Dr Mark Hayes is a Brisbane Webdiarist. Here is an edited review of two books on whistleblowing he wrote for ‘Non violence today’ in 2000. For Harry Heidelberg’s case studies of ethics under pressure in accounting, see My ethics

 

Deadly Disclosures Whistleblowing and the Ethical Meltdown of Australia, by William De Maria, Wakefield Press, 1999.

 

The Whistleblower�s Handbook � How to be an Effective Resister, by Brian Martin, Jon Carpenter Publishing & Annandale, NSW, Envirobook, 1999.

 

These two books about whistleblowing, both launched at the 1999 Annual General Meeting of the national organisation Whistleblowers Australia in Brisbane in November, 1999, are focused lenses examining a syndrome now widespread in Australian society, and strategies for challenging it.

 

Whistleblowing, which will be more carefully described soon, why people do it, and what happens to them, is not the syndrome. These actions are rather a response to aspects and manifestations of the syndrome and its operations, actions that expose something gravely wrong about our peculiar society that is malignant, malevolent, and evil. The syndrome�s name is domination.

 

Neither Brian nor William even mention the concept of domination, or explicitly describe it in any detail. But the way I read their books, domination is finally what they are focusing upon and what whistleblowers are exposing. Like nonviolent campaigners, whistleblowers are taking on domination operative in their particular sphere of activity. It ought not be surprising at all, then, that whistleblowers get persecuted using all the insidious, ingenious, devious, and oppressive means dominators in our society can apply.

 

Domination is an extremely complex phenomenon, arguably the central topic of analysis for much social science and humanities fields. Many scholars and commentators either don�t know or realise that what they are really studying or criticising is some facet or other of domination, or, more likely, they are looking at some symptom, manifestation, or effect of domination. The difficulty of defining domination, or more adequately describing it, is shown even by how librarians have to classify and catalogue my PhD thesis, which was about domination and peace research. The standard library classification systems don�t even have a place for domination as a discrete and special philosophical, sociological, or theological term or concept. The closest available term or concept is �dominance�, which is a psychological term used to describe certain behaviours observed in animal species, such as a �dominance heirarchy� in monkey troops.

 

Whistleblowing as examined by William and Brian provides a window into the workings of domination in our peculiar kind of society. : Domination refers to socially unnecessary constraints on human freedom which restrict the realisation of human potentials for emancipation, as hermeneutically interpreted in terms of specific contexts and historically precise local ethical systems and legal orders. orders�. Very simply, �hermeneutically interpreted� means �trying really, really hard to fairly, accurately, and adequately understand what it actually means and is really like to be a person in a particular context as much as I possibly can, using some extremely sensitive and complicated investigation, experience gathering, and interpreting techniques, always accepting that no matter how good I am at it, I certainly won�t get their story absolutely right�.

 

What starts to happen when this is sincerely and properly attempted, though, is a radical re�writing of history as well as how some part of society works, including exposing the heretofore hidden and denied stories of domination in practice, together with an entirely expected backlash which labels these new, and more adequate, views of our society�s story as subversive, unsettling, and dangerous. On the positive side, the question I would ask of a particular society � and I always have my own society in mind here, so ask the same question of your own society � is: �Do we really, really need this particular procedure, practice, belief system, law, regulation, institution, whatever, in order for our society to actively, positively, sustainably facilitate the development of a better society? What stands in the way of a better society coming to be?�

 

What it is that prevents or constrains us from creating a better society in which all can achieve their potential for full development can be called �domination�. A closely related point, which I think is central to whistleblowing among many other things, is whether or not we persist with objectively unnecessary activities when, by all generally acceptable accounts, we demonstrably know how to operate or behave better.

 

The method I am applying by asking this general question is called �immanent critique� and comes from a body of sociological theory called �critical theory� . Basically, one looks very carefully at what a society, in this case mine, and its major or most influential, cannonical or credal, statements declare it is on about, and compare those statements with what is actually going on in the ways that society actually operates. The same method can be applied to specific organisations, institutions, or agencies by looking closely at their Mission Statements or Ethics Charters and then seeing what actually happens within the organisation, especially at times of crisis, such as somebody blowing the whistle about wrongdoing inside them.

 

Another useful technique I�ll use is sometimes called �forcing�. This involves looking for the very strongest parts of an idea, notion, philosophical or ethical system, suggested procedure or practice and subjecting them to the most rigorous strain possible to see how much stress they can sustain before they fall apart, cease to make sense, or fail to convince. In practice, �forcing� can involve asking somebody to imagine what kind of a society we�d have if everybody � and by everybody I literally mean every socially competent person in society � behaved or acted as they are suggesting we ought to behave or act.

 

I was again reading Barrington Moore�s 1978 study of Injustice: The Social Bases of Obedience and Revolt while writing this review, and grappling with what seems to be a central question rather poorly addressed in both William and Brian�s books, when some sentences at the end of Moore�s �Epilogue� struck me more forcefully than on past readings. I had returned to Moore because James C. Scott�s 1990 study of Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts, when read in the context of considering whistleblowing, suggested that whistleblowing might be understood as another �hidden transcript�, one of the many ways in which routinely dominated people seek to make sense of their dominated condition and deploy all sorts of ingenious tactics to carve out and protect their own �liberated spaces�, be they physical or mental, and resist their dominators, often nonviolently.

 

Moore wrote:

 

… one main cultural task facing any oppressed group is to undermine or explode the justification of the dominant stratum. Such criticisms may take the form of attempts to demonstrate that the dominant stratum does not perform the tasks that it claims to perform and therefore violates the specific social contract. Much more frequently they take the form that specified individuals in the dominant stratum fail to live up to the social contract. Such criticism leaves the basic functions of the dominant stratum inviolate. Only the most radical forms of criticism have raised the question whether kings, capitalists, priests, generals, bureaucrats, etc., serve any useful social purpose at all.”

 

James C. Scott�s purpose in Domination and the Arts of Resistance is to bring to the fore what he argues are the largely hidden stories of what people do when they are dominated, mostly focusing on colonised peoples, slaves, and peasant societies. On my reading of Moore and especially Scott, whistleblowing, because it is and involves the public disclosure of wrongdoing inside an organisation, is anything but hidden, though it might well get burried later on, along with the whistleblower.

 

To a significant degree, whistleblowing is resistance to certain otherwise routine and largely hidden activities which violate some generally accepted standards of what constitutes proper behaviour. But by no means does it, at least initially, involve a wholesale and radical questioning of the whole point and purpose of the organisation. As a result of their subsequent experiences, if they don�t get destroyed, or driven mad or to suicide, the reflective whistleblower might get thoroughly radicalised and start asking some penetrating questions about what it is in our society that causes our organisations to operate in the ways they do which are so fundamentally at odds with what they say they are supposed to be on about.

 

Before I get to Scott�s quarrel with Moore, I need to clarify three more important concepts: power, hegemony, and mimesis.

 

Power is, very simply, the capacity of an actor to get another actor to do their will despite resistance. Very basically, power is what is used by actors � individuals, groups, agencies, institutions, governments, states � to challenge, resist, overturn, or establish and maintain relations of domination. I�ve borrowed this very simple but still useful definition of power from the German sociologist, Max Weber, whose work on domination is difficult but essential reading for anybody seriously interested in understanding domination.

 

Hegemony,, another concept which often appears in discussions about power or domination, refers to the means used by a dominant group or class in a society to establish, maintain, and extend their domination over other groups or classes through cultural or social means, over against exclusively coercive, legal, or political means.

 

Hegemony is, like domination itself, most effective when its target group has no idea what is going on, and comes to totally accept that they are at fault, that there is something fundamentally inferior about them as individuals, a group, or a people. All the dominator then need do is continue the reproduction of its own culture as the only culture to secure its cultural control, alongside the political tools of law, regulation, and ultimately, violent coercion.

 

In organisations, hegemony operates to create, maintain, and extend the peculiar workplace culture, in addition to its formal rules and regulations, to which employees have to conform if they are to survive.

 

Mimesis, one of the most insidious features of domination, is related to hegemony insofar as it involves the dominated actor taking on and reproducing within their own ranks the beliefs, attitudes, appearances, and behaviours of the dominator, or at least plausibly appearing to do so. If hegemony refers mostly to cultural means of domination, then mimesis can include hegemony, but is often used to describe social psychological traits found in dominated groups.

 

In order to really fit in to an organisation, to really demonstrate their loyalty, employees often groom and dress themselves in ways which they believe will ingratiate themselves with their superiors.

 

Members of the dominated group may use the same language or try to think or see their world in the same ways as the dominator group, refusing to use their own language or world views. Far from being a hidden transcript, or a potential or actual expression of resistance, mimesis all but turns the dominated into the same beings as the dominator. Except that the dominator, though recognising the mimetic reproduction of their domination in the dominated group and thence its value in stabilising and extending their control, will always accept the dominated only on condition that they always will know their place.

 

The intent of mimesis is partially summarised by reference to a 1960s slogan: �It�s hard to fight an opponent with outposts even inside your own head�.

 

Another effect of mimesis occurs when the dominated prey upon each other, reproducing domination within their own ranks rather than mobalising or organising to resist externally imposed domination. Barrington Moore wrote in Injustice that:

 

Even fantasies of liberation and revenge can help preserve domination through dissipating collective energies in relatively harmless rhetoric and ritual. For the dominant group such a phenomenon has the further advantage of justifying alertness, keeping the tools of repression in good working order and their own supporters in line. Among the leaders of both oppressors and oppressed there can be a tacit understanding that this is the way the system is supposed to work, that this is the form the social contract takes.

 

James C. Scott�s difficulty with Barrington Moore�s point that the most radical question to ask is whether or not we really need domination manifesting in heirarchial agencies such as bureaucracies in order to run a good society, is that most of the time the dominated groups don�t really want a wholesale radical change in the ways their society operates. Scott writes:

 

Short of the total declaration of war that one does occasionally find in the midst of a revolutionary crisis, most protests and challenges � even quite violent ones � are made in the realistic expectation that the central features of the form of domination will remain intact.

This seems fair enough. Given my definition and approach to domination, it is entirely proper to accept a lot of what my kind of society does and how it works. I also happen to support quite a few of the directions in which my society seems to be heading. It�s the aspects of my society which are demonstrably wrong, particularly where we demonstrably know better, and why and how we ought to behave better, which I oppose. Which leads us into whistleblowing.

 

These books, and especially William De Maria�s Deadly Disclosures, collect overwhelming evidence which points to a syndrome raging through our society which demands concerted, principled, and courageous resistance. Brian Martin�s Whistleblower�s Handbook offers strategies and tactics, many derived from nonviolent action, which, if intelligently and creatively followed, at least offer the intending whistleblower greater empowerment as they embark on what, on both author�s amply referenced accounts, is usually an extremely risky, frought, complicated, dangerous, and, on occasion, literally fatal course of action to expose wrongness and seek justice.

 

The best advice William and Brian would give to intending whistleblowers in the short term is an emphatic �Don�t!� In savage summary, the brutal ways in which our peculiar kind of society operates, riddled as it is with the malignant, malevolent, and evil syndrome I�ll attempt to succinctly describe soon, explicitly deter whistleblowing and exact such fearsome tolls upon those who do expose official misbehaviour that, from the perspectives of self-preservation or radical individualism, all but the most foolhardy, naieve, or genuinely masochistic individual would even momentarily consider doing so.

 

That people still do blow the whistle, despite, or even fully aware of, what they almost certainly are getting themselves, and their families, friends, and supporters into, offers at least a glimmer of hope that all is not completely lost.

 

The positive sides of the books is that both equip the whistleblower and their supportive associates with many survival and tactical skills and ideas. Whistleblowing provides both a clear window on to what�s so wrong with our society, and when conducted effectively, turns exposing what�s wrong into dissent with what we�re endlessly told is right, correct, and proper, even expedient and necessary, and more effective resistance which can be applied to other manifestations of the syndrome.

 

The Macquarie Dictionary defines a whistleblower as “a person who alerts the public to some scandalous practice or evidence of corruption on the part of someone else”. William more carefully defines a whistleblower as:

 

… a concerned citizen, totally or predominantly motivated by notions of public interest, who initiates of his or her own free will an open disclosure about significant wrongdoing in a particular occupational role to a person or agency capable of investigating the complaint and faciliating the correction of wrongdoing, and who suffers accordingly.

 

There is much embedded in that definition, not the least being an ethical position which guides the individual to make judgements about behaviour they see or come to know about which is contrary to the public interest, over against their own private interests.

 

There is also the assumption in the rightness, rectitude, probity, and efficacy of the individual or agency to whom the open disclosure is made, and in the tendency to fairness or justice embedded in the society in which the individual or agency is located. After all, the agency�s Web Site has its Charter of Ethics, and its enabling Act of Parliament says it�s to be impartial and fair, that complaints made to it will be treated with the strictest confidence, and it appears to have the power to properly investigate complaints, as well as prosecute proven wrongdoers. On that basis, the concerned employee with conclusive evidence of significant wrongdoing seems to be on a strong and secure foundation.

 

William has the whistleblower acting out of an occupational role, an employment situation where the whistleblower either comes across the wrongdoing within their own organisation, or as a consequence of their routine work, but not necessarily as a central part of it. The employer � employee relationship, containing legal and often assumed unwritten mutual obligations and responsibilities, is the immediate context in which whistleblowing occurs, excluding voluntary associations, though publically spirited disclosure can also occur in organisations like churches or local sporting clubs. It�s the scale of the disclosure and its effects on society that matters.

 

To be sure, anonymous leaks, or tip offs that journalists sometimes receive pointing us to look closely at a government department, or ask exceptionally well informed questions of the Minister at a media conference, are sometimes described as whistleblowing, but William excludes the leak, or anonymous tip offs from his definition of whistleblowing. Indeed, while always eager to receive leaks, or bundles of documents falling off the back of a passing truck at 3.00am in the morning, good journalists are always suspicious of them because leaks never tell the complete story, and can be deliberately partial, passed on for baser motives than disclosure solely in the public interest. The up front open disclosure made at first instance to the apparently proper authority is what separates the whistleblower from the anonymous leaker.

 

The spectacular leaks from 2UE to ABC TV�s Media Watch show, which led to the so�called �cash for comment� inquiry before the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) in the middle of 1999, were just leaks. Had, say, John Law�s or Alan Jones� producer, wracked by pangs of conscience and outraged about what the undisclosed payments were doing to the essential, even decisive, credibility of not only 2UE, but the entire Australian commercial broadcasting industry, gathered up all the documents and toddled off to the relevant government watchdog authority, the ABA, or even the Federation of Australian Radio Broadcasters (FARB), the relevant self�regulatory industry association, then this might have been whistleblowing, except that the ABA or FARB may have chosen to keep the matter locked away safely in�house for fear of damaging the industry�s credibility, and thence its revenue stream.

 

What advertiser wants to be associated with a radio station with even the slightest hint of graft about it? Maybe the producer�s identity might have found its way back to 2UE, and a discrete sacking arranged, with word put around the industry that the former high flying producer was the one who leaked, and wrecked it for the rest of us.

 

Here are the decisive elements in William�s definition of whistleblowing, and I�ll use them, and the assumption of a general ethical consensus which helps us decide what�s in �the public interest�, as entry points into my discussion of the syndrome I attached the name �domination� to earlier.

 

For speaking out, and bringing the wrongdoing to the attention of their superiors, employers, or an external agency with, at least on paper, the power to investigate and do something to remedy the situation, the employee, far from receiving praise for their honesty or rectitude, often receives the kinds of persecutions met�d out to Franz Kafka�s Joseph K in The Trial or Winston Smith in George Orwell�s 1984. In other words, it seems far more important to conform, stay silent, go along to get along, exist only for the advancement of your superior�s career, keep your mouth shut, don�t cause trouble, etc. and similar, because if you don�t, this is what will happen to you.

 

In genuine bewilderment, we might well ask, �Why?!!�, as it seems incomprehensible that the genuine, and even totally vindicated, exposer of official wrongdoing in our organisations would receive anything less than praise, support, perhaps a promotion, or a financial reward for helping root out corruption which might be costing taxpayers millions of dollars, or eroding the trust we ought to have in agencies such as the police or the courts.

 

As William details by way of case studies taken from well documented whistleblowing across academe, the ABC, the Royal Darwin Hospital, the National Crime Authority, several Queensland Government Departments, and the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries, whistleblowers usually wind up enmeshed in a complex web of formal, bureaucratic, as well as informal, revenge and retribution, some of which even superior courts of law can find entirely legal if utterly unjust.

 

In passing, it�s interesting that almost all of the whistleblowing cases described in �the literature� occurred in government or quasi�government agencies. Comparatively few occur in private corporations, though they are not entirely unknown, as environmental organisations like Greenpeace know well.

 

That a producer at 2UE did not blow the whistle about �cash for comment� to either the ABA or FARB, but somebody very well placed indeed apparently anonymously leaked enough solid material to the ABC for �Media Watch� to expose the whole greedy works, is indicative of an important point which radically differentiates so�called public and private agencies. Somehow we expect private companies and corporations to be less ethical, less open to media and general scrutiny, less accountable, than agencies like government departments or the ABC, for which we pay as tax payers, and thence we kind�of sense that we �own� them.

 

Budget oversight committees, Senate and Parliament Committees, and the like, further add to this sense of public accountability we have about so�called public institutions. The final bottom line for a corporation is finally that, the balance sheet, and the rest of it, like Ethics Statements, and Ethics Audits, are the preserve of public relations consultants doing adroit spin doctoring whose operating maxim is: “We have ways of making you believe.”

 

Privatisation of formerly government owned and run agencies or services shift this sense of public ownership and accountability into the private marketplace. This shifting of accountability from the public into the private sphere through privatisation or corporatisation, William argues, is a partial explanation of why phenomena such as whistleblower protection laws, in place in several Australian states with significantly varying power, agencies such as Administrative Appeal Tribunals, industry or government Ombudsman�s Offices, and company, institutional, or departmental Codes or Charters of Ethics do not protect whistleblowers against reprisals, or facilitate sufficient investigation, exposure, and erradication of wrong doing.

 

Freedom of Information legislation is better described as Freedom from Information legislation, as anybody who has used it would fully confirm, because even public organisations can keep even harmless documents from being released under a welter of exclusion clauses, and, if needs be, governments can and do process bulk documents through Cabinet, making them �Cabinet in Confidence� and not for release until years or decades have passed.

 

With privatisation and outsourcing rampant, information about even the ordinary operations of governments is increasingly whithheld because it is declared to be �Commercial in Confidence�.

 

If legal strategems, plain and simple delays, mendacious obstructions, evasions, even lies, don�t dissuade the persistent nuisance, then it might finally come down to a court case, or ‘QCs at ten paces at $5,000 a day each’. While all organisations routinely squeal about how financially strapped they are, it�s quite amazing how many large buckets of money they can find to fund expensive legal advice, if only to finally get the pest out of their faces because the organisation�s funds are always far, far greater than those of the lonely individual.

 

Answers to the question of why this occurs are also hinted at in the sub�title of Deadly Disclosures � �the ethical meltdown of Australia�. Here Brian and William part company in their explanations of why our institutions and organisations behave in the ways they demonstrably do. Brian largely locates the problem in the operation of heirarchies and what almost inevitably happens when people dominate each other even in apparently benign situations. In my view, the weakest part of William�s book lies in his explanation of why �the ethical meltdown of Australia� he most ably documents occurs.

 

In one of several newspaper articles which appeared in early December 1999, surrounding the release of Brian and William�s books at the Annual General Meeting of Whistleblowers Australia in Brisbane, William was quoted as saying that:

 

We live in soft dictatorships. When our material needs are so important that we can identify how to satisfy them in society, we peripheralise the big subjects.

 

Corporate Australia is about a fear�driven workplace in the sense there�s no longer that family concept. It�s more like � give us your heart and soul, and we might not ask for your leg as well.

 

In the same article, by Shelley Gare in The Weekend Australian of December 4, Brian was quoted as saying that:

 

The reprisals for being a dissenter are extremely serious in many cases, which is why you often get either the young or the old being rebels. Less to lose.

 

The balance in society is way too skewed towards conformity. Dissent is becoming more important, but it�s also more difficult to take on powerful corporations. And if you�re on the inside of the corporation, it�s easy to be targeted vehemently. Elsewhere, Brian has studied and written about intellectual suppression, or how inconvenient, dissenting, embarassing, or unfashionable ideas or research at universities and think tanks is suppressed.

 

Write me off as being hopelessly naieve, but I still cling to the proposition that a major role of universities is to explore, debate, and promote precisely the kinds of cutting edge ideas or research outcomes which, while they might challenge accepted orthodoxies or practices, may well result in real and lasting improvements.

 

As globalisation, corporatisation, and economic rationalism overtake universities, and they are transformed into factories manufacturing only acceptable, commercially exploitable knowledge and compliant, technically skilled graduates whose original ideas extend to the making of money for themselves and their employers, even whistleblowing about how these dynamics are impacting on a given course, department, or faculty can and does result in exactly the same insidious web of revenge enveloping the dissident academic or researcher as it does on the whistleblowing public servant, police officer, or corporate employee.

 

The Sydney Morning Herald Good Weekend Magazine for December 11, 1999 carried a lengthy and deeply unsettling, article entitled �University Inc.� which detailed how Australian universities are using exactly the same silencing methods as corporations or government departments to control and exclude their dissenters.

 

William�s discussion of whistleblowing in academ�, entitled �Being UnFree in Free Spaces� adds to the story of what�s so wrong with institutions like universities, where one would expect dissenting ideas to be at least tolerated.

 

When frustrated by public servants or corporate employees from whom I�m seeking even a very mild off the record bit of harmless information, who seem to have to get written approval from higher up even to confirm the time of day, I have been heard to mutter darkly that I can think of several hundred thousand reasons why they will not talk to me. I�m referring, of course, to the important social control function of superannuation schemes. The longer somebody has been employed, or the higher they are in an organisation, the more they stand to lose in terms of employer�funded super contributions if they are sacked for even the mildest unauthorised disclosure of information, let alone serious whistleblowing.

 

This is also the Golden Handcuff or the Velvet Gag, and it is a major method deployed to ensure compliance, obedience, and silence.

 

If these don�t work, and an employee does speak out, even within the organisation, the web of revenge drops upon them from a great height, and they can get slowly squeezed almost, and in some extreme and tragic cases literally, to death, usually by suicide induced by acute frustration, depression, despair, or isolation.

 

In Shelley Gare�s article, this is explained by reference to a corporate herd mentality, in which the perceived rebel is ostracised. William was quoted as saying that:

 

The shunning is 100% effective. It�s the closest thing to death..

 

Shunning of this kind occurs within the organisation � restricted access to information needed to do one�s job, signatures from supervisors on work or equipment orders become impossible to get, formerly sociable colleagues avoid the whistleblower even in the canteen or after work socials � and outside.

 

When a whistleblower is ‘let go’ or their contract terminated, sometimes for what might be very strictly legal grounds and using the most minimally proper procedures possible, but what on any reading amounts to persecution or contrived circumstances, word can be quickly spread around an industry network that the dissenter is ‘a problem’ and finding work in their chosen career field becomes impossible.

 

Fighting the innuendos, and even lies, can be like punching smoke or chasing ghosts, because the network closes ranks, completely excludes notions of ethics, fairness, natural justice, and refuses to explore the possibility that the dissenter may well be correct, and can verify their claims with wads of documents.

 

Nobody wants to hire ‘a problem’ and very few people have either the time or the patience to wade through the documents and/or listen to the whistleblower�s tale of woe, let alone add their support to the whistleblower�s often lonely campaign.

 

Indeed, in not a few cases, even being seen in the company of a whistleblower can rebound upon the possible supporter, contaminating them in the eyes of their colleagues and superiors just as surely as if they were carriers of a highly contagious disease.

 

More widely, our society arguably depends on the existence of a generally understood and applied informal ethical consensus about what kinds of behaviours are acceptable or tolerable, a consensus which is formally written into our laws and enforced by formal institutions such as courts and the police.

 

This ethical consensus, vague though nevertheless very real and quite effective, is constantly contested, continually evolving (though not necessarily always in progressive directions), and is a product of general debate and discussion, often reinforced by actions such as general support for those who seem to exhibit or embody the best of the consensus, and social criticism, even ostracism and exclusion, of those who do not.

 

A major way in which this conversation is conducted throughout society is through the mass media, especially news, current affairs, comment, and letters outlets, though even sitcoms and soap operas often contain didactic content).

 

Now, suppose we divide our society up into two very broad areas. The top area we�ll call ‘the system’. It is the area in society where behaviour is governed or regulated by reference to formal laws, rules, or regulations, and is guided by the astringent application of formal, strictly rational, and predictable standards which are usually written down and very carefully interpreted and applied. This is where the thinking and formal behaviours largely typical of the accountant, the lawyer, the engineer, the skilled tradesperson or technician, and similar, have their place and operations.

 

It would be a mistake to assume that these standards and behaviours are devoid of ethics, but they operate out of different ethical criteria. Using the methods of �forcing� I mentioned earlier, if we rigorously force the ethical standards demanded by system thinking and practice � setting to one side entirely appropriate technical or procedural competences � we appear to end up with what looks suspiciously like nihilism.

 

Beneath the system we have what many commentators variously describe as the �civil society�, the �civil sphere�, or the �lifeworld�. This is the sphere of society were debates or conversations about ethics, about what�s right and wrong, what�s good and bad, what we individually and as a society ought and ought not do. These debates or conversations are usually conducted nonviolently because the point of them is to arrive at sustainable agreements which suit most participants and enable most people in society to live, be, become, experience joy, freedom, satisfaction, happiness… slippery yet crucial ideas which don�t fit into an accountant�s spreadsheet. Here the grease of social intercourse is also created and applied to social interactions. This grease includes such fragile and delicate, yet absolutely essential and reciprocal components like trust and loyalty.

 

Between the system and the civil society is a highly permeable membrane, composed of sets of ideas and practices which, in theory, equip us with necessary filters, discernment capabilities, evaluation tools, and the like, which help us sieve through information, processing it into knowledge, and then into wisdom.

 

Straddling this membrane is a major social institution, the mass media, which is the source of much needed information about what�s going on remote from the everyday experience of society�s constituent individuals.

 

Another tool essential to protecting the civil society from encroachments from the system is the deceptively simple capacity and activity of reasonably aware and informed people to have worthwhile conversations about concerns and issues which really matter, and to be able to inform themselves and their actions in and on society and the world on the basis of those conversations.

 

What many commentators argue is so wrong about our society is that the expected behaviours and practices largely appropriate in the system are colonising the civil sphere, where they have the same corrosive, destructive effects on the civic body as a malignant cancer does on the physical body.

 

The �civic capital� we have so painfully and carefully built up in our society, the reciprocal obligations and expectations we have invested in creating a society in which we can trust each other and where loyalty is earned rather than expected or demanded simply in return for a pay packet, is rapidly eroding away.

 

It is being replaced by trust which is bought and sold and loyalty which is expected and demanded for a mess of pottage. Another name for this kind of activity, at least in part, is economic rationalism. And woe and chaos engulfs those who dare blow the whistle on this.

 

It gets worse. In theory, nihilism is the purported belief in nothing (from nihilo meaning nothing). Nihilism rapidly devolves into rather crude forms of hedonism or narcissism, or into the complex and continually shifting activities associated with domination in practice, and the ideas systems which give license to domination in practice, making it hegemonic, and reproducing itself mimetically throughout society.

 

Ours is supposedly a post�modern society, and a fashion in contemporary thought called postmodernism has arisen purporting to make sense of this situation. In brutal summary, a major feature of postmodern society is that most of the foundational moral and ethical absolutes, such as truth, justice, trust, and loyalty, are up for grabs. What several critics of postmodernism have pointed to is that, while its methods of analysing social phenomena, such as literary, visual, or aural texts to expose obscured meanings, often called deconstruction, do provide useful insights, removing from deconstruction any practical sense of what the final point of the exercise even might be opens the door to endless deconstructions the end point (telos) of which is rarely, if ever, spelt out, or even remotely glimpsed. Once again, this approach, when forced, leads at many points straight back to nihilism, and gives license for domination to rampage into what is finally a yawing and growing meaning vaccumn in our society, an empty, meaning devoid spiritual, psychic, philosophical, and ethical black hole.

 

From a related angle, system informed domination, located in a space such as the everyday workplace, purported nihilism and its practical outworkings of hedonism and narcissism, and postmodernism can all be subjected to an immanent critique, rigorously isolating each complex phenomenon�s explicitly stated goals and purposes and comparing them to what actually occurs in the real world or specifically located places in the real world. This kind of activity inevitably drives dominators crazy, and rouses them to exact revenge, because they usually have a mimetically created internally consistent and extremely robust cage which reinforces their own self�understanding of their rectitude, probity, and ethical practice � ‘We�d never do anything like that!’ � and protects and insulates them, particularly, from external challenges.

 

Because they really and truly believe they have paid for and thence bought and control their employee�s trust and loyalty, an internal challenge represented by a whistleblower is all the more outrageous, challenging, and dangerous not only to their own power and prestigue, but also to their entire self�image and self understanding.

 

Whistleblowing, why people do it, and what happens to them when they do it, can finally be largely explained by reference to the confluence of the system colonising the civil society with its domination riddled standards and practices and the practical effects of applied postmodernism tunneling through our meaning systems, endlessly deconstructing them to no final point or purpose, leaving a meaning void into which domination offers at least some sort of certainty, even if grasping for that certainty demands the all but irrevocable surrender and sale of one�s soul, personhood, or whatever you finally believe it is that makes you truly human.

 

Sensitivity to whistleblowing in this context helps us really get to grips with what�s so wrong in our society, and the most disturbing part of this is that we actually do know how to behave and act better, firstly to prevent the kinds of things happening to which whistleblowers draw our attention almost as a last siren of warning, and secondly, to not persecute them for doing so.

 

Dangerous Disclosures � Whistleblowing and the Ethical Meltdown of Australia provides us with a concentrated examination of the phenomenon of whistleblowing and points towards an explanation of it.

The Whistleblower�s Handbook provides an accessable, well�researched and developed, tactical manual for the intending and committed whistleblower, the whistleblower even part way into the byzantine territory they may well come to, regretfully, call ‘home’, those moved to support and encourage whistleblowing, and as a very focused addition to the serious activist�s bookshelf and training resource kit. The References and Further Contacts sections will offer more useful sources for information, insight, and potential support.

I commend both books to all readers concerned with the current state of Australian society who are moved to do their part to improve it.

Scott Burchill is Webdiary’s international relations commentator. He lectures at Deakin University.

 

The Jakarta Lobby was an informal group of like-minded bureaucrats (DFAT, Ausaid, Defence), intelligence officers (DIO, ONA), as well as journalists and academics, who argued that Indonesia under General Suharto should be judged by a different standard to the one applied to other governments.

This was despite the fact that Suharto’s rise to power in 1965 triggered one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century, and his brutal dictatorship lasted for over three decades.

To the extent that Indonesia under Suharto became a “special case” for Australia, the Canberra-Jakarta axis parallels the Washington-Tel Aviv relationship which developed at around the same time. In both instances a small minority of highly influential people started lobbying their own government (often from within it) to protect and further the interests of another which illegally occupied adjacent land (East Timor, Palestine).

The strategies of both lobbies included –

* protecting each state from criticism and scrutiny (downplaying human rights violations in occupied territories (Santa Cruz, Jenin), portraying state terrorism as self-defence, silence on WMD programs, attributing atrocities orchestrated by senior state officials to middle management or “rogue elements”);

* exaggerating their strategic vulnerability (Indonesia’s fragmentation, “tiny Israel” – armed with WMD – surrounded by hostile neighbours – conventionally armed);

* providing diplomatic protection at the UN (Whitlam’s visit to UN, Washington’s Security Council veto);

* recognising the acquisition of territory by force and denying rights to self-determination (Canberra’s de jure recognition of Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor, Bush’s recognition of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the denial of refugees’ right of return);

* portraying critics of the governments in Jakarta and Tel Aviv as being motivated by racism (anti-Indonesian, anti-Semitic); and

* accepting, despite global trends heading the opposite way, the militarisation of politics as legitimate (TNI in politics, former generals as heads of Indonesian and Israeli governments, the brutality of their military in occupied territories – Aceh, West Papua, Palestine, Lebanon).

Since the mid 1960s and occasionally before, the Jakarta lobby in Australia believed that the Republic of Indonesia was beset by centrifugal forces which could only be countered by strong authoritarian rule from Jakarta. Presupposing both the inevitable Balkanisation of the archipelago and the dangers this posed to Australia, its members reflexively opposed secessionist (Aceh, West Papua) and independence (East Timor) movements, regardless of their legitimacy and the fact that their retention within the state was effectively maintained at the point of a gun.

Blind to the normal trends against the idea of immutable political boundaries in international politics, the lobby’s refusal to examine its own flawed presuppositions about Indonesia’s territorial integrity encouraged it to downplay or overlook Suharto’s crimes against his own people and his neighbours.

The lobby has never explained why independence for Aceh and West Papua would inexorably lead to the disintegration of the Indonesian state. Nor have they noticed the correlation between military brutality and separatism in the country’s outlying provinces. Their claims that Canberra “had to deal with Jakarta” regardless of its behaviour, disguised the extent to which they drove the relationship well beyond the level of diplomatic necessity to the point where Australian military forces became morally compromised through joint training exercises with Jakarta’s special forces – notorious for their human rights violations.

Thanks partly to their efforts in securing Canberra’s de jure recognition of Jakarta’s control of the territory in the 1980s, the legitimate aspirations of the East Timorese for independence were ultimately thwarted for 24 years at an appalling cost in human suffering.

East Timor is finally free, but the behaviour of prominent spokesmen in the media over the last fortnight suggests the Jakarta lobby is alive and well, six years after Suharto’s fall from power. Like the ‘Likudniks’ in the Pentagon and other ‘friends of Israel’ who influence the Bush Administration’s approach to the Middle East, the Jakarta lobby still contaminates Australia’s foreign and defence policies.

Currently they are seeking to discredit Lt Col Lance Collins, an experienced intelligence officer in the Army, by portraying him as an ill-informed and bitter maverick, frustrated by a lack of influence and his failure to be promoted within the armed forces. The lobby is also at pains to protect its tarnished reputation and avoid independent judicial scrutiny.

Although he was one of the very few to anticipate the charnel house that East Timor became in 1999, Collins’ principal crime was to expose the litany of policy failures by lobby members, many of whom have gone on to bigger and better things in intelligence, consultancies and private think tanks.

That is why their appearances on TV, radio and in newspapers at present, denying the very existence of a pro-Jakarta lobby which they actually comprise, makes for such a bizarre and grotesque spectacle.

Tony Kevin is the former Australian diplomat who was intrumental in forcing the defence force to explain its failure to find SIEV-X before it sank during the federal election, drowning 353 asylum seekers.

 

The story of Australia�s initiation of secret illegal preemptive combat in Iraq from 18 to 20 March 2003, which I have been exploring since January 2004, got a re-start in the media after the release of Bob Woodward�s new book on the Iraq War, Plan of Attack. John Howard and Australia are minor players in Woodward�s book, but interesting new material in revealed.

First, the stories themselves (my highlightinh) then my analysis.

1. Marian Wilkinson, Book reveals Howard�s early commitment to overthrow of Saddam, Sydney Morning Herald:

“On March 16 [Washington time � 17 March Canberra time] Bush phoned Howard from Air Force One as he flew from the Azores summit with Blair and Aznar. Bush explained that he would deliver a speech the next day in which he would issue a 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam.

“Apparently concerned, Howard asked Bush whether this was going to be the declaration of war speech. “No,” Bush assured him. “It’s an ultimatum speech”.

“Howard then told Bush he needed “one last official word” before the war started. “Otherwise, it would look to the Australian people like Bush just started the war without even telling his biggest allies.”

“No, no,” Bush assured him. “This isn’t the last call you’re going to get from me.”

Louise Dodson writes from Canberra:

“A spokesman for John Howard said yesterday: ‘As the Prime Minister indicated at the time, he was in regular contact with President Bush on the eve of the outbreak of hostilities. The Prime Minister made it very plain to President Bush that there would need to be cabinet authorisation before Australian troops could be taken to war.'”

2. Phillip Coorey, Bush’s call to Howard from 39,000 feet (used by various News Limited papers on 21 April):

“THREE days before the war began in Iraq, Prime Minister John Howard told US President George W.Bush he was worried about public opinion in Australia and urged that he be informed in advance when the war would start. Details of conversations between Mr Howard and Mr Bush are chronicled in the new book Plan of Attack by veteran Washington Post journalist, Bob Woodward.

“The book also reveals how Australian commandos began secret operations in Iraq before the war officially started.”

Mr Woodward has pieced together the blow by blow account of the march to war.

Mr Bush rang Mr Howard on the night of Sunday, March 16, while flying back to Washington. He told him that the next day – Monday in America – the US was likely to withdraw a UN resolution authorising war because of the threat of veto from France. He said he would instead give Saddam Hussein an ultimatum. “Is this going to be a declaration of war speech?” Mr Howard is quoted as asking. “No, it’s an ultimatum speech,” Mr Bush replied.

“Woodward writes: ‘Howard was worried about Australian public opinion and said he needed one last official word from Bush before the war started.’ “Otherwise it would look to the Australian people like Bush just started the war without even telling his biggest allies,” Mr Howard is quoted as telling Mr Bush. “No, no, this isn’t the last call you’re going to get from me”.

“At 2pm on Monday, March 17, Mr Bush rang Mr Howard again to tell him he was going to give a speech that night issuing a 48-hour ultimatum to Saddam. “George, if it comes to this, I pledge to you that Australian troops will fight if necessary”, Mr Howard said.

Special forces troops from Australia, the US, Britain and Poland used the 48-hour delay to slip into Iraq and secure key infrastructure sites like oil wells, scud missile launchers and dams.

At 9am on Wednesday, March 19, about 12 hours before the ultimatum expired, 31 special forces groups were in the country. “The Aussies are in,” the White House chief of staff reported to Mr Bush at 2pm that day…“The Aussies are in,” the White House chief of staff reported to Mr Bush at 2pm that day�.. 3. Roy Eccleston, Bush’s war call to Howard, Washington correspondent, The Australian:

“… On March 19, the first of Australia’s 2000 troops entered Iraq. By 1pm Washington time, nine hours before Mr Bush announced that the opening stages of the war had begun with an attempted strike on a Saddam hideout, 31 US special forces teams had entered Iraq secretly. The Australian SAS was not far behind.

Some time after 2pm, White House Chief of Staff Andy Card told Mr Bush: “The Aussies are in.” Australian commandos had moved into the west, heading for a dam (presumably to prevent it being blown up by Hussein’s forces, although this is not explained)…”

4. John Howard was asked about this on Melbourne Radio 3AW yesterday morning and the ABC program The World Today at 12 noon carried this radio story:

MATT BROWN: On Melbourne radio 3AW the Prime Minister has confirmed this morning that Australian troops entered Iraq before the deadline George W. Bush set for Saddam Hussein to surrender expired.

JOHN HOWARD: I think Senator Hill has indicated that that did happen.

INTERVIEWER: But it was denied at the time.

JOHN HOWARD: Well, I think what we said at the time was that we did the right…that we went in, in…

INTERVIEWER: I remember asking you whether troops went in, after we’d been told they were, and you said no.

JOHN HOWARD: Did I say that?

INTERVIEWER: Not to your knowledge, yeah.

JOHN HOWARD: Not to my knowledge. Well, that could well have been the case at the time.

INTERVIEWER: How early did they go in?

JOHN HOWARD: Well, certainly after the ultimatum was rejected.

INTERVIEWER: No, but did they not go in before the deadline expired?

JOHN HOWARD: Yes, but once an ultimatum is rejected the deadline is irrelevant.

MATT BROWN: Mr Howard says the invasion was legal, and the decision to invade was not taken before the proper processes had been followed in Australia.

JOHN HOWARD: I certainly made it very plain to Bush that we needed to have a Cabinet meeting for a final authorisation, that I could not commit my forces, the Australian military forces to action in Iraq until such time as that Cabinet meeting had taken place.

And it did take place. He did ring me two or three times that week to inform me what had happened, and that’s what transpired. But I was certainly diplomatically very supportive, we did pre-deploy. And we made it very clear that we were putting ourselves in a position to be involved, but the final decision to be involved was not taken until after those conversations.

***

Howard was obviously floundering in the 3AW interview. This interview is the best public confirmation so far that this story is real and important, and yet to be fully admitted.

Meanwhile, the key sources are my three website pieces, the Defence Department briefing by Colonel Mansell on 9 May 2003, and the Defence Report on the Iraq War issued in February 2004 (pages 15 and 22 in particular).

Woodward�s book has the timelines too short by a full day. These are the correct timelines for Australian SAS action, give or take an hour or so:

The Bush ultimatum was given at 8pm on 17 March Washington time which is 4 am Iraq time on 18 March , close enough to 12 noon on 18 March Canberra time. The ultimatum expired 48 hours later, at 8 pm Washington time 19 March, ie 4 am Iraq time 20 March, close enough to 12 noon on 20 March Canberra time.

The SAS according to Mansell (9 May 2003 Defence briefing) went into Iraq in the first darkness hours after Howard’s “commitment” [ie his speech at 2 pm on 18 March in Parliament] . This suggests they went in about 1900 hours on 18 March Iraq time, or 0300 hours Canberra time on 19 March. That is 33 hours before the expiry of the Bush ultimatum. � not 9 or 12 hours. There is a big difference.

It appears that our SAS was the first coalition force to take up arms inside Iraq, in the evening of 18 March 2003 Iraq time (refer Mansell briefing). They went in around the same time � maybe a couple of hours after � Saddam announced he was rejecting the Bush ultimatum. (This is actually irrelevant � ultimatums are supposed to run their course because people often do change their minds, and obviously the insertion had been planned well beforehand.)

We have known since Robert Hill�s letters to the Age and SMH in January 2004 (after my first articles on this) that Cabinet NSC authorised those military actions on the morning of 18 March 2003 in Canberra, i.e., around the time Bush�s ultimatum was issued. Howard confirms this in his 3AW interview.

The issues now are:

1. Whether these substantial Australian military combat operations inside Iraq 18-20 March 2003 were preemptive acts of war initiated by Australian forces 33 hours before the expiry of a conditional coalition ultimatum? Were these operations contrary to the laws of war, as these are commonly understood by governments and military forces around the world?

2. That John Howard clearly misled the Australian Parliament and people on 18 and 20 March 2003 as to what his government had decided to do. He led us to believe that 18 March 2003 was a declaration of Australian readiness for “possible future action” in support of the Bush 48-hour ultimatum, and that 20 March 2003 was “the first public indication” of actual engagement of Australian forces in combat in Iraq. Howard knew from the beginning that his Cabinet had taken a dubious decision ordering Australian military action starting on 18 March, and he was trying from the beginning to hide this knowledge from the Parliament and people. It seems from the 3AW interview yesterday that he still is.

Careful press euphemisms about coalition special forces troops that “used the 48-hour delay to slip into Iraq and secure key infrastructure sites like oil wells, scud missile launchers and dams” blur the real truth about the major military combat character of these preemptive engagements by Australian military forces in Iraq. And this does matter.

David Tiley is standing in for Tim Dunlop for the next four weeks. He is a writer, script editor, teacher and occasional director who works in film and multimedia, particularly on documentaries, and has done his bit as an arts bureaucrat. His blog Barista tries to find humour in a deadly serious world.

 

Jozef Imrich at Media Dragon is a prince of the link. This very Tuesday, for instance, he carries enough connections to deep thought about the nature of blogging to torture the rest of us with unaccustomed self reflection.

Gary Sauer-Thompson has a reflective but highly conceptual chew on the issues, on the grounds that:

…the media has become a battlefield for those who hold that a healthy, participatory democracy requires noncommercial access to the tools of communication.

Does this mean we have become important by accident? Press Think provides a potpourri of ideas for a BloggerCon at Harvard, which is enough to make me fear that the medium will stop being fun.

The NYT account of this (thanks Jozef) adds a note of squalor:

“Soon, advertisers will be able to say “I want to buy ads on 25 different Web logs in Southern California written by women who drive humvees,” and have the perfect audience at their fingertips, he said.”

We all need money, but bloggers are self selected against being a commodity – there are so many better ways of putting ourselves up for sale.

We Australians, of course, will die to preserve a sense of fun. Professor Bunyip, on enigmatic hiatus, threatened to return ten days ago but hasn’t. In his absence, we have only the moppet muggers of pretension atThe Spin Starts Here to keep the monstering light.

Gummo Trotsky is wrapped in a similar silence. He seems to be running a strange Giaconda game, where his not blogging makes us comment, until it dies away into silence. Now. Silence.

Cricket has given way to football, while After Grog is combining the two in one last hymn both to the Laragod and the Sex scandals. Drug scandals. Umpire abuse. Goal umpire abuse. Tribunal inconsistencies…which make up the AFL.

The Monday Experts section of Ubersportingpundit is a treasure, though Uberpundit Scott’s politics are not inclusive.

Chris Sheil, meanwhile, continues his public agony over his mistaken loyalty to a failing rugby team. Yobbo remains existentially true to a vision of the game which football would dearly like to deny. He will never be allowed to coach your childrens’ team:

My contribution to the game was limited to being involved in a 6 person brawl midway through the last quarter. Next week I’ll try to get a kick as well.

I don’t know what effect the bloggers are having on the Australian media. But I do know that any episodes of public stupidity will be paraded around the houses on a stick and barbecued on the hot griddle of sarcasm. Maybe we are starting to keep the bastards of the press honest.

Tim Lambert hunts pseudoscience and stooges for right wing pressure groups with the calm zeal of the truly outraged. Gun control, crime statistics, global warming and passive smoking are grist to his mill. Hisinterest in the statistical arcana of epidemiology (you think this is a meaningful statistic? THIS is a meaningful statistic) has spread to Quiggin, parts one and two.

It is one thing to hurl facts across the blogosphere; to undermine the models and ideas of science itself is a truly dirty trick. Science ain’t the law and adversarialism don’t play.

Back Pages, in a more serious vein, has caught the NSW Leader of the Opposition (who? where?) in an extraordinary piece of pure political obscenity. Rather than a raft of Boards and State Authorities and Quangos and the Salvos (yes, in welfare, even the Salvos), Brogden says:

if you are the minister for transport you should be responsible for our railways. If you are the minister for utilites you should be responsible for our water supply. If you are the minister for health you should be responsible for our hospitals. That is our philosophy. No ifs or buts.

He will be telling us the Government is elected to govern next. That means, of course, we would go back to the olden days when we, the public, knew who to biff if something went wrong. And Ministers used to do this weird thing called “resigning.”

Catallaxy has taken up the question of our faith in government from its particular free market perspective. Talking about services like schools and hospitals which are historically not Big Ticket monopolies like trains, Andrew Norton says:

In my own research into privatisation, the best way of predicting public opinion is to look at the historic ownership of that sector. Where it is historically private, private ownership is most popular. Where it is historically public, public ownership is most popular. When there is a mix, that too is reflected in opinion.

Whatever it is, we like it like its always been.

There is a reminder, incidentally, at Kick and Scream, about spam. The Evil Ones can rip email addresses off comments, and there are various ways to hide them.

Internationally, the news continues to be grim. Swanker looks at the tenth anniversary of the Rwanda genocide.

Juan Cole continues to track the politics and slaughter in Iraq. Tim Dunlop guts Howard’s logic on the Spanish withdrawal – and points out that Zapatero actually did what he promised, which at least is refreshing.

Southerly Buster reminds us that Negroponte the Nasty is now U.S. Ambassador to Iraq. And I found a pair of harrowing, chaotic tales of the war – a circus worker turned humanitarian, and a woman soldier’s first night uner fire.

Fortunately, we can seek solace in our local individualists. Hot Buttered Death can be relied upon to find any idiocy going, while Gianna is falling in love with her baby again:

And we spent a lot of time just looking at each other and smiling. I’m pretty sure he felt the same way. I looked at him and finally it hit me that I’ve made a little person.

No-one else can get away with that. In a single day, Boynton manages to swing from walking a dog in memory of Wodehouse to the Jerusalem Chainsaw Massacre.

Loobylu is celebrating Autumn, while Invisible Shoebox is taking the world’s wisest ants to Barcelona.

The Governor-General has a tribe of librarians to comb his magnificent collection of comic writing. How else could he find an old Bernard Levin remark about Michael Foote to describe Bush on television:

I felt like a member of Greenpeace watching a month old seal pup beating its own brains out.

If individual blogs can become all self important and angsty, the group blogs can turn into a public soap opera. Witness Troppo Armadillo, as Ken Parish introduces a new flame, who turns out to have a mind of her own thank you very much, Woodsy discusses investment advice, and Geoff Remains Poised.

In the middle of this blog domesticity, Wayne talked about the right to die. And I know, as I reread it in this context, what blogging is for. Go there and let it work on you.

NEXT WEEK: small treasures. Use the comments at Barista to tell me those exquisite blogs that seem to be ignored. You all know some.

Harry Heidelberg is a Webdiary columnist.

 

About 2 weeks ago I had a dream where JOHN HOWARD was the central figure. I remember waking up and thinking �how bizarre�.

I’ve never had a dream before where a public figure is involved. Usually it is friends, family, work colleagues, or I guess what you would call ‘composite’ characters, but never a public figure.

The Howard dream wasn�t significant except that he was bloody in my head while I was sleeping. I AM NOT SO SURE I LIKE THAT!

As far as I can remember, the substance of the dream was that I was fighting with him verbally. It wasn�t about politics and for the life of me, I can�t remember now exactly what it was about. It was endless rounds of him telling me what to do and me refusing.

Anyway, I hope him or anyone else like him never reappears in my sleeping hours. I really don�t want to start dreaming about politics.

The dream I had an hour or two ago was more bizarre. It had in it terrorism, ethics and politics. This is now the SECOND time in a couple of weeks with public affairs in a dream. I was one of the good guys (what a surprise). It started with me being the leader of a mission in counter terrorism. There were terrorists on board a plane and my mission became to blow them up. All the planning was going along fine and I was happy with what we were doing.

Then part way through I started worrying. I said, “This bomb is going to pierce the fuselage� yes it will kill the terrorists but��it will also bring the whole bloody plane down.”

To my HORROR, they all looked at me as if I was some kind of na�ve child. It was said that I needed to think about “the message we are sending”. So in the end I was being sent on a suicide mission where either the terrorists would blow up the plane or I would blow it up. Somehow it was “sending the right message” if I did it.

I don�t normally have nightmares but I think this qualifies.

Then there was this extraordinary chase. I was running all around the world but they kept reappearing. It wasn�t like I was under arrest or something, more like, “Well the flight is about to depart, do you have everything ready or not?”. Then somehow I would escape from them to another city and they would reappear again. London, Zurich. Prague and Berlin…

In between times I kept ending up at an Australian beach place which was a composite of Terrigal, Byron Bay and Pt Lookout (Stradbroke Island). I�d be with friends at a WONDERFUL outdoor area behind a house and we�d be having a great lunch etc etc. The phone would ring, and the doorbell, and I�d keep saying JUST IGNORE IT.

Then they would catch up with me and I�d be back in Europe again, pretending to be getting ready for the flight, even though I was determined that I would NEVER take that flight.

I�m not sure what the message is but the initial premise for the whole thing is interesting. There is a plan I agree with it but I am duped. The plan makes no moral or ethical sense. Then I run from it but somehow there is no proper resolution. The dream ends with me still running. As long as I don�t board the flight I am OK? Who knows.

I can say one thing – I do NOT appreciate having public affairs now in my dreams! I suppose it is a reflection of the state of the world. Perhaps I�m not the only person for whom the public sphere is suddenly interfering with my private sphere.

I don�t like these things to be in my subconscious. It’s scary.

Artist Robert Bosler is Webdiary’s commentator on the significance of Mark Latham. His work includes Time for Labor to play to win, not just play safe, An artist’s blueprint for a Latham win and Why is Latham alarming?

 

What is our world built on? Is it built on science? Is it built on politics? Is it built on religion? What is central to all these aspects of the human condition? What is the one, irrevocable central point upon which we can all agree?

It is that the world is built upon ideas. Nothing began in this world that did not begin first as an idea.

We are born into this physical world, but do we understand it? Understanding our physical world has always been admitted as subjective. Studies of this world begin with an assumption – an idea – and processes are devised towards finding more about it.

This process is akin to throwing a blanket over some of the stars, saying �this is our starting point� and then embarking on the discovery of what that blanket holds. The end result is a declaration saying �This is what our world is like�. From this knowledge we then build the world we live in. But always there is uncertainty because it all began with an assumption, a limited frame of starting points. We have no definitive or absolute certainty about this physical place in which we live. We are, in reality, continually creating our own existence.

A small number of citizens whose ideas are regarded as exceptional, brilliant, and world changing. The bulk of our citizens accept the world as something they cannot change – and yet if only they knew the power of that idea about the world!

Our suburbs are full of people whose idea of the world is “I have limited if not no power in changing the world”, but in fact their idea of it is what has given them, and everyone else, that world in the first place! Imagine if the world were full of citizens with brilliant, world changing ideas! There would be mayhem. The world is balanced and stable to the extent it is because of the stability which exists in the suburban mind.

Our world is a direct reflection of the combined effects of everyone�s ideas. The purpose of education and learning is to unlock constraints and allow people to know more about how they can utilise the the power of their own ideas about how they see the world. We can change the world by changing our ideas about it.

We are all born into the world as travellers on the road of life, down through the ages, none of us with absolute certainty about the road we are on, nor any road for that matter, except certainties we choose ourselves. As citizens of the world we’ve been given a free ticket to create it any way we want.

So what sort of world do we want? We can have it all. If we want, we can have it all.

Do we want, for instance, a world where people are at war? Do we want a world of peace? We can have anything we like, it is just a matter of where we put our resources. The idea of travellers on the road of life killing fellow travellers is repulsive to some, or crazy, stupid, a waste, and terribly sad. To others, the idea of war is exciting and valuable. Who is to say who�s idea is the better? No one can with certainty. But we can say for sure that we have the choice. It�s all about what we want.

We in Australia are uniquely positioned to change the world we live in. There is no other country possessing the distinct qualities we have. Let�s look at our place.

Beneath us is the oldest land in the world.

Why are we given this privilege? What gifts are written into this? Where do we get the answers? It starts with an idea.

The idea we can embrace if we want is that we are given this privilege because Australia is destined to take a place as a leader on the world stage.

We are born onto the oldest soil in the world because we have an inherent privilege to respect and honour our place of specialness and to, from that place, lead the world. No other people can say it. Australians can.

Don’t like the idea? Don’t think it can happen? Then it won’t. If you do like the idea, then it can.

We’re young

All the great civilisations of the world enormous roots embedded back through time. Each of these cultures have produced tremendous gifts to humanity, of arts, sciences, sport, and other treasures. But each of those cultures has, along with their priceless gifts, an anchor holding them back. Just as those tremendous historical roots have brought forth those gifts, so too do they anchor those civilisations to their past. They cannot escape from it.

Australia does not have that bind. Settled Australia is only two hundred years old. This is a blink in the eye and not long enough to form roots of burden. But we can relate to it all and freely create our nation as we want.

Our country is in the unique position of being able to choose from all those other great civilisations any gifts we want. We can take the gifts, embrace them, and use those gifts for our benefit. We can look at it all and choose for ourselves what qualities we want, without the binding or limiting negatives that go along with it.

As a developed nation we have already done so. We have chosen many of those treasures of humanity. Not only have we taken them, we have excelled with them. Our advances in medicine, sport and the arts are already leading the world.

So the idea of working towards a position of world leadership is real. Let�s not confuse world leadership with world domination. There is a dearth of true leadership in the world now, not that it comes along often anyway, so we need to be careful not to misunderstand what leadership really is. Leadership represents a place where citizens of the world are all yearning at some level to go to.

What we’d need to do first

We must discover more about this awesome place in which we live and love. Have we really started to fully understand where we live? We have enjoyed it; have we really bitten in to really know it?

Our peoples here are ancient. Yet again we strike world rarity and human gold. We mentioned great historical cultures but do we consider what we have right here? Our own people blitz them all in longevity. Outright, unequivocal, stand alone, world leaders. Our very own people have walked the earth the longest; their culture the most ancient. Let�s imagine for a moment what tremendous forces must have been bearing down on our Aboriginal people through those thousands upon thousands of years. They survived. That alone is a gulp stopper. But they prospered, and their culture sang with the joy of success.

These rare qualities are big things going down. Have we ignored it? Have we harmed it? Do we want to heal it and embrace it? How do we take it further?

May contributors take the ball from here. If you’ve taken this idea for the first time, that Australia is precious, privileged, and unique, and can move forward into a greater place as a leading light on the world stage, and it moves something in you, you are needed right now. Take the ball and go. Do what you feel you must. Australia has the chance of moving forward at this moment in our national history.

The following is one afternoon�s offering of ideas to contribute to the way forward, towards reaching and honouring our destiny.

We will not achieve our destiny if we remain separate from our own people. The world will never respect us if we do not achieve reconciliation. There was never a conciliation in our national history, and we’ve been barking up the wrong tree trying to attempt Reconciliation. There�s been nothing to reconcile. We haven’t yet discovered what our Aboriginal people are all about. We don’t even know who we are dealing with. Let�s abandon the term Reconciliation for the misleading thing it is and start afresh on a whole new exciting path of discovery. Let us seek conciliation.

Our Aboriginal peoples� make up is entirely different from ours. They operate differently, think and feel in different ways, see the world from a different place. Their culture is a magical culture, built on relationship of matters of an internal nature. Settled Australia has matured enough to put aside our own view of life and to begin to discover the philosophical depths of Aboriginal life. Trying to make them like us is nothing short of cruel. But we can merge philosophical benefits from each of our ways and let each culture live enriching one another, crossing and joining where it wants, remaining free and pure where it wants. Of course this will take time, but the end result is brilliance. Let us set our goal at nothing less.

If you were born in another country, and looked upon these great gifts and privileges that only Australia has, wouldn’t you want to see them driving the highest standards possible for their appreciation within that privileged country? What would you think of a country that ignored them? We are brilliant and successful, leading the world already in so many ways, why not set brilliant conciliation and cultural celebration as our national goal?

How do we discover what our Aboriginal people are about? Perhaps a good place to start is to stop, sit down, and listen to them. This listening can happen anywhere, but the nation must hear it. What we learn must resonate through our daily lives. This discovery must be one of excitement and pleasure, so the journey of discovery itself is rewarding.

Maybe settled Australia needs to learn that we see our land as something separate from us. Maybe we need to learn that our Aboriginal people walk through and engage the land as a part of who they are; that they are walking through their own being, as distinct from being a tourist in it. Maybe if we sat down with them, and listened, we could learn how and why they see the world that way. Maybe we will benefit beyond belief in embracing some of these valuable philosophies and using them in practical solutions for all our welfare.

Maybe the joy of national discovery, of listening, of respecting the Aboriginal culture will inspire them, too. Nothing binds a people more joyously than the shared sweat of effort towards a common goal. Of course we can do it. We just have to want to.

Embracing our own people, bringing them into our lives, and going into theirs and enriching ourselves by all of this achieves not only a rich and magical and practically benefited Australia – it sends a powerful message to the world about how it is done. We did not fight, we did not demand, we sat down and listened. We learned.

What message would this send to the world?

Achieving conciliation between Settled Australia and Aboriginal Australia would send bullets of human brightness into the hearts of nations around the world. The international community would warm to us as a nation that got it right.

In embarking on our journey of conciliation we would learn more about what we loosely term the environment. We may come to understand that the environment is not something that happens to us, or that we do to it: that the environment and our own lives are wholesome as one, an organism of life. Imagine feeling that the natural world resonated within your very own being, rather than feeling like you are a tourist in it! How would this feeling change Settled Australian�s ideas and choices in life? How rich would be the feeling that your life is as one with the world around you.

Even slight policy changes that embraced this sense of wholesomeness in legislative matters of the environment shift the balance more towards our sustainability as a life form. Even slight changes alter attitudes and awareness, which lead in turn to the celebration of protecting our environment in all we do. Environmental respect becomes a sexy subject. The world must learn how to better manage our living with the natural world. We have the world�s teachers, the culture of philosophical success in achieving that, right here in our Australian Aborigine.

We would need a change of government if any of the above is to occur. We would need a government that has faith in our strengths, faith in our ability to freely embrace others, and faith in the value of ideas and the value of conciliation.

We would need a government that not only understood the need for trust, but understood that trust is an integral part of anyone�s desire to grow, and of the natural creative process – the process at the heart of everything we do. It would need to be a government that actually dealt in trust, if it could not go the distance to nurture it.

Strangely, a government that dealt in trust would, in the end, have less of an impact on our lives because it would recede into the background as we got on with the stuff of life that we each want to get stuck into.

Government criticism brings the government to the fore, daily, in everything we do, and is terribly distracting from what could be a smoother path of prosperity. Diminishing this criticism by having a government dealing more in trust – by trusting trust – shifts the focus of the national mind onto areas of government action that will provide greater national prosperity. It�s a win win situation for everyone. Even to get back to the days of some allaying of trust by a government would help, but this total ruination of it is not on. If only a government were brave enough to trust even more in trust. But then again, we have to demand it, we have to want it. Have we spoken loudly enough?

It is a matter of our self respect as much as anything. Do we continue to bend over and take it? Let us speak up, and clearly make it known what we want.

To arrive at our destiny, we need a government that did not govern to govern, but one that governed to lead. To lead is to grow, and growth requires faith and trust, and allows for failures along the way, knowing that admitting to failures is an important part of growth. We need a government of vision. We need a government brave enough to listen.

We need a government that understood that in growing there will be dissenting voices, and that these voices are precious and valuable to the process of growth, and that they must be listened to and embraced. To attempt to banish those voices is to turn from our destiny. No one can be denied.

We do not know for sure if we have any or all of these requirements in a Latham Government. We do know for sure we don’t have even one of them with Howard.

Perhaps also we need to answer questions of national self image. Questions of an Australian sovereign state, and our national flag, remain unanswered and unattended. Could it be that by walking the path of conciliation with and learning from our Aboriginal people we will arrive at a place where we do all want to celebrate our unique, natural, national identity? Are we shying away from standing alone on a world stage heralding our own identity because deep down we don’t feel we deserve it? Could it be that joyously moving towards discovery and conciliation with our peoples will give us this national self esteem?

Perhaps we also need to re-engage our international neighbourhood, presenting ourselves more as a nation of goodwill. A nation of goodwill is more accurately what the true Australia is.

Are these big issues to attend to? Yes. What does it take to achieve them? Only that we want to.

It is a great and privileged nation, ours. We have an unrelenting demand to lead in many things we choose internationally to do, and we have this fabulously laid back take it all on style. Somehow we have combined these national traits in a way that is not contradictory, but complementary.

An Australian leader would be bloody dangerous if he or she had the unrelenting need to lead. Perhaps it is time to realise the Australian psyche is sophisticated. Part of the nature of the Australian sophistication is that we don’t see ourselves that way. The makeup of our psyche precludes this, which protects us from arrogance.

Still don’t think Australia can achieve this position as a world leader, or should?

Is a true world leader an economic feastfest lusting after, and with a track record of, using a grotesquely disproportionate degree of all the world�s resources so that the world�s natural resources will be ruined beyond repair in fifty years? Do you think the vast rest of the world wants and respects this?

What are your ideas about what the world really wants as a leading light for the long years ahead?

If your idea of a true world leader is a nation built on the world�s oldest land, having found peace with itself, having faced the fears of discovering its own identity and celebrated that achievement, having learned from its own – the world�s oldest – people, there is only one place in the world that can do it.

Australia.

The privilege and the opportunity has been given to us. Do we want to honour the privileges and take the opportunity?

If we do, we know already, by even just making that choice in our minds and empowered by our willing hearts, that we can make it happen. Our first big opportunity to stand for this choice is just months away. Take the moment now, if you feel it, to speak up on your idea for how you want your world to be.

Antony Loewenstein writes regular Webdiary column Engineering consent, about the workings of the media.

 

“You only have to read history to see that if you want to change the world, get ready to be crushed by those with the most to lose.” Bob Brown, Greens leader, April 2004

Maxine McKew wrote in 2002 that Greens leader Bob Brown was “the de facto chief of the disenchanted left.” Back then, national polling had the progressive party at 8% of the primary vote across the country.

Two years later, a recent Newspoll has confirmed that Australians care deeply about the environment. Nine out of ten polled said they wanted Tasmania�s old growth forests protected from logging and future development. The Greens are set to take around 9% of the primary vote in the upcoming election. The Greens have therefore grown into the only serious third force in Australian politics.

Brown articulated the feeling of hundreds of thousands of Australians on 14 February, 2003, when speaking at a public rally in Melbourne against the impending war in Iraq:

While Iraq has been an issue through all these years, in none of his election wins has our Prime Minister John Howard sought or been given a mandate to attack Iraq. He has no mandate from Green or Democrat voters. He has no mandate from Labor voters. He has no mandate from National Party or Liberal voters. He has no mandate at all.

Brown�s stand makes him a unique figure on the national political scene.

In his new book Memo for a Saner World (Penguin), Brown records his lifelong struggles on environmental issues, the growth of the Greens and his vision for a future Australia. The introduction quotes Indian global activist and writer, Vandana Shiva, and highlights the rule by which Brown himself plays � harnessing the spirit in world affairs:

A spiritual leaning used to mean total inactivity in the world, while activism tended to be associated with violence. But suddenly the only people who seem to have the courage to act are the deeply spiritual – because it�s only those who know there is another world, another dimension, who are not intimidated by the world of organised power.

In an interview for Webdiary, Brown said the mainstream media�s coverage of the Greens had improved in recent years, but that the media elite had been slow to understand the rise of the movement:

I think in Canberra, the Press Gallery judges an issue whether there is a difference between Labor and Liberal, and not on whether there should be a different point of view to Labor and Liberal. The clearest thing is the environment. It comes up along with health and education and unemployment as one of the big issues of the day with the electorate�s mind, way above tax and superannuation, but it�s left off the agenda by the senior commentators in Canberra. Unless there is a political stoush, (which there very rarely), Labor and Liberal see eye to eye as they do in the current historically high rate of destruction of Tasmania�s forests.

A perfect example of the mainstream media�s scepticism came when Labor leader Mark Latham visited the Styx Forest in Tasmania in March. Rather than examining the issues around environmental policy, many commentators preferred to focus on Latham�s motivation for visiting the Apple Isle. Brown, however, was pleased with Latham�s visit:

John Howard didn�t come and see the forests but signed their death warrants, which was the Regional Forest Agreements in 1997. Mark Latham has come to see the forests and I respect and admire that. He isn�t a Greenie by any means, or an environmentalist, but he recognises that the Australian electorate does rate the environment highly, so it�s important to leave the door open for Labor to change.

Brown isn�t under any illusions that Labor is going to fundamentally change its policy.

The difficulty, of course, is that Labor is the problem in Tasmania. So what�s new? The Franklin campaign, or the Daintree in Queensland or Kakadu, these have all been huge problems and it’s taken leadership, very often in Canberra, to come out with the right results. In the case of the Daintree rain forest, there are now 4000 jobs coming out of that World Heritage area. And ditto with the Franklin.

During Latham�s visit to Tasmania, he announced no cessation of wood chipping or logging of old forests and pledged to continue supporting the clear-felling of old growth forests until 2010.

Throughout Memo for a Saner World, Brown urges Australians to see beyond the two-party political system and embrace the Greens as the alternative to the materialism of big party politics. There is no question that the Greens are gaining momentum as a world movement. In early April, a Greens Prime Minister was installed in Latvia, a world first,and Brown sees the global trend mirrored across Australia:

We�ve seen more than 50 local government councillors elected in NSW, including Jan Barham, the first directly elected Green head of state of a local government, if you like, in Byron Bay. You put them all together, and it seems they are small steps on a huge political platform, but we are a global movement and we do have a fresh ethic and we do have solutions.

At the end of the book, Brown outlines a 10-point plan for future Prime Ministers, and “how to make Australia a proud, compassionate, independent nation”. He includes pulling Australian troops out of Iraq and “lending a global effort to divert some of the US$1 trillion annual weapons budget so that every child on Earth has food, clean water and a school to attend”.

I hope Mark Latham or John Howard adopts the 10-point plan and puts the Greens out of business�, says Brown, �but that�s not going to happen, is it?

For young people especially – and if recent polling is correct, around 20% of young people support the Greens – the progressive party is bringing optimism. Brown thinks he knows why:

We do offer an alternative to the short-sighted, exploitative and greedy politics of now. I think the optimism comes out of saying �We can get hope back into the equation, We can look after the next generation�s interests’. Our long-term view is rather than just looking at the next election, will people thank us 100 years from now?

It�s the politics of hope, rather than division or fear, lifting the Greens in the polls, especially amongst some traditional Labor voters disillusioned with their party since Tampa and 9/11.

Brown is constantly confronted with doubters about the Green�s integrity and long-term viability. In the book’s introduction, he responds to the charge that a vote for the Greens is a ‘wasted vote’:

In fact, it has double the value. Under Australia�s preferential voting system, if your minor party is not elected, your whole vote goes to your major party preference. Better still, an increase in the Greens� vote indicates to the big parties where your real policy preference lies.”

With world political moods shifting to the right and a tendency to embrace conservative narratives as policy, Brown says the party is in a stronger position today than political pundits ever predicted.

The predictions of doom and gloom, that we were a flash in the pan, and that we had nowhere to go, all of which I�ve had hauled at me by the Tasmanian media and other parties in the national media, are patently wrong.

Last year�s visit of US President George W. Bush brought our national political dramas to a worldwide audience, thanks to a smuggled CNN camera into Parliament that captured Brown and fellow Senator, Kerry Nettle, interjecting during Bush�s speech. Brown said he and Nettle were very nervous before the protest:

I made it clear that if nerves got the better of us, it would be okay to stay seated: it would be a daunting scene.

Mainstream commentators generally agreed on the inappropriateness of the protest, deeming it unseemly and undemocratic. Brown suggests this is a perfect example of how out of touch the media has become:

There is a much different view out there in Australia than the doyens of the Press Gallery express. And they�re out of touch, not us. And particularly when it comes to the idea of uttering a syllable while George Bush was speaking, rather than an exercise in democracy. Australians have responded to what Kerry and I did positively and we did the right thing.

Despite a dip in Greens support after the Bush and Chinese President, Hu Jintao�s visit, their numbers have risen again, to 9%. Brown�s ideal foreign policy is that Australia [should be] an independent player on the world scene:

We�ve got so much to give this region. We�re the wealthiest country in the region, if not the world. We�re democratic, we�re a country who believes in a fair go, and we�ve got much more than Howard�s politics and bending the knee to the White House, to offer the world.

With conflict in Iraq becoming a more brutal affair by the day, the reasons behind Australia�s involvement in Bush�s endeavour are likely to remain on the agenda until election day. Andrew Wilkie, former intelligence officer at the Officer of National Assessments, will run as a Green in the seat of Bennelong against the Prime Minister. Wilkie resigned before the Iraq war, saying the Howard government exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam. He also anticipated a humanitarian disaster after an invasion. Brown feels that Wilkie�s dedication to the truth makes him a perfect candidate:

I was impressed with his integrity. To be able to take a stand like he did is rare and precious thing in politics.

We come from different backgrounds. We do come from different points of view, but having come from a conservative background myself, I recognise how the Greens don�t sit on the political spectrum easily.

Wilkie had talks with Labor, the Demcorats, and Meg Lees Progressive Alliance before joining the Greens. “I am attracted to the underlying principles in the Greens, in particular their understanding of the importance of social justice in all its forms, their strong pro-environment stance and their equally strong anti-war stance”

Brown said that “being in politics is a priveledge, not a daunting thing, and putting oneself on the line in public shouldn�t be reserved for steely hard men who like mind treading on other peoples� hands and faces”.

It�s terrific Andrew Wilkie’s running in Bennelong. He wanted to run against Howard. He�s really saying that Howard�s politics need strong alternatives, and right in the cockpit, right in the PM�s own seat. He�s standing there. He�s a realist, but I think it does draw attention to the Prime Ministerial politics and the fact that whether it�s Bennelong or the whole of Australia, there are better alternatives.

With rapidly improving communication, the Greens philosophy on globalisation is becoming a worldwide progressive call for an alternative approach to government. With the major parties merely rearranging interchangeable policies, Brown stresses the importance of understanding the revolution we are currently experiencing:

We are a globalising world community and you can�t just globalise the economy. There is a greater humanity and respect for this planet and for coming generations in the populace than there is in the political elite in the age of materialism. And whether you�re looking at Mr. Putin in Russia or Mr. Howard in Canberra or Mr. Hu in Beijing, the rampant materialism at the expense of other values, like our humanity, and the well-being of the planet, is worrying people.

When Mark Latham was in Tasmania, I said there is a mood of change. I think we�ll get a big spending budget and maybe an accolade for Mr. Howard from President Bush and an early election. Mark Latham is an untested leader but he�s shown that he�s prepared to be different to John Howard and he�s prepared to tackle John Howard. It�s made politics exciting. And the Greens are here saying we�ve got a really progressive alternative.

The ABC’s election analyst, Antony Green, believes the Greens �will win all Senate positions not won by the big parties� at the election, because “One Nation and the Democrats now look to be in permanent decline, perhaps victims of their lack of ideology”.

***

Further reading

Bob Brown�s speeches from 1996 to 2004.

The Age journalist Michelle Grattan on the Green�s influence and Amanda Lohrey�s Quarterly Essay on the Rise of the Greens”, November 2002.

The Bulletin�s Maxine McKew interview with Bob Brown in September 2002.

The CNN report of October 24, 2003 on Brown�s interjection to George W. Bush.

aloewenstein@f2network.com.au

This piece was first published in The Sun Herald today.

 

Why do they do it, these whistleblowers? Why do they dare speak out? Whether in the private or public sector, often they lose their livelihoods, and the strain can damage their health, end their closest relationships and smash their friendships. Almost always they are smeared, threatened and put under intolerable psychological pressure.

What do they get in return for their courage, their defiant insistence that one person can make a difference and must, when faced with a choice between right and wrong, look the powerful people in their world in the eye and say “No!”?

They get pats on the back from some of us for a little while, but in the end they’re alone with the friends they have left when the fair-weather ones have gone.

Lance Collins this week joined a growing list of public service whistleblowers who’ve stood up for truth, the public’s right to be told it, and the public interest. Mahatma Gandhi said that whatever we do in the world is insignificant, but that it is very important that we do it. That’s because when enough of us are brave enough to stand up for what is right, the world will change. And part of standing up is looking after our whistleblowers.

Unless we start doing what we can to back them, the public service will be beyond repair. It’s our public service, in the end, and its ethics and commitment to the public interest are a bedrock of our democracy.

Robert Menzies put it well in 1942 in one of his “forgotten people” broadcasts: “Do not underrate the civil servant. He is for the most part anonymous and unadvertised, but he is responsible for by far the greater part of the achievements sometimes loudly claimed by others. He provides, as a witty friend of mine once said, ‘a level of competence below which no government can fall’.”

Just as ethics have collapsed in business, the ethos of service and duty is almost gone from the public service. Don’t give the government the facts, because it doesn’t want to know. Without the facts, or honest risk and effects assessments, the Government avoids taking moral responsibility for what it does, and can safely lie to us. In return, senior public servants get “performance bonuses”, job security and “status”. Why, they even get onto honours lists.

Funny, isn’t it, that Collins didn’t get an official award for his work in East Timor. Courageous, ethical people who care for their country and fight for its values don’t get honoured by governments in the main. Who will honour our democratic torchbearers?

Web diarist Peter Gellatly wrote: “All the evidence points to the public having a very short attention span, and, subsequent to a fast but fleeting bout of moral outrage, not really giving a damn. This lack of public support is responsible for a dearth of overt fearless principle in the public service. The putatively courageous might be forgiven for concluding that the public they serve does not value, and is therefore not entitled to expect, the whistleblower’s inevitable personal sacrifice – a sacrifice borne not just by the individual but by his/her family.”

Web diarist Jamie Clark quoted Stanford University professor of philosophy Richard Rorty, who believes the West is becoming post democratic: “The progress humanity made in the 19th and 20th centuries was largely due to the increased role of public opinion in determining government policies. But the lack of public concern about government secrecy has, in the last 60 years, created a new political culture in each of the democracies. In a worst-case scenario, historians will some day have to explain why the golden age of Western democracy lasted only about 200 years. The saddest pages in their books are likely to be those in which they describe how the citizens of the democracies, by their craven acquiescence in governmental secrecy, helped bring the disaster on themselves.”

How can we avoid this terrible trend? Wouldn’t it be great if we raised money for a whistleblowers’ fund for our nurses in NSW who spoke out about the decay of our hospitals; Lance Collins, who spoke out about intelligence services corruption; Andrew Wilkie, who told us before the Iraq war that the Government was lying; and many others. So many “ordinary” people have turned their lives inside out for us. We need to show them it’s worth it. There could be annual awards, but there’d be ongoing financial support too, and hideaway homes when the going got tough, and help in finding work.

The balance of power is so stacked against the ethical individual that unless citizens do something to redress it, we’ll run out of whistleblowers. We’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Christopher Selth is a former head of international equities at BT who wrote his first Webdiary piece after September 11 in What happens next and his second in Why is Howard not addressing us?

 

In this extraordinary time, there are two themes which strike me in reading the discussion in Webdiary.

Firstly and most obviously there is outrage at the situation in Iraq. Regardless of ones political persuasion it must be seen at the very least as a humanitarian catastrophe.

Secondly, lurking below the surface in a number of comments posted in this forum is a question about the nature of the debate taking place across our community. The question is to what end, if any, are these heated discussions leading? This concern applies both to the political debate between our leaders, and to what is happening within Webdiary itself. With respect to this latter point I refer to pieces by Susan Metcalf, Paul Walter, and most recently by Jack Robertson.

I�ll quote him:

But as I started plucking all the naughty hidden agendas from the latest columns of writers like Miranda Devine and Chris Pearson and Andrew bolt, I was overwhelmed by a sense of futility and self disgust.

Is anyone else at Webdiary or in the blogosphere for that matter � as bored as I am with constantly trying to have the last word in these endless tit-for-tat cyber battles?

Jack, I agree with you.

I have been struggling to sort through my sense of anger and frustration at the scale of the problems facing the world with a sense that our institutions may not be up to the challenge of resolving them. Yet within that analysis I do not believe the problem lies simply with “bad policy” implemented by our current leadership.

Whilst I have the gravest of doubts about a number of the positions held by our governments, I believe the failings we are witnessing reflect not only on our leaders, but on us all. We can find key elements of the problem in the way we, the community, engage in political debate.

Debates which appear ultimately to bog down in finger pointing do little to achieve a better world. There is a tendency to characterise political arguments as some kind of Manichean struggle, �good guy� versus �bad guy�. We seek to prove how disconnected our opponents are from us and from reality, rather than seeking to understand the points of connection. We have turned both our political and intellectual processes into adversarial forums where both sides arm themselves with their own self righteousness. We are more intent on �I told you so� than analysis. Little wonder that our �analysis� leaves us feeling more scared and alienated.

As is so often cried out in the Webdiary, we get the politicians we deserve. The politics of fear is not just a creation of our politicians. It is our creation. It can be seen within our self righteous debates, where we resist understanding our opponents, and characterise all their positions as being founded only on the basest of motives.

Without finding some connection or understanding there is no way we can move forward in a constructive manner. Change will be forged through bitter catharsis. The pendulum will swing violently. Human history is clear.

It�s the point I think Susan Metcalf touched on in Media don’t get it on Latham and Iraq when she challenged the nature of the debates taking place in Webdiary. As she says, this style of argument risks being reductionist and reactionary. It�s what I characterise as �adversarial logic�. Analysis is structured in order to confirm our good guy bad guy hypotheses.

Sometimes it feels like we have turned Iraq into some kind of football match where we try to score the performances of John Howard and Mark Latham. We know which team we are barracking for.

I agree with Paul Walter in Adelaide. He describes what I have been struggling with, and I quote:

What REALLY emerges on second glance us not so much contempt of debate [referring to the argument by Susan Metcalf and Marilyn Shepherd] but intense disappointment that so little emerges FROM all this earnest debating.

I sense here that many of us are looking for a new way. But is there another way, or do we just have to tighten our seat belts and hope our side wins? Is a new way just fantasy?

Mark Latham and the hope for a ‘new politics’

Mark Latham focused on the need for a ‘New Politics’ in a speech to the La Trobe Political Society. It picked out themes of the breakdown in civil society and trust in the political structures championed in the analysis of American sociologist Robert Putnam [see Putnam�s book ‘Bowling Alone’]. I believe Latham�s honeymoon in the opinion polls was in part tied to the appeal of this idea.

Of course in a jaded community, distrustful of politicians hope is balanced with cynicism. Those doubts obviously erupted when Mark Latham made his comments with respect to pulling out of Iraq. Was it evidence of cheap populism, or a considered opinion reflecting Latham�s views as shown in his March of folly speech before the war?

The setbacks in Mark Latham�s recent poll performance might be interpreted as the price paid for poor positioning on Iraq, or disappointment that he had in some way betrayed the hope for a new politics, whether by the Iraq comments themselves, or in the subsequent exchanges with John Howard.

What is the �new politics�?

Mark Latham characterised new politics as being built around rebuilding public trust in the parliamentary system. This is to be achieved by politicians acknowledging the essential nature of that trust, and seeking to gain it through greater honesty. I think many of us would agree that this would be highly desirable.

Latham in his ‘New Politics’ speech, however, sought to identify civic consciousness, and hence desire to reinvigorate the democratic process, as the preserve of the Social Democratic parties of the centre left. He characterised the right as inherently self serving.

This reading of the right is a logical extension of certain strands of right wing ideology, but not all. To seek to score this kind of political point risks reducing a high minded proposition to old politics. Nor does it sit comfortably with the electorate�s experience of the machinations of the Labor Party at the state level in New South Wales or Western Australia.

So does a ‘new politics’ mean just promising a greater level of honesty by one side of the political divide, a kind of new politics ‘light’? How many in the electorate will believe it? John Howard and George W. made similar claims prior to their elections. If it is to achieve anything at all the new politics must be about more than that.

Latham in his book ‘Civilising Global Capital’ writes:

[New social democrats] have responded to the complexity of the new political economy with a fresh set of social democratic values. They have eschewed the coalition-building approach of binary politics in favour of the values of a new radical centre. The policy prescriptions of the old Left and Right dichotomy have been abandoned as unsuitable during a time of globalisation and widespread insecurity.

Whilst it is true that this comment refers more to an intellectual divide between left and right with respect to policy prescriptions, it surely touches on a central question of the new politics, abandoning the ‘binary’ adversarial nature of the old politics to examine issues that can no longer be dealt with by that structure. Latham in his ‘New Politics’ speech advocates the idea of holding community forums and more direct democracy. You can hardly expect the community to engage constructively with complex issues whilst political debate remains primitive, an ideological battle of the Somme.

This highlights the tension in Latham�s position, between the ‘realities’ of old style politics, and the requirement that he position himself against John Howard, versus a new style politics which claims to be taking a constructive stance, that substance matters more than spin. As Latham says in his speech, ‘a positive contribution to the debate counts for more than negativity and partisanship’.

Latham is an intelligent man. He clearly must be aware of the complexity of reconciling these positions. Is it possible? Does he really believe it? Is it an abstract ideal that requires real world ‘compromises’? Or is it just good marketing? So we watch not just whether Latham personally can embody this new approach, but more broadly whether a ‘new politics’ is achievable or just a na�ve fantasy.

A cornerstone of the old politics – the politics of fear

Mark Latham in his inaugural address to the Labor Party conference as party leader raised the issue of the politics of fear as central to what differentiated his vision from that of John Howard. But can Latham really take on a political style that has become so entrenched, or is it a seductive if somewhat glib marketing pitch?

The politics of fear is more than just a political stratagem, deliberately adopted by players of both the Right and Left; it is also linked to fundamental elements of human psychology.

The nature and purpose of fear and anxiety

Of course there are many forms of fear. Some are healthy, natural defence mechanisms. Others may represent ego strategies that if pushed to extreme will ultimately generate serious harm.

Psychoanalyst Melanie Klein used the phrase paranoid-schizoid to describe one of those fear responses. It was an element of theory she developed when examining infant�s behaviour. Klein was seeking to understand the anger babies can show.

Paranoid-schizoid behaviour is a psychological defence strategy whereby given the stresses imposed by non gratification of the immediate desires of the infant, the child sees the failure of the universe to satisfy those desires as evidence of the world being disconnected from the child [schizoid], and directed against the child [paranoid].

This model suggests something which in the modern world may seem obvious to many, that intrinsic to our consciousness is a tendency to see that which is different from us as alien and potentially threatening. Furthermore, and most significantly, we have a tendency to embrace this response as a way of managing our sense of loss in not getting what we want. It is innately not fair. We are not responsible. It is someone else�s fault that we didn�t get what we wanted.

Healthy maturation of the child should lead to dealing with these anxieties, learning not to throw tantrums. The essence of human civilisation is managing this kind of fear. It involves the getting of wisdom, learning at both the individual and the collective level. It involves knowing the nature and limits of personal and collective responsibility, whilst taking appropriate action against real external threats. It does not mean though that the inclinations are eliminated. They sit within all of us, managed but capable of springing out under stress.

I believe we must examine the potentialities of a new politics in light of these human behavioural traits. They bear not just on how we respond to outsiders, as demonstrated by the Tampa episode or One Nation, but also on how we see those not sharing our views within our own society, within our own political debate.

The left is as guilty as the right in this regard. Schizoid behaviour is dysfunctional because it is about disconnection. Disconnection is intrinsic to adversarial politics. It is intrinsic to how we engage in the discussions in forums such as these, and why they have difficulty in going forward.

How does this psychology play out in our political processes?

At the community level government, and our political processes, are responsible for identifying ‘real threats’ and developing strategies to deal with them.

Complicating this however is the reality that our politicians are subject to the same paranoid-schizoid responses as the rest of us. Furthermore politicians historically have not shied away from using the fear in the electorate for political advantage. These political responses can be seen in scapegoating, jingoistic nationalism, and simplistic populism. No side of politics can deny having resorted to such strategies at some time.

The problem with these strategies is that they don�t effectively deal with the underlying issues that generated those fears in the first place. In fact those threats can to some extent be seen as of being of benefit to certain members of the political class.

I am wary of just pointing the finger at politicians here. Remember they use these strategies not just as a manipulation, but because they reflect who we are, and what we want to hear.

The recent history of anxiety in our community

Before Sept 11 community anxiety firmly focused on the impact of economic reform processes and globalisation.

In an environment where there was perceived widening gap between winners and losers produced by this process, where the integrity of the community and the idea of justice and a fair go was under challenge, the community was ripe for the politics of negativity. This situation did not exist just in Australia. It was pretty much across the Western World.

The nature of these anxieties is very clearly identified in Michael Pusey�s book ‘The Experience of Middle Australia’. It is a compelling survey of Australian attitudes, even if you do not agree with all of Pusey�s editorial judgements as to the cause and solutions of the problems Middle Australia is reacting to.

John Howard exploited those fears to defeat the Keating government.

Remember that prior to September 11 the anti-globalisation movement was making headlines. John Howard looked set to lose the Federal Election. Then came Tampa, and Al-Qaeda.

The Liberal Party built its fear politics on nationalism, foreign hordes and terrorism. The Labor Party built its own version on the attack on Medicare, Telstra, and the GST.

This is not to say that there were and are not legitimate issues associated with all of the above, but do we believe there have been credible constructive responses to any of these issues by our leaders? Surveys of the public�s attitudes to politicians show most of us are unconvinced.

The results of the pursuit of fear based strategies are coming in

The pursuit of these strategies has led to a number of outcomes which at first glance seem somewhat surprising but are in fact the inevitable outcome of the weaknesses implicit to this sort of politics.

I summarise these outcomes as the following:

1. The economy is back as an issue as the structural shifts in the world economy continue to create massive tension in local communities.

2. The terrorist threat is still significant … possibly worse.

3. Iraq is falling into civil war.

4. It is now the political leaders who drove the politics of fear who look most afraid. They cease being afraid, however, when they can return to an adversarial politics loaded with technicalities.

5. Global warming remains as the unnamed elephant in the room which might change all our long term stories.

Are there positives? Possibly:

1. An undoubtedly evil dictator has been removed.

2. Certain elements of the Arab world have been ameliorated� i.e. Libya.

3. The global economy does well as the �BRIC�s� drive growth [Brazil, Russia, India, China].

And in the ambiguous category, depending on your political persuasion:

1. The strength of the world�s one superpower has proved exaggerated as Iraq devolves into a quagmire.

2. We are moving inexorably to a new balance of power, with the world learning it does not have to obey the United States, and China moving towards a position of significant strength.

It�s the economy, stupid

Through the US Democratic primary process George W Bush found himself exposed. It was not initially about the revelations of Richard Clark, or the impact of another terrorist monstrosity in Madrid, but of the anxieties about the US economy. Polling showed these concerns to be the primary issue in voters� minds. If Bush gets re-elected, it most probably will be on the basis of a job rebound.

Question marks persist about the structure of the world economy. Job creation in the US has been surprisingly weak. The economic establishment is publicly at a loss to explain this.

Outsourcing of jobs by corporate America to China and India had received high attention by the Democratic primary process, which has resulted in John Kerry being the candidate who has focused on this story.

But the loss of jobs to Asia is only part of the story. Major productivity improvements in the US economy, produced by past technological innovation and structural change mean that US firms have managed to increase output significantly without taking on new workers. This has kept consumer goods prices low, but has created few jobs and given limited income growth. Those low prices have produced a low inflation, which has facilitated low interest rates. This has meant that consumers with jobs can borrow to buy goods, and if you own a house, its valuation has risen. So some of the benefits of this productivity boom, and cheap Chinese imports are made available to the public, but the cost is higher debt and greater job uncertainty. Can this go on forever?

Even if job growth picks up in the US, what is certain is that ongoing structural change in the economy persists. This guarantees a state of anxiety by the community. That anxiety will mean that populist fear based politics will attract political strategists, as opposed to the much harder problem of finding solutions.

The job situation and the structure of community will be a prime focus for John Kerry in the up coming American election. But is this a good thing? India and China are already being scapegoated. The politics of fear is in play again. But are real solutions being suggested?

It is interesting to contrast the US experience with the Australian one.

Australian economic performance has been stronger than the US in recent time periods. It is telling that John Howard is now trying to use the economy to shield himself, just as George W was trying to assume the role of war time president to hide from it. This inconsistency suggests the existence of a fault line which we need to explore.

How does the Australian community feel about the economy? Surface numbers are encouraging. Consumer confidence also appears strong. But the situation is not so clear cut. Qualitative research such as the Pusey survey suggests deep disquiet in the community. One focal point is the gap between rich and poor. This gap opened up by the end of the last Labor government. Little wonder that the ALP is wary of touching this terrain. Statistical evidence suggests that it has not improved under Howard, and has probably deteriorated further. Middle Australia feels it is struggling to maintain its quality of life. It has lost job security. Social services are in decline. If Australia is doing so well, and the government tax take is so high, why then are our schools and hospitals falling apart? The news of economic prosperity doesn�t tally with the headlines in the newspapers.

Mark Latham has picked this point. The sense of community cohesion will continue to be threatened by these trends. But does he really have policies to deal with these issues? Are they the inevitable result of global economic forces? Or is he just going to scapegoat John Howard? Playing the politics of fear?

Look at Europe. Disputes are paralysing France, Germany, and Italy as these societies struggle with these issues. They are gridlocked between holding on to their old community structures, the costs of which are becoming economically crippling, and radically altering the socio-economic structure, which threatens the integrity of certain core values. Will we avoid this?

I asked can this last? The last few days have seen economic news that could mark the end of this period in both the US and Australia. Growth in Asia has supported the Australian economy in part by fuelling commodity prices. It is telling that the oil price is one key reflector of this reality. The strong commodity prices that Australia benefited from are beginning to feed through to higher consumer prices in Asia. Cheap manufacturing prices have been an important element to low global inflation. Last night US inflation numbers came in above expectations. This threatens an increase in interest rates. Beyond that China is beginning to restrain credit growth to try to break its booming economy. There is a major bad debt risk in the Chinese economy. Higher interest rates mean the end of the building boom, higher mortgage rates and lower house prices in Australia. Australian and American consumers are carrying record levels of personal debt. And then there is the massive US budget deficit.

Ian Macfarlane, the head of the Reserve Bank commented about this risk yesterday. We have built an economic structure that is too dependent on low interest rates.

The idea of a new politics will be meaningless unless we can engage constructively with these economic challenges. And the hunt for external scapegoats will escalate. The politics of fear will re-assert itself, violently.

Afterthoughts on the economy

Two significant asides …

The growth of China and India are structurally shifting the global economy. This cannot be dismissed simply as a capitalist plot. Isn�t it ironic that throughout our history many Australians have been so worried about invasions of our shores by our poorer Asian neighbours jealous of our standard of living and way of life? Now it will appear that the real challenge to our way of life will be the competitive challenges posed as these economies industrialise, and their citizens claim material standards of living which we presumed were only available in the West.

The forces that are entering play have been seen in the world before; during the 70s, and in part as a consequence of the Vietnam War.

The 60s saw the end of a massive productivity boom … similar to the 90�s. The United States entered into the Vietnam War, and threw out fiscal discipline. It started running massive budget deficits. This was seen as one element that fuelled resurgence in inflation. Commodity prices rose, with the biggest blow off seen in the oil market. The economic boom of the 60s was followed by the stagflation of the 70s.

This process touches on a number of the issues raised in Matt Southon�s piece As seen on TV: the decline and fall of the American empire. I would like to comment on this piece at a later date as it raises significant issues which touch on this analysis.

Iraq, an example of adversarial logic and old politics

Iraq understandably and justifiably dominates our current debate. Within it lie all the elements that I have commented on above.

The Iraqi people, and the world, face a problem on the ground that it would not be hyperbole to describe as a disaster.

It is a consequence of many waves of history, culminating in the policies instigated by the Bush administration.

It is right that we consider those policies. Critical judgement is an appropriate element of that consideration, but where are we going on this?

The discussion of the Iraq war by both our politicians and Webdiarists seems dominated by other the point scoring that characterised the old politics, or by the adversarial logic whereby we dismiss those of opposing points of views as villains, and analyse their positions in order to prove that point.

I have trawled through the arguments over the last couple of months to try to pull out examples of this. In countering a number of the critiques made of the Bush and Howard administrations, I am not seeking to defend them. Rather I wish to demonstrate what Susan Metcalf refers to as reductionist and reactionary thinking.

There are 3 critical models which I read as being applied to the Iraq situation.

1. No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. As this was the justification for an expensive war in Iraq, whose final ramifications are not yet clear, the failure to find WMD�s and the processes by which these decisions were made demand exploration by opposition groups, and justification by government.

This is the approach implicit in Mark Latham�s speech. It has been adopted by a number of opposition groups under the democratic processes of members of the Coalition of the Willing.

It is essentially legalistic. It avoids complex exploration of the issues involved in the Iraq war and does not of itself challenge the motivations on the part of the governments of the Willing. It also avoids the question as to why certain opposition groups did not more fully engage the debate before the war. This is particularly true in the US where Kerry and the like supported the war, probably scared of taking on nationalist fervour, less true of the Australian Labor Party.

The governments have gone to little effort to justify their decisions with all their ramifications despite the failure to find WMDs. It is hence appropriate that questions be raised by opposition parties. Consequently Mark Latham made his call for John Howard to apologise. The governments of the Willing must take responsibility for this form of attack by opposition parties, as it is built almost totally on the framework that they themselves constructed; the presence of WMDs was the basis for the war.

Having said that, these attacks seem to have proved of little interest to the electorate, at least so far.

I believe that it is because they reek of the ‘old politics’. The issue of Iraq and terrorism as understood by the electorate only partially reflect the governments� pronouncements on WMDs.

The electorate see a connection between the Middle East and terrorism. They see that Saddam Hussein was an evil man. They believe that ‘something’ had to be done. The association between the two was an easy way for many of us to manage our anxieties. In a piece of now notorious apocrypha, Donald Rumsfeld is reputed to have touched this point post Sept 11 when he commented, “We have nobody to bomb”. Our politicians in part reflect our own paranoid-schizoid responses, our fears and our need to find someone to blame. They delivered the enemies we wanted.

A constructive stance on the issue of terrorism and Iraq needs to examine the basis of the electorates fear, and offer solutions. Whilst Mark Latham�s demand of an apology from John Howard might be technically sound it fails to deal with the electorates underlying concern. It smells of finger pointing and old politics.

I don�t want to come down too harshly on Latham here. I am assessing him against the benchmark of an idealised new approach to politics. Of course, John Howard would probably do far worse than Latham on these criteria. And who is to say that there is a new game. Perhaps that is just my fantasy. Mark Latham might still beat Howard, at the old game.

2. The invasion of Iraq was a clumsy anti terrorism strategy, reflecting the structural biases within the US administration. Its execution without a UN mandate alienated US allies and confirmed the appearance of the US as an invader within the Middle East, increasing the attraction of Islamic extremists and the likelihood of civil war in Iraq.

This critique is gaining political momentum. It is especially championed by the likes of John Kerry.

With the deterioration in the Iraq situation it has become politically acceptable to up the ante on the criticism of the administration, particularly in the light of Richard Clark�s comments on the US administrations weak anti terrorist stance pre September 11.

It has only been strongly voiced after the event, when it was deemed politically acceptable. And are those now publicly making this criticism guaranteeing that such policy decisions wouldn�t be made again in the future? Are they committed to set up more open critical forums to function as checks and balances? Is this critique being used more to score political points than to present solutions?

These comments in the New York Times on April 8 with respect Kerry�s position are telling:

In an interview on Wednesday with American Urban Radio Networks, Mr. Kerry described the president’s Iraq policy as “one of the greatest failures of diplomacy and failures of judgment that I have seen in all the time that I’ve been in public life.”

Still, even as he attacked Mr. Bush, Mr. Kerry was notably vague in saying how he would handle the matter as president. His advisers said he had no plans to offer a policy speech about a war that aides to Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry alike said they now expected to provide a bloody backdrop for the campaign for months.

“Right now, what I would do differently is, I mean, look, I’m not the president, and I didn’t create this mess so I don’t want to acknowledge a mistake that I haven’t made,” Mr. Kerry said on Wednesday on CNN.

3. The invasion of Iraq was initiated primarily on the claim of the existence weapons of mass destruction, breech of UN security resolutions with respect to those WMD�s, and alleged links, or potential links, between Saddam Hussein and terrorists. It was really designed for regime change with the strategic goal of giving the US effective control of Iraq and its oil. The failure to find those weapons of mass destruction, and revelations by Richard Clark, Paul O�Neill, Karen Kwiatkowski and the rest expose that conspiracy.

This version of the critique I put here is a simple synthesis of a number of the views on Webdiary, blogging sites around the world, Noam Chomsky and the caf� I go to. Yes I plead guilty to being part of latte society.

It is not publicly supported by any mainstream political group that I am aware of.

It touches on the issue raised previously in this essay, the trouble distinguishing between the facts of the matter, including of course the possible existence of all manner of conspiracies, and our own need to interpret the facts to demonstrate the existence of conspiracies. This satisfies a need to examine the universe in good guy bad guy terms.

This style of thinking is loaded through this interpretation of events, at its most fundamental levels.

Let me give some examples of some of those foundation propositions.

1. That a policy whose focus is oil is inconsistent with a policy to combat terrorism, and/or the interests of the broad community Oil is not just a question of money and power for the rich; it strikes at the heart of the global economic system.

For example, OPEC jacking up oil prices in the 70s was one of the key factors that devastated the world economy in that period.

The Bush administration, and in fact most governments across the world would see such policy prescriptions not as conspiracies but as the necessary outgrowth of their exercising their responsibilities as economic managers. The Gulf has been a focus for this kind of politics for almost a century by all players.

I am not suggesting that there have not been actions by oil companies driven primarily in their self interest, and that could be classified as conspiracies. Nor am I saying that this kind of politics is attractive or even desirable. What I am saying is that most governments would reject the proposition that targeting oil as a policy focus was in dereliction of their responsibilities to their core constituencies.

If the Australian or US economy blew up because of an oil shortage the public response to what is appropriate policy in Iraq or the Gulf I am sure would be more brutal than anything we are witnessing now.

2. That the desire by the US to shift military bases from Saudi Arabia was inconsistent with a policy to combat terrorism, and/or the interests of the broad community.

The issue of Saudi Arabia brings us back to the question of oil and the geo-politics of the Gulf and terrorism.

Saudi Arabia is the dominant oil producer in OPEC. Furthermore it is the producer with the greatest technical capacity to expand or contract production at will. For a long time it controlled the tap on how much surplus oil was entering the market. It hence effectively controlled the world oil price.

It is unsurprising under the circumstances that American sought to build strong links to Saudi. Of course these were of commercial interest as well. One must add to this picture that the second largest OPEC producer is Iran, openly hostile to the west.

When Iraq was removed from the equation post the first Gulf war, Saudi Arabia effectively kept OPEC in check, and the world, including the US of course, benefited from low oil prices for much of the decade.

What became clear however was that Saudi could not be simply categorised as a compliant American state. Members of the Saudi establishment were funding bin Laden. Saudi was the centre of one of the most fundamentalist strains of Islam. America ultimately found itself with limited leverage on Saudi, which effectively controlled OPEC and was funding al Qaeda.

Prior to the war it was reported by certain think tanks that the war’s objective was to gain a counter weight to Saudi in OPEC so that Saudi could not continue with impunity funding al Qaeda and controlling the oil price.

Hence a fundamental link between oil, Saudi, and al Qaeda was seen by the US establishment. Within the terms of this analysis Iraq becomes an essential piece of leverage over Saudi, and the ultimate funding of al Qaeda.

Furthermore both Iran and Syria, Iraq�s neighbours, had relationships with terrorist groups of some form or another. The Pentagon had little capacity to apply leverage to either state if they chose to expand those terrorist relationships, and possibly supply arms.

3. That the absence of established links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda signify that the goal of removing him was inconsistent with a policy with a policy to combat terrorism, and/or the interests of the broad community.

The great writer and anti-establishment US critic Norman Mailer commented that the issue of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda was misrepresented.

The arrival of al Qaeda meant that the likes of Saddam Hussein, even if historically they had no links to it, gained a new policy option. If relations with the West deteriorated he and others like him could always insinuate supplying weaponry to al Qaeda. The risk if the US permitted such brinksmanship strategies would be either that at some point terrorists would access to WMDs of some capacity, or the west would always be subject to blackmail by the likes of Hussein. North Korea is a case in point.

4. That action which might be seen as supporting certain interest groups in the United States are essentially inconsistent with a policy to combat terrorism, and/or the interests of the broader community.

Of course US oil companies are concerned with who controls Iraqi oil reserves. There are reasonable grounds to believe that there is a strong connection between the US administration and the oil industry.

Does that mean that the intervention in Iraq which may be in the interests of some of those companies was also inconsistent with broad policy objectives? Of course conflicts of interest such as this should be avoided in the idealised democratic template, but is this a realistic proposition?

Oil companies are just one of the many powerful lobby groups entwined with the politics of many nations. There were a string of highly documented scandals about French government links to the now merged oil giant Elf Total and the Russian government’s involvement with its own majors is naked; Gazprom, Lukoil, and now Yukos. It was France and Russia that opposed the invasion of Iraq. Their oil companies have been highly involved in oil deals in Iran and have circled Iraq. The interests of oil companies and their respective nations are inexorably linked. Whilst it would seem appropriate that the US should act with detachment from its oil industry, is that likely when other nations are not operating with similar detachment? (See Gigantic sleaze scandal winds up as former Elf oil chiefs are jailed.)

The pro Iraq arguments need to be understood in the context of the Bush administration�s belief systems…

Why did the Bush administration focus on these arguments as opposed to the alternatives?

The role of neo conservative philosophy

It would be na�ve to categorise the neo cons as simply corporate cronies. Many of the technocrats� backgrounds would be better classified as academic and primarily ideologically driven.

Those ideologies suit certain capitalist interests, but not all. There are significant areas where the neo-con framework threatens the global trading structure that trans-national capital prizes. Equivalently the budgetary stance taken by the Bush administration is not what global capital would have envisaged, even if the tax breaks are primarily distributed to the wealthy.

This is a point where I feel uncomfortable with Matt Southon�s analysis. I do not believe that the various power groups in the US, even corporate interests, can be considered part of some singular establishment edifice with homogenous views as to the nature of the world. The neo-cons represent one camp. Their views were developed in think tanks associated with the industrial-military complex and the Pentagon. They tend to show little sympathy for many of the views on Wall Street or Silicon Valley.

The neo-cons values can be characterized as Social Darwinist and libertarian. They see themselves as having moral authority and values. Liberal Humanists tend to claim a similar moral authority, but on the basis of a different philosophical model.

The neo con history sees that after World War 2 democracy was transplanted into Germany and Japan.

The Berlin Wall fell in their view as a direct consequence of Reagan�s hard line stance with the Soviet Union. Democracy ‘swept’ Eastern Europe.

Within their sociological model, and their reading of history, the invasion of Iraq would trigger a similar domino effect across the region as they had seen in the past. This would be their way of impacting terrorism at street level.

This view seems na�ve and was formed in the absence of significant expertise on Arab affairs within the neo-con establishment. But I have little doubt that a number of them hold it sincerely.

A belief in the �free market� economic system

There is a degree of alignment between neo-cons and ‘neo-liberal’ economists on economic models. That view would suggest that the economic betterment of the Iraqi people and the Arab world will inevitably flow from the application of ‘free market’ economics. State intervention is seen as counter productive. A long term strategy to counter terrorism is hence based on the application of western liberal democratic values, and free market economics to better material conditions. Note that the neo-cons are quite comfortable in throwing out market economics if it runs counter to their view of the application of political and military power at a national level.

The structure of US institutions dictates responses� “The US had no one else to bomb”. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that the Pentagon had no contingency plans to deal with terrorists. Its whole operating structure was pitched to dealing with sovereign states. It is ironic, because this is the inevitable consequence of the application of international law. How could the Pentagon develop contingency plans against street level phenomenon within another sovereign state?

It is unsurprising hence that it sought a point of leverage at the national level – Afghanistan, Iraq.

This is the new reality John Howard refers to.

Absence of critical cross checks within the administration

What is of concern is that the US administration allowed these philosophical biases to drive the analysis of information and consequent policy formation.

The formation and application of these philosophies is consistent with the most basic strategies of ego defence, whereby the world is interpreted in terms that ultimately support the position of the establishment. Throughout human history establishments have always adopted philosophies which justify their own positions. They remain unchallenged whilst those philosophies align sufficiently with reality as to prove effective, Hubris, however, ultimately clouds the ability to read underlying changes.

This issue parallels the core of the critical processes we would expect to be the heart of the ‘new politics’. It parallels the issue of what would characterise an effective and constructive forum within the Webdiary. Do we simply characterise Bush and co as bad guys, and as the epitome of all the elements we disapprove of in the world, or do we examine the basis of their arguments in order to generate a response?

* Considering the Bush administration in light of the arguments against invading Iraq

Iraq was held together by a central strong man. His removal would see internal factionalism drive Iraq into Civil War. This was widely predicted before the war. The Americans appear to have dismissed this argument. Why?

The stance of the US administration would appear to be consistent with their interpretation of events in Eastern Europe, the economic revolution in China, and their underlying philosophy of historical process.

The avoidance of a plan on how to manage Iraq pos Saddam however would seem either negligent, or having brutal faith that after a ‘shakeout’ the situation would stabilise. God knows what the human cost of this shakeout would be.

The desire to introduce some form of democracy was/is inconsistent with the objective of having a government that was necessarily sympathetic to the west, and unsympathetic to terrorism.

There is a reasonable probability that the Iraqi people electing a theocratic government that is not sympathetic to the West. This risks defeating on one of the major objectives of US anti-terrorist strategy.

This has now become apparent.

It would appear that US neo-conservatives could not adequately envisage an outcome where western models were not embraced as part of the liberation.

They probably will continue to suggest that it is too early to tell. Their theory of historical progress is driven by Social Darwinism and captured in texts like ‘The End of History’ by Francis Fukuyama, where their position is the natural and inevitable end point:

…liberal democracy may constitute the �end point of mankind�s ideological evolution� and the �final form of human government�, and as such constituted the ‘end of history.

Iraq will further alienate the Islamic World from the West and prompt greater recruitment by terrorist organisations

With respect to winning the hearts and minds of the Arab world, it seems that US policy makers felt that this battle was lost in the short term.

The reality was that the US could not undo the impact of decades of support for Israel, or force a shift in Israeli politics in the short term. As a result there would always be a pool of Arab �extremists� to join terrorist organisations. Undoing the anti-Western beliefs in the Arab world would require a longer term strategy, which whilst necessary, would need to be supported by a short term strategy to deal with terrorists now.

The Bush administration does have a vision of shifting Arab views to being more pro-Western. It is built on a neo-conservative value system about the ultimate and inevitable desirability of Western liberal democratic political institutions, and with that free market economics. The Bush administration has clearly stated that it will seek to promote those values, rather than some compromise PR campaign in the Arab world.

The validity of this approach is a key area we should examine. It is clearly not working in the short term. The question is whether it is valid in the long term, or probably more tellingly, just a hypothetical point which in practice may not be reached for an extended period and at the cost of the lives of millions. This sort of faith seems to represent the equivalent of the ideological jihads of Islam, or Communism.

Impact of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

The Bush administration has not taken serious steps in resolving this situation. It may be that it is not resolvable in the short term. Of course elements of the Bush administration have historic links to Likud in Israel.

Against such a backdrop the nature of a military intervention in Iraq needed to be considered with the utmost caution.

The intervention challenged the integrity of the international agreements. A proper UN mandate should have been obtained

The Bush administration�s response to this is to reflect on the limitations of such internationalist, multilateralist structures.

European failure to intervene in Bosnia despite massive evidence of a human rights catastrophe is given as a prime recent example. A significant reason for this was horse-trading between the Germans and the French who historically had been associated with Croatia and Serbia respectively. Historic evidence did not suggest that a multi-lateral force could be obtained when these sort of frictions were in place.

Could effective defensive strategies be made subject to such compromised structures? Israel has long pulled back from them under terrorist assault.

Alternatively, America post September 11 had the political capital to reform those structures, and lead a united world on this issue. It chose not to do so.

That it was unjustified on the basis of the loss of life and suffering of the Iraqi people

Inflicting loss of life is in breech of our most fundamental ethical structures. It is telling that an administration that characterises itself as Christian could enter into such a strategy with limited consideration of the human cost.

But Saddam was butchering the people!

This is clearly a powerful argument. It does not however justify an invasion where the consequences after the removal of Saddam had not been adequately considered or resourced. The political chaos, devastation of the country and the civil war mean that the lives of the ‘person in the street’ will probably be worse now, and for the foreseeable future, than they were under Saddam.

And whilst our leaders can be called politically to account for the deaths of our soldiers, who will call them to account for civilian casualties in Iraq? A test case for war crime tribunals or in the US case civil proceedings under US courts? I doubt the Iraqi people will be confident of a fair hearing.

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In conclusion on conspiracy theories

The focus of criticisms of the invasion of Iraq that it was not consistent with the �War against Terror� strikes me as weak. A more reasonable criticism is that it was bad policy and that the formation of that policy was clouded by the philosophical underpinnings of the US and other national governments.

Those philosophical models are not new. They have been explicit to the operation to world politics for centuries. Furthermore, the blindness to the self serving nature of these policies and the weakness of critical judgements is also not new. It is a frequent feature of establishments that believe their own propaganda. It is implicit to our own human nature.

Why did John Howard and Tony Blair sign up for this strategy? There clearly had to be a deeper rationale than just WMD to explain their commitment. It is by asserting a hard core conspiracy theory that their actions seem incomprehensible other than as acts of evil, or corrupt or servile pandering to the United States.

A more reasonable assumption is that the likes of Tony Blair and Colin Powell accepted that the Iraq strategy had some merit, whilst privately maintaining certain reservations. It was President Bush�s prerogative to choose the direction his administration was to pursue. As such Blair and Howard signed on because they felt it better that a clear position of global leadership was taken on these issues than the situation be left unclear. There is strong evidence to suggest that both men saw their roles as balancing the positions of the neo-con ideologues with respect to the implementation of the strategy, and winning broad international support for it. Critics will probably conclude that those efforts were largely failures, and the two men�s agreement to the strategy may ultimately have proven to be a mistake.

Of course the governments of the willing in many ways have themselves to blame for setting up the debate in these terms. That is because they were not honest and forthcoming in discussing with the public the full reasons for their intervention.

This is the nature of the old politics rearing its head. It is probably not the first time. In fact, most wars throughout history have been entered into with some doctoring of the facts for public construction. Government has always claimed that this secrecy was and is necessary on national security grounds. But history also tends to show that the greatest disasters have been caused by the application of bad policy by government. A higher level of critical scrutiny probably would have saved millions of lives. This is the reality of what the �new politics� is fighting for, and what we should be talking about in Webdiary.

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The significance of critical forums, and self reflection

Institutions and persons make decisions based on a collection of factors.

1. The ‘facts’ of the situation.

2. Philosophy, being the view of how the world works, of how the facts fit together.

3. Psychological need, reflecting instincts of self preservation, which are by definition broadly self serving. These drives are not necessarily conscious.

4. The tools that are available. Strategies will tend to be chosen from an opportunity set of available options over theoretical ones.

These 4 propositions are strongly interconnected. The choice of philosophy will be influenced by psychological needs. The development of tools will reflect the application of those philosophies and that psychology over time. Even ‘facts’ will be subject to a subjective screen determining what is emphasised and what is not emphasised.

Effective action requires that we gain some capacity to distinguish ‘what is’ from interpretations of ‘what we would like it to be’ in order to serve our egos. The capacity to develop such responses is most vital in crisis periods such as September 11, or the current Iraqi situation. Recognising and understanding the nature of our own subjectivity is the first step to wisdom.

The evidence suggests that the Bush administration has been particularly weak in challenging its own interpretation of reality in determining appropriate policy. It has weeded out critical voices as weak or treacherous. This criticism does not apply just at the level of direct policy formation, but also at a deeper level. The neo-conservative political philosophy does not seem to have been subject to critical scrutiny on the basis that its conclusions serve the interests of the Bush administrations� constituency. It presents them as moral champions standing astride the globe.

George W Bush said at his recent press conference:

“I also have this belief, strong belief that freedom is not this country’s gift to the world. Freedom is the Almighty’s gift to every man and woman in this world. And as the greatest power on the face of the earth we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom.”

As I said at the beginning of this essay most of us seek to define the world in terms where we are the heroes. Bush and team are no different.

To pick up Matt Southon�s theme of the decline of empire, the lack of self reflection coincides with the replacement of self belief with hubris, the inability to distinguish between policies that are primarily self serving, and ultimately self deluding, with an effective response. Such tendencies flag the decline of an individual, an organisation, or a nation.

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So can constructive analysis shape history or do we only learn the hard way?

Two competing responses strike me.

The first is one whereby our critical analysis can generate insights that improve our own understanding, and also potentially suggest a way to move forward.

For that analysis to be robust however, we must seek to acknowledge the impact of our own subjective stance, as well as, picking up Susan Metcalf�s point, avoiding the �reductionist� tendency whereby we simplify our opponent�s arguments into caricatures consistent with our own self serving model of reality.

Mark Latham suggests that he believes that we can better our situation through the application of reason. In his ‘New Politics’ speech he says:

More than any other political movement, we have a belief in the power of social reform by democratic means. Our belief in the capacity of human reason and progress to create a fairer society.

This is consistent with both the aims of a new politics, and of an intellectual forum such as Webdiary. It carries on the idealism implicit to the Enlightenment, starting from the likes of Voltaire, and implicit to the formation of the US constitution and Bill of Rights.

The second interpretation is more consistent with a collection of viewpoints; Social Darwinist, or Hegelian/Marxist. Within it different philosophies will battle it out, and either the �fittest� will win, or a new synthesis will be born on the anvil of history. This view is consistent with the idea that critical analysis can never escape our subjective stance, and constructively engage with the ideas of those not holding our views.

In this model the best possible outcome is that we each of us do what we most believe in to the utmost of our capacities, and in the crucible of life the shape of history will be forged.

To try to distil it through some intellectual process is foolishness. Within this framework no self reflection will save an empire from decline. In fact self reflection is often a symptom of ‘decadence’ [read Robert Kaplan for examples of this kind of analysis]. An empire will decline when its operating philosophy and cultural dynamics cease to be effective in determining its relationship with the real world. It will be supplanted by another more vigorous culture and value system.

It is telling that this is the operating model that the neo-conservatives operate under in terms of political theory, and the economic rationalists operate under in economic theory. It sees acknowledging the adversarial principle as the basis of true wisdom.

But it is not just neo-cons that hold this theory. It is also consistent with a Marxist view of history. There is no surprise that there is this overlap as a number of the neo-cons came originally from left wing backgrounds. A number of the arguments presented in Webdiary from a left wing perspective equally are looking for a historic catharsis that will prove them correct.

And then there is Mark Latham. He has sought to position himself as a thinker. He and his political situation now seem to embody the tension between ‘idealism’ and ‘pragmatism’. Is it too much to expect him to champion the new politics that he himself has talked about, whilst at the same as being engaged in the ‘realities’ of traditional day to day politics?

Is it possible to build a new politics, or does it run against the ‘reality’ of our psychology? The issues embodied in this debate strike across our society, and many of our intellectual disciplines. I suspect that evolutionary psychology and Social Darwinism would suggest that an adversarial logic is intrinsic and essential. It is unlikely that the application of reason alone, as per the liberal humanist model, will break this psychology. But that is not to say it cannot be broken. To build a new politics we must work on our own consciousness. We must do so whilst engaging with other groups who may not be so self reflective. It involves learning wisdom. There are no guarantees of success.

Can the discussions in Webdiary break out of a cycle of indignation by one side, then the other, or is that the inevitable nature of debate? Is it necessary that we vent our anger against injustice, or is it the more we feel justified in venting anger, the more things stay the same?

Tonight, your comments on the death of an ethical public service and your ideas to repair the damage. I�ll start with a quote from Sir Robert Menzies in 1942, in one of his �Forgotten people� radio talks:

 

“Do not underrate the civil servant. He is for the most part anonymous and unadvertised, but he is responsible for by far the greater part of the achievements sometimes loudly claimed by others. He provides, as a witty friend of mine once said, ‘a level of competence below which no Government can fall’. He has done a marvellous job in this war. His importance will grow, not diminish, for Government activity is here to stay.”

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Peter Gellatly

Though I have no means to assess the merits of Colonel Collin’s concerns, I must allow that good people do not routinely risk their careers over implausibilities or trivialities. So I am prepared to put Collins on a pedestal with Wilkie and … Whatshisname?

You recall the fellow: the Federal Police Officer let go because he asserted the Federal Police was allowing itself to be politically manipulated regarding East Timor intelligence. At least, so my memory serves: the same memory which, a couple of years after the incident, can’t even recall the Officer’s name!

Which brings me to your solution in Few chances left to restore public service integrity:

“What scares me is that if the crazy brave whistle blowers who keep telling us what�s gone wrong don�t get the public�s attention soon, the destruction of our long tradition of a �frank and fearless� public service will be complete and there�ll be nothing left to save…

“In the end, the people have to insist. We need to honour our whistleblowers, for a start, and look after them when the government goes for their throats.”

All the evidence points to the public having a very short attention span, and, subsequent to a fast but fleeting bout of moral outrage, not really giving a damn. And one wonders at the public-sector whistleblowers’ consequent employment prospects in the private sector.

Industry, after all, cherishes “team players” above all, and could well be averse to hiring a perceived “loose cannon”.

I suggest that it is really this lack of public support, not term contracts and the like, which is responsible for a dearth of overt fearless principle in the public service. Not from the (preselected?) naturally timid, mind you – they wouldn’t speak out under any circumstances. But the putatively courageous might be forgiven for concluding that the public they serve does not value, and is therefore not entitled to expect, the whistleblower’s inevitable personal sacrifice – a sacrifice borne, not just by the individual, but by his/her family as well.

So, Webdiarists, what is the name of that former Federal Police Officer, and does anyone know how he’s making out?

Margo: His name in Wayne Sievers. He stood for the Democrats in Canberra after he left the AFP. I don�t know what he�s doing now. Wayne, can you check in? Here�s an interview he did on Lateline in May 2001 when Captain Andrew Plunkett blew the whistle on East Timor intelligence cover-ups: East Timor massacre cover-up discussed.

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Anon (name supplied)

I’ve just ‘resigned’ from the federal public service (I’ve taken a super option available to me) due to some family heath issues, so it�s not a happy event for me personally. However it does give me an opportunity to join others who are prepared to tell it as it is these days (see Expelling the good, for the good of the government).

I was not at the Senior Executive Service level in Canberra but at the Executive level and State based. I was responsible for a lot of State-Commonwealth implementation of policy and programmes stuff.

The last 2-3 years have been all about ‘scripting’ what we said and what we did. No one – but no one – is allowed to speak any more in meetings – only the person who is ultimately going to have to sign off. So while one was allowed – but also threatened sometimes with not being allowed – to attend meetings, one was expected to sit mute as the script unfolded, even where it was obvious that the Canberra blow-ins did not have all the detail nor necessarily all the facts.

This was due to the ‘position’ that the department had decided it would take, regardless, and of course we all had to toe the line or else.

I’m extremely proud of being a public administrator of 25 years standing, and I’m even prouder that I continued to try and give fearless and without favour advice and information, even if it did make my working life uncomfortable and at times cost me personally.

We need to acknowledge that there are many, many fine public servants who do want to be effective, worthwhile and fearless public administrators.

Maybe if the public stopped the nonsense of saying how meaningless public service work is then more would be proud to wear the badge and tell it as it is. For all Australians’ sake.

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Dr Geoff Robinson, lecturer in Australian studies and politics, Deakin University

Peter Shergold, the current head of the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet, gave an interesting insight into the contemporary public service in March 2002 as head of the Department of Education, Science and Technology. He declared in an address to staff (my emphasis): “The key question, and it is the one on which I have been reflecting at every meeting I�ve had in the last six weeks, is whether the Department is in a fit shape to contribute as we should to supporting the Government, particularly our Ministers, in pursuit of public policy….

“There were times in the past when public servants did not have to worry too much about such questions. They could look forward to having an effective monopoly on providing advice to the government of the day. As has been emphasised at previous all-staff meetings, this is no longer the case. We need to aspire to being the provider of choice. We need to think constantly of how we can add value to the directions of government.

“The need to stand in the shoes of others is nowhere more important than in the service that we provide to our Ministers. Let me be quite clear. They are our most important clients. We serve the government of the day through them. Of course they need to receive, and will almost certainly welcome, frank and fearless advice. But robust advice will only be fully effective if a relationship of trust has been established. To do that we have to get the day-to-day responsibilities right.

“And �right� means imagining that we stand in the shoes of a Minister who is participating in rigorous political and public debate, facing hostile Parliamentary questioning, contributing in an informed way to Cabinet deliberations or seeking to respond sympathetically to the interests of constituents and citizens.

“In relationship management there is one abiding truth: from little things big things grow. We need to ensure that the correspondence drafted for Ministers captures the personal concerns that they will want to express for those who write to them. We need to imagine, as we prepare PPQs (possible parliamentary questions) that we would want to use those words if we were on our feet in Parliament.

This seems to me a total misreading of the role of the public service. Only the minister stands in parliament, it is not the role of public servants to pretend they are politicians (although the Canberra press gallery dropped this inhibition a longtime ago, as demonstrated by Paul Kelly’s belief that he is the leader of the ALP).

Margo: Shergold certainly put his ideas into practice � see Nelson hides behind Sir Humphrey. And for more words of wisdom from Shergold shortly after becoming head of PM&C, see Nelson’s purge escalates as the education department burns.

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Simon Jarman in Melbourne

Disclosure: I am a former A.C.T. Branch Secretary of the Community and Public Sector Union (1997) and a member of the Australian Labor Party.

Since Federation, our �third pillar� of government prided itself in providing frank advice to all governments without fear or favour. It could no longer be accused of doing so, and that is to the detriment of the good governance of this country and the health of our democracy. I believe that the politicisation of Australia�s federal public service over the past decade is one of the saddest things to have happened to our democracy.

A Labor government started us down this road by ending permanently tenured public service heads and moving them to fixed term, performance based contracts. Perhaps one of the rationales for this was that the government wanted the public service to be run more like the private sector. Perhaps the notion of permanency for agency heads was considered antiquated. Whatever the reasons, this change has created a dynamic where senior public servants are now entirely captive to their ministers.

While this may or may not have been the intent of Labor, it is without doubt the outcome under John Howard, who has accelerated the politicisation of the public service to the extent that public service heads are, generally speaking, now little more than political lap dogs.

Under John Howard, we have seen time and again that most advice from the public service is tailored to the prevailing policy, ideology or propaganda of his government. Doubt and dissent from senior public servants is punished rather than encouraged by his government, and those who toe the line get the favours.

John Howard�s record in this area is dismal. The children overboard scandal immediately springs to mind, where senior bureaucrats in the Department of Defence remained silent in the face of overwhelming evidence that this was a lie. The navy officer who spoke out had his career ruined, while Jane Halton, who ran the boat people policy in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, was given a pat on the head and appointed head of the Department of Health and Ageing.

The Mick Keelty affair is still fresh in people�s minds. After senior managers of our intelligence agencies were outed this week for tailoring their intelligence assessments to government policy, Paul Barratt, the ex-Secretary of the Department of Defence, said on ABC radio:

“I�m sure throughout government there are pressures on people to tell the government what it wants to hear. I would be very surprised if there was any strong counsel against the invasion of Iraq.”

Under Howard�s government senior federal bureaucrats operate in an atmosphere dominated by fear of reprisal for telling the truth (if it doesn�t fit the government�s agenda) and the expectation of favour for toeing the Liberal Party line. How is this a good thing for our democracy?

It is time the Labor Party acknowledged that the changes they set in train were detrimental to the good governance and democracy of this country. In short, what Labor broke it needs to fix.

The Labor Party needs to abandon the short-term contracts imposed on agency heads and other senior staff, and their performance bonuses. Public service values are not the values of Collins and Pitt Streets and nor should they ever be.

I don�t pretend to have all the answers, but one to go would be to tenure senior departmental and agency staff for six-year terms, the same as Senators. This would restore some level of independence to our heads of public service, and their ability to provide frank and fearless advice to ministers without fear or favour.

Australia needs men and women of integrity running our public institutions, people captive to good governance in the service of all Australians, not to their performance bonuses and the sound of their master�s voice on the hill. The Australian people deserve to have confidence in the integrity of their public service.

There can only be upside for Labor in addressing this issue before the election. It melds perfectly with the �values� agenda Mark Latham is establishing, and the message is a simple one:

“Only the Labor party will restore integrity to the public service � a public service so thoroughly corrupted by John Howard.”