“I wish I were a writer, but all I have is how I feel about the big, scary nightmares that face us, and a growing despair that we will continue to spiral down into the blackest pit of us and them, with only hollow lies to cling to. All the while without a clue as to who are we, and who are they.”

 

Webdiarist David Makinson was honest enough to admit he wasn’t sure how we should respond to September 11, 2001. His first contribution to Webdiary came after the Bali bombing, and he’s since been locked in debate with John Wojdylo about the threatened war on Iraq. He’s been working on a detailed piece about the state we’re in, the nature of our discourse about it, and the basis for his conviction that war on Iraq would be disastrous for a while now, and today I publish the result. Thanks David. You speak for many of us.

To begin, David’s first take on the state of the world after the Bali bombing, first published in Searching for hope (webdiaryOct15).

***

David Makinson

This is an extract from a letter I wrote to a friend (of socio-political bent) last night. I usually try to be constructive, but I cannot find it in me at the moment. I think I am beginning to despair.

It surprises no-one I suppose, but it still defies belief, that commentators from across the political spectrum are using (yes, “using”) the Bali atrocity to score points off their rival pontificators. It is deeply sickening.

So now it’s definitively established to those of the right that the bleeding hearts have been exposed as fools, whilst it’s equally clear to those of the left that here is proof-positive that the macho, militaristic posturings of the right continue to rain catastrophe upon us.

I want to scream: Wake up, people! These horrible events prove neither faction right. Surely it’s obvious by now that we’re all wrong? Our romanticised assessments of what we define as good and evil, and our yearnings for the simplicity of black and white solutions, are delusions. The world lurches from futile rhetoric to ineffective response and still our people are dying.

Unnecessary deaths. Politicians and commentators of all persuasions will seek to portray their particular cause as noble because we have lost our friends. We must reject this cynicism. Be clear that these poor, poor people died for nothing – a tragic symbol of an abject failure of leadership.

Politicians failed to protect them. The experts of right and left have had no effect. We must not reward them by jumping on any of their various bandwagons. Just cry and cry and cry for the wasted victims and the torment of their loved ones.

The left says our government’s public support of the US makes us a target. We sense the truth in this. The right says that it is folly to think that a passive stance will protect us. We sense the truth in this.

The right says a military solution is the only solution. They may be correct. The left says violence begets violence, and they too may be correct. Neither group can recognise the merits in each other’s case, and so the true, far more complex solution eludes us.

President Bush said, in the seeming long ago, “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists”. Wrong, George. We’re against both of you. We wonder if perhaps you deserve each other, but we’re certain we have done nothing at all to deserve you. We, the cannon fodder, oppose you. We are the innocent people of Australia, the US, Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, the world, and we are opposed to you. It’s not as simple as us and them. It’s about all of us.

For myself, every instinct I have says we need to seek an active path of peaceful action and engagement if we are to have any chance of working through these troubles. I believe this is the test of courage we need to confront – to engage these people at the root of their grievances and hurts – both real and imagined.

I am not optimistic that we can pass this test. I fear our bravery does not run that deep. The pragmatist in me recognises that we will resort to force. We will dress this up in words of action and purpose, and imagine it a considered and effective response. We will convince ourselves it is necessary and just. It is neither – and it will not work.

It is a dark time. I fear for my children. I am conscious that I offer no solutions. Doubtless the right and the left will have many. Let us pray that somewhere amongst the dross is a kernel of constructive thought which can be built into hope.

***

Reflections on the dishonesty of debate, left or right, what Tolkien would make of things, and disbelief.

by David Makinson

I wish I were a writer. Then I could find the words that would get my message through with some approximation of what I actually mean. As it is, I struggle for expression, unlike so many of the talented people who contribute to this place. I lack their education, their wit and, occasionally, their knowledge, as some of them delight in pointing out.

It is like pulling teeth for me. And despite my very best efforts, I find I am consistently misinterpreted. So when I say no to your war, the reply is you advocate doing nothing, you seek to appease. I never said that. You did. I don’t know how to respond to your interpretation, unless it’s to defend the position you manufactured. But it’s your proposition, not mine. You defend it.

When I say I oppose unlimited mandatory detention of refugees the reply is that I have signed up for the open door brigade. I have no response other than simple denial. That’s not what I said. You made it up. If I respond you have succeeded in sidetracking the debate. Good writers seem to be able to do this at will.

I read the Devines, McGuinesses, Hendersons, Akermans, and Albrechtsons and I can only admire their skill. I wish I knew how to do this. A recent offering from McGuiness shows a man at the pinnacle of his art. WTO protesters think Bali victims deserved it. It’s wonderful. He just made it up. He said that, not the WTO protesters, but now they have to defend it. Truly, magnificently, awesome.

Yes, I wish I were a writer. But all I have is how I feel about the big, scary nightmares that face us, and a growing despair that we will continue to spiral down into the blackest pit of us and them, with only hollow lies to cling to. All the while without a clue as to who are we, and who are they.

***

A hypothesis: I suspect many of us have spent most of our lives completely asleep when it comes to matters of international politics. To our consternation, we now find ourselves at something of a loss as the world and times we live in start to slap us in the face on an almost daily basis. What’s that you say? Go back to sleep? Can’t. We wish we could. It keeps us awake, night after night.

***

The trigger for my own dormant sensibilities was the day the good ship Tampa came to the rescue of a leaking refugee boat. I think I discovered that day that I am an alien. Or living amongst aliens. Whatever – same result. “How can we not help these people?” I asked, perplexed.

“They will build a mosque next to your house and rape your children,” I was told. “You want to open up our borders to any and everyone.” No I don’t. You said that, not me. “Leave them out at sea. Push them back to Indonesia. Send them to Nauru.” You said that too.

And later – inevitably – they are terrorists. “How do you figure that one out?” I dared to ask. “You are condoning September 11!” the retort flashed back. No. You said that, not me.

It’s a great tool for those who would quash meaningful debate. Put up an absurd straw man argument and pin it to your opponents. So simple. More recently, our own Margo stood accused of blaming the Bali victims. But no, Bob said that, not Margo. But did it get Margo on the defensive? Did it ever. Even the writers themselves fall victim to the cheap trick. The politicians have learnt the writers tricks. Or perhaps it is vice versa, it matters little.

Alas, because I am no writer, I do not know how to respond to these cunningly manufactured assertions. Simple plain language rebuttals don’t seem to work, but I keep trying. In these pages I have been labelled everything from a Chamberlain to a Quisling. I am neither. Seemingly intelligent people conclude in one breath that I am a peacenik (which I am not) and in the next that I am a Nazi sympathiser (which I am not). They then seek to have me defend myself against their imagined positions (which I will not). Their arguments are so cunning they fly right above my head. Ah, I wish I could write like that.

[Aside: Just last night – not from a writer or a politician, but from someone whose opinion I value – “I sometimes think you support the terrorists.” Where that comes from, I cannot say. I certainly cannot defend the idea. No, dear. You said that, not me.]

***

Left, right, left, right

The world, we are told, has changed. No doubt this is correct. I wonder if this also applies to the world of politics. The old clarity of left and right has been looking shaky for some years now, and it starts to look as if the post September 11 world will kill it off once and for all. Certainly both right and left appear to have not a clue between them about how to deal with the global issues that confront us.

In correspondence post-Tampa with one of the right wing journalists I mentioned before, I was told that I was obviously a highly rational man, so why didn’t I accept his (very right wing) stance? I wrote back that I thought he had probably answered his own question, and the correspondence pretty much ceased thereafter. That writer’s articles continue to veer erratically between racism and bigotry.

Let’s cut to the chase. The trouble with most of the right wing positions are that they are just plain old fashioned stupid. They are self-destructive and just don’t stand up to any kind of reasoned scrutiny. Stupid and dangerous. “Ah ha! You are a bleeding heart lefty!” I hear the triumphant howls. No I am not. You said that, not me.

The trouble with the left wing, at least in the media, is that whilst they are sometimes good at diagnosing the problems, they remain entirely hopeless at proposing realistic solutions. This may (or may not) be intellectually OK, but is quite useless in practical terms. Because they propose no alternative to indefinite mandatory detention, they stand accused of opening the borders. Because they do not propose a response to terrorism they lay themselves open to the charge that they in fact advocate no response.

I think people are starting to wonder where they fit in the political spectrum. Are we of the right, or the left? I believe more and more people are rejecting both camps. Many of us despise both positions. The right is too automatic, too kneejerk, too close in its responses to the terrorists themselves. As you kill, so will you be killed. Contains circular reference – does not compute. It’s stupid for Osama Bin Laden, and it’s stupid for us. Bomb Iraq? The war on Iraq has absolutely nothing to do with stopping terrorism, you stupid, stupid bastards. The only question is whether your stupidity is sincere, which is horrifying, or contrived, which is terrifying.

The left just seems weak, bewildered and profoundly leaderless. Little wonder the right is in the ascendancy across the world. If the left truly believes in zero response to terrorism, or an open borders policy on refugees, let them say so. If that is indeed what they’re saying, then I am certainly not one of them. Those positions are almost as stupid as those of the right.

So we political refugees wonder if perhaps our new political home is in the centre. Or perhaps completely outside the traditional framework. I am certain increasing numbers of people are asking these questions. I don’t know if it even really matters, but I believe it might, because it may well provide a further push towards non-alignment in political affairs. I voted Green for the first time in the last election (admittedly out of desperation) but an intelligent independent viewpoint would certainly be attractive to more and more of us.

So what do we actually stand for? It’s very hard to find much certainty. I wonder if it is possible to define one’s position by what one clearly opposes. I am entirely clear on a number of those things. If I look at things from this perspective, I am clearly more opposed to the right wing and its bias to reaction over reason than I am to the left wing, whose bias to reason leads so often to inaction.

Why? Probably because the right wing is heavily armed and infinitely dangerous. In our times at least, the left is mostly harmless, to borrow from Douglas Adams. (The right will jump on this, pointing out exactly how dangerous the do-nothing left really is, but the proposition is weak at best).

I have been labelled recently in Webdiary as openly reflective. I think this is observant, and it has been very helpful to me in trying to sort out my head, so I thank Robin Ford. (See Seven precepts for disempowered people, webdiaryNov21.) Robin also turned me into an adjective, which is a novel experience!

The openly reflective description was not offered as a compliment, but more as a neutral perspective on the ultimate futility of the ongoing verbal stoush between John Wojdylo and myself. On that too, Robin is correct. It is advancing nothing, so I propose to stop (after one last go, naturally). I will thank John however in that he has also played a part in helping me to sort out my thinking and confirming my complete and irreversible opposition to his philosophy.

I choose to believe that he and I in fact share much common ground. We both want the elimination of terrorism and the reduction of threat across the world. I choose to believe that our dispute is not about the goals, but the tactics. I think John acknowledges this.

John and I will never agree on how to deal with these challenges, so I will continue to reject his position and his words of mass destruction as fundamentally dishonest, and he will continue to regard my arguments with contempt. (I know John denies this contempt, but John, believe me – it’s the way you tell it, mate).

John wrote recently: “Different tactics are possible, but these are just part of the same picture – of choosing either action or inaction.” I’ll try to put my position one last time, and then I’ll move on. Different tactics are possible YES. A thousand times, yes. It’s what I have been trying (and clearly failing) to say. But, it’s either action or inaction NO. A thousand times, no. This is where John’s analysis corrupts itself.

An analogy: It is bushfire season. The house has caught fire. John sets out with presumably good and brave intentions to quell the blaze, marching boldly up the driveway, tin can in hand, to douse the flames. He does not hear us chasing him, screaming for him to stop. “Stop, John! That can is full of gasoline!” The real tragedy is that because were all chasing John, none of us has the time to see if we can find a can of water or a hose.

You don’t put out fires with gasoline, and you don’t stop violence with bombs.

For the record, I agree with Robin Ford’s precepts. Robin and John are wrong about one thing however I am not in despair. I had my moments of despair post-Bali, but who didn’t? I am now focussed on hope for a brighter future, as despair will get us nowhere.

More John: “There are no “spaces between” – or third way – that we can escape into.” Wrong. It seems to me that John is the one who is in despair. Of course there are other paths we can choose to take. Always. Countless ranges of options and alternatives. If we could just for a moment stop fighting John and his ilk, we might just have the time to find the right way. In the end, John’s philosophy of it’s either bloodshed or it’s bloodshed is deeply and darkly hopeless. He offers no light, yet castigates those who would try to find the switch.

Robin, I actually hold increasing hope that reason will prevail and there will be no war on Iraq. I am doubtless kidding myself, but I earnestly hope that in my own very small way I am promoting this outcome. Some might say this is a complete waste of time, but it is born of hope, not despair, and I will keep trying.

In the end John’s position ain’t gonna change, and neither is mine, so I hereby declare peace. I will fight no more with John.

***

Incurable romantics and the Tolkienisation of the Right. (And where is Mount Doom?)

Welcome to Middle Earth. Here life is simple. There is Good, which is naturally very good and always good, and Evil, which is, as you would expect, entirely, and consistently, evil. Good stands for liberal Western democracies and freedom and justice for all. Good calls this its Values. Evil hates Good because of this.

They hate us because we are free, say the followers of Good.

Yes, say the spawn of Evil. We hate you because you are free, and it is therefore clear that we must crush you.

Of course, says Good. And because of this troublesome attitude, we will have to crush you first. And we will win.

Certainly you will win, says Evil. That is as it should be. But we will take you to the very lip of the fires of Mount Doom first, and countless supporters of both sides will be maimed and killed.

Yes. This is as it must be. Shall we begin? Slaughter of the innocents first, as ever. Your move, I believe.

Fortunately for us hobbits, we are on the side of the righteous. Middle Earth is comprised of some quite nice civilised bits, and citadels of pure evil, whose denizens hate us only because we are free. They have no other cause for their loathing. The very suggestion is treasonous, our leaders tell us. Are you sure you are really Good, because your questions make me think you might be a bit Evil, which means you are completely Evil, for there are no half measures in Middle Earth.

Also luckily for us, the citadels of pure evil are in far off places such as Mordor. But of late the Dark Lord has been sending out his Black Riders, and they are spreading evilness into the good bits of Middle Earth. This, remember, is because we are free.

This appears to be the world the right would have us believe in. Good and Evil. Pure and simple. No room for complexity, no need for shades of grey. Its black and white, light and darkness. You are with us, or you are with them. Tolkien did not need any annoying complications, or he might have added a few further plot nuances:

Who said it’s because weve got their bloody Ring? It’s because we are free. How many times do I have to tell you? That Ring is a Weapon Of Mass Destruction, got it? What’s that? We’ve got a few Rings of our own? What the hell has that got to do with the price of eggs? And who said we actually trained those nine Black Riders ourselves? Yes, I know Saruman was on our side once. And what was that about us controlling all the resources of Middle Earth? No, I don’t know why the dwarves hate the elves even though they are both Good. A fairer distribution of wealth? No special favours for our mates? Have you gone completely mad? Name, please. Did you say Gandalf the Grey? I see. Shut up, you are sounding Evil! Shut up!

Too many questions by far, but in Middle Earth you can still ask those questions, because (as you are constantly reminded) you are free. For now. In another fantasy realm, George W. Bush famously said There ought to be limits to freedom. Indeed.

Back to reality. The last few paragraphs are clearly preposterous. I imagine John Cleese as an enraged goblin. It would all be very funny if only it wasnt.

Tragically, a very large portion of the world’s population seems to think this way, and for many of them there is indeed a Mount Doom. But not for everyone is Mount Doom in Kabul or Baghdad. For many its on the other side of the planet, in a nice white neo-classical building that flies a banner of stars and stripes.

“Hah! You are anti-American!” No. You said that, not me. (And no, I am not anti-Tolkien, either).

My point: Day after day, our leaders feed us arrant nonsense. A romanticised, fairy tale world that just does not exist. These incurable romantics have a lot to answer for. I am sure they will be the death of us all in the end. Their hopelessly simplistic world view only works in fantasy. And it is deadly dangerous because even if they are sincere (and I am reasonably sure some of them are) they lay themselves open to manipulation by the hawks of the world the vested interests on all sides that will never seek a peaceful solution because, in the end, it does not suit them to do so.

And still a lot of us accept what we are told by people in authority or the media, even though we know all the while that they lie and lie and lie. More on this later. History suggests it was ever thus. It seems there is little real hope that we can fight this, but those who see what is happening have a duty to speak out or we will have no hope at all.

***

History – it teaches us nothing, it seems. Time will say nothing but I told you so, said W.H. Auden, with characteristic insight. Why do we not think? I cannot bear to see our leaders cloaking themselves in a flag as they denounce their critics as traitors. And I cannot bear to see how otherwise good people rally in blindness to the corruption that passes as patriotism in some societies. Quoting historical figures can be perilous when confronting the convictions of the righteous, but just to demonstrate that this has all happened before, I’ve included a selection of the sayings of the wise and not so wise over the ages. Just in case anyone thinks I am well read (I wish!) I found these by trawling the internet for a few minutes. If you don’t need further convincing you can skip this part.

***

Adolf Hitler: What luck for rulers that men do not think.

Julius Caesar: Beware the leader who bangs the drum of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervour. For patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and patriotism, will offer up all of their rights to the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Julius Caesar.

Aleister Crowley: The deliberate antagonising of nations is the foulest of crimes. It is the Press of the warring nations that, by inflaming the passions of the ignorant, has set Europe by the ears. Had all men been educated and travelled, they would not have listened to those harpy-shrieks. Now the mischief is done, and it is for us to repair it as best we may. This must be our motto: “Humanity First.” [Note: I understand that the hopeful Mr Crowley may have been something of a witch or a wizard or some such. Evil, no doubt, perhaps even from Middle Earth, so my critics can have a field day this one. Go for it!]

Albert Einstein: He who joyfully marches to music rank and file, has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilisation should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action. It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is no different than murder.

Hermann Goering (at Nuremburg): Why of course the people don’t want war … But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

Howard Zinn: Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience. . . Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem.

Arundhati Roy: Flags are bits of coloured cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead.

I’ve saved the best for last: This from Mark Twain, discussing American wars in the Philippines and in Cuba:

“The loud little handful will shout for war. The pulpit will warily and cautiously protest at first…. The great mass of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes, and will try to make out why there should be a war, and they will say earnestly and indignantly: ‘It is unjust and dishonourable and there is no need for war’.

“Then the few will shout even louder…. Before long you will see a curious thing: anti-war speakers will be stoned from the platform, and free speech will be strangled by hordes of furious men who still agree with the speakers but dare not admit it…

“Next, the statesmen will invent cheap lies…and each man will be glad of these lies and will study them because they soothe his conscience; and thus he will bye and bye convince himself that the war is just and he will thank God for a better sleep he enjoys by his self-deception.”

Right on the money. Truly, the more things change, the more they stay the same. But admiring Mr Twain’s skills of observation offers scant hope that human race is making any progress.

***

Never give up your disbelief

There has been much debate in Webdiary about the importance of belief. I argue that there is quite often a lot of common ground in the things we believe, but our responses to those inputs can be worlds apart. I resurrect this not to reignite that dispute, but as a convenient introduction to what I really want to talk about – disbelief. Specifically, I want to encourage it.

We are lied to all day every day. Lied to by politicians and militants of all persuasions. They are aided and abetted by a compliant and in many cases collaborative media. Does anybody doubt this? If you accept this proposition then your default position has to be one of disbelief. Disbelieve until its proved, and then disbelieve a bit more, because the proof itself must be questioned.

Your disbelief is your only defence.

I fell into this trap myself just the other day. My disbelief was suspended. I believed without hesitation that the latest Bin Laden tapes are genuine, and proof that our nemesis is still out there, plotting our downfall. Later that day someone asked me why I believed it. How do you know it’s not just a convenient ploy of our governments to keep us afraid? It is after all a time-honoured tactic of those who would lead us to war, they pressed.

I didn’t change my view. I still believe the tapes are for real, though I cannot explain why. My disbelief has failed me on this one, and I missed what in the circumstances is a reasonable question.

Interestingly, I think it is the great bulk of the middle class that most often fails, or forgets, to disbelieve. When I talk to my friends about these matters it’s clear that they have often accepted as cold facts the most outlandish of propositions. My friends are by and large very well educated and highly intelligent people (don’t tell them I said that!), but on these matters of global import they are simply ignorant. I do not use that word in a pejorative sense, but merely to describe a complete lack of knowledge. Naturally, their ignorance does not prevent them having strong convictions. Here are some of the things they have believed recently:

* They threw their children overboard.

* They tried to sink their own boat.

* We must attack Iraq because they attacked us on September 11 and in Bali and they will get us again.

* The Bali bombings justify our hard line stance on refugees.

* Saddam and Osama are in cahoots.

* They hate us because we are free.

Nearly all of these are now known to be lies of course, but in my circle of friends, each of these propositions was or is believed automatically, without question. When finally exposed as lies, the response is usually that it wasn’t that important, or it’s OK because all politicians lie.

And now we Webdiarists have our very own lie to ponder – Margo Kingston blames the Bali victims. Sorry Bob, we disbelieve.

I acknowledge that disbelief risks becoming circular. At some point we need to get to a common position and make some decisions. But we are a long, long way from that, so for now, please disbelieve. Disbelieve me too, but disbelieve.

One thing I really do want to ask people to disbelieve is the proposition that the war on Iraq and the carefully misnamed war on terror are in some way linked. The former is matter of expedience, the latter is an absolute necessity.

The true reasons for attacking Iraq lie in matters of corporations and profit, and personal ambitions. Only the romantics claim otherwise.

The reasons for eliminating terror are clear, and speak to simple self-preservation. Finding the right way to address this is possibly one of the central challenges we face. I see terrorism as something akin to AIDS – it is a deadly and virulent disease. I don’t know if this analogy is entirely apt, and there are those who would say with some justification that AIDS is a far, far greater problem, but it does take me to a place where I can say that, as with all diseases, prevention is better than cure. I think that is quite central to my philosophy, if I can lay claim to having so grand a thing.

As everybody knows, western governments have tried desperately to prove links between Iraq and September 11. Despite the application of astonishing amounts of intelligence resources, the link remains unproven. I urge continued disbelief. Iraq had nothing to do with September 11. Iraq had nothing to do with Bali. The only link between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden is that they were both sponsored by the CIA! (I heard that one on a TV show recently, and in stuck in my memory – well it would, wouldnt it?). Iraq has never attacked or threatened us in any way, shape or form. It is never likely to. Yet we threaten them.

“You are pro-Saddam!” No. You said that, not me. The man is a devil. Find him and his cronies and execute them. I’ll even pull the trigger. Just stop punishing his victims – the people of Iraq.

It’s not my usual approach I know, but I am going to adopt the practices of other webdiarists here, and provide some independent support for my position.

***

Remember Rumsfeld’s declaration that the U.S. had “bulletproof evidence” of a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda? For a bulletproof story, there certainly are a lot of holes, including a report from Czech President Vaclav Havel that suggests there is no evidence, at least of the long-rumored meeting between one of the 9/11 hijackers and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. (Robert Jensen, University of Texas at Austin.)

Myth: Saddam Hussein is “a man who loves to link up with al-Qaeda.” (George W. Bush). Fact: Bush is desperately trying to make a connection between Iraq and the September 11 attacks in the U.S. though none exists. As Daniel Benjamin, who served on the National Security Council (NSC) from 1994 to 1999, wrote on September 30 in the New York Times, “Iraq and al-Qaeda are not obvious allies. In fact, they are natural enemies.” An investigation by the NSC “found no evidence of a noteworthy relationship” between the two, Benjamin said. In fact, al-Qaeda militantly opposes the secular Iraqi government and Hussein’s Baath Party (Anthony Arnove.)

Obviously, one cannot prove the absence of connections. There are, however, good reasons for doubting any serious ties between the two. Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime has been ruthlessly secular and has had no love for fundamentalist groups. Al Qaeda, for its part, considers its task the overthrow of all governments in the region that are insufficiently Islamic, and certainly Hussein’s regime counts as such. (One might note that Iraq did not have diplomatic relations with the Taliban regime – in fact, the only countries that did have diplomatic relations with the Taliban were the U.S. allies Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Pakistan.)

Of course, hostile parties can sometimes be useful to one another against a common enemy, but no evidence has come to light of cooperation between al Qaeda and Iraq. Ever since September 11, U.S. officials have been frantically looking for some connection between the two.

War hawks leapt on the report that Mohammed Atta, the leader of the September 11 hijackers, met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence agent in April 2001. The Czech government, basing itself on the evidence of one informant – a student who said he recognized Atta’s photograph as someone he had seen with the Iraqi agent five months earlier – said it was 70 percent sure the story was accurate, but the former director of Czech intelligence noted that “These informants tend to tell you what you want to believe” and the head of Czech foreign intelligence was skeptical. The FBI (which ran down “hundreds of thousands of leads”) and the CIA concluded that the report was inaccurate; they found no evidence that Atta was in Prague on the relevant date and some evidence that he was in the United States (Washington Times, 6/19/02; Prague Post, 7/17/02;Washington Post, 5/1/02; Newsweek, 4/28/02 web exclusive; Newsweek, 8/19/02, p. 10; LA Times, 8/2/02).

On September 24, 2002, the British government released a 55 page dossier laying out its case against Iraq. The evidence was said to come from British intelligence and analysis agencies, but also from “access to intelligence from close allies” (page 9). Surely this includes the United States, and surely whatever hesitancy the United States government might have about revealing intelligence information publicly would not prevent it from sharing such information with its closest ally. The dossier presented zero evidence of any al Qaeda-Iraq links

In the last week of September in the face of international and domestic hesitancy regarding the rush to war, U.S. officials again raised the specter of al Qaeda-Saddam Hussein links. Rumsfeld said he had “bulletproof” evidence tying the two together, but, significantly, he did not present any of that evidence and admits that it wouldn’t hold up in a U.S. court of law.

There was one report, charged Rumsfeld, that Iraq provided “unspecified training relating to chemical and/or biological matters”. The report apparently came from Abu Zubaydah, a high ranking al Qaeda prisoner who, according to an intelligence source cited by Newsday, “often has lied or provided deliberately misleading information.” As one U.S. official told USA Today, “detainees have a motive to lie to U.S. interrogators: to encourage a U.S. invasion of Iraq, the better to make the case that the United States is the mortal enemy of Muslim countries”.

The head of the Senate intelligence committee, Bob Graham, said he had seen nothing connecting al Qaeda and Iraq. Sen. Joseph Biden, who heard a classified CIA briefing on the matter, disputes Rumsfeld’s summary. Nebraska Republican, Senator Chuck Hagel, commented that “To say, ‘Yes, I know there is evidence there, but I don’t want to tell you any more about it,’ that does not encourage any of us. Nor does it give the American public a heck of a lot of faith that, in fact, what anyone is saying is true.” Intelligence experts inside and outside the U.S. government expressed skepticism, and a Pentagon official called the new claims an “exaggeration.” And French intelligence has found not a trace of evidence of any link. (NYT, 9/28/02; Newsday, 9/27/02; USA Today, 9/27/02; Washington Post, 9/27/02; Financial Times, 10/6/02.)

This said, there is one connection between Iraq and al Qaeda; that an attack on Iraq may well play into al Qaeda’s hands by destabilizing much of the Middle East and, in the words of former General Wesley Clark, possibly “supercharge” recruiting for the terrorist network (NYT, 9/24/02). (Stephen Shalom and Michael Albert.)

***

The above extracts are all sourced from Znet, which is unashamedly left wing, so in the interests of objectivity, I trundled over to iraqwatch.org. We are often recommended to go to this site to get the real facts. The homepage says Iraq Watch is a comprehensive web site devoted to monitoring Iraq’s progress in building weapons of mass destruction. The agenda is at least clear. It’s political leanings seem to be some little distance away from where Znet sits ( to put it as politely as I can).

So what does Iraq Watch have to say?

A couple of extracts:

1. Excerpts from previous political updates, by subject: 10-22-02, Alleged links to terrorism

There is still no clear proof of an Iraqi link to the attacks on September 11, despite media reports of meetings between the September 11 terrorists and Iraqi agents. Nevertheless, in mid-March C.I.A. Director George J. Tenet specifically declined to rule out Iraqi involvement, citing Iraq’s and Al Qaeda’s “mutual antipathy toward the United States and the Saudi royal family”.

Unfortunately for the right, this is the best they’ve got. Here’s another, this time direct from a White House briefing.

BRIEFING BY ARI FLEISCHER, PRESS SECRETARY, WHITE HOUSE

September 25, 2002

Excerpts

Q: We can go back to that in a minute. I have another question. Yesterday in the briefing, you said that the information you have has said al Qaeda is operating in Iraq. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was asked about linkages between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein this morning. He said very definitively that, yes, he believes there are. And then the President said, talking about al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, the danger is that they work in concert. Is the President saying that they are working in concert, that there is a relationship? Do you have evidence that supports that?

MR. FLEISCHER: No, the President is saying that’s the danger. The President has repeatedly said that the worst thing that could happen is for people – the world’s worst dictators with the world’s worst weapons of mass destruction to work in concert with terrorists such as al Qaeda, who have shown an ability to attack the United States. And that’s what the President has said.

Q: So why – when Rumsfeld was saying, yes, there is a linkage between the two, what is he talking about?

MR. FLEISCHER: Clearly, al Qaeda is operating inside Iraq. And the point is, in the shadowy world of terrorism, sometimes there is no precise way to have definitive information until it is too late. And we’ve seen that in the past. And so the risk is that al Qaeda operating in Iraq does present a security threat, and it’s cause for concern. And I think it’s very understandably so. If you’re searching, Campbell, again, for the smoking gun, again I say what Secretary Rumsfeld said – the problem with smoking guns is they only smoke after they’re fired.

Q: I’m not looking for a smoking gun. I’m just trying to figure out how you make that conclusion, because the British, the Russians, people on the Hill that you all have briefed about all this stuff say that there isn’t a linkage, that they don’t believe that al Qaeda is there working in conjunction in any way with Saddam Hussein. And there is a mountain of comments, both public and private statements that Osama bin Laden has made about Saddam, calling him a bad Muslim, suggesting that there would be no way that the two would ever connect. So I just – if there’s something, if you have some evidence that supports this, I’m just wondering why –

MR. FLEISCHER: What supports what I just said is that the President fears that the two can get together. That’s what the President has said, and that’s one of the reasons that he feels so strongly about the importance of fighting the war on terror.

Q: So does Rumsfeld have some information that the President doesn’t, that they are, in fact, working together now?

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, I’m going to take a little more detailed look at anything that you’ve got there. I haven’t seen a verbatim quote, so I’ll take a look at that.

***

Ducking and diving. This is the sum of Washington’s case. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the president thinks it might happen. On this basis we are asked to sign up for a war. It is obscene.

You would reasonably expect the above two websites to disagree on just about everything, but on this Iraq Watch and Znet, it seems, are in complete agreement. No proof of any links between Iraq and September 11. Case closed. Why is this even a question of debate?

***

Iraq Watch has some great transcripts of Donald Rumsfeld interviews which everyone should read. Illuminating. Especially if your sense of humour is on the dark side. Oh, what the hell – he-ere’s Donny (courtesy of Iraq Watch):

Q: Mr. Secretary, are you even cleared to say that Saddam Hussein – or there’s no intelligence that you’ve seen that Saddam Hussein has a direct tie to September 11th?

Rumsfeld: I didn’t address that.

Q: And I’m asking that. Do you – have you seen any or is there any intelligence that Saddam Hussein has any ties to September 11th?

Rumsfeld: I think I’ve probably said what I’d like to say about al Qaeda and Iraq.

Q: Mr. Secretary, can we follow up on that just a little bit? Much of the criticism, congressional and others, domestically and overseas, is that neither you nor the president have proven the case, so to speak, about a possible attack on Iraq. Do you know something that we don’t know, that perhaps you’re not willing to share with us – but do you know possibly

Rumsfeld: I hope so! (Laughter.)

***

Another gem:

Q: And on one of your other issues, you say there’s credible information that Iraq and al Qaeda have discussed safe haven, the issue of safe haven.

Rumsfeld: Right.

Q: Is Iraq providing al Qaeda safe haven?

Rumsfeld: I guess that’s a question of semantics. I –

Q: Just to talk about it doesn’t mean you do it, I guess.

Rumsfeld: That’s possible, although we know there are al Qaeda in the country, and we know they’ve discussed with Iraq safe haven. Now whether the ones that are in the country are there under some sort of grant of safe haven or not is – happens to be a piece of intelligence that either we don’t have or we don’t want to talk about.

***

And another:

…Q: (Off mike) – about – on the one point, you said, I think, that you have solid evidence of the presence of al Qaeda in Iraq, including some in Baghdad. And when you said that, I wasn’t clear what time frame you were referring to, whether or not that is current. Do you currently believe they’re in Baghdad, or are you only talking about al Qaeda in the North in Kurdish-controlled areas?

Rumsfeld: Specifically not, with respect to the last part of your question. We’re not only talking about al Qaeda in the northern part.

Q: So you currently believe there are al Qaeda in Saddam Hussein-controlled areas.

Rumsfeld: I thought I said it precisely the way I wanted to. I can’t know whether, as we sit here talking, the information that was accurate when we got it is still accurate today.

***

Last one, I promise. A chilling pointer to an upcoming attraction – Axis of Evil: The Sequel

Q: And since you – I have a follow-up. Since you were willing to lay out some of the particulars about the presence of al Qaeda in Iraq, are you willing to tell us what evidence U.S. has of al Qaeda in Iran in recent intelligence

Rumsfeld: You know, I’ve been talking about this for weeks. There are al Qaeda in Iran! There are a lot of al Qaeda in Iran. Iran is providing haven. And they’re telling their people they’re not! The government is. And they’re not telling their people the truth. And they are there. And they do not like it when we say that. But they are.

***

Selective quotes? Well perhaps, but not particularly so. Please disbelieve me go check it out for yourselves.

Remember – disbelieve. We are being lied to.

A final note: For those who like me are compelled to try to convert people to the anti-war cause, there’s some helpful material at madre

***

I am off on holiday, so this is my last offering for a little while. Compliments of the season to one and all. Stay safe.

SIEV-X will not go away, despite what you don’t read in the newspapers. After closing down the Senate inquiry into the matter, Labor and Democrats Senators are going for it again, and the plot thickens even more.

Retired diplomat Tony Kevin hasn’t stopped campaigning on SIEV-X, and nor has Marg Hutton let up in documenting all the developments on her ground-breaking website sievx, including a speech by Tony arguing that the Howard government used the pre-emptive strike option it now argues should be made part of international law during its assault on boat people last year. Tony’s speech is also at abcpublicrecord

There’s a chance the Senate will pass motions this week – the last week of sittings this year – calling for a judicial inquiry into SIEV-X and the extradition of the voyage organiser Abu Quessay when he’s released from an Indonesian jail in January.

Here’s a piece Tony wrote for Webdiary to preview the action. Webdiary’s archive on the story is in the right-hand column. The upcoming book on the Tampa by Herald journalists David Marr and Marian Wilkinson will include an interesting chapter on SIEV-X, with, I understand, new information on the matter.

***

SIEV-X: Not the news

by Tony Kevin

As you know, my principal area of public interest activism is the campaign for justice and accountability in the deaths of 353 people – including 146 women and 142 children – drowned on SIEV-X on 19 October 2001 as a result of an alleged Australian-instigated covert people smuggling disruption operation in Indonesia.

This intersects closely with the broader issues you’ve been covering over the past few weeks: The attack on civil liberties both federally and in NSW, the passivity of the mainstream media on that, the new ALP refugee policy and Carmen Lawrence’s exit from Shadow Cabinet. The SIEV-X issue exemplifies and dramatises many of your broader conclusions.

In particular, you asked on 2 December in Democracy’s watchdogs blind to the danger (webdiaryDec2):

“Has the media decided that in dangerous times it is an arm of government, whatever its flaws and whatever the dangers of abuse of power?”

I think something very like that has happened on SIEV-X, especially since the Senate inquiry report was handed down in the Senate on 23 October. Let me detail this a little, and then draw some broader conclusions at the end.

With a great sigh of relief, the mainstream media shelved the subject of SIEV-X after 23 October. They did not study the detail in the Senate Committee Report, the individual tabling statements and individual chapters by Senators Cook, Faulkner, Collins and Bartlett. They simply recorded with minimal comment the overall committee judgement that the ADF had not been negligent. SIEV-X quickly vanished from the news and commentary pages. For the mainstream media, the SIEV-X game was over.

So there was almost no reporting – certainly no analysis – of John Faulkner’s firmly expressed determination to go on pursuing the people smuggling disruption program which he had questioned so dramatically in the Senate in September; no reference to Labor Senator Jacinta Collins’ bucketing of PM boat people task force head Jane Halton’s credibility as a witness (Halton was a key witness on SIEV-X) , or of Collins’ bluntly expressed concerns about failures of compassion in the border protection operations; no reference to Andrew Bartlett’s concerns about the acres of blacked-out lines in submitted documentary evidence and about official witnesses’ shifting stories; no reference to Chairman Peter Cook’s (and other Senators’) call for a judicial enquiry into the disruption program and other issues related to SIEV-X.

Undeterred, www.sievx.com pressed on with the factual investigation of the story, as did the Labor Party Senate team.

A few weeks later the issue surfaced in the Senate again. Australian Federal Police chief Mick Keelty was closely quizzed in Estimates by Faulkner and Collins on two big sleeper issues: whether the AFP knew if tracking devices had been placed on SIEV boats, and what was happening now about the AFP’s promise in Keelty’s July evidence to seek to extradite the admitted SIEV-X voyage organiser Abu Quessay to Australia on homicide-related charges after his short Indonesian jail sentence for passport fraud ends on 1 January 2003?

On the tracking devices, Keelty ducked and weaved skilfully. First he asked for more time to get the answer, then the next day he claimed public interest immunity from answering, then the next day he called a press conference and declared that the AFP had not placed a tracking device on SIEV-X.

He thereby evaded the real questions, which were: Had the AFP given tracking devices to the 20 Indonesian senior policemen it had trained, funded and equipped as people smuggling disruption agent coordinators in Indonesia? Had any of the Indonesian police disruption units set up by these 20 agents , working with Quessay, sabotaged SIEV-X and concealed a tracking device in it, in order to track where it sank and where to find any survivors? Those important questions remain unanswered.

On extradition of Quessay, Keelty replied casually that advice from Attorney-Generals’ Department was that extradition for homicide was not possible because of the difficulty in establishing a jurisdiction on the basis of uncertainty where SIEV-X sank. (MARGO: Remember John Howard’s cast iron guarantee during the election campaign that SIEV-X sank in Indonesian waters? This would have meant no jurisdiction for Australian Courts, but we found out later Howard had no evidence at all for that claim and that all the evidence was to the contrary, that it sank in international waters.)

Instead, he suggested, AFP might be able to get Quessay out here on people smuggling charges if the Indonesians passed an anti-people smuggling law before Quessay is released on 1 January.

There was no media analysis or comment on these significant pieces of testimony by Australia’s Federal Police Commissioner – Australia’s top cop. There was no scrutiny of his claims regarding Quessay’s extradition despite this issue’s obvious importance.

Then Labor Senator Linda Kirk presented a South Australian petition calling for a full powers independent judicial enquiry into SIEV-X. She made a stirring speech. Again, no media coverage.

Then I gave two strong factually detailed speeches in Brisbane and Sydney. AAP wire service ( Nikki Todd) reported the Brisbane highlights. In Brisbane I said:

“There is increasing circumstantial evidence that two or three Australian federal police liaison officers who were running the Australian people smuggling disruption program out of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta during October 2001, are likely to know a great deal about how 353 asylum-seekers, mostly women and children, were killed by a ruthless Indonesian disruption operation that achieved its intended result the capsizing of a deliberately grossly overloaded boat with great loss of life – on 19 October 2001.

“But it would not be fair to simply blame these two or three men who did the job expected of them in their positions. Others further up the line of authority know enough of what may have happened to take care not to know more …”

There was no coverage of that speech (though a minor right-wing blogger website picked up the above quotation).

Last Wednesday in the Senate, Senator Bartlett asked two strong questions of AFP Minister Senator Ellison on the disruption program – in part drawing on Faulkner’s and Collins’ earlier questions to Keelty – and followed this up with an uncompromising statement noting that SIEV-X was a mass killing on the scale of Bali, that it happened in international waters, and that Australia had an obligation to do something about bringing Quessay to account and to answer outstanding questions about SIEV-X. Again, no media coverage at all.

What is going on here? Is this really such a minor story? Is it really so boring to readers? Is it really so hard to report intelligibly? Or is the truth that it is too frightening, too confronting of our complacent self-image? At what point do our mainstream media decide to pick up the SIEV-X story again?

This coming week, there is a good chance of further SIEV-X activity in the Senate.

Non-government parties may, to their great credit, agree to put down further public benchmarks of Senate opinion on the issues. How will the mainstream media report and comment on this? What will make it “news”?

This is where your wider diagnosis fits in, Margo. There has been a lot of interesting analysis lately by senior commentators of John Howard’s growing agenda-setting power, and of his power to get things done without wanting to know the detail of how they are done. (Carr is operating on similar lines). Both trends are important indicators of a growing “soft authoritarianism” in Australia.

In the latter regard, the children overboard photographs are often cited as an example. But this is a “safe” example to use. It takes considerably more courage to link questions about SIEV-X with discussions on John Howard’s growing power. Maybe discussion of that linkage must be postponed till more evidence is in on what was really happening in Indonesia between the AFP, its Indonesian police agents, and its undercover agents.

Possibly there is now a view in influential editorial offices that the SIEV-X and people disruption story – even if it is true – is too disturbing and confronting at a time when Australia is still digesting the tragedy of Bali, and the government is trying to build a national consensus that does not yet exist behind war with the US ally against Iraq.

Maybe the mainstream editorial view is – we don’t want to have to deal in Australia with this complication and distraction from the “war on terror”, so let’s push this aside until such time as we may have more leisure to devote some attention to it. Don’t let it grow into a big issue now, because it could become too divisive.

If true, this would explain the media’s lack of attention to SIEV-X over the past seven weeks.

I profoundly disagree with such a view. Like the WW2-era British police inspector in the excellent recent ABC TV series Foyle’s War, I believe that murder is murder whenever it happens and whoever is responsible. After all, 353 people died on SIEV-X!

I am glad to see the Senate supporting these concerns and setting an example to the rest of Australia. The evidence is building (see www.sievx.com) that SIEV-X was not an accident, and this evidence needs to be examined by an independent judicial enquiry with powers to subpoena witnesses and compel testimony from reluctant witnesses. Quessay needs to be detained as a key witness. It is precisely because the SIEV-X issue is building again at a time when we face difficult national challenges that it needs to be handled correctly and courageously under our law. Let the chips fall where they may.

Watch point: How will our newspapers handle developments in the Senate on the AFP people smuggling disruption program, Abu Quessay and SIEV-X, in its last sitting week 9-12 December before Quessay’s release on 1 January?

“It’s actually a cry from the heart for the Labor Party as a whole to gather its resources, its intelligence, its energy and its passion and to take on that man who pretends to lead this country.” Carmen Lawrence

“We have to, I guess, convince the Australian community that we’re capable of having a different kind of society. We’re actually capable of transforming ourselves and our social world. That’s always been the objective of left-of-centre political parties. If we think we’re just going to make a minor difference, I don’t know why I’d get up in the morning and frankly I’m finding it harder and harder to do so.” Carmen Lawrence

Several readers want to read the full text of Carmen’s statement to the Canberra press gallery announcing her resignation from the frontbench. Here it is, followed by questions and answers which hit the mark on many unsaid truths, including the media’s role in closing down, not opening up, public debate.

Carmen’s defiance has already inspired some ALP members to encourage her to stand for the position of president of the Party (see Left weighs push to win top party job for Lawrence, smhDec9)

***

Transcript of press conference by Dr Carmen Lawrence

Parliament House, Canberra, Thursday December 5, 2002

Thank you very much for coming here this afternoon. It won’t surprise you, I think, that I’m here to announce my resignation from the Shadow Cabinet and the Ministry. It hasn’t been a particularly well kept secret.

I informed Simon Crean before question time today, after having a long discussion with him about my reasons. I’ve obviously discussed it, too, with my family and friends and colleagues. Although there may be speculation to this effect, the decision’s not made solely on the basis of the policy decision on asylum seekers today. That clearly has been the trigger for my decision but it’s not the only reason that I’ve decided to move from the Shadow Cabinet and Ministry to the back bench.

And that’s what I’m doing – moving to the back bench.

I’ve found myself increasingly out of step with the majority of my Shadow Cabinet colleagues. That may be me, not them. I don’t find my own views and values reflected in a lot of decisions that are made by that Shadow Cabinet, And in fairness to a great many people in the Labor Party, I think that they doesn’t always reflect their views either.

The difficulty with the position that I confronted, and it’s not a new one – politicians find themselves in this position on many occasions – is that once decisions are made, I’m bound to both support those decisions and defend them in the public arena, and the condition of that is that I cannot then speak against matters about which on some occasions I feel very strongly.

Now I’m not a novice to compromise or mistakes – I’ve done both and plenty of them.

But I’ve got to the point with my colleagues in the Shadow Cabinet where I don’t believe I can continue to support and defend a range of policies, as well as, if you like, the general disposition and direction of that that Shadow Cabinet, whether you’re talking about the current decision on asylum seekers, the lack of clarity in my view, on the position in Iraq, previous decisions such as the complete agreement, initially, with the Private Health Insurance Rebate ( although I still have some hopes in that direction), funding for wealthy schools and so on.

My first experience on returning to the Shadow Cabinet over a year ago – nearly two years now – was that it had become incredibly conservative – timid, even. And I’d hoped that after the election that would change. I’m prepared, as I say, to concede that I’m the one who’s out of step. But I’m not able to continue to support and defend policies which, in my view are devised with one eye on the polls, and another on media impact.

That’s not true, I must say, of all my Shadow Cabinet colleagues or, indeed of all of my Caucus colleagues. My views are not reflected, and I think that’s true of a number of others as well, but my vote’s captured.

However, it’s not fair on my Shadow Cabinet colleagues to seek to be an exception to the rule that you don’t speak out and that you don’t dissent.

I’ve simply found that tension too great. As you know, I have, on a few occasions, spoken out – initially on the asylum seekers. At least the policy was then in development. I can no longer do that.

I’ve spoken strongly against us supporting a war on Iraq – against attacking Iraq – because that’s really what’s at issue. And I have in many respects, although you may not all have seen it, exceeded the brief of the Shadow Cabinet. I feel very strongly that that’s an issue that we’re going to confront as a community and I don’t believe that we’re speaking sufficiently clearly against the possibility that we would sign up with George Bush in some form of unilateral action against Iraq.

In my experience in recent times it’s not uncommon in the Shadow Cabinet for issues to be discussed first of all with an eye on what the public reaction is likely to be, rather that whether it’s inherently good policy. And I don’t believe that we can continue in that direction.

I believe that we need to be telling Australians a story about the sort of country w want this to be – what we hope for them – how their lives can be improved. Certainly we have to listen to the community and be aware of their needs and interests, but we can’t continually be responding to what is often the shorter term view of a section of the community who are most audible.

To develop good polices that are consistent with our claims to be progressive we have to start with a set of values and yes – even ideals – to which we aspire as political activists.

Otherwise, why bother?

They shouldn’t be for decoration either – these values – they’re not just a preamble to the policy statements. They should be embedded in it – both in terms of the decision and the language. And they shouldn’t be abandoned either at the faintest whiff of grape shot.

I’ll use the asylum seeker policy as an example. First of all, I think the mistake we’re making is that we’re playing on Howard’s turf. We’re allowing him to define the territory and the arguments.

Now I don’t share the view that Howard is some kind of political genius. He’s not. The times suit him. But he’s vulnerable. But as long as we try to argue the case on his territory, then he’s the one who’s dictating the terms about the political contest and the way it’s played out. We played along – before the last election with the moral panic surrounding the boat people, instead of getting out there and persuading Australians of a different point of view.

As a lot of you know, I hated our acquiescence on the Tampa. But a lot had gone before that. In a sense it was inevitable after so much acquiescence, month after month. Each small step in a way was barely noticeable. But the end result was that we were pushed well beyond a position that even our own members – members of the ALP – could endorse. This time, with the asylum seeker policy after twelve months, I though it was an opportunity to get it right, to rule a line under the past, as we did with East Timor. After twenty five years of wrong policy we finally got East Timor right and I pay tribute to Laurie Brereton for that.

And I thought this was as similar opportunity. There are improvements and I will concede that. But we’re in opposition. This is the time to craft the policy in the best form that we possibly can. Now was the time to signal the we really wanted to head in a new direction, the underpinning principal of which was the recognition of the equal worth of all human beings, not trying to frighten people into some idea that they threaten our territorial integrity and they are a security threat.

It’s part of our task in politics to bring the Australian community with us and not to treat them as if they’re incapable of changing their views and in fact assuming that they’re terminally bigoted. That’s not a view I can possibly accept as a member of the Labor Party.

And I guess what I’m trying to say, too, is that the way we talk about issues and people and the values that underpin our actions are often at least as important as the policy details themselves. Because ultimately people will be asking – where will you go if you’re confronted by certain decisions in Government, how can we expect you to behave given challenges that you haven’t yet thought about. And I don’t think we’re doing a very good job at outlining those directions and dispositions. So people need to look at the detail of every policy in order to decide where we might be.

The language, in my view, of toughness and of security and of threat, are not an appropriate language to talk about a policy for asylum seekers. These are people who are asking for our help after they’ve been subject to persecution, and, as we know in most cases that turns out to be the case.

Why should we confuse the very serious question of our own national security and threats to the lives of Australians with the issue of how we manage people who come here when they’re seeking asylum. They are not the same issue and yet we are going along with the view that these are somehow all tied in together. And we showed that in the way we put it together.

We’re also retaining, for instance, the linking of onshore and off shore refugee programs. We’re encouraging the idea that it’s reasonable to talk about queues. All we need do is separate them and then you’ve got the ongoing humanitarian program – managed and predictable – and then at various times an opportunity for a more generous response separate from that when there is need.

This policy clearly treats some asylum seekers as more worthy than others – whatever gloss you put on it. The Christmas Island option is seriously diminished in relation to the onshore option and yet what’s the difference between the two groups of people – one get in a leaky boat that doesn’t make it and gets as far as Christmas Island, the others get on a slightly less leaky boat and make it, as they have in the past, to Broome?

One gets the offshore processing, one gets onshore processing. One gets legal advice, the other gets none. One gets an independent tribunal – the other gets none. One gets the possibility of review – the other gets none.

And where is Christmas Island? It’s a very long way from the mainland. Are you people going to be there, watching what’s happening on Christmas Island? Are you people going to be they’re when things go wrong? Will the lawyers get there to do pro-bono work?

I’m a former Premier of Western Australia, and I know where Christmas Island is. I’ve been there and I know how difficult it is to get staff – to get staff to stay, to get people to visit – it takes a week, effectively, unless you’re wealthy enough to afford a charter.

Christmas Island is a very long way. Out of sight, out of mind, but the recommendations of our policy have one set of processes for people who go there and one on land. And these are largely matters of accident. They’re not matters of priority, they’re not matters of one group being more worthy than the other, they’re essentially arbitrary and matters of accident.

So they are a few of my reasons. They’re by no means all of them and I don’t necessarily want to go into a lot of detail about the asylum seekers issue but I will if you wish, in questioning.

I was also very disappointed on this occasion, with the process. And a number of my colleagues were as well.

There has been a lot of consultation in the wider community – true – but we knew down to the last details almost the views of the various state conferences around the country. Labor Party people told us what they wanted. They told us that they wanted to see an end to mandatory detention for the purpose of processing. Not for checking – everyone understands you need to do that. Security checking, health checking, identity checking. And in most countries in Europe that takes around a month. The people around this country that belong to the Labor Party and support it have told us very clearly that that’s what they wanted. They told us that they wanted an end to temporary protection visas because again, they’re discriminatory. You know you get a Temporary Protection Visa on the basis of how you come here, not on the basis of the merits of your case. We argue against it in the document and then retain it.

These are the issues that I think confront us as a party, and our members told us what they wanted and we haven’t listened to them. I want to move to the back bench so that I can work assiduously as a member of the Labor Party, which is a party that I joined up with a great many years ago and I’m not giving up on, to try and change direction on some of these issues.

So that I’m not silent when the decisions are made or even before they’re made.

So that I can act with colleagues – of whom there are many – to take back the heart and the soul of the Labor Party – away from those people for whom it’s good enough to get up in the morning just to think that we’re going to be slightly better managed on that day.

Most of the people that I know won’t sign up to political activism in order to get better managers. Why would we be in politics? Go and join the bureaucracy.

So my plea to the young members of the Labor Party – to the members of the party who’ve kept the faith – is that mine is not a decision to abandon the Labor Party. It’s a decision to move into a different phase of my life, to work with activists to encourage young people to join up to this great party and to try with many others – because it isn’t something that anyone could do alone, to re-capture the values that I think underpin the Labor Party.

It’s an appropriate time, on the thirtieth anniversary of Whitlam’ election.

There was a generation of the sixties of whom I was one – forgive the nostalgia – who joined the Labor Party. Not because of the details of Whitlam’s policies, but because of what he and his colleagues stood for – because of the excitement they generated about the sort of Australia we could be – after years and years of the stuffiness and the war, by the way, that took place under the conservatives.

There are people out there with similar passion. At the moment we’re not speaking to them adequately. So part of what I’m trying to do is, with others – particularly young people – to try and capture them.

The Greens can’t do it. The Greens aren’t the solution. The Greens are a third party – a minor party. It’s about the Labor Party. The Labor Party taking stock of the future, grabbing that new generation and asking serious questions about human values, about sustainability for the environment and a range of other issues that I know that they all care abut.

So I thank you all very much for your time and I want to thank a few people before I conclude. I am very sorry in many respects for my colleagues – not because my going is necessarily going to make a huge difference to them, but it may appear that I’m reflecting on them. I’m not.

This is a personal decision and I know there are plenty of people within the party who agonise every day over similar things. And some people may suggest that my position is selfish and self-interested. That will be a judgment that they make, but I really do thank my colleagues who’ve supported me today and in the past

I’ve had the best and the worst of the Labor Party, the best and the worst of politics, and a lot of people have stood beside me. That’s not a resignation speech from the party, by the way, or the Parliament, but I want to thank them for the faith they’ve shown me in getting me into the Shadow Cabinet again after a difficult period of time.

I want to thank Jo Fox from my staff. One of the things that happens when you step aside – and Jo has had this experience before and she’s not a jinx, she’s a fantastic young woman with lots of energy and commitment to Indigenous people – I know that she will find a place for herself either with another Shadow Minister or in other employment if that’s what she chooses to do. And I want to publicly thank Jo, particularly for her commitment to Indigenous people.

And they’re the other group of people to whom I want to apologise. But I will continue to work incredibly hard to influence the policy of the Labor Party now and into the future. We are not doing nearly enough on that front either. Part of the success of John Howard has been to make it extremely difficult to talk about the principles that should underpin Indigenous policy in this country. And we need a renewal of energy on that front – not just mine but everybody’s.

Because these are the most disadvantaged people and it’s not just about health and housing. It’s easy for Howard and others to point at that and say we need to do better. It’s about, again, respecting the capacity of Indigenous leadership and Indigenous people.

I get thoroughly sick of people telling us in a sense how down and out they are. The Indigenous people that I meet are powerful, potent and they want to take control of their lives. Sure there are lots of people who are damaged because of what’s happened to them over the last two hundred years, but it’s time in this community that we don’t share his views about Indigenous people, that talking about their disadvantage is not a black-arm view of history. It’s fact.

And remedying that disadvantage is a task for all of us – not just for the Labor Party, but also for every single person here and every single person in the community. So I do apologise to them for not being the shadow minister. They have been incredibly generous to me and in a sense it’s a great tragedy that there has been such a high turnover.

But I’ll continue on every issue – education, health, rights – plant breeders’ rights for God’s sake we’ve got involved in – to look at the interests of Indigenous people. It doesn’t happen often enough in Australia. There are too many stereotypes about them and it’s time we turned it around. So that basically is what I wanted to say and please feel free to ask any questions. Sorry if I’ve taken a while but it’s important.

***

Question: Dr Lawrence, as a person of influence you haven’t been able to influence the party. Why isn’t this a resignation speech from the Labor Party under Simon Crean?

Lawrence: Well I know the Labor Party pretty well and the Labor Party is essentially about a tug of war that goes on all the time, among party membership, between the various unions, with public opinion.

I find the views that I’ve expressed to you today reflected in the Labor Party among the rank and file members, so called – amongst the branches and all the state conferences that I’ve talked to you about. I actually feel more comfortable with the Labor Party and it’s values than I do at the moment with the Shadow Cabinet.

And it’s not just about Simon Crean, by the way, I’m not pointing at Simon. It’s a collective – of which I was a part. I just think we’ve lost our sense of direction in teams of those values that I’ve talked bout. It’s not terminal – it’s just that I don’t feel as if I can continue for the moment in that role and I want to play a different role in the Party.

There’s a lot of incredibly good people – energetic and faithful people – in the Labor Party. I’m not resigning from the Labor Party. The Labor Party doesn’t belong either to Gough Whitlam or to anyone else. The Labor Party is the views of its members. It’s the passion of its members and ultimately it’s the members. It’s not mine; it’s not Simon Creans, it’s not anyone else’s to play with.

Question: Really what you’re saying today is that the Shadow Cabinet under the leadership of Simon Crean – that the Shadow Cabinet as a collective is not reflecting Labor Party values, is not standing for Labor Party values

Lawrence: That’s my view. Bluntly, that’s my view.

Question: (inaudible) take on Simon Crean’s leadership?

Lawrence: Obviously that’s something I’ve thought about very carefully – not just Simon but about my colleagues. As I said, at one level it would have been easy for me to succumbed to the view that I should stay in there because I represent a certain strand of thought, that I can have a certain impact, but my experience in the last couple of years has been that that’s not true. Not that I’ve failed to make the arguments, but that it’s not possible to have that effect. In many cases the decisions are made before it even gets –

Question: Simon Crean as leader after taking (inaudible.)-

Lawrence: No, because it was true under Kim Beazley, too. And it’s not, I think, it’s not a function of an individual leader. Leaders in many respects are only as good as the people that they lead. I think that we get that wrong in Ausralian politics. I think it’s a collective responsibility.

It’s about the Labor Party at very senior level, a Labor Party that I think can do a lot better. The individual members of the Shadow Cabinet – many of them I like and respect. I’m not trying to poke a finger in the eye of Simon Crean or Kim Beazley for that matter, I just think that we’ve stepped – we’ve been taking steps to the right probably for more time than I’ve been aware of.

But it’s become, in my view, extremely difficult to sustain positions that I regard as Labor positions, and I can’t go out – I couldn’t go out there tomorrow and argue in favour of the policy that we’ve passed this morning. I can’t go out tomorrow as a Shadow Cabinet minister and argue in favour of supporting the United States if they take pre-emptive action against Iraq. I cannot do that and I shouldn’t put my colleagues in the position pretending that I can, of dissembling, of nudging the edges of getting special permission. That’s not fair on them either.

Question: Could Labor win an election with what you describe as the incredibly conservative, timid managerial style?

Lawrence: They may well. As I say, it may be me who’s out of step. I’m prepared to concede that. This may be the future of politics in Australia. As I say, you can look around and see that you’re out of step, and sometimes you’ve got to concede it could be you.

But I don’t think so. I’m hopeful enough that there are still arguments to be made in favour of a different kind of Australia where we don’t regard asylum seekers as a threat to our very existence, where we do understand the need to make good the damage that’s been done to Indigenous people, where contemplating bombing innocent civilians in Iraq is not actually taken as given.

I mean, what’s happened in Australia – I think in some of the debate about this stuff we’re prepared to accept as normal horrifying prospects, like killing fifty thousand people in Iraq, which is a possible scenario. For what purpose does that serves any interest that most of us would hold valuable?

Question: You seem to be having purer view of Cabinet solidarity than Simon Crean, who this morning said it would be OK for you to argue in public party platforms your case for change of the policy. Did he put that case to you before?

Lawrence: He did, and very generously, but I don’t think that’s sustainable and don’t think it’s fair on my colleagues if I were to go out there and say, “Well look I’ve got special permission to say that yes there’s the policy and I voted for it but I actually don’t really think it’s a fine policy I’m going to continue to argue against it.” I’m one of his inner group of shadow ministers, that’s not fair, I couldn’t do that. I mean, as I say I’ve played it as far as I could without breaking Cabinet solidarity, Simon generously offered that to me but I don’t think that’s sustainable and I think that ultimately neither does he.

Question: (inaudible)

Lawrence: How many colleagues overall? I haven’t counted but I’m certainly not alone. I’ve never been very good at counting in fact, as I’m sure some people will tell you.

Question: The Labor Party has backed you through some pretty tough times over many years and some people wanted you to resign seven years ago.

Lawrence: And I told Keating he’d have it, too, at the time.

Question: You’ve spent twenty minutes on blistering criticism of Crean, and did you take that into account how they’ve backed you in the past and –

Lawrence: Absolutely

Question: And many of your colleagues will think that you’re being a traitor by –

Lawrence: They may think that. A year ago when the Tampa decision was made, if I can just give you a feeling for this, I wasn’t alone amongst my colleagues in teetering on the brink.

When I walked into Parliament at Question Time that day, I’d actually been having lunch, which I rarely do, with one of the embassy staff – with the Irish Ambassador, because the Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland was here – a woman with responsibilities for similar areas as I had at the time. So I did a rare thing and I went out for lunch.

We were a little late getting back and I heard the stuff about the boarding of the Tampa by the SAS on the radio two o’clock news. And I walked straight into the Chamber just in time to hear our leader endorse that position.

Now on that day I didn’t actually get my bum on the seat. I walked out and I didn’t go back for two days. At that moment, like lot of other people, I was very close to pulling the pin and I decided, precisely for the reasons that you’ve described, that that would have been destructive of my colleagues, it would have damaged people who would have had nothing to do with me or my conscience.

Some people obviously don’t share those views, but I pledged at that time to myself and to others that I would do whatever I could to try and change some of those directions, not just in relation to asylum seekers.

So that’s, I hope, how I hope to pay back those people in the party . I’m not trying to destroy the party. We’re two years out from an election. But I do want the party to improve its capacity to distinguish itself from the Liberals, to play on different territory, to respect our own members for God’s sake. That’s, I think, a way for me to repay the very many people who’ve supported me.

Question: Dr Lawrence do you think Simon Crean will be the person to lead the Labor Party at the next election?

Lawrence: I do. I do. I don’t see –

Question: For what reason given your twenty minutes of (inaudible)?

Lawrence: There are occasionally rare people in politics and in public life who have characteristics that are so compelling that you say. “That’s the one”. That’s the one we want to lead us, whether it’s in the board room or in politics or wherever it may be.

But most of the rest of the time it’s a compromise. Most of the rest of the time it’s the next best. You know, if you like, the person that we can all work and live with.

I actually hate the trend in Australian politics towards the presidential style. The Labor Party leadership, as I said before, is ultimately only as good as its members. So it could be Simon Crean, it could be anybody, in my view. As long as they were reflecting the views and values of the Labor Party and did so convincingly.

So I haven’t given up on Simon Crean or anyone else for that matter. I think they’re all capable of showing the way.

John Howard, as I say, is the most deeply ordinary person that I’ve ever confronted in Australian politics and for God’s sake he’s leading the Liberal Party and everyone thinks he’s a political genius.

So without wanting to damn Simon with faint praise by making that comparison, I don’t believe that that’s the issue. I know the media love to speculate about this or that leader. Simon may or may not survive until the next election. I don’t know that , you don’t know that. Simon probably doesn’t know that. John Howard didn’t know that he was going to end up leader of the Liberal Party when he did but Simon is a decent human being and I think he’s capable of listening. He’s shown a willingness to change but we’ve still got a long way to go.

I don’t want to belong to a Labor Party as I say that’s just sort of marginally different from the Libs. If you want the original go for it – why would you want a facsimile?

Question: Which category Simon Crean fall into – natural leader or next best?

Lawrence: No I think I’ve made it pretty clear. I don’t think Simon’s one of those people who stands out head and shoulders above the crowd, but neither does John Howard. I don’t look around and see anyone like that at the moment.

Question: But Dr Lawrence doesn’t the leader have to seek the – and get the party to crystallise the values of the party and follow those values? Obviously in your view Simon Crean has not done that – has not been able to do that.

Lawrence: I won’t dissemble. I think it’s clear from what I’ve said that that’s the case. It doesn’t mean to say he’s not capable of doing it. I think what Simon needs to do is to get a wider range of advice on issues, he needs to listen to more people within his own Caucus who have different views. It’s always easy to get agreement when you only ask the people who agree with you. You’ve actually got to get a wider range of advice, so I think Simon’s perfectly capable of transforming himself and the party as long as people are willing to give him a go to do that.

But I think a lot of people will not find it a very entrancing prospect if what we’re leading toward is more of the same.

Question: Why do you believe he’s suddenly capable of transforming himself now?

Lawrence: I said he’s capable of it. I don’t know whether he will or not.

Question: Aren’t you saying that as long as the group beneath him aren’t – you’re saying that there is not the personnel in the Labor Front Bench at the moment to make a good Labor leader representing Labor values because they’re not doing that?

Lawrence: We need a lot more courage, and it’s not to say that they’re not capable of courage. We need a lot more courage. We need a wider range of opinions reflected in the decision. We need less interest, especially now, in developing these principles and policies in how you guys are going to react the next day. We need more willingness to persuade – all of those things.

There are intelligent people in the Labor Party. I think there are too many of them who have come up through the school of forelock tugging, too few who are independent of mind, but there are enough independent thinkers, creative thinkers and people of energy to transform the party in the way that I’ve described. And that’s my plea.

It’s not that the party’s incapable of transformation. But at the moment the people who are pushing the show are the ones who don’t like to take risks and they don’t like to put their heads above the parapet and they’re not willing to risk your ire.

Question: (inaudible)

Lawrence: Well that’s a possibility. I mean I agonised over that, I went to the people of Fremantle before the last election and I didn’t publicly disassociate myself with the asylum seeker policy at that time. I didn’t. I should l have but had I done so I would have been doing precisely what Matt Price (Australian journalist) alluded to, and that is blowing up a whole lot of people for reasons of my own views and values. We’re one year into a three year cycle now. Frankly by Monday you guys are going to have forgotten all of this and I’ll get on with my job.

Question: What’s your opinion of Julia Gillard?

Lawrence: Julia’s an incredibly hard worker, she’s smart and she took this policy a lot further than others might have done. So I don’t have any antipathy toward Julia.

Question: Do you have any criticism of the way she’s conducted this process though?

Lawrence: No, I think in fairness it’s not Julia. The process was again one of not taking enough varied advice internally. Simon knew that there were dissenters on this policy. And yet those of us he knew were likely to be critics didn’t get to see the policy until Sunday – in my case I was lucky, it was a privilege for me. Sunday in my case, and in the case of a couple of other Shadow Ministers with strong views they didn’t get to see it until Question Time on Monday, a seventy five page document that we then debated at four o’clock.

Now the Caucus rightly said, “Well bugger that, we’re not going to do that”, and insisted on it being delayed, but by then those of us in Shadow Cabinet had been locked into it. So that wasn’t Julia’s doing. That’s the sort of thing that has to change. We cannot go developing a whole lot of policies in that way. Howard runs his Cabinet like that, but they’re in Government so they’re content to live with it. Our troops are a lot more bolshie than that, I’m pleased to say.

Question: Mr Crean’s doing though, Dr Lawrence.

Lawrence: Well I don’t know who decided to handle it that way. I really don’t know whose decision it was, but it’s part of the fear that if we show people it will leak and if it leaks somehow the arguments will be corroded having discussed it for two weeks instead of having to discuss it for two days. It’s part of the dumbing down of Australian politics.

Why can’t we have a debate about the details in public, especially in Opposition? I know that the division is death stuff is out there, and you’ll probably construct even these events in those terms. Yes, says Matt Price, he will. But I think it’s time in Australian politics to say “Come on, come on, we cannot afford to have second-rate debates which focus on whether someone supports the leader or not”.

And Howard gets away with murder basically because his colleagues are now so totally intimidated very hard to get them to speak publicity about anything at all, even when you know that they’re totally against what he’s proposing.

Question: What.changes in Mr Crean’s office would make the process better?

Lawrence: Well I think I said to you a wide range of advice is necessary – of his colleagues, not necessarily his staff. And I think that it’s important that the party more broadly – when views are known as they are in this case – is brought into the process. I mean we had Labor for Refugees represented on the initial working group but they were told basically that their views really weren’t important.

The reality is that a failure to get this right now will simply mean we’ll have to do it all again in the middle of next year. So I didn’t understand the political strategy either, I’d have to say, of not incorporating their views in the final document. Because it just means they’ll be out there campaigning every day to try and get it right in six months time instead of having it locked away. This afternoon we could have all said, “Done and dusted, terrific, principled Labor policy, finished, all our branches are happy, it’s sensible, it’s humane and it’s workable”. Instead we’ve got three or four key holes in it and those holes are going to leak.

Question: Do you accept that (inaudible)?

Lawrence: Well it’s hard to say I mean we hold Government in every state in the country and I’m always conscious of that when I make these observations. Every state and territory government is a Labor Government, although it was clear in Victoria that there was a substantial Green vote in certain seats. So it may be that if we continue to be less than clear and less than emphatic on these things that we will lose votes to the Greens.

And I’m aware of the fact that a lot of good Labor people the last time round, including some former Labor members of Parliament, didn’t vote for us. That’s a pretty shocking thing when you discover it. And some of them have been quite open in telling anyone who’ll listen that that’s what they did. And I guess what I’m saying is that that was a wake up call then, but we don’t seem to have quite got the message yet and we’re a year into the electoral cycle. We’ve got to get the message and move on and clearly.

Question: Jenny Macklin (from) your faction is in that Shadow Cabinet room. Is she not doing enough to put the concerns that you’ve been talking about today?

Lawrence: Jenny’s incredibly hard working and loyal. I mean one of the problems with the way we operate our system is that the person who’s the deputy invariably gets, once the decisions are made within the leadership group, to defend those positions. One of the difficulties is that it’s not always possible to be clear about what her own views are. And I don’t know how you’d get around that with a deputy.

Question: (inaudible) the baddies?

Lawrence: Wouldn’t you love to know. You can figure it out, I think. I don’t want to name names because it’s not the same on every issue either And it’s not just the people in the Shadow Cabinet, it’s some in the Ministry and some outside. In some respects you may say this is a plea from the Left of the Labor Party that you’re hearing here. But I haven’t always been in the Left of the Labor Party. It’s not an ideological position. It’s about clarity of conviction and courage and a willingness to take risks as much as anything.

Question: Will you be campaigning on this and talking publicly?

Lawrence: Yes I will. I’ll be doing that and I’ll be encouraging the many members of the Labor Party who are here and in state parliaments and the members of the branches to regain control of the Labor Party – not to let it slip.

Question: Not to be (inaudible) what went through today and not to be out there doing that?

Lawrence: Yes in some respects that’s true, but we are yet to have a conference decision on this matter, and as I said it’s not going to go away. But there are other issues as well. On Iraq I intend to campaign very strongly against the Government getting involved, let alone the Opposition endorsing it.

Question: Dr Lawrence, will you be standing at the next election?

Lawrence: Yes I am.

Question: On Mr Crean and the value of leadership. Do you see that value reflected in the Parliamentary Labor Party today?

Lawrence: You can gather from what I said that it’s certainly not enough. Simon has a more consultative style than many leaders and I do give him credit for that. What I suggested about the asylum seeker policy is that it wasn’t really enough to include the critics the day before it was about to be confirmed by the Shadow Ministry.

Like others I didn’t even know what was in it. I didn’t know what sort of movement there had been. I didn’t know what issues had been decided within the strategy group, I didn’t know precisely what it was that was intended. Now I reckon if you’ve got someone that you know is going to be a critic that the time to include them is well before that. So I’d say in this case it didn’t work entirely well. But compared with other leaders, Simon has got an inclusive style. He’s a generous man, Simon Crean. I’m not having a go at his character at all. It’s a process that we’ve collectively devised which is not working well in Opposition in our third term.

Question: Are you prepared to be expelled from the Party over your stand from now on? That’s the first one, and the opposite question is do you still harbour ambitions to be a minister in a Labor Government?

Lawrence: Expelled from the party? I don’t see why that would be the case because what I’m enunciating is fair and it’s consistent with the Labor Party platform – so that would be very odd I think.

Question: Has there been a Caucus vote?

Lawrence: There has been a Caucus vote, but as Simon said this morning the members of the Caucus and indeed he said the Shadow Cabinet- and I thought that was unfair – but the members of the Caucus are entitled – as members of the party – to seek to persuade its national conference to a platform which may, for instance, include the position that there would be no mandatory detention on while processes are taking place to check the status of asylum seekers. So I don’t see why that would be a problem. I’m not going to go out there every day – and you’re not listening anyway – but I’ll be talking to people within the party and the wider community. This won’t be on every radio station every day. In terms of expulsion from the party as well, if people find me so unpleasant they want to sort of extrude me from the process that’s their business, but I doubt it. Sorry, what was the other question?

Question: Ambitions to be a minister in a Labor government?

Lawrence: Look there’s no reason why at a future time I or anyone else wouldn’t be in a position to put their hands up. Whether people would on the basis of my action today say, “We’re not going to cop that, she’s already been in and out a couple of times, it’s time for someone else”, I’d fully understand that. I don’t particularly harbour an ambition for a ministerial post if it’s in a Government where nothing much happens.

Question: But you you said that earlier – how would you describe this phase that you’re coming into? Is this the end phase of your political career?

Lawrence: Phase to me suggests in out, up down, it’s a momentum. I haven’t made a decision to leave politics, Fran.

Question: Who do you expect will get the portfolio of Aboriginal Affairs?

Lawrence: I have no idea what Simon plans to do on that. But I’ll continue to work very hard on that. One of the things that I feel pleased about having done in the short period I’ve had that portfolio is that I’ve nagged every Shadow Minister into taking seriously whatever Indigenous issues exist within their portfolios. So if we’re doing a health piece of legislation or policy I am insistent that we first check the impact on Aboriginal people and how it may adversely or positively effect them and in indeed trying to encourage colleagues to take a bigger step.

In the past ministers for indigenous affairs have typically looked at rights questions, discrimination etcetera, native title and ATSIC, and haven’t really had much involvement in those other areas. Now I intend as a back bencher to keep those questions coming. Every time someone gets up and goes through a piece legislation the question will be, “Have you thought about the impact on Indigenous people, what is it exactly and what are we proposing to do in policy terms?”

Question: Your outspoken, devastating criticisms of the Labor Party – do you expect this to be a sort of starter gun for criticism from others to gather momentum now?

Lawrence: I hope it will cause people to actually look at what needs to be done and I’ve tried to suggest what that will be. And I hope I haven’t just been destructive because that’s not my intention. My intention is to say I can’t continue in this process the way it’s going.

I do see alternatives and I spent a lot of time outlining what they might be. I have hope for the Labor party and it’s members. I want the Labor Party to succeed because Howard and his mob are very destructive and it’s precisely because they’re so destructive that I feel it’s important for the Labor Party to get up off the matt and really take him on.

And I don’t mean the day to day nit picking the Question Time in politics. I mean really take him on – contest the territory – the language, the values, John Howard’s Australia is not one that I recognise as the one I value. He has diminished all of us, John Howard and I think we should be saying that – often.

Question: Dr Lawrence if that loses votes rather than gain votes, in other words if moving to the Left would lose votes, do you still think the Labor Party should do it?

Lawrence: I don’t see why it’s moving to the left. It’s about clear values enunciated and acted upon. We have to, I guess, convince the Australian community that we’re capable of having as different kind of society. We’re actually capable of transforming ourselves and our social world. That’s always been the objective of left of centre political parties. If we think we’re just going to make a minor difference, I don’t know why I’d get up in the morning and frankly I’m finding it harder and harder to do so.

Question: (inaudible)

Lawrence: Look I know you want to see it that way but it’s not. It’s actually a cry from the heart for the Labor Party as a whole to gather its resources, its intelligence, its energy and it’s passion and to take on that man who pretends to lead this country.

Question: At the last election on the Tampa, did you tell lies to your electorate or did you just avoid the truth?

Lawrence: I avoided the truth. I didn’t speak about it. I told as many people as I could in my constituency who asked me that I would do everything within my power from that day forward to undo what I saw as an unconscionable position. So whenever I was asked I did tell them what I would do.

I didn’t put it in my newsletters, my advertising, I didn’t endorse the party position publicly, but neither did I say that I didn’t support it except when asked, when I did say that I didn’t support it. Now that didn’t reach the media but it was very clear. Anyone who wrote to me, spoke to me, emailed me – I told them clearly. And in fact that’s why I’m here today in a way, because I feel as if I haven’t kept the pledge that I made to those people at that time.

Question: Dr Lawrence would you be comfortable going to the next election as a Labor candidate if the asylum seeker policy remains unchanged.

Lawrence: That would be very difficult but I have confidence in the national conference of turning it around, you know, to think that the members of the Labor Party are going to say no to this.

Question: What do you say to the many Labor voters who actually supported Labor and on two party preferred votes it was quite close – at the last election – who actually supported the policy that Kim Beazley put forward.

Lawrence: Well as I say, in my electorate I didn’t campaign on that basis and people in my electorate – because I’m quite outspoken in local newspapers and radio – know that I don’t support it. So it may not have hit the headlines, but it’s pretty clear that most people would understand my position. If they didn’t, I apologise to them, but the reality is that most people most of the time would know my views on these issues. They’ve been consistent for a long time. I’d argued against many of the moves that the Howard Government had made before the Tampa – I didn’t endorse the policy but I do apologise to those people who feel as if they’ve been misled about my real views. And that’s part of the problem that you face in politics. I mean sometimes you swallow it and sometimes you choke on it.

Question: What’s your response to the main argument of Julia Gillard, as I understand it, for the two tiered system, which is that there needs to be a deterrent to people and people smugglers and people getting into leaky boats risking their lives.

Lawrence: Well it’s not even consistent on that point, because if you get on a leaky boat that reaches Christmas Island then you get one system, and if you get on a leaky boat that reaches Darwin you get the onshore system with some degree of a review – not ideal – but some review – an independent tribunal.

Question: (inaudible) a deterrent in a leaky boat.

Lawrence: I don’t see why. Lots of leaky boats used to get to the coast of Western Australia before they started to go to Christmas Island. The logic is not compelling in my view, and if it’s really about deterring who would you be deterring – the people smugglers or the people who get on the boat? Why punish the people who’ve already had the misfortune to fall into the hands of those bastards?

Question: (inaudible)

Lawrence: When I read the policy on Sunday. That was the trigger but as I say it’s not he only reason and colleagues who know me have known that I’ve been worried for some time. I’ve not kept it a secret from anybody.

Thank you very much.

The disempowerment of faith, Iraq, fragmentation, and the failed WTO protests

 

by John Wojdylo

I don’t see the dichotomy between my views and those of David Makinson that Robin Ford (Webdiary 21/11) does. We’re both saying that we ought to base our actions (say, on the question of disarming Saddam Hussein) on the knowledge we have, without prejudging or making inductive leaps.

In addition, though, I’m saying that if we are horrified at the blood on our hands that might be spilt if we act, then we should also be horrified by the blood that might be on our hands if we choose not to act.

There are no “spaces between” – or third way – that we can escape into.

Different tactics are possible, but these are just part of the same picture – of choosing either action or inaction.

The problem is that sometimes the will of others affects us by causing a choice to stand out from the milieu of events of lesser importance: it forces us into making a choice that actually matters.

It seems to me that another of these seminal choices is currently facing the people of NSW, where the proposed anti-terror legislation threatens to change the legal landscape and the character of the democracy.

The sticking point is not the harsh measures – I think they’re justified, given the nature of the terrorist threat – but that the police minister himself will be given too much power.

In the NSW case, while it remains true that the police minister, along with the government that appointed him, can be voted out of office – the anti-terror measures don’t ban elections – the government would be given a free pass to create mischief while in office, and extra power to manipulate the electorate towards its own ends, particularly at election time.

It has proved itself in the past (e.g. WTO protests) willing to undertake such manipulation: the precedent is there.

An important moment is upon the people of NSW: they are being asked to have faith in the State. In principle, forever.

The Australian’s Editorial (28/11) echoes this sentiment: Australians “should have more confidence in the robustness of Australian democracy”.

But the point is that an important pillar of this robustness will be chipped away by the NSW anti-terror legislation.

The choice is between strengthened democratic structure and faith in the State. I’m afraid that naivety and apathy will conspire to favour the latter.

Yet the solution is relatively simple and painless, if only the will could be found to implement it: an independent authority (e.g. ombudsman, governor) ought to make decisions such as extending the period of validity of the anti-terrorism measures.

The Iraq choice is not so easy.

Seeing complexity in everything (as Derrida urges) is not the most important thing: seeing why a situation is complicated – because we have to make a choice and live with the responsibility – is.

I’m arguing that this is where we’re at because of Saddam Hussein. I’m arguing for responsibility, and for seeing the whole of the world, not just the half of it that makes it easy for us. The half that we avoid might have profound consequences for our lives.

If the belief that we are innocent and disempowered leads us to reject out of hand the wielders of power – “we, the innocent of the world, reject all of you” (DM) – then this belief is preventing us from seeing ourselves and examining our actions, because each of us wields power.

This goes back to the question of responsibilities that accompany rights.

Far from being disempowered, Robin, too, wields power. The statement, “Wojdylo despises the reflection that Makinson holds dear”, unjustly drives a wedge in and fragments the space of the discussion. Readers may be tempted to believe that there is no common ground, when in fact there’s enormous common ground with regards to making decisions to act without prejudging or making inductive leaps. I believe that David simply hasn’t thought his position through carefully enough, and is being a little bit dishonest.

I don’t believe that questioning statements made in public and argumentation in front of an audience is inherently rude and confrontational. Are we to ban mirrors?

It seems to me that scrutiny – not only of elected leaders – is going out of fashion.

Those who forgive – and then forget – their own actions in advance (i.e. don’t think critically about what they doing) are invariably surprised to discover their role in their own downfall. They blame it on someone else instead of accepting their part.

If you like the idea of Zeitgeist, then the feeling of disempowerment may be a product of our times, of friction with modernity. Perhaps not entirely coincidentally, then, the flavour of Islam that has gained ascendancy since the 1970s also bemoans and perpetuates disempowerment, blaming all the ills of Muslim countries on America and the rest of the infidels.

The biggest-gaining religion, however, has been Christianity, due to its boom in the developing world. There, it serves as a form of empowerment partly through strict adherence to rituals that seem harsh by first world standards.

One thread that links all these manifestations of the disempowerment faith is the demagoguery of their high priests and evangelists – the inability to engage with the facts, and lack of arguments in public statements. (See below.)

David may well despair at those who have picked themselves up off the floor after being debilitated by the horror of the reality of Saddam Hussein’s existence, and who manifest a “single-minded drive” for compelling him to disarm. But he ought to feel even more despair at what Saddam manifestly intends to do when he gets hold of a nuclear device, if he isn’t stopped.

Not to mention what Saddam said he will do to Israel and unsubmissive nearby Arab/Muslim countries with his biological and chemical weapons.

Despair can also be brought on by having one’s eyes opened to the vastness of the world – i.e. by having been refuted. That’s one reason why some people believe it’s better not to know anything (“See no evil…”). It’s an expression of life on earth, but this fact alone doesn’t make it right.

It turns out that in traditional societies (e.g. Japan) that live according to the “See no evil…” edict, methods exist for incorporating new elements of reality into the consciousness – i.e. a kind of realism has been part of the thinking for a thousand years or more.

Anti-realism sets in periodically when some principle or belief cuts people off from the facts, and prevents them assimilating new ground-level details. In the 1930s, many Japanese believed that they were the Aryans of Asia and had a divine mandate (from Hirohito) to conquer their part of the world.

Even today, a standard argument one hears in Japan as to why the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour is that the US-led oil embargo forced them to seek natural resources in East Asia.

This is similar to the oft-repeated German argument that the West – especially the United States – was responsible for Hitler’s rise to power, because the humiliating conditions of the Treaty of Versailles created the preconditions for Hitler’s success in the Weimar Republic.

This faith causes people to blame everybody but themselves.

The grain of truth – no, half a grain – in the worldview that rejects world leaders and proclaims one’s own innocence is the fact that with the advent of weapons of mass destruction, a small number of despots can enslave an entire population and use it as pawns for their own ends. It has been happening in Iraq, and is happening again now with the rise of a nuclear-armed North Korea.

Those familiar with the Japanese imperialist-apologia will be disturbed to hear that cutting off a country’s oil supply has been viewed in the past as an act of war (Japan, 1941). How will the insane Kim Jong-il react?

There’s a real choice to be made – and there’s no guarantee that any choice will be the right one, or a painless one. Critics (such as Anatol Lieven) of American actions live the illusion of a simplified world where choices are made in a vacuum: choices have no context, and so all kinds of utopias are possible, and of course none are attained, for which, naturally, the US alone is to blame. (To see this, apply the “basic questions” I listed in “Saddam Hussein’s Desire for Genocide” and “Heart of Darkness”.)

The reflections we hold dear are part of reality: there’s no dichotomy here either. We wield power also through the reflections we hold dear. These have sway over us and others, and affect our actions when they are unexamined.

David is probably unaware that the call for an internationale of innocents was repeated tens of thousands of times by Young Pioneers in the Soviet Union singing cheerful, optimistic and emotionally compelling – at times very beautiful – songs approved by the Politburo.

When the Young Pioneers grew up, many turned into willing apparatchiks for a totalitarian system whose stated and operational aim was to universalise its utopian vision. They started off professing innocence, but ended up wielding terrifying totalitarian power.

Some of those who have been touched by the communist experience are acutely aware of the use that beauty (e.g. a beautiful humanitarian goal) can be put to: i.e., propaganda and manipulation.

I’m not saying David is a communist, but that in his thinking he has hit upon a well-known path. I have no idea how far along he goes in actively retracing it. I suspect hardly at all.

But I can easily imagine situations where people sharing David’s view would unjustly wield their power, because they haven’t bridged the gap between the reflections they hold dear and how to put them into practice.

It’s natural that thinking people rediscover political positions – or snippets of instincts that they haven’t yet developed into a position – that are well-known in history. I’d go so far as to suggest that no new insight is possible. Old insights are merely recycled in different permutations against a backdrop of current circumstances.

We ought to question the instincts we have, try to see where they are taking us – and delimit them from unintended consequences.

This is part of mastering the power that each of us has.

The instinct to confuse “heartfelt reflections” with truth – or the search for truth – is dangerous, especially in political issues, because we leave ourselves open to accepting ex-cathedra pronouncements and unjustified bald assertions that attract and manipulate us.

(I’m always prepared to back up anything I say, upon request.)

I want to comment on one more thing Robin wrote. I’m still quite a way off feeling “contempt” or “despisement” for David Makinson’s view, at least because he hasn’t got it right yet, and I can see that clearly. How can you despise somebody when you understand their condition?

If I felt contempt, then I could not have spent so much time and energy – e.g. reading up on Mahatma Gandhi – trying to scrutinize DM’s position. I went way outside addressing DM’s exact words to try to give readers something of value that they can take with them.

I feel this: Unscrutinized convictions manifest the tragedy of an individual’s life.

Also, I can’t believe that talking about the fatal problems inherent in Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy cannot be “enlightening”, particularly in the present context.

Surely questioning the innocence of respecting human life absolutely is one of the central issues in all of this. Actually, Gandhi’s view is just one aspect of the worldview that I seem to be dealing with over and over again.

* * *

Each protester at the WTO meeting in Sydney had power – at the very least, the power to alienate 99 percent of their target audience. Over and over again – almost with every public utterance – a wedge was driven in that fragmented the space of the discussion.

We all know what authoritarians are capable of. Why make it easy for them?

The opposite approach might well have succeeded.

Imagine if right from the beginning, protest organizers had invited police and media representatives – and anyone else who could bear witness – to attend all stages of planning. Completely openly. No secrets.

No pretending, dishonestly, that the yearning to antagonize the powers-that-be – to provoke them in order to prove a prejudged point – did not exist at all.

Imagine if the manipulators of public opinion hadn’t been aided and abetted by fragmentary thinking, and instead the community as a whole had been given the chance to embrace the legitimate core of the protest.

Another example: strengthened by the solidarity of their mates, some found the power to wear and raise the symbol of the Gulag Archipelago.

The media, naturally – as at every demonstration of this sort around the world – paid disproportionate attention to this, and the photo appeared all over Australia. Those amongst the general public who remember what that symbol means had a ready reason to ignore everything after that. The point of the demonstration was lost.

Belief in personal disempowerment and subsequent innocence – together with mindless seeking of solidarity – might well have been the central cause of the failure of the WTO protests.

I mean “failure” in the sense that the media and others were handed complete victory in marginalizing the protesters by portraying them as worthless rabble and a danger to society, while the legitimate core of the protests was ignored outside protesters’ heads.

In Sunrise of the Autocrats (http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/06/25/1023864577458.html) I argued that the legitimate core consists of drawing attention to (a) the unfair wielding of power by the rich countries and (b) the need to make sure that trade deals are enforced in accordance with the law.

Especially because of the latter point, the fact that NSW police were always going to play a prominent role in the protest one way or another could have been used to advantage to sway members of the wider community. The legitimate core of the protest stands up for the law.

An obvious central platform in which people in all walks of life and the entire political spectrum could have taken part went begging: namely, GATS and the secrecy surrounding it.

It should not have been possible for a photograph – or TV news footage – to be taken without a banner addressing GATS and the secrecy surrounding it plainly in view.

The same mistakes as in every protest of this sort around the world appeared again – pushing imagined opponents away instead of inviting them in and talking and finding common ground. Instead, no message was projected out, except the one invented by the media.

Naturally, there are irreconcilable differences in the positions of the various participant groups – some want the overthrow of capitalism, while others think the WTO, and lower tariffs, can do much, much more for the world’s poor than any handouts can.

But as long as each group promotes its own view instead of reinforcing the central core, these protests will continue to be vulnerable to manipulation by powerful interest groups. The protests will continue to fail.

The cause of it is bloody-minded self-centredness, failure to see beyond yourself, that you’re not doing it for yourself or for your comrades, nor in the name of various nostalgias and utopian visions, but for the whole of our motley society. Even for the parts of it that despise, for whatever reason, the group you are from.

The entire focus should have been on getting the one message across that everybody can agree on.

Why not wear a neutral colour – white? Could have been a small boost to Australia’s clothing industry if everybody bought an Australia-made white T-shirt.

Given the nature of modern mass media, if 10 people wear red and hold red flags, and ten thousand wear white, the media will sensationalize the ten “commos”. It’s utterly predictable. So why not think, next time?

It should be obvious by now how police around the world are dealing with these protests. Those who baited police brought it on themselves and others.

Once again, instead of opening up new vistas and entering new territory, the thinking was tautological. Locked up in itself, its own complexes.

“We are disempowered in the face of a hegemony” – “we insist on this particular provocative act, because it is our right” – (and after incurring the wrath of the authorities, who acted completely predictably) “look how evil the authorities are! We are disempowered in the face of a hegemony!”

Since the goal of the protest ought to be for the good of the whole society, nobody ought to have anything to hide.

Protest organizers should have invited police and media representatives to attend all stages of planning, right from day one, before it was declared illegal. Police representatives should have been allowed to contribute to the discussion, just like everybody else present.

Get dialogue happening between authorities and protest organizers – not poisonous shouting matches, irrespective of “who started it”. Publicize the meetings, the spirit of cooperation.

Build a broad base from all sections of society – because GATS has implications for the whole of our society. There should be nothing for anybody to be afraid of.

And assure potential participants that the meeting will not be hijacked by one or another group peddling nostalgias and utopian visions. And assure participants that if treachery does happen, protest organizers will condemn those groups for breaking a pact and disassociate themselves from them for the benefit of the whole.

If the protest has to collapse because of self-centredness-induced fragmentation, then it’s just another sign that Australia is too immature a society to take personal responsibility seriously.

Authoritarianism will fill the gap. GATS, the NSW anti-terror legislation…

The crazy thing about this disempowerment faith is that people from all political persuasions believe in it. Witness the plethora of right-leaning publications decrying “leftist domination” of the media in Australia.

The right feels disempowered, burns inside and shouts down the left, setting in motion the vilest of currents against those that are not like “us”.

The left feels disempowered, and burns inside while reciting demagoguish mantras, devoid of any rational argument.

Everybody’s talking past each other.

Each side sees only themselves and their fraternal mates. Solidarity among the right, solidarity among the left. And the circus goes on.

The ability to argue the facts has gone out the window. People feel too vulnerable to reveal their mind in public. This is accompanied by a plague of demagoguery: failure to engage with the facts, and mindless sloganeering.

This, in turn, perpetuates the feeling of disempowerment.

This phenomenon is so ubiquitous that any example seems too banal. Let just one suffice: the essay, “The Push for War”, by Anatol Lieven, in the London Review of Books (3/10). The essay was enthusiastically recommended by Phillip Adams on LNL late November.

But it is atrociously written. (To see why, apply the “basic questions” in my piece, “Saddam Hussein’s Heart of Darkness”, to it.) The reader struggles to find one rational argument, one statement that is aimed at persuading the reader why they should change their mind.

Lieven’s essay attempts to reflect the reader’s desires and fears, rather than argue for a better understanding of the Iraq question. It tries to manipulate its audience by telling it what it wants to hear. It is demagoguery par excellence.

* * *

Bob Carr used exactly the same method (though in his case, the aggression was overt) against Margo, to impress supporters of “strong” government. He tried to crush her, but instead produced a gem. (She has been galvanised to articulate herself excellently apropos the NSW anti-terror legislation.)

People want to believe something, and the demagogue gives it to them.

If we were hearing poetry, that’d be fine – but on the Iraq question, we’re talking about the most important political decision that has faced humanity in many decades.

Even poetry, though, can move mountains or instigate witch-hunts.

Bob Carr, incidentally, was wrong in the demagoguery he directed at Margo Kingston. At the time Margo wrote her Bali piece, it was not clear who was responsible for the bombing. It could have been local rivalry (though I never gave much weight to this possibility).

I have seen this sort of rivalry in the old part of Jerusalem: relations between an Israeli Arab and an Armenian businessmen were at a dangerous low. The Armenian condemned the loud music – and drunken westerners – that was emanating from the Arab’s youth hostel till 3am every night as a defilement of the Holy City, and threatened reprisals. Nothing ever came of the threat, as far as I’m aware.

Without knowing the Al Qaeda/JI links, it is within the realms of possibility that a local decided to teach a rival – and all decadent westerners defiling a holy site we don’t know about – a lesson. We “decadent westerners” as a whole – not any in particular – would have been culpable, but not to blame.

Bob Carr seemed to take Margo’s Bali contemplation as a denial that Al Qaeda represents a serious threat to Australia. He thought Margo meant: “as long as we know the root causes for which we are to blame, we can reverse the threat from JI/Al Qaeda”, and this was starkly contradicted by the will for evil by the Bali bombers.

In any case, I think there was much more to his outburst: Margo had hit at least two raw nerves, with her attacking Carr’s developer links, as well as with the publishing of WTO protest material in Webdiary.

The connection with the latter is possibly the following. Paddy McGuinness – who idiotically likened the protesters to Nazis – is a good friend of Carr’s. I have a suspicion that McGuinness influenced NSW police policy towards the protesters. If Carr indeed talks to PP about these things, then I’d advise him to seek better counsel.

McGuinness despises “the inherent authority that is superior to that of the people and parliaments” (SMH 16/3/2000) which people like the WTO protesters evidently claim to have.

He believes in absolute democracy. If “the people” elect national socialists, then so be it. The “will of the people” is sacred – and our elected leaders are the incarnation of God. We must obey unquestioningly, and have faith in the State.

The Australian’s Editorial (28/11) echoes this sentiment: Australians “should have more confidence in the robustness of Australian democracy”.

But an important pillar of this robustness will be chipped away by the NSW anti-terror legislation, when the police minister himself is given the power to decide, for instance, whether the anti-terror measures are to be implemented for additional lengths of time.

The decision to extend the period should be made by an independent authority.

While it remains true that the police minister, along with the government that appointed him, can be voted out of office – the anti-terror measures don’t ban elections – the government would be given a free pass to create mischief while in office, and extra power to manipulate the electorate towards its own ends.

* * *

The clash of civilizations in Australia is not between political left versus right. It’s between those for whom the ground level details loom large and who build their cathedrals of principles from the ground up in a disordered sort of way; and those whose cathedral building blocks somehow get born into the world from transcendental heights, and are fashioned into shape through experience and questioning.

Actually the clash is not between these two ways of thinking – there’s no reason why they shouldn’t agree, since they’re working in the same reality – but between corrupted versions of them.

Corruption happens when people stop asking questions, cease engaging with the facts, but nevertheless keep wielding power. This holds in all cultures – Japan, for example, too.

Then the disordered, ground-level conscience weakens the other’s already brittle, orderly cathedral (or golden pavilion): it is vehemently rejected.

First published in ‘Carr’s new police powers’, webdiaryDec3

Once again, our media has failed us when it comes to protecting our civil rights. Everyone talks about rights and responsibilities these days, but the media has vacated the field on insisting that governments be responsible for the protection of our liberties, rather than take advantage of fear to trample them under cover of the war on terrorism.

I noticed this sad development early this year when the federal government put out its proposed laws creating the criminal offence of “a terrorist act”. A bit of it looked like closing down leaks to the media in the public interest. We jumped up and down – stories, features, editorials – and the government backed down. We then fell virtually silent on the potential for the law to create terrorists of our union picketers and political protesters, and to give the police complete discretion as to whether to charge people under normal laws or under the new, draconian provisions.

I wrote extensively on this issue in Webdiary at the time, and noted that despite the media’s lack of interest in standing up for our citizens, as distinct from its own interests, grass roots action and the core beliefs of backbench Liberals prepared to listen to the evidence of lawyers and community groups in a Senate inquiry saved the day.

Now the NSW Labor government wants to go much further than the federal law. It will countenance no inquiry. In the two weeks since Bob Carr released his proposals for sweeping new police powers and demanded that the Upper House make them law this week without any inquiry or request for public input, the media has been virtually silent, again. The opposition has not participated in a debate to draw out the issues. It looks like a fait accompli.

Is it the climate of fear since September 11, a fear intensified since the Bali bombings? Is it the stifling, dysfunctional, state of public debate in NSW? Has the media decided that in dangerous times it is an arm of government – its role to demand and foster trust in government whatever its flaws and whatever the dangers of abuse of power?

The legal profession has also failed in its role as watchdog of a healthy relationship between the state and the citizen. I think its key failing is its refusal to move from the position it takes in normal times, when the profession’s role is to focus only on protecting liberties. The argument – with which I agree – is that in the long term, our civil liberties are what makes us a democracy, and that the checks and balances of democracy are essential to preserving it. The bottom line, the truth of which is proved over and over by history, is an absence of trust in government, any government, to not abuse unaccountable power.

A new position is required in these dangerous times. In my view, it is the duty of government to do all it can to prevent a terrorist attack on our soil. If it didn’t, and people were killed in an attack, government would have no defence.

Bob Carr has two arguments which are unanswerable in the current climate. He must act to protect our safety. The matter is urgent – the federal government has told us it fears a terrorist attack here over summer. So, protection and urgency are rational, unarguable, reasons for emergency powers for police to break into our homes and search us without reasonable cause and without warrants.

To actively engage in and influence the debate, lawyers would have to move from their not-at-any-price argument to the position that in these dangerous times, maximum safeguards must be built in to the suspension of our civil liberties, to ensure trust in government, unity in defence of our way of life, and surety that our liberties will return when the danger has passed.

I don’t see how a government could successfully answer a thoughtful case along these lines. There is absolutely no justification for Bob Carr wanting to exempt his government from any legal scrutiny of its exercise of the new powers, its refusal to countenance regular public reporting of the exercise of those powers or parliamentary monitoring of its operation, or a sunset clause to enable vigorous public debate on the merits of and detail of the new laws.

No such case is being put by the media, the legal profession, or the NSW Opposition.

Here is a piece I wrote for smh.come.au on Friday.

***

Be warned; Carr’s terror law is an abuse of power

By Margo Kingston

November 29 2002

Unaccountable power always produces abuse of power. Abuse of power means innocent people get hurt. It means people lose more trust in the integrity and trust worthiness of their government, and that they come to fear it instead. The deliberate or careless fostering of fear within a fearful community facing a terrible threat to its collective security is the antithesis of leadership, and a recipe for the disintegration of our democracy.

We live in a time of national crisis, when our safety is threatened by terrorist attacks without warning. Often the first instinct of government in such circumstances is to grant itself more power and control over us and to sweep away the checks and balances which keep government honest. There are three main constraints on this.

The first is the official opposition. The second is the power of the courts – the arbiter of disputes between citizens and the State – to ensure that the State apparatus acts within the powers granted to it by the people through the parliament. The third is open, public discussion on the merits of increasing state power and the accountability expected for its exercise.

Bob Carr released his Terrorism (Police Powers) Bill 2002 last week. It is a profoundly shocking document. It lets the people of NSW down, it betrays our democracy, and it lays the foundation for State terror on innocent citizens.

Bob Carr solemnly asserts that he is deeply committed to our freedoms and liberties. If this is so, I ask: Why do you exempt the police minister from any accountability whatsoever – by the courts or anyone else – for the exercise by your police minister of the new powers you want to give him? If you were committed to the protection of our civil liberties while ensuring our safety from terrorist attacks, wouldn’t you want judicial oversight? Wouldn’t you want a citizen who believed he was wronged the right to test the validity of Mr Costa’s actions? Wouldn’t you want to be sure that the new police powers you insist are now necessary are properly exercised, and not abused?

Remember, this bill gives any police minister, at any time in the future, these powers. This is a fundamental structural change in the relationship between the citizen and the State. Neither Australia or NSW has a bill of rights. When rights and liberties are removed in NSW, there is no way back.

Mr Carr wants to give the police minister, for now the confrontational, controversial and openly divisive Michael Costa, the responsibility for authorising what are, in effect, serial states of emergency. Target areas, people, and objects can be declared, allowing police untrammeled power to break into your home or vehicle and search it, and to frisk or strip search you. Giving any minister this power, let alone one with Michael Costa’s record, is too awesome to also give him total immunity from scrutiny. It’s called absolute power.

Section 13 of Mr Carr’s bill states: “An authorisation (and any decision of the Police Minister under this part with respect to the authorisation) may not be challenged, reviewed, quashed or called into question on any grounds whatsoever before any court, tribunal, body or person in any legal proceedings, or restrained, removed, or otherwise affected by proceedings in the nature of prohibition or mandamus.”

There it is, in black and white. Michael Costa can, quite literally, do what he likes. You have no redress. Mr Carr has knocked out the judiciary as a check on power. What of the NSW opposition?

I spoke to the shadow police minister, Andrew Tink, today. He said he would not “go down the road” of commenting on Mr Costa’s record as police minister, or his actions regarding protesters against the WTO two weeks ago. He opposed requiring an independent person to oversee the police. “In the terrorist situation there has to be someone exercising the powers.The police minister is the logical office holder to do it,” he said.

His only amendment in this regard will be to make the police minister subject to the jurisdiction of the Independent Commission Against Corruption. He is otherwise happy with Mr Costa’s immunity from accountability. He said the opposition had not decided whether or not to pass the bill if his amendment failed.

Not only does Mr Carr want unaccountable police powers put in place, he doesn’t want to give the public the right to know what’s happening under them. He wants secrecy, too, another subversion of a key mechanism to maintain our democracy, that of transparency and public debate.

There is no requirement under the bill to report to parliament or the people on what authorisations have occurred, what they involved, and the results of them. Mr Carr’s lack of good faith is also proved by the fact that he wants the bill rushed through parliament next week without ANY inquiry to allow public discussion and input, and with no sunset clause.

Given that emergency powers need to be rushed through, wouldn’t a Premier deeply committed to our liberties and freedoms order an immediate parliamentary or independent inquiry to report back so considered legislation could be passed to replace the emergency laws?

No. Mr Carr wants these police-state powers to remain on the books indefinitely. I asked Mr Tink why the opposition would let the bill pass without a sunset clause to allow an inquiry. “Because I believe we face an emergency terrorist threat,” he replied. I suggested that given this, there was no reason not to pass the bill as a temporary measure now, with a sunset clause. He said he was happy with section 36. It says: “The minister is to review this Act to determine whether the policy objectives of the Act remain valid and whether the terms of the Act remain appropriate for securing those objectives”. (He is to table a report within a year of each years review.)

So, the police minister reviews himself and reports to parliament what he reckons.

Mr Tink believes this to be an appropriate way of ensuring that these emergency powers don’t stay on the books at the government’s convenience.

The opposition has bowed out of its democratic responsibilities.

We live in dangerous, frightening times. Emotions are high, prejudices aflame. There is deep division within our society on the correct approach to take to win the war on terror. The suspension of the citizen’s protection against abuse of State power may be necessary, but it is fraught with terrible dangers to the way of life we are fighting to preserve.

There are several, very basic ways to improve Mr Carr’s bill to ensure that our personal safety is protected without trashing our rights with impunity. The opposition, it seems, is too frightened to put them up or mount the case for them in the current climate. The lack of leadership in NSW has never been more obvious, or more dangerous for us all.

Stop press: Sensational new developments on SIEV-X: The federal commissioner of police seeks immunity from answering questions on whether the AFP fitted tracking devices to asylum seeker boats. Go to sievx for the latest.

Today, a suggestion to ensure the Carr government does not abuse the sweeping new police powers it wants to rush through Parliament in the run-up to the election. Then readers comment on the chador controversy, the political climate, and the Carr/Kingston thing. A piece by Annabel Douglas-Hill on how the Philippines leadership handled similar protests to last week’s WTO march is a highlight.

The NSW parliament is off next week then back to pass Carr’s police bill before parliament is adjourned until after the election, so there’s no time to waste if you want to have your say. I’m especially interested in legal analysis of how far Carr could go under the new powers, and how the Opposition and the Greens could overcome a Carr vilification campaign if they seek amendments.

You can read the Terrorism (Police Powers) Bill 2002, at nswgov.

A good website to consult is Zem at zem. The author says he’s “a software developer from Sydney, Australia, who works in the telecommunications industry. He used to live in Melbourne. His real name is no dark secret, but has been omitted from this site as a courtesy to his employer.” Zem details developments in “cryptography, censorship, copyright, thought crime”, and there’s been a hell of a lot of them since September 11. His first take on the Carr bill is at zemcarr.

It’s vitally important that the public get involved in the short time available. Remember the multitude of problems with the federal government’s anti-terrorism bills earlier this year, and the fact that before a Liberal backbench revolt the government wanted to extend the ambit of “a terrorist act” to political and industrial protests. These problems came to light in a Senate inquiry rushed for time due to a government-imposed deadline. Carr has ruled out even a quickie inquiry.

For examples of the dangers we face if an unscrutinised, uncontested Carr bill is passed, see Come in, Big Brother, May 1, webdiary, Liberalism fights back on terror laws, May 8, webdiary, Payne and gain, May 29,webdiary and ASIO: Right beats might, again!, June 5, webdiary

***

Who will balance the power in Carr’s new terrorism law?

by Margo Kingston

In times of national crisis, most particularly when we face fighting a long war, it is imperative that the people trust the government. This is because we must accept a compromise of some of our fundamental human rights and liberties in the cause of effectively fighting the enemy.

A united, strong nation is a bedrock requirement for success in war. It is conceivable that conscription could be necessary, so it is vital that enough of our young people are prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice for the country they love.

Leadership in such times is about uniting the people against a common enemy. The antithesis of leadership at such times is to divide the nation and crush those who sometimes disagree with government policy – especially in this war, where the enemy could, in rare vases, be within.

We have a problem. Trust in our key institutions – government, big business, the professions, and the media – is low. It has been breaking down for some time. It is now the duty of the leaders of our key institutions to work hard to rebuild and maintain the trust of the people as we prepare for war.

Bob Carr has a problem. This week he released his “Terrorism (Police Powers) Act 2002”, which he demands be rushed through parliament without any inquiry the week after next to grant police sweeping new powers to search and interrogate citizens. The person he wants to oversee and endorse the police use of these powers, on behalf of the people of NSW, is police minister Michael Costa.

Yet the integrity of his government is under extreme pressure, as the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) inquiry into the Oasis development exposes the seedy networks of closed-door influence and power of his government. Carr has refused to stand down the minister accused of soliciting a bribe of $1 million to buy safe passage for the development, Mr Obeid, and refused to act on Mr Obeid’s serial breaches of his legal requirement to disclose his pecuniary interests. In suburbs of Sydney and the towns and cities along the NSW coast, residents disempowered from any say in development are frustrated and angry, many taking to the streets to protest.

In the last two weeks, in an effort to take the heat off, Costa – without evidence – accused intending protesters against the WTO meeting – students, church people, environmentalists, unionists – of condoning and sponsoring violence. He tried to close down a seminar in Parliament house on the history and role of civil disobedience. He oversaw the banning of a street march in the city, which turned peaceful protesters into lawbreakers. He brought in mounted police and hundreds of other police into the CBD, along with many media representatives, then – despite a remarkable absence of violence in the heated atmosphere he created – demonised them yet again as violent criminals.

NSW citizens feel fear, uncertainty, and insecurity as the threat of terrorism on our own soil mounts. The last thing a responsible government should do is hysterically inflame these feelings by turning people against each other through the demonisation of innocent citizens. Its job is to reassure all citizens that their safety is in good hands and to foster a climate of trust in its good faith.

The way I read Mr Carr’s police bill, the WTO protests would have been, by Costa’s own words last week, “a terrorist act” triggering permission for police to search and interrogate all those involved. Imagine the games he could play with that if Labor was looking bad in the polls.

Costa just needs to say that a political march or industrial protest “creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public”, as he did last week. That makes it an “action”. “A terrorist act” is an action done “with the intention of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause”, and of “intimidating the public or a section of the public”. Yep – Costa banged on about that last week, too.

The escape clause for protests is “advocacy, protest, dissent, or industrial action” not intended “to create a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public”, or “to cause serious harm that is physical harm to a person”. There’s no way last week’s protest would fall within this exemption: Michael Costa accused protesters over and over of wanting to that do just that – without proof – for days before the protests took place.

It gets worse. By Costa’s own words, if this bill had been law two weeks ago he could have declared – through the police – the seminar in parliament house a terrorist act. On November 1, Costa told Parliament the seminar, hosted by Greens member Lee Rhiannon and approved by Upper House president Meredith Burgmann (Labor) would “teach people how to cause problems for our police and members of the community as they go about their business”. His claim was untrue, as the seminar proved, but that makes no difference.

Carr is in election mode. All efforts are directed towards winning in March 2002. He and Costa have proved beyond doubt they are willing to do whatever it takes. In these circumstances, to entrust the oversight of sweeping new police powers to Costa is a recipe for disaster. Too many innocents could be hurt, even destroyed, for political advantage. Our society could be divided so bitterly that our capacity to fight the war could be compromised.

Carr cannot seriously expect the people of NSW to go along with sweeping new police powers without responsible, trusted, oversight by a person with long experience, deeply-held values, unimpeachable integrity, excellent judgement, and above all independence from partisan politics – particularly just before an election.

His game plan is to bluff the opposition, the Greens, the minor parties and the independents in the Upper House into passing his laws or risk relentless vilification as irresponsible risk-takers with the safety of NSW residents. It is imperative, for the sake of innocent people who could be crushed, and the war effort, that the opposition forces in this state call Carr’s bluff.

My suggestion is this. Oversight of the new police powers should be vested in an experienced, independent person who the people of NSW trust. If our core protections against the abuse of government and police power must be suspended – which they must – then the people must feel supremely confident that their interests are being fully protected.

The names that come to my mind are:

* The NSW State Governor, Marie Bashir,

* The NSW Lieutenant Governor and Chief Justice of the NSW Supreme Court, James Spigelman,

*. The former Hight Court chief justice Sir Gerard Brennan, now chancellor of the NSW University of Technology,

* The former NSW Chief Justice, Sir Lawrence Street,

* The former Governor Generals Sir William Deane and Sir Ninian Stephen.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the people of NSW could discuss over the next week whom they wanted to entrust with the awesome responsibility of protecting them against terrorism AND abuse of State power? Perhaps the NSW Opposition will have the courage to call Mr Carr’s bluff and give the people of NSW the chance to trust again.

***

Tim Dunlop was a tragic loss to Webdiary when he left to blog at roadtosurfdom. This week, just before my run-in with Carr, he wrote a called “The false logic of the blame-the-victim accusation”. In it, he points out that while the right terrorises people who suggest that poverty is part of the cause of the rise of fundamentalist terrorism, the right makes the same suggestion when promoting the virtues of globalisation post September 11. Right-wing columnist Michael Duffy did it last week, as do the Americans when lauding the advantages of free trade deals. Much online discussion has ensued at Tim’s site. I recommend it.

It’s the end of a long week, and still Bob Carr has not met his public commitment to me on Tuesday that: “I will deliver you that quote” – the one he said proved that I blamed the Bali dead for the bombing. He has also not replied to my letter of Tuesday night enclosing everything I wrote on Bali and inviting him “to find one instance where I have blamed the Bali dead for the bombing, or said that Australian tourists in Bali provoked the bombing”.

Thus my only personal experience of Carr is that he cannot be trusted to keep his word, or to justify serious allegations against a citizen of NSW. If you can’t trust the Premier, you can’t trust the government.

***

OUR WEEK

Annabel Douglas-Hill in Laguna, Philippines

It’s a nightly treat to read jottings in the SMH online in this part of the world. Allow me to comment on Carr and his actions from the point of view of an expatriate.

His recent attack of you was childish and abusive and I was embarrassed for him for having lost control and showing anger in public, which in Asia entails a loss of face. My concern with Mr Carr is that he has not fully thought through his demand for increased surveillance, increased police rights and his refusal to allow the WTO dissenters to march.

He might feel he is doing the right thing by the State by being tough and dictatorial in a time of crisis and fear, but even President Arroyo, after starting tough when she first came to power under a violent and restive public, allowed her people the right to march on the 400 strong CGIAR meeting in Manila a fortnight ago.

Even though many of the visiting delegates are fighting against world poverty and economic inequality and a fair amount of CGIAR aid comes to the Philippines, she did not allow economic or terrorist pressures to prevent a fair debate by both sides. Ten points to Arroyo, Nil to Carr.

In the Philippines I am living under a more controlled and guarded lifestyle than in Australia, but no more so than in many other places of the world. You can get blase about seeing uniforms en masse, although North Korea might hold a shock for me still.

It has not missed my notice that there is a lack of respect for uniform in a country where so many people are authorised to carry guns, and wear uniforms and badges. We have had colleagues held up and their cars stolen by gangsters disguised in Army uniform, so that I sometimes wonder if I would stop my car if ordered to do so by anyone in uniform. Maybe through my fear of a drawn out kidnapping I would run them down and ask questions afterwards.

This distrust of uniform would not be unusual in an Australian migrant from a country where the police or army had been experienced as corrupt.

This sounds like an enticement for a police state, and perhaps it is due to over-exposure to uniform, but I no longer bat an eyelid when an armed guard opens the door for me to MacDonalds, or when a man walks jauntily down the street with a rifle slung over his shoulder.

Do we want a similar situation to develop in Australia, as it has shown a disturbing tendency to do over the last few years? Or shall we stomp our colonial feet bravely down in our Blunstones and set an example for the rest of the world to follow? Shall we decide to grow up, stop calling each other names when we hold opposing viewpoints, listen carefully to the views of our majority Muslim neighbours and instil some sanity into the world?

This includes demanding some respect from the USA, which has shown itself urgently in need of some honest advice and moral direction. This approach to terrorism is not appeasement but maturity.

What Carr must understand is that too much of a show of security will dull our respect and reliance on the uniform as a symbol of good. Does uniform have due respect in China, in North Korea, in Iraq?

If the police are allowed to behave as terrorists, even if they are given the right to break into a suspect’s home without a warrant, we will learn to distrust all uniform.

If people cannot march or attend conferences peacefully while under police protection or debate alternative points of view, how can I hold my home country up as a symbol of free speech and democracy to the Asian world?

***

Mr Mercurius in Summer Hill, NSW

I was going to give Fred Nile’s speech all the attention it deserves (none), however the predictably poll-driven, wedge-driven response of our Prime Minister, and the supportive comments Fred’s speech attracted inHerald ‘Have Your Say’ today (see ‘PM’s veiled comments on how Muslim women dress’, smh) gave me pause to reflect on the following:

* This is a week which saw law enforcement given unprecedented search-and-arrest anti-terrorism powers; against terrorist threats which according to Fred Nile extends to women wearing the chador.

* When Religion (of any persuasion) and State (of any persuasion) get together, they are a terrifying, and virtually unstoppable force.

* ‘Mainstream’ Australians really do hate anybody who looks different, acts different, dresses different or sounds different. Really. Hate. There’s just no point pretending otherwise any more.

* The fear and loathing driving political discourse in this country will serve only to perpetuate the terrorism it purports to be ‘at war’ with, and condemn the next generation of Australians to living with the fear, and the reality, of more murderous attacks.

* More than ever, we need to stand united in our diversity. The terrorists want to drive us apart, we must stand together.

* Those who talk about ‘integrating’ into society, about ‘you’re in our country, be like us’ etc are thinking like the terrorists. It is the same world-view that says ‘everybody must be like me, do what I do, believe what I believe. Or else.’

To paraphrase a great quote from the twentieth century:

“When they came for the asylum seekers, I did not speak up because I was not an asylum seeker. When they came for WTO protesters, I did not speak up because I was not a WTO protester. When they came for the journalists, I did not speak up because I was not a journalist. When they came for the muslim women in their chadors, I did not speak up because I was not a muslim woman in a chador. And when they came for me, there was nobody left to speak for me.”

***

Martin Williams

For all of your comments about Carr and Costa, most of which I support, I still think the main game is being played elsewhere. For all of Carr’s excesses, at least he and others can’t be accused of cosying up to the rapidly evolving stupidity of Fred Nile.

Which is more than can be said for John Howard, who in these worrying times has decided to return to some effective, familiar old tactics:

Howard knows damn well that Nile has been flinging his own fundamentalist take on religion in other people’s faces for decades, yet refuses point blank to assure Muslim women that the cloth they wear won’t be branded illegal! Result: Muslim women face the fear of a Taliban-style legal imposition which prevents them from leaving their houses WITH these clothes on instead of without. Insane, no?

You’ve got to hand it to Howard: he’s good. Render the floated prejudice potentially respectable and name the target in a vague, obscurantist way and observe the response; if the response is negative then one can withdraw without having pushed too far. But if the response is supportive then go in for the kill. Quite like the old Chinese Communist tactic used when introducing policy or commencing a purge.

Shades of Asian immigration, Pauline Hanson and Tampa once more. In short, I do not trust John Howard to adequately defend this country from terrorists because he appoints bona fide incompetents to key ministries and is passionately committed to playing these dirty little political games of defending risible kooks like Nile (now disowned by Bishop Robert Forsyth, interestingly) and courting Nile’s followers no matter how absurd or offensive or frightening their utterances. This is at the expense of spending all his energy fortifying the entire Australian community to stand together in repelling terrorist elements.

Sadly, this kind of thing – unifying statesmanship and symbolism – has never been his forte, nor his priority for that matter. And it is clear now from his comments today that he is incapable of adapting himself to what is required in the national interest at the moment it is most needed.

His preparedness to comment on the role of Muslim dress off the top of his head, so ignorantly and so glibly – now an indispensable Australian characteristic, this – could only be interpreted by Australian Muslims as patronising, at best.

If I were Muslim, I would be incensed. But you can be sure that average Muslims – especially women and girls – will do what they have to do to get through these days: cop it sweet, keep the head down and the mouth shut.

It doesn’t augur well.

***

Hamish Tweedy

I can’t believe there is someone getting around calling himself Reverend espousing such vile bilge. The man is in parliament and obviously has no idea what the place should stand for. Surely one of the things that most people love most about this country is our freedom, however when attacked it seems to be one of the first things we are willing to give up.

***

Doug Wilson in Marsfield, NSW

Rev Nile,

Following your suggestion that the headdress of women should be removed, I feel that I must point out that people can hide weapons in other types of clothing so perhaps we should just follow these guidelines that I came up with:

Raincoats. Items can be concealed within them and henceforth should be banned (sorry to the people in Melbourne who have purchased these, but they are a risk).

Umbrellas. Swords or powders can be concealed in hollow umbrellas, so these will be banned as well. We encourage the women out there to not wear any hairstyles that will be messed up in the rain since you can’t wear a raincoat as well.

Hairstyles. Items such as guns or knives could potentially be hidden in longhair or hair that is quite “large” (think Marge Simpson). Thus maximum hairlength should be no more than 2 inches.

Dresses and pants. Items such as guns, explosives or other harmful materials could be concealed in these. Thus everyone must wear tight fitting shorts to ensure that nothing is contained within them.

Large winter coats. Much like the raincoats above, these should be banned. From henceforth in the winter everyone will just have to suffer.

Long sleeve shirts, sweaters and the like. Someone could conceal knives or other weapons within. So everyone should be made to wear t-shirts or more preferably muscle shirts to prevent this.

Any boxes or bags. These of course could contain bombs and thus should be banned as well. Everyone should have to carry everything in their hands.

I’m sure that if everyone followed these guidelines then we wouldn’t have to worry about any dangerous items being carried about on our cities. Here’s a $.50 piece Mr Nile, go and buy yourself a clue.

***

Helen Smart: Bob Carr on 2GB, November 19: “Margo Kingston, reportedly from – purportedly from the Sydney Morning Herald, who I cannot deal rationally with. …”. (Snort) Well, Bob, you did say it!….

Kate Carnell in Canberra: Bob Carr’s comments were totally out of line – pay no attention!!!

Kathryn Davy (first timer): I’m shocked and deeply concerned by Bob Carr’s behaviour. I have voted for him in the past, but I am so moved to anger by this that he will never get my vote again.

Kathy Kang: Carr’s treatment of you makes my stomach turn. It’s the last straw. I’m now in no doubt that we’re governed by thugs, and I don’t think he’s even ashamed of it. But even thugs cannot snuff out the lights of hope for a future democracy that is worthy of the name.

***

Tony Krone in Sydney

The Premier is racing to an election and his treatment of your questioning is appalling, particularly as he is proposing such far reaching legislation. So much for accountability. The Premier’s rush to judgment on Bali reminds me of the ‘children overboard’ nonsense put out by the Howard government. The press is here to question – good on you for representing that ideal.

***

Noel Hadjimichael

I have refrained from making a webdiary public comment on the Carr business. However, I make the following observation:

Election Victory Landslide = Strong Mandate = Power = Deals = Arrogance = A Retreat from Principle = Laziness = Voter Disillusionment = More Arrogance = Byelection Problems = Blame the Victims = Blame the Media = Voter Revolt = Government by smear and deceit.

Orwell was right … just too early in his analysis.

***

Kylie Ann Scott in Haberfield, NSW

All I can say is that I hold grave fears for our state. I hold grave fears about Bob Carr, his tactics, his politics and the ancient Roman-style mechanisms that he uses.

We are dealing with a very deliberate, media savvy man knowledgeable in how to manipulate the masses here. We need to begin to look very closely at his words, his actions, his right hand men, and his mouth pieces.

And Question, Question, Question. We need to be very precise in those questions, because it is in the details that his blustering and fear mongering can’t work.

I could not believe what he did to you, and I felt your astonishment at his behavior. And later I felt angry. How stupid does he think we are? Keep asking precise questions on the detail.

***

Gillian and Paul Sloan in Sydney

Just finished your piece on your interview with Carr: Now another two Labour voters are lost. Where do we turn? It’s not Ernie Page’s fault (our local member for Coogee) but the NSW state government looks so ugly. Do they think fear, violence, abuse and ugliness will attract us? Is their policy to scare us into voting for them? Who is Carr talking to when he abuses you and treats us like we’re pig ignorant?

The content of the SMH and the discussions in Webdiary are part of the information sources we use when we discuss issues with friends and family – all are frustrated at the limited content we get from any other media source. Related to this is that we all notice we watch so much less TV!

***

Meagan Phillipson

I agree with Peter Gellatly about your run-in with Bob Carr – it was unwarranted and baseless for Carr to act in such a manner. Ergo sum, he is the one with the problem (or something to hide?) so don’t let it reflect badly on you. And like with all bullies, I also think the best way to treat such behaviour is to throw it back in their face – so it would be right to wear the incident like a badge of honour.

Being a literal person, I’m thinking you should wear this honour in the form of a t-shirt along the lines of the infamous “Free Winona” shirts. I can see it now – a t-shirt emblazoned with the words; “Bob Carr thinks I am a parody of a journalist”)

***

Grant Harcourt

I admire your courage in the face of such frightening stupidity. I’ve read about the press conference incident with a mixture of despair, outrage and fear (come to think of it, most of the news these days engenders that reaction). In this situation, Carr is using the victims of the Bali bomb for his own political gain. By behaving the way he did, he evaded your question about Labor’s links to developers – very handy and utterly disgusting.

I’ve been tardy in attending protest rallies of late – that despair is pretty powerful – but Carr’s appalling and unaccountable behaviour, against a backdrop of increasing attacks on what remains of our democracy, has reignited my desire to protest and be involved. Thanks for providing a dissenting voice within the mainstream.

***

Nigel McGuinness

When I travelled to Bali many years ago I was uncomfortable being the Aussie there. But then I often felt that way in places where westerners spent time in third world tourist spots. It is simply a question of the discrepancy in wealth. The rich have their desires met without regard to local sensitivities. And of course the average local not in the tourist service industry gets none of the rewards and is often resentful.

This resentment is the root cause of a lot of problems. However this fact cannot be mentioned at the moment. To discuss causes is jumped upon by the hawkish in spirit as an attempt to get into appeasement.

Worse, as Bob Carr is doing now, is to accuse the contemplative of treason. No matter. Way of the world.

Interestingly, Bob Carr on Lateline this week said closer relations between the mainstream and muslim Sydney were being actively fostered and could be called “an anti-terrorist measure”. He thus admits that bad relations lead to resentment which can turn the murderous to terrorist action. So it just depends on which way around you put the argument!

Don’t get upset – all the leaders are on an adrenalin rush at the moment because they’re not having the usual discussions on bottom lines with treasury and are getting breathless briefings from spies and generals. They’re all on a high. They know they must act well to safeguard the population etc and fear they’ll stuff up, so they err on the side of the tough guy. They want to be Guliani (and their cheerleaders just want to rat on someone).

Anyway, Africa is where the real issues are. Let the “war” here play out and hope nothing bad happens. There ain’t much to do about it otherwise, I reckon.

***

Ken McLeod in Sydney

Dear Mr Carr,

As a member of the ALP, I am deeply concerned that your behaviour of late seems to be tending towards fascism rather than being true to our humanitarian roots. For example, your attack on Margo Kingston (“What happened in Bali was the murder of innocent Australians not people who were guilty because they were celebrating in a 3rd world country as you argued in the Sydney Morning Herald”) has all the hallmarks of Goebell’s tactics, such as:

– tell lies about anyone who queries your behaviour;

– remember that the bigger the lie the more likely it is that people will believe it;

– assign sinister, untrue, motives to them, (preferably Jewish, but any intellectual elite will do);

– never answer questions;

– use the machinery of State to overpower anybody who stands in your way;

– never forget that nobody remembers losers;

– and never, never, apologise.

How about you prove me wrong and prove that you are a real man and apologise to her.

Ken McLeod, ALP membership 020519

***

Bhavika Haviez

The point here is not what he accused you of – that’s between you and him – but why didn’t he answer your questions? Why did he keep bringing up the Bali bombings instead of answering the real questions about the new counter-terrorist powers being introduced in the State?

I don’t think these powers are a bad thing, but I would like our politicians to be accountable and at least answer the questions being presented to them. If they are so sure that what they are doing is right, they should have no difficulty.

This whole episode, and various other pieces of news I have been reading, seem to be showing that under this wave of fear politicians have just not been accountable for their actions, at both State and Federal levels.

First, there is no viable opposition from federal Labor. When met with opposition from the Labor party, such as Latham/Emerson, the media have just hacked into their language and presentability, instead of realising that some sort of opposition, in whatever un-mannered form it may take, is being presented.

Second, politicians feel they can use a climate of fear as a reason for almost anything. Terrorism is a valid threat, but should not be used whenever politicians need an excuse to legitimate their own agenda.

There are several important issues for our government to debate, and who will debate these? John Howard certainly can not hold a debate with himself, as he is presently being allowed to do. My concern especially at this point is the war on Iraq so obviously being prepared for.

Do we not have a right to question our politicians movements? Are not our politicians supposed to be representing us? I do not have 100% faith and trust in politicians but I do live in a democracy. In a democracy asking questions is a basic right. Australia as a nation cannot progress until it realises it is a nation in its own right, and can make its own decisions. It is not a shadow of the US, only an ally.

***

Rowan Cahill

Bob Carr is right: You are not the sort of journalist wanted around the place. You ask challenging questions, and do not fawn in the face of power; you seem to think journalism is something more than rewriting government press releases, more than accepting CNN at face value. And as for Robert Fisk, what would he know?

No, the sort of journalists Carr and Howard want are those prepared to believe Osama is under every bed and who have no problems with the erosion of civil liberties. After all, the definition of democracy is ‘a reluctant trip to a polling booth every few years’; it is not an ongoing, daily commitment.

Don’t forget that Bob Carr has this long weird love affair with American history, and possibly wears the stars and stripes on his undies; I just wonder when he’ll come up with a local version of the Patriot Act. Or maybe he’ll have his legal apparatchiks whip up a draft for Howard to rush into Federal law.

Just a warning Margo. If you keep going the way you are, then maybe it won’t be too long before you are in an interrogation room, without an lawyer, in a seat previously warmed by a kid abducted on the way home from a local mosque, with maybe an ASIO quack injecting you with instant confession serum. Better pack your bag.

***

David Davis in Switzerland

What in the hell is going on down there? Carr is out of his tree and I feel sorry that you had to put up with such offensive behaviour.

I well remember the remarks you made re tourism and Western influence in Bali. I remember at the time reading it and thinking, “Well that isn’t my reaction”. On reflection, I thought that it was unfortunate that so often the interpretation is that we Westerners are always wrong and always the victimizers of all other cultures (of course often we are, but not always). That was the extent of my reaction. If I had interpreted your remarks to mean that those murdered by the terrorists were to blame, I would have been disgusted and would have stopped reading Webdiary. Clearly they were not to blame and no sane person has suggested that. I haven’t read that anywhere.

It is divisive and wrong to start picking apart the way people should react or what they should say. In any case ever since Bali happened, I haven’t seen you write a single sentence that was offensive or inappropriate, and I have read everything.

In fact, exactly the opposite aspect struck me. You were very supportive and extremely patriotic. I thought it was perfect. You may recall some even accused you of “mawkish sentimentality”. So what is the Margo Kingston reaction to Bali? Is it “blaming the dead” or “mawkish sentimentality”? It’s neither but I’d rather you be accused of the latter than the former.

None of this makes any sense. I smell a rat.

There are a lot of dots around Sydney and you seem to be connecting a few and highlighting others. The highlighted dots await connection! Clearly this makes you unpopular and perhaps threatening. In a sense the Carr reaction is flattering. You are getting under their collective skins and under his in particular.

I respect you even more because you have long identified yourself as left of centre and could not possibly be a more harsh critic of the PM. Right after Bali, you complimented him. This proves a somewhat open mind.

I don’t know if it is Carr arrogance or desperation. It probably doesn’t matter because in politics either one of these things is death at the polls. I’m now convinced that he is finished.

Can I start writing up the synopsis for the Sunday after the election? You know how it goes. We have seen this write-up before. “In a last minute upset, the highly successful premier was defeated by the dark horse. Some put it down to the Premier’s arrogance which grew during his term in office and….blah blah blah.”

The remark that you are a parody of a journalist is in itself amusing. Saying over and over that you blamed “the Bali dead” and then wrapping it up with “you are a parody of a journalist” – what does that make him? I reckon it’s got to be a caricature of a cretin. Whichever way you look at it, reality is lost in this kind of process. We are left with parodies and caricatures.

If the Premier feels comfortable in drawing outrageous conclusions, I’ll end with a quote from history. A history we are taught to never forget. “The bigger the lie, the more likely it is to be believed” (Joseph Goebbels – Ministry of Propaganda). Probably it also helps to repeat a lie. They tell you that in the second lecture of Propaganda 101. So if I were him and it comes up again, I’d come out swinging and just repeat it. Of course Margo blamed the victims. We know that and she should be discredited as a result of it. Say it over and over and suddenly it becomes true.

The disconcerting aspect is that it is hard to know whether to laugh or to be scared. I’m leaning towards being scared. We are definitely in deep trouble and you don’t have to look far to see more and more evidence of this changed environment.

PS: A bit of history. Remember the hand that signed the paper? He signed the paper to allow the various toasters (high rise apartments) at East Circular Quay to be constructed. This was when he was Environment Minister. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. In the dying days of the Unsworth government, Bob Carr put that millstone of East Circular Quay around our collective necks. It’s pretty bloody easy to say “I set aside this national park and that national park” in areas no one cares about anyway. He’s always been Bob the Builder and one of his biggest accomplishments was even before he took office as Premier – those hideous buildings right next to and virtually overshadowing the Opera House, the greatest building of the 20th century. Never forget who did that. Bob the Builder. Don’t believe the sensible sun hat and “oh, but I don’t drive” routine.

A long day. To begin the last instalment of your say on the Carr thingo, my favourite email on the matter.

Despair, and seven precepts for disempowered people

by Robin Ford

Walking to work I was pondering a response to the John Wojdylo/David Makinson scrap over war on Iraq. I didn’t share your positive view of it. As I read their words it seems to me that Wojdylo despises the reflection that Makinson holds dear, and Makinson is in despair over Wojdylos single-minded drive for proper action.

A Myers Briggs categorisation of each would be fascinating. With such different emotional drivers I can’t see this providing much help to me in sorting out what I should do. A drag-em-out, knock-em-down fight, particularly if each believes in different rules, isn’t the way to enlightenment for onlookers (although it sometimes reconciles the protagonists).

All that fell away when I read about the Bob Carr interlude. When I think about what you have written recently, his attack and its style was surely to be expected, presuming that Mr Carr thinks you are significant. His response is completely consistent with the view you have come to hold of the man. And think of the police minister he has chosen. Your response on these webpages is impeccable; write how you see it, then print the source material. It impresses me, but then I’m among the marginalized too.

There is a link with the Wojdylo/Makinson scrap. Your attacks on Carr are Wojdylovian in their confrontational style, whereas your articles on Bali are Makinsonian in their open reflectivity. Carr has replied to your attacks by using the free edges that your open-ended reflection leaves for multiple, and invented, meanings. Dangerous stuff, open reflection.

So how should I respond to our current circumstances? You have given us some ideas in recent articles. It is time for a consolidated list of precepts so I dont overlook them in times of despair. Moses exemplified the idea. I need something to look at in hope. I’ve seen four possibles for the list:

* vote for people who meet the eye-ball test

* take your body, fragile though it might be, to protest meetings that you agree with numbers count

* write to politicians, with a pen

* keep up with webdiary, and similar sites of honesty and hope

There must be more, and perhaps some of the above are trite. Seven in total would be a good number.

***

ONE LINERS

steve j spears:Mr Premier, If you think Margo Kingston’s a parody of a journalist, you’re in need of a looooong rest. She’s got the most balls of any hack in the state. Your job is to answer questions, not spread malicious lies. Get your shit together.

Robert Lawton: Bob Carr is obviously looking for an easy target and the pinko press = you for now it seems. No haters like Labor haters, are there?

Janet Fraser: I think that Bob Carr is using you to score political points and any vestigial respect I felt for him has vanished in a puff of political posturing. There are many of us who think like you do, Margo. You go for it!

Phil Knopke: I have just read your exchange with Bob Carr from todays SMH site. Seriously, why don’t you sue the bastard?

Cathy Bannister: Isn’t the Bob Carr outburst libel? Good luck with the suit.

Sean Hosking: The reknowned thinker Bob Carr clearly had a score to settle with you. It reminded me of my days in the playground at Maroubra public school. Not to worry. Your recent pieces for the SMH on the NSW government have been succinct, passionate and punchy. Clearly you’ve upset the right people. Keep up the good work. You’re helping to restore my faith in the press.

Emma Geary: Bob Carr is not fit to lead this State if he resorts to bully boy tactics as soon as the heat is turned up. I suppose you could take the ferocity of his attack on your professionalism as a compliment – he obviously felt threatened by your enquiries and has something to hide. I thought your coverage of the Bali victims was particularly sensitive and on rereading the articles I don’t understand where Carr is coming from. Keep up the pressure.

***

CARR’S RIGHT

Richard Moss: If you say you have never written what Bob Carr accused you of, what precisely are the 7th and 8th paragraphs of your story of 14 October supposed to mean?

I interpret those paragraphs as implying that Australian tourism had adversely affected Bali and that this may have contributed to the circumstances that led to the bombing. While this doesn’t precisely amount to blaming the victims individually and personally, it is nevertheless significant, and typical, that one of your first reactions after the event was to find reasons why it may have been wholly or partly “our fault”.

I am unsurprised that there is an adverse reaction to you, particularly at that early stage, implying that tourists in Bali, including the victims, may have contributed to the circumstances that led to the crime.

***

Geoff Honnor

Here’s what you wrote in the aftermath of Bali:

“I know little about Bali, and whether we’ve respected and nurtured the place we love to visit or colonised it with our wants. A friend in Byron Bay said Australians had taken Bali over, business wise, and that acquaintances with businesses in Bali were considering coming home before this horror. They sensed resentment, and felt a growing unease.

“Maybe part of it is the lack of services for locals. A completely inadequate hospital, for instance, so graphically exposed in the aftermath of the horror. Some people – foreigners like us, elite big-city Indonesians – make their fortunes. Have residents lost their place, their power to define it? Did the big money fail to give enough back to the people who belong there, whose home it is?”

I don’t think it’s totally unreasonable for Bob Carr to draw a “blame the victim” conclusion from that, on the evidence available . Any more, presumably, than it would be totally unreasonable for you to conclude that the government deliberately acquiesced in the deaths of 300 illegal immigrants, on the evidence available.

Or have I missed something?

***

FIRST TIMER

Michael Cahill in Sydney

I haven’t written to you before, and I will admit to not agreeing with all of your views. However, the incident of the attack made against you by Bob Carr has me angry enough to write something.

I’ve watched the video several times and read the transcripts, and I cannot interpret Bob Carr’s actions as anything other than a deliberate tactic to derail the press conference.

Why is it that those in power both here and elsewhere in the western world are so afraid to ask what motivates the deplorable, inexcusable actions of terrorists? Why do we not distinguish between searching for explanations and blaming the victims?

Of course, widespread fear in the community increases support for the incumbents, and there is always talkback radio support for stronger police powers. For politicians, the mere mention of terrorism is a guaranteed way to demonise opponents or divert attention from issues they would prefer not to talk about. Bob Carr’s words are one of the clearest examples of this tactic in action.

My strong conviction is that we can’t fight terror with terror. To me, journalists who only repeat and amplify messages of fear are the real parodies. Please keep asking questions.

***

WEBDIARY REGULARS

Hamish Tweedy

Do you believe that Bob Carr just invoked memories of the victims of the Bali Disaster to distract you from your line of questioning? If he did, Australian politics has reached a new low and if he did not then he badly misrepresented your article and owes you and the victims and their families an apology. For my part I almost have to force myself to believe the latter as the former is too disgusting to contemplate. Do think he realises what he has done?

***

Peter Gellatly in Canada

I have not so far contributed to the terrorism/ Bali bombing debate on Webdiary, so let me preface this by saying my views do not line up with yours. So on this occasion I write to defend you out of principle, not likemindedness.

Based on the transcript of the Carr press conference plus your two October opinion pieces, I would say you have been defamed on two counts:

(1) your character has been impugned, and

(2) so has your professionalism as a journalist.

But please don’t bother suing; rather wear these slurs as a badge of honour. You must be getting to him (them?)!

By the way, as to the substantive matter of the discretionary misapplication of police powers, if I recall correctly here in Canada the ink was barely dry on the new federal anti-terrorism bill before a police anti-terrorist squad participated in a raid on a native activist group. Later, a police spokesperson refused to rule out use of the anti-terrorism legislation to bring charges under similar circumstances.

The point is, within every political administration and every police force there is inevitably a minority – however small – of self-righteous hardliners for whom the ends justify the means, and who regard the strict upholding of civil liberties as kindergarten fluff beneath the concern of tough practitioners. All broadsweep criminal code provisions must be carefully drafted with this in mind – to proceed otherwise is simply to invite subsequent abuse.

***

David Makinson

Wanted to write in support. As you know I’m trying (and failing!) to cut down on my Webdiary habit, but I just had to read the Kingston v Carr saga.

If by including my humble scribblings you have been in any way further exposed to this expedient man’s despicable cynicism, I do apologise. This is what I mean about coming too close to something mean, nasty and permanently polluted.

As far as I know, nothing you have written even remotely “blames the Bali dead”. It is simply too astonishing a claim to be taken with any seriousness. I even wonder if you have grounds for a legal suit for libel or slander, but doubtless you in the media have to cop this sort of manure sweet. In the final analysis, Bob Carr, like most of his political colleagues, is a liar. And this is just another lie. Don’t sweat it.

By coincidence, I have been working sporadically on a piece for Webdiary about how the right (in which I certainly include Carr) invents preposterous positions for their opponents and then forces them to defend them. Don’t fall for it.

***

SO WHO DO I VOTE FOR?

Hugh Driver in Sydney

I’m finding it very difficult to put my disgust at Bob’s responses into words. I’m no tort lawyer, but is defamation a possibility? If only we had the US interest groups that would fund that sort of litigation.

Who to vote for in the NSW elections? It seems that I’m sitting in a demographic which has become irrelevant to all major parties and is not worth courting. The policies of the major alternatives (eg the Greens) are, in my view, too unworkable and unsustainable for me to vote for. The same goes for many other dissenting groups which have arisen in response to current affairs in the last few years. Hopefully a sensible (well, sensible by my definition) independent will stand in my seat. Or dare I hope that some new, viable political party may arise? It seems unlikely.

I’m getting used to feeling powerless in democracy where I am out of step with the majority. The ALP will lose a lifelong voter in me, but I don’t think they particularly care. Perhaps I’m not aspirational enough.

Still, never give up. Best of luck.

***

NOT IN ON THE JOKE

Karen Young

I think that many, many people agree with the right to protest, and to speak out about the atrocity that is our current dominant political and social perspective. I am hoping that underneath this arrogant, dominant, bullying business driven machismo facade, lies a rich vein of hope and peace within the global population.

I especially resent the headlines of the Daily Telegraph, feeding Government and business propaganda, as it does, to people, with headlines like, “…a bloody disgrace”, in relation to the protestors of the WTO conference in Sydney. It is not a disgrace to care about what is really happening. It is not a joke, to want to find a peaceful solution to this overwhelming pressure cooker, uneasy, business-dominated world conflict. It is not a joke to point out inconsistencies in current political rhetoric.

People that would risk, who care, who are not afraid of speaking out against fear, war, racism, environmental vandalism, intolerance to refugees, greed and who point out the madness of current rhetoric, are not a JOKE or disgraceful.

***

STREET-LEVEL VIEW

David Burnett

A letter of two parts – sympathy and solidarity over WTO, and a question regarding the inner workings of the media at such times.

Firstly, I’m so sorry, Margo, that you have had to witness the brutality of today’s governors, both through the instrument of the police and by way of public vilification and humiliation.

I experienced the same fury and terror when 50 fellow hippies (including NZ Greens MPs), sitting singing on the road in the morning gloom, were attacked from behind without warning by armoured riot police on the second morning of Melbourne’s S11 protests. I suspect you would empathise with my experience that the boots and batons were far less brutal than the outrageous smears and bare-faced lies of police command, parliamentary representatives and ‘journalists’ both before and after the event.

The only consolation I can offer is that this experience at least allowed me to more fully know the enemy, and the true nature of the society in which we live. In the lead-up to the protest, it all seemed a bit of a game – tactics and counter-tactics, black bloc, green bloc, pink bloc, cheerleaders in drag, Trots and anarchists happily slagging each other off, everyone madly spinning and manoeuvring.

Even the stream of hysterical media coverage came across as a sign that we had got under their skin – and surely few punters would believe the transparent posturing of wannabe macho pollies, rabid shock-jocks and dour-faced police command.

But when the goons swooped, the batons fell, the horses charged, these childish illusions evaporated and I was left with one, crystal-clear insight – this is power. Not the voting, the lobbying, the letters to the editor, the tireless branch-work of your suburban politico, the cut and thrust of public debate. But big, strong men in body armour beating helpless people with sticks. Thus has it ever been, and we would be wiser (if sadder) to remind ourselves of this every day.

The great service that the wave of globalisation protests of the last few years has done is to reveal the iron fist inside the democratic glove, to remind us that even in the most enlightened modern state the fundamental roots of power are still the army and the police and the threat of the force that they wield.

Or, as a friend of mine remarked shortly after the death of a protester in Genoa last August, “We’ve learnt two basic lessons this year: first, the ones with the power have no intention of relinquishing it; and, secondly, if we push them hard enough they will shoot us”.

As for the way the media has presented such events – this confuses the hell out of me. Every journo I spoke to at S11 expressed their shock and disgust at the police tactics, yet the media outlets for which they reported universally ran with the police line of ‘urine-filled balloons’, ‘slingshots’, ‘marbles under horses’ etc (needless to say, all utter fiction).

As with last week’s events, the s11 media coverage was filled with images of police brutalising weedy-looking kids under headlines or voice-overs decrying the ‘violent protesters’.

My question is – where does this spin come from? I mean, who – specifically – did the spinning? The journo (not likely, from their on-the-ground reactions), their editors, the subbies, the media-company’s CEO? *Someone* wrote those words – who the hell were they and what was their agenda?

I didn’t see the SMH coverage (The Age ran a few pars and a ‘violent protester’ pic), but I would be fascinated if you were able to follow the paper-trail of a reporter’s account from street to presses and observe at which points the various agendas come into play.

Once again, Margo, thanks for your dedication and integrity – and take comfort in the belief that is at least better to know where we stand than to fool ourselves about exactly how welcome our participation in the process of government really is. It is only from this clarity that we can formulate an effective response.

‘Mad props’, as they say these days.

OK, last entry for 2002.

After last year’s election, I wrote a piece called “What will you do?”

Lots of you kept the flame burning on refugees against great odds, including many ALP members and several Liberals who’ve had to work behind-the-scenes in secret. Great country, Australia. Love it.

Thanks for reading this year, and thanks a million to all those who contributed to Webdiary – you’ve inspired me and many readers who’ve emailed me privately. Special thanks to Brian Bahnisch for his wise counsel when I was down in the depths after the Carr thing.

To end the year a note from ALP member and Webdiarist James Woodcock, a note from Tom Andrews to Brett Harrison on why he cares about SIEV-X, and a Christmas letter to John Howard from Jack Robertson – who gave me a great Christmas present by returning to Webdiary and defending my honour over Carr.

I’ll begin with “What will you do?”, then my go at an-end-of-year review, which I wrote for the The Northern Rivers Echo (echonews) this week. Editor Simon Thomsen has backed my work for nearly two years now – thanks Simon. I hope you’ll let us know what’s happening in the seat of Lismore next year.

John Wojdylo’s first official column is a reply to David Makinson’s Never suspend your disbelief. Talk about showing no mercy! He reckons he’ll lighten up once he gets into the vodka with his Polish rellies. Click on John’s name in the right hand column for the latest round. How about you guys organise to be in Sydney at the same time and we’ll do a video debate to sort this out!

Happy Christmas. Back mid-Jan.

***

What will you do?

Monday, November 12, 2001

The election result shows that the disaffected right has come back to the Coalition, while the disaffected left has defected to the Greens. A John Howard masterstroke – the Tampa and its aftermath has united his side and split the other.

Several people have remarked that Howard is “an evil genius”. I profoundly disagree. It doesn’t take genius to appeal to xenophobia, or to racism. It’s a winner, especially if there’s no opposition. And it doesn’t take genius to destroy an opponent, in this case One Nation, by adopting its key policy.

Since the Coalition dismantled the White Australia Policy in the 1960s, both sides of politics have chosen not to play those cards. Howard chose differently.

The error of the bipartisan approach was not to address people’s concerns about it. The climax of that error came when Paul Keating ran the country. Asked in Singapore to discuss the extent of racism in Australia, he said there was none. A policy of denial will always be counterproductive. I also think there has been a real need for a long time to articulate core Australian values to which all migrants need to subscribe. There’s been a bit too much once over lightly on multiculturalism, and the backlash has destroyed the ideal.

I was in a strange space on Saturday night. I’d cried every day since the Liberal and Labor launches, so the grieving was already done. For me, the result was expected and I had emotionally reconciled myself to it. So the night itself was calm. I called the result first on 2GB, at 7.15. Some consolation.

Unlike some, I was bitterly disappointed by Beazley’s concession speech. The same smile, the same bravado as he’d projected throughout the campaign. I felt he just continued to fail to reflect his supporters feelings. Beazley keeps getting it wrong. In the valedictories on the last sitting day of Parliament, he praised Howard as the most considerable conservative politician ever, and wished him well, then smiled his way through the campaign as if there was nothing at stake. And so, on the night, it was congratulations for a great Labor campaign and on we go.

Guess what, Kim – many of your supporters were in tears. They were mourning the loss of a vision they had believed in and fought for for decades. Bob Hawke captured the Labor mood on TV, when he shed a tear. “Very, very poor standards have been set in many respects, and the country is more divided now than in many respects it ever has been,” he said. To which Michael Wooldridge replied, quite rightly: “It’s divisiveness, of course, that had bipartisan support”.

Among my circle, most cried when Howard said in his victory speech that “Australia is the best country in the world”. The worst moment for me was when he said that “the things that unite us are more important than the things which divide us”. Not to me, John. The things that divide us are now more important. We’ll put up audio of the two ‘leaders’ on the Webdiary soon, for posterity.

Many of those whose vision for Australia finally died on Saturday night asked themselves the next day: “What will I do?” My fear is that the brain drain will escalate and that many progressive intellectuals will leave the country. We’ll return to the 50s and 60s, the cultural cringe days.

To win through, enough people who believe that a multicultural, internationalist Australia will give our nation the best economic, security and social outcomes must stay, and rethink. We started that discussion in Webdiary last week. Some will join a political party, others will join the refugee protest movement. What will you do?

* Many Webdiarists responded to this question in ‘Searching for answers’ (webdiary2001) and ‘Redrawing my map of home’ (webdiary2001).

***

A Tough Year, but you can Still Dance

At the end of a terrible year you look for hope and inspiration to survive the next one. My Australian of the year is Justice Michael Kirby, who eye-balled his government persecutors, mantained his dignity, saw off the bastards, and refused to be silenced.

Opening the Gay Games last month, he began: “Under different stars, at the beginning of a new millennium, in an old land and a young nation, we join together in the hope and conviction that the future will be kinder and more just than the past.”

The media story of the year was Cheryl Kernot, whose final humiliation – the disclosure of the affair with Gareth Evans – sparked a unique debate between and among journalists and the public on whether we wanted a line drawn between public and private lives. Happily, we proved that our culture is still different – unlike the Americans and the Brits we resoundingly voted yes to some privacy, and had – maybe for the only time this year – a quality debate on the merits about which side of the line the affair fell on.

As the former Democrats leader imploded one last time, the party which brought her to prominence died a long, painful public death, splintered by personality clashes and an addiction to public self-flagellation.

The Democrats demise added to the momentum of the Greens kick-started at last year’s federal election, and the Party went on to slay Goliath in Cunningham and finally seduce the state that had never been interested, Victoria.

But 2002 was a year defined by 2001, when the Tampa and September 11 blew away our domestic consensus on refugees and human rights and plunged the world into potential world war.

Many thought boat people had had their day in the epicentre of Australian politics after the federal election, but too many grassroots Australians, backed by too many rank-and-file members of the ALP, refused to give in and dug in for the long haul.

The federal ALP, until a week ago a sad shadow of the Liberal party on policy, a twisted wreck of a machine on process, staggered towards a split under the sad visage of Simon Crean, who helped destroy Kim Beazley through the infamous “small target strategy”. Carmen Lawrence pulled the plug, and her emergence as leader of the dishevelled, powerless left-wing of the party looked like it might prevent what looked like an inevitable formal split with the left defecting to the Greens.

But then, in a last gasp last Friday which transformed politics in a moment, Simon Crean eye-balled Howard on the ASIO bill and took him, with the inspired backing of Kim Beazley. Howard has threatened a double dissolution election, Labor has its pride back, and, in my view, Crean has saved his leadership and united his party and its supporters. The war over how many of our freedoms must be lost in the war on terror, and which man can be trusted to protect our safety and our way of life, will dominate 2003. Unfortunately, it’s Crean -v- Howard and Bob Carr on this epic battle for our values.

In NSW, Bob Carr exploited fear to ram through legislation creating a police state and a mesmerised opposition went along with it. It is well and truly time to say good-bye to Labor in NSW, but Bob Carr, actor, could well get a third term by playing strong man, directed with glee by Alan Jones. Being run by Tammany Hall in a time of national security crisis is a horrible thought.

The cataclysm of 2002 for Australia was Bali, a country we considered almost part of us. The slaughter, the agony, the shock – all brought home the reality of the war on terror. It also transformed the debate about whether we should join the United States in a first Strike on Iraq, which swirled through 2002 as the US dumped its key objective post September 11 – to catch Osama bin Laden – and abused the fear of its citizens to restart war against an old enemy.

John Howard’s me-tooism repelled too many Australians to last in its purest form, and he spent much of the year trying to appear independent while agreeing to back the US in a unilateral first strike. Now propaganda rains down on us to change our mind, despite the conviction of many that our troops belong in our region defending us against our real enemies rather than across the world creating another one.

Enough of despair. Michael Kirby ended his speech with a call to dance.

“Be sure that, in the end, inclusion will replace exclusion. For the sake of the planet and of humanity it must be so. Enjoy yourselves. And by our lives let us be an example of respect for human rights. Not just for gays. For everyone.”

***

James Woodcock in Sydney

Last week, at the last meeting of Harberfield Branch ALP for 2002, four of us individually brought along motions of Support for Carmen Lawrence’s principled resignation. Ir was passed unanimously ( with cc’s to Simon and John Murphy). I know it is early days yet, but Carmen’s stance and Simon’s recent discovery of his testicles (even for political reasons) are reasons for a little bit of hope.

You are right, this is a great country and what makes it good is that I can email you, a journalist at Australia’s best newspaper and I can get up in a Labor Party Forum and argue with the shadow Minister for Immigration and tell her to get her act together. In spite of all our imperfections I still feel have some input into democratic processes.

***

Tom Andrews

Brett Harrison wrote: “I think it’s amazing that Tony Kevin or anybody else can think that the rest of the world has even heard of SIEV-X, let alone care about it. So much for “gaining the respect of the world, including the Muslim world” by flogging this long-expired equine. Get some perspective, please. This is not world-shattering stuff. The only people in Australia who even think about SIEV-X are refugee advocates and political opponents of the current Government, both for obvious reasons.”

To Brett, I say these things knowing that you have written what you have in good faith. I know this because every person believes that it is impossible for anyone to be more decent or highly principled than him or herself. So if you don’t understand, the following, just believe me.

I am interested in SIEV-X. I am not a political opponent of the government. I should, though, be a supporter. By media definition, I should be an Aspirational Australian. I am not that, either.

I am interested in SIEV-X because just at the time of night I heard of the sinking, my one-year old son crawled up to me and gave me a hug for the first time.

Just that; complete chance.

This caused in me, in the following few microseconds, a wave of empathy for the surviving people who had just lost their children. It also brought on thoughts of those who died in darkness, out of sight of land, with their last hours spent in utter despair thinking of their own children they had seen disappear. Every day since, while we have continued our lives, the survivors have remembered the feeling of a hug from their wives or children, and felt the loss. Every day.

(This may seem mawkish to some, but I say it’s true. Maybe only parents will empathise with the fear of losing a child, or maybe even only parents who haven’t forgotten what it feels like when their children are still young.)

Brett, from his perspective, can’t understand why the hell anyone even remembers it any more. That is his call. I, from my perspective, can’t understand why it doesn’t bring people to tears just thinking about it. And it springs from one tiny event.

That’s only two perspectives, Brett. There are a few millions of others out there somewhere. They don’t all fall neatly into your two categories of “political opponents” and “refugee advocates”.

I say two things to Brett Harrison. Firstly, my interest in the deaths of 353 people is not political, just empathetic. You don’t mean to, of course, but you insult and devalue my love for my child by conveniently labelling me, simply so you can avoid having to discuss or acknowledge. Secondly, I have an interest in plain decency. I want to be able to at least say that I made an effort on behalf of what’s Good and Right. Let’s face it, a society that has at best no care (as you do), at worst contempt and gloating, for the suffering of parents and their children, is not taking the forward view.

***

14 December 2002

Jack Robertson

BALMAIN NSW 2041

*

The Honourable John Howard, MP

*

Dear Mr Howard,

I write to you as a former Army officer and Aide-de-Camp to Governor-General Bill Hayden, and also as the brother of a current serving member of the Australian SAS, to express my growing unease at international Human Rights organization accusations made against our serving personnel, in particular the ugly suggestions that your government’s ‘Border Protection’ policies of recent times may have placed them in difficult non-military situations which resulted in Human Rights violations on their parts.

Prime Minister, I am of course only making a shrewd guess, but I am fairly sure that my brother was a member of the SAS party your government ordered to board the Tampa in late 2001, and I certainly know that he was also among the first contingent of Australian troops who later fought so courageously to help liberate Afghanistan.

I of course have not spoken to him in detail about his unit’s activities in these two markedly different ‘operational’ environments, nor he to me – as is only right and proper from a unit and national security point of view.

I am, however, growing anxious at the apparent fact that your government, and in particular former Minister for Defence Peter Reith and current incumbent Robert Hill, seems at best ambivalent, and at worst wilfully dismissive, towards what I regard as an increasingly urgent need for it take a pro-active interest in protecting the reputation, morale and perhaps even exposure to future prosecution, of our armed services. This is especially so given the real possibility that your government may soon be asking those men and women to embark on dangerous military service in Iraq next year.

Prime Minister, I refer you in particular to the recent study of Australia by the internationally-respected organization ‘Human Rights Watch’, an independent Human Rights NGO whose reports the United States has often referred to in the past – for example, when seeking moral justification for military action in such countries as Afghanistan and Iraq.

The following frightening quote is taken from the Press Release advising of this Report’s release, on 10 December 2002, under the heading: “By Invitation Only: Australian Asylum Policy”:

“Human Rights Watch’s evidence shows that the Australian Defence Forces violated the rights of asylum seekers on board boats intercepted in October 2001. They detained the single men under inhumane conditions, beat several of them with batons and used other

unnecessary force against vulnerable refugee families. These findings contradict the report of the Australian Senate Select Committee on a Certain Maritime Incident [issued on October 23, 2002] that praised the humanitarian conduct of the naval operations. Unlike the Senate

Committee, which could not collect refugee testimony, Human Rights Watch interviewed dozens of refugees present during the naval operations.”

Prime Minister, as I said, my brother has naturally never discussed in any detail what exactly your government’s policy and orders required him (and/or his colleagues) to do on the Tampa, as is only proper for matters of ‘national security’. However, it unsettles me deeply that such an influential organization feels it is justified in making such ugly and unambiguous public accusations, and yet your government apparently feels no need to respond publicly to them, in order to defend our soldiers’ honour.

I refer you also to your government’s repeated ‘ducking and weaving’ on similar related matters, like the ‘children overboard’ affair (especially your personal refusal to pressure Mr Reith to appear before Senate committees); the government’s failure (in my view) to adequately defend our senior RAN and Defence Department civilians there; and your government’s continued silence over the growing calls – from such people as former diplomat Tony Kevin – for full disclosure of your government’s and our navy’s knowledge, if any, of events leading up to the tragic sinking of SIEV-X.

Prime Minister, my family are strong supporters of Australia’s firm stance against international terrorism. I have admired your national leadership in the immediate aftermath of both the S11 attacks and the Bali bombings. Furthermore, it may well be that these HRW Report accusations, and others from such people as Mr Kevin, are ill-judged and unfounded. However, as an ordinary Australian with a family member who has been thrust by you onto the ‘front line’ of both this country’s approach to asylum seekers and the war on terror, I feel justified in asking that you personally, your Ministers, and your government extend the full and proper public support in these matters that my, and other ADF families, surely deserve.

To that end, I now respectfully request you to a) publicly respond on behalf of my brother and his ADF colleagues to the HR abuse accusations in the HRW Report, and do your best to ensure that the mainstream press gives that response the fullest coverage; b) publicly state for the record – ‘before the fact’, so to speak – that responsibility for any such accusations against any member of our ADF that are subsequently proven correct lies ultimately not with them, but with you, your Ministers and your government for placing them in such difficult, non-military situations in the first place; and c) re-affirm that all past, present and future activities relating to ‘border protection’, on the part of our soldiers, sailors and airman, along with our AFP and ASIO, have been, are, and will continue to be, carried out with your government’s full authorisation, support, supervision and acknowledgment.

Prime Minister, thank you.

Jack Robertson

Via email, hard copy to Electoral Office (Bennelong), and hand-delivery to Kirribilli House Information copies: all Federal MPs and Senators (via PH email); Canberra Press Gallery

PS: I tried to deliver my PM’s letter to the Security Office at Kiribilli on Sunday arv, but they won’t accept anything there at all. Sigh. I’m getting sick of humiliating myself like this!

It’s now clear that the people of NSW live in a dual reality. I saw most of the TV news programs on the night of last week’s march through the city, and saw no violence from protesters. I did see a mounted police officer charge into a reporter.

The next day The Daily Telegraph splashed with “WHAT A BLOODY DISGRACE” and a picture of a small man held by three large police being led towards the camera. The lead paragraph, by reporters Ben English and Rachel Morris, read:

“Violent street demonstrations over the World Trade Organisation’s meeting in Sydney by a coalition of professional protesters have cost taxpayers more than $5 million to police.”

The Tele published no pictures of protester violence.

The man Bob Carr will entrust with supervision of police activities under their new terrorism powers is police minister Michael Costa. I recorded his rhetoric and actions in the lead-up to last week’s WTO protests inLabor’s new crime: Civil disobedience (webdiaryNov1), Protesting GATS, if you’re game (webdiaryNov10) and Hey Joh: Costa’s the new demon along the watchtower (webdiaryNov14)

Tonight, the text of what Costa told Parliament last Thursday after the reporter smashed to the ground by police on horseback had been taken to hospital, a note I faxed to Premier Carr late today, and early reactions to Bob Carr and me. from Rodney Sewell and Mark Hyde.

I’ll publish your accounts of last week’s protests in the next entry.

***

The Hon. PETER BREEN (Reform the Legal System Party): My question is to the Minister for Police. Is the Minister aware that a number of people were arrested and others were injured in the protest march in Sydney today as a result of the World Trade Organisation meeting at Homebush Bay? Is the Minister also aware that, because the protest march involved unlawful policing, several demonstrators acted irresponsibly by defacing public buildings and spraying graffiti on public transport vehicles? Is the Minister also aware that the traffic in the city came to a halt and business was disrupted because police had no control over the boundaries or direction of the march? Can the Minister inform the House of the cost to the community of the protest march? Can the Minister compare that cost to the cost of giving police approval? Will the Minister indicate why police approval for the march was not given?

The Hon. MICHAEL COSTA: There are elements of the question that are sensible, and I am happy to respond to those. I have asked the police to detail the cost of this WTO meeting and the cost of all of the precautions that had to be taken because of the threat of violent protest action. And there was a threat of violent protest action. Last night it was pointed out to me – I have not read the adjournment debate – that Ms Lee Rhiannon made some accusations that the Greens have conducted a search of the web to find where these disturbing threats of violence were. The fact of the matter is that they are on the web site. Today I can give the House some more information. A site called “Active Sydney” runs a messaging system. These are sophisticated protestors. They use information technology to cause maximum chaos in the city. They are running an SMS messaging service, which allows people involved in the demonstration to contact and be informed of where they should do something called “spin the bottle”. I read from the site.

For example, if your text message reads “SMUG the bottle is spinning on the corner of pitt and park” then all subscribers to SMUG will get the message on their phone: “the bottle is spinning on the corner of pitt and park”. It’s simple!

Then you try to work out what is “spin the bottle”. That is even more intriguing. It says: Spin the bottle takes the form of a blockade. The spin the bottle blockade takes on the WTO in a no-holds-barred fight to the finish. And you can join them.

I will not read the rest of it, but it goes on to say: We invite you to join us for the most militant game of spin the bottle ever attempted – turning up the heat until every kiss becomes a molotov.

The Greens come into this Chamber and pretend they are running peaceful protests. If they wanted a peaceful protest, they would go to protests permitted by the police. The police have permitted demonstrations against the WTO, and they ought to attend those. No. What do they choose to do? They choose to run wild in the streets. I heard Ms Lee Rhiannon and I think Hon. Ian Cohen as well making comments that I and the police were responsible for the violence that they – until this question time – had not sought to distance themselves from. I have asked Ms Lee Rhiannon on three or four occasions to distance herself from violent protest action. She chose not to – until it actually occurred in the streets this morning. Then did she come into the House and made a personal explanation, to try to distance herself from it. The Greens are hypocrites, and they have been exposed as such.

I have in front of me, off the web site again, the “[No2wto] sydney minutes”. These are the minutes of the meeting from 21 September 2002, in which there is an endorsement of mass action and a game of spin the bottle. I asked the Greens to tell me that none of their people participated in the “[No2wto] sydney minutes” meeting, where that particular strategy of spin the bottle was endorsed. It is a simple question. Did the Greens get involved in that? Were the Greens involved? If so, what did they discuss? And why are they condoning this sort of action? I might note that the very group that was running this forum in this Parliament is actually providing information on “arrest procedures, charges and rights”. Now, why would you be providing that information if you are going to go along to a peaceful demonstration? So they are preparing their legal action for a violent confrontation with the police. That is what they have got. They are responsible. They cannot hide from that.

BREEN: I ask a supplementary question. I attended the protest rally this morning, and was interested to note that no bottles were spun. There was no violence, despite what might have been in the Minister’s information. Why is it that other protests in the city, involving similar groups of people, are approved and this protest was not approved?

COSTA: I think I answered this question a number of days ago. Dick Adams, the commander in charge of the operational police involved in controlling the crowds and the protest actions in relation to the WTO, advised that he was not prepared to give a permit because he had evidence that there would be violent confrontation. That has been confirmed. The Greens might try to distance themselves from it, but it has been confirmed; it has happened in the streets of Sydney. That is the reason that they were not given permission. The police asked them to give an assurance that there would not be any violence, and they could not do that. That is the fact of the matter.

More important are the “[No2wto sydney minutes”. This is the meeting they held. It goes through a range of actions that they are preparing. It is all in very brief form, obviously, because they know that somebody like me might get on the web and have a look at these things. But the code is not all that good, because you can piece it all together. They have organised and endorsed a “mass action game of spin the bottle”. So these people have prepared for this action. They have defined what spin the bottle is in other postings on the Internet. They have come here for violent confrontation, and they are preparing lawyers for arrests. If you are going to a peaceful demonstration, why do you need to prepare legal strategies for arrests? It does not make any sense.

Apart from that, I did challenge Ms Lee Rhiannon yesterday to tell this Parliament what laws she believes require civil disobedience in this State. She made some very broad statements about civil disobedience, the role of civil disobedience, and a number of other things, and how her position in this Parliament was as a consequence of that. But she has never outlined to anybody here what laws she is opposed to that would justify the action in which she has been involved and which she has been sponsoring in this Parliament. The Greens are hypocrites. They stand condemned. The personal explanation given today will not distance the honourable member from that.

***

 

Note to Lee Rhiannon, Nov 17

 

I am writing on behalf of the No-WTO Spin The Bottle Bloc in reference to comments Michael Costa made in parliament on the 14th. As you may recall, Mr Costa denounced our group, apparently believing “spin the bottle” was some kind of code for violent disruption. We are now trying to make clear that what we called for, simply and literally, was a game of spin the bottle in the streets of Sydney. It is hard for us to imagine a less aggressive form of protest, and we find it incredibly bizarre that the police minister talk a call for teen kissing games as some kind of threat. At worst we are guilty of a use of metaphor that sailed over Mr Costa’s head. Thus, we will be holding a small game of spin the bottle outside parliament on Wednesday afternoon. Since Mr Costa seemed, in the hansard transcripts, to be maligning you personally for your participation in “spin the bottle”, we are extending the invitation to join the bloc as we spin. Please let me know if you are interested; I assure you the greatest danger posed by this action is having to kiss someone who didn’t brush their teeth that morning (a danger I will be vigourously discouragig). Please let me know, also, if you do wish to participate, whether I can include that in our press releases. Alternately, we would welcome your non-salivary presence at the event, possibly to make a brief statement to the media. Below is the press release we have sent out this morning for your perusal. Thanks for your time,

 

Morris Day.

 

Cops Crack Down On Spin The Bottle, Protestors Promise To Pash Anyway

 

The Spin The Bottle Bloc, an activist group involved in the recent No-WTO protests, are planning a game of spin the bottle outside State Parliament on Wednesday after their six-foot bottle was confiscated by police at the Olympic site on Friday. “We put it down for about fifteen minutes. When we came back it was gone,” said Morris Day, a member of the Bloc. “It’s bad enough the police stopped us getting to the hotel, but when they stop us snogging each other, it’s just unAustralian.” The bottle – a fragile and completely unthreatening prop made of chicken wire, acetate and sticky tape – was obviously no danger, so why was it seized? The Spin The Bottle Bloc blame Police Minister Michael Costa, who denounced their planned action in State Parliament on Thursday. Mr Costa, having come across the phrase “spin the bottle” in activist communications, pondered the “intriguing” question, “what is ‘spin the bottle’?” “Who doesn’t know what spin the bottle is?” asked Day. “Costa obviously wasn’t invited to the right parties, but that’s what you get for wasting your youth in party politics.” Mr Costa liberally and inaccurately paraphrased from the Spin The Bottle Bloc’s call to action, explaining: “Spin the bottle takes the form of a blockade. The spin the bottle blockade takes on the WTO in a no-holds-barred fight to the finish. And you can join them. I will not read the rest of it, but it goes on to say: We invite you to join us for the most militant game of spin the bottle ever attempted – turning up the heat until every kiss becomes a molotov” “[Protestors] have defined what spin the bottle is in postings on the Internet. They have come here for violent confrontation.” The idea that spin the bottle is a “violent confrontation” is absurd. In context, the use of words ike “molotov” was obviously a joke, a metaphor. A metaphor, for the police minister’s benefit, is when you use words in a symbolic rather than a literal way. For example, when we say we’ve been laughing our arses off at what a fuckhead Michael Costa is, we do not actually mean that our bottoms have fallen from our bodies, or that Michael Costa’s cranium is some kind of sexual plaything. Although it’s hard to take any of this seriously, there is an important issue at stake. The New South Wales Police Minister cannot tell the difference between pashing and terrorism. In Parliament, spin the bottle was his one and only example of protestors’ “disturbing threats of violence”, his justification for aggressive police tactics. The minister has wasted millions of dollars and injured dozens of people defending WTO delegates against the threat of tonsil hockey. Contact the Spin The Bottle Bloc: Email: montezboy@yahoo.com

 

***

 

 

The Hon. IAN COHEN (Green): My question is directed to the Minister for Police.

Costa: Here we go.

COHEN: Yes, that is right – here we go. Will he acknowledge his role in vilifying protests and take responsibility for all police actions, including unlawful police actions, at the World Trade Organisation [WTO] protest today? Does he stand by the statement he made in the House during question time yesterday about “rabble [taking] control of our streets”? Does he regard Patricia Karveles, from the Australian newspaper, as rabble, given that she is now hospitalised with a suspected broken pelvis after being trampled by a police horse in an illegitimate and illegal charge by police horses when she was standing on the side of the road?

The Hon. Richard Jones(Former Democrat, now independent): You don’t care, do you, Minister?

COSTA: That is not right. It is important to acknowledge, although I do not know the circumstances

Cohen: I saw it.

COSTA: If the honourable member saw it, obviously he was participating in an illegal demonstration.

Cohen: That is correct.

COSTA: The honourable member is admitting to the House that he was participating in an illegal demonstration.

Cohen: That is correct.

COSTA: Okay, fine. The Greens have acknowledged that they have participated in an illegal demonstration. All honourable members have heard that. Let me deal with the issue of the media person who was injured. I heard news reports about that. I have asked for a report from police about it. Let me say that I think everybody in the House, including myself and the police involved, sympathise with the person who was injured and hope that she makes a speedy recovery. She was there, as were many people in the media, to cover events. She is obviously a person who was injured in the course of her work, as opposed to somebody who went there illegally to demonstrate, like the Hon. Ian Cohen – as he has just admitted to this House.

Breen: Point of order: The Minister is not entitled to denigrate another member of the House by saying that the member went to a particular place in a particular way. There was no admission by the Hon. Ian Cohen of why he was there.

COSTA: Yes there was.

Breen: I witnessed the Hon. Ian Cohen at the demonstration and he was not taking part in the demonstration. For the Minister to suggest that he was is an imputation against the Hon. Ian Cohen and it ought to be withdrawn.

The PRESIDENT: Order! In previous rulings I have made a distinction between imputations against a member and imputations against actions of a member. The Minister for Police was making statements about the actions of the member. The Minister may proceed.

COSTA: I am actually surprised at that point of order. I think the Hon. Ian Cohen takes pride in the fact that he was at that illegal demonstration, but that is a different matter. Discussion has taken place about the WTO during question time in this House and in speeches that other members have made in adjournment debates. I am sure all members would be aware of the potential for problems to occur at a WTO meeting. On web sites, people have been advocating violent confrontation with the police. I read only a moment ago some other material from a web site called “active sydney”, which is one of the co-ordinating sites

Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile (Christian Democratic Party): It happens in every city.

COSTA: Just because it happens

Nile: I am supporting you. I am trying to help you.

COSTA: I thank Reverend the Hon. Fred Nile. I appreciate the help.

The Hon. Michael Gallacher (Liberal, shadow minister for industrial relations): There is no support coming from the members behind you, but there is some from the crossbench – from on the Right.

COSTA: I do not mind having support from the Right. The fact is that these sites have been advocating violence against the WTO meeting. Clearly our police are charged with the responsibility of maintaining social order. The fact of the matter is that if these people go out to close the WTO”shut it down”, to use their terminology – the implication is that they will use violence against those who are involved in it. How else is a legal, legitimate, peaceful meeting shut down? The only way it can be shut down is by illegal means. It is clearly the case that the demonstrators were there with the intention of shutting down the WTO meeting, by their own admission.

The Hon. Duncan Gay (National Party leader in the Upper House): And this is against a group that is charged with making things better for those who need help.

COSTA: We do not want a debate about the WTO.

COHEN: I ask a supplementary question. Will the Minister first of all answer the question about the media person who was seriously injured? Will he give a directive to stop using police horses as weapons in peaceful protests?

COSTA: Weapons?

COHEN: Yes, weapons. Will he undertake to provide the House with a full police report on this matter?

Jones: He should do that, at the very least.

COSTA: I have already indicated that I will ask for a full report from the police.

Cohen: Will you provide it to the House?

COSTA: I am happy to provide a report to the House on the matters associated with the WTO meeting, including the costs and all the actions taken. I think the House is entitled to have that to be able to understand the conduct of some of its members. I have not made any direct comments about it because I am waiting for a report. I could have made references to a news report I heard alleging that demonstrators were slapping the horses and that this caused the horses to move forward. I have not said anything about that because I am waiting for a full report, and I will get a full report on the matter. But that does not excuse the fact that a journalist conducting her work-related activity attended the place because an illegal demonstration was being conducted, and that illegal demonstration was being conducted in the face of police, government and other concerns about the likely outcomes of such activities in the city.

The people who are responsible are those who are running wild in the streets of Sydney. They are 100 per cent responsible for the problems in the city today. I have told the Greens that they have a challenge. It is no good their coming into this House trying to distance themselves on the day an event occurs. They had the opportunity to distance themselves earlier in the week and they did not take that opportunity. In fact. they refused point-blank to distance themselves from these activities. Now that an incident has occurred, they want to distance themselves and blame the police. Well, that will not wash. I have challenged the Greens to tell me whether there were any representatives of the Greens at the protest against the WTO meeting that is being held in Sydney who were planning these events and who talked very clearly about a spin the bottle action – an activity conducted this morning that has led to disruption of the city and illegal behaviour.

***

I faxed the following note to the Premier’s office tonight:

To: Premier Carr

From: Margo Kingston

Sir,

I refer to the press conference you gave at midday today in Parliament House and the interview with you broadcast on 2GB at 12.30 pm.

At the press conference you falsely accused me of having written in The Sydney Morning Herald that the victims of the Bali bombing were to blame for their own deaths.

You said: “To blame the Bali dead for the bombing is a disgrace and you are a parody of a journalist.”

You also said: “What happened in Bali was the murder of innocent Australians, not people who were guilty because they were celebrating in a third world country as you argued in the Sydney Morning Herald. Not that at all.”

Despite my denials, you broadcast a variation of this damaging slur against me to a much wider audience on 2GB. You said I had written a column “attempting to argue that it was Australian tourists who provoked the Bali bombing, words to that effect”. You later said in the same broadcast that you had read my piece, which said “it was something in the way Western tourists behaved in Bali that invited the bombing”.

Your allegations are false and baseless.

For your information I enclose everything I have written about the Bali bombing. I invite you to find one instance where I have blamed the Bali dead for the bombing, or said that Australian tourists in Bali provoked the bombing.

In the event that you are unable to do so, I expect a public retraction and apology. Given the vicious nature of your attack upon me, I do not think it is unreasonable to ask your office to respond within 24 hours.

Sincerely,

Margo Kingston

***

Rodney Sewell in Munich

As an Australian living in Munich, I very much value reading your column online in the SMH. It’s one island of intelligent calm in a sea of Padraic McGuinnesses.

I was shocked at the behaviour Bob Carr, at his intimidation and his insults.

Please, for what it’s worth, accept my support and my thanks for the stand you’ve taken and the articles you’ve written. I may not agree with what you say, but you have every right to say it. Take care but don’t stop.

PS: Was 2GB presenter Chris Smith’s line “those nosey reporters – they tend to ask questions…” meant ironically or seriously? As you can probably tell, I’ve been away from Sydney for a long time…

***

Mark Hyde in Armidale, NSW

While it’s easy to put the Premier’s Kennettesque style put down down to a just a ruffled ego, I do think that (after reading all you’ve published) you brought this whole episode on yourself (not Carr’s demonstrably misogynist attitude:)).

I agree with you that the whole allegations against are sickening, however there was some words in your first article that could have lead a desperate political operator like Carr to exploit the fears and worries of a hand wringing public.

I quote the paragraph I’m referring to:

“I know little about Bali, and whether we’ve respected and nurtured the place we love to visit or colonised it with our wants. A friend in Byron Bay said Australians had taken Bali over, business wise, and that acquaintances with businesses in Bali were considering coming home before this horror. They sensed resentment, and felt a growing unease.

“Maybe part of it is the lack of services for locals. A completely inadequate hospital, for instance, so graphically exposed in the aftermath of the horror. Some people – foreigners like us, elite big-city Indonesians – make their fortunes. Have residents lost their place, their power to define it? Did the big money fail to give enough back to the people who belong there, whose home it is? Have Muslim extremists destroyed the vibe of Hindu Bali to force us out?

Supporting Carr’s allegations is not my purpose here, but a clutching politician who is itching to get his law and order/security credentials across is bound to exploit words such as these to his own advantage.

No Australian deserved or is responsible for the tragedy in Bali. But base political motives are bound to flow through town seeking out people to blame and the first questioner of these movements tends to be singled out and made an example of.

By the way, Paddy really outdid himself today. Linking the protesters with terrorists is the one of the most reprehensible acts a so-called commentator can make. I also pity future protester movements who have not made better cases to get a marching permit. But did they have to tear down ‘carefully’ constructed barricades to Costa’s base political motivations?:):)

Anyway thanks for the Webdiary voice on smh.com.au.

The morning started badly, and got worse.

I read Herald columnist Paddy McGuinness with disbelief.

“I wonder how many of the relatives and friends of those who died so tragically in Bali on October 12 were at the demonstrations in the city and at Homebush last week? It seems likely that there would be little overlap, since the real feeling of the demonstrators against the victims of Bali is that somehow they deserved what they got, since they were enjoying themselves exploiting the Balinese and thus supporting the world capitalist system.” (Rent-a-mob tarnishes victims of the Bali bombs, smh.)

I’d noticed over the last week that islamic terrorists and protesters against the current economic order and ideology have been converged by police minister Michael Costa and his chief media barracker, The Daily Telegraph. And by the United States – free trade agreements with the American is now a weapon in the war against terror, according to the US government.

But this was something else. Paddy did not say how he knew “the real feeling” of the WTO demonstrators, and this was the first I’d heard of any such suggestion.

Paddy’s words shocked me, but I also felt fear. The climate being generated in Australia – partly by NSW Labor politicians in election mode – is so threatening that it’s getting scary to speak your mind if you don’t agree with the people who rule over us. They’ve got the money, the power, the guns, the batons, and the public space. People who want to dissent against how the powerful and the privileged run the cities and towns, the state, the country, and the world, have nothing but their bodies and the time they can devote to research, lobbying and protest. Yet Paddy said the protesters – demonised as violent to a man and woman in defiance of all the evidence that violent elements are very small – “are more like the gangs of Nazi thugs who roamed the streets of Munich and Berlin as Hitler began his rise to power, or the militias which bully and sometimes murder people minding their own business”.

Still, it was only Paddy. That was something.

I attended the press conference of NSW Premier Bob Carr this morning for his announcement of his new anti-terrorism measures. By the end, I realised I was right to be scared. Mr Carr saw fit to refuse to answer any of my questions and instead to intimidate me with the claim that I “blame the Bali dead” for causing their own deaths. The enemy is me.

“This is not about a demonstration, this is about murder. What happened in Bali was the murder of innocent Australians not people who were guilty because they were celebrating in a 3rd world country as you argued in the Sydney Morning Herald,” Mr Carr said in answer to my question about whether the new terrorism powers extended to people in political protest marches where the police had refused a permit, like last week.

Mr Carr’s allegation is not true. Truth doesn’t seem to matter to the man who wants us to trust his administration with sweeping new police powers over citizens. I am a relatively well known journalist who the Premier of NSW trashed in public. I fear for the fate of the powerless in private.

I’ve read through everything I’ve written about the Bali bombing, and I can’t find anything in which I blame the Bali victims for the bombing. The very idea makes me feel sick.

Mr Carr said he’d dig out the piece that proves his allegation and send it to me, but he hasn’t. He said he’d read the piece in the Herald a month ago, so he might be talking about the first piece I wrote on Bali, calledOctober 13:Bali (WebdiaryOct14). The only time I expressed a firmish view on the motivation for the Bali bombing was in a piece for the Northern Rivers Echo newspaper last month, also published in smh.com.au (smhOct16). I disagreed with the view of some that John Howard’s support for a US strike on Iraq was to blame and said it was more likely to be about our stand on East Timor. The headline, ‘So this is what it’s like on the other side’, took on a new meaning after my experience today. I’ve republished the two pieces below.

I’ve calmed down a lot since the shock of Mr Carr’s allegations but am still too upset to analysis his motives, so I thought I’d put up what he said at the press conference and in a radio interview straight after and ask what you think. The press conference video can be accessed in the right hand column of Webdiary.

***

Bob Carr press conference, Parliament House, midday, October 19

…

Bob Carr: I don’t want to have this debate after a terrorist attack. I don’t want to have a debate about necessary police powers after there has been more people bereaved.

Ben (ABC): Have there been cases where federal agents have picked up people who have attended lectures by Indonesian –

Bob: Well Ben, can I just say this to you? J.I. murdered Australians in Bali. J.I. planted a bomb that took – just from my community of Maroubra – 8 innocent lives.

Margo: You’re prejudging it.

Bob: Margo, can I just remind you that you’re responsible for writing in the Sydney Morning Herald that Australian tourists in Bali provoked that attack. I think that was a disgraceful comment by you in your piece in the Herald when you wrote that Australian tourists by their demeanour in Bali provoked that attack.

Margo: I did not say that.

Bob: Well, we’ll give you the quote. You wrote that. I’m paraphrasing, but you wrote that.

Margo: I did not write that.

Bob: I will deliver you that quote.

(Unidentified journalist): Can we have the press conference?

…

Bob: We’re not taking away the rights of people to question and challenge police action.

Margo: Mr Carr, you’ve excluded lawful industrial and political protests. Does that mean that if like last week police refuse a permit for a march –

Bob: No, no, that is all lawful. No, no. I am adamant that nothing in this reflects the right to demonstrate. The right to demonstrate –

Margo: But you’ve got “exclusion of lawful industrial and political protests”?

Bob: Well, of course we do that. Do you want me to say that we exclude illegal activity? Of course we say that.

Margo: Police refused a march permit last week and Mr Costa said it was illegal activity. They could declare that a target area –

Bob: Margo, please relax. Please relax. It is inconceivable that these powers could be applied to a demonstration. This is not about a demonstration. This is about murder. What happened in Bali was the murder of innocent Australians, not people who were guilty because they were celebrating in a third world country as you argued in the Sydney Morning Herald. Not that at all.

…

Towards the end of the press conference, a reporter asked Mr Carr about revelations in the Herald the the wife of a a senior ALP minister, John Della Bosca, was set to benefit from a major government tender (smhtoday). Mr Carr said tender processes in NSW were squeaky clean, and moved on to berate NSW opposition leader John Brogden for receiving money from a big accounting firm. Mr Carr repeated that he would ban sponsorship of politicians, and began to leave.

Margo Kingston: Mr Carr, if you are going to ban sponsorships why don’t you ban donations from developers?

Bob Carr: Margo, Margo let me …

Margo: Why can you do one and not the other?

Bob: Margo, let me supply you with the quote that you wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald …

Margo: Fine …

Bob: …which is an insult to the Bali dead.

Margo: Could you, could you answer my question please?

Bob: An insult to the Bali dead.

Margo: If you are prepared to ban sponsorships to politicians are you prepared to ban donations to developers?

Bob: To blame the Bali dead –

Margo: Sure give me the quote, OK –

Bob: To blame the Bali dead –

Margo: I did not do that.

Bob: – is a disgrace –

Margo: You’re lying.

Bob: – and you are a parody of a journalist.

Margo: You’re lying.

Bob: You are a parody of a journalist.

Margo: Thanks for your accountability.

Carr: You’re a joke.

***

Rehame transcript

SYDNEY 2GB CHRIS SMITH 12.31PM

19TH NOVEMBER, 2002.

DISCUSSION ABOUT SYDNEY MORNING HERALD JOURNALIST MARGO KINGSTON.

INTERVIEW WITH NSW PREMIER BOB CARR.

CHRIS SMITH – PRESENTER: As I said, the Premier Bob Carr, he’s now just emerged from that press conference announcing the tabling in parliament of the Terrorism Police Powers Bill 2002. The bill, as I said, will give the NSW Police the powers they need to deal with terrorist threats and emergencies, but the bill won’t go into law until thoroughly debated in parliament, according to the Premier. I fear a giant nose being thrown into the works from the Upper House. However, I’ve got the Premier on the line now. Premier, good afternoon.

BOB CARR – NEW SOUTH WALES PREMIER: G’day, Chris. How are you?

SMITH: Good. Thanks for finding the time. That press conference went a little longer than expected.

CARR: Yes, it did.

SMITH: These nosey reporters, Premier, they tend to ask questions until –

CARR: There was only one who I found objectionable, and that was Margo Kingston, reportedly from – purportedly from the Sydney Morning Herald, who I cannot deal rationally with. And she wrote a column –

SMITH: Right.

CARR: – attempting to argue that it was Australian tourists who provoked the Bali bombing, words to that effect. And as someone who knows victims of the Bali bombing, I found that intolerable, and I will not cop it and I will not cop her.

SMITH: And then she had the temerity to sit there in a press conference and argue between herself and yourself.

CARR: And challenge the powers we’re giving the police to minimise the chance of more bereavements to Australian families from a terrorist strike. Since I read her piece of I guess it’s a month a go now, saying, it was something in the way Western tourists behaved in Bali that invited the bombing. I’ve been rather angry, I’ve got to say.

SMITH: And I think most people would join you in that.

…

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October 13: Bali

by Margo Kingston

October 14 2002

The Prime Minister said a true thing today, that the Australian people will take some time to absorb what happened in Bali in the early hours of October 13, our time.

For the families still looking, we cry with and for them. For those who are injured and those who saw their pain, we hold them and hope they will one day again sleep an innocent sleep.

There is no meaning yet. We don’t yet know for sure what happened. We don’t know who did this. We don’t know why. Shock needs to be deeply felt before we’ll know how we want to respond. Time needs to pass. Our casualties need to be identified and grieved for.

There are close links between us and Bali. We go there to surf. Many of us have businesses in Bali and live there. I was in Byron Bay on holidays when someone rang with the news. In this morning’s local paper, The Northern Star, Byron Bay resident Sai Frame, 25, described the horror. He and his grandparents were at Kuta Beach to celebrate the opening of a friend’s shop, across the road from the Sari club.

“I was at the Sari club a few days ago. You couldn’t get a higher concentration of young tourists anywhere in Bali,” Sai said. “It’s so hard to believe. Bali has always been considered the safest place in Indonesia. Noone thought this would ever happen. Much of the wealth of Bali is in Kuta Beach, and most of it is dependent on the tourist industry.”

Beautiful Bali is finished for us. We won’t want to go where we’re not welcome.

I know little about Bali, and whether we’ve respected and nurtured the place we love to visit or colonised it with our wants. A friend in Byron Bay said Australians had taken Bali over, business wise, and that acquaintances with businesses in Bali were considering coming home before this horror. They sensed resentment, and felt a growing unease.

Maybe part of it is the lack of services for locals. A completely inadequate hospital, for instance, so graphically exposed in the aftermath of the horror. Some people – foreigners like us, elite big-city Indonesians – make their fortunes. Have residents lost their place, their power to define it? Did the big money fail to give enough back to the people who belong there, whose home it is? Have Muslim extremists destroyed the vibe of Hindu Bali to force us out?

Will we now swing behind war with Iraq or pull out and focus on our home? The Pacific. South East Asia. East Timor, especially, where we’re protecting a baby, Christian democracy. The places where we have duties and responsibilities and, in the end, where our self interest lies. I don’t know.

The image staying with me is in this morning’s Northern Star. Cartoonist Rod Emmerson drew the Grim Reaper clutching a surfboard called ‘Terrorism’. From the skull, the words “…And I’ve been to Bali too.”

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So this is what it’s like on the other side

by Margo Kingston

October 16 2002

We’re “the other” now. The other is us. Now we know the feeling of living on the edge of fear. Now we feel vulnerable. Now we’re a target.

What have we done to deserve this? What have any victims of terrorism done? It’s terribly difficult to accept what happened to our people in Bali. It’s not possible to intellectualise the pain of being intellectualised by the people who did this to us.

Some experts say we’re up ourselves to think our enemy aimed at us. It was a generalised aim – us as Westerners, Bali as Hindu, the Indonesian government as ripe for overthrow. Others say we were the target because John Howard is so sycophantic to the American compulsion to invade Iraq. My feeling is they chose us to kill and maim because of East Timor. Australia, white Western outpost, sends its troops to rescue the East Timorese dream of independence, then stays on to protect and nurture the baby Christian democracy. Is this the cost?

Whatever the motivations, the fact is we’ve suffered the biggest loss. This is our experience. Many are trying to define it for us, to appropriate it for their purposes, but we mustn’t let them.

This tragedy should see our differences melt as we feel the connection between us as Australians. Webdiarist David Davis felt it in Switzerland.

“On my commute through the Swiss countryside this morning it was dull, dark, grey and unusually cold. I was reading the Times of London and drinking luke warm coffee. On page three was a shot of the Kingsley Senior Football club from Western Australia. Everyone smiling, the larrikin spirit practically leaping off the page. You know for sure these guys would know how to have fun. A night out with those guys would be HUGE – as we would say. That’s what they would have been doing, having a HUGE night. The next day there would be the inevitable post mortem over a breakfast, and comments of “Maaate, such a HUGE night, could you believe it when Dave did that?!

“For a second I was smiling at the picture and forgot why it was in the Times and why I was l looking at it in Switzerland. For a second I escaped and was above the clouds, transported to happy memories. I looked out the window and it came back to me. The horror of what has happened. My God. What is happening in this world and now even to my own – my Aussies.”

How we express our collective grief, how we collectively respond to this horror, will help define us to each other and to the world. The Bali bombing gives us the chance, once we’ve fully felt the pain and formally mourned our loss on our national day of mourning on Sunday, to unite, and to explore what difference we, as Australians, and our nation, Australia, can make to what increasingly seems an inevitable slide into world war, the slaughter of “others”.

Webdiarist David Makinson wrote: “Politicians and commentators of all persuasions will seek to portray their particular cause as noble because we have lost our friends. We must reject this cynicism. Be clear that these poor, poor people died for nothing – a tragic symbol of an abject failure of leadership.”

“The left says our government’s public support of the US makes us a target. We sense the truth in this. The right says that it is folly to think that a passive stance will protect us. We sense the truth in this. The right says a military solution is the only solution. They may be correct. The left says violence begets violence, and they too may be correct. Neither group can recognise the merits in each other’s case, and so the true, far more complex solution eludes us.”

“President Bush said, in the seeming long ago, “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists”. Wrong, George. We’re against both of you. We wonder if perhaps you deserve each other, but we’re certain we have done nothing at all to deserve you. We, the cannon fodder, oppose you. We are the innocent people of Australia, the US, Palestine, Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, the world, and we are opposed to you. It’s not as simple as us and them. It’s about all of us.”

“Every instinct I have says we need to seek an active path of peaceful action and engagement if we are to have any chance of working through these troubles. I believe this is the test of courage we need to confront – to engage these people at the root of their grievances and hurts – both real and imagined.

“I fear our bravery does not run that deep. The pragmatist in me recognises that we will resort to force. We will dress this up in words of action and purpose, and imagine it a considered and effective response. We will convince ourselves it is necessary and just. It is neither – and it will not work.

“It is a dark time. I fear for my children. Let us pray that somewhere amongst the dross is a kernel of constructive thought which can be built into hope.”

One kernel this week: Australians couple Jennifer Ball and George Pengilly, of Melbourne, did not cancel their plan to marry in Bali after Balinese locals requested them to “please do the wedding”. More than 250,000 Australians visit Bali each year. Many Australians have businesses there. Bali has been our national escape to innocent pleasure. We are in relationship with the Balinese people. They made and laid Hindu funeral flower arrangements to honour our dead. They cried with us, for their dead and ours.