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

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

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

I asked Dave to introduce himself:

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

 

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

 

by Dave Green

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

***

Clem Colman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mutual appreciation society

by Antony Loewenstein

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

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

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

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

TREVOR KENNEDY

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

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

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

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

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

Annabel Crabb of The Age noted in late May:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CEDRIC HAMPSON QC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

September 10,2003

Dear Margo,

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

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

Yours sincerely,

Tony Abbott

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr Abbott left this message on my answering machine today:

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

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

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

Over to Jack.

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

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

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

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

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

Permission to lie from the print press quislings

by Jack Robertson

ABC 7.30 Report, August 27

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

TONY ABBOTT: Absolutely not.

TONY JONES: Or other funds from any other source –

TONY ABBOTT: Absolutely not.

TONY JONES: Being offered to Terry Sharples?

TONY ABBOTT: Absolutely not.

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

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

***

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

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

***

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

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

***

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

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

***

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

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

***

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

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

***

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

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

***

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

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

***

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

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

***

IN OTHER NEWS, JESUS CHRIST, MP, HAS RETURNED

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

New York Times, September 4, 2003

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

By STEPHEN LABATON

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Congratulations to Webdiary readers for helping the Australian Electoral Commission see that its duty is to Australian voters, not to devious politicians trying to avoid their legal obligation to be honest with voters about who’s bankrolling their parties. The AEC Chairman, Trevor Morling QC, has now intervened to clean up the mess and reassure the public that Tony Abbott will not get special treatment. He’s criticised the AEC for aspects of its conduct in the ‘Honest Politics’ Trust matter to date, and urgent new legal advice is being sought (AEC chief intervenes in Abbott slush fund secrets).

Thank you Trevor Morling, an Australian elder – a distinguished retired judge who takes his duties to the people very seriously. Justice Morling is a part time AEC chairman, because it’s a part time job. But he cares, is well aware of his grave responsibilities, and is above politics. I think the Australian people can trust him to do the right thing. I certainly do. (For his background and career, see Taking Abbott’s slush secrets to the top: Will the AEC chairman intervene?)

Bouquets are also due to the AEC itself! After trying to keep its record on Abbott’s slush fund secret for more than a week in accordance with its misconceived “standard practice”, it’s now decided to be open with the Australian people it’s there to serve. AEC media spokesman Brien Hallett now openly admits that mistakes were made. That is courageous, honest, and worthy of hearty applause. How many other public service bodies or companies – let alone politicians – are willing to admit they were wrong and then get on with doing the job better?

I’ve now talked to a lot of people who know how the system works, and I’m getting a good idea of how John Howard has deliberately weakened the AEC through budget cuts and the refusal of all AEC requests to clean up political donation disclosure laws. Mark Riley’s piece in the Herald this morning, Anti-rorting proposals ignored, shows the AEC has pushed for legal reforms to stop the big parties rorting the system and hiding their donors from the Australian people for the last ten years. First Keating then Howard said no.

We can now see that Abbott’s ‘Honest Politics Trust’ was not just a joke on the people of Australia because its donors were secret. Abbott and Howard were also misleading the Australian people in a more fundamental way. By their actions – and lack of action – they allowed the system to break down so that there were plenty of chances to evade the Liberal Party’s legal obligations to disclose its political donors. Howard and Abbott believe in dishonest politics for them and honest politics for their small political competitors.

The AEC has to both administer the system and enforce it – a pretty hard ask when you’re trying to keep politicians honest! There should be a powerful, independent enforcer of rules to keep our democracy clean and transparent, just like the ACCC stops big business abusing market power and misleading consumers. But John Howard doesn’t want it that way.

To try to avoid getting embroiled in big party politics, the AEC adopted a policy of confidentiality on donor secrecy so the two big parties didn’t play politics with each other’s tricky business. But that’s backfired. Tony Abbott demands confidentiality of the AEC, yet releases correspondence with it when it suits his political needs. And the AEC forgot for a while that requests by the public for openness on its 1998 decision to allow Abbott to keep his slush fund donors secret were about the AEC being accountable to its clients, the voters.

Tonight, the text of the letters between Abbott and the AEC in 1998 – thank you to the Australian Financial Review’s Canberra bureau chief Tony Walker for giving me copies. Abbott gave the letters to Tony on Sunday night to justify his continuing refusal to come clean, but as Webdiary reader Sue McDonald found out, chose not to put them on his ministerial website. Sue wrote:

I have been searching for details of correspondence that Tony Abbott had with the AEC. I eventually rang Andrew Simpson who is given as the contact on the press release titled One Nation Litigation on Tony Abbott’s website. I said I was trying to find out who initiated the correspondence between Tony Abbott and the Australian Electoral Commission. Andrew Simpson said it was Tony Abbott who initiated the correspondence. (Margo: This is not correct. The AEC wrote to Abbott first.) I asked if Tony Abbott was going to release copies of this correspondence and the legal advice Tony Abbott had obtained. Andrew Simpson stated that the correspondence had been released to media outlets. I also asked if he could fax me a copy of the correspondence. He said he would organise for a copy to be faxed to me. Has this correspondence been released to media outlets? (Margo: Certainly not to the Herald. Only to Tony, as far as I know.)

The letters reveal that the Honest Politics Trust was formed not only to destroy One Nation through the Courts, but also other political parties which could threaten voter support for the Liberal Party.

Webdiarists have also asked for information on the AEC’s legal powers to investigate the trust and prosecute Abbott for non-disclosure. Our legal experts, Graeme Orr and Joo-Cheong Tham, have kindly obliged.

***

Text of letter from Abbott to the AEC in response to its demand that he disclose the name of the donors to his honest politics trust in accordance with laws requiring transparency of political donations. Comments in bold are mine.

October 20, 1998

Roger Wills

Australian Electoral Commission,

PO Box E201

Kingston, ACT 2604

Dear Mr Wills,

The Australians for Honest Politics Trust was established on August 24 1998, and, therefore, cannot fall within any disclosure requirements for the 1997-98 year. In any event, I very strongly submit that the Trust is not an “associated entity” under the Act.

The object of the Trust is to support legal actions to test the extent to which political entities comply with Australian law. I have two fellow trustees: John Wheeldon, a former Labor Minister (now a neo-liberal right winger associated with John Howard’s favourite magazine, Quadrant) and Peter Coleman, a former NSW Liberal leader. Neither, as far as I know, are currently members of a political party and neither would do the bidding of a political party.

So far, the Trust has raised nearly $100,000 – almost all of which is committed to supporting the action brought by Mrs Barbara Hazelton (at the urging of the Trust and after it promised to pay her legal bills) in the Queensland Supreme Court to test the validity of the Queensland registration of One Nation. Given the unusual structure of the One Nation entity (as unusual as the structure of the Honest Politics Trust?)there is an important public interest in this action – which may not have been brought but for the Trust. I very much doubt whether the framers of the Electoral Act would have wished to discourage those seeking to test and strengthen the electoral law. (People like you and Howard, Tony, who’ve blocked electoral law reform so your party can keep avoiding disclosure laws?)

The Trust is not controlled by and does not operate for the benefit of any registered political party. The Trust does not raise money for a political party nor hold assets for the benefit of a political party nor take any part in election campaigns. If the Trust – which is not linked with a political party and is not involved in election campaigns – is required to file an “associated entity” return, other organisations such as trade union and party-allied think tanks would also need to file returns. (Indeed, and so they should.) In my judgement, this would amount to a change of policy in the guise of administration.

Before seeking donations to the trust I spoke with one of Australia’s leading electoral lawyers who assured me that the Trust would not be covered by disclosure provisions. (Tony, why did you want to keep them secret in the first place?) If despite this letter and the attached Trust document you still believe otherwise, I would appreciate your urgent advice.

Yours sincerely,

Tony Abbott.

***

June 10, 1999

The Hon. Tony Abbott, MP.

Suite 11

Pacific Point

4-10 Sydney Road

Manly NSW 2095

Dear Mr Abbott,

Thank you for your letter of 20 October 1998 responding to our inquiry as to whether the trust Australians for honest politics may fall within the ambit of an associated entity. I apologise if you have not received a response earlier.

On the basis of the information provided, I am of the opinion that the trust does not constitute an associated entity at this time and accordingly is not required to lodge a disclosure return.

I take this opportunity to note that if the activities of the Trust alter, then it may constitute an associated entity. This is a term interpreted by the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 and used by the Australian Electoral Commission for an organisation that is controlled by, or operates wholly or mainly for the benefit of, one or more political parties.

If I can be of any further assistance, please telephone me on 02 6271 4413.

Yours sincerely,

Brad Edgman

Director

Funding and disclosure.

***

I asked Webdiary’s electoral law experts Joo-Cheong Tham and Graeme Orr to tell us what the AEC can do to enforce the disclosure laws against reluctant politicians who want to avoid complying with the laws they passed. I also asked if voters could take the matter to Court and ask it to decide whether Abbott should reveal his donors. I’ve published Joo-Cheong’s piece at Enforcing disclosure: AEC can make Abbott give sworn evidence on slush fund. Joo-Cheong added:

I haven’t included stuff on individuals enforcing the Electoral Act as it is really a theoretical option. Like the overwhelming majority of statutes, the Electoral Act can only be enforced by citizens in very limited circumstances. Generally, the requirement is that a person have a special interest in the subject matter. The courts have insisted that a ‘mere emotional or intellectual concern’ won’t do! In the case of AHP Trust, the only people who can make out this requirement are probably Pauline Hanson and David Ettridge.

Australia’s foremost electoral law expert Graeme Orr, senior law lecturer at Brisbane’s Griffith University, debuted on Webdiary in AEC claims secret political donations no business of voters. He was rushed for time today, partly due to media interviews on this hot topic, but emailed these notes:

1. An ‘associated entity’ must file an annual return within 16 weeks of the end of each financial year, to include the names/addresses of donors over $1500.

2. This obligation falls on the trustees. NB – Unless Abbott was a trustee that technically means the rap falls on Wheeldon/Coleman rather than Abbott or Lib Party. (Margo: Abbott is a trustee.)

3. It’s an offence not to furnish a return – with a piddling maximum fine pf $1,000.

4. Under the Electoral Act, only the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is empowered to seek an injunction. If the AEC changed its mind and determined that Australians for Honest Politics (AHP) was an associated entity of the Liberal Party, it would advise trustees to disclose. If the trustees didn’t, the AEC could compel them to via the Federal Court. I note Abbott has committed to disclose if the AEC requires him to. As for the offence/fine, that would only come into play if the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) chose to pursue it after a referral from the AEC. Clearly, the AEC, having first held AHP wasn’t associated, would only pursue conviction for an offence if the trustees refused to disclose the donors.

NB: All this is only relevant assuming AHP is an ‘associated entity’ – as I’ve said this is arguable but less likely than not, unless a court read ‘benefit’ very widely and purposively. I’d be happy to see the AEC and their brief take this line, though it may have difficult consequences for other political activities.

5. Donors are only required to disclose personally if they donated ‘with the intention of benefiting’ a particular party or candidate. That clearly doesn’t apply here.

6. As to whether an ordinary elector could sue directly, there may be two options:

(a) claiming standing to sue as an elector and seeking a declaration – the elector would face the argument that the AEC is the only proper party to sue by implication (see note 4.)

(b) suing the AEC under a writ of ‘mandamus’ to compel it to take action. Andrew Boe, a high profile lawyer, did something like that against the Criminal Justice Commission in Queensland to compel it to use its powers to hold an investigation, and won. The problem here is that the AEC is now taking action – ie getting new legal advice.

 

AEC chairman Trevor Morling

Related:  Anti-rorting proposals ignored  AEC took Abbott’s word for it to keep donors secret   Hanson still a redhead and coping well behind bars: lawyer Joo-Cheong Tham: AEC can make Abbott give sworn evidence on slush fund

The Australian Electoral Commission chairman, retired judge Trevor Morling QC, has intervened in the “honest politics” slush fund controversy, calling for the files and all legal advice to date on whether Workplace Relations minister Tony Abbott must unmask his secret donors.

Mr Abbott today maintained his refusal to take the pressure off the AEC and restore public confidence in the electoral system by revealing his donors voluntarily.

AEC officials today urgently briefed the Australian Government Solicitor (AGS) to advise whether the structure of Abbott’s honest politics trust avoided any legal duty to disclose the donors to the Australian people under existing law.

Mr Morling confirmed that in 1998 the AEC had trusted Mr Abbott’s word that he could legally claim secrecy for his donors in 1998 without seeing his legal advice or taking its own.

Mr Morling revealed that in June 2002, after questions by the Senate, the AEC took general legal advice from the AGS and the Director of Public Prosecutions on whether legal slush funds designed to destroy political opponents could now be used as a way to avoid disclosing donations to political parties.

Mr Morling said he had not yet read the DPP’s advice, but that the AGS advice was “inconclusive”.

The AEC took that advice after Labor Senator John Faulkner warned that if Abbott’s slush fund was legal, then political parties could exploit his disclosure avoidance mechanism to hide more political donations from the people of Australia.

Mr Morling said he did not know why the AEC had not investigated the trust after receiving advice that it might or might not legally avoid disclosure.

The commission not only failed to launch an investigation into the trust, but also failed to advise Senator Faulkner and the Senate of the findings of its legal advice as promised in June last year.

The AEC’s spokesman, Brien Hallett, conceded to the Herald yesterday that this was wrong.

“It was an oversight. It’s regrettable. I’ll take that one on the chin,” he said. “We should have got back to him (Senator Faulkner).”

Mr Morling also criticised the AEC for not advising him of the AGS and DPP legal advice at the time.

“I wish it had been referred to me then,” he said, adding that the AGS advice, which left the question of whether Abbott should disclose his donors open, would not have justified an immediate prosecution.

The question whether it warranted an investigation of the trust “is another matter”, he said.

He said it was an open question whether admissions since Pauline Hanson’s jailing by Abbott and fellow trustee Peter Coleman, who is a Liberal Party elder and Peter Costello’s father-in-law, that the honest politics trust’s purpose was to destroy One Nation to avoid electoral damage to the Liberal Party strengthened the case for disclosure of donors.

“It may be. I’m not in possession of all the facts yet. Steps are being taken and I believe a discussion is being held today with the AGS,” he said.

Mr Morling said the AEC “must stay outside politics – you’d be surprised at the ways we have to fend off politicians and political parties trying to get what they want implemented”.

“That applies whatever government is in power – I’ve been in the job for fourteen years.”

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

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

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

The Herald also asked why Mr Abbott would not name the lawyer who verbally advised him that he was in the clear. Mr Simpson said he would refer this question to Mr Abbott.

The Australian Electoral Commission withdrew its 1998 demand that Tony Abbott reveal the donors to his ‘honest politics’ slush fund without seeing Mr Abbott’s legal advice or taking its own.

The AEC man then responsible for disclosure of political donations, Mr Brad Edgman, told the Herald that he backed down after Mr Abbott wrote claiming he had legal advice that he need not disclose the donors. Mr Edgman said he had never seen that advice, and did not get his own legal advice before bowing to Mr Abbott’s demand to maintain secrecy.

The AEC has refused for more than a week to disclose the basis of its backdown in 1998, but Mr Edgman said yesterday he made the decision, along with his superior,based on Mr Abbott’s letter, the ‘honest politics’ trust deed, and a look at the law concerning “associated entities’ of political parties.

Asked why he decided the honest politics trust was not an associated entity of the Liberal Party, Mr Edgman said: “I’d have to go back and have a look at it.” Mr Edgman is now director of the AEC’s parliamentary and ministerial section.

Asked why he took eight months to reply to Mr Abbott’s letter claiming secrecy for his donors, he said: “I couldn’t tell you, I really don’t know what the delay was about.”

Several electoral experts have challenged the AEC on its decision, saying the trust was clearly or at least possibly an “associated entity” of the Liberal Party The AEC took legal advice only after Labor warned that setting up legal slush funds to destroy other parties created a huge loophole in political donations disclosure laws. But it will not release that advice, and admitted yesterday it was not even investigating the matter in light of new developments since the jailing of Pauline Hanson. The AEC said it was merely “monitoring” media reports.

 

Red star gazing. Image by Webdiary artist Martin Davies. www.daviesart.com

Hanson’s experience shows the forces that will rise up against true grassroots participation in our political process, writes Tim Dunlop. Whether it is snobby put downs of her wide-ranging ignorance or more concerted efforts of legal attack, there is a powerful network of vested interests who have no interest at all in advancing the cause of democratic participation.

No-one who takes the idea of democracy seriously, who believes that ordinary citizens should be involved in political decision making at all levels, who believes in participatory democracy and who believes that societal ends are a work in permanent progress to be contributed to endlessly by people from every stratum of society can have anything but admiration for Pauline Hanson’s intervention in Australian politics.

She did exactly what the theory said she should do – take herself out of her comfort zone and try and have an influence on matters social and political.

In so doing, she put paid to the pernicious idea that “ordinary punters” are not interested in politics, the self-serving mantra pedalled by the media and the political elite that “ordinary Australians” are disengaged and apathetic. She formed a party, she held rallies, gave speeches – in short, she built it and they came. Her demise should be a concern to all of us.

I disagreed with nearly everything she said and with the broad thrust of her politics. I abhorred her xenophobia, her authoritarianism, and her glib contempt for expertise. But in a sense, so what? My views on her actual politics should be easily separable from my views on her worth as an engaged citizen, just as my feelings about the righteousness of her current gaol term should be separable from my views about her political fate.

I certainly do not buy into the Pauline-as-martyr nonsense that has circulated since her imprisonment, but it is still true that she presented a risk to an entrenched power-base within Australian politics and that she quite simply had to be taken down, one way or another. So while eschewing the conspiracy-theory option, we would just be plain bloody naive not to recognise that the sort of impact she was able to have as a complete outsider was a threat to a system that prefers to work through anti-democratic and semi-secretive intra-governmental organisations and mechanisms like COAG, the Council of Australian Governments (seeNational policy issues are being debated in atmosphere of secrecy).

Both left and right pilloried her accent, made fun of her ignorance and, from the national media through to the national parliament, did everything in their not insubstantial power to make her a laughing stock. Some of this was based on a genuine and justified contempt for her policy prescriptions, but too much was generated by revulsion of her person and the strata of Australian society to which she appealed.

As we all know, such attacks, for a while anyway, merely added to her allure amongst what we might call her constituency. People easily recognised the mob picking on the outsider and rallied, literally, to her support. And Hanson’s allure – for a while she was the most potent force in Australian politics since Bob Hawke’s star was ascendant – was not based, as many sneeringly suggested, on an appeal to the so-called latent racism in the Australian population at large. That was always just a convenient scapegoat for a political elite, left and right, who had simply lost touch with, and didn’t particularly like, the vast majority of those they purported to represent.

Her appeal was simply that she represented something authentic in a culture of artifact. She was transparent in an era during which the political class have become expert at concealment. She was a stillpoint in a culture of spin.

This was brought home to me at university where I had given a lecture on political rhetoric and had taken the opportunity to make fun, in passing, of Hanson and her unacademic grasp of key political issues. Thought I was pretty funny too. After the class, a student came to my office and complained that I’d been unfair to Hanson and that I should smarten up. It was the fact that student was Aboriginal that pulled me up short.

“Why the hell are you defending Hanson after what she’s said about Aborigines?” I asked, or words to that affect.

“You don’t get it, do you?”, the woman said, and she was right.

Of course, Hanson’s greatest strength, her lack of guile, was also her greatest weakness. She fell prey to seasoned opportunists like John Pasquarelli and the two Davids and ultimately to politics-as-she-is-really-fought in the form of John Howard and the Liberal Party for whom she was once an endorsed candidate.

We can see now that even while he was riding her populist coat-tails, the Prime Minister’s ideological bovver boys, the likes of Tony Abbott, were seriously plotting her demise. While the PM was making mileage out the “end of political correctness” and was implicitly taking credit for giving voice to “the battlers” who had been oppressed for so long under the yolk of Labor-led “elites” (one of the great misnomers of our recent political history), constructing a rhetoric of populism and involvement built on his own faux-credentials as a man of the people, members of his own party and circle were hell-bent on crushing the real McCoy. He gave her enough rope to hang herself which also happened to be enough rope for an inept Opposition to tie itself in knots it is still trying to undo.

The nature of Hanson’s appeal was that it bled votes from the conservative end of the traditional parties and she therefore had to be stopped, no matter where she fitted in the anti-pantheon of Howard’s carefully manufactured battlerdom.

Of course Hanson made mistakes and was in many ways her own worst enemy. I still abhor the broad thrust of her opinions, (though I suspect she herself learnt a lot during her time in politics and might no longer be capable of easy platitudes of her infamous first speech to parliament).

I have no problem with her incarceration. I think there is a lot of truth in Mark Latham’s comment that many of those demanding leniency for Hanson (including Hanson herself) have been less than willing to consider mitigating factors in other sentencing decisions, and perhaps it will make such law-and-order zealots a little more mindful about the quality of mercy. Besides, as Graham Young has pointed out, there isn’t even anything particularly harsh or unprecedented about her sentence.

And yet, her experience shows the forces that will rise up against true grassroots participation in our political process. Whether it is snobby put downs of her wide-ranging ignorance or more concerted efforts of legal attack, there is a powerful network of vested interests who have no interest at all in advancing the cause of democratic participation. There are many who are positively scared of it and many who are repulsed by it.

So, for all her failings, at some level she advanced our politics even if it was only to the extent of showing us what we might be up against if we choose to get involved as she did. Maybe others will learn from her mistakes.

In short, if you take the idea of genuine participatory democracy seriously then you simply have to take Hanson seriously. And her fate (by which I don’t mean her current gaol term) at the hands of the political class should give everyone who harbours any commitment to genuine grass-roots politics serious pause. At that level at least we should be appalled at how she was treated.

And geez, wouldn’t it be nice if the “next Pauline Hanson” was of the left?

This piece was first published at roadtosurfdom, the weblog of former Webdiarist Dr Tim Dunlop, who did his doctorate on the role of the public intellectual in democratic debate. Tim’s most influential Webdiary piece was Pull the udder one, which disproved the economic rationalist public case for dairy deregulation.