait several days for her written apology from John Howard, after he failed to phone her or send it by express post or courier. (Snub for war widow.)

Mr Howard’s office used a standard stamp on Monday, meaning it could take up to four days to receive her apology.

Mr Howard did not invite the widow of SAS officer Andrew Russell, the only Australian to die in combat in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, to a wreath laying ceremony by President Bush in honour of her husband last Thursday. He also failed to invite her to watch the Bush speech thanking Australia for its sacrifice, or as a guest at his barbecue for President Bush. She learned of the ceremony after it had taken place while doing her shopping in Perth.

Mr Howard’s office said at first that Mr Howard had not known about the wreath laying ceremony for Mr Russell before Mr Bush mentioned it in his speech to Parliament, then claimed that the omission had been “an oversight”. Mrs Russell has been a public advocate for better entitlements for the families of SAS officer killed in training or combat.

Asked how the letter would be delivered, Mr Howard’s most senior spin doctor Mr Tony O’Leary said: “We just put it in the mail.” Asked why the letter had been sent by standard post, Mr Tony O’Leary replied: “What do you suggest?” When I suggested express post, Mr O’Leary replied: “It will be there shortly.”

I opened our conversation by saying I had some questions on the apology to Kylie Russell.” He sent it to Kylie Russell – why don’t you ask her? We’re not answering questions about the letter until she gets it,” Mr O’Leary replied.

I asked whether Mr Howard had explained the oversight in his letter to Mrs Russell. “Wait until she gets the letter then ask her,” he replied.

“How did that oversight occur?”

“I’ll inquire how it occurred,” he replied. On Monday I asked a junior Howard spin doctor, Mr David Luff, for an explanation of how the oversight occurred. He failed to get back to me as promised.

I asked if Mr Howard was conducting a review of procedures to ensure such an oversight would not happen again. “I don’t know,” Mr O’Leary replied.

 

Spoilt cake, by Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

G’day. Tonight, the full text of the letter from Mrs Habib to Bush and Webdiarists debate the sort of democracy we want and what we want its values to be. It’s a debate beginning to take off around Australia, despite the indifference of most media.

I’m in Canberra listening to the Senate debate on Bob Brown’s motion to refer the procedures at joint sittings to a Senate inquiry. Queensland Liberal Senator George Brandis has just accused the Greens of using the tactics of the Nazis and being a crypto-fascist party. Brandis endorsed this week’s Andrew Bolt column Bob Brown a dangerous fanatic. Andrew has run this line before – see his July effort Hitler: green guru.

Northern Territory Liberal Senator Nigel Scullion accused the Greens of “political terrorism”. Wild! Nigel was involved in the human shield (see photo on right hand side of Webdiary) and another melee activist, WA Liberal Senator Ross Lightfoot, chaired the Senate meeting discussing the issue! I’ll put the speeches up tomorrow. It’s a great debate.

American reader Joshua Boldt writes: “I would like to thank the Australian people for protesting against George W. Bush’s visit to your country. The American press no longer reports any dissent in our country, so it is nice to see some kind of protests being acknowledged. Please realize that not all Americans agree with this war-monger. There are people in America who despise everything that GW stands for. Please do not forget us, and please realize that we are trying to fight for our country.”

Journalist Robert Milliken writes: “Margo, congratulations on Howard’s elite – the official list. But why the hell didn’t the SMH itself dig into this and run it in the paper – along with your piece about the war widow snub and the revelation of Bush’s visit being a “government” one instead of a “state” one? As a fellow journo, I’m pretty horrified at how mute the media organisations have been over how the government stage managed the visit and kept Australian media shut out. At least Media Watch last night had a go at it. Anywhere else they’d be screaming blue murder.”

***

THE HABIB LETTER

This is the text of the letter to George by Mrs Habib which Liberal Senators stopped Senator Kerry Nettle giving to him last Thursday:

October 22, 2003

Dear Mr President,

America is the country that leads the civilised world with its system of democracy and justice. It is well known for its defence of human rights all over the world. It is the country of liberty, freedom, justice and dignity. As you yourself have said, it is “a country that values human life”.

My husband was arrested in Pakistan two years ago, and is currently a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay. He has not been charged with any crime – not under American law, Australian law or any law. In his two years of imprisonment, I have not been able to speak with him. How are his rights being protected by the United States? It is beyond any understanding how he could have been caught up in all of this. He is an innocent family man who only had the best interests of his family and children at heart. Because of his unjust incarceration, I have been left to look after four children. The youngest, who has only just turned three, does not remember her father.

Mamdouh has never broken any law of the United States or of any country. He is a decent and loyal citizen of Australia, where he has lived for 19 years, and was in Pakistan on family business. In fact, his only crime was that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. If the United States government considers that he is a threat to its security, then please inform us of his crime and press charges against him. If not, then please return him to his family and his country.

Thanking you in advance.

Yours sincerely,

Maha Habib, Wife of Mamdouh Habib

The Senate today passed this motion, to be given to the government to pass to the US authorities:

The Senate

A. Notes

i. That Mamdouh Habib is currently incarcerated at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, without charge.

ii. That Mr Habib’s wife, Maha Habib, has attempted to communicate her concerns regarding her husband’s status to the United States Government.

iii. That Mrs Habib wrote to the US President that her husband:

“… has not been charged with any crime – not under American law, Australian law or any law. In his two years of imprisonment I have not been able to speak with him. How are his rights being protected by the United States? It is beyond understanding how he could have been caught up in all of this… If the United States Government considers that he is a threat to its security, then please inform us of his crime and press charges against him. If not, then please return him to his family and his country.”

B. Calls on the Federal Government to convey the Habib family’s request to the United States Government as soon as possible.

***

INFORMATION BOARD

For more on war widow Kylie Russell’s campaign for improved SAS entitlements, Polly Bush recommends a piece by my sister Gay Alcorn back in February – Why SAS widow’s quarrel is a matter of honour. Gay writes:

As 2000 Australian troops prepare to risk their lives on behalf of their nation in a war in Iraq, Ms Russell, 29, a petite, pretty woman with a sandy-haired one-year-old baby on her knee, has chosen not to play the silent heroine but to prod into the politics of war. Most uncomfortably, she speaks of one of the least glamorous byproducts of war – what a nation owes to soldiers who return hideously injured or to the families of those who don’t come back at all.

She argues, and few disagree, that the $187,000 she was offered as a lump sum compensation was grossly inadequate. The pension she chose instead – just over $13,000 a year, tax free, for life, as well as other benefits – is insulting compared to the $50,000 the spouse of a federal parliamentarian receives upon his or her death, or the estimated $300,000 lump sum the partner of a killed police officer or fire fighter gets, she says.

“Everyone knows John Howard only comes to Perth when the SAS are going away or when it’s an election,” she says. “He uses those guys extraordinarily to aid his political agenda, and he promises them all when they go away we’ll look after your families, and as soon as anything happens he doesn’t want to know about it.”

Chris Montemayor: “You ask ‘Who is Andrea Ball?’ (Howard’s elite – the official list). Andrea Ball – Deputy Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the First Lady, member of the Republican Party of Texas.”

Chris Gentle: “See results.guv for details on Andrea Ball. “Andrea Ball – White House Deputy Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff to the First Lady. From 1995 until her current appointment, Andi Ball served as Chief of Staff to Laura Bush, First Lady of Texas. Previously, Andi served as Arrangements Director for the Texas Inaugural Committee. In addition, she was the Office Manager/ Convention Coordinator for the Republican Party of Texas for seven years. Andi has an Associates Degree from Alpena Community College in Michigan.”

Ben Evans: “It is true that James Kelly is a White House man, although I am left to wonder how ‘Howards spin doctor’ can only guess as to the identity of a man who attended his boss’ party. Shouldn’t he be more informed? Although, I should not be surprised after all the ‘oversights’ that occurred last Thursday.”

Gay Alcorn (former Washington correspondent for The Age and the SMH, my sister): “James Kelly is the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (he was when I was there anyhow). He deals with Australia, so he should have been at the BBQ.”

Jack H Smit: ” James A. Kelly is Assistant Secretary, Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Term of Appointment: 05/01/2001 to present. From 1994-2001, Mr. Kelly was president of the Pacific Forum, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) of Honolulu. The Pacific Forum has analyzed and led dialogue on Asia-Pacific political, security, and economic/business issues since 1975. It is the autonomous Pacific arm of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC.”

Russell Dovey in Canberra recommends Targeting Diebold with Electronic Civil Disobedience. He writes: “The link leads to evidence of endemic security flaws in the electronic vote counting systems used in 37 states for the United States presidential elections, including Florida, as well as direct evidence of tampering using those flaws. This is dynamite stuff, indictable stuff! It is required reading for those concerned about vote-fixing in the US, and possibly in Australia.”

***

Censoring the net

Malcolm Street

Just when you thought information management couldn’t get any worse or more all-encompasing, along comes siliconvalley.

Robots.txt files are used to discourage search engines from indexing particular parts of web sites. These generally include, say, personnel or other confidential material or odd dynamic parts of a website that may get a search engine into an infinite loop (been there, done that!). Compliance with the robots.txt file is voluntary, but most search engines do recognise them.

So why does the White House web site have a robots.txt file that includes exclusions for just about everything to do with Iraq? Is it to stop search engines detecting changes to documents, or just to limit the ability of the public to find these documents?

The robots.txt file can be accessed at siliconvalley It’s 59 k (huge for this type of file) and nearly every second line includes an exclusion for topics that include “iraq”.

There’s a debate on the link I’ve quoted with the usual US culture wars going on. The following comment is a welcome dose of relevance:

“As an outsider you Americans are an interesting bunch. Dan here raises an issue for possible concern, one that may be attacking your ability to be informed. One could even say that given the litany of lies used to justify recent wars that have killed thousands of innocent children it might be one of your most important tools (being informed of the truth). Yet much of the dialog I see involves endless debate questioning each others abilities and motives. Whilst you argue with one another your freedoms reduce each year, your media consolidates a bit more and your government steps a little further away from accountability. Why not focus back on the original question of how to retain your sources of information – WHATEVER the reasons for them being taken way.”

The article is also being discussed on Slashdot under the heading “Your rights online: White House website limits Iraq-related crawling”, although being Slashdot it will probably just degenerate into a political flame-war 🙂

***

Jack Thomson

Here are some extracts from George Bush Senior’s book A World Transformed, written five years ago. It was co-authored with his former national Security Adviser, Brent Scowcroft.

Bush Senior wrote the following to explain why he didn’t go after Saddam Hussein at the end of the Gulf War:

“Trying to eliminate Saddam… would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible…. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq…. There was no viable ‘exit strategy’ we could see … Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”

Perhaps George Junior has not talked to his father about this event. Perhaps he doesn’t – or can’t – read, as Michael Moore says! In any case, if only …

Many thanks for your outstanding writing in the “Herald” and in your “Web Diary”. You are an inspiration in these dark days of Australian history.

Another thought. I am finding it amazing to see how Joseph Heller’s fiction Catch 22 (first published in 1962) is becoming reality. Yossarian’s worst nightmares are coming true in Bush’s USA and Howard’s Oz. Talk about life imitating art.

Margo: I watched Peter Sellers’ Dr Strangelove the other night. Eerily contemporary. ‘Bob Roberts’ is worth another look, too, the story of a US Republican Congressional candidate against the backdrop of Bush Snr’s Gulf War.

***

READER REQUESTS FOR INFORMATION

Terry O’Kane in Melbourne

As a former ALP voter (now Greens) I have been reading with interest the Webdiary articles by Carmen Lawrence. I find myself agreeing very closely with Carmen’s sentiments and that is why I was very disturbed to read in a recent article in The Age that she voted for Kim Beazley in the leadership contest with Simon Crean.

At the time of the leadership contest I wrote a short comment to Webdiary proposing that Crean be given a chance, although I am as yet to see anything to bring my vote back to the ALP. I am probably representative of many former ALP voters (working class background, late university education) who no longer believe that the ALP holds to the ideals it was founded on and have lost faith. Surely there is a contradiction in voting for a man who embodies not only the right of the ALP but who failed so miserably on the Tampa issue and presumably would have done no better on Iraq.

Thus I would ask in all sincerity, that Carmen offer the former ALP leftwing voters such as myself some reason for her support of Beazley. Perhaps some insight into the workings of the party may clarify where the ALP is heading.

Margo: I’ve forwarded your email to Carmen and she’s agreed to respond. Here’s my assessment. Carmen said publicly that she supported Lindsay Tanner for the leadership, but he pulled out early. She didn’t want to vote for either of the two candidates, believing there was no difference between their policies or values. Yes, Beazley was the architect of the small target strategy, but Crean, as deputy and shadow treasurer, was the engineer. So given there was no choice on substance, I think Carmen would have voted for Beazley on the basis that he was more likely to remove Howard from office. Now that Crean is reliant on the left for his survival, he appears to have moved towards a more differentiated policy approach.

***

Daniel Jenkins: “What the hell has happened to Newspoll? The Creanites finally hit the front and suddenly the fortnightly readings disappear. Am I being excessively conspiratorial? Were the last two polls not commissioned and if so why not? But more importantly, were they commissioned and not published?”

***

SNUB FOR WAR WIDOW

John Boase, reading the SMH in Boston: “Anyone who could remember to invite John Eales to a barbecue could surely remember to invite Mrs Russell to a wreath laying. This effort is breathtaking, even for John Howard.”

Harry Heidelberg: “I’m totally shocked by the snub dealt out to a war widow. There needs to be a full explanation from the PM’s office. What is the reason for this? Surely it has to go beyond insensitivity? I am dumbfounded. That is one of the worst things I have heard of in a long time. Talk about wildly inappropriate. The difference between a state visit and a government visit is interesting but no amount of explanation can forgive that kind of behaviour. The man gave his life in the service and was honored by the President of the US and his wife was ignored. I want to hear more about this. Is there something I am missing? I can’t even be angry about this yet as it is so bizarre. What the hell is going on down there?”

Jason Helton: “When I was a little boy I got to be on TV with Santa. I asked for my gifts and then wished Happy Christmas to my parents and brother. I forgot my sister at home because I was so excited to be on TV with my hero Santa. John Howard did the same thing. Who cares about widows when he can be seen hanging out with his hero George W? He doesn’t care about the common people, he cares about his corporate friends and the famous people he gets to be seen with. Widows who aren’t supported after their husband dies for Johnny’s (or more probably George’s) whims? Who gives a damn? Not John Howard, that’s for sure.”

Christian Wesely: “From my perspective 12.000 miles off it makes perfect sense why Howard snubbed Kylie Russell and now adds now insult to injury by declaring it an oversight. If the war in Iraq had ended with striking success no oversight would have happened and Kylie would be an appreciated woman by now on planet Murdoch. As things stand Howard has every reason to minimise Australia’s infamous role in this ongoing conflict and the less people associate victims with it the less they will care – he hopes.” (Margo: Howard hurried up his apology yesterday – see PM sorry for widow’s absence – but still won’t explain his “oversight”.)

***

BBQ COMMENT

Ssg Stephen B Fuhr, US army, retired: “I read your article regarding Howard’s elite and wonder why they didn’t invite icons like my great mate Normie Rowe. He saved my life in Vietnam.”

Duane Kelly: “I thought the guest list quite reasonable. I was expecting much worse. You made no suggestion (except for Kylie Russell) as to who should have been there. I get the feeling you expected people like Bob Brown and other anti bush campaigners. That just would not make sense. Would you invite Howard to a function you were hosting? Before you answer, you would have no opportunity to grill him, tar and feather him or subject him to any form of torture. I get the feeling you are the Mike Moore of this country. I read your articles, as I do Mike Moore’s books, because they often contain interesting facts and anecdotes, but there is a great amount of bias there and certainly a lot of negativity. My advice to you would be to write something good about Howard and his government and restore some credibility. Surely there must be something. Granted, it won’t be found in his support of the Americans, but I don’t think he even sits comfortably with that, but you can see his logic. You really do come across as a Labour lackey which is ironic given your criticisms of people like Alan Jones using there media exposure to endorse their political opinions. I don’t think it is fair that someone who has their own newspaper column can use it to simply perpetuate their personal political views.”

Mark Alderton: “As already mentioned, even after all the exclusions the guest list was still heavily biased towards males. So what fair-dinkum, men of steel, rancheros would fail to invite a real cowboy – an Aboriginal cattle-man – to their barbeque? Without a hundred years of hard work done by black stockmen Australia wouldn’t even have a beef cattle industry. John and George are dangerously deluded wankers, I say!”(Margo: Did you notice the lack of an ethnic mix? All white European except Jackie Huggins, the indigenous invitee. )

Rawdon Lee in Sydney: “I think Steve Irwin was invited because he would be great company for G.W. Bush. Really, the man has come a long way and I’m sure he would prefer a good crocodile story to answering awkward questions about politics and dead husbands. I think it was quite considerate of Mr Howard to make sure there was one familiar face in what must be a frightening and stressful situation for the President, surrounded as he was by foreigners. It is time for the Australian media to ease up on “Dubya”, as I like to call him. He has described us as “The Sheriff” and mentioned something about trade, and I for one feel that our years of obedience have not been misspent. Most importantly he generously invited us to share in the glory of liberating Iraq from the Taliban, something which the “loony left” seems all too ready to forget.”

Jonathan Pagan: “Just a quick query: what is the “Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Biology”? I noticed that a representative of this organisation got a guernsey at the gathering for Hillary Clinton in 1996, as well as another rep, Prof Suzanne Cory, getting an invite to BBQ with Bush. Their website is almost completely uninformative as it relates entirely to the technical aspects of their work (understandably) and the history of those technical aspects. Let’s hope they keep getting these invites simply because they happen to be doing such a great job that anyone who knew of it would go out of their way to support them. Call me cynical, but knowing Howard, I find that a little hard to believe. Any idea why they keep showing up?” (Margo: Safe charity.)

***

READER IDEAS

Berry Nyman in North Adelaide, South Australia: “You were at your socialist best in reporting on the protest scene in Canberra for the US President’s visit (Parliament greets Bush: A day in the life of our faltering democracy). It is always easy to be negative in one’s comment. Would Ms Kingston care to write a positive piece on how she would have arranged things for the visit and, perhaps, coped with the disorder that may have followed?”

I replied: Good idea. I’m asking around to find an expert on normal protocols for the visit of a foreign leader who can write a piece for Webdiary.

Berry replied: “I was serious. You were scathing in your criticism of the security arrangements. I was challenging you to put your money where your keyboard is. You have now demonstrated your knowledge of the subject by assuming that an expert in protocol would know what to do. Protocal and security are two entirely different disciplines.”

I replied: Hi Berry. Security didn’t stop a Bush press conference. Hu had one, and journos needed a special security-cleared pass to get in, not just the press gallery pass. Security didn’t stop Australian journalists going to the BBQ to report the event for the same reason. Security didn’t stop Australian media filming or photgraphing inside the Parliament during the address either. I don’t know any security experts except Brigadier D’hage. D’hage did the security for the Sydney Olympics. Brigadier, are you reading? Can you help?

GENERAL COMMENT

Patrick Donoghue: “Margo, it’s no wonder that SMH sales are dropping dramatically with writers like you – a typical armchair general. Society is full of fuckwits like you – moan moan moan but contribute noting youself. As long as you have someone else to blame you’re happy. Have you not realised the more cocooned clowns like you and Robert Manne hate Johnny Howard the more people like me and millions like me who live in the real world love him? Get a life you old hag.

Michael Casey: You gave a wonderful example today (Snub for war widow and Howard’s elite – the official list) of what a slimy fascist you are. Keep up good work – your true self just shines through.

Gary Woodman in Canberra

I am writing just a quick note to thank you for your fantastic article Living with Bush for a day: Canberra Webdiarist reports. Thank you for referring me to Peter Hartcher’s article, thank you for the “brown eye salute”(they are a bit keen on this type of protest in the Northern Rivers 🙂 and thank you for your Webdiary! It is a beacon in the self-serving soup of the modern Australian media, one that I regret I don’t study as often as I might.

I’m brimming with rage and frustration; amongst other things, we have the spectacle of the two most horrible men in the world, pissing in each other’s pockets right here in my home town, cranking up the terror with jets screaming overhead all night before and all day. I attended the beginning of the protest on the lawn well out of reach of a parliament protected with plastic barricades (how appropriate for Howard’s faux democracy) and the thin blue line of AFP, around 50 of them, while the guys in the shades and the buzz cuts guarded the entrance to the Houses.

My housemate was able to stay with the protest and joined them at the Lodge and the Embassy, where he, amongst others, was threatened by police. It wasn’t a big crowd; the visit was carefully contrived to offer as little opportunity as possible for protestors to attend. Nonetheless, I was inspired to see buses from Victoria and SA in the Triangle on the day (plenty from NSW of course, but that is not unusual here).

I am surprised that Bush and Howard relaxed their control sufficiently to conduct a self-aggrandising stunt in the House with an unedited guest list. With John Winston Stalin and his robots lined up to kiss arse, and Mr Nobody and his team of gutless parasites looking the other way, Bob Brown and his colleague Kerry Nettle are the nation’s conscience.

The point that Hartcher is making is fairly obvious, but I haven’t seen it laid out in such a comprehensive, compelling case. He agrees with my housemate, a very astute man (he grew up in wartime Balmain), who has been saying since Bush’s “election” that it’s the Fourth Reich. Bush and his gunslingers are committed to world domination at any cost. At Any Cost. And they will have us pay the cost, at gunpoint if necessary. But of course, to our eternal shame, that won’t be necessary in Australia.

***

David Mack in Macclesfield South Australia

I love your Webdiary; a great idea! I live in South Australia, and am starved of decent up-to-date newsprint thanks to Murdoch’s monopoly. I have been buying the weekend SMH (On Sunday) but find myself turning more and more to online content for its immediacy and ‘kick value’.

I’m a political philosophy student and a member of the ALP, Amnesty International and Community Aid Abroad. A long time letter writer to the OZ I now find I am unable to even open the right-wing rag, let alone contribute to it. But if ever there was a time for open political debate it is now!

At least most of the pollies have an email, but their replies in general remain trite and formulated, so I am more than greatful for the chance to contribute to public discourse. (Did you know Robert Hill still maintains there is no evidence to suggest cluster bombs were used in Iraq? At least that’s what he told me when I asked about their strategic significance.)

Yes, the Libs campaign slogan was ‘For all of us’, they just didn’t announce the small print rejoiner ‘And none of you’ till after the election. What a BBQ guest list – talk about ‘unrepresentative swill’.

***

Harry Heidelberg

Margo. whatever happened to your sentiment in Could we start again, please?

I agree with many of the things you say, but I have noticed that any semblence of balance disappeared long ago from Webd iary. Is this an effort to correct the overall balance (ie against big media etc)? Maybe that explains it becuase there is certainly no balance within Webdiary itself. What about item 8 in the Web Diary Code of Ethics?

Even the columnists have something in common. Like if you look at me and Daniel Moye (the Liberal and the Conservative), most of our content is anti-Howard. Then of course all of the others are as well.

I think John Howard has behaved particularly badly and of all the things he has done in the past couple of weeks, not inviting Kylie Russell was the worst. There can be no excuses for this.

I thought Bob Brown acted like a clown and wrote to you telling you so. I noticed that this did not get published and fear that a new form of censorship has crept into Web Diary. You are either anti-John Howard or you are for him………and only those anti, need apply.

The public conversation in Australia has died with the various groups retreating to their respective corners, snarling and growling. It’s clear I don’t always agree with the mainstream. I often find myself in the minority position and argue relentlessly for the things I believe in. I form my views on any situation based on my gut feeling rather than by thoughtful analysis. I’m still interested in alternative views though and that’s why a conversation is important to me.

I fear that Webdiary is at risk of becoming a mini-China. A place where only one viewpoint is allowed and a place where even the artist is employed to echo this viewpoint. You are becoming Chairman Margo!

I liked it better when it was your home for wayward boys and girls! At least as a wayward boy I felt like I would be able to stray off the path from time to time. Now it seems Webdiary is ruled by an iron fist and everyone has to fall into line. This is the scary thing. It happens bit by bit.

I become particulary scared of changes that happen bit by bit because you don’t notice it until it is too late. This applies to much of the Bush visit. It is so utterly depressing because its only when you compare it to the Clinton visit, you see how much things have changed. I trust my gut feeling and I have a terrible feeling about the direction Australia and the US has gone in.

Margo: Hi Harry. I lost a stack of emails last week, and yours was one of them. Even so, I probably wouldn’t have published as I had no time – was working on my own pieces in Canberra. I’m way behind on emails because I’m doing more reporting. Reader’s input guidelines haven’t changed. I’m sorry you’re not happy with Webdiary at the moment, but I’m pretty thinly stretched with mega-news happening as email volume grows. But that’s happened before – it usually balances itself out over time. As to ‘balance’, Webdiary is about the combination of my interests and views and the balance of contributions. I’ve made no secret of my concerns at the direction of Howard’s government and my fears for world peace.

How come Kylie Russell, the only Australian widowed when we fought the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, didn’t get an invite to the Bush barbecue? How come crocodile man Steve Irwin did? Could it be because Steve said recently that Howard was the best leader in the world and Kylie’s been fighting for better compensation for SAS officers killed in training or combat?

John Howard chose the guests for George and its mix and make-up perfectly situates John Howard’s Australia. Who’s in. Who’s out. Us and them. With me or against me.

John Howard came to power on the slogan “For all of us” and promised to crush Keating’s elite and bring grassroots Australians into the power circle. He lied. His “us” is much narrower than Keating’s and more brutally exclusionary. Big business, close friends, big media personalities and lots of sportstars to help his image. No artists. Overwhelmingly male.

And the “them”? All the rest of us, including working journalists to observe and report the event for the people of Australia. That is, until the exposure of the lockout and the free access of the American media saw Howard deign to allow one writer and one photographer to attend. Despite this, and the unprecedented censorship and control of press gallery journalists during the visit, the head of the press gallery committee, Daily Telegraph political correspondent Malcolm Farr, accepted a late invitation. I’ll write more later on the crisis in the press gallery exposed by last week’s debacle.

Here’s the list of invitees, supplied late Thursday night after Howard’s office refused all day to oblige. According to Melbourne’s Herald Sun – Herald Sun press gallery reporter Jason Frenkel spent Wednesday ringing around famous people to uncover some guests – John Laws, Westfield billionaire Frank Lowy, Steve Waugh and former Liberal Treasurer Ron Walker were invited but could not make it due to the late notice. Howard’s office didn’t have the courtesy – to the guests or the Australian people – to include their positions in the list. Those I couldn’t find in Who’s Who or a web search I put to Howard’s spin doctor David Luff. He wasn’t sure about James Kelly, but thought he was a White House man. I haven’t placed Andrea Ball – can someone tell me who she is?

To end, memories from the last Presidential visit, and controversy over Mrs Howard’s idea of the women Hillary would like to meet. Bear in mind that the Clintons had many opportunities to meet Australians. With Bush, there was just one, the barbecue.

***

JOHN AND JANETTE HOWARD’S ELITE

Howard’s family

Howard- McDonald, Mrs Melanie & Mr Rowan McDonald

Howard, Mr Richard

Howard, Mr Timothy

Howard’s staff

Varghese, Mr Peter

Nutt, Mr Tony

O’Leary, Mr Tony

Sinodinos, Mr Arthur

Howard’s politicians

Anderson, Mr John & Mrs Julia

Costello, Mr Peter & Mrs Tanya

Downer, Mr Alexander & Mrs Nicky

Hill, Senator Robert & Mrs Diana Hill

Vaile, Mr Mark & Mrs Wendy

Howard’s corporates

Triguboff AO, Mr Harry & Mrs Rhonda – head of Sydney’s biggest apartment developer Meriton

Campbell, Mr Terry & Mrs Christine – executive chairman of Were Stockbroking

Davis, Mr Leon – deputy chairman Rio Tinto

Gerard AO, Mr Rob & Mrs Fay – managing director Gerard Industries

Ramsay AO, Mr Paul – head of Ramsay Health Care

Howard’s sportstars

Eales, Mr John & Mrs Lara

Hewitt, Mr Lleyton

Taylor, Mr Mark & Mrs Judy

Howard’s media

Packer, Mr Kerry & Mrs Ros

Stokes AO, Mr Kerry & Ms Christine Simpson

Jones AM, Mr Alan – Howard’s favourite talkback king, found guilty of taking cash for favourable comment on companies without disclosure

Farr, Mr Malcolm – head of the press gallery committee, political correspondent of Rupert Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph.

McDonald, Mr Donald & Mrs Janet – chairman of the ABC, personal friend of Howard

Mitchell, Mr Neil – Howard’s favourite Melbourne Radio host

Howard’s former rival

Peacock AC, Hon Andrew – Howatrd made him ambassador to the US after victory in 1996

Howard’s historian

Blainey AO, Geoffrey & Ann

Howard’s public servant

Shergold, Dr Peter & Ms Carol Green – head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet

Howard’s ambassador

Thawley, Ambassador HE Michael Thawley

Howard’s army

Cosgrove, General Peter & Mrs Lynne

McNairn, Brigadier Maurie & Mrs Richenda

Howard’s true blue

Irwin, Mr Steve & Mrs Terri – crocodile hunter

Howard’s lawyer

Leibler AO, Mr Mark & Mrs Rosanna – partner in Arnold Bloch Leibler, prominent Melbourne Zionist

Howard’s gesture to the community

Cory, Prof Susan & Prof Jerry Adams – director of Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Biology

Huggins, Ms Jackie – director of Reconciliation Australia

Stanley, Prof Fiona & Prof Geoff Shellam – Professor of paediatrics Unoiversity of Western Asutralia, Australian of the year

White House staff

Rice, Dr Condoleezza

Schieffer, Ambassador HE Tom & Mrs Suzanne

Card, Mr Andrew

Moriarty, Mr James

Kelly, Mr James

*

Ball, Ms Andrea

***

1996 GUESTS AT HILLARY CLINTON’S FUNCTION

The guest list with a certain snub appeal

by Sheryle Bagwell

Australian Financial Review, 21-11-1996

The Prime Minister’s wife, Mrs Janette Howard, will be there. So will the Federal Minister for Social Security, Senator Jocelyn Newman. Even the NSW Liberal Opposition Leader’s wife, Ms Dominique Collins, and Liberal MP Ms Kerry Chikarovksi have got a guernsey.

But the 30 “high-powered” women who have scored a ticket to the hottest women’s event of the year – a private audience with Hillary Rodham Clinton this afternoon – will not include such leading Labor female identities as Dr Carmen Lawrence, Mrs Joan Kirner, Dr Anne Summers, or even NSW Minister for the Status of Women, Mrs Faye Lo Po. Ms Susie Annus, wife of Federal Opposition Leader Mr Kim Beazley, has also been snubbed.

Mrs Clinton had requested a private reception with “women working at the coalface” in areas close to her heart, after she delivers a speech to 500 invited guests at the Sydney Opera House. But Labor has complained that the women Mrs Clinton would want to meet are absent from the “secret” guest list, said to have been drawn up by the Federal Government’s Office of the Status of Women, but heavily vetted by the Prime Minister’s office and Mrs Howard.

“I think that Hillary Clinton has a set of interests which have been very much the interests of what were the previous Labor Government, particularly as far as women’s affairs were concerned,” said Mr Beazley, smarting from his own bit part in the Clinton visit. “So, I guess I would have to say, in all logic, that an awful lot of our people would probably be better interlocutors.”

The Prime Minister’s office yesterday dismissed Mr Beazley’s comments. A spokesman said that among those invited were Mrs Helena Carr, the wife of the NSW Premier; Ms Catherine Harris, the head of the Affirmative Action Agency; Ms Lois O’Donoghue, the ATSIC chief; and Ms Kathy Townsend, the head of the Office of the Status of Women, proving that the guest list was “a broad church – without men”.

The kerfuffle over the private reception has caused some consternation in the First Lady’s camp. An observer said yesterday Mrs Clinton’s “people” were “amply aware” of the “political vetting” of the list.

“It is always a preference of Mrs Clinton in her travels to engage with women from all walks of life,” he said. “But there comes a point in discussions where you throw up your hands and say ‘This is the best we can get; let’s do the best we can’.

“This is politics. I can assure you that in Washington, President Dole would not have invited Gloria Steinem to the White House.”

***

Getting an entree to Hillary is a family affair

by Jodie Brough Canberra

Sydney Morning Herald 22/11/96

First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s reception for prominent women yesterday proved one thing. It’s not who you are but who you know – and to know the Prime Minister’s family is a definite bonus.

Mrs Clinton had asked to meet prominent women working in her areas of interest, which include health, children’s welfare, law and discrimination, after her speech on women at the Opera House.

She met Ms Melanie Howard, law student and Prime Minister’s daughter, and a friend, Ms Miranda Biven, also a student at University of Sydney law school.

The list of guests is said to have been altered by the Prime Minister’s wife, Mrs Janette Howard, to include personal friends and political allies at the expense of her husband’s foes, an allegation Mr Howard’s office has not denied. Mrs Howard attended, as did her friends Mrs Janet McDonald, wife of ABC chairman Mr Donald McDonald, and Ms Carla Zampatti, wife of the Howard-appointed Ambassador to Paris, Mr John Spender. So did Howard Chief of Staff Ms Nicole Feely and NSW Howard ally Mrs Kerry Chikarovski.

Nine Coalition women politicians, staffers or wives went along. The Premier’s wife, Mrs Helena Carr, and a late addition, ALP women’s activist Ms Kay Loder, were the only Labor women. Attendees not on the guest list were Mr Peter Botsman (formerly of the Evatt Foundation) and the Clintons’ favourite Australian novelist, Jon Cleary.

The guests talked for about an hour and a half in the Opera House’s northern annex, dining on finger food such as smoked salmon on buckwheat pancakes and Vietnamese spring rolls.

The Democrats’ leader, Senator Cheryl Kernot, got a last-minute invitation. The Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Hill, contacted her at 9.20 am to express Mr Howard’s view that her exclusion was an “oversight” and to apologise on his behalf. Shortly afterwards, the Minister for Industrial Relations, Mr Reith – who recently cut a deal with Senator Kernot to pass the IR bill – rang Senator Kernot to say: “I hope it’s fixed.”

Senator Kernot said she was “happy to go as a corrected ‘oversight’ but this was meant to be about women and women’s ideas, and that spans the political spectrum”. She and the chairwoman of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission, Miss Lois O’Donoghue, had talked to Mrs Clinton about Aboriginal art and intellectual property rights for Aboriginal artists “in anticipation of the Olympic Games”.

Some schools missed out on invitations to Mr Clinton’s speech at Mrs Macquaries Chair and Mrs Clinton’s speech because the number of places was cut back.

***

Row flares over reception guests

by Karen Middleton

The Age, 22-11-1996

The Prime Minister’s daughter, Ms Melanie Howard, and a university friend were among the carefully selected women who attended a private reception for the first lady of the United States, Mrs Hillary Clinton, in Sydney yesterday.

The hostess, Mrs Janette Howard, also invited her best friend, charity organiser Mrs Janet MacDonald, who is married to the ABC’s chief executive.

Bitter criticism of the guest-list led to some hasty last-minute invitations. The only female leader of a political party in Australia, the leader of the Democrats, Senator Cheryl Kernot, was invited yesterday morning.

But backbiting by the Opposition leader, Mr Kim Beazley, and others in the Labor Party did not sway the organisers. The president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Ms Jennie George, was not invited. Nor were any other leading female Labor lights.

The guest list, obtained by The Age, was on the socially conservative side. There were no women from the arts. Ms Carla Zampatti, who is married to a former leading Liberal Mr John Spender, was the only prominent businesswoman.

The female advisers to the PM and Women’s Minister were there. So was Mrs Judy Fischer, wife of the Deputy PM.

The chancellor of Sydney University, Dame Leonie Kramer, and Federal Court Justice Catherine Branson were on the list. So was a director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Ms Eve Mahlab; the director of the Office of the Status of Women, Ms Kathy Townsend; and the Affirmative Action Agency’s director, Ms Catherine Harris.

Mrs Helena Carr, wife of the NSW Premier, was the only one linked to the Labor Party.

Besides Mrs Howard and Mrs Clinton, 35 women accepted invitations to attend the exclusive Opera House function which followed Mrs Clinton’s speech to about 500 guests. Another nine women sent their apologies, including Family Court Justice Sally Brown and Mrs Tanya Costello, the wife of the federal Treasurer.

Dr Anne Summers, the editor of Good Weekend magazine for The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, yesterday said she would have loved to have had the chance to meet Mrs Clinton. “But it was Mrs Howard’s prerogative to invite who she chooses and I am not involved in public policy any more. I am a journalist, so I would’ve been pretty low on the list of people to consider,” she said.

Dr Summers said it was extraordinary that Ms George and the former Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Ms Quentin Bryce, were not invited to the gathering given their involvement in issues “that go to the heart of Hillary Clinton’s known interests”.