Not a word of protest for years. The ignoring of his complaints of beatings. Acquiescence in an Australian citizen having no rights while American citizens captured with him are fully protected by the American constitution. And now, as Howard puts his foot to the floor for an election on the American Alliance, David Hicks is suddenly charged. Clever? You be the judge.

 

I bet the trial doesn’t start before the federal election, and that the charges will be dropped after it. Here’s today’s statement from the Law Council of Australia.

*

10 June 2004

Doubts Remain Over Fair Trial for Hicks

The Law Council of Australia is relieved that charges have finally been laid against David Hicks two and half years since he was first detained, but questions whether the Australian Guantanamo Bay detainee can ever receive justice under the military commission process.

President of the Law Council, Bob Gotterson QC said, �The charging of Mr Hicks� has taken far too long. It is appalling that Mr Hicks has been confined in non-reviewable detention for two and a half years and now faces trial in a system which has very serious shortcomings.�

Military commission trials leave detainees at the mercy of executive government, which has the power to keep them incarcerated even if they are acquitted or serve out their sentence. There are no independent judges � any appeal is subject to the US President only – and the rules of evidence do not apply.

Mr Gotterson said, �In our view the military commission process remains an unnecessary and inferior substitute to a normal court martial or a civilian court. However, it is clear that this is the manner in which US authorities intend to proceed.�

The US Defence Department announced yesterday that Mr Hicks had been charged with conspiracy to commit war crimes, attempted murder by an unprivileged belligerent, and aiding the enemy. Mr Hicks� military lawyer has indicated publicly that Mr Hicks will plead not guilty to the charges.

�We should keep in mind that there is a US Supreme Court decision due in a matter of weeks in a case brought by Mr Hicks and other detainees. That decision could open the way to challenge the legality of their detention before a military commission trial even proceeds.�

Julian Ninio’s first piece published on Webdiary was Ignorance, hypocrisy, obedience: symptoms of a sick America, based on his recent book. This article was first pubished in The Age and is repubished with Julian’s permission. For more on defending our democracy see nothappyjohn.

 

I became an Australian citizen a month ago. In the US, I will vote for Kerry holding my nose, knowing that Kerry won’t fix the deep problems of which George Bush is a symptom, such as the trailer parks where America’s social policies force one family in thirteen. In Australia, I will vote knowing that a single election can produce change.

Australian citizens share at least one problem with American citizens. This problem afflicts many democracies. Citizens feel that governments do not obey them. In Australia, John Howard didn’t ask the people if they wanted to invade Iraq. John Howard didn’t ask Australians if they wanted to raise the price of university education by 25 per cent. John Howard didn’t ask Australians if they wanted to ban gay marriages. John Howard didn’t ask Australians if they wanted a tax cut instead of social services.

But compared with US citizens, Australians are in a far better position to change their society. First, more Australians are aware that their democracy doesn’t truly work. (It helps that Australia, unlike the US, does not see itself as the cradle of democracy.) One cannot fix a problem unless one knows about it. By and large, Australians know there’s a problem.

Second, Australian citizens have powerful democratic tools on their side, tools US citizens lack. Think of democracy as having two aspects: government ‘by the people’ and ‘for the people’.

Australia’s special tools do not lie on the ‘for the people’ side of democracy. ‘For the people’ means that people can force government to serve the public interest. This piece of democracy is broken nearly everywhere.

Australia’s democratic strength lies on the ‘by the people’ side of democracy. ‘By the people’ means that people choose who represents them. Australia has mandatory voting; in the US, half of the people vote and they vote in proportion to income and education. Australia has proportional representation; in the US, if ten per cent of people vote for the Greens, their vote gets thrown out. Australia has preferential voting; in the US, if five per cent of people vote for Ralph Nader, that’s fewer votes for Al Gore or John Kerry, and George Bush gets elected.

If Australians re-elect John Howard, at least they will know they voted for him. Australia has these tools: mandatory voting, preferential voting, proportional representation. This means that if Australians produce a critical mass of concerned citizens before an election, they can change society.

For instance, look at the Iraq War. Many people feel that last year’s massive protests were useless, that they changed nothing — yet things are changing. The Sydney suburb of Leichhardt (where I live) just had local elections, and now has four Green councillors. Australians have tools to express their anger at the ruling parties. And if Australians organise again, they can actually solve the war problem, make sure it never happens again.

Let�s call this a democracy problem. The problem: Most Australians opposed the war, Howard went to war anyway. Clue: The constitution sets no process for the country to declare war. The problem has at least one obvious solution. Australians need a law that forbids government from committing troops to a war of aggression without the approval of parliament, or of citizens. By the way, make that approval by a ‘super majority’ – a majority by two-thirds or three-quarters.

So the message before the election should not just be ‘We want troops out’. It should also be: ‘We want laws to restrict the power to go to war’. The Democrats introduced such a bill last year, but without major party support, parliament has not discussed it.

If hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets with that message in the weeks before the election, it will work. Labor will have to pick it up. These are the mass dynamics that worked in Spain’s last election.

The Iraq War is one of many ‘democracy problems’. Australians could solve many other problems in one go. Today, Australian citizens have no power to initiate a referendum. Suppose Australians changed that. Suppose Australians changed the Referendum Act so the signatures of 300 000 voters could force an issue on the ballot.

That’s the scale of last year’s No War protests. People wouldn’t feel disillusioned about protests if they knew that protests could force government to submit important questions to a popular vote. People would protest more. And government would take greater care not to upset the popular will, if they knew that citizens could organise and reverse their policies.

If citizens could initiate a referendum, they would be far closer to having government ‘for people’. People would have the power to force reforms that seem doomed today, in all areas: the environment, work, education, health, trade, and more.

True, a people’s referendum would need careful design to ensure people do not have to vote every week, and that they vote on meaningful questions, not blind tosses between bitter and acid. Those disgruntled with the 1999 referendum can help discuss how to design a process that works.

Australian democracy almost works. This may sound like a harsh assessment, but it’s more than one can say about most societies that also call themselves democratic. It would take little to make Australian democracy truly work.

In the weeks before the next election, we should ask for ‘Troops Out’. But we should also ask for a People’s War Control Act. And, I argue, we should ask for a People’s Referendum Act.

As we spend energy treating symptoms such as the Iraq War, we might as well treat the causes too. Let’s start making these banners now. By next year, we may be on our way to becoming the lucky citizens of a fully functional democracy.

Julian Ninio is the author of The Empire of Ignorance, Hypocrisy and Obedience (2004) .

Polly Bush** is a Webdiary columnist.

 

A new contestant has emerged in the lead-up to this year’s federal poll, with the launching of a political party prepared to take on the Howard Government’s gay wedge issue – or at least, take the issue up to a higher level.

The Keeping-It-Queer (KIQ) Party, launched today, has been formed as a direct response to the Government’s recent policy announcements to legislate against marriage and overseas adoption rights for gay and lesbian Australians.

While the new Party opposes the Government’s policies, Party President Les Beyan said the Coalition’s “regrettable” position left it no other option but to work with the Government in further creating a segregated society.

“If John Howard wants to create an Us-and-Them Society, the KIQ Party will ensure we roll out these reforms to all spheres of Australian life,” the new Party President said.

“We will help create clearer divisions between straight and gay Australians, so to preserve the sanctity of both groups.”

Heading up the KIQ Party’s agenda is the issuing of pink triangles to all gay and lesbian Australians, which will bolster John Howard’s canvassed introduction of a national ID card system following the next election.

“By helping John Howard fight the war on terrorism, the pink triangles will also help the Government’s war on diversity,” Les Beyan said.

The triangles will also help identify lesbian and gays at polling booths, complementing the KIQ Party�s proposal of limiting their voting choices to gay and lesbian candidates.

This policy will also be put in reverse, meaning heterosexuals will be banned from voting for candidates such as the Greens Bob Brown, the Democrats Brian Greig, and Labor Senator Penny Wong. Les Beyan warned it could also affect several others.

“While the Labor Party has promised an audit of all discriminatory federal legislation, we will conduct an audit of all closeted members of parliament and out them,” Beyan said.

The pink triangles will also identify gay and lesbian Australians as consumers, permitting them to buy products like Robert Dessaix and Patrick White books, Peter Allen records, and attend festivals run by Robyn Archer, which will now be prohibited for all heterosexuals.

Geographical zones declared �Pink Triangle Areas� will also be set up, and will only be accessible for gay and lesbian Australians.

Oxford Street in Sydney and Brunswick and Chapel Streets in Melbourne are already considering the Pink Zoned Areas, fearing these bustling inner city trendy retail strips will be reduced to ghost towns if they reject the move.

Gays and lesbians living in Yarraville in Melbourne’s inner-west are considering a ban on allowing their Federal member Nicola Roxon from visiting the suburb, following her comments in support of the Government�s marriage ban.

Suburbs of Highgate Hill and New Farm in Brisbane, Prahran and South Yarra in Melbourne (part of Treasurer Peter Costello�s federal seat), and several inner-city Sydney suburbs are considering blanket pink zones. Northcote in Melbourne has already agreed to revert to the suburb’s friendly local term of Dykecote.

Similarly, Cairns and Noosa in Queensland, and Daylesford in Victoria are also weighing up the pink dollar in their areas.

But it’s predicted the pink designated areas will face stiff straight opposition, with heterosexuals living in and around such areas threatening to set up heterosexual rights lobbies in response.

“I pay my taxes, I’m law abiding and I have a right to shop in Oxford Street if I bloody well like,” one angry heterosexual Sydney resident said upon hearing the KIQ announcement.

Workplaces would also be allocated straight and queer workstation areas, and where possible, gays would be siphoned off.

Such a move would force gay athletes in the Australian Olympics team out of the Athens squad and into the Gay Games.

Swimming’s governing body is shocked by the move, saying it would potentially wipe out almost the entire Australian squad from competing in this year’s Olympic Games.

Other measures announced include the banning of frocks worn by straight men, a move that Channel Nine is reportedly appealing, given that footy shows are high ratings programs for the Network. The Churches are also said to be incredibly confused by this particular move.

Justice Michael Kirby will only be allowed to hear High Court cases relating to gay and lesbian Australians, a proposal that has sent panic waves through the Attorney-General’s Department, Bill Heffernan’s office, and the shoebox of the Australian newspaper’s Janet Albrechtsen.

Hugh Jackman will be banned from performing any more musicals, while Adam Elliot will be forced to hand back his Oscar.

Kylie Minogue is set to be devastated by KIQ’s formation and goals, and is considering canceling her greatest hits tour fearing she won’t be able to fill seats if she has to rely on heterosexual ticket purchases.

Network Ten’s Queer Eye for a Straight Guy will be relaunched as �Straight Eye for a Straight Guy� with Warrick Capper being touted as a potential host, despite an insider from the Network fearing “nobody will watch it”.

Play School will be re-marketed as Gay School, so as not to offend or confuse any Howard Government members, or the Leader of the Opposition who are all regular viewers.

The KIQ Party also wants to ensure the Howard Government�s marriage act and adoption rights proposals are rolled out in full to include Howard�s ‘survival of the species’ sentiments, and will introduce a new series of amendments if elected.

“Married couples who can�t have children will have their marriage annulled with the introduction of compulsory fertility testing at marriage registries,” Les Beyan said.

The Opposition said while they supported the Government’s recent amendment of the marriage act, they really and truly care about the rights of gay and lesbian Australians.

The Prime Minister and the Government refused to comment on the Party’s launch and proposals.

**Polly Bush is a pink triangle adorned lesbian who sought full permission from KIQ President Les Beyan to report this story.

Intense. Emotional. Compelling. I saw a raw, in your face, ‘Please take me as I am’ press conference by Mark Latham to the Canberra press gallery this morning to “clear the air”. I’m a Latham supporter, though – here’s the transcript so you can judge for yourselves.

 

FEDERAL LABOR LEADER TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE AT PARLIAMENT HOUSE CANBERRA MONDAY, 5 JULY 2004

Subjects: Political Priorities, FTA, Tax Policy, Education, Health

LATHAM: Thanks very much for coming along. I’ve called this press conference to clear the air. Sometime in the next couple of months we are going to have an election campaign and I believe it should be about the positive things we should be doing for Australias future rather than the old politics of fear and smear.

I believe that many great things need to be done for our country especially in opening up new opportunities in the education system and restoring the fairness of Medicare. I will run a very positive and constructive election campaign. I want to be out there talking directly to the Australian people about the things that matter, about the policy solutions that can make the good difference for Australias future.

I think one of the good things about our democracy is that that is what the Australian people want me to do, and all the party political leaders to be out there talking about the positives, the good things we can do for the future. So I will be talking about the future but I’ve also got to face up to the fact that in recent weeks the focus has been on my past. I’ve been subjected to more rumours and smears than you can poke a stick at. Normally in politics that’s a sign that you are a threat to someone someone’s got the power and you might possibly be about to take it off them.

I’ve got nothing to hide about my past. I’m here to answer your questions as best I can. But can I also say that in running to be Australia’s Prime Minister I expect the Australian people to judge me on my work and performance as Opposition Leader, primarily.

When I was right here on the 2nd of December, I made two promises to the Australian people. One was no more crudity and I’ve kept that. I believe I’ve communicated appropriately and as effectively as I can over the last seven months.

And the second promise, the most important promise I made, was to be positive, to try and set the agenda, put out good constructive ideas that would benefit the Australian people. I heard over the weekend Mr Howard saying that I was somehow policy deficient. He wasn’t saying that when he adopted our policy on parliamentary superannuation, and ATSIC, and the pneumococcal vaccine and the baby care payment and childhood obesity and the emphasis we have placed on child care places and literacy for our infant children. They are all issues where the Government has been forced to respond to Labor’s positive policy agenda.

And, as best I can, I’ve tried not to be a whinger. I could get out there on the doors every morning nah, nah, complaining about the Howard Government, complaining about everything under the sun. It’s not my style. By nature I’m not a whinger. I’m not a negative person. I said that on the 2nd of December. I try to be positive and that’s how I’ve tried to do this job to the best of my ability over the last seven months.

Let’s deal with these rumours; some of them have been around a long, long time. I’ve never complained about it in the past. At one level, Ive learned to live with it. I had a senior journalist in the press gallery ring me after the 1998 election and say the real reason you are not running for the front bench, the real reason you are going to the back bench, is because you’re on sexual harassment charges. That’s what he said to me and that was the rumour that was circulating at the time and the rumour that’s been repeated to me in recent times by another journalist. It’s not true. It wasn’t true then, not true now and never true at any stage.

The other rumour that is around, it’s in the papers today, it was in the paper’s yesterday, something about a video at a bucks night. Some people say the second marriage; I didnt have a bucks night the second time around. I had one the first time around; that was enough, quite frankly. It was organised by other people. I turned up and it was a tame enough affair. Nothing happened that would cause me any embarrassment today, looking back on it 13 years later, even if there was a video to look at, which I very much doubt. I mean, there’s nothing there that would cause me embarrassment or anything I did wrong by my own standards or those of the Australian people.

It seems to me these rumours come from three sources. It’s no surprise that one is the first wife; she was out in the media in December and she’s been backgrounding journalists ever since. Well, my standard is simply this: I refuse to relive a marriage break up publicly. It was hard enough the first time. I’m not going to go through it a second time in the public arena and I don’t believe the Australian people see it as my public duty to do that.

She has remarried with children and so have I. At the time it was hard; it was messy. I would’ve made mistakes. I mean, there were things that you just wouldn’t believe. It’s the toughest part of your life. If any one has had a perfect marriage break up, let me know about it – I don’t think anyone ever has.

The only request I make – and it’s a request I made in December – it might not have been noted at the time was that as these rumours are circulated from my first wife, and some people in the media repeat them; would you lay off my family? Things have been put to me about my sisters, my mother, my father that are not true and they don’t deserve it. Say whatever you like about me but leave them out of it please.

The second set of rumours comes from an interesting group of former councillors at Liverpool City Council. The background to this is that when I first ran for Liverpool Council in 1987, believe it or not there hadn’t been a Labor majority on that council for 25 years. The standing joke in Liverpool was that we had more ex-Labor councillors in the council chamber than official Labor councillors. The council for 25 years, was controlled by a group of ex-Labor councillors – sometimes known as Labor rats – independents and Liberals, and they’d run the council for a quarter of a century.

I ran to be the Labor mayor in 1991 and get control of the council back for the Labor Party and do the best I could to be a good mayor and achieve things that I thought were important in the place where I grew up: the City of Liverpool. I did that; I beat them in 1991. The whole list of people you’ve got on this letter here today were defeated in 1991 at that council election.

They’re fighting old battles and at one level I’m not surprised. I mean, it was a divisive period; I rubbed their noses into it. I suppose that was a mistake at the time. I could’ve run a more unified, harmonious council, but in the politics – the hotbed municipal politics of the day – it wasn’t like that.

And one thing I’ve learned from that period and probably from in the Parliament here – being, at times, too divisive a figure – is to get a better capacity for bringing people together.

Over the last seven months a small but I hope significant achievement is that the Labor Caucus under my leadership is more united and hopefully more harmonious than it was in the past, certainly through the course of 2003.

But these people who have circulated this letter haven’t been in the Labor Party for a long, long while. For four of them to list themselves as Labor is just untrue. Casey Conway was last in the Labor Party in 1989 when he ran against us in the State by-election as an independent. Joe Durant was last in the Labor Party 25 years ago. He was a Labor mayor of Liverpool in around 1972 and then got out of the Labor Party. I defeated him at the council election in East Ward in 1987. Noel Short, listed here as Labor, I defeated him the 1987 pre-selection and then he ran as an independent, I beat him again in the East Ward ballot, he then joined the Liberal Party. He was the Liberal candidate for the seat of Hughes in 1993. He is listed here as Labor. He was the Liberal candidate for the seat of Hughes in 1993. The joke was he needed to wait one more time and run in 96, the election where Dana Vale beat Robert Tickner in the seat of Hughes.

The other people listed here – Frank Heyhoe lost many pre-selection ballots in the 80s and left the Labor Party; Colin Harrington, listed here as independent, was actually elected to the council as a Labor alderman but then joined the independents to become mayor and I beat him to myself become mayor in 1991.

So I beat all of these people at the 1991 council election campaign. They’re still fighting the same old battle and the only one who has owned up in an honest way is Gary Lucas, who lists himself as Liberal. He has always been Liberal and he was the Liberal candidate for Liverpool Council in 1991.

So that’s the truth of these people and what they’ve had to say about the council finances. I have set out in the Parliament my response. No-one has disputed the key figures – not even Piers Ackerman, who just re-runs the Government’s research in this area. The debt servicing ratio went down, the working funds went up and I produced surplus budgets, most notably in 1994, and these things have been confirmed by John Walker, who belongs to the other side of politics, but was our general manager and has confirmed them as recently as yesterday.

The third area for these rumours appears to be the Government’s dirt machine. I’ve been used to Tony Abbott’s staff coming out digging dirt in Liverpool for the last eight years. I haven’t said much about it, but I still get regular reports from people who say that Abbott’s people are out there doing their worst.

There is a unit headed by Ian Hanke. We had a Government Minister last week wandering around the Press Gallery saying there is a campaign worker with a broken collarbone; doesn’t exist. Peter Costello telling journalists to go investigate the Liverpool Council. You all know the rumours and trash that gets walked around the Press Gallery on a regular basis.

I simply urge the Prime Minister to disband the dirt units. Disband the dirt units and actually turn these publicly funded staff to a positive purpose perhaps running the country a better way and doing some good things for the Australian people. So if this is about a character test, I’m expecting the Australian people, I hope the Australian people will judge me for who I am but most particularly the work that I’ve undertaken as Opposition Leader.

I’ve worked hard through my life, through school, through university, my time in public life. There is no secret or trick about that, you work hard, you do your best. You make mistakes along the way; you try and learn from them as best you can. I hope I’ve got the policies and ideas that can win the confidence of the Australian people and do a good job as their Prime Minister.

The one thing I will never apologise for; I’m not a single dimension person. I saw Glenn Milne today writing a piece (in The Australian)which basically said you can’t simultaneously have a few beers, write a few books, rip into Tony Abbott in the Parliament plus advocate the importance of reading books to our infant children.

Well, I say you can. I say you can; that’s a real life where you believe in many things and you do many things. I mean, that’s being a real person who leads a real life. It is not being complicated or erratic. If anyone is a single dimension person, I say try and broaden out; do many more things in your life than just one.

And that’s how I’ve tried to run my public life as best I can. That’s who I am. I really can’t add more than that other than saying I believe I’ve got the character and policies to be a good Prime Minister of this country. I’ll be advocating as best I can, doing the best I can for the Australian people in a positive way in the weeks and months leading up to the Federal election and it would be a vast privilege and honour to serve as their Prime Minister in the future.

Geof Parry (Network 7): Mr Latham, in this address you have choked a couple of times, where you talk about your family and that sort of stuff. Has this stuff hurt you, personally?

LATHAM: I’m pretty tough and have been through politics a fair while. I mentioned that hotbed environment in Liverpool where they threw everything at me and over the last seven months I’ve been getting around the country you know, you take the praise, and that’s nice, but there’s also a fair bit of scrutiny and coverage. People writing six books, lots of media interest in me. I don’t complain about any of that. I welcome the scrutiny. I am running to be the Prime Minister of the country, the scrutiny is deserved but on family, yes, it hurts. They’re not public figures.

Samantha Maiden, The Australian: Mr Latham, you raised the sexual harassment claims that have been circulated in the past, including by members of your own party. Is it completely baseless? You’ve raised it but was there ever a claim, did anyone ever raise any questions about that with you or any complaints with you personally. You said there was never a sexual harassment charge but was there any basis to it whatsoever?

LATHAM: Not in my opinion. There was no basis to it. Theres a big difference between rumour and fact and this has been for six years now a rumour and nothing more than that.

Samantha: Did anyone ever complain to your office or complain to Kim Beazley’s office about your behaviour towards women?

LATHAM: I can’t answer for other people; I received no complaint myself from any individual. I know there was nothing to complain about because there was no incident. Okay. What you’ve got is a rumour. This rumour has circulated for six years. I wouldn’t know the name of the person, the nature of the incident, any of that detail. I know it didn’t happen and no-one has ever been able to put to me anything other than the nature of the rumour. So how can I do all of that it is like trying to grab hold of a puff of smoke; it doesn’t exist. All I’ve got is a rumour that I know is not true. It was put to me in 1998, in that fashion, and it has circulated ever since. It was put to me just last Thursday by a journalist who is researching a so-called profile piece. Its not true. No name, no incident, no detail, no nothing. All I’ve got, and all I’ve ever heard about for six years, is a rumour and there is a world of difference between a rumour and fact.

JOURNALIST: Mr Latham, do you think you’ve had a fair go from the media?

LATHAM:. Yes, I do. I started this job and got a lot of encouragement and positive coverage and that was great. Of course, over time, you expect that that levels out and we are now at the period where hopefully the coverage will be fifty-fifty and we get on with the election campaign. I’ve got no complaints about the media. I’ve got complaints about the nature of these rumours and where they come from and I’m making my response to them here today.

Jim Middleton, ABC TV News: Mr Latham, you spoke of the Howard Governments dirt unit. The Hawke and Keating governments had the ANIMALS – will you give a commitment right here and now that if you are elected and become Prime Minister, a Latham Labor Government will have nothing of that kind under any guise whatsoever – that is, a monitoring unit, or individuals within the Government designed to monitor the activity of position or opponents, political opponents?

LATHAM: My understanding is that Mr Hanke and his unit does much more than monitoring. I urge the Prime Minister to disband that unit and of course we have got no intention of re-establishing it.

Jim: No intention of having anything of that kind?

LATHAM: We’ve got nothing planned to bring back ANIMALS, certainly not.

Jim: They are not conclusive words; they are weasel words.

LATHAM: Well, no – the answer to your question is no. I’ve had no discussions with anyone about any intention of ours, and I wouldn’t want to do it anyway, to being back such a unit in Government.

Jim: Nothing like the ANIMALS?

LATHAM: No.

JOURNALIST: Mr Latham, have you ever hit another person other than in self-defence?

LATHAM: On the football field there has been the odd incident. But what happens on the field stays on the field but like all footy players you would say that was in self-defence as well in the context of the footy field.

JOURNALIST: So no [inaudible] attacks off the footy field?

LATHAM: No, I haven’t, honestly. And what has happened is out there in the public arena, whatever incidents people want to point to. I’ve given my account and I know it to be the truth.

Michael Brissenden, 7.30 Report: Mr Latham, do you think all of this has hurt you politically?

LATHAM: I don’t know; that’s for the Australian people, and yourself included, to make your own judgment. I’m just here to advocate what I believe to be the truth and advocate through the election campaign the policies that I believe in for the country.

Jim Middleton: Why have you decided to address this now? Why now rather than when the rumours and innuendo, and reports, first emerged? Why now, after these events?

LATHAM: Jim, some of these rumours have been around for six years. At one level, I had learned to live with them but given the nature of them at the current time, and the intensity of it – I’ve heard things come back to me that have been whispered around the Press Gallery and this building that just sort of make you feel sick. So, given the intensity of it, and the focus on it I’m not scared of facing up to these things I thought the time was right to confront them head on. Six years is enough in my book six years is enough given the intensity and some of the garbage I’ve heard last week. It’s enough.

Michelle Grattan, The Age: But Mr Latham why do you think there has been that intensity going back so far because presumably the Liberals, if they’ve been digging out dirt more recently, were not particularly interested in you at that stage. How do you account for this? I don’t remember any former leader on either side of politics having to do what you’re doing today, even Bob Hawke with his colourful past.

LATHAM: You will have to ask them. Maybe it’s got something to do with election timing. You would have to ask the Government minister who reckons I’ve broken someone’s collarbone. You’d have to ask the people who come and talk to you. Ask them. Why not ask them?

Samantha: Mr Latham, there were some claims raised in the Sunday newspapers by so-called friends of your wife that you were unfaithful in your marriage. Do you think that is a relevant issue? Do you think voters need to know that? And do you think that you need to respond to that?

LATHAM: The claim was made from Gabrielle Gwyther herself in March; don’t know about friends, so-called friends. I mean, the claim was there in The Age newspaper in March, and that’s one of the points I make – none of these things are new. They’ve been out in the public arena for a long, long while.

JOURNALIST: Mr Latham, if they’re not new, what evidence do you have that they are being raised by a dirt unit within the Government?

LATHAM: You’ve got reportage in your paper of a Government Minister saying last week, you thought it was true enough to report, that I’ve broken someone’s collarbone. That this stuff on theSunday program was going to relate to a previous campaign incident where I’ve broken someone’s collarbone and its not true. That’s not true.

JOURNALIST: Peter Fraser supports Don Nelson’s version of events in relation to that stoush, what does he have to win by supporting that?

LATHAM: Peter Fraser supported the opposition campaign against me to be mayor in 1991. He is part of that group who opposed me back then and I assume still oppose me today. But it is just fantastic, isn’t it, to think you can king hit someone in the main street of Liverpool, as an elected representative, as a councillor, where every single thing was subject to scrutiny in the local media – everything was the subject of speculation and gossip at Liverpool Council – you can king hit someone in the main street of Liverpool, on a Saturday night, and no-one, not even your political opponents mention it for 15 years? I think it’s pretty obvious what has happened here; they’ve worked out, post the taxi driver, this is something they can go back to and have a bigger political impact than they could have 15 years ago or any time in the interim. That’s what’s happened.

JOURNALIST: Mr Latham, you’ve raised in the past the issue of Tony Abbott’s son, which is something that obviously happened a long time in the past, do you think the issue of your fidelity within your marriage is a public issue or do you think it is something that should be off limits?

LATHAM: I have read and seen things in the media – I don’t think there is any big secret about this but in relation to Mr Abbott he was spending a fair bit of his time in the Parliament talking about Labor families. Saying there was something wrong with Simon Crean’s dad, Kim Beazley’s dad and we just made a judgment that if he wants to talk about our families then we will talk about his. I’m not proud of it, not proud that it happened but in the politics of the time, it was something as a blocking measure to get him off what was a pretty unsavoury episode talking about people’s families in the House of Representatives. He has sort of lapsed back into in recent times, but we made the point at that time.

JOURNALIST: Do you think it was mistake that year where you were pretty rough on your opponents that its made it a lot more fair game now because you’ve said some pretty harsh things about your political opponents and other Labor MPs have said and now you are perhaps paying for that?

LATHAM: No, we’re all fair game. The moment you walk in here you are fair game but there are tactics and counter-measures that are taken in the normal tough nature of politics tough but fair in nature, hopefully and that episode was just part of that.

Michelle: You seemed a lot less tearful about all of this on Friday, when you were rather dismissive, flippant, on radio; why the change?

LATHAM: Michelle, if there is speculation in newspapers and the media that you are in some video, and we all know the nature of what we are talking about here, I mean it is a bit more serious than Don Nelson and his ridiculous claim from 15 years – which, quite frankly, for 15 years has been a bit of a joke, the nature of the incident. There is a big difference between media reporting rumours about this video and what it means to me and my family, and that’s pretty serious stuff. Just contemplate yourself what we’re talking about here and, if you had children, would you want them to grow up thinking and knowing about it, even at the level of a rumour? No, you wouldn’t. You’d take it pretty seriously.

JOURNALIST: Where do you believe those rumours have come from?

LATHAM: Possibly a combination of the first and third groups that I mentioned earlier on. All three actually most likely all three.

JOURNALIST: So your first wife, your political opponents in Liverpool and the Government?

LATHAM: You’re asking me my guess as to where, and I would say all three would be talking about it. Have you heard someone from the Government talk about it in recent times? I’m sure there is someone in this room that has heard the Government talk about that video in the past week, a Government member or staff – strike me down if I’m wrong.

JOURNALIST: Mr Latham, you’ve raised the video. Can you just clear it up for us.

LATHAM: There is no video it was a bucks night, which was tame enough. It was organised by other people. I turned up. I had a bucks night for the first marriage and, believe you me, I didn’t see the need for it the second time around. It was tame enough and there’s nothing there I would be embarrassed about, but theres no video.

Louise Dodson, Sydney Morning Herald: Mr Latham, you said that you’ve got the character to be Prime Minister; can you just describe what your character is to us?

LATHAM: I’m a hard-working person. I’m passionate about the things I believe in. I believe I’ve got certain skills to implement good policies for the benefit of the country. I’m not perfect. I just regard myself as a fair dinkum, honest person. What you see is what you get. There’s no big secret about me. I get stuck in and have a go on the things I believe in. I enjoy Australian larrikinism, as well, as a way of life you know, I think it is great to have mates and enjoy a joke the Australian way. That is a big part of my character. I’m proud of it. It’s one of the things that makes me proud to be an Australian. So that’s my best description of who I am.

JOURNALIST: Mr Latham, do you feel that you can deny these rumours til you are blue in the face, but do you worry that some voters might believe and think that where there is smoke there is fire?

LATHAM: Obviously, I hope not. But you know the nature of politics. These things have circulated for a long, long time. In the end, my greatest assurance and source of strength, if you like, is that the Australian people are much more interested in where the health and education systems are going to be 20 months from now than what happened in Liverpool 20 years ago. It is only natural. The Australian people are focused on the future. That’s why I’ve been trying to focus on the future. The Australian people have also had enough of the negativity in Australian politics. That’s why I’ve tried to be as positive as I can as Opposition Leader. That’s my judgment of the Australian people and I trust that’s their judgment of me.

Dennis: Are you closer to making a decision on the FTA with the USA?

LATHAM: No, we’ll see the process through that we’ve embarked on for the Senate report. It’s described as a living agreement that is subject to change and the need for more information and detail. We said that we would do that in a considered way; we wouldn’t be flying blind so we are going down that process, giving the Australian people their say about the FTA but, just as importantly, getting all the facts and detail before we make a judgment.

JOURNALIST: Mr Latham, in recasting your tax policy, will you be taking any notice of the Access Economics report today that suggests that the figures in the budget may not be as healthy as the Government would have us believe, or would you take the budget papers as the figures that you will base your tax policy on?

LATHAM: The advice in the election campaign, of course, comes from the Treasury but the Access Economics report confirms the Government has been on a spending spree, and we’ve been making that point that we are committed to our budget pledge, which is surplus budgets every year of the next Parliament, reducing net debt and also bringing down taxation and expenditures as proportions of GDP. So we’ve got our budget pledge and you can be guaranteed were sticking to that pledge, 100 per cent.

JOURNALIST: So if the Secretary of the Treasury comes to you, as Prime Minister after the election, and says there is not as much money there as the budget papers suggested, you will be committed to either increasing taxes or reducing spending to keep the budget in surplus?

LATHAM: We won’t be increasing taxes.

JOURNALIST: So that means you would [inaudible]

LATHAM: We would be tightening the budget cutting waste and mismanagement, which is what we’ve been doing in our policies and our work for the last couple of years. That’s the way in which we meet our financial commitments, our social investments. If we have to continue that in Government, we would.

Jim Middleton: Access suggests it might be a bit more serious than that, though, it might involve programs not just waste and mismanagement.

LATHAM: I’ve answered your question, Jim, we wont be raising taxes.

Samantha: Mr Latham, I have a health and education question. On universities, if you’re elected in October or November is that enough time to introduce legislation to allow universities to reverse 25 per cent HECS increases or will that not be possible until later in the year? When are you going to detail what the Labor Party plans to do to the 30 per cent health rebate?

LATHAM: That will be part of our policy announcements on health, but we’ve said that we’ve got no plan to get rid of it. We want to improve it and we’ll specify how. On the first matter hypothetical dates about the election, hypothetical dates about when the Parliament comes back in relation to universities, Jenny Macklin is talking all that through with the universities and I’m sure there will be no problem.

Samantha: But you’ve told students and voters that from 2005 those HECS increases wont go up.

LATHAM: But I don’t know the election date and I don’t know the feasibility, even when we’ve got the election date, of getting the Parliament back before Christmas so its hypothetical.

Samantha: So you dont know?

LATHAM: No, I don’t know the election date.

Samantha: But you’ve told students that these increases.

LATHAM: At the first available opportunity when we can legislate, obviously we are going to reverse the 25 per cent HECS. What election date there might be, and what happens with parliamentary sittings, that really is in the land of the hypothetical.

JOURNALIST: Mr Latham, are you going to leave the release of your tax policy until your campaign launch?

LATHAM: No.

JOURNALIST: Is it almost ready to be delivered? When can we see it?

LATHAM: You’ll see it when its released. We’ve announced a lot of policy in recent times. I know there is a very strong fascination with this particular policy but in the normal course of events the election schedule, the three years, runs out in November then we would have our tax and family policies out well in advance for the Australian people to have a good look at them and hopefully support them.

JOURNALIST: What about your list of savings; have you added to that recently?

LATHAM: The good thing about the list if you look down the back of all our policy announcements, there’s a list of how they are funded so that is the list. It was the list for the baby care payment. It was the lift for the Youth Guarantee. Its the list we have been producing for our social investment plans, fully costed and fully funded. Dennis Shanahan, The Australian: As a living document; has PBS been added to that?

LATHAM: When you identify that as a saving, that’s a budget decision we’ve made but it had not been there had been uncertainty about the PBS; would the Government bring it back in this round of budgeting? Once we established that, we were able to respond accordingly, mindful of our budget pledge to keep it in surplus when we are in Government and ensure that we’ve got downward pressure on interest rates. We had to make a tough decision there but as I’ve said we can’t fund everything. You just can’t fund every single service that has been abolished by the Howard Government. We can’t restore every single cut back. We are going to do a lot in health and education, in particular, and we’ve got a lot of those commitments out there but we’ll do it in a financially responsible way, consistent with our budget pledge.

Dennis: And tax cuts for every one under $52,000?

LATHAM: You’ll see the detail of our policy when its released.

Hiya. Today, a few of your comments on Not Happy John! A lot’s been happening for me this week and I haven’t been able to read all my emails, so please send or resend your comments on the book to nothappyjohn and the team will endeavour to get them up there.

 

But first, have a look at a great scoop by the Herald Sun�s Jason Frenkel, which the Murdoch Melbourne tabloid buried on page 17 today. Fellow Australians, John Howard has decided that WE will pay for sitting members� how to vote cards, for the first time ever. How�s that for an unfair, undemocratic process. No fair fights for John. And for fair dinkum vote-rigging, what can beat Jason�s report that MPs got their annual $125,000 printing allowance on July 1, so sitting members can spend the bloody lot to see off the competition. See Double dip for poll campaign. He added privately: “Abetz’s office says its an unwritten convention. But ask any of the senior campaign officials on either side and they have never heard of it… And Abetz’s office has confirmed to me that they are re-writing the member’s entitlements handbook right now – my guess is that a previously “unwritten convention” will now be codified and formalised in writing in the new edition handbook. It will pump an extra $20million or thereabouts into party coffers.”

June�s Webdiary statistics are:

1. Howard’s 2004 Tampa: director George Bush, June 9

2. Our beds are burning election, June 11

3. Not happy John!, June 20

4. Did our government lie to us to protect America?, June 2

5. A call to scream from Andrew Denton, by Andrew Denton, June 11

6. Tony Fitzgerald: Howard a “radical”, June 29

7. Howard drapes polluter’s package in green, June 15

8. Was Australia complicit in U.S. war crimes at Abu Ghraib?, June 2

9. Hill – defeated by Defence or just another pawn in the lie game?

10. Renewable energy crumb laced with poison, by Meg Lees, June 15

The top five referring websites were spleenville, roadtosurfdom, bushwatch,informationclearinghouse and iraqdaily

***

YOUR REACTION TO NOT HAPPY JOHN

Heather Jeffcoat, a staffer of Democrats Senator John Cherry: Congratulations on your new book. Check out familymovie, truthaboutwarmovie and refugeesmovie (audio required).

Grant Lee: I listened to your comments on Late Night Live on Wednesday night where you referred to Chinese Premier Hu Jintao as a “communist dictator”. A malign dictator he may be, a “Communist” in name and rhetoric he may be, but a communist in fact, he is not. Since the death of Mao Zedong, private enterprise has been enouraged to the point where less than half of the economy is now in public hands. This is especially significant in a country where more than 70% of the population is still involved in peasant agriculture (and therefore comprises far less than 70% of the economy). The political elite such as Hu and his family and cronies have become immensely rich as result of this privatisation by default. It is safe to say that Hu is, effectively, not a communist.

***

Trish Kench

I’ve always seen my right to vote as an obligation – a duty of citizenship; the “right thing” to do. In recent years I’ve watched the dishonest antics of the spoiled brat brigade; the woeful lack of principled leadership from representatives of both labour and the privileged; the tossing out of the ‘fair go’; the sacrifice of honesty for expediency, of independence for dollars; the growth of brand and spin, of the citizen-as-consumer and the replacement of ‘society’ with ‘the marketplace’.

We have no society if we don’t care about each other’s well being; if profit is more important than compassion and moral integrity; if our national identity rhetoric (fair go; mateship; dinkum) is co-opted as ‘brand’ by the cashed-up powerful who, straight faced, serve it back to us on its head and think we won’t notice – or care.

I do notice and I care a great deal. As did many others, I recorded my protest at the last election by voting Green – for the first time.

Listen up boys, or I will take away your toys: I want a good education for my neighbour’s children and I want his elderly parents warm, well fed and happy. I will help to pay for their teachers, their pharmaceuticals, and any hospitalisation they need. When he is etrenched because his skill set is outmoded I will help to pay to retrain him.

I want teachers and nurses paid commensurate with the importance of the hard and valuable work they do. I want the natural environment protected and sustained. I want an informative free press.

I am not an anarchist or one of a mob of terrorist-sympathisers and I want to say Sorry. I want something constructive done about the health and welfare of indigenous Australians. I want to treat ‘illegal’ refugees with compassion and child abusers sent to jail.

I want a clear demarcation between politics and the bureaucracy. I want democracy. Increase my taxes.

***

Penny Butler in Fairfield, Melbourne

Firstly – thank you for your amazing book. I read Tony Fitzgerald’s launch speech in The Age on Tuesday and immediately left the office to purchase your book. I am half way through it and although the points made are frightening, it is an excellent read and so far sums up many of the discussions my father and I have regarding the state of political play in this country. Further, although I am not there yet, I notice that you have actually included suggestions of ways we can bring about change. Bravo.

I regularly email the PM, Mark Latham, Amanda Vandstone etc asking questions and making points. Iraq, Hicks & Habib, Refugees – all these issues and more cause me much concern. However the greater concern is the failure of the News to inform the people and to even ignore key issues. I recently emailed the editor to the Age asking why this is so (we know why). I couldn’t believe, after the Abu Gharib situation, that our Government was misinformed yet again. In all my 33 years I have never known a govt. to be so misinformed about so many things. And all of these things will potentially impact Australia’s future in a major way. The newspapers are relatively quiet on it and Mark Latham has been near silent. Pathetic.

I was nearly ready to throw my hands in the air in disgust and give up – most people at work think I am a bit of a freak because I go on about the Government so much – but their lack of concern is another worry I carry with me. However, you have given me hope and upon finishing your book I will do what I can to effect some change about the place because you are right, Howard’s version of Australia is not the one I want to belong to and I will do whatever I can to help remove him.

Your book also introduced me to Webdiary – as an Age reader I hadn’t seen it before. There should be a link from The Age to it. It is a fantastic forum. Thank you.

At the end of the day – whether it be Liberal or Labor – they both have a duty to protect our democracy and they are failing. So I guess it’s up to us.

***

Jim Connolly in Paynesville, Victoria

You�ve opened up a can of worms with ‘Not Happy John!’ and it’s time somebody did. From the time the First Fleet arrived, Australians have feared invasion by a foreign power. Perhaps it is guilt for the dispossession of the Aborigines that we have, ever since, anticipated that we, in our turn, will be dispossessed by a foreign invader. We have reacted to perceived threats by the Aborigines themselves, the French, the Russians, the Germans, the “Yellow Peril” of the millions of poor in the Asian countries to our north, the Japanese in particular, Communists, the Domino theory, “Boat People” and, at the time of writing, Islamic terrorists.

Perhaps this is why politicians have perpetuated the myth that the US saved us from Japanese invasion during the war. The fact is that the Japanese attacked the US because America had cut off supplies of oil and rubber to Japan. Australia had no oil or rubber at that time and Japan had neither the will nor the capacity to occupy a country this size during the war in the Pacific. Churchill and Roosevelt knew this but, because they didn’t trust Curtin, whether Curtin was told is still in dispute.

Macarthur arrived here as an asylum seeker, unexpected and uninvited. If he arrived the same way today he would be locked up in a detention centre. It was the Australians who first stopped the Japanese on the Kokoda Track. We owe the US nothing and can expect nothing from them unless it is in their interest. Surely it is time we ended our sycophantic, subservient subjection to American political objectives.

The following questions should be discussed:

1. Who really runs Australia?

2. Will the forthcoming election be a de-facto referendum on Australia’s Sovereignty?

***

John Caldecott

Re Tony Fitzgerald�s speech at your Sydney launch, it is now easy to understand why public education is being put down by both major parties. Institutions of society have been taken over in the name of neo-liberalism/neo-conservatism. Their social, economic and political religion is based upon the Washington Consensus and their values are based upon corporate values.

Democracy is about who has the most private property and the modus operandi is whatever it takes and however long it takes. These are the corporatists, and they exist in the media, think tanks, political parties, governments and lobby groups. They are not game to stand as one political party – it is much easier to take over and control existing institutions so as not to alert the public that they are about to be deceived by a well engineered and manufactured crisis. Royal Commissions are almost never used, as they might uncover the truth and compromise the movement.

It is a movement that knows no borders and as we have seen with both the Liberal and Labor camps (federal and state), their values and ethics constantly change to suit the corporatist end game. Putting up PBS prices in readiness for the FTA. Putting up the cost of water in cities and towns in readiness for the planned water privatisation and the FTA. State governments, all Labor, are planning to convert the water entitlements (public property) of irrigators and farmers into permanent private property rights to enrich landowners and the banks. Obscene private education and private health funding, the recent baby bonus and no questions asked Family Payment (Grant) don’t make sense when at the same time public school and universities fees are being put up, public housing sold off and public hospitals are under immense strain. Welfare recipients are terrorised by CentreLink and the ATO whilst they pay back any overpayments caused by extra earnings – so much for incentive. Public infrastructure is starved of funds to justify Private Public Partnerships.

All these “reforms” are designed to gradually transform public property into private property, never mind whether effectiveness and the competitive position of the economy is compromised. Social policy is now regressive not progressive.

Put simply it is capitalism gone mad and as we have just witnessed with the corporatist latest and most audacious revolutionary reform yet, the “National Water Initiative” or should I say the “National Water Privatisation”. It is time to dump corportist political parties, expose their propaganda network and establish institutions that are truly in the public interest.

***

Grant Long in Newcastle

I heard you on LNL on Tuesday night. Speaking for myself, I greatly appreciate what you have achieved (so far!) with Webdiary.

A year or so ago, after yet another announcement from the government on detention centres, I started compiling a list of what I believed our country had lost since 1996 and also the things the government had done since that time that I found offensive. It was only a dot point list but it grew to some length.

It started with things like �mutual obligation� that only flowed in one direction. It included other things like SIEV-X and the Tampa. This lead to children, or even adults, in horrendous detention. Little did I know then that our country would commit to war in Iraq. On and on the list went. Needless to say it was a lowpoint in my life. Where was the country of my childhood and youth that I loved for its great contrasts, it inclusiveness, it positiveness and tolerance?

I know many other people of ages from 20 to 70 (no doubt beyond) also feel this way as I have a beer with them and chew the fat over politics. My father in law, who has always been a Liberal voter, now speaks about Bob Brown as a voice of reason in an increasingly self-serving parliament. Things change, evolution is relentless.

But what remained for me was a void, a participation void. I am glad to say that Webdiary has, in large part, filled that void and therefore also greatly reduced my increasing frustration. I could say it has kept me sane.

***

Vince O’Hara

What a pleasant surprise to hear you the other day on “Australia talks back” and then again, with that old Adams bastard. Like old times! And congratulations on the book: I’ve got a copy on order today.

Your insightful comment on political affairs is very much to my liking, though I don’t doubt that we would disagree on some things. But you seem to be able to clearly nail the average Australian thinking on some controversial subjects. Your “expose” on the usurpation of our Parliamentary protocol by Howard’s supine complicity during the Bush invasion should be much more widely appreciated, if only our citizens were awake to such bastardry.

***

Michael Strutt

Listening to your piece on Late Night Live I was struck by your continued commitment to participatory journalism. You even went so far as to say that you limited your Webdiary editorial discretion to articles which were libellous or abusive (in spite of the fact that you have admitted that you declined to post an article early last year because you thought its argument that there were *no* WMD in Iraq was just too far out).

I agree that it may just be possible to salvage journalism by encouraging broad participation. The examples of IndyMedia, bloggers and OhMyNews (in South Korea) certainly seem to offer an encouraging start.

But is Webdiary really the way forward? Or in being tied to Fairfax is it actually a retrograde step which will ultimately bind contributors just a tightly to the corporate inspired self censorship that has made Fairfax no more of an alternative to News Ltd than the ALP is to the Coalition (and for pretty much the same reasons)?

For the past few weeks I have not even been able to read Webdiary, thanks to registration policies that insist that I must become an open ended marketing resource if I wish to access Fairfax online content. Yes, I know that Fairfax has a ‘privacy policy’. But after 20 years in the IT industry I know just how hollow such promises of privacy protection are (as 92 million AOL subscribers recentlydiscovered.

It seems to me that if you are really committed to *indenpedent* participatory journalism there is an immediate symbolic gesture you could make to demonstrate it. You could demand that Fairfax online exempts Webdiary from registration requirements or, if that is technically problematic, demand the right to mirror its content as part of the nothappyjohn website.

I await your response with interest – but don’t bother doing so via Webdiary as I will be unable to read it.

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Les Bursill in Engadine, Brisbane

Well done MK. I heard you on LNL and I must buy my own copy. Two things.

1. My access card AKA credit card and fund access card got crunched by the machine and no money or credit for me all weekend (no food no petrol no movies, nothing). How can banks get away with that? They have no emergency procedures in place. I went to the manager Monday at 9.30 (no early starts here) and she said ‘tough’. I told her banks need to become (ha ha) socially responsible and remember the billions they make from us sheep.

2. On Sutherland station on Friday last (25th June 3.45pm), the station crowded with school kids. Two sets of police with dogs (dressed like storm troopers [not the dogs]) came to the station and started searching any, every child the dogs showed interest in. The kids couldn’t have been more than 15 or so. No privacy, no appology just bailed them up, emptied their pockets and their bags on the concourse in full view, just tough for you. Don’t approach sir or you will be arrested for interfering. I just don’t feel that warm and comfy glow Johnny promised.

G�day. I�ll allow myself a Webdiary entry to publish your first take on my book, but from now on if you want to review it, correct it, comment or put up your ideas to defend our democracy, go to Penguin’s nothappyjohn website, which Webdiarists and book contributors Jack Robertson andAntony Loewenstein and I will maintain. It was fabulous to meet so many Webdiarists at the launches in Canberra, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Thanks for coming.

 

Will Howard call call the election on Sunday for August 7? My pick in the office sweep was August 7, and August has been my selection since I read that page 1 one story by Paul Kelly in The Australian in which Richard Armitage threatened to end the American alliance if Australians elected a Labor government (see Howard’s 2004 Tampa: director George Bush and Stage set for David and Goliath battle).

I hope I�m wrong about August 7, but Latham is so worried about the Sundayprogram�s pending profile he did a short-notice pre-emptive strike on John Laws’ radio show this morning. That means he’s prepared to guarantee the Sunday profile a big audience. The transcript follows. Tony Kevinwrites:

If Howard does decide to delay the election till, say, October, I think it will be for three reasons:

1. Wanting time to reconvene Senate and trap Labor into having to sign or reject the US Free Trade Agreement in the Senate. Howard would see Latham as facing a Hobson’s choice here – if he lets it pass, it will gag Labor from further criticism of FTA , ie it is neutralised as an election issue. If Latham blocks it, it becomes an alliance loyalty wedge issue from which Howard would hope to pick up a few Nervous Ned and Nellie votes. We really need a larger community debate NOW on the risks to our sovereignty and public welfare of this FTA. I am trying to help stimulate one (through the ‘Eureka Street’ July issue and my website). The FTA is really important for our sovereignty and welfare, yet hardly anyone now is saying or writing anything about it. It seems to be off limits! (Margo: see Subsuming us into America – the economic aspect.)

2. Howard hopes Iraq will stabilise militarily. That is anybody’s guess. If the US troops are locked up in barracks and Bush and Rumsfeld say nothing provocative maybe it might. But it is poised on a knife-edge.

3. The electoral money bribes – instalment 2 of the kids’ handout kicks in in September . How well timed.

***

INTERVIEW WITH JOHN LAWS, 2UE STUDIO, SYDNEY, FRIDAY, 2 JULY 2004

Subjects: Sunday Program

LAWS: It appears to be that some people are far more interested in Mark Latham�s past than they are in their own future. All sorts of stories about his past are doing the rounds ahead of what is called a major profile on the Sunday (program) this weekend. Mark Latham is in the studio. Good morning. Don�t hit me!

LATHAM: How are you going, John.

LAWS: I�m all right. What have you done in the past that is apparently � according to these people � so hideous?

LATHAM: The funny thing about all of this is that it�s billed as investigative journalism but it is actually ancient history � the Sunday program talking breathlessly about an incident 15 years ago that was reported in the Melbourne Age newspaper on 13 March.

This is something that has been reported before; it happened 15 years ago. From my point of view it is pretty straightforward; we were in our campaign rooms at the end of the Liverpool by-election voting day so it would have been a Saturday night in the main street of Liverpool. We were closing and a fellow called Don Nelson wandered in � he came across from the RSL, which had closed on the other side of the road � and he was mates with a bloke who was in the campaign room, Peter Fraser. Peter offered him a beer and was sitting having a chat and Don Nelson spied me as one of the local Liverpool councillors and started to complain that the other day he had backed his car into one of the big pot plants in the main street and wanted to make a big complaint to me as a councillor. Well, at 11 o�clock on a Saturday night, we�d had a long day with all the voting and the by-election activities, and I said, �Look, you know, that�s a bit of a worry; how about we talk about it Monday.� But he wanted to go on and on about it and I thought I would put a bit of humour in and said, �Don, listen, I�m a man of direct action, I believe in getting results done for the people of Liverpool. How about we go out on the street now and we�ll move the pot plant so you can�t smash you car into them again in the future.� And, at this point � and he had had a good night � he got a bit stroppy and sort of took half a swing at me. We grabbed him and got him out of the campaign rooms.

LAWS: Did you biff him?

LATHAM: No, no, I grabbed hold of him. He was � I mean, not in any state to do anyone real harm but we just got hold of him and got him out of the campaign rooms, a bit of crowd control and that was the end of that. But his mate, Peter Fraser � he�s been bagging me for 20 years out in Liverpool � I think, has tried to generate a bit of mischief. Peter put these claims down in The Agenewspaper in March. I responded to them.

You know this is an insignificant piece of trivia because I was a Liverpool councillor at the time. I was an elected representative. It never featured in the Liverpool papers. When I ran for Mayor in 1991; no coverage about it. I ran for the national Parliament at a by-election in 1994, no-one said boo about it. The fellow never made any complaints. Fifteen years later the only thing that has happened is I�m running for Prime Minister so this sort of trivia gets dragged out and apparently this is the big news the Sunday program has got � it was reported, what, four months ago with the Melbourne Age newspaper. It happened 15 years ago and it�s been either a big yawn or a big laugh ever since.

LAWS: Is there anything else that you think they might drop on you in the Sunday program?

LATHAM: Well, I saw this morning on the Today program that this fellow Frank Heyhoe who�s one of their, again, investigative journalism products. Frank gave what was billed as an exclusive interview with the Sun Herald [sic] newspaper on 8 February.

So, again, all of these things have been aired. People have had a grievance about me � I mean, I was involved in local politics and ballots and disputes and arguments, that�s the nature of local democracy. They had their lash when I became Leader of the Party seven months ago � or, in these two instances, in an article on the 8th February and then one on the 13th of March � so it is ancient history that is being recycled under the banner of investigative journalism. When I look back and think about it � something that couldn�t even get in the local Liverpool newspapers 15 years ago is spoken of in this way it�s so bizarre, it�s amusing.

LAWS: Are you a bit of a biffer?

LATHAM: No.

LAWS: Come on!

LATHAM: I�ve grown up in the western suburbs � every now and then you�ve got to hold your hands up to defend yourself. I�ve played footy. I wasn�t living in a convent out there. There is the odd occasion on the footy field or elsewhere you have had to defend yourself and that�s just been part of life. But I don�t go around biffing people, certainly not.

LAWS: It�s part of life in that kind of environment, with all respect to the western suburbs. In fact, it is kind of part of the charm of the western suburbs that it is fundamentally pretty tough living and you�ve got to learn to be a survivor and there are many different ways to be a survivor. Sometimes you�ve got to protect yourself. But have you ever aggressively taken up a fight to somebody else?

LATHAM: No, only to what you would call self-defence on the footy field or in this particular instance with this fellow in the campaign rooms. There was the instance with the taxi driver. I recovered my stolen property which I was entitled to do. But the other thing is people would report these things to the authorities and, with the thing they are talking about 15 years ago in the campaign rooms, nothing was ever reported to the authorities or in the newspapers and that just proves the insignificance of it.

LAWS: Okay. The terrible night with the cab driver; were you drunk?

LATHAM: I wouldn�t have thought I was drunk. I had had a few drinks. I was in cab; I was over the limit in terms of driving home but I wouldn�t have regarded myself as drunk. I had my wits about me to know that my property had been stolen and I needed to track him down and get it back, which I did.

LAWS: Have you anything to hide from people? Because the suggestion of this is that you have, because you wouldn�t cooperate with the program or something. But do you believe that you�ve got anything � I have! Is there anybody who hasn�t got something they would prefer not to be aired?

LATHAM: I�m not claiming to be 100 per cent perfect and that I�ve been a little angel all my life. I�m just claiming to have been a regular person who grew up in the Western suburbs of Sydney, wanted to serve the people of my district, which I did in local government and now in federal politics, and wanting to do good things for the country.

I�ve really got no secrets and when I got this job seven months ago there was a lot of scrutiny. A lot of people came out and said a lot of things about me and I handled that at the time so I don�t really feel there are any secrets. There is just now an attempt to recycle material that’s already been published and try and get some prominence for this program on Sunday.

There is also an attempt by the Liberal Party to stir these things up. The Australian newspaper on its website reports �One Government minister told the Australian the Liberal Party has been pursuing allegations that Mr Latham was involved in an incident during an earlier election that led to un unknown person breaking a collarbone�. The unknown person is unknown to me, as is the incident. People who want to spread rumours and create this sort of mischief – I don�t think they do the system any service.

I know one thing for sure: I know the Australian people are much more interested in where the education and health systems are going to be 20 months from now than what happened 20 years ago on the back streets of Liverpool. I mean, you can talk about the past until you are blue in the face but I try to focus on the future and being positive and I�m sure that’s where the Australian people want our public debate to go.

LAWS: That�s what I said at the beginning of the interview; it seems that a lot of people are far more interested in your past than they are in their own future because you are an integral part of their future, whether you win or lose the election at this time is totally immaterial, you are going to be Opposition Leader, you are around, you are a major figure in politics and they should be aware that you are, like it or dislike, going to be part of their future one way or another. But can you believe that there are suggestions � now, I found this quite extraordinary, that you had an active love life between marriages! Who wouldn�t?

LATHAM: Can I just give you the breaking news: I had an active love life before marriage! Now, imagine what the Liberal Party will do with that! I can hardly wait for Tony Abbott�s diatribe in the Australian Parliament � ooh, what a person!

LAWS: There you go.

LATHAM: I think the big news is if you didn�t � that would be the big news, wouldn�t it, as far as I�m concerned.

LAWS: Yes, if you didn�t. One of the brightest blokes in politics that I ever encountered, and you too I would imagine, and a larrikin of the first order in Bob Hawke. I still see Bob and I like him very much; I didn�t like a lot of his political ideas but I like him as a bloke very much. Now, he was smart; he got the biography out before and any time anybody � and that’s why I think it is very important now that you and I are talking you get it all out so that you can continue to say as Bob said, �Well, hang on, sure, I did. What, yes, I did that it�s in the book. Haven�t you read the book? It�s in the book.� and would simply dismiss all of this rubbish from the past.

LATHAM: I dismiss it but, in terms of it being out, it was out when I got this job in December and then follow up newspaper articles and profiles in February and March so I can honestly say I�ve got no secrets. I mean, I feel like I have been examined and the Liberal Party inventing things, as we read in the papers today, and they have had their go in Parliament and the like, but my focus remains on the future and being positive and talking about the things that actually matter to the Australian people. We don�t want to go down the American path with talk about the private � it�s the public things that actually matter to the Australian people.

LAWS: Okay. Let me say this to you: the reason I wanted to talk to you is because I have been down the road that you are now going down. There was a story recently where somebody wanted to say I didn�t give any money to the fire brigade, because I was flying their flag I should have given money to them. I gave them a fire engine and they write these ridiculous stories. I find it offensive. Whether you become Prime Minister or not, at this stage of my life, is totally immaterial to me. I happen to like you like I like John Howard. But I do subscribe to the theory of fairness. Why have they taken three months to dish the dirt on you? And that�s what they are saying; it�s taken three months investigating for the Sunday program to do what they are going to on Sunday.

LATHAM: They can run their own race at the Sunday program but they have taken three months to find a story that was reported in a major Melbourne newspaper four months ago. I think if they�re investigative journalists they should hand their badge and their cheque over to the people who wrote the article four months ago � Gay Alcorn, Malcolm Schmidt and Liz Minchin. It�s been reported; that’s the thing that makes me laugh about it. It�s just bizarre but the good thing about it is the Australian people are actually focused on the future. The election is going to be determined on who�s got the best policies for the country rather than some nonsense that runs around the media and the backrooms of the Liberal Party.

LAWS: Are you over-confident?

LATHAM: No, not at all. I don�t take anything for granted. I�m ready for the election when the Prime Minister calls it. Looking forward to the campaign which is again a chance to get out and be positive and tell more about our plans to the Australian people.

LAWS: Where is Simon Crean?

LATHAM: He is in Phillip Street (Sydney) today at one of our meetings, as we�re finalising our policies and getting ready.

LAWS: He has kind of vanished publicly; we don�t hear much about him.

LATHAM: Oh, no. He did our response to the budget and he�s out there arguing the case on his responsibilities for the Australian economy.

LAWS: Are you expecting John Howard to make a visit to the Governor-General, not his chosen Governor-General, but the Governor-General?

LATHAM: That�s up to the Prime Minister. He�s a tough campaigner. He doesn�t give me any clues or hints so we�ll just have to wait and see what happens there but we are going to have an election in this part of the year, the second half of the year, and I think that is something I am looking forward to very much so whenever the Prime Minister calls it. Let�s hope we have a positive campaign and both sides putting out good ideas for the future of the country.

LAWS: Thank you very much for coming in at such late notice.

LATHAM: A pleasure, John. Any other rumours you want to raise?

LAWS: Let me again say this has got nothing to do with politics; it�s only got to do with fairness and if John Howard were in the same situation I would like to have him in the studio to talk about it too. And you do understand that?

LATHAM: Yes, and I appreciate it.

LAWS: I just think fair is fair and sometimes they can go a little bit too far. John Lyons a mate of mine (Margo: John is the boss at Sunday and wrote Laws’ biography.)and a very good journalist, maybe you would like to ring me and tell what�s in that program that I don�t know about and it will be interesting to see. But after all this I imagine for the first time in a long time theSunday program will actually have a rating!

LATHAM: Maybe that�s what it�s all about. You live and learn.

This is the full text of Justice Tony Fitzgerald’s speech launching my book ‘Not happy John! Defending our democracy’, at Gleebooks in Sydney on June 22. Michelle Grattan reported on the speech today at Fitzgerald berates both sides of politics

 

In a speech last year, the author Norman Mailer described democracy as �a state of grace that is attained only by those countries which have a host of individuals not only ready to enjoy freedom but to undergo the heavy labor of maintaining it�. Not Happy John! is Margo Kingston�s admirable contribution to the �heavy labor� of maintaining democracy in Australia.

As the title hints, Margo has focused her analysis on the behaviour of the current Commonwealth government, especially the Prime Minister. In the words of the publisher: �Not Happy, John! is a gutsy, anecdotal book with a deadly serious purpose: to lay bare the insidious ways in which John Howard�s government has profoundly undermined our freedoms and our rights. She doesn�t care whether you vote Liberal or Labor, Greens or One Nation. She isn�t interested in the old, outworn left – right rhetoric. What she�s passionate about is the urgent need for us to reassert the core civic values of a humane, egalitarian, liberal democracy.�

You will observe the force of Margo�s argument when you read her book, as obviously you should. My brief remarks will be directed to the damage that mainstream politicians generally are doing to our democracy.

Australians generally accept that democracy is the best system of government, the market is the most efficient mechanism for economic activity and fair laws are the most powerful instrument for creating and maintaining a society that is free, rational and just. However, we are also collectively conscious that democracy is fragile, the market is amoral and law is an inadequate measure of responsibility. As former Chief Justice Warren of the United States Supreme Court explained: “Law �.. presupposes the existence of a broad area of human conduct controlled only by ethical norms.�

Similarly, democracy in our tradition assumes that a broad range of political activity is controlled only by conventions of proper conduct. Especially because individual rights are not constitutionally guaranteed in this country, justice, equality and other fundamental community values in Australia are constantly vulnerable to the disregard of those conventions.

Since the sacking of the Whitlam Government in 1975, the major political parties seem to have largely abandoned the ethics of government. A spiteful, divisive contest now dominates the national conversation, and democracy struggles incessantly with populism. Mainstream political parties routinely shirk their duty of maintaining democracy in Australia.

This is nowhere more obvious than in what passes for political debate, in which it is regarded as not only legitimate but clever to mislead. Although effective democracy depends on the participation of informed citizens, modern political discourse is corrupted by pervasive deception. It is a measure of the deep cynicism in our party political system that many of the political class deride those who support the evolution of Australia as a fair, tolerant, compassionate society and a good world citizen as an un-Australian, �bleeding-heart� elite, and that the current government inaccurately describes itself as conservative and liberal.

It is neither.

It exhibits a radical disdain for both liberal thought and fundamental institutions and conventions. No institution is beyond stacking and no convention restrains the blatant advancement of ideology. The tit-for-tat attitude each side adopts means that the position will probably change little when the opposition gains power at some future time. A decline in standards will continue if we permit it.

Without ethical leadership, those of us who are comfortably insulated from the harsh realities of violence, disability, poverty and discrimination seem to have experienced a collective failure of imagination. Relentless change and perceptions of external threat make conformity and order attractive and incremental erosions of freedom tolerable to those who benefit from the status quo and are apprehensive of others who are different and therefore easily misunderstood.

Mainstream Australians remain unreconciled with Indigenous Australians and largely ignore their just claims.

Without any coherent justification, we are participating in a war in a distant country in which more than half the population are children, some of whom, inevitably, are being killed. In our own country, many live in poverty, children are hungry and homeless and other severely traumatized children are in detention in flagrant breach of the Convention on the Rights of the Child simply because they were brought here by their parents seeking a better life.

Politicians mesmerised by power seem to be unconcerned that, when leaders fail to set and follow ethical standards, public trust is damaged, community expectations diminish and social divisions expand. However, these matters are important to the rest of us. We are a community, not merely a collection of self-interested individuals. Justice, integrity and trust in fundamental institutions are essential social assets and social capital is as important as economic prosperity.

In order to perform our democratic function, we need, and are entitled to, the truth. Nothing is more important to the functioning of democracy than informed discussion and debate. Yet a universal aim of the power-hungry is to stifle dissent. Most of us are easily silenced, through a sense of futility if not personal concern.

Margo has the knowledge, energy and courage to stand up for her beliefs. Congratulations, Margo, for doing much more than your share of the �heavy labor� of maintaining Australia�s democracy. It is a privilege to launch �Not Happy John!�, to urge all to read it and to wish you and �Not Happy John!� every success.

***

POSTSCRIPT: in Tony’s written speech but not delivered at the launch

There are currently 162 children in immigration detention in mainland Australia and on Nauru and Christmas Island.

The recently published report by the HEREOC National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention (A Last Resort, 2004) attests that “Australian laws that require the mandatory immigration detention of children and the way these laws are administered by the Commonwealth, have resulted in numerous and repeated breaches of the Convention on the Rights of the Child”.

Findings by the Inquiry confirm what those of us who have sustained contact with some of the children now released have known for some time, namely that “the traumatic nature of the detention experience has out-stripped any previous trauma that the children have had”. It observed that:

“Children in detention exhibited symptoms including bed-wetting, sleep walking and night terrors. At the severe end of the spectrum, some children became mute, refused to eat and drink, made suicide attempts and began to self-harm, such as by cutting themselves.”

With respect to some children the Inquiry found that:

“The Department of Immigration failed to implement the clear – and in some cases repeated – recommendations of State agencies and mental health experts that they be urgently transferred out of detention centres with their parents. This amounted to cruel,inhuman and degrading treatment.”

Detention of children places extreme stress on their parents. Those we have come to know have expressed this to us. They felt responsible and guilty for bringing their children to Australia ,where instead of finding freedom and the new home they had promised their children, they were being held in “a prison”.

As the Inquiry stated “being in detenion can severely undermine the ability of parents to care for their children”. Their normal roles in the family are taken away from them. Often too the parents are severely traumatized by the experience of detention, which reduces their ability to parent their children.

Children in detention have witnessed extreme forms of violence, riots, suicide attempts and self harm. Some have been tear gassed and struck by batons during riots. The Inquiry found that “the Commonwealth had breached the Convention on the Rights of the Child by failing to take all appropriate measures to protect children in detention from physical and mental violence”.

Other measures which I would describe as inhumane and dehumanizing include giving children ( and their parents) a number which they must wear at all times and by which they are known and called; not allowing parents to take any photos of their children…..so babies born in detention have no photos recording their growth and development, something most parents take for granted.

That a society which calls itself civilized continues to countenance the prolonged and indeterminate detention of children in conditions closely resembling those of a high security prison , shocks me profoundly. That this society is Australia, saddens and angers me more than I can say.

Senator Brian Harradine and I have had several disagreements over the years, particularly on family planning issues, but we have come to like and respect each other. Last year Brian saved Australia�s only law to protect the diversity of ownership of Australia�s media, for which I will be forever grateful (see The debate that dare not speak its name and Brian Harradine: The voice of reason on media laws).

 

Brian is a major character in my book, in which I said of him:

�In my opinion, Brian Harradine is a statesman. If there�s one single politician I�d choose to have represent me on a vote of genuine bipartisan importance to Australia, it might just be him…

�Brian Harradine is a great Australian. One day someone will tell his story in the detail it deserves.�

Brian, the longest serving Senator in Australia�s Parliament, announced yesterday that he would retire. Here is his statement, and his summary of the highlights of his long and tumultuous political career.

***

HARRADINE STATEMENT

Senator Harradine will not recontest seat

I will not be recontesting my Tasmanian Senate seat at the next election. My term is due to end on 30 June 2005. I will leave the Senate as the longest serving senator in the current Parliament and the longest serving independent senator since Federation.

I have made this decision with some sadness and regret. After notifying my supporters of my intentions, I have received very strong appeals to reconsider. But I am sure they and other Tasmanians will understand that after reaching 30 years in the Senate next year, I would like to spend more time with my family. I would also like to concentrate on some writing, speaking engagements and bushwalking. (Margo: want to write for Webdiary, Brian?)

The Senator Brian Harradine Group will not be nominating another candidate for the election.

In my time in this place I have endeavoured to address public policy matters by applying a framework of social justice principles able to be understood and supported by all persons of goodwill who are committed to a just, free, equal, and life-affirming society.

When I was first elected to the Senate, I confronted a clear threat to the Australian way of life from Communists and the socialist left. From my first days in Parliament I urged a new and moderate path for Australia, arguing vigorously for economic justice for smaller states like Tasmania. I also demanded greater recognition and assistance for Australian families.

I am proud of my strong advocacy over the years for people suffering political oppression, for the rights of workers in Australia and overseas to organise, for initiatives to combat chronic unemployment and for assistance to refugees.

Throughout my parliamentary career I have sought to defend the dignity of the human person against attacks by those who promote a utilitarian philosophy.

In defending human dignity I have decried the objectification of women by the pornography and prostitution industries, tried to prevent the tragic destruction of unborn children through abortion and denounced the �what can be done should be done� technological imperative of some scientists experimenting on human embryos as though they are laboratory rats.

I am particularly proud of the role I have played in promoting and defending the Senate not as a rubber stamp for the government of the day, but as a true house of review scrutinising and refining the laws under which we all live. In the face of increasing centralisation of power, I have sought to ensure the Senate acts to protect the smaller states.

During the difficult GST debate, I remarked that you can be a rooster one day and a feather duster the next. But in recent times I have:

* secured $353 million for Tasmanians from the minority sales of Telstra. This money has contributed to the turn around in the Tasmanian economy;

* secured, as part of negotiations between the independents and the Government, an extra 1600 new university student places for Tasmanians by 2008, many of which will go to the state�s north and north west;

* brokered the Wik agreement which not only provided an equitable outcome for indigenous Australians, but also avoided a race-based election.

I will continue to strive to ensure Australia as a society measures up to the standard I have always espoused: that the measure of a civil society is how it treats its most vulnerable members.

***

Senator Brian Harradine: a short history

Family man

Born Richard William Brian Harradine on 9 January 1935 at Quorn, South Australia. His wife Barbara died in 1980 after 18 years of marriage, leaving behind Brian and their six children. He married Marian, a widow with seven children, in 1982. He and Marian now have 27 grandchildren. Marian and Brian Harradine share a love of bushwalking and have walked in most areas of Tasmania.

Work and Union

Brian�s first job was on the Commonwealth Railway�s (CR) Ghan and East West services. After parting company with the CR he worked with the Post Master General’s Department (PMG) – Engineering Division – in Adelaide.

In late 1959 Brian Harradine arrived in Tasmania as a union organiser with the Federated Clerks� Union. During his first weeks in Tasmania, Brian resided in the head office keeper�s quarters on the roof of the Franklin Square Government Offices building in central Hobart.

He was Secretary of the Tasmanian Trades and Labour Council and a member of the Australian Council of Trade Unions executive for twelve years from 1964 to 1976. He was also instrumental in changing the first of the Tasmanian Trades and Labour Council objectives to that of the International Labour Organisation (ILO): �To contribute to the development of an economic and social order in which people can live with freedom and dignity and pursue both their spiritual development and material well-being in conditions of economic security and equal opportunity.�

Founder of the Tasmanian branch of the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association and its president since 1967.

ALP member

Member of the ALP Tasmanian State Executive from 1965 to 1975.

Member of the Australian Labor Party Federal Executive from 1968 to 1975. Despite being repeatedly elected by the Tasmanian state conference of the ALP to the ALP Federal Executive, the socialist left voted to deny his right to sit on the Federal Executive for seven years. The Leader of the Opposition, Gough Whitlam, resigned as parliamentary leader to protest Brian Harradine�s treatment and was subsequently re-elected, defeating Dr Jim Cairns narrowly.

Expelled from the ALP by a 9-8 vote of the Federal Executive in September 1975. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam said at the time: �Harradine is the victim of perjured evidence.�

The Tasmanian ALP State Executive continued to support Brian Harradine. Rather than see further conflict between the Tasmanian branch and the Federal Executive, and to avoid possible Federal Executive intervention in the Tasmanian branch, Brian Harradine decided to appeal over the heads of the Federal Executive to the Tasmanian people and run for the Senate as an independent.

Independent Senator for Tasmania

Elected as a Tasmanian member of the Senate in 1975 as the first independent to win a Senate seat on primary votes. Senator Harradine achieved nearly two Senate quotas. Since elected to the Senate for six consecutive terms.

When elected he said he held no animosity towards the Labor Party. �In politics or the trade union movement, it is counter-productive,� he said.

He marked his first day in Parliament (17 February 1976) by deliberately taking the seat of the Opposition Leader, Gough Whitlam, at the centre table opposite the Prime Minister. Labor MPs and senators had boycotted the official opening of Parliament by Governor General Sir John Kerr. Senator Harradine said at the time: �Cabinet ministers started filling the front benches usually occupied by the Opposition. I felt this was too much and a position had been reached where the Government was getting it all its own way. I am sure many Labor supporters in Australia will be pleased that an Opposition presence was made.�

Balance of power

Between July 1981 and December 1984 Senator Harradine�s vote could become a deciding one, depending on whether the Democrat vote split.

Between December 1994 and March 1996, Senator Harradine�s vote, combined with the ALP, Democrats and Greens, was sufficient to carry legislation. If Senator Harradine voted with Senator Devereux and the Coalition, their combined vote was sufficient to defeat legislation. After September 1995 the vote of independent Senator Crichton-Brown (Margo: expelled from the Liberal Party) was also necessary to defeat Government legislation.

Between August 1996 and June 1999, Senator Harradine�s vote combined with Senator Colston�s and the Coalition Government was sufficient to carry legislation.

Between July 2002 and the present, Senator Harradine�s vote combined with the votes of Senators Murphy, Lees, Harris and the Coalition Government passes legislation.

In all Senate situations, irrespective of balance of power considerations, Senator Harradine has consistently argued the need to debate issues on their merits.

Some key events

In November 1976 Senator Harradine moved an urgency motion in the Senate to note that Queenstown was facing a 40 per cent cut in its workforce as a result of job cuts at the Mount Lyell mine on Tasmania�s west coast. Senator Harradine was subsequently appointed to the Select Committee on the Operations of the Mount Lyell Company. The Committee reported in December. The company�s financial problems were largely addressed by the Government�s decision in November to devalue the Australian dollar. The Committee recommended the Government consider further support for the copper industry. The company responded by halving its planned retrenchments.

In February 1978 Senator Harradine called for the establishment of an Australian coast guard. �The current method of maritime sovereignty enforcement is inefficient, wasteful and a drain on Australian defence capabilities. Naval patrols and aerial surveillance equipment are wastefully under-utilised in the essentially civil tasks involved in fisheries patrols and Australian law enforcement offshore�. The coast guard would address the problem of illegal foreign fishing boats and drug running. He also called for some of the manufacture of the coast guard fleet to be undertaken in Tasmania.

In August 1980 Senator Harradine presented what was described at the time as a �massive� petition of over 22,000 Australians to the Senate calling for the restoration of the value of family allowances. He has spoken on family allowances and the need to provide adequate support to families since 1976. The importance of this issue in the electorate was reflected in his record vote achieved in the 1980 Federal Election.

In June 1982 Senator Harradine chaired the Senate Select Committee on Industrial Relations Legislation. He reported to the Senate in October 1982 that the Committee found:

“The proposed legislation is an undesirable and unwarranted intervention into the field of industrial relations, particularly at a time when high levels of unemployment have already disturbed this balance. The Committee believes quite firmly that viable unions are essential for the operation of Australia’s system of conciliation and arbitration.”

In May 1985 Senator Harradine introduced a private members bill � the Human Embryo Experimentation Bill 1985, along with a petition with 100,000 signatures supporting it. The Bill sought to ban destructive experimentation on human embryos and anticipated by 17 years the debate over the Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002. A Senate committee reported on the Bill in October 1986, recommending a ban on destructive research on human embryos, but the Bill was not given time for debate.

On 17 August 1989, as Chair of the Parliamentary Pro-Life Group, Senator Harradine supported the introduction of the Abortion Funding Abolition Bill 1989 into the House of Representatives. The Bill would have ended Medicare funding of abortion. The Bill was not given time for debate.

In September 1990 Senator Harradine successfully moved an amendment to the Patents Act to ensure that �Human beings, and the biological processes for their generation, are not patentable inventions�.

In August 1993 Senator Harradine criticised the government for having �no plans to compensate Tasmanians for the increased costs across Bass Strait through proper adjustment of the freight equalisation scheme�. The Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme was adjusted in the 1993-94 federal budget as part of negotiations between Treasurer John Dawkins and Senator Harradine. A Department of the Parliamentary Library budget review paper recorded �an agreement was made with Senator Harradine for the provision of a further $2 million per year for four years to alleviate Bass Strait shipping costs. This resulted in a 5% increase in TFES rates of assistance�.

In May 1996 Senator Harradine successfully moved an amendment to the Therapeutic Goods Amendment Bill 1996 (No. 2) which ensures that abortion-inducing drugs cannot be imported into Australia without the express permission of the Federal Health Minister, rather than it being the decision of a departmental officer.

On 4 December 1996 Senator Harradine successfully moved an amendment to the Higher Education Legislation Amendment Bill to ensure that the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) debt repayment threshold takes account of families. The income threshold at which HECS debts start to be repaid increased from the basic $20,700 to $23,478 for those graduates with a spouse, to $25,749 for those graduates with one child and so on. This takes account of graduates� capacity to pay.

On 11 December 1996 Senator Harradine supported the Telstra (Dilution of Public Ownership) Act 1996 (T1) which secured $183 million for Tasmanians for an unprecedented program combining environmental protection with technological advancement. This money was used to establish 59 on-line access centres throughout Tasmania, Telehealth centres, the Tasmanian Electronic Commerce Centre, Tasmanian Business On-line, landcare projects, walking tracks and facilities in the World Heritage area, National Parks and other Natural Heritage Trust projects.

In June 1997 Senator Harradine was instrumental in the establishment of an inquiry to examine the fairness of the settlement offered by the Commonwealth Government to recipients of human pituitary hormones who had contracted or were at risk of contracting the incurable Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD). The inquiry also heard damning evidence that CSL and other Government bodies failed to protect public safety. (Senate Community Affairs References Committee Report on the CJD Settlement Offer, October 1997). Senator Harradine called for a more wide ranging examination of the issue of contaminated blood, which had wreaked havoc in the lives of so many innocent people.

In July 1998 Senator Harradine negotiated a compromise to balance preserving native title rights and a new system for the recognition and operation of native title. This negotiation helped to avoid a divisive race-based election that could have played into the hands of extremists. The agreement he crafted led to the longest Parliamentary debate since Federation on a particular measure – the Native Title Amendment Bill 1997 (No.2), known as the Wik debate.

In an opinion piece, Senator Harradine said:

�The ultimate result of the Wik debate is bipartisan acceptance of native title as a legitimate part of Australian law – a remarkable achievement given the vehemence with which the High Court was attacked after Mabo and Wik � the compromise I negotiated benefited indigenous Australians. It also held the line against attempts to further erode native title rights while delivering positive benefits such as the ability to negotiate Indigenous Land Use Agreements, improved claims and registration processes, and reaffirmation of the operation -of the Racial Discrimination Act.�

In July 1998 Senator Harradine�s persistent efforts to secure an inter-country adoption agreement between Australia and China were successful, allowing the adoption of Chinese children by Australian couples for the first time.

In May 1999 Senator Harradine prompted a Senate Inquiry into the operation of Australia�s Refugee and Humanitarian Programme after exposing the deportation of an 8 � month pregnant Chinese woman who was aborted on arrival in China. The Committee report A Sanctuary Under Review: An Examination of Australia’s Refugee and Humanitarian Determination Processes was completed in June 2000.

On 14 May 1999 Senator Harradine announced he would not support the Government�s GST package:

�But one thing can be guaranteed, and that is that the goods and services tax, once enshrined in legislation, will never be removed. Decisions we make now on this issue are not for the next three years; we are making decisions here that will affect generations. The question that I have to ask myself is whether I am going to be a party to imposing an impersonal, indiscriminate tax on my children, my grandchildren and their children for generations to come. I cannot.�

In May 1999 Senator Harradine reached agreement with the Government for his support for the Online Content Co-Regulatory Scheme. The Scheme was part of the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Bill 1999. The Scheme puts restrictions on Internet content that is likely to offend adults and was meant to provide for the protection of children from pornography.

On 21 June 1999 Senator Harradine supported the Telstra (Transition to Full Private Ownership) Bill 1998 (T2), negotiating another $150 million for Tasmanians, plus a further $20 million from Telstra. This led to funding for the Intelligent Island program, NetAlert to promote Internet safety to Australians, funding under the Networking the Nation program and the Launceston Broadband Project.

In June 2001 Senator Harradine called for the release of women, children and families seeking asylum, where their detention was not necessary for security or some other compelling reason, in a qualifying comment to the Human Rights Sub-Committee report on visits to immigration detention centres.

In February 2003 Senator Harradine opposed the war in Iraq on the grounds that he was not convinced that it satisfied the tests for a �just war�.

In June 2003 Senator Harradine successfully moved an amendment to the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Media Ownership) Bill 2002 to ensure that a media proprietor could not own both a television licence and a newspaper in the same mainland capital city. This contributed to the rejection of the Bill by the Government and the House of Representatives.

In September 2003 Senator Harradine negotiated with the Government to change Therapeutic Goods Regulations to ensure that consumers will be informed if human embryos, human embryonic stem cells or materials derived from embryos or stem cells are used in the manufacture or testing of pharmaceuticals. Consumers can then make an informed decision as to whether they want to use these drugs. The Government agreed to require pharmaceutical companies to provide plain English advice in Product Information (pamphlets for medical professionals) and Consumer Medicine Information (pamphlets for consumers), which are available for all registered drugs in Australia. This was a world first.

On 24 October 2003 Senator Harradine boycotted a special joint sitting of parliament convened to hear Chinese President Hu Jintao in protest against continuing and appalling breaches of human rights committed by the Chinese government. Senator Harradine said the parliamentary address set a precedent by honouring the head of a totalitarian regime in the elected chamber and he could not take part.

In December 2003 Senator Harradine and his three independent colleagues negotiated with the Government over the Higher Education Support Bill to achieve a variety of benefits including an increase in the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) income repayment threshold from $24,000 to $35,000. The Bill secured more than $200 million in benefits over six years for Tasmanians, including an extra 1600 new university student places for the state.

In March 2004 Senator Harradine and his three independent colleagues negotiated with the Government to secure an extra $427 million in improvements to MedicarePlus. This included ensuring Tasmania had the higher $7.50 bulk billing incentive across Tasmania and ensuring an extra 6,600 individuals and families in Tasmania get access to the safety net. Improving the coverage of the safety net was the only concrete way, barring the Government properly investing in Medicare, of making sure lower income people are safe from the burden of high medical bills.

G’day. A number a readers have complained about a line in On the road again in response to a query from Tim and Anna-Maria Stephens:

“Hi Margo. Please see below our e-mail to Minister Downer today concerning Australia’s vote in the UN General Assembly on the West Bank wall. This one has really slipped under the radar. Why, we can all ask, was there no public debate about this? (Margo: Because the fundamentalist Zionist lobby controls politics and the media in the US and Australia. A chapter in my book by Antony Loewenstein includes an indictment of the tactics of these people by Bob Carr.)

As you know, I routinely publish complaints about my work, of which there were many during last year’s debate on the Ashrawi affair (for example, see Ashrawi leaves behind a fresh air debate on the Israel Palestine question and More than two sides to Ashrawi fallout story.)

But this time, most complaints were marked ‘not for publication’ and went straight to the editor, demanding that I be sacked for “anti-Semitic Jew baiting” and “incitement to racial hatred”. I was also accused of “the kind of language and views that I might expect to find in some diatribe by Goebbels”. Another complainant said that my “comments come straight out of Czarist Russia”.

A number of colleagues at the Sydney Morning Herald also wrote to me privately expressing their distaste for my remarks. The suggestion that “the fundamentalist Zionist lobby controls politics and the media in the US and Australia” was “not true now – and nor was it true when a secret group of “fundamentalist” Russian Jews, who planned to set up a Jewish world state, were alleged to have declared that “the Press, with a few exceptions, is already entirely in our hands”.

The only complaint not marked NFP was from Paul Williams, who wrote: “Well done Margo, straight from the annals of Nazi propaganda. Tell me, do the Jews control the banks and international finance as well?”

Obviously, I did not mean what many people believed I meant. I am not anti-semitic, and I thought what I wrote was a statement of fact. Is there a language problem here? So I read more about Zionism, its history and its various meanings at Wikipedia and corresponded with two Jewish Australians of my acquaintance to work out where I’d gone wrong.

One, who wishes to remain anonymous, wrote that my comment was “a bit rich – it’s harking back to classic anti-semitic stereotypes.” I responded: “I admit I’m at a loss to understand the anti-semitic charge. Is it the use of the ‘Zionist’ lobby? After all, there are Zionist Federations everywhere. Or is it the suggestion that this lobby controls politics and silences the media on the Israel issue? I’d really appreciate your advice on this – it seemed so uncontroversial when I wrote it – I suppose because I mix largely with left wing Jewish Australians. Is there another form of words which won’t offend people but makes the same point?”

He replied: “It’s the second suggestion: that Zionist groups control politics and the media i.e. that they are lumped into one intangible network, with a power so great that it is by nature malignant. By analogy, it’s akin to lumping all muslims into one one umbrella, and assigning to all muslims the aims and activities of just some. I also think using the adjective ‘fundamentalist’ is not quite right. It implies a religious fundamentalism and the religious intolerance (no brooking of difference in values) that goes with that. I suspect you were alluding to the political intolerance (ie no brooking of dissent). There’s a difference.”

I still couldn’t quite work it out, because “Fundamentalist Zionism” was not a description of all Jewish people, but of some Jewish and some fundamentalist Christian people in a political movement which support the actions of Sharon and his Likud party without question. In that regard, on the recommendation of a reader I read Israel’s apartheid: roots in ‘Revisionist Zionism’ (July 23). It reads:

When Ariel Sharon became Prime Minister of Israel, the picture on the wall was not that of Theodore Herzl, the secular and worldly European Jewish journalist whose book ‘The Jewish State’ launched the movement to create a modern-day nation-state tied to historical Judaism. Rather the picture on the wall was that of Vladimir Jabotinsky, the Jewish militant who was for many years the arch-nemesis of the Zionist establishment led by David Ben-Gurion and the Labor Party.

Jabotinsky was in fact declared a fascist by his opponents for espousing what today can be easily recognized as a kind of racist ‘ethnic-cleansing’ philosophy. He was so controversial that the leaders of Israel refused to even let him be buried in the Jewish State until the late 1970s after the first victory of his followers when Manachem Begin became Prime Minister.

In 1923, a generation after Herzl wrote ‘The Jewish State’, Jabotinsky wrote ‘The Iron Wall’. The roots of what has become Israeli Apartheid and now the widely-condemned nearly 500 kilometer long “Wall” are in this approach to the Palestinians long known as “Revisionism Zionism” and long the underlying philosophy of those who today rule Israel and attempt to speak for American Jewry. This telling excerpt from Jabotinsky’s ‘The Iron Wall’:

“There can be no discussion of voluntary reconciliation between us and the Arabs, not now, and not in the foreseeable future. All well-meaning people, with the exception of those blind from birth, understood long ago the complete impossibility of arriving at a voluntary agreement with the Arabs of Palestine for the transformation of Palestine from an Arab country to a country with a Jewish majority. Each of you has some general understanding of the history of colonization. Try to find even one example when the colonization of a country took place with the agreement of the native population. Such an event has never occurred.

The natives will always struggle obstinately against the colonists – and it is all the same whether they are cultured or uncultured. The comrades in arms of [Hernan] Cortez or [Francisco] Pizarro conducted themselves like brigands. The Redskins fought with uncompromising fervor against both evil and good-hearted colonizers. The natives struggled because any kind of colonization anywhere at anytime is inadmissible to any native people.

Any native people view their country as their national home, of which they will be complete masters. They will never voluntarily allow a new master. So it is for the Arabs. Compromisers among us try to convince us that the Arabs are some kind of fools who can be tricked with hidden formulations of our basic goals. I flatly refuse to accept this view of the Palestinian Arabs.

They have the precise psychology that we have. They look upon Palestine with the same instinctive love and true fervor that any Aztec looked upon his Mexico or any Sioux upon his prairie. Each people will struggle against colonizers until the last spark of hope that they can avoid the dangers of conquest and colonization is extinguished. The Palestinians will struggle in this way until there is hardly a spark of hope.

It matters not what kind of words we use to explain our colonization. Colonization has its own integral and inescapable meaning understood by every Jew and by every Arab. Colonization has only one goal. This is in the nature of things. To change that nature is impossible. It has been necessary to carry on colonization against the will of the Palestinian Arabs and the same condition exists now.

Even an agreement with non-Palestinians represents the same kind of fantasy. In order for Arab nationalists of Baghdad and Mecca and Damascus to agree to pay so serious a price they would have to refuse to maintain the Arab character of Palestine.

We cannot give any compensation for Palestine, neither to the Palestinians nor to other Arabs. Therefore, a voluntary agreement is inconceivable. All colonization, even the most restricted, must continue in defiance of the will of the native population. Therefore, it can continue and develop only under the shield of force which comprises an Iron Wall through which the local population can never break through. This is our Arab policy. To formulate it any other way would be hypocrisy.”

***

This was the sense in which I used the phrase “Fundamentalist Zionism”. Could a reader advise another form of words to describe this subset of Zionism which does not offend? As to my belief that powerful members of this subset control politics and the media, I thought this was stating a fact (see, for example, Shifting sands and awakening public and Senator Hollings Is Right: it’s all about Israel). I thought it was well known that in the US no politician wanting re-election would speak out about the excesses of current Israeli policy. I thought the relentless intimidation of the media by Australia’s AIJAC was commonly accepted. Clearly neither of these suppositions were true. My apologies.

I also asked Jenny Green, a long time Webdiarist and Jewish Australian, to help me understand where I went wrong. She replied:

“A nasty one. I clocked that when I read Webdiary last week and thought “Oh no, she’s going to get yelled at….”. I don’t believe or support some of the stuff I’m about to say, I’m just going to try to explain it.

No, it’s not anti-semitic, but I may be saying that because I know exactly what you’re referring to by the fundamentalist Zionist lobby. I think it could all be cleared up by defining the terms in which you’re talking – for instance, the fundamentalist Zionist lobby (at least in the US) is not exclusively Jewish, but also comprises many scary Christians, who believe (for various reasons) that the establishment of the state of Israel is necessary for the second coming. (No, I’m not joking! And there are LOTS of them.) Israelis are a bit divided on this issue – some of them welcome the support, while most of them deeply mistrust it.

It may also help if you define why Zionist is not synonymous with Jew. It may also help if you spell out that not all Jews have the financial clout and political power you write of. I know this must feel a little precious, but I can explain – a bit – why comments such as this get are getting an increasingly strong reaction.

Many Jews – ordinary, Australian, often non-practising, non-political, non-shul attending Jews – feel that when Palestinians or Palestinian supporting groups make a public “complaint” about the whole debacle, their complaints are welcomed, published and supported – but when Jews, or Jewish-supporting groups complain about – SPECIFICALLY – suicide bombers, they are told that because they are members of a wealthy, influential zionist lobby they have no right to complain. This often feels close to the sort of all “all Jews have lots of money and are secretly trying to take over the world” scenario which has been all too familiar.

This feeds right into the other biggest fear – that by refusing to explicitly condemn suicide bombing, the old attitude of a Jew’s death being worth nothing is on the rise again. And the fact – which I noticed especially during the Ashrawi debate – that the description “Jew” is being used more and more often doesn’t help. You have to remember that that label has variously been a source of shame and fear and danger within the lifetime of my own grandparents.

Not all Jews are Zionists. Not all Jews are rich. Not all Jews have political clout. If fact, most do not. And the interests of all Jews are not covered by the activities of those Jews who DO have money and political power. So when my cousin gets killed in a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv and I demand some action to prevent this happening, and Ariel Sharon decides that that action will take the form of a wall (which I personally think is discraceful), I get really angry when “you” tell me that instead of taking action to stop my other loved ones being killed, I have to right to self defence because I have the money and standing to get whet I want anyway.

I’m not saying that you specifically are trying to do this, but do you get what I mean? Just define your terms. Even during the Ashrawi debate, some definition would have prevented much of the angst amd anger of some of the responses. I remember noticing that several people who took offence at some of the responses were actually saying the same thing but had just misunderstood each other.

By the way, I’m half Jewish and half Irish – not only do I have terrorists on both sides of the family, but if there is a book of Guilt then honey, I wrote it!

***

To conclude, I sincerely apologise for any offence caused, and will be happy to publish reader discussion on the matter. The latest outbreak of hostilities is the decision by the Presbyterian Church in the US to consider divesting its assets in Israel: see haaretz.

***

READERS ON THE WALL, AND ITS SUPPORTERS

A long time journalist who closely watches Middle East Politics

One thing that is such a telltale about Downer’s recent closeness to the Jewish right is his continued use of the expresion “suicide-homicide bomber”. There’s inherently nothing with it per se apart from the simple clumsiness of the expression, but the phrase has history. It was in the very far right in Israel and the US that the push came for this expression a couple of years ago, the argument being that even the expresion suicide bomber was unfair to Israel because it promoted the martyr and left out the victim. Totally one-eyed media watch groups like the hideoushonestreporting pushed its use as a matter of urgency, suggesting the use of “suicide bomber” was tantamount to supporting the act! Whatever the rather spurious merits of that argument, the expression became a real identifier of people from the “Israel right or wrong” side of politics.

So just watch how Downer is so absolutely careful to never use the expression “suicide bomber”, flagging his support behind – well behind Likud I guess.

***

Grant Bar

You seem to think that Moir’s cartoon of 23/7 sums up the situation in the Middle East. Hardly surprising as you both seem to only be aware of (or pay attention to) the facts that support the conclusion that you have already reached – that is, Israel is bad and can do no right and the Palestinians are all peace loving people who, if given “back” the West Bank and Gaza would happily live in peace with Israel. Would that were true. Please find below the complete text of my letter to the editor regarding Moir’s cartoon:

Moir’s cartoon in today’s SMH demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the Arab/Israeli conflict (or a deliberate attempt to ignore the facts). Israel was attacked in 1967 and in this defensive war captured the Gaza Strip from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan (neither of whom created a Palestinian state when they occupied these lands).

UN Resolution 242 called for an exchange of “land for peace”. Israel has subsequently signed such peace agreements with these countries and they reclaimed all the land that they wanted. Neither wanted to take back control of the West Bank or Gaza even to immediately create a Palestinian state within these territories as it suited them to keep a thorn in Israel’s side.

These lands are now disputed territories. Israel offered Arafat 97% of this land in exchange for peace (with a territory exchanges to compensate for the 3%) in 2000. Arafat refused outright and unleashed a storm of terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians.

Israel is building a barrier to protect her citizens. When the Palestinian leadership is prepared to make peace a barrier can be moved but those murdered by terrorist bombs cannot be brought back to life.”

I am sure that the Palestinian people are suffering and I have sympathy for them but their suffering is as a direct result of the policies of their leaders. To focus on their suffering exclusively without putting this into the context of the Israeli suffering under constant terrorist attacks and the numerous attempts by Israel to make peace which have been spurned by the Palestinian leadership is to only consider part of the picture.

Australia’s vote against the International Court of Justice’s ruling on the barrier was a vote in recognition of a country’s right to defend herself against terrorism. The question is not why Australia voted against the UN resolution, but why more countries did not do the same.

***

Allen Jay

First congratulations on the book – I bought it on release at Brisbane airport and read it on the way to Manila. Yes, we have to get rid of John but will Mark be radical enough to wind back all the damage? Bob Brown seems the only small light in a Dark Night.

Anyway onto the latest digusting bit – the pro Israel vote in the general assembly and Alexanders disgusting defense of it. He really is a pathetic excuse for a man – mind you Little John is not much better – and these are our representatives to the world, representing the ANZAC spirit?! God help us all.

This really is the rabid right wing Zioinists leading the US and Australia meekly tagging behind – this is like a mirror image of the NAZI plan, which given Lenni Brenner’s investigations into the early history of the Zionist leadership is not surprising. When Sharon come to power on the back of the assassination of a PM who made peace with the Palestinians promising to destroy that peace, should anyone be suprised at what he has been prepared to do to achieve that end?

I know Anthony Loewenstein would not agree and is sensitive to the comparison, but, how else can it but be compared in all its ruthlessness, illegality and arrogance to the master race in replay (see Rubenstein strikes again: Now Howard’s a champion of human rights!).

The real problem for all of us is to stop this nonsense before it really does come back to destroy us as well as the people we have already destroyed in Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq.

***

Andrew Price in Singapore

Good luck with going solo, I did it five years ago and have not looked back. I have lived in Singapore for 10 years but still logon to the SMH and Webdiary regularly. I thought you may be interested in my correspondence to the Australian High Commissioner in Singapore about this week’s vote against the UN resolution calling on Israel to dismantle its wall. As a Muslim convert, I wonder whether the Australian government has gone completely AWOL on its recent foreign policy decisions. It is hard to imagine any justification that could be given for the current route and location for this wall other than even more injustice for the Palestinians. Maybe that is why the Government voted against the UN resolution.

From: Andrew Price, July 21

To: Gary.Quinlan@dfat.gov.au

Subject: Terrorism White Paper

Gary,

I received the White Paper today, thank you very much.

It is impressive in its research on the problem of extremism and the ideology behind the “Al Qaida” way of thinking. It was good to read in there that Australia understands well and appreciates the difference between the ideology of the terrorists and mainstream Islam, especially in SE Asia.

But on a separate note I was shocked to read that Australia was one of a handful of countries that voted yesterday against the UN General Assembly resolution to press Israel to remove its illegal wall.

It is hard to imagine how any justification could be given for Australia’s decision which of course will be viewed extremely badly in the entire Islamic world. To me, there is no greater injustice than that faced by the Palestinians living under an illegal occupation for nearly 40 years.

While Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorists is understandable, the big problem is the location of the wall, not the wall itself. If the wall was located along the so-called green line, there would be no cause for complaint. However, its present location is clearly designed to make life impossible for even more Palestinians and to put more pressure on them to leave and to assume even more of their land.

How is it possible for Australia to ignore the findings of the International Court of Justice about the illegality of Israel’s plans? The resolution calls on Israel to comply with the International Court of Justice’s advisory opinion issued July 9 and tear down the barrier. It even included a requirement on the Palestinian Authority to “undertake visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning violent attacks”.

Australia’s one-sided support for Israel is becoming as absurd as the position of the United States itself.

Surely resolving the Israel/Palestine dispute must be one of the best ways of reducing the threat of global terrorism. I notice that the White Paper does not even mention the importance of this dispute to the level of frustration and embitterment felt by so many Muslims and others about the injustice suffered by the Palestinians. But to ignore this factor in order not to be seen as rewarding terrorists is a grave mistake, in my opinion.

I am at a loss to explain to my friends the logic of recent Australian foreign policy decisions.

Antony Loewenstein writes the Engineering Consent column on the workings of the media.

“The promise that democracy would spread from a liberated Iraq, for example, was as poorly scrutinised [by the media] as the notion advanced by the administration that the Geneva conventions did not apply to the war on terror.” Moises Naim, The Financial Times, June 1, 2004

“Never underestimate the power of ideology and myth – in this case anti-Americanism – to trump reality. But at least we now know for sure it is not love, but being a left-wing intellectual, that means never having to say you’re sorry.” The Australian, 12 April 2004

The New York Times released an unprecedented statement on May 26. Though buried on page A10, the paper announced that in the run-up to the Iraq war, “we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been.” This was the understatement of the year, even from a paper as prone to making grand statements of unsubstantiated fact regarding Iraq’s WMD and links to Islamic terrorism.

My earlier report, The New York Times‘ role in promoting war in Iraq, outlined the ways in which its star reporter, Judith Miller, produced numerous page one stories painting a doomsday prediction of Saddam’s biological, chemical and nuclear arsenal. Frequently written without caveats or even mild qualifications, it has since emerged that the vast majority of her scoops were gleaned from Ahmad Chalabi, recently described by, of all people, L. Marc Zell, former law partner of Douglas Feith, current Undersecretary of Defence, as “a treacherous, spineless turncoat.”

Chalabi was also feted and supported financially by many of the neo-conservative ideologues in Washington’s power-elite such as Vice-President Dick Cheney and Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz. Since the early 1990s, Chalabi’s INC (Iraqi National Congress) gathered friends, confidantes and generous benefactors to support the overthrow of Saddam’s regime. Problem is, Chalabi is now under suspicion of sharing American secrets with the Iranian theocracy and hoodwinking, on a scale virtually unprecedented, many of the main players behind the Bush administration’s push towards the illegal Iraqi invasion.

The role of The Australian newspaper in pushing the war agenda was essential. Like every other Murdoch newspaper around the world, dutifully pushing their master’s wishes, the mogul said in early 2003: “We can’t back down now, where you hand over the whole of the Middle East to Saddam…. I think Bush is acting very morally, very correctly, and I think he is going to go on with it.” Putting to one side the factual inaccuracy of his statement (Saddam has held little strategic influence over the Middle East for at least a decade), Murdoch’s pro-war and pro-business agenda was mirrored in The Australian‘s coverage. Apart from bullying and foreboding editorials regarding Iraq’s supposed WMD, Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan deserves special mention for hyping up Iraq’s supposed threat. No other Australian journalist produced more fawning attention to the claims churned out by Bush, Blair and Howard, though stable-mate Paul Kelly was also competitive. Virtually all of his claims have subsequently been proven false and yet no apology has been forthcoming. Likewise from the paper’s editorial staff. This kind of short-term memory loss journalism is undermining the public’s trust in the media’s ability to report accurately and transparently. This behaviour should not be considered responsible reporting – it is nothing more than lies and arrogance dressed up in sanctimonious chest beating.

The Times May 26 statement made no mention of Judith Miller. Indeed, the paper congratulated itself first (“we found an enormous amount of journalism that we are proud of”) before discussing past mistakes. Focusing on journalist’s reliance on Iraqi informants, defectors and exiles committed on “regime change”, the publication admitted it had frequently run claims as fact. “Administration officials now acknowledge that they sometimes fell for misinformation from these exile sources”, the Times wrote. “Articles based on dire claims about Iraq tended to get prominent display, while follow-up articles that called the original ones into question were sometimes buried. In some cases, there was no follow-up at all.”

One of the more incendiary claims before the war was Iraq’s supposed use of aluminium tubing for the manufacture of nuclear weapons fuel. The Times reported these accusations as close to fact in late 2002, while in reality the evidence was far less convincing. The paper’s mea culpa accepted that they should have been vigilant in reporting the use of the tubes. “Five days later [after September 8, 2002], the Times reporters learned that the tubes were in fact a subject of debate among intelligence agencies. The misgivings appeared deep in an article on Page A13, under a headline that gave no inkling that we were revising our earlier view (‘White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons’)”. Once again, government voices were given prominence over the more sceptical view. It was a sin committed time and time again from late 2001 to mid 2003 in relation to WMD.

On April 21, 2003, while embedded with the 101st Airborne Division, south of Baghdad, Miller reported an Iraqi scientist who claimed that Saddam had destroyed chemical and biological weapons only days before the war had begun. It was yet another Miller “exclusive” and faithfully placed prominently. No weapons were ever found and amazingly, in an act of faith the Times must surely be regretting, she accepted the military’s rules of engagement: “this reporter was not permitted to interview the scientist or visit his home. Nor was she permitted to write about the discovery of the scientist for three days, and the copy was then submitted for a check by military officials.” Hardly fearless reporting by the world’s supposedly finest publication.

A few days before the Times printed its mea culpa, a memo was sent to staff explaining the rationale. Executive Editor Bill Keller and Managing Editor Jill Abramson claimed the note was “not an attempt to find a scapegoat or to blame reporters for not knowing then what we know now. Nor is it intended to signal that you should pull your punches. Quite the contrary. As you have probably noticed in, for example, our coverage of the prisoner abuse story, we prize hard-won, hard-hitting stories … For those of you who are wondering about the next chapter of this ordeal, the next chapter is, we keep reporting.”

After publication of the note, more than 300 newspapers in the US, and countless around the world, were faced with the task of reviewing their own methods. On May 27, The Sydney Morning Herald published a piece from The Washington Post and attached an acknowledgement that the paper had published “three of the problematic stories.” There was no follow-up or investigation of the unprecedented Times move. Alarmingly, the only Fairfax publication to seriously address this scandal was The Financial Review. (On May 28, Tony Walker examined the fall-out of the editor’s note and quoted Slate columnist Jack Shafer: “The true test of the Times is on the horizon: having promised to set the record straight on the Iraq WMD story, what sort of journalism will the newspaper commit?”)

In the US, many papers printed elements of the Times apology. The most telling response, however, came from Doug Clifton, editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland. His paper ran the editor’s note on page two but questioned the Times alerting his paper at 10pm the night before. “A correction ought not to be one of those things you have to deal with as breaking news”, Clifton said. “They knew about this for a while. It is sort of bothersome that they did not put any advisories out.” It can be persuasively argued that The New York Times wasn’t too keen on making its wide readership aware of past transgressions.

Other editors across America raised the more fundamental questions over the editor’s note, from the use of unnamed sources to editorial controls over content. Clifton compared the event with the Jayson Blair scandal, though arguing, “it’s worse because it speaks to the essence of the reporting and editing process. That is worse than one guy screwing around and playing fast and loose.”

If there was ever doubt over Times support for Judith Miller, her by-line reappeared in early June. The story examined the role of the UN in the oil-for-food program. Astoundingly, Chalabi featured – proudly defended by an Iraqi National Congress official. Greg Mitchell from Editor & Publisher wrote on June 2 that “nowhere in the story is there any relevance to Chalabi’s track record with Miller or the Times, or its stunning downfall last week. More irony: the Miller story (co-written by Warren Hoge) appeared on the same day the Times, on its front page, strongly suggested that Chalabi had passed vital US secrets to the Iranians. Yet more irony: right next to the new Miller story was a lengthy article titled, ‘Powell Presses CIA on Faulty Intelligence on Iraq Arms.’ You can’t make this stuff up. (Well, come to think of it, maybe you can.)”

The establishment last December of the Times Public Editor, Daniel Okrent, was a welcome sign of further accountability. On May 30, Okrent went further than the editor’s note and more fully explained the ways in which the newspaper printed numerous false stories on Iraq’s WMD. Though beginning with the clear statement of “I think they got it right. Mostly”, he soon admits fundamental flaws in the paper’s editorial guidelines. After speaking to numerous reporters and editors related to the WMD story, he is convinced that “a dysfunctional system enabled some reporters operating out of Washington and Baghdad to work outside the lines of customary bureau management. In some instances, reporters who raised substantive questions about certain stories were not heeded. Worse, some with substantial knowledge of the subject at hand seem not to have been given the chance to express reservations.”

It is a strong statement and admirable. It is certainly the most transparent admission of any newspaper on this matter. The fact that it doesn’t go nearly far enough is also relevant and the fact that the note is only online and unlikely to be read by vast amounts of people is equally worrying. It’s an encouraging start, however, and will hopefully lead to deeper examination of how one of the world’s major papers became the Bush administration’s ideal conduit for outrageous, dishonest and false accusations. Strong supporters of media accountability should be supporting similar institutions here. Perhaps The Sydney Morning Herald is having similar thoughts.

Michael Massing commented in The New York Review of Books on June 24 that the Times mea culpa was a welcome sign but “for months, the Times has seemed slow to recognise important news developments out of Iraq and to give them the attention they deserve. Aside from the Abu Ghraib scandal, which has largely taken over the Times coverage, the paper has seemed intent on keeping bad news off the front page.” Furthermore, Massing offers advice for a Western media increasingly behind in its coverage and scope:

“If US news organizations truly wanted to get inside events in Iraq, there’s a clear step they could take: incorporating more reporting and footage from international news organizations. Al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya, and other Arabic-language TV stations have a wide presence on the ground. European outlets like the BBC, the Guardian and Le Monde have Arabic-speaking correspondents with close knowledge of the Middle East…. It’s remarkable how little reporting from these organizations makes it way into American news accounts.”

So what of the Times international reputation? The Guardian on May 29 was scathing. Aside from chiding editorial and Judith Miller herself for blindness towards the deceit Chalabi, journalist James Moore uncovered some rudimentary facts about Miller’s political background and allegiances:

“The Middle East Forum, an organisation that openly advocated that the US overthrow Saddam, listed Miller as an expert speaker on its website and held a launch party for her book. She was represented by Benador Associates, a speakers’ bureau that specialises in conservative thinkers with Middle East expertise. I asked Miller if she supported Bush politically. ‘My views are well known,’ she replied. ‘I understood that these people who hated us so much … that if they ever got their hands on WMD, they would use them. Do I have a belief that the WMD exist, and a fear? Yeah, I have real fear for my country.’

Nobody wanted a war against Iraq more than Ahmad Chalabi, and the biggest paper in the US gave it to him almost as willingly as the White House did.”

(One of the most detailed and devastating examinations of Miller’s background, experience and personal allegiances is by Franklin Foer of June’s New York Metro.

A strong condemnation of the Times came from US-based progressive website, Buzzflash. Demanding nothing less than regime change at the newspaper (due in no small part to its lack of personnel changes), the editorial chastises the myths around which the paper operates:

“Make no mistake about it; the NYT tries to continue to appear to be a liberal newspaper in its news coverage. It tends to take a secular perspective on choice, race, and gender issues, for instance. But being ‘modern’ and ‘urban’ has not precluded the NYT from being, in general, insidiously pro-Republican and anti-Democratic Party in its presidential news coverage, whatever specific exceptions it can offer to the contrary.”

Furthermore, it argued that the “gray lady” needs journalists and editors who would “re-institute the tradition of investigative reporting that uncovers the wrongs done by political figures that violate the public trust. It needs regime change to meet White House pronouncements with skepticism, instead of plastering them on the front page with several column headlines.” Much of their suggestions equally apply to Australia’s broadsheets. Despite an ever-increasing quotient of lies emanating from John Howard’s ministers, it continues printing Government statements as fact, until proven otherwise. Reactive, not proactive journalism is the death of accountable media. When was the last night a mainstream newspaper clearly and confidently accused a major public figure of lying and then stuck with the story for weeks, keeping the pressure on daily? As famed journalist Phillip Knightley recently said: “There are a lot of stories in Australia which start with a big bang, then exposure, then inequity. Newspapers lose interest. I think readers care. You can make the readers care.”

Buzzflash puts it best: “May the [Times] return to its role, in its new section, as a voice for democracy, the engagement of public political debate, uncoverer of corruption, investigative journalism and seeker of truth and justice…. Judith Miller should go, but so should all the individuals responsible for a ‘corporate culture’ at The New York Times that has failed democracy.”

Alexander Cockburn of Counterpunch, a long-time critic of the Times, argued on May 28 that the paper’s mea culpa was nothing more than an avoidance of the real issues. His argument goes to the heart of the journalistic profession:

“This brings us to the now popular scapegoat for the fictions about WMDs, touted by Timeseditors, by other reporters and by US intelligence agencies. It was all the fault of the smooth-tongued Ahmed Chalabi, now fallen from grace and stigmatized as a cat’s-paw of Iranian intelligence. But was there ever a moment when Chalabi’s motives and the defectors he efficiently mass-produced should not have been questioned by experienced reporters, editors and intelligence analysts?”

Cockburn articulates a necessary malaise within mainstream journalism. Noam Chomsky calls itManufacturing Consent. He writes that the mass media “serves to mobilize support for the special interests that dominate the state and private activity and that their choices, emphases, and omissions can often be understood best, and sometimes with striking clarity and insight, by analyzing them in such terms. Perhaps this is an obvious point, but the democratic postulate is that the media are independent and committed to discovering and reporting the truth, and that they do not merely reflect the world as powerful groups wish to perceive it.” The New York Times is exactly the kind of newspaper Chomsky argues is incapable of seeing its inherent biases and slavish love of power. The newspaper’s virtually unqualified reporting of Bush administration lies over Iraq is ample evidence of this thesis.

The Sydney Morning Herald editorialised on 19 March 2003 that Australia should not enter the impending Iraq conflict. “It should not have come to this”, it stated. “The international community should not have failed to disarm Iraq peacefully. The United Nations Security Council should not have failed so spectacularly (ed: blindly authorising American demands and militarism?). The United States and Britain should not have been left to go it alone (ed: to invade a country illegally and with no weapons threatening the region or the world?) And when the moment of truth arrived, Australia should not have been so deeply committed to a course set by the US and Britain that it had no choice. We could only confirm the already promised support and are now in a deeply regrettable war.” The best that can be said for its stand was the call for calm – and no war.

By November 4, the Herald expressed its concerns about the lack of WMD, but along with the majority of Western media, still held Bush administration claims for Iraq as believable and achievable: “The US has not wavered from its commitment to see Iraq rebuilt and power transferred to a stable democratic government”, it offered. The facts overwhelm that the US has never wanted a real democracy in the Middle East, despite the vast rhetoric, but rather a manageable dictator or strongman to control the country’s oil reserves and the continual presence of US forces. It appears inconceivable to the Herald that the US government’s aims for Iraq should be questioned. After the lies of Iraq’s non-existent WMD and links to al-Qaeda, why do Leader writers continue accepting Western governments’ comments as essentially decent and good? As Medialens (www.medialens.org) offered after the passing of Ronald Reagan on June 10:

“Thus, last year, it rapidly became understood in the media that it was wrong to continue challenging the Iraq war once the shooting had started. The invasion had become no less immoral, illegal or murderous when it was actually being fought, but we owed it to ‘our boys’ – risking life and limb in service to our country – to ‘back them’. All challenges to this argument were dismissed out of hand – the idea that we could best protest ‘our boys’ by bringing them home, for example, was considered mere sophistry.”

Once again, on March 19, the Herald continued the idea that Iraq may become a democracy in the heart of the Middle East – exactly echoing the propaganda of Bush, Blair and Howard. As the three leaders’ spin shifted from WMD and al-Qaeda to Iraqi ‘democracy’, so did the mainstream press. “One year on, the justification for the war is not the justification for starting it. Instead it is the hope that by toppling Saddam, Iraq might become a template for a new, stable Middle East.” The evidence against this is profound, from polls conducted in the region to US Army Generals toaverage Iraqis themselves. And yet newspapers still prefer to live in a reality created for them by their government “masters”.

Greg Sheridan is The Australian‘s Foreign Editor and is well versed in swallowing and propagating government spin. He is notorious as an apologist for the former Indonesian regime of Suharto, once mocking an Australian parliamentary study that revealed over 200,00 people had been killed during the dictator’s reign. His performance, and that of his Murdoch cheer-leading paper, both during the run-up to the Iraq conflict, and increasingly since, has been nothing less than a continual shifting of the goal posts of responsibility and truth.

As early at late September 2002, Sheridan was already building the case for war against Saddam. After the release of the now infamous dossier by Tony Blair’s Government, Sheridan wrote the following: “[the dossier] goes some way to nailing the preposterous idea that there is a lack of evidence that Saddam Hussein has and is pursuing weapons of mass destruction.” He soon breathlessly mentioned the absurd 45-minute claim (that Saddam could deploy chemical and biological weapons in less than one hour) and Saddam’s attempts to obtain uranium from Niger (subsequently proven false by the Bush administration itself). This dossier has since been proven untrue and yet there has been no apology or acknowledgement by Sheridan of his grievous error.

By early 2003, Sheridan was content to quote Henry Kissinger, former US secretary of state and official apologist for mass murder and Third-World dictatorships. (Christopher Hitchens has been one of the most eloquent accusers against the former government chameleon.) Sheridan wrote as if he and Kissinger were best of friends (“All his discussions were off the record, including with me, so I can’t tell you exactly what he said”) and then explained the reasons that we should listen to a man who co-ordinated the overthrow of the democratally elected government of Chile in 1973 and the carpet bombing of Cambodia in the early 1970s, among a host of other war crimes. “Kissinger’s judgement”, gushed Sheridan, “that this action [to invade Iraq] is necessary and is being carried out by one of the most formidable national security teams ever assembled in Washington – is surely right.” The question remains: what does a person need to do before Sheridan deems him too corrupted by power, and is Mugabe and Milosovic next on his interview wish list?

By the middle of 2003, and with a glaring lack of WMD, Sheridan’s allies were looking shaky. On 12 July, The Australian ran a story on Page 1 claiming “soldiers have found what the US believes is proof of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program”. (Note the shift from “weapons” to “programs”.) Only by turning to Page 11 were readers illuminated by this bold claim. Sheridan had interviewed John Bolton, the US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and Security. Though described as a non neo-conservative by Sheridan, Bolton was indeed one of the main players behind the rush to war. And once again, outrageously optimistic statements were made without qualification or hesitation: “The evidence that Hussein had WMD programs is so overwhelming, he [Bolton] can barely understand how it is doubted.” The world is still waiting to be stunned by Bolton’s “overwhelming” evidence.

15 December 2003 brought the first sign of major triumpantalism by Sheridan, with the capture of Saddam. His analysis, however, has proven to be spectacularly inaccurate and culturally insensitive. With statements such as these: “Axis of evil dictators should know this is the end point of the defiance of US power” and “Arab culture universally respects power and the effective disposition of force”, we are faced with an Orientalism of the most racist kind. “This must be a massive boost for George W. Bush domestically”, offered Sheridan. “Nothing succeeds like success and it will be very hard for his opponents to deny this success to Bush and his policy. All politics are temporary, but this is a great day for the good guys everywhere.” Looks like he wasn’t reading the early reports of prisoner abuse, murder and exploitation in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

By early 2004, even Sheridan seemed perturbed about the lack of WMD. However, rather than seeking out the voices of intelligence figures who were critiquing Bush administration claims, he spoke to two veterans of Israeli intelligence, one of whom had actually worked with the Bush administration. Sheridan found it incomprehensible that the “Coalition of the Willing” had lied and greatly exaggerated Iraq’s threat level for political and strategic reasons. He was therefore doing his best, in regular Thursday columns, to cushion the blow for Western governments caught twisting the truth. One could not find a finer apologist for Western crimes. As Scott Burchill, lecturer in international relations at Deakin University, wrote on 1 March 2004, the WMD cheerleaders in the media “remain utterly shameless about their conduct.”

Murdoch’s Australian has been the key propaganda arm in the country. One editorial after another has trumpeted the rightness of the “Coalition’s” mission in Iraq. In late January last year, the paper was already proving its pro-Bush/Blair/Howard stance. “We are not at war, but we have signaled to the international community, and Iraq, that Australia rejects the route of appeasement. As an open democracy and a strong but not unthinking ally of the US, the difficult course we have taken provides leadership towards a peaceful world and is in the nation’s interests.” This is but one of the paper’s truly Orwellian statements – peace is war and war is peace. And nowhere does Murdoch’s mouthpiece (with a fundamental belief that war is good for business) outline where Australia has actually questioned Bush administration policy. Guantanamo Bay? Prisoner abuse accusations in Afghanistan? Government sanctioned torture at US military facilities? Only three examples the Howard Government surely knew about.

In the light of Reagan’s recent death and the mainstream media’s virtual whitewashing of his true legacy (perhaps expressed best by incendiary journalist, Greg Palast, the Australian‘s Leader on 31 January 2003 is worth repeating. After Bush’s speech to the UN, the paper said: “Far from looking stupid, Mr. Bush nowadays has an almost Reaganite ease of communication. Both the style of substance of his address gave weight to the emerging view that in some respects the Bush presidency represents ‘Reagan’s third term’, and has the potential to transform the international scene by its unambiguous adherence to ‘simplistic’ principles of freedom and decency.” As ever, the corruption, conflicts of interest and untruths displayed by our leaders are minor facts to be wished away by talking about “asserting the claims of peace and security over the threat of chaos.”

Saddam’s link to Islamist terrorism was one of the main tenets for pro-war supporters. The Bush administration constantly suggested links to al-Qaeda and 9-11 and The Australian was more than happy to shadow the accusations. “The Iraq dictator’s links with international terrorism cannot be dismissed as fantasy”, claimed the paper on 5 February. “The example an unrepentant and triumphant Hussein would set to regimes like North Korea is not an option to embrace.” The only credible evidence linking Saddam to international terrorism was his supporting and funding of Palestinian families whose child had committed suicide bombing. This kind of action can hardly be compared to the actions of al-Qaeda or Jemaah Islamiah and is no threat to the safety of the world, aside from Israel.

By the end of February, the paper issued its most aggressive stance: “The day is rapidly approaching when opponents of military action to disarm Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship will have no choice but to either put up or shut up.” Mirroring Government spin on appeasement, Murdoch’s mouthpiece hammered the themes of getting tough and freeing the Iraqi people from tyranny. Unsurprisingly, and not unlike the Herald, the Australian stressed the inherent goodness of the Howard Government, struggling with massive decisions. And once again, the thought that Howard was joining the “Coalition” for less than freedom-loving reasons was unutterable.

Underlying the Australian‘s message was the “national interest.” Arguing that 9-11 had made the policy of containment no longer relevant, Australia had to act decisively to avoid the “nightmare scenario” – terrorists with WMD. One of the more telling examples of the paper’s hazy logic and lack of rigorous journalistic ethics was this statement on 14 March:

“While Mr. Howard did not adduce direct evidence of a connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq, he detailed the terrorists’ interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction, and Iraq’s interests in aiding and abetting terrorism. The dots are there to be joined.”

Forget about watertight evidence. Forget about conclusive proof that Iraq is an imminent threat to the safety of the world. Politicians wanting to create in the public’s mind the impression that Saddam and Osama bin Laden are one and the same thing (a dangerous misnomer) was a disturbing confusion propagated by Murdoch’s broadsheet. (This fact has now been proven false again by the 9-11 Commission.

Once the bombs starting dropping on Iraq in late March 2003 (described in March 2004 as “a model of military art and … remarkable restraint”), the paper continued pushing the imminent-threat lie parroted by Howard, Bush and Blair. “While much more formidable than Iraq, Iran and North Korea do not pose the same kind of immediate threat … At least seven nations possess nuclear weapons, and an unknown number have biological and chemical weapons: ignoring Iraq would have encouraged proliferation.” The sheer hypocrisy of these statements is astounding. First, Israel as one of the world’s greatest proliferators is never mentioned. Second, America’s record of reducing its WMD stockpile is abysmal. Indeed, the Bush administration has frequently publicly expressed its desire to resume nuclear testing. In 2001, the US refused to enforce a protocol to ban biological weapons, saying that to do so would put at risk national security and confidential business information. (The New Nuclear Danger, Dr Helen Caldicott. Scribe Publications 2002)

By early 2004, and with no WMD, no proven links to international terrorism and a country increasingly unstable, the Australian explained the absence of weapons as thus: “It is easy to see how it happened. Over the years, United Nations weapon’s inspectors had found ample evidence of WMDs in Iraq, and as war approached Saddam offered no credible case that they have been destroyed. But the burden of proof to justify invading Iraq should have been higher than this.” This final qualification is all that exists of allocating blame. When in trouble, bash the UN. No acknowledgement that Bush, Blair and Howard criminally exaggerated intelligence. And most certainly no acceptance that the newspaper had played a vital part in going along with the Great Lie. “Never having to say you’re sorry” was the paper’s patronising critique of the Left on 12 April 2004. It’s time Murdoch’s lapdogs took some of their own advice.

The Herald‘s Paul McGeough explained in late June this year that the Australian Government (and by extension, the pro-war press) is avoiding the fundamental lessons of the Iraq war. By acknowledging nothing, denying everything and stonewalling every investigation, we are all therefore complicit in a war crime of unprecedented gravity:

“Early this year we had the Howard Government backslapping itself because its inquiry had found it had been ‘more moderate and more measured’ in its use of bogus intelligence as a reason for war. Now we have yesterday’s report clearing Australian troops in Iraq of allegations that were not made. If this is the sort of society the US – and Australia – has become, then let’s be honest about it.”

FURTHER READING

– The New Yorker‘s comprehensive critique of Ahmed Chalabi’s manipulation of the West:http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040607fa-fact1

– How The Washington Post and the Times “created” Chalabi:http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6245.htm

Thanks to Scott Burchill for assistance on this story.

aloewenstein@f2network.com.au