Kylie Russell. Image below Kylie and Andrew.

 

Something diabolical happened in Canberra on Thursday. Prime Minister John Howard secretly dumped our protocols for visits by foreign leaders to construct a wholly party political event – a stunt – for the glory of himself. He didn’t tell you, but he decided that President Bush’s visit was not “a state visit” to thank Australia for helping him invade Iraq but a “government” one. This answers many queries from readers about why our head of state, the Governor-General, wasn’t Mr Bush’s host in Australia, and why Simon Crean was not invited to George Bush’s visit to the War Memorial or to the Bush barbecue.

It also explains why Kylie Russell was neither invited to see Bush lay a wreath for her husband at the War Memorial or even notified about it.

You’d have to be thinking on the purest of dehumanised political levels to either forget or deliberately snub the man’s widow. And you’d have to have kept your plans so secret that the bodies normally in the loop – the Australian Defence Force and Australian War Memorial – didn’t know about it.

I checked with both organisations today and neither knew anything of the ceremony for Sgt Russell until Bush mentioned it in his speech to Parliament just before driving to the War Memorial. The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet simply told the War Memorial at a meeting late last month to prepare a general wreath laying ceremony and not to lay on the pomp and ceremony because “this is not a state visit”. The wreath itself does not mention Sgt Russell’s name, and although Mr Bush said he would lay it, he didn’t. He never even touched it – the wreath was laid by two men in his entourage.

The War Memorial spokesperson said: “If we had been told, we would have suggested that Mrs Russell and her [baby] daughter be involved.”

John Howard’s actions speak louder than the thousands of fine words he’s uttered in countless welcome home tea parties for our troops. He cares about the political points he can get from being close to Bush and being seen with our troops. His rhetoric is empty.

There is one other explanation – that Bush decided to lay the wreath for Sgt Russell and did not tell Howard. Bush said in his speech: “… in Afghanistan, the first casualty among America’s allies was Australian: Special Air Service Sergeant Andrew Russell. “This afternoon, I will lay a wreath at the Australian War Memorial, in memory of Sergeant Russell and the long line of Australians who have died in service to this nation.”

If Howard hadn’t known until that moment, it would confirm growing evidence that in our capital and our Parliament he handed all decision making to the White House and that it responded with deserved contempt. It would also mean that Howard didn’t have the guts to tell Bush it wasn’t on in the absence of the dead soldier’s wife and daughter, and that Bush’s staff didn’t have the common decency to consider the dead man’s widow when making their plan.

 

Kylie and Andrew.

 

Kylie Russell doesn’t want to speak to the media today. She has spoken out previously about the lack of appropriate entitlements for SAS officers killed in action or in training, and she and others wonder whether that’s why she wasn’t invited. Now she just wants to be left alone, after writing a letter to The West Australian newspaper:

Mrs Russell said yesterday she was told Mr Bush had laid a wreath in her husband’s honour while she was grocery shopping on Thursday.

She was honoured Mr Bush had paid tribute to her husband but devastated she was not invited to the ceremony. “What do you do in that situation – do you just stand there or go and finish the grocery shopping before going home and falling apart?” she said.

“I don’t know if I wasn’t invited because I have been a thorn in Mr Howard’s side, but if so I hope he can live with himself after denying me and my daughter an opportunity to be part of something we would have remembered forever. No apology will bring that back.”

Western Australian Labor MP Graham Edwards, a Vietnam War veteran, broke the news to Mrs Russell after Bush’s speech. He wrote to the Prime Minister the next day:

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

But don’t expect accountability from John Howard. The West Australian reports today:

“It was an oversight and the Prime Minister will be writing to her to apologise,” Mr Howard’s spokesman said.

An oversight???????? I rang Howard spin doctor David Luff to ask how on earth that could be so. He opened with the standard line: “It was an oversight that she wasn’t invited.”

“How could you forget to invite the widow?” I asked in disbelief.

There was a long silence. “That’s all I want to say. We’re going to write to her and it’s best not to discuss it until she receives the letter.”

He had to be joking, right?

Will you write today, I asked? “Shortly”. Today? “Shortly” Today? “Shortly.”

When did the government know the wreath was going to be laid for Mrs Russell’s husband?

Long silence. “We’re writing to Mrs Russell so it’s not appropriate – “

“That’s not the question I asked.”

Long silence. I finally broke it by asking if he could put me through to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet person organising the trip who might be able to help. He said he’d get back to me.

He won’t, of course. I’m afraid that if you want to get the truth from this profane Prime Minister you’ll have to contact Mr Howard’s office yourself. Good luck.

Here are the Sydney Morning Herald stories on the death of Sgt Russell and his funeral.

***

Cosgrove laments soldiers ‘rotten’ death in combat

Sydney Morning Herald, 19 February 2002, Source AAP, The West Australian

The Army is coming to terms with a tragedy it has not faced in a generation: a death in combat, with the loss of a soldier in Afghanistan our first battlefield fatality since Vietnam.

The Chief of the Army, Lieutenant-General Peter Cosgrove, said the service was mourning the death of Special Air Service Trooper Andrew Russell, who was killed by a landmine at the weekend. “It’s a great tragedy, a young soldier in the prime of his life who was serving his country and was cut down by a rotten landmine,” he said. “I just feel awful for his family and his loved ones and his colleagues.”

General Cosgrove said morale remained high, and that Trooper Russell’s colleagues would get on with their work in Afghanistan. “They’re professional soldiers; they’ll mourn, they may say a quiet prayer, they’ll feel very sorry for their comrade and his loved ones,” he said.

Although many defence personnel have died during peacekeeping missions, Trooper Russell’s death is the first in combat since the Vietnam War. He was stationed at the SAS’s Campbell Barracks in Perth when he was deployed to Afghanistan. The base is home to about 800 SAS members, although 150 are in Afghanistan, part of the 1550-strong Australian force.

Bart Maverick, a former member of the SAS and president of the West Australian branch of the SAS Association, said Trooper Russell’s comrades in Perth were stunned. “Even though you expect this sort of thing to happen in the dangerous environment they work in, it is still a terrible shock to lose someone,” Mr Maverick said.

Trooper Russell’s body is likely to be returned to Perth later this week, and he is entitled to a funeral with full military honours. It is not yet known whether his family will opt for the military funeral.

His widow, Kylie, gave birth two weeks ago to the couple’s daughter, Leisa Abigail, who was born after Trooper Russell was deployed to Afghanistan. Ms Russell,who lives in suburban Perth, has asked the media for privacy.

Trooper Russell was travelling in a vehicle with four other soldiers when they drove over an anti-tank mine in southern Afghanistan late on Saturday night. The other soldiers escaped but Trooper Russell was critically hurt, and died shortly after arriving at a United States military hospital.

Political leaders expressed their sympathies to his family yesterday, with the Defence Minister, Senator Robert Hill, saying the incident highlighted the dangers faced by Australian forces in Afghanistan.

***

Last Post for first Australian military casualty of war on terrorism

Sydney Morning Herald, March 2, 2002, Source AAP

Australia’s first military casualty in the war against terrorism was farewelled yesterday by his widow and the baby he never knew.

Special Air Service Regiment Sergeant Andrew Russell, 33, was lowered into his grave as the strains of the Last Post, played by a uniformed soldier, rang through the tranquil surrounds of Pinaroo Valley Memorial Park in northern Perth.

His casket, draped with an Australian flag, was carried to the grave on top of a gun carriage towed by an army vehicle decked with flowers. The procession followed a private ceremony, attended by about 200 family and friends.

After a short graveside ceremony, mourners wept as they watched his widow, Kylie, holding the couple’s month-old baby, Leisa Abigail, place two red roses into her husband’s grave.

Sergeant Russell never saw his daughter.

He was killed on February 16 after the vehicle in which he was travelling struck a landmine in southern Afghanistan. His body was returned to Australia last week and was received by members of the elite SAS Regiment with full military honours. In Afghanistan, Sergeant Russell’s body had been farewelled by his mates, as bagpipes wailed across a remote desert air base.

Originally from Adelaide, Sergeant Russell was stationed at SAS headquarters in Perth at the time of his deployment to join the fight against terrorism.

Yesterday’s ceremony was a private affair at the request of the family, who chose to bury Sergeant Russell in a grassy grave surrounded by bushland and kangaroos.

 

‘Crowd control’ operations outside the Lodge yesterday. Photo: Wade Laube

Today Canberra residents detail their day with Bush, Natasha Cica inside Parliament House and Malcolm Street in the thick of the protests.

That’s our Bush

by Natasha Cica in Canberra

Thursday, 23 October 2003. Canberra, Australia

03: 00 hours

Woken from sleep. Again. Helicopters, fighter jets.

05: 00

More helicopters.

07:30

Rise, shower, breakfast. Radio says Canberra hospital ward cleared in anticipation of Presidential emergency. Infectious diseases. Wonder – is this joke?

08:00

Leave house. Drive towards Parliament House.

08:25

Stuck in traffic jam somewhere near Parliament House. Swarm of policemen in baseball caps.

08:45

Closer, but still stuck. Very large policeman with gun and baseball cap outside car window, inserting round mirrors in drains on approach to Parliament House. Wonder.

08:50

Closer, but must park outside ringroad. Start walking.

09:00

Stopped by security official on ringroad. Show invitation. Am allowed past.

09:03

Stopped by security official. Show invitation. Am questioned further. Mention first official and am allowed past, on proviso am checked by third security official in pink shirt.

09:05

Security official in pink shirt demands invitation and name of inviter. Both provided. Proceed.

09:07

Another security official reluctant to let me proceed. Despite invitation. Mention first, second, third official. He relents.

09:08

Walk past Stars & Stripes to Ministerial entrance. Present invitation. Encounter gaggle of Coalition Wives in large, elaborate hats. Vowels like Prue and True from Kath & Kim. Think – bit too early for Melbourne cup? Is this a joke?

09:10

Attempt entry. Everything beeps going through security. Shoes, watch, earrings. Fillings, presumably. Wonder – do hats beep?

09:10

Cleared to enter. Walk round building. Many Prues and Trues, many loopy rope barricades. Many men with curly wires coming out of ears. Wonder – is this Matrix?

10:15

Meet parliamentarian for coffee. Has been to anti-Bush demonstration and asked for pass by security official to proceed. (What pass? Since when? Was obliged to jump barricade.)

10:45

Am escorted to Chamber entrance by parliamentarian. Wonder, will we need to jump barricade? Meet another parliamentarian handing out dove badges. Peace, yep, am all for it, take one.

10:47

Walk towards stairs. At bottom of stairs, security official demands invitation. Duly presented. Walk up stairs. At top of stairs, security official demands invitation. Duly presented. Walk towards security screening area. Join long queue, more Prues and Trues, many hats. Near end of queue, remove mobile phone from bag to turn off. Security official says must cloak phone. Leave queue to cloak phone. Resume long queue, more Prues, more Trues. Nearing end of queue, security official inspects invitation and notes no texta mark on back. Sorry? Leave queue for texta mark green. Resume long queue. Stand behind random Ambassador, very friendly, says some diplomats not so happy about security, complaining lots, but he has no problem, the world has changed forever, he likes Australia. Asks what dove is for.

 

Part of the police security ring yesterday. Photo: Penny Bradfield

 

11:03

Everything beeps going through security. Hear later that Melanie McDonald nee Howard exempt from security check after complaint.

11:05

Am directed up more stairs. Find self in area behind soundproof glass, not public gallery as such – that’s full. Chairs here all full too, many security passes from US Embassy. Remember fuss about closure of entire public gallery of Australian Parliament to Australian public. Wonder.

11:06

Security/courtesy official politely asks if visitors from US Embassy would mind accompanying her. To fill empty seats at back of press gallery, in open area of parliamentary chamber, so invited guests to public gallery may sit. None shows interest. None moves.

11:07

Security/courtesy official repeats request. Tell her as invited guest am happy to sit in one of those empty seats if they don’t want one. Not possible. Wonder why, aloud. Offer only extends to people who won’t make a disturbance. Wonder, aloud, why as an invited guest of member of parliament I’m suspected of potential disturbance. No hat? Remember dove.

11:08

Walk off, turn corner into another closed area. See spare seat near glass near American journalist. Sit.

11:09

Security/courtesy official says please vacate seat for one away from window. Tell her would rather not, thanks, need to see what’s happening to take notes for article. Remain in seat.

11:10

Parliamentarians enter chamber. Listen as American journo is coached by baby-faced spook from US embassy on who is what in chamber. That’s the Foreign Minister. D-O-W-N-E-R. Yes, really.

11:11

Announcement of President. All parliamentarians in chamber stand. All in public gallery below stand, including school children in green and gold tracksuits. Security/courtesy official runs up, exhorts us all to stand as matter of courtesy. In the distance, eighteen members of press gallery stand. There are empty seats behind them.

11:15

Howard speech. We are a terrorist target not because of what we have done, but because of who we are.

11: 25

Crean speech. Joining most warmly in the Prime Ministers welcome. Above all, Australia looks to itself [as an] independent people. Wonder. Honesty is the foundation stone of that great Australian value – mateship. Baby-faced spook smirks and snorts. Involuntary memories of Tampa. Excision, anyone? Look at Americans around me in what passes today for public gallery. Wonder.

11:30 am

Bush speech. Man of steel – that’s Texan for fair dinkum. Rudd laughs. Latham looks gloomy. Brown interrupts. The Speaker responds – The Sergeant will remove Senator Brown from the House. Bush winks. Howard reddens. Man in long black coat with tassel tries to remove Brown from the House. Brown sits, Sergeant retreats. Episode assiduously avoided by

Australian Parliamentary vision. Episode caught on American TV and beamed to world. I love free speech. Bush continues. We celebrate the spread of freedom. Wonder – does he mean Vegemite? Remember Victory Gin. Nettle interrupts. The Speaker responds The Sergeant will remove Senator Nettle from the House. Feel bit sorry for Sergeant, approaching, tassel waving. Bush responds – I love free speech. Coalition applauds, many Labor also. Wonder.

11:55 am

Bush ends with God. Entire Coalition stands and ovates. Assorted Labor, Greens, Democrats remain seated. Entire Labor front bench stands and claps, limply. Latham looks gloomier. Bush moves towards Labor front bench. Shakes all hands. Howard beckons, Beazley rolls on down, tanklike, beaming. Abbott sits like bouncer in rear of chamber near door throughout. Wonder. Bush moves towards door, Abbott marshals Coalition human shields to block Greens petition about unlawful detention of Hicks and Habib. Speaker names Greens. Motion passed to suspend them from house. Coalition

applauds.

12:00 noon

Leaving chamber, escaping excited Prue/True scrum, more hats, walk directly into Mrs Habib, looking sad. Wonder.

12:05 pm

Attend Amnesty meeting as guest of parliamentarian. Strangely, Ruddock absent. Wonder if has now handed in badge. Addressed by Melbourne lawyer who works in US on war on terror cases, including Hicks and Habib. Counts 3500 detainees, including Guantanamo Bay. Discusses unlawfulness of arrests and detention, conditions of detention, military tribunals. Recalls rule of law, separation of powers. Describes torture – systematic, deliberate, ongoing. Unlawful, immoral. Wonders aloud why this is not news in Australia.

***

Georgie and the Jets

by Malcolm Street

We first heard the jets c. 4 pm about on Wednesday 22nd; Hornets flying overhead on combat air patrol. It’s not uncommon to hear military and political aircraft flying over Canberra, but only for brief period. Not all the time. This was un-Australian, like a city under siege. Not the quiet, free, dignified capital I and other Canberrans so love.

The cold shoulder given to local journalists backfired – with nothing official to occupy them local ABC radio sent up the visit something rotten, requesting calls from listeners with president/secret service sitings with points for various types of sitings. A piece of typically Australian piss-taking in contrast to the deadly (literally) seriousness and pomposity surrounding the official aspects of the visit.

Around 4:30 pm a big four-engined airliner flew over; it looked like a 707 but may have been a 747, at quite low altitude. Again, aircraft just don’t fly into Canberra like that; obviously part of the entourage.

Through the evening the FA/18’s continued to fly (one ABC listener calculated that their passes were at c. 6 minute intervals) and into the morning, after Air Force One landed, which we heard coming over our outer-west suburban Canberra home c. 9:45. TV film showed the arrival, with John Howard almost leaping up the stairs and emerging with Bush with a huge toothy grin. I felt like throwing up. Our city and our parliament had been taken away from us because of this visit, and here was Howard happy as a (lap) dog with two tails.

Morning arrived and ABC radio assisted by listeners was continuing to send up the visit; someone rang in reporting a dog urinating in the Parliamentary Triangle as a possible subversive, while they played a special selection of Texas-themed songs as part of their “Bigger than Texas” Bush-special breakfast show.

I’m an IT contractor having a break between contracts, so there was no problem with time off. I decided to go to the anti-Bush demonstration, the first of this type I’d been in for over twenty years, and after parking around Belconnen took the bus into Civic with a vague feeling of forboding. Once I got there I found that the bus routes had been disrupted, and I had to wait for another bus. (Canberra traffic anywhere near the Parliamentary triangle was in chaos because road closures weren’t announced until the last minute as a security measure).

During the wait I bought The Canberra Times. Its headline: “Welcome to Bush capital”. Cartoonist Ian Sharpe (with whom I once shared a house), deputising for Pryor, came up with a beauty: Parliament House proudly fluttering a white flag of surrender. Too true to be funny, and the editorial was pretty savage as well.

The bus came, in and along with most passengers I got off at the National Library stop and walked up to the demonstration area. There was a stage and there was a PA system, powered by a hired generator, so that part of the government’s attempt to stifle the demonstration had failed at least. Victory Number 1!!!

Due to the bus change I missed the first few speakers (including Bob Brown and Carmen Lawrence), getting there just in time to see Pat Power, the Auxiliary Catholic Bishop of Canberra and Goulburn speak. There are Christians that I loath and frighten the living daylights out of me (Bush and his mates in the US Religious Right and the current Pope notable examples) and others I have profound respect and admiration for. He was one of the latter. But it was frankly sad to hear this good man’s sane, humble and humane request, a message he’d sent to Bush that morning, for a more internationalist approach from the US when I knew it would be water off the duck’s back in the current climate of USA uber alles.

Next up was David Hick’s lawyer Stephen Kenny, concentrating on Guantanamo Bay. He made the excellent point that this could backfire on Australian troops in future conflicts because the precedent has been set by the US to ignore the Geneva Convention in treating POWs. He pointed out that even Nazi Germany in World War II obeyed the Geneva Convention for Western prisoners. The result was a death rate of US POWs of only about 1%, vs 40% for those captured by the Japanese who didn’t abide by the convention. He still doesn’t have direct contact with his client.

Labor MP Harry Quick came up next complete with white arm-band and described “the bogey man of terrorism” being used by Bush and Howard, quoted the Dalai Lama and said hopefully, “Keep the faith, we will prevail”.

The biggest reception, indeed a raptourous one, greeted the next speaker, Andrew Wilkie, who well and truly let fly. He described Bush and Howard’s “meeting of the minds” as a “staggering exhibition of unbridled arrogance”, that it had increased the risk of global terrorism and encouraged proliferation of WMDs to states who now felt they had to have them to deter an attack from the US. He spoke of Howard using “the national security card for his own political purposes”, “cynically manipulating”, the ultimate example his mention of the Bali bombing victims in his opening speech for the Rugby World Cup.

And he was just warming up! He went on to describe a “whiff of criminal activity” that was now surrounding the Bush/Howard camp, with the actions against the US official who blew the lid on the Iraq uranium claims, and the leaking of classified information to Andrew Bolt to discredit him. He reckoned he still hasn’t been interviewed about this case, and that “the rule of law means nothing to Howard”, before saying that if Howard wanted to be a true friend to Bush he’d tell him what he doesn’t want to hear, notably that he had to reengage with the international community. We were seeing instead the transfer of Australian decision making from Canberra to Washington.

Democracy was “on the ropes”, Howard “lies continuously” and people who “dare to care” were “slandered” by the government and its compliant media. And Bush’s visit emphasised this by restricting the right to free assembly and the rights of the Australian press to report.

It was a passionate, bravura, recklessly brave speech from an outraged man of principle who obviously feels he has nothing further to lose. Hopefully someone recorded it so that a transcript can be circulated more widely. I greatly admired Andrew Wilkie before; now I almost worship the guy.

After this the lead guard of the motorcade started to appear. There was practice in chanting, and the crowd (which I’d estimate roughly at 2-3,000 people) headed, literally, for the barricades, set back c. 200 metres from the entrance and with large numbers of federal police at the other sides.

The entrance of Parliament House was disguised, appropriately, by bushes, big pot plants having been brought in for the occasion so we couldn’t even see him get out. I assume the main justification was to stop a sniper taking a pot shot at him, but they’d also presumably muffle the sounds and hide the sight of protesters.

We did our best though; when the entourage with the sinister big black stetch limos with their green and obviously very thick glass arrived a thunderous, shattering, primal roar of anger came out of crowd. After c. twenty minutes of chanting the motorcade headed off and we went back to further speakers.

First up was a speaker from ACTNOW, the demo organiser, who memorably described the US under Bush as the “thug of the world”. A Palestinian woman then passionately outlined their situation, saying that the occupation of Palestinian land by Israel gave them empathy with the occupation of Iraq by the US. In her view with the new wall apartheid is being resurrected in Israel under the name of democracy, that suicide bombers “have been left with no other choice” and that the US can forget about winning the war against terrorism while Israel’s current treatment of the Palestinians continues.

Next a speaker from the Phillipines, saying how 7 MPs didn’t stand for Bush at their parliament, and the effect of jobs lost in trade liberalisation there. Finally a very very angry Sophie (?) from the Refugee Action Alliance pointing out the hypocrisy of the government in discouraging refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan, and using some choice language like “a fire of racism from the government” being used to divide the community, “immoral, disgusting and brutal treatment” of asylum seekers and a final plea to “free the refugees, close down the camps.”

Then an announcement that organisers had arranged with the police to allow a march on The Lodge after all; Victory number 2!!! Off we went, ending up on State Circle, with thundering noise of chanting as we marched under the Commonwealth Avenue bridge. Things went peacefully until it became obvious when we got near the US embassy that we’d been had: we were being herded into a “protest pen” well down the hill from the Lodge. The crowd stopped marching down the marked star picket and plastic tape path and broke out up to the embassy itself with palpable anger.

After some minutes of being just across the road from the embassy, eyeball-to-eyeball with the police, and a couple of members of the crowd breaking through and being recaptured, the crowd moved on to The Lodge, again breaking through the barriers to end up on the verge in the middle of Adelaide Avenue, just across from the main entrance, at least 50 metres up from where the “protest pen” would have left us. Victory Number 3!!! (Despite, or perhaps because, I was in the thick of the crowd at the embassy I missed seeing the fellow hit by a police quad-bike and the nitwit(s) who threw a couple of star pickets at the police).

Chanting, singing and street theatre followed. Police were literally shoulder to shoulder between the crowd and The Lodge, and in places three deep! I was in a couple of demonstrations of over 100,000 in London in the early 1980’s, but I have never seen such a concentrated police presence in one place.

Chants ranged from “Go home Bush” through “George Bush, Uncle Sam, Iraq will be your Vietnam”, to demonstrators pointing over the heads of the police towards the Lodge and chanting “The criminals are there!”. For light relief up came “Whose lunch, our lunch!” and, my favourite, “Barbecue Bush!”.

Despite obvious tension things were reasonably good-humoured. After about an hour it was obvious there was nothing more to be done; obviously we weren’t going to get any closer to The Lodge and no-one from the barby was going to come out. So we started marching back to Parliament House. We could see a group straggling behind, and then things got nasty; this was when several people were arrested and police dogs were used. A lot of us ran back up there, the crowd started chanting of “Let him go”, and then the police pushed us off Adelaide Avenue, after a several minute struggle against a wall of demonstrators with arms linked chanting “The whole world is watching”. Heavy scene, man…

It was with relief that the march back from then on was without incident, apart from a couple of identical late-model silver Commodores going past with passengers displaying identical US flags to us and us displaying upraised fingers to them in return. I assume they’d been guests at the Lodge barbie; as Peter Brewer naughtily put it in The Canberra Times in an article about the chaos Bush’s visit had caused Canberra traffic: “A flag-waving George Bush well-wisher in the streets of Canberra was as hard to locate yesterday as a weapon of mass destruction in Iraq.”

Back at Parliament the crowd gradually broke up and I headed home. It was the most violent demonstration I’ve ever been in and could have gotten much worse if it hadn’t been for coolness and common sense generally shown by the AFP (I wouldn’t have been in their shoes for anything) and particularly the role played by the designated “Legal Observers” within the march. Their primary role was to act as contacts for anyone who had run-ins with the police (they had clipboards for taking down details of witnesses etc) but I also saw them talking with police outside the US embassy and helping defuse what could have been a very nasty situation; I assume their apparent absence in the small rump of the crowd left behind at The Lodge contributed to things getting out of hand there.

So what did the demonstration achieve? Not much really, but it was at least for me a piece of cathartic spleen-venting. Even if there is little opportunity to stop the domestic and international rampages of the Bush and Howard governments it is at least important to show that there’s some people who aren’t going to take it quietly.

The crowd very much changed as the day went on and particularly during the march, increasingly becoming communist and particularly Trotskyist-dominated. There’s something that makes me very queasy about seeing red flags fluttering again en mass less than fifteen years after communism was apparently dead and buried (and good riddance).

Yet the pathetic display of opposition provided by Labor to the neo-Fascist agenda of the Bush and Howard governments may well be, in another parallel with the 1930’s, encouraging youth to see in far-left radicalism the only source of real opposition. Certainly the handful of young people with Labor placards looked rather sad compared to the mass spectacle of the more militant parties. Simon Crean, are you listening?!

The jets continued to fly until Bush left. Reports came in over the radio (and in The Canberra Times) of security measures so surreal as to be beyond satire; a postbox welded shut in Yarralumla near the US embassy, rubber dinghies with frogmen under the Commonwealth and Kings Avenue bridges and searches of cyclist’s back-packs.

TV news was full of the Green’s run-in in Parliament. Bush says “I love free speech”, this in a Parliament locked off to the public, with only invited guests in the public gallery, and protesters kept well out of embarrassment distance. Ho, ho bloody ho; the situation was a textbook example of what used to be called “repressive tolerance”.

Friday morning. The Canberra Times does a Bush visit special. There’s some priceless letters to the editor, including: “John Howard must have thought he had died and gone to Heaven… The actual, really President of the United States standing in Parliament to praise John as a ‘man of steel’ (translated nicely into Russian as ‘Stalin’)” and “The jet engines of FA/18s lulling me to sleep, the streets lined with police. Thank you, John, for making my world a safer one”.

And we have our city back, the bush capital, not the Bush capital. It’s like being let out of gaol. I’ve long been a fierce critic of Howard not moving to The Lodge, but if this is what happens when he turns up, mate, you can stay in your taxpayer-funded mansion with the Sydney Harbour views as long as you like! And let’s hope it’s the only time we have to put up with George Bush.

 

Brown Eye Salute. Photo by Jeff Dawson, Byron Shire Echo. jeff@echo.net.au. www.echo.net.au

 

G’Day. I’ve been swamped with passionate Webdiarist reactions to this week’s democratic dramas – on several sides of the argument. What a time to lose stacks of them through a system glitch! I was also going to publish the guest list for the Howard/Bush barbecue today, but that’s gone too. I’ll publish the register of Howard’s unelected elite, including his tame ‘journo’ guests, next week. Tonight, your say from those who survived my email meltdown. If I’ve missed a doozy, please resend.

RECOMMENDATIONS

* The Australian Financial Review’s Peter Hartcher wrote a chilling analysis of the Bush agenda in The main game just before he finished his stint as Washington correspondent and returned to Sydney to become the paper’s international editor. It is a must read, the best piece on the revolutionary agenda of the neo-cons – and copycat John Howard – I’ve read from an Australian journalist, and on par with the courageous work of American economist and columnist Paul Krugman. Thanks to the AFR for providing the link. An extract:

The pundits’ claims that September 11 made terrorism the defining issue of the Bush presidency are completely wrong. The Bush Administration deliberately rejected the counter-terrorism opportunities of post-September 11 to return to its pre-existing agenda of extraordinarily aggressive political and geopolitical activism: an agenda not even remotely connected to terrorism; an agenda squarely devoted to entrenching Republican power at home and US power abroad.

* SMH political editor Geoff Kitney recommends Asian hostility toward U.S. distresses Bush by New York Times reporter David E. Sanger. It begins:

Minutes after President Bush finished an hour long meeting with moderate Islamic leaders on the island of Bali this week, he approached his staff with something of a puzzled look on his face. “Do they really believe that we think all Muslims are terrorists?” he asked, shaking his head. He was equally distressed, he told them, to hear that the United States was so pro-Israel that it was uninterested in the creation of a Palestinian state, despite his frequent declarations calling for exactly that, living alongside Israel. It was a revealing moment precisely because the president was so surprised.

* Carmen Lawrence recommends a report by ‘Reporters Without Borders’ ranking countries by the degree of press freedom. Australia comes in at a dishonourable 50.

* The full text of Donald Rumsfeld’s controversial memo on the war is at usatoday. Thanks to Scott Burchill for the link.

*A reader recommends The case for unraveling corporate DNA.

ONE LINERS

Gary Richards: Margo, the other day I wrote to you about being a disaffected Australian. Today I have new heroes – Senators Nettle and Brown. They will always be “up there”, if only because – against all odds – they exerted their democratic rights in the nation’s House of Representatives and spoke for me and the way I feel. The people I have voted for for years came close, but the Greens won the day. Congratulations to them.

John Crockett: The Bush speech was surreal – a recycled State of the Union address. Bush is a curious combination of Jimmy Stewart and the TV evangelist Benny Hinn. Perhaps George W. Bush was not being disingenuous when he spoke to the joint sitting today. Maybe he just doesn’t get it.

Adam Zaborszczyk: The Russian translation for ‘man of steel’ is ‘Stalin’, somewhat ironic really in terms of political colours, but perhaps rather apt in light of love of war, ASIO legislation, assimilation of ethnic minorities and intolerance of dissenting views.

Steve Wallace: You know that Canberra is marketed to tourists as “Australia’s Bush Capital”? The phrase is evidently appropriate. Great work recently. Only decent source of information around. (Margo: Steve sent me an email before the war saying he was certain there were no WMDs in Iraq. I thought this view so off the wall I didn’t publish it. Sorry, Steve.)

Nick W: You are a pathetic excuse for a human. You are totally fucked in the head and should spend perhaps 20 years with those other terrorists in Camp X-Ray. Bush and Howard are heroes who will win in 2004 in landslide victories and you will still be a lefty loser so bitter at the world. How dare you call yourself an Australian, you Ho.

***

BUSH SPEECH TO US

Scott Burchill

If we accept the argument that economic interdependence between nations pacifies their relations because war becomes counter-productive for both (eg France and Germany after WW2), then logically the growing economic ties between Beijing and Canberra (a scope study exploring the possibility of an Free Trade Agreement, the gas deal, the prospect of China soon displacing Japan as Australia’s largest export market, etc) must be worrying Washington. There seemed to be a hint of this in President Bush’s speech to Parliament yesterday.

The nightmare scenario for Australia has always been the possibility that Washington will ask for Canberra’s support in a fight with China over Taiwan. The time will soon come, if it hasn’t arrived already (as it did with Japan from the late 1950s on), when Canberra cannot even consider a conflict with Beijing on any issue without committing economic suicide. Washington knows this.

***

Tom Lonergan in Campbell, Canberra

George W. Bush asserted in his speech that Mamdouh Habib was “picked up off of a battlefield of war” in Afghanistan. This statement is a blatant fallacy. This fallacy has been perpetuated by the Howard proxy administration like so many others on cable from HQ Washington.

Mr Habib was arrested in Pakistan and transferred to US ‘custody’ in early October 2001. He was then removed, without an extradition hearing, from Pakistan to Egypt. There, it is most likely he was exposed to the torturous and bloody interrogation methods of the Egyptian intelligence service. The US is known to have sent prisoners to countries like Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco for interrogation where human rights are virtually absent to avoid any legal hurdles. Not that the US military seems to be following any rule of law anyway.

He was then sent to Afghanistan, presumably to be ‘washed’ through the dubious Bagram air base detention facility, and then he was sent onto Guantanamo Bay. Mr Habib’s movements were confirmed by Daryl Williams and Alexander Downer in a joint press release issued on 18 April 2002.

Mr Habib may have links to Al Qaeda and he may have visited Afghanistan; yet, he may also be completely innocent. But we cannot know this as Mr Habib has been denied all of his legal rights. These are the supposed rights that Australia and the US are meant to be preserving in the War on Terrorism.

What is most disappointing is the lack of interest in this matter from the somnolent Australian electorate. If the US and Australia are equal partners, then why is there one rule for American citizen captives like John Walker Lindh, and another for Australian detainees?

Let it be clear though: Mr Habib was not captured as an ‘unlawful combatant’ in Afghanistan; he was taken extra-judiciously from Pakistan. And remember, Pakistan has never been a theatre of conflict in the War on Terrorism.

Margo: Howard was very defensive about his behaviour on Hicks and Habib on the 7.30 Report last night. He lied, as usual, justifying his lack of action by implying that the pair had been charged. They haven’t.

***

Graham Giblin in Croydon, Sydney

I think the saddest thing about today is that G Dubya’s quip that he loves free speech will get all the running, as it already has.

First of all, he doesn’t love free speech. Look at the way Joseph C. Wilson IV was vilified and his wife, Valerie Plame’s, name was leaked as a CIA operative. All in the interests of discouraging others from exercising free speech. The same way Andrew Wilkie was vilified here. Not because they were wrong but because they dared to speak freely against the lies that were being told by their administrations.

Look at the way journalists were embedded during the conflict, folded into the media management operation. Look at the way at least 11 identical letters were published in the last couple of weeks in newspapers in the US over the signatures of 11 different GIs, some of whom didn’t know anything about it. Look at the way Australian journalists are barred from covering the Bush visit. What he loves is to manipulate the media and therefore free speech.

And he doesn’t love democracy. If democracy had had its day during the 2000 election he would not be president today. He and his friends, family and mentors rorted the system. There are several books about this, most famously Michael Moore’s Stupid White Men.

In his speech he trotted out the old lies once again, including those that have been discredited (“We have discovered Saddam’s clandestine network of biological laboratories, his design work on prohibited long-range missiles, his elaborate campaign to hide illegal weapons programs”). I mean, doesn’t he think we have radio, or television, or newspapers or the internet?

He once again conflated terrorism and Iraq (“So we are confronting outlaw regimes that aid terrorists, and pursue weapons of mass destruction, and defy the demands of the world. America, Australia and other nations acted in Iraq to remove a grave and gathering danger, instead of wishing and waiting while tragedy drew closer.”) Which other nations is he confronting, rather than appeasing, that pursue weapons of mass destruction or defy the demands of the world? North Korea? Iran? Pakistan? India? Israel? Saudi Arabia? Burma? Sudan?

He seeks now to legitimise his policy of pre-emption on an even looser basis than before. Now it is not a clear and present danger but “a grave and gathering danger” that is sufficient. At this rate, before long simple suspicion will do.

He used the story about the women of Afghanistan (“And the Afghan people, especially Afghan women, do not miss the bullying, and beatings, and public executions at the hands of the Taliban.”) They don’t miss them because outside Kabul they’re still getting them – perhaps not the executions, I don’t know, but the rapes, yes. Women and girls are too afraid to go to school. About the story that was created about the “Afghani women”, Jim Wilkinson, a top civilian communications aide to the administration, called this effort the best thing weve done. Not because they actually did anything but because it highlighted the plight of the women and gained support the US needed. Now they don’t need t e support any more, the women can fend for themselves.

He trotted out yet again the story of how Saddam Hussein gassed his own people (“Surely not the victims he murdered with poison gas.”). He failed to mention that at the time of the gassing the US was supporting Saddam and supplying him with weapons and there was barely a ripple of concern from Washington. “In 1983, Rumsfeld then President Reagans special envoy to the Middle East, now secretary of defense told senior Iraqi officials that the use of poison gas inhibited normal relations between the two countries.” (msnbc)

Nevertheless they continued to support Iraq with weapons and strategic advice in its war with Iran.

He said, “We seek the rise of freedom and self-government in Afghanistan and Iraq for benefit of their people, as an example to their neighbours, and for the security of the world.” But what he has done, with the support of Howard and Tony Blair has, according to the latest reports, actually increased the threat of terrorism and compromised the security of the world. No, the world is not a safer place.

If you’re going to tell a lie, they say, make it a really big one. And then stick to it no matter what.

“The advance of freedom will not be halted,” he said, but with the shut-outs and lockdowns, the pushing away of the protesters out of G Dubya’s delicate sight -and as Bob Brown said afterwards, young men in the chamber who apparently had hearing problems and had to wear hearing aids – the advance of freedom was slowed down in Canberra today.

***

Ian McPherson

In yesterday’s Parliament speech, George Bush stated:

“Because we enforced (UN) Resolution 1441, and used force in Iraq as a last resort, there is one more free nation in the world, and all free nations are more secure.”

Unfortunately, at the Iraq Donor’s Conference in Madrid, Christian Aid UK is distributing a report that indicates that around $US4 billion in Iraq oil revenue has “… disappeared into opaque bank accounts administered by the Coalition Provisional Authority, the US-controlled body that rules Iraq”.

Christian Aid estimates that by the end of the year, if nothing changes in the way these funds are accounted for, that figure will double. I fail to see how Iraq can be more secure, let alone “all free nations”, when Iraq’s occupiers cannot account for the oil revenue funds they have undertaken to manage in the interests of the Iraq people?

Maybe honest John can use his influence with his good mate George W to find out where the money has gone?

***

Tim Gillin in Kensington, Sydney

George Bush calls John Howard “the man of steel”. That’s Texan for fair dinkum, or so he tells us. In Russia ‘man of steel’ translates as “Stalin”.

The last time anyone here called John Howard a “Stalin”, I recall, was during the great gun law debate. Back then gun owners protested the federal diversion of Medicare levy funds to subsidise a defacto federalisation of state law. Some alleged ‘hotheads’ in the movement saw this as the first step to dictatorship.

‘The gun lobby’ staged a lone defence of a right that goes back to before the English Bill of Rights of 1688, one of the oldest of the old Anglo-Saxon rights. They even organised the largest public demonstrations in defence of personal freedom seen in Australia in decades.

The liberty lovin’ left laughed and sneered at the mass protests. I bet they aren’t chuckling so much now.

***

BUSH-HOWARD DEMOCRACY(?)

David Lennon

Your description of the Howard government’s decision to close the public gallery for President Bush’s visit as “a telling symbol of the battering he’s prepared to give to core Australian democratic traditions” inParliament greets Bush: A day in the life of our faltering democracy is more than a little extreme.

Most Australians, including you, were interested in what Bush had to say, and filling the gallery with protesters would ensure that this would never happen. In my opinion, your blind hatred of all things that the Liberal Government stands for has seriously damaged your credibility as a journalist. Your crusade to unseat them by peddling exaggerations and half-truths lowers you to their level.

***

Donato Rufo

My views on Brown’s interruption are somewhat mixed. Good on him for saying something on one hand, but the other I’m appalled at his approach and lack of tact. Why couldn’t he pose his opposition and questioning of Australians detained in Guantanamo Bay in a speech? Crean’s attempt was more statesmanlike while Brown was, as many have stated today, “under-graduate”.

I am outraged by how CNN got video approval! I think it isn’t chance either but some kind of deal from our PM. Is that a bit too conspiratorial?

Margo: Brown asked to make a speech at the joint sitting. Permission refused. Conspiracy re CNN? No – Howard did NOT want that footage broadcast all over the world. Without CNN, Australian networks would have had no footage of the incidents – and that’s what Howard would have wanted. The Speaker of the House of Reps whose orders CNN defied, Neil Andrew, is ropeable.

***

Dennis Argall in Tomerong NSW

Apart from conservative amusement at the opportunity to rough up a dissident female senator, the matter of a head of state not inviting an opposition leader to his one function for a visiting head of state while gathering around him the sort of crowd he had to lunch is disturbing. I am reminded of something Norman Mailer said early in the year in a remarkably insightful speech:

To assume blithely that we can export democracy into any country we choose can serve paradoxically to encourage more fascism at home and abroad. Democracy is a state of grace that is attained only by those countries who have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it.

The planes are on time, there is a general happiness amid lies and rising domestic violence, mental health problems and economic divide. Dissenting opinion will be squeezed out if not exercised more extensively.

I spent two hours as a demonstrator outside the parliament today. It was very disappointing to see the crowd so small, to find middle Australia absent, acquiescent, compliant; the focus of the day dominated by extreme groups.

***

Lathe Gill in California

I usually read your diatribes with bemusement, but I confess I am disappointed with the desire of Howard to put up a unified front. It is the lively and brutal and vulgar exchanges in Parliament that make Australian politics so charming.

Mr Keating was famous for his invective, I am told, gracing Hansard with such words as scumbags, pieces of criminal garbage, sleazebags, stupid foul-mouthed grubs, piss-ants, mangy maggot, perfumed gigolos, gutless spivs, boxheads, immoral cheats and stunned mullets.

How can one help but be entertained by such lively exchanges? I am pleased that Brown got a few comments off before the powers that be shushed him. Bush could afford to answer a few questions. I appreciate Australia’s contributions to democracy.

***

Jamie Jackson, ‘an outraged Australian living in New York’

I am dumbfounded! A foreign leader arrives in our country and our media is not given access to report on his visit? What is happening to our country? This sounds more like a totalitarian state than the robust democracy of Australia. And apart from you, no-one seems alarmed.

Why aren’t journalists pissed off that they weren’t allowed to do their jobs? Why aren’t they the first people screaming in outrage? And to make matters worse, the only images we, the people, have of the goings on in our chamber, is through the American media which was filming in OUR chamber against OUR laws. Have we truly given up?

Bush travels in a bubble and it’s time someone pricked it and exposed him to the anger that is growing in the real world. Howard has sold us down the river and made our democracy a joke. This is one of the saddest days for Australian democracy, made all the sadder by the fact that no-one seems to care.

***

Wendy Hunter in Rose Bay, Sydney

The picture in today’s SMH of Ross Lightfoot and a cluster of suited idiots with John Howard and his outspread arms says it all. This is no democracy. This is a dictatorship and a paranoid dictatorship at that. The whole debacle of the Bush’s visit is testimony enough to that – the people’s parliament closed off and heavily guarded and then the supposition that a file carried by Kerry Nettle contained “something dangerous” would be laughable if it weren’t so pathetic

Bob Brown and Kerry Nettle were trying to exercise their right to speak in a democratic parliament and were asked to leave. John Howard considered their action “a stunt”. george Bush considered it “free speech”…not so free when one is going to be thrown out and then prevented from presenting a petition.

I was brought up to believe that democracy is the government of the people by the people and for the people. These puffed up western world leaders strutting the stage like little Napoleons would do well to remember this.

Yesterday I wept for what Australia has become. I’m sure there are hundreds of others who feel just as ashamed.

***

Neil Harris in Ballarat, Victoria

I’ve just read Parliament greets Bush: a day in the life of our faltering democracy – chilling stuff.

I knew about the lockdown of Canberra, the stacking of the public gallery and the banning of megaphones at the anti-Bush demo (didn’t know it was legal in Aus to ban megaphones) but I had no idea Howard was so obsessed with spinning the event that every image was so tightly controlled. THANK YOU MARGO for letting us know about this – it’s virtually totalitarian, isn’t it? I never thought I’d say thank god for CNN – but thank heavens (or who/whatever) they disobeyed little Johnny’s orders or we wouldn’t have seen anything at all except his propaganda. I’m not proud of our PM but I am very proud of you, Margo. I know you get a lot of flack and it must be disheartening sometimes but I am so glad you’re there.

***

Mike Lyvers in Queensland

I would ask Malcolm Street a few questions (see Living with Bush for a day: Canberra Webdiarist reports). Why did he give the finger to people in a car who were waving American flags? What sort of message did he and his friends intend to convey to them by this act?

The only “message” the people in the car would have received was the impression that Malcolm and his oh-so-macho friends are assholes. So what did that accomplish, Malcolm?

And why does the toppling of fascist regimes – the Taliban and Saddam Hussein – constitute “Neo-fascism”? Would Malcolm and his protesting friends really prefer that Saddam and the Taliban were still in power? If so I wish they’d just come out an say it. Why not hoist protest banners saying “Bring Back Saddam!” or “Mullah Omar – Its Time!” or “Viva Islamofascism: Today Saudi Arabia, Tomorrow the World!”

I’m no fan of Bush – to say the least! – but I saw the disruptions by Brown and Nettle as a stupid stunt that only showed a lack of dignity on their part. I doubt that it will please any but their most feral supporters.

 

A police dog bites a policeman during crowd control activities at the US embassy. Photo: Wade Laube

Police dog bites cop outside Parliament House. Inside, Bob Brown breaks through a Coalition human shield to shake the hand of George Bush. The Australian people see the unprecedented scuffle between OUR politicians in OUR parliament because CNN defied orders from our government not to film in our Parliamentary chamber.

It was that sort of day in Canberra, as our shuddering democracy proved that despite John Howard’s best efforts at total control, it still refuses to privilege form over substance and still insists on being heard.

John Howard ensured that George Bush could not see the protesters when he arrived at the Parliament House entrance by pushing them way down the hill. They ensured Bush heard them by banging on the barricades.

John Howard allowed only invited Coalition MPs and staffers to gather inside the entrance, and they cheered wildly and waved Australian flags as if George was a pop star. It jarred, at first: Howard, like Australians in general, has traditionally had a conservative notion of appropriate Parliamentary behaviour towards important invited guests, one of reserve and polite formality. The spectacle emphasised how much he seeks to transform our style and substance by politicising every event for its propaganda potential in a divided Australia. Scripted cheering crowds with designated true-blue props inside the Parliament and doubters of his all-the-way-with GW Bush policy feel more isolated, supporters more confident.

MPs and Senators never look comfortable together in the same chamber, but this time the discomfort was palpable. John Howard invited Senators – the people whose power he wants to crush and who have twice censured Howard for invading Iraq and lying about his reasons – to the House of ‘Representatives’ to applaud the man who asked him to do it.

On the Labor side, outspoken Labor larrikin MP Harry Quick was the only one to wear a white armband. The two Greens Senators wore a sprig of wattle over a postcard picture of the two Australian citizens interned in Guantanamo Bay. The pair, Mr Hicks and Mr Habib, have been held by the Americans without charge for nearly two years in gross breach of international law and in stark contrast to the treatment received by the American captured in Afghanistan. He received all the rights guaranteed by the American bill of rights. John Howard did not protest. Two Senators had the guts to insist that Australians and Americans had equal rights.

Howard banned members of the public from the public gallery – a telling symbol of the battering he’s prepared to give to core Australian democratic traditions – this one the people’s right to witness the proceedings of their elected representatives – to avoid protests. But there were school children there, after all. Apparently Howard’s office partly reversed the ban after public outrage and invited a few schools to send ten children each.

 

President Bush, leaving the chamber, shakes hands with Senator Brown. Photo: Andrew Taylor

 

‘Honourable members, honourable Senators, the President of the United States of America.’

All politicians stood as he entered, in accordance with the short political tradition of such addresses. This time, though, more than a few press gallery members stood too, although this is not the tradition of the press gallery.

From then on, the right side of Parliament behaved in a totally different way to the left. John Howard’s team seemed choreographed, as if they’d been geed up before a big game. They were not individuals with individual reactions to what they were hearing, they were a pack. They bayed ‘hear, hear’ on cue, clapped on cue, shouted down the Greens in unison and laughed loudly at what might or might not have been Bush’s attempt at a joke. Their behaviour was – that’s it – more American than British.

On the left side, Labor remained silent during Bush’s speech. Some looked uncomfortable at times, others more at ease. They seemed to be actually listening.

Howard praised “the character and the strength and the leadership of the man we welcome today”. “Hear, hear,” his people roared.

Simon Crean’s most elegant and courageous speech as opposition leader noted that “on occasion, friends disagree, as we on this side did with you on the war in Iraq”.

“But, such is the strength of our shared values, interests and principles, those differences can enrich rather than diminish, strengthen rather than weaken, our partnership. Our commitment to the Alliance remains unshakeable, as does our commitment to the War on Terror, but friends must be honest with each other. Honesty is, after all, the foundation stone of that great Australian value – ‘mateship’.”

Honesty. A big word when you’re talking about Iraq. He concluded with sentiments eminent American opponents of the war passionately asserted before the invasion and are fighting hard for now:

“Mr President, the world has changed, but there remains an essential truth in Prime Minister Curtin’s words 62 years ago – ‘Australia still looks to America’. A truth not just for Australia, but for democracies everywhere. It is a profound historic truth, which derives its power – not from the might of America – but from the democratic promise upon which America was brought forth, conceived and dedicated 227 years ago: The equal rights of all nations. Respect for the opinions of all peoples. And the idea that all men are created equal. These principles, taken together, form the true and imperishable basis of the promise of, and the friendship between, our two great nations. May they never perish from the face of the Earth.”

George Bush’s speech was almost contemptuous in its tired banality. He treated us as children, he told us a simplistic fairy story laced with cheap flattery. Recalling John’s visit to George in Texas, he said: “You might remember that I called him a man of steel. That’s Texan for fair dinkum.”

In Australia, fair dinkum means you’re for real, that you’re up front and honest. Man of steel doesn’t mean that. Was it meant to be a joke? The Coalition laughed.

In times of trouble and danger, Bush said, “Australians are the first to step forward, to accept hard duties and to fight bravely until the fighting is done.” Silence to that. First forward, eh? So when did John Howard really commit to invading Iraq and why did he lie to us about it? And we effectively skipped Iraq more than six months ago and the fighting goes on without us.

Bush praised Australia for fighting alongside America in Vietnam. Pin prick silence.

After Bush asserted that America had removed “a grave and gathering danger” from Saddam, Bob Brown stood up. “I call on you to return our Australians … and we will respect you.”

Coalition members yelled “sit down, sit down” and a parliamentary attendant approached to ask him to leave. Bob Brown stayed in his seat and the attendant moved away. Howard went bright red and stayed that way for the rest of the speech. His hand clutched the lectern in front of him.

When Bush said that “Australia is leading the way to peace in South-East Asia”, Brown interjected “We are not a sheriff”.

When Greens Senator Kerry Nettle rose to protest the ‘free trade’ agreement Bush and Howard are negotiating in secret, the Coalition shouted her down. But when Bush responded that “I love free speech” the Coalition broke into wild applause. Many Labor pollies clapped too. Brown opened his arms and said with a smile: “We do too.”

George Bush said that “a code of free people” united our nations, which “embraces the things that are right, and condemns the things that are wrong”.

“We call evil by its name, and stand for the freedom that leads to peace.”

The Coalition machine stood as one and clapped continuously for several minutes until Bush shook hands with pollies and left the Chamber. Most Labor MPs stood and briefly applauded. About 13 remained seated, mostly women.

As Bush headed to the exit, Coalition MPs formed a human shield to stop the Greens approaching their man. Western Australian Ross Lightfoot used his elbows, as he and others held her back like police holding back the protesters outside. At the same time, Labor MP Tanya Plibersek strode to the other side of the chamber to Condaleeza Rice, shook her hand and handed her a book of speeches Labor MPs made in Parliament opposing the war before Howard said yes to George Bush. They smiled and shook hands.

After Bush left health minister Tony Abbott demanded that Brown and Nettle be suspended from Parliament. Speaker Neil Andrew asked those in favour to say aye. The Coalition roared “YES”. Those against say no. Several muted Labor voices said no. Bob Brown called for a vote, as required when there is dissent on the voices. But Mr Andrew pretended not to have heard him and ordered the suspension, which means Brown and Nettle are banned from attending the Chinese leader’s speech to Parliament today. Labor was relieved – it feared some of its members would defend the right of the representatives of a significant number of Australians to have their say while all others stayed silent.

Brown argued later that he was given no choice but to interject on behalf of those two Australians Howard had abandoned, since Bush refused to do the usual and mix with MPs over tea and scones after receiving the rare honour of addressing a joint sitting of the Australian Parliament. Parliament knocked back Brown’s request to make a speech.

The Green’s protest and the unprecedented physical violence in our Parliament meant Labor didn’t make the TV news last night. In a way, it was a relief – absence stymied the political cartoon Howard hoped he’d drawn for the TV news – Coalition united behind our hero George, Labor divided.

If he’d had his way, Australians would not have seen either Brown or Nettle rise in their places to address the president, either in a photo or on film. In one of many firsts of this occasion, he banned press photographers from the gallery reserved for the media. He decreed that the government’s official photographers, Auspic, would take that position, behind Bush, looking out to Brown and Nettle. The arrangement was that Auspic would supply pictures to all media. The government later banned Auspic from distributing their pictures to anyone.

The government never lets film cameras into any gallery in the chamber. Instead its official film makers body ASVO shoots vision according to strict rules which ban it filming ‘disorderly behaviour’ by MPs so the public not in the public gallery don’t see the truth. It rejected requests from the American media to make an exception for them. CNN defied the ruling, on the nod from White House Security – which, it seems, took over our parliament for the day – and got the footage which shows a parliamentary attendant manhandling a Senator.

And so it came to be that Australia’s media had to beg the American media for footage of the Brown/Nettle interventions in the Australian Parliament. The technical format used by the Americans is different to ours, so our media had to film off the US monitors. That’s why the vision you saw on TV last night was grainy and jumpy. You also saw a parliamentary attendant grab Senator Kerry Nettle’s shirt in an attempt to drag her away from George Bush courtesy of CNN footage shot in defiance of John Howard.

After question time, Simon Crean and George Bush had a meeting in the Cabinet room. Under the agreed, written arrangements for media, a Network Ten camera crew, on behalf of all Australian media, was designated to film Bush entering the meeting. The government insisted, however, that no media photographer could shoot footage. Only its official photographers, Auspic, would be present, and it would distribute pictures to all the media. Control, you see. You see the image John Howard wants you to see.

But the White House press minders waved away Network Ten. A male White House staffer informed Daniel Bolger, the contractor Mr Howard hired to handle the Australian press’s access to Mr Bush, that there was to be ‘No press”. A female White House Official repeated ” No press” before ordering the White House Press corp to follow her down the corridor.

A member of the Network Ten camera crew asked Mr Bolger’s assistant, a man standing at the Cabinet room entrance awaiting Mr Bush’s arrival, why media access had suddenly been cancelled.

“The President’s saying he doesn’t want anyone, so …” Asked whether the order came directly from the President, he said: “That, I don’t know.” He then realised the camera was filming the exchange, amended his answer to “No” and waved his hand over the camera lense to block vision.

Bush emerged from the meeting to greet a White House press corp given the nod to film and take pictures. Noone bothered to tell the Australian media Bush rules had changed.

It got worse. As agreed, Auspic delivered the photos it had shot as the designated pool photographer to the Sydney Morning Herald’s Andrew Meares. After we’d transmitted the photos to Sydney but before we’d given them to other media, he received a call from Auspic advising that the Prime Minister’s office had instructed Auspic not to distribute photos to the media. That meant no pictures of Bush with Crean could be seen by the Australian people. After lots of calls from lots of people, Crean’s people asked Auspic to give Crean the photos in accordance with his rights as a member of parliament. Crean’s office distributed the photos, as did, eventually, Auspic.

These are a couple of the many extraordinary machinations of John Howard, the Prime Minister who asserts the right to decide what you see of your political process.

It gets even worse. Yesterday morning and throughout most of the day John Howard’s office refused to release the guest list for his barbecue for Bush. He didn’t want you to know which Australians were allowed to meet the President. Nearly half of Australia’s citizens voted for Labor in 2001 in preference to the Coalition. Not one Labor MP or Senator – not one – was invited to that barbecue. Alan Jones got a guernsey.

The United States’ democracy, for all its faults, releases such basic information as official guest lists as a matter of course. The Australian media had to fight all day on a very busy day to get it. It was finally faxed through late last night, too late for most deadlines.

Tony Abbott, asked why he would not disclose the donors to his ‘Honest Politics trust, said: “There are some things the public has no particular right to know.” Try every thing John Howard can get away with. Unlike America, we have no bill of rights guaranteeing citizens free speech and other civil rights fundamental to a democracy. Under John Howard, we get no rights unless we fight for them.

Maybe that explains the story which, as a press gallery journo for 12 years, most shocked me yesterday. John Howard cares so little about what’s left of our free media or what a free media is for in a functioning democracy that he contracted out the responsibility of liaising with the White House on what access Australian journalists would have to the President to a small-time freelance PR man called Daniel Bolger. Bolger had no power or authority and agreed to whatever the White House said. That way John could say, “Oh well, that’s the way it has to be” when the result was little or no access by our media to anything. It also meant the American media got privileges denied to Australian journalists in OUR country, such as the ban on Australian journalists or photographers attending the barbecue, leaving Australians to read what American journos with an American perspective had to say about it.

When The Herald’s Mark Riley broke that story this week, public outrage again forced Howard to intervene, and he wrangled permission from Bush’s people to allow one Australian journo and one Australian photographer to be present. We asked both men to write down the names of everyone they saw there and recognised, since at that stage Howard was STILL refusing to release the guest list.

So next time you scorn the performance of the Australian press gallery, remember that in Howard’s Australia a lot of their time is spent pleading for basic rights the Australian people didn’t know they’d lost. Yes, the Australian press gallery is in the midst of a crisis of credibility. But so is Australia’s democracy.

 

Scrum at the top … Greens senator Kerry Nettle, fourth from left, comes in contact with Liberal senator Ross Lightfoot, second from left, as Coalition politicians including the Prime Minister block her from presenting a petition to Mr Bush. Photo by Graham Tidy

Related:  Enlarged shot of senators being blocked

Greens Senator Bob Brown claims he and Senator Kerry Nettle were assaulted by Coalition MPs in the parliamentary chamber to stop them meeting George Bush and one told Senator Nettle she should “die”, but their efforts did not stop Senator Brown shaking Mr Bush’s hand.

The president’s address to Parliament was given amid high tension in the House of Representatives after Senator Brown interrupted with a call to Mr Bush to release two Australian citizens detained without charge in Guantanamo Bay.

Coalition MPs shouted him down as he said: “I call on you to return our Australians (and) treat them as the Americans do (and) we will respect you.”

When Kerry Nettle rose later to urge Australia not to sign a free trade agreement with the United States, Coalition MPs again shouted her down. But when Mr Bush responded, “I love free speech”, they burst into applause.

As President Bush left the chamber Liberal Senator Ross Lightfoot (Western Australia) and two other unidentifed Coalition MPs, jostled the Green Senators to stop them giving the president a letter from the family of one of the detained Australian citizens. Senator Nettle said Senator Lightfoot told her she should “die”.

Senator Brown said Senator Lightfoot was the most physically vigorous with him.

“I was physically elbowed and had my feet trodden on,” Senator Brown said. “Despite all that I reached through and had a double handshake with George Bush, including the thumb around.” He said Mr Bush returned his gaze and acknowledged him when he said: “I hope you will release our citizens from Guantanamo Bay.”

An officer of the Parliament tried to eject Senator Brown after his intervention during the president’s speech but he refused and the official walked away.

Mr Howard went bright red and clutched the despatch box. After Mr Bush left the chamber, health minister Tony Abbott demanded that Senators Brown and Nettle be suspended from Parliament.

Coalition MPs yelled out “Yes” but some on the Labor side said “No”.

When Senator Brown called for a “division” so the matter could be voted on the government dropped its demand.

Sydney Labor MP Tanya Plibersek walked around the chamber as President Bush shook hands with MPs to give Bush’s national security adviser Condoleezza Rice a book of speeches by Labor MPs opposing Australia invading Iraq without UN approval. Ms Rice shook Ms Plibersek’s hand and took the book with a smile.

The president later cancelled a photocall with Opposition leader Simon Crean.

 

Last Saturday I spoke at a forum in Canberra to mark the second anniversary of the death of 353 people on SIEV-X during the 2001 federal election campaign. About 200 people turned up. Why? Church and refugee action groups had just got together to design and fund a SIEV-X memorial in Canberra. Why? The Senate had just demanded for the second time that the government establish a judicial inquiry into SIEV-X. Why?

 

Here’s my speech – off the cuff, no notes, so forgive the looseness – and that of Jack Waterford, the editor in chief of The Canberra Times, which has followed the story consistently since it broke last year. There’s more on the sievx site, a unique volunteer-run archive so comprehensive the AFP used to trawl it nightly until it got sprung. To end, SIEV-X website manager Marg Hutton’s summary of the Senate action so far. Thanks to Tony Kevin for the transcripts of Jack’s and my remarks. Tony’s speech is at his new website www.tonykevin.com

***

Margo Kingston

I’d really like to work out why everyone is here, to survey why people care enough to come out on a Saturday to listen to all this stuff about SIEV-X ? Why did I drive to Canberra to talk about SIEV-X?

Listening to Tony Kevin, the thing that really strikes me about this is the number of people and the number of organisations that just don’t want to be honest about what they knew. It is like the children overboard thing. What’s wrong with our system when there wasn’t one person – when so many people in Canberra knew that children overboard was a lie – not one person told the media?

I got a new theory listening to Tony. I remember when the SAS boarded the Tampa and I wrote a piece which said “Now we’ve invaded Norway” but the piece was about how the build-up of the detention policy was really the build up to an undeclared war. After the Tampa we effectively declared war on boat people, and when you declare war all the rules change. Everything becomes a matter of national security. “Criminal activity to win the war” does not make sense – war is about beating the enemy no matter what the circumstances.

I went to a conference last night where Julian Burnside spoke, probably the leading pro bono barrister trying to obtain justice for the boat people. He said he was arguing in Court for Iranian reffos who had been found not to be genuine asylum-seekers. He was trying to stop them being sent back to Iran because they were certain to be tortured. He actually had a video that he spoke about in flat terms – which did not make it any easier to hear – a video of a man lying on a table with his family beside him and a group of officials reading in a bureaucratic manner a long document, in the process of which the man on the table’s eyes were taken out and they were put on a towel.

He said that the government’s response in the Court was: “Let’s assume that it’s true that the Iranian people we will send back to Iran will be tortured in this way, under the Migration Act we still have the right to do it – and we will do it”

So it might help, in trying to understand this and not drive ourselves crazy about it, to conceptualise that Australia is at war with the boat people and that public opinion is in favour of that war.

Another anecdote Julian gave last night was that he gave a speech at Victoria’s Parliament House a few months ago – a speech I put up on Webdiary without knowing the background to it until last night – about how part of the deal in us joining the International Criminal Court was that we had put into Australian domestic law laws against genocide and crimes against humanity. And under our domestic law of crimes against humanity, the government was guilty of that because they had put a specific cohort of people in detention etc etc.

A journalist from The Age had come up and asked for that speech. The journo had apologetically rung Julian a few days later and said: “Sorry, the editor doesn’t think that is interesting”. Don’t laugh. I think this is really important to know: in a war, there is censorship. There is massive censorship.

I know that in the short period I was involved in SIEV-X, I was very careful not to make accusations. All anyone asked me at work and in interviews was: “Well, what happened, Margo? What do you think happened?” And I always said: “I don’t know, I was just trying to ask questions, to see what happened.” And almost immediately I was accused of scandalous behaviour and scandalising the Australian people with allegations that John Howard is a mass murderer etc etc. There was a concerted attack by Albrechtson, Akerman, and all of them really, just saying, “Well, she should be sacked”.

Again, in a war most journalists act as propagandists. If we are in a war, that does explain why the system won’t tell the truth, seeks to hide the truth, because nasty things have to be done to win a war, as we all know.

So where does that leave us ? Us people that turn up on a Saturday to worry ourselves senseless about the state of morality of Australia and its government? Well, that leaves us as traitors, terrorists, an extreme minority, and people who are in danger.

I think it’s actually a liberation to realise that, because you stop worrying about why no one wants to hear, why no one wants the truth, and you get strength from each other about standing up for what you believe Australia is about in the long term and what Australia stands for in the long term.

It’s a time to look after each other and to be careful, and also I think if you are in a minority, a persecuted minority, then it is really important to free the mind to think laterally.

One phrase that I have instructed Webdiarists to cease and desist from for some time now is this “Ashamed to be Australian” business, because that is not going to convince anyone over to our side – and let’s be frank, our side is a dangerous place to be. You say “Come over to here, you’ll have a lot of fun and everyone will really like you.”

You’re also appealing to something apart from that. I believe that the people in my terrorist cell – you people – have got more brains than the other lot. The other lot has got the power, and we’ve got the brains. We have got to free our minds to use the brains, because what we have got on our side is hope and optimism and faith.

So that is my contribution, except one other thing.

The way I got involved with SIEV-X was, I came down to Canberra to have a go at children overboard – I thought children overboard was a really important story – and I just happened to be here when Admiral Bonser gave some testimony that showed that Admiral Smith, the head of Operation Relex, had lied under oath to the Senate enquiry when he said that the Defence Force had known nothing about SIEV-X until after it sank. And that is when the whole thing started to unravel and we started to work out that that wasn’t the case at all, far from it – far from it.

And then I thought that I’d better sort out this business of whether it sank in Indonesian waters or not. I think the biggest lie Howard told, until he lied to us about the reasons for the war in Iraq, was not the lie about the children overboard. That pales into insignificance compared to the lie he told on October 23 2001, when he lied over the bodies of 353 people and said “That boat sank in Indonesian waters”.

He said that five or six times, he said it as part of his immigration policy launch. The context in which he said it was that Looselips Beazley had said in response to news of the sinking was that it was the fault of government policy . And John Howard said ‘No, it’s nothing to do with us, that boat sank in Indonesian waters, that boat sank in Indonesian waters, that is the cruellest slur on the integrity of our Australian Defence Force, the cruellest slur”. He won votes on that for 3 or 4 days.

First I went to Robert Hill and asked a series of questions, because as a result of Tony Kevin approaching Simon Crean, Crean had written to Hill and said ‘Look, I’ve got these pretty wild allegations from a constituent, what is the evidence for me to say that it sank in Indonesian waters?’ And Hill wrote back and said: ‘Well, that is what Defence tells me”.

So I just thought, well what is the basis for this evidence? I went through a week of rigmarole – so frustrating – and at the end of the day the answer came back that after Tony had raised these allegations, the Defence Force had done a rough calculation on the back of an envelope basically (because there was no information, nothing). That has since proved to be a massive lie, as has lots of other stuff.

So I went to John Howard’s Office and asked his press secretary Tony O’Leary: ‘Well, could you please tell me the basis for Mr Howard’s cast-iron statements on Oct 23 and 24 that the boat sank in Indonesian waters?’

He rang back and said: ‘Oh well, it was media and other advice’, and he reeled off all these media statements by talkshow people, which was not really evidence at all. I put it in writing, and then he said he’d get back to me and he passed it on to Miles Jordana, Howard’s foreign affairs adviser and one of the people implicated in the children overboard lie. That went on for days. I rang practically every day and Tony said ‘Look , I don’t know what’s happening, Miles has been onto it’.

So finally I thought, alright, I’ll take the plunge. Howard was giving an airport press conference on his way out of the country in Sydney and I went out to Sydney Airport and I threw the question. I said, ‘Well Mr Howard, the time’s come, what’s your evidence?’ And he said: ‘I’m not going to tell you’. Why? ‘I’m not going to tell you.’ Why? ‘I’m not going to tell you.’

And that’s when I started to know that, whether or not Australia sunk that boat or connived in sinking that boat, there is no doubt that Howard lied over 353 dead bodies. I just don’t respect that guy at all.

***

PS: After the speeches there’s was an intense audience discussion about the line over which a public servant could not ethically cross. When does the “I was just obeying orders’ defence not wash? A former deputy secretary of the finance department, Steve Bartos, who’d gone into private practice when the system stunk too much for him to feel comfortable, said children overboard or SEIV-X hadn’t affected him or his department. There’s always a seat at the table for finance, the money men, but not at the boat people task force table. Money was no object to Howard on this one. Cost-benefit analyses weren’t relevant on this one. He had a war to win, and an election.

***

Jack Waterford

Some media colleagues might say that Tony Kevin, and maybe the people in this room, are starting to become obsessive and nutty and really SIEV-X is not an issue out there. I have perhaps a little bit more leeway in this, because I’ve never seen any sign other than that the people of Canberra, our readers, have been, in a large majority way, quite interested in, quite concerned about, and quite appalled about, the whole context of our refugee policy (applause).

I recognise that Letters to the Editor are not necessarily an infallible guide to public opinion. But I am flat out getting a single letter which will support government policy in the area. And it still figures largely as a central issue in Letters to the Editor which come in to The Canberra Times.

It fits also into a broader context of things. Even before the question of the fate of the SIEV-X had become an issue because of the activities of Tony Kevin, the activities of the Liberal government were amazing and astounding enough, but the shameful moral surrender of the Labor Party is something for which we have yet to have an accounting (applause).

And even now it is I think a significant factor in preventing all of the truth coming out, because while there have been some brave Senators who have, somewhat against their better judgement, followed the issue through, at all stages they have felt: “Look, I’m not getting anything out of this, I’m probably doing the wrong thing, maybe I’m caught up in one of Tony Kevin’s mad conspiracy theories, I shouldn’t follow it too far, I should leave myself room to manoeuvre, or to get out.”

Now almost anyone who has gone in – backwards, as it were – into the situation, has ended up at every stage along the track finding yet more clues and yet more signs, if only from the defensiveness, from the evasiveness, and from the way in which the layers have been pulled back and back, indicating that somewhere deep behind it all there is a great secret and a shameful secret. These people have got to the point where, two years on, the Senate is passing resolutions which are in effect self-invitations to do the job that they should have done better last year.

When Tony first came to me with this material, I must confess that I was reasonably sceptical about it, even though I had a whole lot of incredibly sceptical ideas about the motivation and the factual basis behind refugee policy. The reason why is that essentially as a journalist, I’m a bit of a “presumption of regularity” person. I believe that most public servants like their jobs, believe that they’re acting in the public interest, would not consciously assist in or connive in something that was clearly morally wrong, let alone criminal.

If I look at the list of names of addressees on the cable that Tony was referring to, like Tony I suppose I know personally at least three-quarters of them and I regard them essentially as honourable and capable Australian public servants. And I cannot believe for a second that they were party to a conspiracy to actually sink these people.

I think that still, and yet I more and more wonder whether there is an inner secret there that only a small few of them know about, which is still being concealed, and this is why I’m still anxious to see the story reported and followed through.

What is the context of this? Well, the first is the general background of refugee policy and the deliberate political use that was being made of fear of refugees, of boat invasions, of terror coming here, that was a part of the lead-up to the “Tampa” affair and then subsequently to the SIEV-X affair.

Even before we got to the “Tampa” affair, indifference had been demonstrated by DIMIA (the immigration department) in particular, but also by other agencies, in relation to the safety of life at sea. This was not the first instance in which a boat sank with many people drowned. I recall about four or five years ago putting in an freedom of information request about the information that was available to the Australian authorities on that, and received back about three or four pages of essentially press material.

Further to Margo’s theory of our being at war, I think a very important thing occurred on the evening of the “Tampa” incident. John Howard himself strode around the press galleries of Parliament House talking about how important it was and insisting that (JW pounding the table for emphasis): “These people will never be allowed to land in Australia”. And when we think of this as a military operation, this was the primary political imperative of the government: that come what may, no landing was to be allowed or permitted.

I don’t know exactly how that political directive, strategic objective, fed its way into the military operation that took place. But one of the things which still bemuses me most in the lead-up to the SIEV-X affair is that when we had massively increased Australian surveillance over the area, ships at sea there to intercept any boats that were travelling, clear intelligence operations taking place in Indonesia designed to identify likely shipments, gatherings of refugees, and various things like that – this boat is allowed to sail off with some knowledge by the Australian authorities. And yet at all of the crucial times mysteriously it escapes all of the surveillance operations that we have and our ships are in fact well away and are not in the places where one would think that they ought to be if they were designing to intercept anything.

But even that one could accept to some extent as a cock-up, one of those things that happened or something like that, were it not for the pattern of cover-up, evasion, defensiveness, the serial pulling-apart of the layers of the onion, the hints that go further and further about undercover operations going on in Indonesia, so that it’s quite clear that at some stage a lot more truth is going to be revealed about it.

Margo Kingston – Why, Jack?

I just don’t believe at the end of the day that it can be concealed.

The other thing that I find absolutely astounding if we have a government or a military which is actually working in the public interest in this matter, is why after all of the consequences, whether those that took place in the immediate aftermath or after Tony Kevin blew the whistle, we’ve seen no sign of any effort by the authorities to say: “Well let’s suppose that we buggered it up. Let’s suppose it was a cock-up: what have we learnt from this episode? What are we going to do in future to make sure that we don’t miss such people, that 353 people don’t die on our watch? What have we shown by way of an institutional response, which is to be a memorial to this appalling tragedy?”

The answer is – nothing.

I even now don’t pretend that I know anything like all of the facts of this thing. Even now, my major suspicion that there is a great secret about it comes less from any direct evidence which has emerged, although there is some such evidence, so much as from the pattern of cover-up, defensiveness and indifference from government.

But still I think the critical thing before we get a full accounting is in fact that the shameful moral surrender of the Labor Party on the issue has made the Labor Party to some degree complicit in what was done institutionally by government. When Labor shakes itself out of this moral torpor that it is in, I don’t believe that it is possible that within an adversary democratic system this secret can remain hidden.

***

Senate Renews Its Call For A Judicial Inquiry Into SIEVX

by Marg Hutton

18 October 2003

Full report, and references, at sievxarchives

Democrats Leader Senator Andrew Bartlett and Leader of the Greens, Senator Bob Brown turned up the heat on the Howard Government with the passage through the Senate of two new motions related to SIEV-X on the eve of the second anniversary of the SIEV-X tragedy. This makes a total of four Senate motions concerning SIEV-X that have now been passed during the last twelve months.

The significance of these resolutions is clear when they are viewed in the light of their history.

It is now almost a year since the Report of the Select Committee on A Certain Maritime Incident (CMI) was tabled in Parliament on 23 October 2002. The first recommendation of that report called for ‘a full independent inquiry’ into the People Smuggling ‘disruption activity’ of refugee vessels prior to their departure from Indonesia – by implication this included SIEVX under its umbrella.

In early December 2002, two months after the publication of this Report, the first SIEV-X related motion calling for a judicial inquiry was passed by the Senate. This resolution expressed ‘serious concern at the apparent inconsistencies in evidence provided to the [CMI] committee and estimates committees by Commonwealth agencies in relation to the People Smuggling Disruption Program and in relation to Suspected Illegal Entry Vessels (SIEVs), including the boat known as SIEV-X’ and called on the government to ‘immediately establish a comprehensive, independent judicial inquiry into all aspects of the People Smuggling Disruption Program operated by the Commonwealth government and agencies from 2000 to date, including… the circumstances and outcomes of all departures from Indonesia of all boats carrying asylum-seekers, including the circumstances of the sinking of SIEV X.’

The following day, a second SIEV-X related motion was passed addressing the issue of the impending release from prison of people smuggler and alleged organiser of the SIEV-X voyage Abu Quassey. Quassey had been serving a brief term in Jakarta’s Cipinang prison for passport related offences and was due to be released on New Year’s Day. This second Senate motion called on the governments of Australia and Indonesia ‘to undertake all actions necessary prior to 1 January 2003 to ensure that Abu Quessai [was] immediately brought to justice.’

Two months after the passage of these motions, the Government had made no response. SIEV-X was once again in the news when the infamous DFAT cable was finally released to the Senate nearly seven months after the CMI Committee had asked Jane Halton, the former head of the Prime Minister’s People Smuggling Taskforce, to provide it on notice.

The appearance of this cable so long after the Committee had finished its work, coupled with the new information it contained, caused the Chair of the CMI Committee Senator Cook to boldly speak out in Parliament in February regarding perceived contradictions in the evidence provided to the Committee.

During this speech Cook referred to a letter that had been received by the Deputy President of the Senate, John Hogg from Peter Slipper, Acting Parliamentary Secretary to the PM, responding to the first Senate motion in December calling for a judicial inquiry. In this letter Slipper stated:

The Prime Minister has asked the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to examine the recommendations made by the Senate Committee and to coordinate for the government’s consideration a whole of government response in consultation with all relevant departments and agencies.

Fast forward to October this year and we find that the Senate is still waiting on the Government to formally respond to the Recommendations made in the CMI Report and the two Senate motions concerning SIEV-X. And Abu Quassey has been extradited to Egypt from Indonesia and appears to be out of reach of Australian authorities.

The Senate’s displeasure at the government’s lack of response to these matters is apparent in the wording of the two new motions passed this week.

The Greens’ motion, which was passed on Wednesday, refers to the ‘Government’s failure to respond to the two Senate orders of 10 December and 11 December 2002 concerning the People Smuggling Disruption Program and the ineffectual pursuit by Australian justice authorities of the alleged people smuggler Abu Quassey’ and goes on to demand that the list of the names of the dead who drowned on SIEV-X – which the AFP have admitted to having in their possession but which they have repeatedly refused to make public – be released immediately, along with the identity of the source who provided it.

This motion also corrected a major inaccuracy in the CMI Report concerning the sinking position of SIEV-X. Where the CMI Report was equivocal in regard to where the vessel sank, this new motion – passed by Labor, Democrats, Greens and Independent Senators – makes it clear that the Senate is now firmly of the view that SIEV-X sank ‘in international waters that were being closely monitored by Australian air and naval forces’.

The Democrats’ motion which was passed by the Senate on Thursday criticised the government for not ‘responding to the report of the Select Committee on a Certain Maritime Incident, which included an examination of the SIEV-X sinking’ and renewed the call for a ‘comprehensive, independent judicial inquiry into all aspects of the People Smuggling Disruption Program operated by the Commonwealth Government and agencies from 2000 to date, including Suspected Illegal Entry Vessels, and in particular the boat known as SIEV-X.’

Bartlett’s motion added an important new dimension to the Senate work on SIEV-X – it enabled the Senate to show its humanity by expressing ‘regret and sympathy’ for the huge loss of ‘innocent lives’ and also called on the Immigration Minister to grant permanent visas on humanitarian grounds to those Temporary Protection Visa holders who lost family members on SIEV-X.

Thanks to the tenacity and courage of Senators Bartlett, Brown, Collins, Cook and Faulkner, we now have four strong pillars on which to continue to campaign around SIEV-X. Continued pressure needs to be put on the Howard government to respond to the first recommendation of the CMI Report and the Senate motions. Nothing less than a full powers independent judicial inquiry can bring justice and accountability in this matter.

 

Inseperable twins, by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

G’Day. Something’s stirring in grassroots liberal Australia, no doubt about it. Today, the full text of NSW Liberal elder John Valder’s remarks to the North Shore forum on the Iraq war last night, then reader reaction from Robert Sheehan, Gary Richards, Veronica Husted and Anne Picot.

John Valder’s question to the panel was: Have Australia’s long term interests been served by our involvement in the war against Iraq? What is our future as a nation if we continue our current allegiance to the US agenda at the expense of broader international relationships?

Each speaker – Tony Abbott, local human shield Donna Mulhearn, federal Labor MP Tanya Plibersek and Peter Macdonald – the independent who won 46 percent of the vote after preferences when he ran against Abbott in 2001 – responded to one of six pre-disclosed questions, then the questioner got a right of reply. For details of how Mosman Peace Group organised the forum – the first occasion since the first phase of the war that a senior Howard minister has faced the people on the matter – see Tony Abbott to eyeball North Shore against the War: Truth possible. For the forum’s goals, see organiser Sue Roffey’s piece Don’t let pollies get away with murder, which also appeared in my Sun Herald column last Sunday. The full transcript of the forum will be available soon at sydneypeace.

***

John Valder

First of all, I would like to thank each of the speakers for their responses. Donna, if I may say, particularly yours, because you’re the only person in this room, or along with Mike Hartnell (a member of the peace group) who has actually been in Baghdad, in Iraq. The rest of us have formed our views from what we’ve read or heard, and they’ve been shaped probably around our preconceived political prejudices.

Now, Tony, I really feel I should be up there as a former Liberal Party President supporting you, but you probably know that I’m not able to on this subject because I do disagree with you strongly, and I do propose to make one or two tough comments. But first I do wholeheartedly support Donna’s comment about you having the courage to be here tonight. (Applause) I think that very few of your colleagues would have accepted the same challenge in the way that you have, and that is to your great credit.

But having said that, as I said, [Tony Abbott: You’ll get stuck into the issue properly!] I do want to make one or two comments, because I sense that our government has underestimated the strength of feeling on the issue, not just in this room tonight, or just in this country, but right around the world on this issue.

OK, for the time being the Rugby World Cup is more important than what is happening in Iraq, and the Caulfield Cup, and the couple of fellows from the United States and China later in the week. But let’s not underestimate the enormity of what’s happened in Iraq.

Tony referred to September the 11th and what an atrocity it was, and it was – I hope I never live to see a single atrocity as dreadful as that one was, but I’m afraid the coalition of the willing has inflicted on Iraq a much greater atrocity – as Donna said, bombs raining down and missiles night and day all around the clock. I remember at one point during the war, and not at the end of the war, the United States proudly claiming that it had fired more than a million missiles into Iraq. Does that compare with September 11 – I’m afraid it doesn’t.

What I think we should all bear in mind is where this might end, and it might not end very pleasantly for the Coalition of the Willing. As we all know, there’s a Presidential election in the United States in almost exactly twelve months time. Now, politicians in the United States are rather fond of trying to indict Presidents of the opposite political party for whatever reason. People have been indicted; Presidents have been indicted for much lesser crimes than what we have just seen this last year in Iraq.

I don’t say this is going to happen, but in the twelve months running up to an election there must be quite a conceivable possibility of George Bush facing indictment for what he’s done in Iraq, for the reason that he led the Coalition of the Willing, with our country, with the British government, on what, I think everybody agrees tonight, except perhaps Tony, was false premises.

It was all about weapons of mass destruction. Your prime minister, your foreign minister and countless others bellowed and trumpeted it from the rooftops, about these wicked weapons of mass destruction, and how Saddam Hussein was going to have the power to rain missiles onto the United States itself, and feed them to terrorists. Now, of course, these things were never checked out, despite Hans Blix and others, and of course in the end it’s found that that premise is entirely false. I’m not going to subscribe to conspiracy theories as to what the other reasons for invading Iraq were, but without any shadow of a doubt, weapons of mass destruction was first and foremost.

Now Saddam Hussein might have fallen. Everybody says that’s a good thing. I would like to go to Iraq myself with Donna, and in fact I said to my wife just at the weekend, “We really ought to think of going to Iraq, to see for ourselves, because I just wonder if the people of Iraq today find life more or less bearable than it was under Saddam Hussein.” I don’t know …

So what happens if George Bush does face an indictment, where does that leave the British Government and Tony Blair, and our government and our prime minister? Not in a very comfortable position – they may not be indicted, but I can see political parties in Britain and Australia perhaps raising the spectre of war crimes charges being levelled against them. (Applause)

I’d appreciate your response to that. I’m not saying that is going to happen, but for the first time, we have a Prime Minister who has put this country at risk of being branded a war criminal. And that is why, Tony, I think your government is underestimating the enormity of what’s happened in Iraq, and on false premises.

And it really does worry me, you or somebody mentioned (Donna was it?) about human rights – couple that with what’s happened in human rights in this country since the people overboard and all sorts of events right through to the present time, the two Australians held in Guantanamo Bay. There is a total disregard it seems by this government, really, for human rights. I understand there is citizens of forty-two nations in Guantanamo Bay, and forty of those forty-two nations have all protested bitterly to the United States about that. Two haven’t: Australia is one of them, I don’t know who the other one is. (Audience members; China) Is it China? So here we have this situation, and Tony, I have to say to you, as a friend, it is an appalling situation, and it’s not too late for your government to make amends.

***

Robert Sheehan

Thanks for today’s article concerning John Valder’s comments at the forum. I attended as an interested observer, but one who has felt ‘profoundly disempowered and disillusioned’.

When he said: “…we have a Prime Minister who has put this country at risk of being branded as a war criminal”, a communal murmur of disgusted assent rose from the audience. A clear interjection of “resign!” from a member of the audience during Tony Abbott’s reply that “nothing would satisfy Mr Valder” said it all.

One of the Questioners, Andrew McNaughtan, who I guess is a member of ‘North Shore Peace & Democracy’, asked an extremely relevant question about past policies of developed western countries. He then spoke very truthfully and eloquently, and, along with Peter Macdonald and Donna Mulhearn especially, put forward loud and clear what many of us feel.

Keep up the excellent work Margo. In mainstream media you seem like a lonely voice in the wilderness, but the ideas and values you set forward are supported by a growing band of people like me. I’m more confident today that our numbers will grow sufficiently to restore truth, fairness and compassion to the affairs or this nation.

***

Gary Richards

Oh God Margo, the article on the Mosman peace movement was a godsend. I had all but given up after attending the small anti-Bush rally on Sunday, the lack of critical press, and the left/right debate on issues of morality. I was convinced that the bulk of Australians don’t care. But I’m wrong! It’s a melancholy joy I feel. Some of my fellow Australians, the ones I thought blindly supported Howard, do care. I will do every thing I can do to support them. The Iraq war debate was and is bigger than politics, and it’s time the “parties” really understood what power the people have. We need the Government to work for us, the Australian public, to uphold Democracy, human values and morality – not just for us but for humanity. As an Australian, I believe these values separate us from despicable countries and regimes and set us free – and maybe others by example.

Veronica Husted in Sanctuary Point NSW

Yesterday I attended a forum organised by the Gilmore Peace Group and held in Nowra in the Shoalhaven, NSW. The federal seat is held by the Liberal’s Joanna Gash. The forum was addressed by Andrew Wilkie, Professor John Mins from ANU, Bruce Haigh and James Dunn. Their speeches were inspiring and listened to attentively by over 200 hundred people.

The message they gave was that the governments of America, Australia and Britain lied to the people and continue to lie. They also felt quite strongly that Howard’s desire to tie us so strongly to America was creating a hatred of the West which includes Australia. This was borne out by a message purporting to come from Osama bin Laden that Australia was a target.

Like Sue Roffey of the Mosman Peace Group, I resent being lied to and having this country used as a pawn in some horrible game.

I find Sue’s comments about Howard talking constantly about the 88 people who were killed in Bali, therefore totally ignoring the deaths of so many other innocent people, as indicative of his attitude to non Anglo-Celtic people.

I was also impressed by Robert Bosler’s reader quote of the week in your Sun Herald column:

In a sense it’s terrific Bush is coming here to see his ‘friend’ John Howard. This is the dance of the idiots. Have faith. The real leaders are on the way. This is the time of change, and change takes a while. The real leaders are preparing, but while the idiots are dancing on stage they have no mind to make an entrance.

One can have a little hope after reading about Sue’s feelings and those of Robert Bosler and after listening to the speakers we were fortunate to listen to on Sunday. The courage and tenacity of those men is incredible.

***

Anne Picot

Great piece about the North Shore Peace and Justice forum last night. John Valder’s comments were the most politically telling of the evening.

I spoke to you as you were coming into the forum last night about the Sydney Social Forum and David Barsamian. In light of the pillorying the mainstream media got for its war coverage at the forum last night, and considering the charter you have attached to the Webdiary, you really should talk to David. He is one of the US’s most distinguished progressive broadcasters and journalists, and the recipient of the 2003 Upton Sinclair Award for Freedom of Speech. Here is an extract about public broadcasting in the US to give you an idea of where he is coming from.

Public Radio Reconfigure to Grab the Dollar (PBS or the Petroleum Broadcasting Service)

Unlike Community Radio and TV in Australia, the U.S. system of public stations was funded directly from money appropriated by Congress. The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS TV) and National Public Radio (NPR) were not able to raise independent funding (unlike community radio and TV in Australia who are able to accept sponsorship and are not government subsidised to the same extent). In effect, as Barsamian says, they would have to go to Congress and plead their case for funding.

However, the charter that established these networks was amended to allow sponsorship. This did not bode well for independence and radical programming. Barsamian says that when the public networks were established in the 1960s the enabling legislation saw public radio and TV as giving a voice to the voiceless, to the under-represented and minority communities and points of view in various communities. Thirty or so years later we find much of the programming is rather narrowly defined ideologically. In fact we have right-wing tilted programs on PBS.

A study by the New York based Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) found that the NPR program ‘All things Considered’ featured, as expert guests, mainly ex government or corporate officials and right wing think-tank specialists. Barsamian says that this narrowing of views mirrors the developments in commercial media where we have, today, a range of views from A to B and from GE to GM. There isn’t a lot of diversity.

People are turning off the Petroleum Broadcasting Service PBS. They have lost 15% of their audience and it’s no wonder. Look at their programming: The McLaughlin Group, Wall Street Week in Review, Washington Week in Review, The Nightly Business Report. There’s nothing there for young people. The programming is totally predictable says Barsamian.

When asked what this has to do with Alternative Radio, Barsamian pulls no punches.

If it’s free, why isn’t it on?

Alternative Radio is heard on over 120 public radio stations across the U.S. but that is only a small fraction of the stations that could take it. In fact, in some of the most likely markets, the program has never gone to air or has been pulled from schedules. This has left Barsamian scratching his head to understand why. But not for long. When asked why some of the larger stations, in cities that have been traditionally linked to radical thought, dont take Alternative Radio, Barsamian responds that there must be something in the content of the programming they find objectionable. It’s free of charge! Yet they take programs that cost them to broadcast. I mean, why is KOPN in Columbia, Missouri, broadcasting Marketplace, which is underwritten by General Electric?

Barsamian is highly critical of the way public radio station management has evolved to the point where public radio is seen by many within it as being a career path towards commercial media and where a bottom line accounting culture has taken over from the philosophy of community development and empowerment.

Barsamian likens the changes in public radio in the U.S. to the trends in corporate media, where there is no threat to the power structures of society. He says that while there are some very popular programs on small independent stations, programs that he thinks would rival the popularity of the corporate stars, the reason these programs do not get on the national public networks is because they challenge the status quo. Would you give a program to someone who would undermine your position of power and authority, who is saying that corporate capitalism leaves a lot to be desired, that corporate control of media is undemocratic and is narrowing public debate? Unlikely.

David’s book ‘The Decline and Fall of Public Broadcasting’ tackles this issue head on. Most of the censorship that occurs on NPR and PBS is one of omission not commission, he says. Stories are left out. Voices are completely occluded from participating in the debate. You never hear Michael Parenti, Angela Davis or Howard Zinn for example. They feature regularly on Alternative Radio.

Margo: The sydneysocialforum will be held this year from October 24 to 26 at the University of Technology in Sydney. Contacts to interview David or attend his workshops are here.

 

Illustration by Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

 

G’day. I gagged at Mark Riley’s story today, Say what you like, but don’t expect Bush to hear. Not only has Howard moved the Bush protest far away from Parliament House so George won’t see it, he’s banned the use of loudspeakers so he won’t hear it either:

The basic right of freedom of speech will adopt a new interpretation during the Canberra visits this week by the US President, George Bush, and his Chinese counterpart, Hu Jintao. Protesters will be free to speak as much as they like – just as long as they can’t be heard. Last week, the Federal Parliament’s presiding officers announced that no members of the public would be allowed into Parliament on Thursday or Friday, when the leaders deliver historic addresses to the “people’s house”. Now, organisers of an anti-war protest have been told they have been banned from using a public address system anywhere in the precinct encircling Parliament. The only spot made available for protests is at the back of Old Parliament House in Federation Mall. But the speakers must be pointed away from the new Parliament House so that no one inside, particularly the two presidents, can hear the protest speeches. The organisers will also have to find a way to carry the stage and the equipment to the site. All roads servicing the area will be closed from early Thursday morning, preventing the protesters from bringing in their buses.

It gets worse. I made inquiries after receiving this email from Bronte Germaine:

Will there be an opportunity for Australian political journalists to freely question George Bush tomorrow? While our parliament has “questions without notice”, the US relies on journalists to ask those questions. But no administration has had as few press conferences, and US journalists who have “access” play ball with the president so their “access” is not denied. While the president is in Australia he must play by our rules or clear off. If free access is denied, this must be the biggest story tomorrow, surely. If there is free access, I hope our journalists take the opportunity for some more robust questioning than “W” is used to.

George and John won’t hold a press conference, so Australian journalists won’t be allowed to ask him any questions on behalf of the Australian people. Not only that, journos have to be in Parliament by 9am and can’t leave until after Bush does, so we can’t even report the protest! If you’re at the protest, please email me a report.

What’s the point of this Bush whistlestop? Bush is so ignorant of our circumstances that he thought it was a compliment to dub us sheriff of our region, yet while he’s here he won’t see real Australians, hear them or meet them. The trip is for our ‘representatives’ to swoon before him, our businesspeople to beg him for favours and our defence people to salute him. It’s a strange free world Bush leads, the one Howard has scripted.

And Howard did it to the Thais. Bangkok reader Tony Williams writes:

Thought your readers might like to know that whilst Little Johnny is here in Bangkok for the APEC fiasco he’s allowed City Hall to close Lumpini Park (our equivalent of Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens) from 4 p.m. on his behalf so that he can have the opportunity to go jogging in the park. The closure of the entire park and the cost of the security forces required to provide the park for his sole use is absurd, but what is more disturbing is the eviction of all the Thais who use this park daily for their recreation and relaxation. If he really wants to gain political mileage, he should go jogging alongside the thousands of Thais who use Lumpini Park every day and meet real Thai people enjoying themselves and satisfying their well-being. Ah, but that would contradict the travel warning advice issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra!

They’re in league, these two, in the most radical, anti-democratic agenda I’ve observed in my lifetime, and even George’s Dad can’t stand it! (Bush Sr.’s ‘message’ to Bush Jr)

George Jnr and JW Howard have decided that real democracy doesn’t suit their corporate mates and backers (controllers?) so they’re destroying it, piece by piece. I ran my scenario by you in Howard’s roads to absolute power and Faultlines in Howard’s plan for absolute power, and the Howard strategy for total control has become even clearer in the few months since.

And Labor? David Spratt in North Fitzroy, Victoria:

Last Friday I resigned from the Labor Party after 20 years. Simon Crean is completely dead in the water, seemingly surrounded by little more than flotsam and jetsam. Here’s what I wrote:

Simon, I can take it no longer. Iraq lies in ruins, occupied by a superpower whose strategic worldview is full spectrum dominance. The desire and right of the people of Iraq to democratically determine their own affairs is indefinitely denied. War is justified by a lie. The credibility of George Bush and Tony Blair continue to plummet, and so should that of John Howard.

And what are you, the Australian opposition leader worried about? You’re worried about offending George Bush!

In February this year, opposition to war on Iraq came from every sector of Australian society, including faith organisations, former prime ministers, most of the military chiefs of Australia’s 1991 Gulf War forces, business leaders, aid organisations, intelligence analysts and the entertainment industry. Why was the government not forced to listen and act?

The most significant factor was the weakness of the ALP. In Europe, parties of the left and the right had been swayed by public opinion, but in Australia Labor under your leadership simply went missing. For six months Labor sat on its hands and gave no support to the anti-war movement. You and Kevin Rudd prevaricated and squirmed this way and that, and did not say this war was always going to be wrong, with or without the UN Security Council. There was a roar of silence from the Labor State premiers. And then at the last moment, Simon, you said you were against the war, and became mute. At a Brisbane rally, you were booed from the stage; your opposition’s weakness had given John Howard free rein.

And now it’s all about cheer-leading George Bush. My 20-year membership of the ALP has come to an end.

I spoke at the launch of the University of Technology’s “right to know” conference last Friday night on the frustrations of dealing with democracy’s so-called watchdog, the Australian Electoral Commission, on Tony Abbott’s ‘Honest Politics’ trust. I published Julian Burnside’s despairing speech critiquing our media at Media silence abets Ruddock’s atrocities, and hope to publish the speeches of Oxfam CEO Andrew Hewett and ABC hero Quentin Dempster soon. Here is the opening remarks by Chris Nash, director of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism at UTS:

The PR2K conferences were established in 2001 as an annual series to explore issues in and around the Public Right to Know, with particular reference to any potential Bill of Rights in a republican constitution for Australia.

That mission may have looked a little quixotic in 2001, especially in the light of the divisive defeat of the republican referendum two years earlier. The Tampa and September 11 events of that year also gave an urgency to humanitarian, religious, ethnic and international perspectives that might have made concern with a national constitution appear rather bookish and even diversionary. Nonetheless, our first conference was a very strong one, particularly in the opening night focus on the plight of refugees.

And events since that time, especially over the last twelve months, have made it very clear that the lack of entrenched constitutional protection of civil rights in this country have left us legally exposed in these increasingly turbulent times in a way the citizens of few other liberal democracies are. Collectively these developments seriously undermine the assumptions most would have about the fundamentals of their political system.

Specifically, the ASIO Act 2003 federally and in NSW the Terrorism (Police Powers) Act 2002 are serious assaults on the freedoms to remain silent and for journalists to protect the confidentiality of sources. They go beyond the restraints imposed by comparable legislation in the UK and USA, both of which states have much greater experience of terrorism within their borders but also have constitutional protections of civil rights.

The unlimited detention of asylum-seekers challenges the protections of habeas corpus, and draws dangerous divisions between categories of people who come under the jurisdiction of Australian law.

A bedrock principle of the Westminster system of government is that a Minister is accountable for the actions of his or her department. But the politics of ‘plausible deniability’ and ministerial ignorance pursued in the ‘children overboard’ affair, and other less brutal instances, turn that principle on its head. It is now the role of senior public servants specifically not to inform the Minister or indeed Prime Minister of politically sensitive decisions they are making in his or her name, precisely so that the Minister can’t be held accountable. And of course the public servants won’t be held accountable either – to the contrary, the evidence to date is that their careers will prosper.

The constitutional convention of Ministerial responsibility has been torn up – there is no now no operative constitutional provision for the accountability of government action through ministers accept through a winner-takes-all ballot at periodic elections.

Journalists, particularly in the parliamentary press galleries, are finding it increasingly difficult to get responses from Ministers to their written questions, or to question politicians at proper press conferences in a room around a desk or podium. Rather, they’re deluged with transcripts of ministerial speeches or appearances on talkback radio, or given occasional doorstop interviews where politicians can disappear through a door when the questions get difficult.

The squeezing of the media isn’t confined to individual journalists. The national broadcasters, ABC and SBS, have come under sustained assault in the fulfilment of their responsibilities to deal with the Australian people as citizens, and not as potential consumers for the goods and services being advertised.

The ABC has suffered a cumulative cut of 25% in its real budget over the last fifteen years, under both Coalition and Labor governments. Most recently, the then Minister for Communication and the Arts, Senator Alston, and a number of rightwing commentators have floated the idea that the ABC should cease to be the national broadcaster, and become a subscriber-supported organization like the marginalised PBS network in the United States.

Truly, some of the institutional pillars of public and political life that have taken for granted for most of the period since Federation have been brought into question. But precisely who is allowed to ask the questions is also now a matter of contention. The federal government has proposed the prohibition on public comment and criticism of government policy by non-government organizations funded as charities by government. It is a truly stunning assault on freedom of speech, not to mention the rights of the disadvantaged to organise and represent themselves collectively, that would be inconceivable in the contemporary North American or European context. It underlines just how fragile the position of fundamental democratic rights is in this country without entrenched constitutional protection.

It’s all getting so obvious the mainstream media’s refusal to see it indicates that something’s stopping it. Check out Will Hutton’s piece There’s a Revolution Going On in the US. It begins:

Britain’s political class and commentators just don’t get contemporary America. They don’t understand the revolutionary nature of US conservatism and the profundity of its ambitions. They don’t understand the extraordinary self-serving venality of corporate America and its Republican allies. They don’t understand the ruthless pursuit of radical conservative interests and disregard for all others. They think, like Tony Blair, that America is having an eccentric wobble and that if George Bush is engaged with, it will sooner or later be business as usual. They should read these two books (The Great Unravelling: From Boom to Bust in Three Short Years by Paul Krugman and The Roaring Nineties by Joseph Stiglitz) and be disabused…

Krugman states a truth from which many still shrink: todays conservatives are radical revolutionaries who do not accept the legitimacy of America’s current political system and aim to subvert it. Their goals are the establishment of an American military imperium abroad, under American rather than international law, and to minimize the responsibilities of the rich and corporate America to the common weal at home. This is so breathtaking, says Krugman, that to say it risks being condemned as alarmist. Indeed, quoting Henry Kissinger, he argues it is one of the characteristics of revolutionary power that it draws just this response; it is those who counsel adaptation to circumstances who are considered balanced and sane. Consensual mainstream opinion cannot come to terms with the radicalism of the revolutionaries – it is too far outside its ambit. It seems delusional, almost hysterical, to acknowledge what is really happening.

Hutton sets out Krugman’s five rules when reporting such a regime – journos awake!:

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

For more info on Krugman see Bush administration ignites condemning fire in columnist. For more on Joseph Stiglitz see Blowing the whistle on Dubyanomics

I recommend a close read of a wonderful open letter written by Democrat Ernest Partridge to a friend in Liberal slant. Headline: Is This the Kind of Country That You Want? A Letter to a Republican Friend. It echoes conversations happening now in Australia, little by little, partly because of the cross-party opposition to invading Iraq. Webdiary is reflecting a little of this stirring: the contributions of worried conservativeDaniel Moye, who became a Webdiary contributor after reading ‘Howard’s roads to absolute power’, are a good example.

These conversations will, I think, get deeper and more urgent. Would any of you like to have a go at a letter to a friend of different political persuasion along the lines of Ernest’s? Here’s a taste:

At no time in my memory, or yours, I suspect, has the rivalry between the two major parties been more mean-spirited and poisonous. And yet, despite our separate party affiliations, we remain close friends as we have for all the decades since high school. Moreover, I see no reason for this to change, nor, I trust, do you.

Surely you know that I have never regarded you as a fascist, just as I know that you have never thought of me as a traitor. Yet these are the kinds of labels that are routinely hurled by one fringe of our respective parties against the other.

Such mutual incivility is more than acutely unpleasant, it strikes at the foundation of our republic. Thus it falls upon cooler heads, such as ourselves, to reject the insult and abuse, and to restore the calm civic dialog and mutual respect that is the foundation of a just and secure political order.

Sadly, much more is required if we are to restore our republic to its former health and vigor. For our country and its founding political principles are gravely endangered by a radicalism that has taken control of all branches of our government as well as our mass media.

This means that it has, regretfully, taken control of the Republican Party – your party. It is thus imperative that moderates, such as yourself, take back their party.

…

Our political differences have been a constant topic of conversation between us over the years, occasionally heated, but never placing our friendship in any great peril. You see, we are both moderates. And while, in our arguments, our attention was understandably focused upon our differences, we took little notice of our common ground of commitment and belief.

You correctly describe yourself as a Conservative. I am willing to be called a liberal, despite the recent disparagement of that once honorable label. However, because of the abuse of that word, I prefer to call myself a progressive. Conventional wisdom treats conservative and liberal as opposing point of view. I prefer to see them as complementary. Thus and authentic conservative and a liberal can hold a great deal in common…

For now I must urge you to look directly and soberly upon your Party. With the aforementioned principles of conservatism firmly in your mind, ask yourself: Does this organization embody your conservative convictions? Do those public figures who so readily describe themselves as conservative authentically fit that label? Where your Party is leading our country, do you truly wish to follow?…

Face it, my friend: your party has deserted you and your fellow moderates. All worthy content has been drained from this party, and all that remains is the empty shell with the name, Republican, and the false attribution of the word conservative.

If you are to take back your party, you must paradoxically leave it for a brief season. Clearly, the moderates can not now wrest control of the party from the radicals – certainly, not before the 2004 election which, if Bush wins a second term, will solidify the radical right control of our government for another generation.

If moderate republicanism is to revive, the radicals must be repudiated and thrown out of power next year. To accomplish this, you and your fellow moderates must form an alliance with the moderate Democrats – with whom, I submit, you share a significant inventory of political ideals and policies. You differ with these Democrats primarily in name – and what’s in a name?

When I reflect upon the political landscape today, and upon the dilemma faced by moderate Republicans such as yourself, I am reminded of the closing scene in the magnificent war drama, The Bridge on the River Kwai. Col. Nicholson (Alec Guinness), the commander of the British prisoners of war, becomes so personally invested in the project of building the bridge, that he forgets that he is assisting the enemy. Seeing the explosive charges set by the Allied saboteurs to destroy the bridge, he rushes down to the river to save the bridge and, upon encountering the British and American commandos, is suddenly shocked into a recognition of his authentic loyalties and duties. My God, he says, what have I done?

So, in closing, I must ask you: Wherein is your ultimate loyalty? To your party or to your country? If you reflect soberly on what has become of your party, on the full import of the crisis facing our country, and upon you duty as a conservative and as a patriot, I am confident that you will arrive at wise and just conclusion.

***

And now, emails from Australians worried about where we’re going, and what they can, and are, doing about it.

Peter Gellatly in Canada

I would go further than Julian Burnside in Media silence abets Ruddock’s atrocities. To me, the Aussie press – including Fairfax, and especially The Age – seems entirely uninterested not only in uncomfortable issues, but particularly in providing a conduit for “outsider” voices. In this way is community debate and dissent smothered. Webdiary remains a treasured anomaly.

As to the International Criminal Court and the relevant Aussie legislation regarding crimes against humanity, I venture Julian would agree that participation/enactment by Western democracies is done on the basis of a winking “but we don’t mean us”! Yet there is the law, in black and white.

A decade or so ago, I seem to recall a British case where a citizen petitioned the courts to force the country’s Attorney General to do his job and bring prosecution. Don’t recall the outcome, save that the tactic proved somewhat effective. So a question: is there some equivalent Aussie legal provision whereby Julian et al could pressure Ministerial enforcement of the country’s laws?

***

Marilyn Shepherd in Adelaide, refugee activist

Last time I saw Julian Burnside he was delightedly on his haunches talking to Nagina, Montezar and Alamdar Bakhtiaryi, the most abused and maligned children currently in this country of ours. The kids were actually impressed by this famous man and his delight was obvious considering his part in their release.

Several times during his inaugural Don Dunstan lecture Nagina was a bit overcome, remembering her own time in the hell that is Woomera. Nagina knew she was finally safe and with friends, as I hugged her and Lowitja O’Donoghue talked to Alamdar and Montezar.

A powerful and impressive oration earned Julian a 5 minute standing ovation, richly deserved, for his commitment and passion about the treatment of refugees.

I was behind Julian in court room 5 of the Adelaide Federal Court when he argued for the release of Amin Mastipour, who had been in an isolation cell for 45 days. Mr Roder for the minister, Mr Ruddock, claimed that this nation is allowed to keep asylum seekers in any conditions we want and it would still be lawful. It seemed they were happy to lock Mr Mastipour in isolation for the term of his natural life.

His initial crime was to refuse to be strip-searched in front of his 7 year old daughter, a daughter who was subsequently stolen from him by force and trickery and deported to Iran.

Mr Mastipour spent 60 days in that cell before Justice Mansfield ordered his release to Maribynong or Villawood. Last I heard he was in Melbourne.

On Saturday I was at the airport with a group of carers and supporters, including lawyers, Afghan refugees, a Catholic priest and others as we were forced to put two wonderful boys on a plane in a vicious pantomime. These kids were 18 and 19, sent to Australia for protection and given Woomera.

St Ignatius College wanted them to stay, we wanted them to stay, but no-one at all in the department would budge. These kids had to go to the most evil place on earth, according to the US state department on Monday, stay there and try and survive for 6 weeks while DIMIA worked out return visas as students.

Alexander Downer knew the boys and he wrote a character reference, but he would not even try and stop this cruel charade. Just the week before another boy just like these two, another war orphan, was granted permanent residence. These are the orphans of Afghanistan, a nation we have helped bomb to bits.

For his treatment of the Bakhtiaryi children alone Ruddock should spend the rest of his life in prison.

We must appeal to Amanda Vanstone not to imprison new-born Mahzar at the end of the week.

To do so would be monstrous is the extreme – he is only 6 days old, already labelled as an “unlawful non-citizen” and his mum has spent 34 months today in prison even though DIMIA knew all along that Ali was in the country as a refugee. (High Court file S134/2002 – 4th February).

With the law as it stands, according to the Commonwealth Solicitor General David Bennett on 30th September in the High Court case for the kids, “the detention of children is more finite than the detention of adults because they can end it when they turn 18”.

Think about that. Mahzar is 6 days old. No-one in the media reported that remark as noteworthy, but my first thought was for Roquia’s babe, then unborn. The possibility, as it stands, is that Mahzar could spend 18 years in jail, for being born.

Also on the weekend, as you know Margo, it was the 2nd anniversary of the drowning of 146 children, 142 women and 65 men on SIEV-X. Not a bloody word in the media. Not interesting anymore, if it ever was.

***

Glenn Floyd

The Australian nation and our society has altered permanently, directly at the hand of the Prime Minister John Howard and former Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock. Both these men have profoundly subverted our nationally cherished ethical and democratic values, once fiercely held and defended in periods of great human and national challenge within our open, loving society.

There was a time when we faced overwhelming odds, by any historical measure far more overwhelming than any of those of the past three years. We both faced these challenges together as a nation and never at any time believed we would resile from our widely and deeply understood duty to address our obligations and our common belief in our nation, ourselves, our ethics and our democracy.

As a nation under these two men, we have demonstrated we no longer stand for these universal values of human integrity and dignity.

The essence of depth of these treasured values, deeply felt and abided since nationhood, are concisely enshrined in a United Nations General Assembly resolution of 2000, the momentous Millennium Declaration. This statement of world-agreed fervent belief reminds us these values are everlasting and of perpetual beauty and may never be tarnished by any national politicians anywhere at any time.

The impact of the declaration is profound, as it encapsulates what we once proudly stood for and what we have lost.

I am no longer able to accept my hitherto legally defined being as an Australian, and choose world citizenship over that of this nation. I adopt the Universal Declaration Of Humanity as the only means of ethically existing under the damaged status of this nation and society. The move is not one loss or lament, it is one of great pride and restoration in belief in humanity and our common destiny. While national dignity will be destroyed by many politicians throughout history, human dignity remains sacrosanct.

I take this stand in part because of Prime Minister John Howard’s damage to the historically honoured reputations of all Australians worldwide. This destruction of our reputation was caused by attacking and killing innocent Iraqi people after an immoral declaration of war. This heinous act was perpetrated when the disarmament of Iraq was being honourably managed with the full agreement of the Iraqi authorities and under the unanimous agreement of and at the demand of the United Nations.

This killer and butcher of innocents took this morally indefensible decision to kill in the full knowledge that he had not undertaken the paramount responsibility of his position and fully and utterly verified the spurious forged and corrupt intelligence of USA and British leaders. He is an accessory.

In addition, I am not able to rest in ethical good conscience knowing that Australia is internationally reviled as implementing a barbarous detention system declared by the United Nations as the most brutal in the democratised world. This brutality was consistently and mercilessly metered out on weak and helpless people under the barbaric, ruthless and chilling personality of former Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock. This man’s continuing actions against innocent women, children, men and families have breached the U.N. Conventions on Human Rights and Refugees.

We recognize that, in addition to our separate responsibilities to our own societies, we have a collective responsibility to uphold the principles of human dignity, equality and equity at the global level. Our politicians have a duty therefore to all the world’s people, especially the most vulnerable and, in particular, the children of the world, to whom the future belongs.

Upon the innate goodness, the innocence of and the name of Ali Ismail Abbas, the 12 year old Iraqi boy whose parents and brothers and sisters were slaughtered and who had his arms blown off by John Howard’s warring butchery, I also pledge my life tos removing John Howard and Phillip Ruddock from power. I will stand at Canberra this Thursday 23 October as a proud world citizen protesting the presence of the barbaric American warring butcher.

The Universal Declaration Of Humanity

2003 Glenn Floyd Australia

In the absolute interests of and to ethically serve the posterity of all humanity, I – Glenn Francis Floyd – do solemnly declare that I hereby fully renounce my Australian citizenship and nationalistic identity in all its forms forthwith.

I accordingly adopt the status of world citizen as defined, in spirit and intent, by the United Nations General Assembly Millennium Declaration.

I declare my future allegiance to honourably align my being as a human, my personal philosophy, my indebted service and future to the welfare of all humankind and all species of our planet Earth.

I make this declaration for the purposes of fully accepting in totality all responsibilities, rights and obligations in perpetuity bestowed upon all nation’s citizens, as paramount over my own nation’s stated and implied obligations and rights. I will no longer serve any nation over humanity.

Signed: Glenn Francis Floyd

Twentieth Day Of October 2003

***

Brian Gore

Many of us within the Catholic Justice and Peace groups have been thoroughly disgusted with the Australian Government’s attitude to the UN and its lack of adherence to the principles of International Law. This is our little protest.

Columban Mission Institute

420 Bobbin Head Road

North Turramurra NSW 2074

OPEN LETTER TO ALL ELECTED FEDERAL MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT

We, the undersigned organisations and individuals, are concerned at attempts to discredit and undermine the role of the United Nations as exemplified by the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which was done without the endorsement of the UN.

Pope John Paul II has said that the United Nations has a more important role than ever in the reconstruction of nations after conflict and disasters. This is not so true where conflict could and should have been avoided. He also said that it was important to adhere to International Law to achieve world peace. The Pope had declared that the invasion of Iraq would be immoral and did his best to stop it.

At the reception of Letters of Credence on new ambassadors to the Vatican, the Pope said:

“Since the period of the great world conflicts, the international community has provided itself with organizations and specific legislation so that war will never break out again, which kills innocent civilian people, devastating regions and leaving wounds that take a long time to heal.”

In announcing John Paul II’s topic for the 2004 World Day of Peace recently, the Vatican said that the United Nations is “irreplaceable” as a forum for international dialogue and world peace, and “the Holy See has not stopped supporting it”. We fully endorse the words of Pope John Paul 11.

Australian Governments in the past have made significant contributions to the foundation and development of United Nations organizations. We are very concerned that the current Australian Government is contributing to the undermining of the hard won advances in human rights, recognition for which the United Nations stands.

Those who denigrate the effectiveness of the United Nations as a global peacekeeping force and decision-making body should remember that it is only as good and effective as its members want it to be. “If the UN ‘fails’, it is because governments fail,” says Margaret Reynolds, National President of the United Nations Association of Australia.

We reject totally the attempts to sideline the role of the United Nations and to manipulate and ignore International Law. Creating solutions to international problems through the United Nations, while not perfect, we believe is the most democratic way at present to building a more peaceful, sustainable world community.

The “Coalition of the Willing” ignored the UN and the majority of the international community and invaded Iraq. Now they want the UN and other nations to clean up the mess they have made. We ignore the UN at our peril.

As Church groups and individuals who work for peace and justice in Australia and the world community, we believe that we need to work together to express support for the role of the United Nations as a platform for world peace.

We as Australian voters want you our elected political leaders to uphold the commitment of previous Australian Governments to the Charter of the United Nations and to speak out against any attempts to diminish the role of the United Nations and adherence to International Law.

Yours Sincerely

Fr Brian Gore, Convenor Columban Centre for Peace Ecology and Justice

Br Shane Wood cfc, Broome Diocesan Office of Justice, Ecology and Peace

Ms Margaret Reynolds, United Nations Association of Australia

Mr John Dacey Community Education Coordinator & Mr Roger O’Halloran Executive Director, PALMS Australia

Sr Margaret Hinchey, Convenor Catholics in Coalition for Justice & Peace

Sr Patty Fawkner SGS, Director Uniya Jesuit Social Justice Centre

Ms Margaret Perkins, Chairperson Rockhampton Social Justice Action Group

Mr James McGillicuddy, Coordinator PolMin, Australian Political Ministry Network Ltd

Fr Claude Mostowik msc, Missionaries of the Sacred Heart Justice & Peace Centre

Mrs Rita Camilleri, Pax Christi Australia

Sr MaryLou Moorehead rscj, Pax Christi New South Wales

Mr Marc Purcell, Executive Officer, Catholic Commission for Justice & Peace, Melbourne

Bro Steve Cram cfc, Edmund Rice Centre, Sydney

Ms Julie Morgan, Promoter of Justice, Peace and Integrity of Creation, Franciscan Friars Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia and Brunei.

Sr Judith Dynan, Franciscan Missionaries of Mary, Australia

Sr Aileen Crowe fmm, NetAct, A Project of Catholic Social Justice, Welfare & Educational Agencies

 

Illustration by Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

Former NSW Liberal Party president John Valder last night accused John Howard of being the first Prime Minister to place Australia at risk of being branded a war criminal.

Speaking at a Sydney North Shore forum on the consequences for truth and democracy of Mr Howard’s decision to invade Iraq, Mr Valder, a former backer of Mr Howard, confronted health minister Tony Abbott “as a friend”, accusing the Government of being a party to “a much greater atrocity” than the September 11 terrorist attack in the United States.

“I sense that our government has underestimated the strength of feeling on this issue, not just in this room tonight or just in this country, but right around the world,” he said. “Let’s not underestimate the enormity of what’s happened in Iraq,” where the Coalition of the Willing fired more than one million missiles on the country.

He said invading Iraq “might not end very pleasantly for the Coalition of the Willing”.

“Presidents have been indicted for much lesser crimes than what we have just this last year in Iraq”, he said, citing his belief that President Bush invaded Iraq on a false premise.

If President Bush was indicted, “where does that leave the British government and Tony Blair and our government and our Prime Minister?” he asked Mr Abbott. “Your Prime Minister … bellowed and trumpeted from the rooftops, about those wicked Weapons of Mass Destruction, and how Saddam Hussein was going to have the power to rain missiles onto the United States itself, and feed them to terrorists… that premise is entirely false.”

“I can see political parties in Britain and Australia perhaps raising the spectre of war crimes charges being levelled against them … For the first time, we have a Prime Minister who has put this country at risk of being branded as a war criminal.”

“Couple what has happened with what’s happened in human rights in this country since the children overboard (to) Guantanamo Bay, there is a total disregard, it seems, by this government, really, of human rights.” Only two of the 42 nations whose citizens the US had detained in Guantanamo Bay without charge had not strongly protested to the US – Australia and China.

“I have to say to you, as a friend, it is an appalling situation, and it’s not too late for your government to make amends.”

Mr Abbott replied that nothing would satisfy Mr Valder “short of repudiating everything that has been done.”

“I think it was right. I think it was a bitter necessity. If, in the end, this government and indeed its ministers are judged critically and harshly – even condemned by the voting public – let that be their fate.”

Citing British political philosopher Edmund Burke, he said: “I owe you my judgment, not my obedience. That is the fundamental principle at the heart of responsible government.”

More than 200 North Shore residents attended the forum. The other panelists were federal Labor MP Tanya Plibersek, Peter Macdonald – the independent who gave Abbott a run for his money at the 2001 election – and local human shield Donna Mulhearn.

How long have the major parties flip flopped on ending superannuation discrimination against same sex couples? Before a fascinating rundown from Polly Bush on the possibility that the Democrats will join the cant parties just as – because? – it finally got the Senate numbers to apply real pressure for reform, a blast from the past.

New Lib row on ‘family’ looms

by Margo Kingston

Sydney Morning Herald 29-12-1995

The Shadow minister for small business and women, Ms Judith Moylan, reignited Coalition tensions over the definition of “the family” yesterday when she publicly backed the removal of all superannuation discrimination against gay couples and single people.

Ms Moylan said marital status should be irrelevant when deciding returns on any investment, and “who you leave the equity of your policy to”. Until now, the Coalition has been intransigent in maintaining the traditional definition of “spouse” and “family” in all legislation.

Ms Moylan told the Herald: “My personal view is that the law should not interfere in this. The question of same-sex couples and single people shouldn’t enter into it. “My own personal viewpoint is that this ought to be rectified, and that superannuation should be treated like any other accumulated saving. I don’t see why something you’ve contributed to for a long period of time should be withheld on the basis of your marital relationship or otherwise.”

Ms Moylan endorsed the recommendations of a recent Senate Committee superannuation report, which urged an end to the payment of benefits only if the deceased contributor had a wife or child. It said all contributors should be allowed to nominate a beneficiary. At present, no death benefit is payable when a contributor who has no wife or child dies before retirement. This applies to government or private schemes.

The (Labor) Government has stalled for years on the issue while promising a review when the Democrats periodically propose reform through amendments to superannuation bills. Government sources said yesterday that no change was contemplated.

But the committee, led by Senator John Watson (Liberal, Tasmania), recommended a revision, not by extending the definition of family, but by offering the “nominated beneficiary” option to people without a wife or child. Senator Watson, who crossed the floor to vote against the sexual privacy bill, is a respected superannuation expert and is influential on Coalition superannuation policy.

Senator Watson said the rules should change “so that those in a bona fide domestic relationship and single people are treated in the same manner as married and de facto superannuants”.

The committee said homosexuals and single heterosexuals were “subsidising the benefits to other members of their superannuation funds purely on the basis of their marital status”. The committee said that despite Government commitments to non-discrimination, including its signature to an International Labor Organisation convention outlawing workplace discrimination on the ground of sexuality, it was the worst offender.

The Treasury department admitted that fund managers risked losing their official status if they paid out to same sex partners.

*

Same sex super rundown

by Polly Bush

Polly wrote a timely backgrounder in Same sex super: how we value love, just before Democrats Senator John Cherry unilaterally ripped up party policy by announcing the Dems would pass a super bill even if the government refused to accept same sex amendments. She reported the beginning of the fallout in Coalition heat melts Democrats on same sex super. Here’s her fascinating rundown of what’s gone down since. The Democrats crunchtime is now scheduled for October 27.

There are few guarantees in politics. There are particularly few guarantees for gay and lesbian couples when it comes to the major political parties changing the gender specific terms enshrined in federal superannuation laws.

While frustrating for Government, the Australian Democrats have had a long-held commitment to vote against any superannuation reforms unless the laws include amendments to recognise same sex couples. This is one of the party’s principles, and part of the party’s history.

But this commitment has been doubtful in recent weeks, with the Democrats Superannuation spokesperson Senator John Cherry announcing the party many back down on these amendments to pass the Government’s Superannuation Bill 2003 through the Senate.

Two weeks later, asked by Webdiary for a “straight” answer on whether he would back down, Senator Cherry said: “Wait and see”.

A backdown would pose a dilemma for at least two Democrats senators. West Australian Senator Brian Greig, who has himself been in a same-sex relationship for 18 years, is expected to not vote with the Party if it backs down on this legislation. It is also understood that former Democrats leader Senator Natasha Stott Despoja will defend the party’s long-held commitment to recognising same-sex couples by insisting on the amendments. Senator Stott Despoja was a guest presenter of the Gay and Lesbian Awards (GALAs) held in Adelaide last Friday night.

Here is a rundown of the events so far:

September 2003

Labor, the Democrats and the Greens join forces in the Senate to attach amendments giving same sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples to a Federal Government superannuation package . Greens leader Bob Brown describes the vote as historic:

“All states and territories have moved to modify their laws to remove discrimination but the Howard government has been dragging its feet. The Senate is now moving the Government into the modern world.”

It is historic, as this is the first time the Australian Labor Party has supported such amendments. The amendments recognise both same-sex and interdependency relationships.

In the past, the minor parties, particularly the Australian Democrats, have led the way in pushing these amendments, refusing to vote for any federal legislation through the Senate without same sex couple recognition.

October 3, 2003

The Age political correspondent Annabel Crabb reports a potential back down on the amendments for the current legislation, with Democrats superannuation spokesperson John Cherry saying his party is prepared to leave same-sex rights to another day:

“We think this particular package stands alone. I think it was worth doing for the moral victory of getting Labor on the record (but) there are plenty of other bills coming up that these amendments can be attached to.”

Australia’s first gay and lesbian community radio station, Melbourne’s JOY-FM, leads its news bulletins with Crabb’s report. Greens leader Bob Brown later expresses his disbelief in the story:

“I can’t believe the Democrats will back off on this they have been such champions of this cause. I hope that this report will be found to be untrue.”

October 4, 2003

Webdiary reports a potential split emerging within the Australian Democrats should the Party back down on the amendments. Senator Greig says:

I will not vote for this Bill if the same-sex amendments fail.

However other senators indicate they are willing to back down. Victorian Senator Lyn Allyson tells the Herald Online:

I will be (reluctantly) not insisting on the amendment.

October 5, 2003

Former Western Australian division president of the Democrats Tracy Chaloner responds to Webdiary’s reports of a split emerging within the Party:

Now they (Meg Lees’ gang of four – Cherry, Allyson, Aden Ridgeway and Andrew Murray) are derailing an 11-year campaign that finally got up with the support of the ALP and Greens – superannuation equity for same sex couples – doing a backflip of epic proportions and abandoning this important amendment to the superannuation legislation now before Parliament. The Democrats had a long and proud tradition of fighting for the rights of same sex couples. It is an extremely important principle, one of equity and anti-discrimination.

October 7, 2003

A joint press release is issued by Democrats Senators John Cherry and Brian Greig. Senator Cherry argues the benefits of the current bill for low income earners:

“Workers earning less than average earnings will now be eligible for a dollar to dollar top-up for voluntary superannuation savings to a means tested maximum of $1,000.”

Senator Greig appeals to the Federal Government to support the same sex recognition amendment:

“The Government talks about the importance of choice in superannuation, but refuses to deliver choice on what happens to death benefits. It is inconsistent and hypocritical.”

The same day in the Upper House, Democrats leader Senator Andrew Bartlett attempts to “clear up any confusion” about the Democrats position. On the superannuation amendment recognising same-sex couples, Senator Bartlett says:

It is an issue which the government will need to continue to confront, particularly if the ALP’s position remains consistent in removing discrimination against same sex couples. Whether or not that approach will continue consistently on bills that the ALP support as opposed to bills the ALP oppose, we shall have to wait and see. But that is part of the unknowns that we will be seeing in the near future in this chamber and that, amongst other things, will determine what the Democrats’ approach will be to the future outcome of this legislation should the government not agree to the amendments that the chamber makes. But that, as is not uncommon, is an issue to be considered down the track rather than predetermining what we will do.

The amendments are moved and passed in the Senate, and the Bill is sent back to the Lower House.

October 8, 2003

The House of Representatives debates the superannuation amendments to recognise both same sex and interdependency relationships. Ross Cameron, the Liberal Member for Parramatta, says the amendments are irrelevant as the Bill “only applies to an individual”.

Labor Member for Grayndler Anthony Albanese, who in the past has introduced private members bills arguing for the recognition of same sex couples in superannuation law, pleads to the Australian Democrats to not back down on the amendments when the Bill reaches the Senate again:

I call upon the Australian Democrats – if they have a sliver of integrity left – to ensure that when this amendment goes back to the Senate they actually vote to remove this discrimination.

The Labor Member for Melbourne Ports, Michael Danby, also appeals to the Australian Democrats to not back down, quoting Tracy Chaloner’s response to Webdiary:

Tracy Chaloner, the leading member of the Australian Democrats in Western Australia, says that it is a result of ‘the gang and the faceless cabal’ who are the real power behind the Democrats, who have to do with nothing more than political opportunism and who have abrogated the policy of the Democrats as it was originally formed.

The Member for Melbourne, Lindsay Tanner, expresses his disappointment in the Government’s refusal to support the amendments:

This is a simple matter of basic human rights and decency. It is very distressing that the Government regards this as some sort of direct threat to the sanctity and security of the institution of marriage.

The print media covers the potential split within the Australian Democrats, with Annabel Crabb reporting that former Democrats leader Natasha Stott Despoja will be joining Senator Brian Greig on insisting on the amendments:

Senator Stott Despoja has told her colleagues she opposes the deal because it contains tax breaks for the wealthy, and she also believes the party should not let the legislation go through without proposed amendments that would finally give gay couples equal treatment under Commonwealth superannuation legislation. Even with the defections of senators Stott Despoja and Greig, the deal will pass the Senate on the votes of the other five Democrats.”

Website moneymanagement runs the headline ‘Democrats to support Govt despite same-sex veto’, reporting:

A senior Australian Democrats adviser has indicated that while the Party is disappointed by the Government’s veto of the same-sex amendments, this will not alter the Democrats support of the co-contributions legislation when it returns to the Senate.

October 10, 2003

Victoria and Tasmania’s gay newspaper MCV runs the front-page headline ‘SUPER SELLOUT’. The article reports:

The Democrats must choose between passing the unamended Bill and holding on to principle, or finalising the superannuation deal. “I think it would be very hard difficult for me to explain to a gay and lesbian community why I did not insist on these amendments on this occasion,” Senator Greig said about his voting intentions.

October 13, 2003

Debate resumes in the House of Representatives. Anthony Albanese refers to Senator Brian Greig’s comments to the Sydney Star Observer, issue no. 683:

Greig said he hoped the credibility of Democrats would not be damaged. Bad luck, Brian, because you are incredibly damaged by this sell-out. He said: “I encourage the community to look at this issue in its complexity … It’s not as black and white as our critics are making out.” It has been black-and-white in the past for Senator Greig and the Australian Democrats who have refused to be a part of broad campaign and have chosen a sectarian road on this issue in attacking people who support reform.

Albanese also attacks Prime Minister John Howard, but his use of language is rejected by the Deputy Speaker:

ALBANESE: The government, led by a bigot in the Prime Minister when it comes to issues of sexual preference, is refusing to allow this much needed reform.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Hon. D.G.H. Adams) Order! The honourable member has used the word bigot to describe the Prime Minister. I understand that the word bigot is unparliamentary.

ALBANESE: I note that no-one on the government side objected, but I withdraw the term bigot and use prejudiced in terms of sexual relations.

Keen to be clear on what language is ‘parliamentary’, Labor Member for Sydney Tanya Plibersek seeks clarification:

“Mr Deputy Speaker, before I start I want to seek your advice. The honourable member for Grayndler was pulled up for using the term bigot. I just wondered whether or not homophobe is parliamentary language?

In her address, Plibersek said the Government’s stance is designed to try to shore up votes:

“Remembering what the Prime Minister did when he raised the issue of lesbians having access to IVF (a summary of that debate is at Sperm for singles – round three) it is not difficult to draw the conclusion that this government sees protecting the rights of same-sex couples as not just politically unpopular but also, perhaps, sees attacking the rights of these people as a vote winner. I must say it really shocks me that the Democrats are prepared to be part of this hatchet job.”

The Member for Melbourne Ports, Michael Danby, believes the discrimination in superannuation law is more suited to the 1950s. Mr Danby says:

By not amending this legislation we are discriminating against people who are simply trying to pass on their retirement incomes to a person with whom they are living in a loving and long-term relationship. This is not the kind of Australia that I believe is fitting for the 21st century.

With the Government having the numbers, the amendments are rejected and the bill heads back to the Senate.

October 15, 2003

The Sydney Morning Herald runs Gay rights threaten super windfall on its front page. Mark Riley, Annette Sampson and Aban Contractor report:

“The Federal Government’s $1.3 billion superannuation package, offering benefits for both high and low wage earners, was in peril last night amid a political bunfight over rights for same-sex couples. A landmark deal between the Government and the Democrats to secure tax breaks for high-income earners and government-matched contributions for the low-paid is at risk of unravelling. The Government has warned that the package will be doomed if the Democrats, Labor and the Greens back amendments in the Senate today to give gay and lesbian couples the same superannuation rights as heterosexuals. The Democrats have called a special party room meeting for this morning to thrash out its final position. The party had trumpeted the agreement with the Government as a major breakthrough for the low paid, but now faces having to shelve its long-held support of equal rights for same-sex couples to see the changes become law.”

SMH Online runs a poll on the issue, asking, “Should same sex couples get the same rights?” Of the 4063 respondents, 68% answer yes.

The story of the split gathers momentum, with the ABC online reporting:

“The Democrats’ leader Andrew Bartlett says it is difficult for Democrat senators to decide whether to force the issue on equal superannuation for gay couples or to help low income earners. ‘What we’re seeing is the Labor Party holding up significant gains for low income earners and using gay and lesbian people as the missile to shoot down that package,’ he said.”

Meanwhile, debate on the Bill resumes in the Senate. The ALP’s Senator Nick Sherry attacks Ross Cameron’s take in the House of Reps:

“His claim that the governments so-called choice of fund legislation overcomes the fundamental discrimination in law against same sex couples is grossly misleading. It is not the superannuation funds that are at the heart of the problem; it is the law that the superannuation funds are required to meet that is at the heart of the problem.”

The shots come firing back, with Liberal Senator John Watson accusing the ALP of hypocrisy:

“It is interesting that, in order to try and get some additional support for its opposition, the Labor Party has joined with some minority senators in using the same-sex couples debate to try and destroy this legislation.”(Margo: Rich as, John, given your support for reform in 1995.)

Democrats Senator John Cherry plays to both sides, talking up the Bill’s benefits to low income earners, as well as promoting the amendments to support both same sex and interdependent relationships:

“I cannot see why we cannot ensure this package moves through because it is such a good and important package. I cannot see why we cannot also deal with the issue of discrimination because it is a fundamentally important issue.”

Senator Ron Boswell provides a different argument, complaining of the problems in recognising ‘interdependent relationships’ and refusing to support same sex relationships recognition (although he had a little difficulty expressing this). In his address, he drew on a personal example:

“Unfortunately in my case, the same thing happened when my son passed away. The money was taxed when he passed it on to his nephew. I thought that was a bit rough at the time. I hope this legislation gets the support of the Democrats and that we do not get hung up on an issue that we would find, particularly in the Nationals, very difficult to support.”

Senator Sherry: Property rights are difficult for the Nationals!

Senator Boswell: No, it is not property rights. It is the other thing that I am referring to and you know it quite well – same sex couples. We would find it very difficult to support it. I plead with the Democrats.

Senator Brian Greig has the final word on the Bill before it is adjourned, attacking both the Labor and Coalition parties. Of the Labor Party’s recent support of the amendments, Senator Greig said:

“To see the amendment from Labor their first ever on this issue come out of the blue as it did, was, as Senator Watson correctly said, to see Labor using the issue of same-sex couples as a torpedo or a weapon to sink a bill that they are ultimately going to vote against. I regret that.”

In terms of the Government’s refusal to support the amendments, Senator Greig points the finger at the Prime Minister:

“The blame for that rests with the Government and its ridiculous position on this issue. We know where it comes from. I do not think it comes from Senator Coonan. I think her heart is in the right place. It comes directly from the Prime Minister and cabinet.”

October 16, 2003

The Sydney Star Observer’s David Mills covers the week’s debates in the Senate and the House of Representatives, quoting the Sydney Labor MPs Anthony Albanese and Tanya Plibersek. It also reports the response from Somali Cerise, the Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby co-convenor:

“This clearly demonstrates that the Howard Government is out of touch with the community, and definitely out of touch with the gay and lesbian community,” she said. The Lobby would be “extremely disappointed” if other Democrats senators voted for the bill without the amendment, Cerise said. “The Democrats are a party with a long history of taking a principled stand on gay and lesbian issues,” she said. “We expect unwavering commitment.”

Debate on the Superannuation Bill 2003 is expected to return to the Upper House when the Senate resumes on October 27.