Peter Reith has made the link between the Tampa boat people and the catastrophe in the United States. Being one of the ludicrously out of touch minority I realise I now am, I had thought the atrocity may have softened our attitude to the boat people – they are, after all, fleeing terror. But no, now they’re terrorists trying to infiltrate our country.

Today, Reith said on Network Sky TV:

 

“They (our borders) are certainly too easily penetrated and that is why we have been taking a very strong stand on this issue … Jim Kelly, I should say, who is the number two to Colin Powell for our region was in Jakarta only 10 days ago saying that it was very important to tighten up on entry into Indonesia otherwise it could be used as a launching pad for terrorist activities. And that was before, you know, the last couple of horrific days. So those issues, security and border protection go hand in hand, there’s no two ways about it and that’s certainly one of the reasons that the Howard Government is taking a very strong stand on the issue.”

 

 

Immigration minister Phillip Ruddock came close to making the link yesterday morning on Radio National.

 

REPORTER: Certainly some of the talkback calls this morning has seen a lot of hatred being expressed towards the Muslim community. Now, there’s also been reference made to the asylum seeker issue. In hindsight to you regret the actions of the past couple of weeks now?

 

RUDDOCK: Not at all. I mean the issue here is the issue of our national sovereignty. Our capacity to be able to determine who is able to access Australia and who is able to remain here. And those issues go to the questions of character and security…

 

REPORTER: But surely you would accept that the actions, over the past couple of weeks by the government, has increased the level of anxiety amongst the Muslim community? Has increased the level of attacks against the Muslim community? Surely the government must bear some responsibility here?

 

RUDDOCK: Well, I simply make the point no comments have been made by me, or by government ministers, adverse to any element of our community.

 

ends

 

No, the government you just rode on the coat tails of racism, and said nothing to quell it.

 

But John Howard, of all people, refused to make the link in a press conference before he left the United States, and made a strong statement calling for racial calm in Australia.

 

HOWARD: We all think that there’s a patch in the world called Australia that’s a little different from everywhere else, but its not really and we have to understand that we have to take precautions and accept approaches that we otherwise would not have wanted.

 

JOURNALIST: Does this episode have implications for our refugee

 

HOWARD: Look I’m not seeking in any way to link those two things.

 

Later, Howard said: “There are probably several hundred thousands of Australian-Lebanese and other Arab heritages. And they are good citizens and they are entitled to the same decent treatment and respect that we extend to all of our citizens, and I hope, speaking from, however inadequately, from a Christian perspective, I ask all Australians to extend to their fellow countrymen and women – whether they are of Islamic faiths, Christian faiths, Jewish faiths, or no faith at all tolerance, decency and inclusion.”

 

“We are a harmonious society. I want to keep it that way, and the people of Middle Eastern extraction in Australia, and the ordinary Australian citizens of that extraction should not be judged by the dastardly deeds of a few. I encourage everyone to re-double their sense of acceptance and tolerance towards people of different backgrounds and different ethnicities. And we have, by and large, been fortunate in that respect…

 

A journalist then asked an inaudible question. Howard replied: “Jim, in answer to another question in another context, I said I didn’t want to link two things and it is just not something I want to do.”

 

As racial and religious tensions threaten to escalate into world war, the government’s failure to calm them during the Tampa crisis – and even to inflame them now – is scandalous. John Howard’s attitude now is striking.

 

This edition explores the matter. To those of you who’ve emailed saying you’d like to shoot all Arabs or the like, I won’t publish such material. You should direct your emails to one of the many other media forums which will.

 

Contributors are: Mark Reddan, John Crockett, Julie Vella, Corrie Brodie, Amien Furmie, Clarence Oxford, Jared Madden, Stephen Collins, Con Vaitsas, Karel Zegers, Michael Beecham, Bryan Law, Anton Cook, Tony Cole and David Lim.

 

Mark Redden in Sydney

 

I’m an Australian permanent resident and US citizen. John Howard simply said, “Let’s be their friend.” Thanks for that.

 

I rode home from work, still a bit numb from all of it, didn’t want to read the newspaper on the seat next to me. A man of Middle East descent also got on and you could feel the tension in the bus. I had some as well.

 

He found a seat near the back of the bus, pretty close to mine. I watched as a mother whispered in her son’s ear while pointing at the man. It made me feel real bad for him, and for the way I and others were feeling towards him.

 

A young lady came and sat next to him, which seemed to amaze everyone. Good on her for that. It convinced me that I was wrong, that I can’t let bitterness overwhelm me, that I too can “Overcome evil with good.”

 

John Crockett

 

I was down in the carpark putting the shopping into the boot and two young men of Middle Eastern appearance were walking towards their car and I had to resist the urge to stare and so I turned away. Twenty four hours of unrelenting American news reports and I feel compelled to turn away from my fellow citizens.

 

What is happening Margo?

 

 

Julie Vella

 

I am a High School teacher in Campbelltown (in Western Sydney ) and I found a desk with large graffiti letters saying “Kill All Arabs”. I was shocked to read such a message from my mostly apolitical students and I am worried that fringe loonies will suddenly assume a licence to hate.

 

 

Corrie Brodie

 

I am, like so many others absolutely horrified by the terrorist attack on the US. However I am extremely frightened and saddened that our point of view is not shared by all here in Australia.

 

I work with people from the Middle East and yesterday they openly admitted that the attack was reason to celebrate and to quote one “…a miracle, an act of God”. I have no way to comprehend this amount of hatred that obviously exists towards the Western World or towards any group people.

 

The people who want us to let ‘refugees’ into this country without any form of system hopefully will think twice. They may believe that they are letting in a flock of sheep, however there are probably a few wolves in sheep skins just waiting to have another attack on Western Society.

 

 

Amien Furmie

 

I have been paying close attention to the responses of the public am dumbfounded by the narrow minded responses from fellow Australians who are labelling Muslims Arabs and refugees as the perpetrators.

 

I am a South African born Muslim and proud of my religion. We as Muslims don’t support suicide in any form, or terrorism – in fact its a sin and these are the words in the Quraan and that’s a fact any Scholar will tell you.

 

Stop showing Palistinians celebrating and get some responses from a diverse background of Muslims and I guarantee they too will condemn this terrorism. America has now seen what damage greed and hatred can cause on their own soil. For years the world have suffered these atrocities, where innocent people of all colours and religions were killed, including Jews, Muslims and others.

 

Now my mother won’t go out in fear of revenge attacks. My son’s daycare teacher has a stand-offish attitude to me now.

 

I read the Quraan daily, I pray, I have an Australian wife who became Muslim and is not covered with a cloak and a tea towel. So please don’t generalise as this will only cause a negative effect. History has made its mistakes of revenge and seen its effects. It made people more angry.

 

It’s time to learn why we are fighting and sort out our differences, or be prepared for more of these disgusting acts from all parts of the globe, including the USA.

 

Clarence Oxford (nom de plume)

 

You and your fellow journalists need to make a collective appeal to your management at Fairfax and other media companies for an immediate cessation of the vilification both racial and religious that is being promoted by Ackerman and others.

 

These are dangerous times and emotions are running red hot. Management of the respective media organizations must take responsibility for what it allows to be published in their newspapers.

 

Today’s column by Piers Ackerman in the Daily Telegraph is truly vile and accuses all Muslims of complicity in the attacks on America. Paddy McGuinness and others at your paper are also engaging in highly dangerous writings which are serving as an open invitation to attack Muslims.

 

Of course these people will deny this but only an idiot would think that their rantings are adding anything of value to the discussions taking place between all people at the moment.

 

We are on the verge of serious violence in this country and it is time for publishers to take responsibility for what they publish.

 

Jared Madden

 

 

These latest attacks herald a new era of terrorist ingenuity and a should be a beacon to all residents and the decision makers of the world that the current rule books are invalid. Who knows how many years that these attacks has been planned!

 

We have been condemned for not accepting the asylum seekers on the ship the Tampa. How do we know that amongst these asylum seekers that there are no terrorists that have been planted to receive asylum status and train themselves here for a terrorist attack?

 

If we cannot be sure why should we accept them? The court was wrong to rule against the government. It should not have stuck its nose into matters of national security. We elect these people to govern overs this beautiful country and make these decisions. Let them do their job!

 

 

Stephen Collins in Singapore

 

I’m very disappointed that you would publish a letter of the type received from A Iman in Fear purporting to balance the account of the tragedy with a secondary perspective.

 

There are absolutely NO moral or other justification for what has taken place. There is NO “other side”to the story. To suggest, or even allow the suggestion otherwise. is an act of moral cowardice.

 

Let’s hope common sense prevails here. Let’s hope that any response is targetted against the guilty and not the innocent. Let’s hope that mindless persecution of Muslim people does not occur.

 

But let us also hope that this serves the purpose of winding back the type of moral/cultural relativism that infects countries such as Australia and blinds them to the absolute rights and wrongs.

 

My advice to A Iman is this: This is a war. Keep your head down and your mouth shut. Diplomats and lawyers have relinquished the center stage stage now. It is warriors who will shape the next decade and beyond.

 

Words are now very cheap.

 

Con Vaitsas, an Australian of Greek descent in Sydney

 

Buying my coffee from the usual haunt this morning, I mentioned the previous nights events and asked the staff how they really felt being of Middle-Eastern origins. One leant over the counter and whispered to me, “What goes around comes around” and his colleagues agreed.

 

Yes, they feel it’s terrible that innocents were killed but would like to see the same compassion also being shown towards people of their own ethnic or religious background when they are involved in massive atrocities. But they said they would never admit this to other customers because they have to make a living.

 

At lunch time I went and on a bench in the park next to 3 construction workers who were talking about the tragedy.

 

I could hear their conversation. One bloke said, “Well the yanks are always sticking their noses everywhere” and another replied, “Lucky we didnt take those reffos, and as for those civil libertarians they should be given a bashing.”

 

“Hold on, what have the Tampa refugees got to do with what happened last night?” I asked

 

You gotta be kidding mate, said the young bloke, those bastards should have been shot. Why should we take those stinking Muslims. Are you going to pay for their upkeep? They don’t speak English, their customs are not like ours, and they bring diseases and are bludgers.

 

As I argued against this, I was asked where I was from. I said I was born here and they said I was not a real Aussie and what country my parents came from?

 

The young guy finally telling me and his mates that white man is supreme and we should kick out and keep out the non-whites. I left after telling him he shouldn’t believe everything he hears and reads in the media and should learn to question things.

 

This evening I arrived home, grabbed my mail and opened one of the envelopes to find another anonymous letter full of vitriol aimed at me and my views because of a recent letter to the editor I wrote supporting the refugees. I wish they would add their names to it. I only want sensible debate.

 

Karel Zegers in Bendigo

 

Two points to ponder.

 

1) Do we in Australia need or want residents or citizens who are part of a religion glorifying or supporting acts like the World Trade Centre? And please don’t mention that some Islamites pretending “abhorrence” over this terrible event. They are just scared and so they should be.

 

2) Terrorists and their allies only understand terror. So lets not pussyfoot but get stuck into them.

 

Or is there anyone who supports the Taliban and Bin-Laden?

 

Michael Beecham

 

I would hate to be a Muslim now in a foreign country. Imagine what it must be like for them always watching their backs now. A big mistake they made for their people those who did this

 

Bryan Law in Cairns

 

What’s at stake here is not just the issue of Tampa refugees or Terrorism in the U.S.. Rather it is the preservation and creation of a fully human way of life for all of us on planet Earth.

 

John Avery and Colin White in Tragedy leap neatly to conclusions and caricature of Islam. Andrew Cave “Tragedy” identifies anti-Arab sentiment in Kuraby. The Middle-East is a logical region to suspect of growing these suicide bombers, but the who and why of it requires more thinking than blaming – especially if we’re going to do something about it.

 

I heard a commentator on Radio National tonight saying that if it came from the Middle-East it is connected to some very ugly historical injustices that are woven into the fabric of that region. He referred to the collapse of the Ottoman empire, the perfidy of the English state during WW2, the establishment of Israel post WW2, and the foreign policy of the U.S. state since the 1970s, including the repeated bombing of Lebanon and Iraq.

 

It’s completely wrong to associate atrocity with any religion in particular. We might as well blame Buddhism for Cambodia, and Christianity for Serbia (to name just two other recent instances of massive bombing and attempted genocide). We’d have to blame Animism for Rwanda. I’d prefer to get the facts, and figure out where the evil actually does come from.

 

One thing I know is we’d have a whole lot less anti-Arab sentiment in the western world today if they weren’t sitting on all that lovely oil we want (cheap).

 

One other thing I know is that we are not doomed to repeat the escalating cycles of violence. Gandhi showed a powerful way forward last century. To Brian Bahnish in Tragedy I’d say Gandhi also said that satyagraha relied on truth to oneself as well as to God. “If you have a sword in your heart, pick it up and use it. Don’t pretend.”

 

You may well be willing to kill to save your sister’s life, but that has always been a phoney question designed to trap conscientious objectors. The real question is “Are you willing to organise to build and enhance your whole community’s life?”

 

Pope Paul 6 said “If you want peace, work for justice.

 

Malcolm X said, on the occasion of President Kennedy’s assassination, “I hear the sounds of chickens coming home to roost”. That phrase has been in my mind all day.

 

The world hasn’t suddenly changed, It’s been heading down this road for quite a while. It’s time to work for justice.

 

 

Anton Cook

 

These boat people – the ones that Kim Howard and John Beazley would turn away – are they not refugees from the oppressive regime now suspected of complicity in perhaps the most gross terrorist atrocity of all time? Time for a humanitarian rethink?

 

Tony Cole

 

I am astounded that so little attention is being given by Tweedledum (Howard) and Tweedledee (Beazley) and by governments throughout the world to the root cause of the problem. We get tough on the asylum seekers but not on their persecutors!

 

Perhaps Howard and Ruddock could sing for the electors (rather than merely enacting) the Gendarmes’ Duet:

“………

When danger looms w’are never there!

But when we meet a helpless woman,

or little boys that do no harm,

we run them in

we run them in

we run them in

we run them in

we show them w’are the bold Gendarmes!!”

 

David Lim

 

I’m not sure what to say. The only thought that comes to mind is that this marks the end of peacetime. So this is how the end of the world starts.

 

This despicable terrorist act marks the end of tolerance, of diversity, of multiculturalism. And it marks the beginning of racial hatred, of mob rule, of racial segregation, of mindless violence and terror.

 

People who are non-white (like me), will not be able to walk in our streets again. We will be actively discriminated against because of the colour of our skin, our race, because we are “terrorists” out to destroy the country. This marks the beginning of paranoia and racial discrimination.

 

So how far will Australia (and the US) go in retaliating against its non-White citizens? Concentration camps for non-whites? Or an Australian-style “final solution” with gas chambers and mass executions?

 

We’ve already seen John Howard, Pauline Hanson and Bob Carr encouraging race-related abuse. How far will they go? How much “non-white” blood will be spilled before enough is enough?

 

I’m afraid, and I’m frightened. I’ve never felt like this before, not even during the whole Pauline Hanson “anti-Asian” race debate. Soon, very soon, the racial persecution will start. Our country will give in to its lust for hatred and revenge. May god have mercy on us all.

I am still in the shock phase of grief. Fear isn’t allowed in yet. Some people in Australia have hit out and are threatening fellow Australians. Others have used the tragedy to bolster their case against allowing any Muslims into Australia, including the Tampa boat people. A few of these people have written to the Webdiary. Some others have written making judgements about the United States and suggesting it is responsible for last night’s events. I’ve chosen not to publish any of these emails at this time. Many Australians are still waiting for news on family and friends in the United States.

 

Keith Conley wrote to me today: “In light of what happened last night, please put a halt to the web diary. It can serve no purpose now. Any argument over refugees will be inflamed by the raw tidal wave of emotion that is about to be unleashed. This is not the time.”

 

I’d already decided the same thing, but have changed my mind. Today, I publish contributions from John Avery, Brian Bahnisch, Andrew Cave, Polly Bush, Colin White, Marc Pengryffn, Merrill Pye and Beris de Vanharasz.

 

John Avery in Adelaide

 

It is a reasonable guess that the perpetrators of today’s terrorism in the US are an extreme faction identified with Islam and probably connected to the Taliban. Having said that, it vital that the actual culprits are identified and punished with narrow particularity, not just for sake of justice but to defeat the purposes of these outrages.

 

President Bush has said no distinction will be drawn between terrorists and the regimes who support them. But that is the exactly the response these shocking deeds seem calculated to elicit. A key object of extremist factions, such as those competing with more moderate groups among the Taliban, is to prevent moderate groups defecting, to shut the escape hatches.

 

We have seen this tactic in Afghanistan with the desecration of the Buddhist monuments, the arrest of aid workers for (allegedly) preaching Christianity and the outrageous repression of women in that country. The terrorists believe that more extreme and outrageous the actions, the more reliably will their targets extend revenge to anyone tainted by association with them.

 

Under common attack, more moderate factions are forced to commit to the extreme hard line, whether they like it or not.

 

If this is correct, the US response should be to drive a wedge between the perpetrators and to their close supporters, rebarbative as they definitely will turn out to be. This course is unlikely to be followed because the extremity of the terrorists’ outrage is designed to amplify their victims’ hostility and harden their feelings of revenge.

 

Thus the huge scale of losses inflicted on the US are calculated to induce feelings of revenge that will not be satisfied with the punishment of a mere handful of scruffy tribesmen, even if Bin Laden were among them (should his group turn out to be culpable).

 

The vividness and power of these events, underscored by presumed religiously inspired suicides, make it emotionally difficult for the Americans to resist the terrorists’ overt message that they are primarily engaged in war with the USA or the west.

 

The war with the diabolical west may turn out to be their platform, but the real purpose of their attacks and their extreme high stake tactics seem to be fame, self-preservation and advancement within a specific regional politics marked by labile factional and ideological commitments to forms of Islam ostensibly opposed to modernity with a western face.

 

The world will pay a high price if America succumbs to these forceful temptations. President Bush, contrary to what he has declared so far in the heat of the moment, should lend support to the more moderate factions to isolate the extremists, contrary to the extremists’ desire to draw a savage response from the USA, but this is unlikely to happen.

 

It seems a small point to make now, but the prospect that the world might have developed better ways of dealing with the increasing flow of refugees from Afghanistan and nearby countries seems to have evaporated.

 

I had hoped that, in that context, Australia would be able to review its responsibilities to take refugees on a more compassionate and responsive basis. That would have changed things for the better. At present, it seems that we can only hope things do not get far, far worse.

 

Brian Bahnisch in Brisbane

 

When I was young there was a fellow called Gandhi. I admired his pacifist philosophy but could not bring myself to adopt it entirely. I would always be ready to kill if it meant saving my sister’s life. But Gandhi made you think. We do have to be careful about extending the cycle of violence.

 

Later when doing a course on ethics I read that every society on earth has legitimated killing in some form in some circumstances. Exceptions are possible but they are rare. Last year I met a Kiwi, a Moriori, who told me that the Moriori were so gentle they would rather die than fight the invading Maori. There are not many Moriori about these days.

 

Last night was a bad night. After Lateline finished I checked out the end of the Channel 10 news. There was a World Trade Centre tower burning. By the time I got out of the shower it was clear that bad things were happening. I watched in fascination, as it became clear that the world had changed forever.

 

This morning we told my 14-year-old about what had happened. His response? Bad things are going to happen. You know how the Americans are when some of their people are killed.

 

There was lots of comment on the radio. American voices, experts in terrorism and defense, saying that Bush should be careful about overreacting. One pointed out that the terrorists were just toying with the US. There was no payload of anthrax and they could have taken out the White House.

 

They spoke about how hard it was to defend against such an attack. Weapons could be taken on board and put together later. I realised that the terrorists would not have needed any weapons at all if there were enough of them and they were skilled in unarmed combat. In fact the woman who phoned her husband from one of the planes mentioned only knives and cardboard cutters.

 

It was an elegant plan. Use the power of the products of capitalism against itself. I wondered about what violence had preceded these unspeakable acts and what violence would follow. After all the Brits and the Yanks have been bombing Iraq for the last 10 years.

 

Then came Beazley. He expressed concern for the victims and their families and then talked about retribution. Is this what I want my leader to be saying? Shouldn’t he be calming things down? And I thought, give up Kim. People will never vote to change the government now with the strong man in control.

 

Then came Howard. He had compassionate words too and then spoke of a lethal strike. I called into the newsagent and picked up the Bulletin. I had been sweating on the Bulletin Morgan poll. The last one had been taken just after the Minister, who could not remember where he had been or what he knew, had given out five different stories to cover himself. Labor was then 57 to 43 ahead. This one was taken on 12 September. The gap had narrowed 10 points in two weeks. Howard was in the hunt. Now he would surely romp it in.

 

Then came talkback on the ABC. I expected it and it came. We must keep these Muslims out! They want to destroy our Christian society. Then a guy came on and said the notable thing about this attack was that it came from inside the US. And here in Australia we have one man (Justice North) subverting the will of our elected leaders.

 

So is this the end of what Fukuyama claimed was the end of history, namely liberal democracy and free market capitalism? Perhaps not, but it must be getting closer. Eric Hobsbawm says borders are becoming more porous, crime is globalising and the technology of violence is increasing to the point where it is hard for the nation state to exert control within its borders and make the place safe for global capitalism. He thinks the nation state reached its zenith about 40 years ago.

 

And what do we do? Throw up our hands in despair? Well no, we keep pushing the rock up the hill like Sisyphus even if it is destined to keep rolling down again.

 

Andrew Cave in Kuraby, Queensland

 

My wife went to the local supermarket about half an hour ago. When she came back she told me of overhearing conversations. Two young men talking to a checkout operator saying “All Arabs are crazy”. Another checkout operator saying “Now you know why we turned those boat people away.” A beautiful young Arab woman working on checkout defending herself against three other checkout operators who were evidently focussing on her as a representative of Islam and so having some responsibility for the terrible crime in New York overnight.

 

This sort of reaction is commonplace now as the message to fear the Islamic people of the world becomes internalised, part of the very moral and decision making framework of our lives. Unquestioned like the notion that man is the most evolved creature on the planet.

 

It is this sort of fear that attacking the boat people works on. Those who pander to it may think, isolated in their sane and well-educated suburbs, that this can be used for political advantage and that it can be contained like a controlled burn-off. But like a fire that gets to the tree crowns, it will run away from their control.

 

Watching the American news coverage, I have been struck by how considered and calm their commentary has been. There has been overt efforts to ensure that it is not assumed that it was Islamic terrorists and that a distinction is drawn between the people who did it and the people who may have unwittingly shared a country.

 

I can only hope that our media will do the same – even the shock-jocks. And I sincerely hope that the first politician to try and make political mileage by linking New York with the Afghan refugees is so vilified by the press that he (or she) never participates in public life again.

 

Polly Bush in Melbourne

 

Madness. Complete and utter madness. Excuse my age (24) but this is the biggest thing I have ever seen. This is the scariest feeling I have ever had. This is beyond comprehension.

 

Work was a joke today. I couldn’t do anything except mindlessly click the refresh button on any news site I could find. People walked around, mouths open, eyes vacant, silent, stunned.

 

And this is just Australia. Crowds gathered around the office TVs, but still, silence, stunned faces.

 

A male colleague of mine told me on one of many unproductive smoko breaks today, “I don’t want to be called up for war”. I never thought I would hear that from someone my age and seriously contemplate it.

 

Idiot callers on talkback radio likened boat people to terrorists, without making the connection this is what boat people might be fleeing from. Emails went wild. I got sent this Nostradamus quote: “In the city of God there will be a great thunder, two brothers torn apart by chaos, while the fortress endures, the great leader will succumb. The third big war will begin when the big city is burning.” Ta for that, whoever.

 

Dubbya quoted the bible. Terrific. I recalled his father’s speech during the Gulf and the emphasis on the sons and daughters of the USA. I felt sick. I rang my Mum interstate for some vague reassurance that life is OK. She asked me to come home, so we can go bush and build a bunker. That didn’t help.

 

In light of the Tampa, I didn’t think news could get anymore depressing. It has. Unfortunately I think this will just enrage the racists in this country and around the world.

 

We live in dangerous times. I fear the future.

 

Colin White in Highgate, Western Australia

 

If reports are to be believed, this evil is the work of Islam. Why does Islam insist on hiding from the world the beauty inspired by Allah, presenting only the evil inspired by Satan?

 

I hope the American people have the fortitude to rebuild those beautifully elegant towers to their original design, as a living, working monument to all who perished there yesterday. A design in which, ironically, I have always seen the influence of Islamic architecture.

 

Marc Pengryffyn in Katoomba, NSW

 

Arbitrary slaughter of innocent people is the norm over most of the world, not the exception. The murder of thousands of Americans is a horrible tragedy. So were the deaths of the thousands in Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Chile, Chechnya, Iraq, Iran, Indonesia, Palestine, the former Yugoslavia, China, Burma, etc, etc. There is no defence against terror, except to create a world without the depth of inequality and injustice that currently exists.

 

It disturbs me that the first thing I heard President Bush say was to promise revenge. Not justice. Revenge. This suggests that even more innocent civilians will be killed to ‘send a message’ to the terrorists. Why do the bodies of the innocent always have to be the medium of the message?

 

Likewise, the Australian government has been speaking in terms of retribution, rather than justice. Predictably, the noisy, hard-of-thinking bigots who patronise talk-back are threatening violent retribution against the Australian Muslim community. More innocent victims.

 

Tit-for-tat atrocities is not the way to end terror. Look at Palestine or Northern Ireland. The terrorists need to be brought to justice, and the conditions that foster fanaticism and terror need to be addressed at the roots. We need justice, not vengeance.

 

But few will listen. Few will even bother to think. They will only react, and the cycle of violence will continue. Sometimes it’s hard to be an optimist.

 

Merrill Pye

 

My worries for reverberations continue, but down the bottom of Pandora’s Box was hope. Just maybe some sort of common feeling might come out of this. New York and Washington DC now maybe can feel like Belgrade and Baghdad did. Those pretty pictures, like movies or computer games, missile-cam and night-vision, now connect with reality, with pain, grief, loss and destruction.

 

Beris de Vanharasz

 

I feel desperate for the world and all the decent people of all races and beliefs.

The identity debate has exploded, with questions about the state of our democratic traditions, particularly the rule of law, entering the picture. But the racism debate is still creating all the angst – it’s raw, it’s emotional, it’s genuine, it’s reaching out, and it’s engaged. Thank you, to all contributors.

You are: Robert Lawton, a favourite regular, Paul Wilson-Brown, Ron Williams, Bradley Lonard, Jack Nalbandian, Peter Kelly, Paul Wright, Charles Richards, Susan Jenner, Hardy Martin, Michelle Stein-Evers, Sonia Foley and Matt Eggers.

I begin with a poem by Brisbane boy David Peetz, in Quebec at the moment.

Is this “my country”?

I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains,

Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains.

I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea,

Her beauty and her terror – The wide brown land for me!

But where like far horizons, our minds were once so wide

We’d welcome all and sundry, live with them side by side

The jewel-sea’s load we fear now, we scorn their ragged clothes

And beauty turns to terror if your eyes stay tightly closed

So if your land’s been swept away by droughts and flooding rains

If you seek a new beginning to escape from terror’s reign

Don’t come to our horizons, if we see you coming near

We’ll stand and sing our anthem, and this is what you’ll hear

“Australians all – watch us rejoice –

But we won’t hear your plea.

The Taliban may do their worst –

We’ll tow you back to sea!

Our land abounds in nature’s gifts

That we don’t want to share.

In history’s page, the world’s outraged

But we don’t really care.

We’ll show them we forget how to

Advance Australia fair.”

 

Notes: First verse by Dorothea Mackellar, ‘My country’, 1908; in last verse lines 5, 10 and half of line 7 from ‘Advance Australia Fair’ by Peter Dodds McCormick, 1878)

 

RACISM IN OZ

Robert Lawton in Adelaide

I’ve been reading the enormous triple and quadruple editions of Webdiary recently and feeling swamped. Swamped by the torrent of words on this issue, and sad that politics has become so routine that many people only feel driven to speak on a topic like this.

There’s been some joy as well: just seeing the monolithic Lab and Lib wedges splinter as people make their own choices rather than allow the party to think for them.

The pro-Howard Laborites may perhaps nail down some of the sillier policy ideas in a Beazley administration; the hard-to-kill Lib moderates will clearly have their day again, and on other issues than this perhaps.

A few comments on anti-Muslim feeling, speaking from an experience of Islam through Iranian, Bangladeshi and Malian friends; time spent travelling in Turkey, Jordan and Muslim India; and the old linkages of NW Pakistan to the Flinders Ranges through the Ghantowns of Farina and Marree…and the people of mixed Afghan/Aboriginal lineage now living through that area.

I say to people like Piers Denton (in Why we are racist): open your eyes to people like Nasser Hussain, captain of the England cricket team; Zinedine Zidane, a sensible, talented man perhaps the best all round footballer on the planet; Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who worked so hard to avoid the partition of India into what became India, Pakistan and Bangladesh; those brave judges of the High Court of Malaysia who have defied Mahathir in their decisions in favour of an open society; Malcolm X; Frantz Fanon of Senegal, who wrote so movingly of racism in the 1950s; Ataturk who promoted self confidence, democracy, feminism and openness in Turkey in the 1920s when Europe was going the other way; King Hussein of Jordan, who used dialogue and respect to counter Israeli

chauvinism and fear; even Gus Dur (the former President Wahid) of Indonesia who continues to use Islam as a way forward rather than a wall to contain the past.

I laugh at my 76-year-old mother’s anti-Catholic prejudices, because I can see the naked chauvinism behind them for what it is. Then I ask her why she cried so much when Robert Kennedy was shot.

Anti-Lebanese Muslim feeling is just the same as anti-Catholicism: the Lebanese happen to be in the gun in this country at present. In Germany it is expressed against the Turks, in France against the Algerians and other North African Arabs, in Britain against the Indian Muslims from everywhere from Uganda to Pakistan, Malaysia and Fiji. And in Israel.

There are still some people who hate Catholics for what they are. But in time anti-Muslim feeling will be just as marginalised.

Salaam wa laykoum: May peace be upon you. An Arabic phrase worth learning and using!

Paul Wilson-Brown

I never ring talk back lines, participate in online forums or normally have anything to do with media biased based debate of any sort. I’m too busy working. But I got a rare afternoon off so just thought I’d put my one cent in before John Howard changes the cross media ownership laws and I give up paying attention to the media all together (except for the wonderful ABC or what’s left of it).

It just seems to me that most of the people who call up the talkback jerks (Sandy McCutcheon excluded) are older white people who grew up in a Menzies induced torpor where white and might was right and whose only engagement with multiculturalism was a bit o’ Chinese food on a Fridee night. I’m generalising and making assumptions about a group of people and I really shouldn’t do that should I? But I wanted to say …

I was at a lunch party on Sunday afternoon with my Japanese girlfriend and we came across a pleasant fellow who spent several years in Japan. Well, she and he were chatting away quite nicely in Japanese when this (blonde OZ) girl stated form across the table ‘Jesus that shits me, you’re in Australia why don’t you speak Australian!? (Gee I thought we spoke English here but anyway)

“I’m so over all this shit,” (Multiculturalism I presume) she said to her friend.

Just yesterday I received a work-related call from a woman who lived in Strathfield in Sydney who in the course of the conversation calmly mentioned that the suburb was ‘overrun’ (a word usually associated with vermin I think) by Koreans!

“How rude they are!” she remarked (and remember she doesn’t know me from a bar of soap). “The young ones won’t get out of your way if you want to pass by”. I told her that anyone under the age of 18 is likely to be like that and on my recent trip to Korea, the Koreans were complaining about how rude the Americans were!

Actually I know a lot of Koreans and if it’s at all permitted to generalise (as it seems to be these days) they are some of the most earnest, honest, family oriented and generous people I know actually …. But I wanted to say.

An environment has been created where racists (and there are many levels of racism, from the subtle to the sick) feel very comfortable about airing their views in the confidence of an assumtion that the majority of “Australians” (read white Australians) agree. The 77% may see it as a breakdown in political correctness but actually it’s just a breakthrough in racism. I see it for the hard hearted empty headed crap that it is as does the rest of the world.

My family migrated to Australia from Scotland in 1970 when I was 7. We stayed in a crappy army barracks in Wacol in Brisbane. Man, it really sucked but I can only imagine (shudder) what the Afghanis are going through sitting in a shit heap in Pakistan and I don’t think I’d want to hang around in a drought stricken desert waiting for the Taliban to skin me alive and hang me from the flagpole.

WHAT I REALLY WANTED TO SAY WAS … It matters little what rhetoric you care to dabble with or how you attempt to rationalise your backward stance. You can feel strongly about something and still be completely and totally wrong.

So wake up, you racist shits. Cast off that cloak of self serving bigotry you’ve wrapped your “Australian” values in. Expel all the racist poison your parents injected into you when you were young and impressionable. Grow up and grow into the world.

Australia is the best country in the world, even though it’s now 77% thought free.

 

A FAIR GO

Ron Williams

What happened to a fair go? Nothing, mate, except that some of those people we’ve generously allowed into our country are busily turning it into a place I wouldn’t want to live in.

There are limits to the ‘fair go’. After all, if a beggar comes to your door, you don’t invite him in, say “Here, sit down at the telly, I’ll fetch you a cup of tea’. Nor do we.

There are limits, and I’m afraid I, along with many other Australians have reached ours.

 

OUR DEBATING STYLE

Bradley Lonard

Certainly one of the more amusing parts of the post-Tampa fallout has been watching the breathtaking hypocrisy of some prominent political and media figures.

Let’s start with our Prime Minister, John Winston Howard. The Australian today reports that while making an address, Mr Howard vehemently denied making political hay out of the refugee crisis: “I mean, what a ridiculous proposition.” The same story reports, with presumably a straight face, that the PM ‘spent more than half of the address talking about the refugee crisis.’ Quite.

Or there’s our old friend P P McGuinness, who decided to devote his Herald column to exposing the abusive emails and letters he’s received from readers unhappy with his hard line against the Tampa refugees. Some people might think it a bit rich that the man who turned Quadrant magazine into a vehicle for tirades against those with whom he happens to disagree – such as Robert Manne or Sir William Deane – should be complaining about receiving abusive emails.

Just as some people might be bemused at how McGuinness – a journalist, politician and long-time resident of one of Sydney’s pricier, trendier suburbs — regularly launches diatribes against ‘the elites’.

Over in the Australian there’s good old Frank Devine, who scores with a column sneering at those ‘halfwits’ who want to let refugees be processed in Australian, proclaiming that ‘hard hearts’ should rule; and then follows it up with a column warning Kim Beazley that he’s far too nice

Back in the Herald, Devine Jnr, Miranda, nips any thoughts of admiration we might have for the way NZ PM Helen Clark has handled the crisis by reminding us that the country’s a basket case that isn’t fit to lick our own country’s shoes. So there: New Zealand has a conscience so it’s obviously a wreck.

And then we come to the Webdiary. Well, there’s been some intelligent, reasoned criticism from both sides of the divide. There’s also, unfortunately, been a lot of abuse and too much sneering of the ‘If you want the refugees to come here, let them live in your home’ or ‘If you want to criticise Australia, go live in Afghanistan and see if you like it’ variety.

Christopher Hitchins calls this the ‘We have free speech here, so SHUT UP!’ argument. It’s intellectually dishonest. But then, intellect – as opposed to mere opinion and emotion – is one thing that’s been lacking from much of the entire affair.

This, really, has been the saddest part of the Tampa fallout: the way public debate has quickly turned into ‘I’m right, you’re wrong, nyah nyah nyah!’ ‘No, I’M right, you’re wrong!’ ‘No, YOU are!’ ‘No, YOU are!’ etc etc etc.

This tactic, which has been standard right-wing issue since the middle 1980s (witness Ackerman, Pearson, Warby et al), has now infected almost the entire population.

We all deserve better than this.

 

Jack Nalbandian

Ruminations on a nation. Thoughts occurring to me while filling holes in soil with seedlings on the process line. Trying to find a space in my mind around counting eight per punnet, I start thinking about some of what I’ve been reading in Webdiary and it strikes me as perversely amusing to read how threatened the affluent xenophobe feels, and how they talk of being marginalised and unrepresented.

I’m pissing myself now, and then I feel compassion because it must be hard to be in those shoes seeing as how the prime minister is a lesbian, parliament is full of Aborigines, Asians and women. Ha, ha.

We desperately need healthy dissent, debate, argument whatever you want to call it. At present I feel Australia has become some sort of psychological totalitarian state; a toxic fog has descended over our collective consciousness and we’ve become blind to our peoples’ and country’s unique potentials.

It seems to me that we all have to understand our own limitations and at least try to cross the mental boundaries we create in our thinking to attempt to see anothers point of veiw, and maybe even take enough real interest to ask the question why?

Sadly we live in reactionary times, on all levels, even the most mundane. Foresight and planning have been replaced with making the figures look good today. So don’t worry that the cheap crap you bought today to save some precious coin will stuff up the machine tommyrot, we’ll just have to feed it manually but be expected to meet the same production quotas with same amount of staff working longer hours.

Pondering aloud. What do the business leaders think about the Tampa situation.

Consider. I have a business and I export materials to the Scandinavian countries, Europe and Asia, Indonesia, China and other places . My product says it has been made in Australia. Should I now change the labels so as not to identify the country of production and not suffer the international backlash against it.

Remember how we monsterised the French Perfumes?

Some readers and talk back radios callers (they must be bored with their life) were saying shoot them and throw them in the water. Now since some of these educated Aussies have irrevocable proof that there is a certain ethnicity related to crime, I wonder if they have some of this particular ethnic genes in themselves from their great grandpa which is allowing them to talk such criminal nonsense.

What a big superpower we must be that we are afraid of 433 people with nothing on them other than their clothes. A flood of refugees will follow!!

So? That means that we are a third world country with an arrogant grandeur of being the best and the most righteous. 200 years only passed and the world has just found out that we are still a baby in the international forum.

 

Peter Kelly

Pastor Martin Niemoller, writing in Germany before his arrest in the 1930s: “The Nazis came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and

I didn’t speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics and I was a Protestant, so I didn’t speak up….by that time there was nobody left to speak up for anyone.”

It seems many, perhaps most, migrants support the tough policy stand of Howard in denying entry to the Tampa in particular and to refugees in general. But I am reminded of what Pastor Martin Niemoller said. The racial dog that Howard has baited can turn around and go for any identifiable group, even the one holding the leash.

The issue of refugees is important to us even if we are not refugees because we can all be identified as members of some group. It does not ultimately come down to refugees but to fear and insecurity and anyone of us can, inadvertently, inspire fear and insecurity in others.

I fear Australia is becoming very ugly and membership of an ethnic group that supports a tough line on refugees today may not make it immune from persecution tomorrow. But the refugees being persecuted today and the middle eastern communities being kicked by talk back radio shock jocks and politicians today will not be around to speak up for these other communities.

 

Paul Wright in Summer Hill, Sydney

An interesting aside before the meat of the question. Some correspondents are calling this an “unbiased soapbox”. A quick glance through the last few day’s Webdiary entries show several interjections and corrections by Margo – almost if not all on letters she disagrees with.

Censorship takes many forms, not least of which is the excessively personal and hateful language used against the Prime Minister.

This is not a moral problem, this is a problem of numbers and timing. If you accept that we cannot have unlimited immigration and refugee acceptance, then you accept that sometime your limit will be reached. And when that limit is reached, will you have the courage to stand by your own convictions. Or will you say “just one more”, and “they are really pathetic looking, we should let them in”.

When your limit is reached, will you feel like a racist, a redneck, no compassion?

When Howard went against the (slim) majority of people who wanted a republic, he was “the man who broke Australia’s heart”. Now he’s with 70% and he’s populist, and even racist. You can’t be both populist and racist, because each requires unswerving behaviour regardless of beliefs. Remember, if you dislike populism, then you should have been prepared to condemn Howard for letting them in, had the polls gone that way.

Seriously, to the anti-Howard crew, do you really think he would have acted differently if an election wasn’t coming? If you’re in the “populist” camp, where did he get the poll data instantly? And where’s the electoral advantage when the Opposition is in furious agreement?

Why is it so hard to acknowledge other people’s right to hold an opinion contrary to yours. I hear little hint of pluralism, or tolerance, from those that disagree with me. Can you call your fellow Australians racist bully-boys, and intolerant scumbags, while preaching tolerance and acceptance?

 

Charles Richards

I think this Tampa thing has become a biiger issue on whether Australians should let in more immigrants or end immigration full stop. The comments on the newsgroup aus.politics has gotten very nasty lately over the Tampa issue. Here is one such comment:

“Losers enjoy company, Guess that is why there are a few who want to open the floodgates of immigration so they won’t feel like they are the only ones accused of being bludgers because they are dependent on social welfare.”

 

Susan Jenner

Fear of difference.

One thing that has really struck me about the race debate is the extreme fear or dislike some have of people who are different.

Viewpoints I have heard over and over are that the boat people, immigrants, or Muslims in general are “not like us”, “have values different to us”, “won’t assimilate”, are “violent”, or “have no respect for our laws”.

There is a tendency in many people to look at someone that is different and regard them with fear or even hate. I believe this is because there is such a strong belief instilled in us from early childhood that things are either ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.

So if you are confronted with someone who has different views, or looks different, or is from a different culture there is an internal process, which is probably unconscious, that says:

“He/she is different so either they are wrong or I am, and I do not want to think that I am wrong, so they must be.”

I think xenophobic reactions partly come from a deep fear that it is really the self that is ‘wrong’, not the one who is different. Therefore the difference must be suppressed or others may believe that the different one is ‘right’. So there are attempts to dehumanise or vilify people of other races, or those who have different beliefs. Or to condemn a whole group of people by the actions of an unfortunate few, such as in the gang rape cases. All to prove that these people cannot possibly be ‘right’.

But different does not mean right or wrong, superior or inferior, it is just different!

A taoist saying really sums this up: “Different means different, not better or worse. Different means different, it isn’t a curse.”

 

Hardy Martin

I am deeply upset about the Tampa issue being reduced to a race debate, as though it makes any difference what country they came from. They tried to enter the country illegally and that is that!

It is assumed that because they are from another country that it is a racial thing. Of course they’re from another country – they are asylum seekers – so playing the race card is simply stupid.

I have read many contributions, and especially noted Susan Jenner’s contribution in Why we are racist, that have tried to analyse the “Australian Psyche” and tried (to no avail) to find some answers.

They are not there and the notion of a democratic country having a psyche upsets me even more than the issue at hand. These readers have wasted everyone’s time. Placing our own “guilt” on the list of reasons for turning them away – how about the real reasons?

They do not care for our laws and the countries they travel through to get here do not care either, so long as they don’t stop until they get to Australia. Maybe there was a statement to be made that rises above the typical “Oh my god, they’re boat people, we must accept them or people will think we’re racist” chant which is so easy to say when you need to wash your hands of racism, (Beazley) after all, its only another 460.

Nobody seems too keen to solve the problems, just to pass the buck. Johnny made the right decision this time.

But I’m still not voting for him, or Beazley, who should have grown some chest hair and supported the move.

Beazley’s “vision” speech is very nice, but it’s useless. He calls for co-operation and that’s exactly what he won’t get from the other key nations who have nothing to gain from doing the right thing.

And as for other countries pointing the finger at our “disgusting” behaviour – get real. Let those without sin cast the first stone.

So many issues have been raised and none have been settled. Why? Because we have raised too many issues for a democratic country to debate all at once.

I am a realist and I believe that by everyone kicking and screaming about 460 people on a boat, nothing has been accomplished. AS PER USUAL. Why? Because the general populace is not intelligent enough to see through all the supplementary issues raised by the media and everyone else who wants some free publicity, who just love to play the race card which always results in the same “Oh my god they’re boat people……..”

Congratulations, you have all just totally missed the point!

 

Michelle Stein-Evers in Double Bay, Sydney

What has happened to and because of the Tampa, the arrogant misbehaving in the face of (and the name of ) the rule of law, is something that, when the chips are down, could happen to every one of us here.

As the laws and conventions stand, when any Australian government feels threatened it feels that it has the right to push through any law (such as that declaring the actions of the Tampa’s skipper illegal retrospectively), conscionable or no.

These governments feel also that they can threaten fine folks to keep them in line (as with one of the plaintiffs in one of the Melbourne suits: he has been threatened by the Government that if they feel they have been discomfited, they will sue him for damages or costs and attack his personal assets to punish him for suing on behalf of those on board the Tampa).

These are tactics that would have made Hitler’s Goebbels proud. What is painful to me is to realise that the majority of Australians I’ve met think those sorts of governmental dirty tricks are just fine.

It seems that don’t consider that same arsenal of heavyhandedness is available to be used against them.

 

Sonia Foley

The issue about illegal immigrants is now the “hot topic” of the moment. Some people who do not understand the situation are shooting off saying that Australia is being “racist”. From what I have observed this is not the case. I spoke with an American friend yesterday and he said that the majority of Americans that he has spoken with support what our government is doing. They recognise that these people are “economic refugees” (those were his words).

This issue has nothing to do with race!!! Personally I would not care what country these people come from. The issue is this “Are these people really refugees or illegal immigrants”.

If they are true refugees then I would have no problem in them coming to Australia. However, it is very suspicious when they “lose” their identification and “do not know where they come from”. When illegal immigrants see a soft stand from the Australian government then they will take advantage of this. Please tell me why, if they are true refugees, they would not let the captain take them to Indonesia as this was his original intention. What they did, in effect, was pirate the ship!!! If they were truly desperate to go anywhere to escape their own country, why would they refuse to go to Indonesia?

I saw “A Current Affair” last night with the interview of the captain of the Tampa. It was interesting how he basically said that his ship was pirated by these people and that he was afraid. I am curious why he did not come right out and say it. However, from his own admission, this is exactly what these people did to his ship. These are not the sort of people who we want in our country. Their actions were criminal and we do not want more criminals in our country. The captain said that they came onto the bridge and were in his face, talking in an agitated manner and were saying that if he did not turn the ship around that they would “go crazy”.

Interestingly enough, when these people do not have any identification there can be no police checks done on their criminal activity and who knows what sort of background they have – after all, the way they are coming in is an illegal activity so who knows what sort of criminal activity they were involved in back in their original country. We have enough problems with criminal activity without letting in more people who can not have a thorough background check.

Also, if they were refugees I think it is interesting that there are so few women and children – so many single men. Where are all the families? If they have families, and their lives are supposedly in danger, why would they leave them behind?

I work and have worked with people from many different countries – Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Fiji, Switzerland, Germany, China, Phillipines… the list goes on. Also, I have many friends from different countries. It may interest you to know that when speaking with my friends from different countries they told me, without provocation on my behalf, that they were not happy with the situation as these boat people are “queue jumpers”. These friends came in the legal way.

The statistics that I would be interested in finding out would be how many of the detainees that are here are deported and how many are kept. Also, how many are kept that we could not find out any background information on. The statistics that I heard were as follows: that 9,000 illegal immigrants were deported last year and that most of the escapees from the detention centres (which happened fairly recently) were due to be deported. Also, that some of the detainees have lodged action against our government about being detained for so long. Which ultimately means that we, the Australian taxpayer, will be footing the bill. I would like to know if this is correct. If anyone can supply correct information on this it would be appreciated.

I think that Australians are sick of the whole situation. We have enough problems without this one. The money that could be spent on hospitals, education and helping our homeless is spent dealing with this situation.

An interesting thought. What does the government to do with “refugees” that have no identification and no possible means of finding out where they come from? Do we put an unknown quantity in the general population? If so, how do we know that they are not criminals?

I do not think that people who encourage and allow these people to come here are “do gooders”. Actually I think they are “do baders” as they are rewarding bad behaviour and not rewarding those genuine, sincere people who do the right thing and apply properly for refugee status (with proper background checking). This means that other desperate people who are doing the right thing are pushed out of their position for people who “queue jump”. Australians are screaming at the moment about the fact that our legal system is not giving tougher punishment for crimes committed and yet they are wanting to reward this example of piracy.

We need to protect our country and reward good behaviour, not bad behaviour. Let in the refugees who come in the legal way!!!!!

 

Matt Eggers

When injustices were being committed against Aboriginal people in the not too distant past, the community didn’t get up in arms about things. The problem generally wasn’t in their own figurative back yard and they didn’t want it to be so they said nothing and let those perpetrating and advocating the wrongs, to go unchallenged.

Now, it is generally accepted that the actions of the government at that time were wrong. Why hasn’t this taught us anything? Why does the passage of time have to be the proving ground for recognition of social injustice towards those who are different to us?

Let’s hope that the current Government’s difficulty in saying the “s” word doesn’t manifest itself in the need to say it again in a few years’ time over their inability to recognise the right thing to do with refugees.

11.30pm: I was just about to leave when Law lecturer Simon Evans sent this memo on the Border Protection Bill, introduced into Parliament tonight. He’s also sent it to politicians. First his legal opinion, then yet more of your reaction – with the balance starting to shift a little.

 

Simon wrote:

 

 

I attach for your information my short analysis of the Border Protection Bill introduced into Parliament today. It’s a shocking piece of legislation and ought not be passed, quite irrespective of the current situation.

 

To peruse the bill, go to www.aph.gov.au/legis.htm and click on Current Bills (by title).

 

M E M O R A N D U M

 

From: Dr Simon Evans, Faculty of Law, University of Melbourne

Date: 29 August 2001

Subject: Border Protection Bill 2001

To: Politicians and Webdiary, sent tonight.

 

The Border Protection Bill 2001 (the Bill) was introduced into the Parliament on 29 August 2001 by the Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs. It is expressed to be:

 

A Bill for an Act to provide for the removal of ships from the territorial sea of Australia, and for related purposes.

 

This memorandum sets out my serious concerns about the drafting of the Bill. I hope they can be taken into account in the Parliamentary proceedings on the Bill.

 

The provisions of the Bill

 

1.1: Direction that ship be removed from Australian territorial sea

 

The Bill’s key provision is s 4 which provides in part:

 

(1) An officer may, in his or her absolute discretion, direct the master or other person in charge of a ship that is within the outer limits of the territorial sea of Australia to take the ship, and any person on board the ship, outside the territorial sea.

 

‘Officer’ is defined by section 3 to mean a person:

 

who is authorised (whether orally or in writing) for the purposes of this Act by the Prime Minister or the Minister, and is one of the following:

 

(a) the Secretary, or an employee, of the Department;

 

(b) a person who is an officer for the purposes of the Customs Act 1901;

 

(c) a member of the Australian Federal Police or of the police force of a State or an internal Territory;

 

(d) a member of the police force of an external Territory;

 

(e) a member of the Australian Defence Force.

 

1.2: Enforcement and use of force

 

Section 5 provides for the enforcement of directions made under s 4 and authorises an officer to:

detain the ship, and take it, or cause it to be taken, outside the territorial sea of Australia. For this purpose, reasonable means, including reasonable force, may be used by the officer or another person.

 

Section 6 also authorises an officer or a person assisting an officer to use reasonable force to return a person to the ship if they have left it.

 

1.3 Exclusion of review and exclusion of liability

 

Section 4(2) provides purports to prevent the courts from reviewing a direction given under s 4(1).

 

Section 7 purports to prevent proceedings (civil or criminal) being taken against the Commonwealth in relation to action taken to enforce a direction made under s 4.

 

It also purports to prevent proceedings being taken against officers and any person who assists an officer to enforce a direction made under s 4 provided only that the officer or person acts in good faith.

 

Section 8 purports to prevent proceedings being taken to prevent removal of a ship from the Australian territorial sea once a direction is made under s 4.

 

1.4: No applications for protection visas

 

Section 9 prevents a person who is on board a ship at the time when a direction is given under s 4 in respect of the ship from making an application for a protection visa.

 

1.5: Commencement and retrospectivity

 

If passed the Act will be taken to have commenced on 29 August 2001 at 9.00 am (Australian Capital Territory time): s 2.

 

Section 11 operates to validate retrospectively any direction of the kind contemplated by s 4 that is given after that time and before the Act is assented to, provided that:

 

the Prime Minister or the Minister authorised a person described in any of the paragraphs of the definition of officer in section 3 to give a direction of the kind described in section 4 (however that authorisation was expressed).

 

2: My concerns about the Bill

 

2.1: The Bill authorises the use of force: a vigilant approach is required

 

Once an officer makes a direction under s 4 requiring that a ship be taken outside the Australian Territorial sea that officer and others are authorised to use reasonable force to enforce that direction. The officer and others are also authorised to use reasonable force to return a person to the ship if they leave it after the direction is given.

 

Any legislation that authorises the use of force against individuals ought to be scrutinised carefully to ensure that its provisions do not go further than is necessary to pursue the legitimate objectives of the legislation.

 

This Bill goes too far and should be amended before it is passed.

 

2.2 Ministerial authorisation should be limited in time and place

 

The Prime Minister or Minister may authorise any one of large number of people ‘for the purposes of the Act’. Once authorised that person is an ‘officer’ and has an ‘absolute’, unreviewable discretion to give a direction under s 4.

 

The Prime Minister or Minister need not limit the authorisation to a particular period of time or to a particular vessel. A standing authorisation is possible under the Bill.

 

This is inappropriate, particularly given the limits on review of a direction made by an officer once he or she has been authorised by the Prime Minister or Minister.

 

The Prime Minister or Minister ought to be required by the legislation to limit authorisations in time and place, to table authorisations in the Parliament and to maintain a register of all active authorisations. Absent such a requirement there is limited facility for holding the Executive accountable for the exercise of the coercive powers under the Act.

 

2.3: Ministerial authorisation should be in writing

 

The Prime Minister or Minister may authorise a person for the purposes of the Act ‘orally or in writing’.

 

Oral authorisation should not be possible. There ought to be a formal record of these decisions for the reasons outlined immediately above.

 

2:4 Officer’s discretion should be confined

 

An officer’s discretion to make a direction under s 4 is unconfined. This is inappropriate.

 

The discretion conferred is ‘absolute’. It can be exercised in any circumstances, for any reason or no reason. Once exercised it provides a justification for the use of force and immunity for the consequences of using force.

 

There are no preconditions to the exercise of the discretion (for example, an established defence or quarantine risk).

 

No standards are provided by reference to which the discretion is to be exercised. For example:

 

– the officer is not required to consider whether the ship is seaworthy and can safely be taken outside Australian territorial waters;

 

– the officer is not required to consider whether any persons on the ship are in need of medical or other assistance;

 

– indeed the officer is not required to consider whether the ship is an Australian ship and the people on the ship are Australian citizens: under s 4 the officer can direct that such a ship with such a crew leave the Australian Territorial sea.

 

The statement of the Act’s purpose (‘to provide for the removal of ships from the territorial sea of Australia, and for related purposes’) does not provide any useful guidance.

 

Such an unconfined discretion may be appropriate at the highest levels of policy formation. But it is inappropriate when it can be conferred (for example) on any employee of the Department or any member of the Australian Defence Force. It is particularly inappropriate given the consequences of the discretion and when no reason is apparent for not identifying preconditions and standards for the exercise of the discretion.

 

The discretion should be conditioned on the existence of some need to remove the ship from the Australian Territorial sea; and the Act should provide standards by which it is to be exercised.

 

Incidentally, amending the Bill in this way before it is enacted would assist in removing doubts about its constitutional validity.

 

2.5: Officer’s discretion should be reviewable

 

An officer’s discretion to make a direction under s 4 cannot be ‘called into question, or challenged, in any proceedings in any court in Australia’.

 

This prevents all judicial review of the officer’s decision to make a direction under s 4, unless the officer acts in bad faith.

 

It cannot be the case that every instance calling for the exercise of this discretion is so urgent, sensitive or involves issues of national security such that judicial review is inappropriate.

 

Provision should be made for judicial review of officer’s decisions under s 4 except in situations where that is clearly inappropriate.

 

2.6: Proceedings should be available to prevent removal of the ship if the discretion is inappropriately exercised

 

It follows from the comments immediately proceeding that s 8 is inappropriate and should be removed.

 

2.7: Reasonable steps should be required to ensure that the master of the ship understands the direction

 

A direction under s 4 is given effectively even if:

 

there was no master on board the ship to receive the direction; or

 

the master did not receive or understand the direction.

 

Given that the making of a direction authorises the use of reasonable force to enforce that direction, the officer giving the direction ought to be required to take reasonable steps to ensure that the master receives and understands the direction.

 

2.8: The persons who can assist the officer to enforce the direction ought to be specified

 

A direction under s 4 can be enforced using reasonable force by the officer or another person: s 5. Similarly a person can be returned to the ship by the officer or another person: s 6.

 

The Act does not restrict who that other person is: it need not be a person who is capable of being authorised as an officer for the purposes of the Act.

 

That category of person – which includes members of State, Federal and internal and external Territory police forces – ought to be wide enough to provide persons capable of assisting an officer to enforce a direction under s 4.

 

The need to authorise any wider category of person to use force ought to be clearly demonstrated before it is allowed.

 

Moreover ‘another person’ ought have the power to use force (and immunity from liability for that use of force) unless they are acting at the request of the officer and assisting him or her to carry out his or her powers and functions under ss 5 and 6. (Section 6 hints at such a requirement: ‘An officer, or a person assisting an officer, may return to a ship a person who … ‘. The requirement ought to be more direct and ought to be present also in s 5.)

 

2.9 The Act ought to comply with Australia’s international obligations under the Refugees Convention

 

I have not had an opportunity to determine fully whether s 9 complies with Australia’s obligations under the Refugees Convention; at first sight it appears doubtful that s 9 does comply. No doubt others will provide commentary on this issue.

 

3: Summary

 

The Bill if enacted would confer an absolute unreviewable discretion on potentially junior officers, without providing standards for its exercise, and authorise the use of force with only the most minimal safeguards.

 

The Bill ought not be passed in its current form. I urge Members and Senators to consider these matters most seriously.

 

Gjert Myrestrand, 27 years old, Stavanger, Norway

 

Hello in Sydney.

 

I would like to make the following statement on your message board “Australians and Norwegians speak out”:

 

There is a human tragedy under development in the sea off Australia. The captain of the Norwegian ship is put in an impossible situation, having to make “life and death” decisions because nobody wants his “problem”.

 

Australia and Norway are among the wealthiest nations on the planet, and I have a hard time believing what’s happening. This is not a case of granting asylum, but of saving human lives.

 

I understand that Australia needs to control the influx of refugees, but do not let this fact lead to people dying on the high seas.

 

If a Norwegian government had refused to help people in severe distress, I’m one hundred percent sure that this government would have had to resign within days.

 

I urge the Australian government to allow the vessel to call at an Australian port. Save the lives of those poor people first, then deal with the political implications.

 

Australia has a nice reputation worldwide in humanitarian affairs, but this reputation is being more and more tainted every minute the “Tampa” is refused to enter Australian waters.

 

If Australia wanted to make a political statement about asylum seekers, you have succeeded long ago.

 

Now, save lives.”

 

Mike Kudla

 

I am not a fan of John Howard, but if he does not cave in on this matter he will rise rapidly in my view.

 

The ship’s captain should have immediately proceeded to Indonesia. If he allowed his command to be usurped by people wishing to make him their pawn and take over the direction of his vessel that is his and Norway’s problem.

 

John Howard is showing strong leadership in sticking to the principles of law.

 

Peter Dew

 

When I first moved to Norway I used to miss Australia a lot. The sun, the surf, the cheap beer.

 

After a while I found things in Norway to replace them, the mountains, the snow, the beautiful women. I stopped thinking about Australia so much.

 

The events of the last few days have appalled me as an Australian (still) and I realise now why I left the country and more importantly why I stopped missing it. Bigotry, racism, sexism, idolatry of sport (if the Afghans could play rugger or cricket this wouldn’t be a problem) and of course “little Johnny”.

 

What a prick! It pains me to say it but I am ashamed of my country. So the best thing to do would be to let them land, get them healthy and send them to Norway. It is a better place to live. And please, please, please, don’t vote for the liberals.

 

James Hodges

 

I’m an expatriate Australian who works in Japan. When I left Australia, Bob Hawke was still PM. Generally speaking, I am not in favor of our government locking up people who are legitimate refugees. Furthermore, after reading the SMH over the last couple of years, I don’t think much of Howard’s policy of locking up children. It doesn’t do much for our international image.

 

With regard to the current issue, however, I think that the Liberals have made the right decision. These people who get in clapped out vessels and set sail to Christmas Island or the mainland and expect to be welcomed with open arms have to be dissuaded where possible. Failure to do so will just invite more of them to make the journey.

 

Bhautik Jitendra Joshi

 

I live in Sydney but at the moment I’m working in Copenhagen at a university full of people from across Europe and the world. The situation is a sad, sad reflection of Australia’s poor position as an international citizen and seems to serve only to highlight how far the country has to go in terms of international relations.

 

Granted, yes, as a percentage there are a large number of refugees arriving compared to the size of the population; however most of these people take a hazardous journey across land and water to get to Australia.

 

In Europe, the distances are far less and the numbers far greater; the numbers of refugees entering Australia simply pales in comparison to the numbers travelling across all of Europe.

 

An Italian friend of mine was appalled at the reaction of the Australian government; his country processes tens of thousands of refugees every year.

 

Every Scandinavian I know here who has commented on the ugly affair has had nothing positive to say about the Australian reaction, and see it as an abuse of the good intentions and faith of maritime law.

 

The media here paints a sympathetic picture of the refugees, and most people feel that the government has over-reacted and put lives at risk.

 

There are indications in the press that the Indonesian government has to shoulder part of the blame, but the lack of compassion and inhumanity is shown to have come from the Australian government – specifically John Howard. They have been labelled reactionaries and racists, and compared to the lunatic DPP party in Denmark, led by the P. Hanson-esqe Pia Kjaersgaard.

 

This may not be the truth, but overseas, perception in the popular press is everything.

 

If Australia wants to become an international citizen, it better start to shoulder all of the responsibilities that come with it, rather than selectively supporting issues that carry political gain.

 

This whole incident doing very little for the international position of the country.

 

Stephen Reynolds

 

Who cares what Norway thinks, it’s not a Norwegian problem.

 

These people claim to be refugees seeking a safe haven. But first they entered Malaysia, where presumably they were safe enough. From Malaysia they entered Indonesia, and then travelled the full length of Indonesia.

 

Presumably they were also safe enough in Indonesia. From Indonesia they set sail for Australia. Why? Weren’t they safe enough in Indonesia or Malaysia? Why didn’t they seek sanctuary in Malaysia or Indonesia? Perhaps the majority of Australians are right, maybe these people are just economic refugees, trying to jump the legitimate refugee queue into Australia?

 

The Prime Minister and the Government are pursuing the correct course.

 

Beazley is just confirming what we always suspected, he really is just a sanctimonious windbag without the ticker to become Prime Minister.

 

Ian Cameron

 

Disclosure: I’m currently studying Government, Business & Society at the Queensland University of Technology.

 

Below is a email I just sent to Natasha Stott Despoja.:-

 

Senator,

 

Thank you for not passing the Border Protection Bill 2001. You will be receiving my senate vote in November. All I can say is thank god for the Senate.

 

If the federal government was set up like Queensland, with no house of review, imagine the situation that Australia would be in.

 

Once again, thank you for bringing a voice of saneness to the debate.

 

Jeremy Young

 

I honestly can’t understand what the problem is.

 

They are terrorists.

 

Let them land. Take them into custody and send them back to Afghanistan.

 

As for the vessel: it should be seized and sold off to recover some of the costs which have resulted from the Captain’s failure to obey international law.

 

K. Ogland, Oslo, Norway

 

I’m Norwegian who has lived in the Asia Pacific region for years, but have recently returned to Norway. I can only join in with my countrymen in their disbelief over the Australian behavior in this matter.

 

How can Australia ask for help to rescue 438 refugees in their own waters, and then refuse to accept the ship afterwards?

 

How can you put not only the refugees lives at risk, but the Norwegian crew’s as well? The Tampa and her crew have done nothing but to assist and save lives.

 

Norway has accepted thousands and thousands of refugees over the years. Just recently more than 5000 Kosovo Albanians were airlifted into Norway. Our country has always been generous in that respect. It’s time that Australia show some responsibility too.

 

I just can’t understand that a you’ll put your well respected reputation in jeopardy like this. The whole world is watching, and I can assure you, it looks ugly!

 

Matt Murphy

 

The newest batch of asylum seekers are fleeing a country where a repressive regime reigns over a poverty-stricken, cowed people in a country which has been engulfed in a tribalist-fuelled civil war for over 20 years.

 

The kind of refugee program Margo Kingston seems to advocate would quite rapidly see such conditions duplicated here in Australia.

 

Ajey Godbole

 

I am not Norwegian, nor am I Australian. I am Indian and have lived in Sydney for over two years and am now in New York. Coming to NY brought home to me the casual, almost flippant Aussie attitude to racism. That is what this Tampa business is about. I wonder how long it would take the Howard government to give citizenship to a boat load of South African white ‘refugees’?

Debate has begun on the women thing. The inaugural winner of the contribution of the week competition goes to Polly Bush on the topic. As this stage this will also be the last award, Denise Parkinson having accused me of further descending into male-only space with the idea.

 

Fiona Ferrari, who noted the recent dearth of female contributors first, now says: “Women generally need more encouragement than men, they need to hear you say that you really want to hear from them and why you want to hear from them.”

 

This site did not begin as a forum, it just became one. I don’t know the gender balance of readers, but can’t see why it wouldn’t be about even. So long as women are reading, it doesn’t worry me that fewer women contribute. Cathy Bannister used to write a lot, but she did it often at 3am, while breastfeeding, and kept swearing she’d stop through lack of time.

 

What can I do to encourage female contributors – a women’s spot, a guarantee that all female contributions will be run? No way. If female readers think some of the contributions are too didactic, they can redress the balance if they wish. No-one can say most male contributors eschew emotion – the opposite for several of them.

 

First timer Heather Cameron provided some reassurance. “Fiona Ferrari in Nice, but… said that maybe women weren’t writing to your Webdiary because “your aggro style appeals more to men”. I must say that your style is a breath of fresh air, in the perpetual stream of women hedging around trying not to disturb the guys. How are the guys ever going to know, if you don’t tell them?”

 

 

We’ll start with women on the Webdiary women question, through Polly Bush, in a welcome return, Denise Parkinson. and regular Elen Seymour, then to Paul Zikking on women and cloning. The drugs debate – which attracts regular comment in Webdiary – is back courtesy of Howard’s never, ever remarks on heroin trials and Polly Bush, Robert Lawton and Jackson Manning. Then debutante Simon Ross on politician’s perks and new Liberal contributor Jeremy Raine on that old favourite, globalisation.

 

WOMEN AND WEBDIARY

 

Polly Bush

 

My excuse is I’m time poor. I print off the Webdiary extracts in a bizarre ritual each morning at work, and save the 100 odd pages to read on the weekend. By that stage I’ve lost all opportunity to respond to something because the issue has moved on.

 

I did however, somewhat agree with the description of the page being like a public bar. I tried to envisage this:

 

Tie up my old tired horse outside the saloon bar. After a last minute paranoid infused check I wipe the sweat beads off my forehead and push through the swinging doors of Kingo’s Club Chaos. Greeted by the familiar smell of wacky tobacky, I light up a big fat number to calm the nerves and try to settle in. Breath.

 

Kingo’s taking the orders for tonight’s feed while Don pours the drinks. I tip my hat to Jack who’s got his own bench seat and seems to be where the action is: the fellas are all gathered round focussed on his animated rantings. Sidle on over avoiding the significant group of cowboys drinking milk.

 

Door bitch Fiona strolls in reinforcing her muscles to customers. Look at the stairwell, but alas, there’s no Doris Day breaking out into Once I had a secret love. Damn. Kingo drops a tallie and the room gasps to silence.

 

With the country twang of guitars the businessmen from outta town are here. Davo cruises in, plying a cigar open with his teeth, and after spitting, proceeds to announce drinks are on him. Wojdylo sits in a corner muttering to himself about how the Austrian coffee here just isn’t the same. Davo proceeds to tell his latest and the crowd seems torn between him and Jack.

 

Kingo tries to level things and reads a postcard from Ottowa. I’m desperate to talk to Robert at the bar as he reminds me of my father: a sheriff with a social conscience. Wojdylo’s around so Rob and I end up discussing the Crows chances of making the top eight.

 

The debate between Davo and Jacks groups has picked up so Robert decides to go join Davo’s camp coz theres talk Kingo may be organising a gunfight. After pausing in the middle I decide to blow this chicken stand.

 

No chance I’ll drink ride home – somehow I’m too turped up. So I put spurs to dirt and sidle on out, booking a gallery seat for the next piss-up.

 

Denise Parkinson

 

It is a good point you made, Fiona Ferrari, about Webdiary being dominated by men. For some time now I have mentioned Webdiary to my female friends, but they don’t seem to be interested in even reading it, let alone writing pieces for it. These are women who are very well educated, well read, and who will sometimes debate issues with me. So, from my point of view I am basically clueless.

 

Personally I have never seen you as aggro – you do bite back at times in the diary, but make good points when you do. This could be seen as being an aggro trait by some, but again I personally don’t find this to be the case.

 

One current point of disagreement is that you’ve taken up the suggestion that diary should now be turned into a competition. Oh big moan and groan Margo, this is a mistake. Let’s not turn our little corner of free speech into winners and losers – the world is already so full of all that.

 

Besides for whatever reason women are not writing in, this may prove to be a further disincentive.

 

My own reasons for writing are fairly straightforward. The last 4 months have been the first time I have ever written to columns or contacted journalists. Apart from a public forum I was instrumental in putting together, I have been silent all of my life, never feeling that I had the expertise or writing ability to contribute to any public debate.

 

A number of things have happened in my life to change that, probably forever. One is my personal disillusion with being an artist in this country. The other is that I fear the direction this country is heading in, for example work place relations, the aggressive stance against unions, the Defence Legislation Amendment (Aid to Civilian Authorities) legislation last year and the proposed National Medical Data Base, to name a few.

 

So I have decided, for what it is worth, to say what I feel about the end of even an illusion of fair play in this country. And lets face it, it has to be bad when a dyslexic, non-writing artist feels such an overwhelming need to enter the debate.

 

Elen Seymour

 

Thank you, Sean Richardson in Bring back Hewson, you made me get off my butt and contribute again. Hey, I reckon I can tear myself away from talk of weddings to contribute to the gender debate.

 

I think I can posit a theory regarding gender contributions. I once read some research paper or another into women’s participation at university; it concluded that women’s participation was more limited than men’s due to several factors:

 

1) they were more reluctant than their male peers to interrupt either the lecture or someone else talking

 

2) they were less likely to keep their hand up in the air for longer than 2 minutes as compared to the five minutes of their male peers, and men were more likely to keep their hand in the air when someone else was talking; whereas women were more likely to take theirs down

 

3) they were less likely to believe that they had a valid contribution to make to a lecture or tutorial than their male counterparts.

 

It boils down to this. Men interrupt more, and believe that what they have to say is important enough to warrant interrupting others, even the “expert”.

 

And since we’re talking pubs here, my personal experience empirically backs this up.

 

Why do I contribute? I enjoy the discussions and feel like adding my two cents worth. I admit that I have never been shy in expressing an opinion.

 

And Sean, in regards to weddings, I am willing to bet you failed to hear beyond the word “wedding” and listen properly. You assume that because the subject matter seems trivial than the act of discussing the wedding is also trivial. This is not necessarily so. Women talking are doing more than just filling the environment with hot air.

 

And I’m not prepared to concede that even when you and your male mates discussed “deep issues” that you in fact achieved anything other than hot air yourselves. There is more to discussion that simply the subject matter under discussion.

 

You said: “After two hours the blokes had covered police corruption, globalisation and industrial relations. The sheilas were STILL on the wedding!”

 

But how did you cover police corruption, globalisation and industrial relations? To what depth? In two hours you covered three of the biggest topics around today. How on earth did you do that? Did Mate A say “the police corruption is bad.” you all agree, then Mate B tell an anecdote about police corruption and you all shake your heads and agree again it was bad? Did you discuss options on how to solve it? Did you identify other related issues overlooked by the media?

 

The women, on the other hand, were still discussing the wedding after two hours but it was no doubt in exhaustive detail and no doubt they all felt at the end that they understood each other better and had progressed the subject. No doubt Miss About to be Married now has ideas on how to deal with her awkward sister and where to buy cheap but nice flowers and been reassured that two flower girls won’t look pretentious because every body understands that cousins have to be at the wedding. Solutions to issues, reassurance, statements of the value of family relationships, budgetary concerns, bonding. Important stuff.

 

It’s a cheap shot to blithely assume because you and your fellow blokes spoke of subjects that come under the “serious” label that you actually are more serious and achieving things. Equally that a discussion for two hours about weddings could be anything other than shallow and frivolous.

 

Have you ever planned a wedding? Of all the subjects to pick to have a go at women for a wedding should be the last on your list! Most weddings I know have more planning involved than invading a country, more politics than Labor factional meeting and more social implications than almost any other event of which I can think.

 

Leave weddings alone!

 

Paul Zikking

 

My major gripe is with the treatment of women in the news.

 

How little notice there seems to be about the value of women and the things they do. I recall a book published years ago called “Media She”. It lampooned the way in which women are portrayed as sex objects in the daily press, radio and TV. Nothing much has changed if one does a quick view of what is on offer in the new stands or the rest of the media these days.

 

Not only do we have orthodontically correct “girls” who are so slim they

look like they’d faint into a coma if they so much as smelt a butter menthol but they have to be virtually children to work in that field.

 

Males are portrayed in even more bizarre poses. From the frenetically jazzy hip and smooth to the Rambo roided look a like favoured by the biz tech crew cutters. Don’t you think there is something really weird going on?

 

Instead of maturing in respect of the way media treat women we seem to have had men dragged across to sort of conform to a view of the world held by a few corny subeditors from Penthouse! The ultimate dumbing down. Treat all as silly sex objects or just objects, silly!

 

I’m leading to my main topic and that is human cloning by two (2) [mad] Italian doctors. Some male members of the medical profession just can’t seem to get away from trying to control women’s lives.

 

I really cannot understand why women don’t stand up to this sort of stuff. It may or may not be a medical advance to have the ability to clone humans or clone anything else for that matter. But what are we doing to the reproductive side of the species if it isn’t to create some sort of production line or system for reproducing males (or the self loved & universally loathed males who can’t establish proper human relationships).

 

I understand from the press reports that at this stage only children of the male gender [and probably deformed by the process] will be able to be born this way. Don’t we have an oversupply of men on this planet right now? I know it seems like it to me!

 

It is early news about this latest cloning idea but what on earth is happening to us all? I mean it really is bizarre that 2 male doctors can be calling for 200 volunteers (all women) to proceed with this project. God help us if the doctors cut corners a bit and clone themselves!

 

I think of the other things so necessary for a better life all round being ignored while these stories and people go on with all this stuff and I’m dismayed. I would have thought a cure for cystic fibrosis would have been a higher priority?

 

To add further insult to the viewer this story, as it appeared on TV included film footage of a running/shouting match between pro and anti cloning scientists at a press/media conference [all of the “scientists” were male and wore cardigans or brown suits and looked like the winning candidates for a Century 21 Real Estate agency].

 

It is quite obviously a male only affair and women are only permitted to participate on the basis that they are supine and non controversially involved as “factories”! I wonder what will the terms and conditions of the confidentiality agreement they sign with these 2 “doctors” contain?

 

Will the “mothers” of invention be permitted to have media conferences? Will they impose a form of sexual apartheid? What about the “girls” who want to give birth to “girls”? What about the boys who may, as these things sometimes turn out, want to be “girls”? What about warranties and indemnities to the mothers/unborn? What hospital is going to allow this? Will it be privately funded? Will it be owned by an insurance company?

 

Don’t we have a few issues worth looking at here?

 

I also think the idea of cloning to make yourself a “complete” person is another form of marketing. I mean really! I saw one bereaved woman on TV who advocated cloning her dead daughter so that she could relive her kids upbringing. You know, like go over the good times with a replica! What about the person who is not the real thing but the copy? How bizarre is that?

 

Do any of these people understand the concept of selfishness? I mean what does that say about the intrinsic values people bring to parenting? Is it about self, self, self?

 

I also saw on the same program a woman who held the view that we should value the individualism and diversity that natural reproduction brings to the wider community. It was important what she had to say. Ethics is not sexy.

 

I know it might seem corny but what on earth do we need to repopulate some parts of the first world? Why don’t they just take a relaxatab and give all of us a rest?

 

DRUGS

 

Polly Bush

 

I sit here pathetically sobbing like a fool. Nothing like getting in touch with your emotional demons AGAIN. I have a problem – a vicious cycle that won’t go away. Ive been a little extra stressed with work lately, and unfortunately this drives me aggro. So aggro my random thoughts turn to incomprehensible, violent acts I would not dream to act on. When they subside the irreversible next phase hits – my thoughts turn to the possibility of using smack again, the quick fix solution, and while I do not act on these thoughts, I hate myself for thinking them. To me it represents all that is weak within myself.

 

It’s been years since I pierced needle to skin, and despite assurances from several psychiatrists that the further away you distance yourself from using the less frequently these thoughts will appear – my head always ends up there after a bout of stress.

 

I heard someone describe past addiction as a sleeping lion in a closet. That lion sleeps there for your entire life, and you have the power at any moment to unlock the door and wake up the beast.

 

I rue the day I first tried the stuff. At the time, I knew an ex-user who warned me that smack destroys souls. Too bloody right. I wasn’t joking last time when I said I felt middle aged. There is a vacuum in my soul that has never been replenished. It stole my ambition, it robbed me of my drive. Jumping to thoughts to use again after stress in my life is such a hindrance.

 

I hate this mid-twenties crisis shit. Half of me wants to pack up and head up to the northern NSW coast, go feral, live off the land, perhaps run an ice-cream truck in between surfing. But hey, the last time I was in that part of the world I drove through Nimbin and the people on the street were green and it had nothing to do with the weed! I couldn’t even pull over because all I could see was the walking dead. Reminders are also a hindrance.

 

What doesn’t help my sobbing today is headlines along the lines of Losing the war on drugs. Nothing new, prohibition will always be the loser. I hate hearing people talk up injecting rooms because nothing else is working. Thats a lame and limp response. Supervised injecting rooms in a country that supports zero tolerance? HA! Now that’s just funny.

 

I’m still wondering whatever happened to addressing the underlying reasons people turn to drugs – and I don’t just mean drug education in schools, I mean a proper study. I know the phrase prevention is better than cure is very naff, but there is a point to it. If we stop some kids becoming emotional tossers we would really be saving lives.

 

Sure people have told me I’ve come a long way and at some level I’m a stronger person for going through the experience. Pity I cant stop smoking. Ultimately, a lot of the time I wish I’d just never gone there – I’d rather take idealism and ignorance over washed up cynicism most days of the week.

 

Robert Lawton

 

I’ve just seen this quote attributed to Peter Costello on Thursday in connection with the Treasurer’s horrified reaction to the possibility of legal heroin trialling. “Don’t take them.”

 

Drug policy is a break-the-camels-back issue for me. If Mr Costello is fair dinkum on this point (shades of Nancy Reagan) then I’ll happily stuff envelopes for Labor.

 

What a crazy attitude for someone who has the opportunity to see the bigger picture on intoxicants; and what appalling arrogance to think that this “message” will reach anyone other than a few news junkies.

 

Perhaps I need rehab from my “public affairs” use. Extended exposure to this kind of crap can only harm my mind.

 

PS: Maybe the women are staying off Webdiary because of the somewhat over-personalised ranting between some of your male contributors. I have been hoping for a new issue to crop up…have been getting a bit bored of the same old same old about evil rightwingers and good leftwingers.

 

Jackson Manning (nom de plume)

 

John Howard seems obsessed with finishing his stint as the heroic PM who *always* stood in the way of all forms of social progress.

 

Perhaps he sees himself as Moses, parting the seas of sin to allow his chosen people (fundamentalists and corporations) to walk to the promised land (core or non-core?).

 

Just this week he’s scuttled his own Superannuation Choice legislation rather than agree to the Democrats’ amendment allowing gay couples to leave their super to their partners.

 

 

He’s as obstinate on the drugs issue, disallowing even a limited trial. It’s all zero tolerance rhetoric, glossy, pro-abstinence PR, useless scare campaigns in schools and minimal funding for rehabilitation.

 

If, like John Howard, you plan on building a world where wealth always wins, you’ve got to expect a helluva lot of human spirits are gonna get crushed and lot of drug lords are gonna get rich.

 

I’ve never done heroin, but I’ve known a few junkies in my time. Each of them were deeply scarred by their childhoods. As adults, they were frightened and tragic. They said heroin was “like being wrapped in cotton wool”. Heroin mothered them.

 

 

Although most had turned to crime to support their addiction at one time or another, the underlying problem was a mental health issue. Surely, it makes more sense to at least trial the supply of those already addicted with a controlled dosage of heroin which can be decreased over time in a clinical setting.

 

We all pay for the current failed system with home invasions, high insurance premiums, bribery and corruption, organised crime and the pointless imprisonment of people so ill they need rehab and stability, not the PhD in crime they get in jail.

 

It’s tragic our Moses cannot understand that rather than parting the waters of sin, he’s simply leading us further and further out to sea.

 

Simon Ross (nom de plume – he’s a federal public servant.)

 

Disclosure: I work for a government department and am a member of the Liberal Party.

 

I believe the debate around perks for members of parliament is one that we ought to have. However, I have serious problems with the notion that the Department of Finance should be making the types of recommendations as outlined in your piece in Bring back Hewson.

 

When the bureaucracy dictates policy to the elected representatives of the people (ie the parliament) than our democracy is effectively dead.

 

Yes I agree that the system needs to be overhauled, but if changes are to be made they should be driven by the parliament itself. It would be easy to say that they are happy with the current system and so will remain to keep their “snouts in the trough”. However, I believe the changes will happen.

 

Peter Andren, the Independent Member for Calare, has started the ball rolling and it won’t take long for the changes to come, given the political implications of not being seen to do anything – particularly in an election year.

 

Recently the Prime Minister was credited with having the Australian Tax Office vary the penalty rate imposed on taxpayers who were subject to penalties after having various deductions disallowed, particularly in Western Australia. I was astounded at the lack of outrage from the public of the very concept of the PM directly administering the very laws he was elected to make. So much for the separation of powers!

 

MARGO: Audit office draft reports of any sensitivity go to the minister before the department responds. You’ll recall the explosive audit report on national highway funding on the eve of the Western Australian election this year, which found government had breached their legal obligation to spend certain amounts on national highways. The draft went to John Anderson’s office late last year – and he sacked two staff members after the report’s release for not warning him of its contents.

 

The special minister of state, Eric Abetz, commented on the entitlement report’s release that everything was fine, querying only the cost of conducting the audit! So its fair to assume he cleared Finance’s appalling responses.

 

On Andren, he put up a private members bill on pollies super, forcing Howard to put in his own law stopping politicians elected FROM NOW ON from claiming their super till they reached 55. Existing members keep the rort. Howard refused to back Andren’s demand that super contributions be equivalent to those of everyone else’s super.

 

On the tax scammers Howard intervened to protect, the campaign was run by an ex-Labor pollie, George Gear. Both sides play dirty pool near election time, and most of the scammers live in Kalgoorlie, a marginal seat. Witness Howard’s big gift this week to the developers of a magnesium refinery in Queensland. Taxpayers money to subsidise dividends to private investors in the early years! Two marginal seats are involved – Hinkler and Capricornia in central Queensland.

 

Jeremy Raine

 

Michael West’s comments on globalisation in Who can I trust? were interesting in that he raised the issue of control and how it affected him personally. Isn’t it more that the political and economic forces we are subject to within our societies, particularly in the last 15 years or so, are challenging our ideas and sense of self, place, gender etc. and because we are challenged we feel that we are losing control?

 

The expansion of ancient Greek traders in the Athenian maritime empire, the spread of the Roman empire , the renaissance and growth of the Venetian trading system, the growth of the British empire based on its industrial and maritime power, were all periods of massive economic expansion internationally , and as with the last few years one key factors was the application of new technology.

 

We entered a period of economic and political chaos after, a period of every nation for itself dominated by the depression and WW2. While the issues raised by our recent experiences with globalization are a cause for concern , we need only look at the period between the wars as a warning as to what can happen when nations turn in on themselves.

 

I’m a supporter, but not a zealot) of forces characterised by the term “globalization “, even as I have had to cope with its less generous side – downsizing and aggressive competitiveness.

 

The stark fact is that there is a trade off for everything we do.Witness Michael West’s comment that he has found parts of globalization good for him in that he is able to access technical resources for his job that are not available in Australia and is servicing clients in the US and South America without leaving Sydney!

 

Just think about it- businesses in the United States and South America has approached a business in Australia seeking a service or business solution. Michael West is one of the contributors to Australia’s staggering growth in service’s over the last 10 years and and this is one of the reasons we have managed to stay out of serious recession regionally as our neighbours have gone in the opposite direction.

 

Michael Porter of Harvard University said in Australia recently: “You can’t press some lever , announce some grand policy…this is a long arduous process…competitiveness is something where everything matters…the quality of the roads…the quality of the schools…the tax policy matters…it’s a huge process…its an endurance race, not a sprint.”

 

This issue inevitably leads to talk of developing industry policy , and the supposed divide in Australia , between the libs and labor. It is not so much about “the picking winners policy ” supposedly loathed by conservative governments, it is providing coherent policies to build on and create viable business.

 

This has been one of the most contentious issues in the left/right policy debate in western democracies over the last 20 odd years, simplistically characterised by the Thatcher/Reaganite view of the world versus the social democratic/left world view.

 

This is also probably the biggest bone of contention I have with the ideological position of the libs at the moment, aside from the lack of adequate attention given to the concept of “society”.

 

Ultimately it is the negativity and whining quality that bugs me about people who bemoan our condition on a regular basis, be they reactionary conservatives , ON supporters , antedeluvian Democrats and Greens. Provide a coherent body of policy and I will begin to listen.

 

What we have achieved in this country over the last few years is astounding , never more obvious than the Sydney olympics and paralympics. They are a superb example of a collective effort to achieve a goal, a combination of public and private effort, and while this model is not applicable in every case, the core ingredients of multiple skills from the public and private sectors point the way.

 

All of this occurred within the context of a global economy , and ultimately the issues thrown up by grappling with globalization should be pointing us towards asking what the country wants to become, how we want the global community to see us, and whether we see competitive pressures as a positive rather than as a negative force.

 

PS: Response to David Eastwood’s critique in Bring back Hewson of my comments on what’s wrong with the NSW Liberal party (see Nice, but…).

 

David, political parties have always been vehicles for career advancement as well as containing people who sought the betterment of society.

 

I agree that the right ingredients don’t just consist of political and organizational talent. Yes, they also need to focus on a coherent vision, empathy and a sophisticated view of the world within which they interact. But if talent, of any sort, is not nurtured within the organization, any organization, we will see ossification and decay. The liberal party in NSW is in an advanced state of decay. In Queensland it is does not exist in a meaningful way.

 

If you have members not effectively performing you will fail to get elected. That means perennial opposition, and with that comes the risk that intelligent and informed debate will cease, handing the other side the treasury benches and the risk that power will corrupt. We are seeing it already with the carr government’s handling of any number of issues.

 

I’m not so sure I agree with Margo’s solution, that voters decide to make every seat marginal, but the anarchic/humorous side of me would be fascinated to see the result.

So Geoff Clark told Minister for Reconciliation Phillip Ruddock some weeks ago that he could well be in Geneva when State and Federal Aboriginal affairs ministers meet next weekend to find solutions to the endemic violence by Aboriginal men against Aboriginal women and children.

 

You’ll recall that Ruddock put the crisis on top of the agenda in response to devastating revelations by female Aboriginal leaders that women had kept quiet about the violence for too long. He said then that ATSIC chairman Clark – who strongly denies allegations by four women that he raped them – would come with him.

 

Clark’s decision is the latest proof that ATSIC has learnt nothing and he must go.

 

Can you imagine Ruddock getting away with preferring an overseas junket to being at this crucial meeting? Double standards, Geoff.

 

It gets worse. Clark told the Herald today in an interview from Geneva, where he’s lobbying United Nations human rights groups, that he wants the Australian government to invite a newly appointed UN special rapporteur on indigenous rights, Rodolpho Stavenhagen, to investigate deaths in custody and native title.

 

Clark said Mr Stavenhagen would understand problems such as family dysfunction and violence were symptoms of the lack of economic development and recognition of the rights of indigenous people.

 

“Hopefully then he would be able to comment on that to the UN to put pressure on for change if that’s not occurring in a country,” Clark said.

 

Geoff, where do you get off?

 

There is pressure for change in this country NOW. The meeting is the first step towards translating that pressure into IMMEDIATE action.

 

Aboriginal people do have the right to economic empowerment and to native title, but Aboriginal women and children also have the RIGHT not to be routinely attacked and abused by Aboriginal men.

 

Aboriginal children are the future of your people, Geoff. We don’t need a UN rapporteur to tell us there is a crisis. We already KNOW that.

 

Your priorities are disgusting.

 

If you had any credibility left, it might be worthwhile asking why you misled the Australian people on June 19, when you announced that you would not sue The Age for publishing the rape allegations against you, and that instead “I will lodge an immediate complaint with the Press Council”.

 

No complaint has yet been lodged.

 

******

 

I interviewed Phillip Ruddock on Clark’s likely no-show today. Here is my report.

 

ATSIC reversed its decision to expand its London office in the wake of revelations that it took little interest in endemic violence by Aboriginal men against Aboriginal women and children.

 

It decided in May to spend $3.6 million to set up an office in London to help lobby for a treaty, and to cut regional health and legal budgets to pay for it, sparking outrage from some indigenous leaders. After the violence scandal broke last month, it was also revealed that ATSIC had ended funding for a domestic violence program in North Queensland.

 

But Reconciliation minister Phillip Ruddock told the Herald online that the dumping of the London spending was evidence that ATSIC was responding to revelations by Aboriginal women leaders last month that women had stayed silent for too long on the crisis.

 

“Indigenous organisations are now having to weigh up in their priorities the amount of money they spend on this, rather than on other things,” he said.

 

But he refused to directly criticise the chairman of ATSIC Geoff Clark, for advising him that he might not attend a meeting of State and Federal Aboriginal affairs ministers next weekend to find solutions to the crisis.

 

Mr Ruddock announced last month that he and Mr Clark – who denies allegations of serial rape – would attend the meeting.

 

Mr Clark is in Geneva to lobby United Nations human rights groups, and has said he might not come back in time for the meeting.

 

“He still has to formally advise us as to whether or not he will attend,” Mr Ruddock said. “I would like him to be there, and he still might be.”

 

“All of the participants in meetings of this sort have to make judgements on their priorities.”

 

Mr Ruddock said his top priority a the meeting was to force the States to collect the necessary information on the extent of the crisis.

 

“Some States have, over a long period of time, not wanted to get the evidence or to put it clearly on the table,” he said.

 

He accused the states of failing in their responsibilities to protect Aboriginal women and children from violence. “Aboriginal people must have the same capacity to access police and family and community services as everyone else, and this is a matter the States can no longer avoid,” he said.

 

ends.

 

Today, the view from the trenches in Genoa, courtesy of my brother Hamish Alcorn.

 

COMMUNIQUE FROM NYC-YA BASTA! and THE NYC-DIRECT ACTION NETWORK IN GENOA, JULY 22, 2001

 

CONCERNING THE ATTACK ON THE INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTER AND FASCIST/POLICE COORDINATION DURING THE G8 SUMMIT

 

The Independent Media Center in Genoa City and a nearby schoolhouse “safe area” was attacked at midnight last night by police, aided, it appears, by mysterious elements disguised as anarchists who committed savage and bloody attacks on activists and independent journalists.

 

This is the culmination of a systematic campaign of state violence against enormous and overwhelmingly peaceful protests against the G8 summit here.

 

We were in the Carlini stadium which was where Ya Basta! was camped out when the attack occurred – most of the major tutti bianci and other contingents were already gone, there were only about three or four hundred people left there at 1 AM when we got news of the IMC attack.

 

We were told to get our things and walk up to a different camp about twenty minutes walk away while Ya Basta! assembled journalists and parliamentarians whose presence would protect us, as our camp was definitely next.

 

Apparently the cops did show up an hour after we took off, and completely trashed the place; after searching everything, they opened the camp to a bunch of junkies who then went through all the remaining bags and tents and made off with or destroyed everything of value.

 

The cops have been working with a lot of low-life elements: the big story today is of a group of about fifty “Black Bloc” types who none of the other anarchists knew who always showed up and started acting extremely violently right before the cops arrived to gas and attack peaceful protestors. In some cases this reportedly caused actual fistfights with other Black Blockers who were trying to stop them from attacking small shops or other illegitimate targets.

 

The main question people are asking is whether they were cops or fascists working with the cops – the question may be moot if reports are to be believed that the top story of the local carabinieri HQ here is covered with swastikas and fascist symbols.

 

The story with the IMC: a couple minutes before midnight according to an eyewitness account from someone from RTS New York, a band of 50 “anarchists” in suspiciously uniform black clothes, bandanas and halmets appeared on a corner near the IMC, coming from the direction of a police position, started overturning dumpsters, and vanished again.

 

At exactly midnight a major police convoy appeared and bashed down the gate of the IMC with a van; people on the street who tried to form a line were beaten bloody with truncheons; at the IMC itself they had to produce a warrant and behave in a fairly civilized fashion, simply ripping tapes out of cameras, appropriating files and smashing computers – largely because the IMC was given the space by the city government and at least one minister of parliament was present – but across the street, in a “safe space” in which many activists were sleeping or eating in a schoolhouse, they simply came in swinging and attacked everyone they could get their hands on.

 

Most of the most savage beatings were again not done by uniformed police but by characters dressed in jeans and bandanas and helmets with ‘police’ written on their T-shirts, which had presumably been under the black sweatshirts all along. There was blood and broken glass everywhere inside; dozens were arrested, many carried off to the station in stretchers with broken limbs; today every third person you see in the IMC is wounded in some way – black eyes, arms in casts, gashes and cuts all over. Most are afraid to go to the hospital because the police have been removing people with unexplained wounds from hospital beds and throwing them in jail.

 

There were unconfirmed reports in the corporate media that three people were killed in the assault; most people today think this was mistaken (corporate media is hobbled in covering stories like this because most of them have a policy not to use independent media as a source. Apparently the BBC refused to run live footage of the police assault the IMC offered to supply them while it was happening because they claimed the event was “unconfirmed”!)

 

A French journalist is looking into the matter of the “warrant” and believes that it was a fraud – no such warrant was actually issued. There are rumors that Amnesty International is going to take up the matter at the World Court at the Hague and specifically accuse the Italian government of fascism.

 

Considering the fact that the Berlusconi regime is already working in coalition with overtly fascist parties (ie, led by Mussolini’s grand-daughter) the press is already beginning to talk of a fascist government. Many of the techniques employed here: the use of fake bomb threats, rightists posing as leftist terrorists to justify brutal oppression, were those employed in the ’70s to repress Autonomia.

 

However, what is happening here is obviously not just an Italian phenomena: techniques of repression are clearly being developed systematically, with new elements being added with every major action.

 

For instance, the Italian police here used what were for them entirely new techniques here, such as the wall around the “red zone” and the systematic use of extremely powerful tear-gas, which were spearheaded in Quebec City in April; the use of agents provocateurs disguised as anarchists right before police attacks on peaceful protestors was used at least since Barcelona in June, where it was fully documented on film and acknowledged even by the corporate media; the use of live ammunition of course goes back to Gothenburg.

 

It is important to note that after Gothenburg, Ya Basta! appealed to the government, saying that they were going to promise that no one associated with them engaged in any aggressive acts against either persons or property, and they were asking the police in return to agree not to bring live ammunition but rubber bullets and other relatively non-lethal arms.

 

The police refused, and even publicly announced a week before the summit that they were ordering body bags for dead protestors. The shootings and killings were not accidental: this was an intentional policy which goes back at least to the top of the Italian government but most likely to agencies like the US secret service which were ultimately coordinating the defense of the summit.

 

It is important to stress that the initiative for personal violence in just about every case we have looked into came from the police and not the protestors. On the 19th, there was a completely peaceful march of 50-60,000 people calling for international freedom of movement; since the police did not attack, there was no violence or property destruction of any kind.

 

The next day there were to be four or five separate columns descending on the walled “red zone” ranging from the Tuti Bianci in whimsical foam rubber armor and giant plexiglass shields, reformist groups like ATTAC who had no intention of doing direct action of any kind, radical syndicalists, a theatrical “pink bloc” with wigs and feather dusters, and a pagan bloc teamed with Gandhian pacifists who performed a spiral dance ceremony.

 

Every single one was attacked by the police, and always following the same pattern: first massive gassing similar to Quebec City, then baton charges meant to break bones and heads. The only group which was not attacked was the small “splinter group” within the Black Bloc which somehow mysteriously appeared in the middle of whatever group the police were about to attack next, destroying property randomly, and in some cases physically attacking people (including other anarchists) who tried to stop them, then somehow vanishing right before the cops began gassing.

 

This group was never itself assaulted by the police, it seems, but every other one was at one point or another.

 

If the police were intending to provoke mayhem, they succeeded: enraged protestors and many local citizens banded together to smash store windows and set fire to banks; in some places they even turned police violence back on the police, throwing rocks and bottles: there were several street battles, and in one of them, nearby where the Ya Basta! march was blocked by a police assault, local people, (real) anarchists and others combined forces to drive the police back and at certain points the police were definitely getting the worst of it; this is where a police officer shot one protester through the eye and drove his van over him, killing him.

 

Whatever the circumstances of the actual shooting (and it was not the only occasion in which police used live ammunition, others were, apparently, wounded by live bullets), the decision to incite violence and then arm police with live ammunition was made beforehand with full knowledge of the likely results, and in open defiance of desperate pleas from the protestors not to take that course.

 

It is the Berlusconi regime and the international police networks who have been coordinating the repression of the movement who are responsible for the violence and death in Genoa, not any particular policeman, carabinieri, or even fascist. These men knew exactly what they were doing.

 

We have to coordinate an immediate response. We always knew that the hammer of the state would come down eventually. The movement has been growing too fast, and has been far too effective, to be allowed to advance further. Now it is happening.

 

At this point it appears we have no choice: we must appeal, in every way possible, to civil society; to spread the word about what is happening and to hold those responsible to account.

 

It is already starting to happen in Europe and it is much harder in the United States where the press is so much more systematically biased against us, but this is a time to start playing every card we have – every connection or access to the power structure, time to start making phone calls, to start daily protests and even, if necessary, scrupulously non-violent direct actions against the media itself if it refuses to reveal what is actually happening here.

 

We have to jam their email and phone banks, not to let them get away with lying about us any more. These things can be done. We can turn it around. We can stop the engine of repression in its tracks if our pressure is massive and overwhelming.

 

Every time we read a story saying “police raid headquarters of violent protestors” we need to have a hundred letters sent demanding that they print the truth. We need to start calling the journalists responsible and demanding to know why they use the language they did and will not publish key information.

 

To ask them: if you admit (as they often do in private) that police attacked overwhelmingly peaceful protesters, why is it they never say so?

 

Be creative. Be disruptive. Absolutely refuse to go away.

Barry Jones, author of Labor’s Knowledge Nation and creator of the so-called ‘spaghetti’ diagram, answers his critics.

In the Knowledge Nation Task Force Report the now famous diagram, labelled Figure 1: The complex interactions between the elements of the Knowledge Nation appears on page 9.

The diagram has become a matter of controversy, diverting commentators from the content of the Report itself, much to my regret. It has also led to personal abuse of its creator – namely, me. The central theme of the critics has been to say: “We can’t handle complexity and the report should have ignored it.”

It is essentially a graphic illustration of the text (largely ignored) set out on the same page above the diagram.

It might have been better, indeed, if Bruce Petty had designed the diagram, suggesting dynamic processes, rather than static ones.

The whole fracas raises the question: If the diagram had been omitted (as it could well have been), what would the commentators have written about?

The diagram evolved over several months. When I talked about Knowledge Nation to various groups, schools, service clubs, public meetings or ALP branches, I often used a simplified version, either on white board, black board or overhead projection.

There were a variety of responses. Some groups thought it was overcomplicated and confusing. One observer suggested that, with its circles and lines, it looked like an Aboriginal bark painting. But generally the response was favourable, especially with young people.

So I became committed to the diagram as a useful teaching tool.

Kim Beazley’s office was always anxious that the diagram would become the story and that it might short circuit serious discussion about the report. I thought this was an overanxious reaction and that press commentators would be far more sophisticated than they feared.

They were right, and I was wrong.

Nevertheless, the diagram makes several important points – and it would repay examination for several minutes.

1. The diagram is a diagrammatic representation of complexity, but pointing out how the complexity can be integrated. As it turned out, the challenge is hard to ignore. Our nation, as society and economy, is marked by extremely complex interactions involving the generation and transfer of knowledge. People who suffer from knowledge deficits, because of remoteness, lack of access, limited language skills or poverty, are seriously disadvantaged. In the current situation where the control of, or access to, Information is in a very few hands (Murdoch, Packer, Stokes, the Fairfax group) means that the Information Revolution actually strengthens the powerful, at the expense of the weak. I speculated about this in Sleepers, Wake! in 1982. Not one commentator has referred to the concentration of media power. If they obsess on the format of the diagram, what more needs to be written?

2. Knowledge Nation is the central concept – the area in which diverse knowledge-based activities and transactions meet, involving individuals, industry or professional groups, and Government itself.

3. Government plays an important role in Knowledge Nation, as a catalyst, generator, provider and user of knowledge, but it is not central. The facile argument that Knowledge Nation would be an instrument of Big Government, Big Spending and the Command Economy, misses our argument completely. If individuals were empowered by their use of knowledge, the role of government might actually contract.

4. Before the Report was published, commentators made sweeping assumptions about what Knowledge Nation would be about. It was often assumed that Knowledge Nation = Education. Well, education is of major importance to Knowledge Nation, but it is only one element, although a central one. Other writers, depending on their areas of expertise, assumed that Knowledge Nation = the generation of new industries, especially in IT and biotechnology. Well, yes, both propositions are true, but they are only elements. Others hoped, at least, that Knowledge Nation = preserving our great national institutions, such as the ABC, CSIRO, the Australia Council, and enhancing creativity. That is also true. Another view was that we must use knowledge resources to protect the environment and heritage. Indeed all the propositions are correect. The diagram attempts to make all those points.

5. A central element in our thinking involved the concepts of ‘silos’ and ‘linkages’. Perhaps it might have been better if the elipses in the diagram had been circles because that might have suggested the silos in which we store much of the knowledge we have generated. The lines, with arrows at both ends, indicate dynamic, two-way linkages. Task Force members concluded in the Report that Australia already has most of the building blocks to be a Knowledge Nation, but that we are underperforming badly. The main reason is that the linkages or connections are very weak. We need more dynamic connections for effective synergy. What are the linkages? They are ways of communicating, negotiating and integrating. We thought this would be a relatively inexpensive process – indeed that the returns from existing expenditure would be far higher. There is much unnecessary duplication of effort where parallel agencies operate in competition with each other – and this is counterproductive, expensive and wasteful. We were also enthusiastic about the concept of a National Inventory or National Data Bank (whatever called) which would link together information already collected about physical and human resources – including health, education, environmental, and make it freely available to citizens and governments alike.

Data alone does not produce knowledge, let alone wisdom. It is how we make connections. The diagram is an illustration of the central theme ‘Connecting the nation’.

I would have welcomed some assistance from professional designers, to improve the diagram. Perhaps somebody could offer to design it as a moving, dynamic set of computer images. But that still would not be appropriate for the print medium, on which most citizens rely.

On reflection, it might have been better for the elipses to have been grouped differently. For example, schools, universities, TAFE/Learning, ‘Third Age’ Lifelong Learning, should probably have been next to each other. So should ABC/Media, Communications IT and Print. There should have been a line linking CSIRO and Trade/Commerce. Libraries, Museums and Galleries should have had an elipse of their own.

But these are all trivial points – or, at least, I thought they were trivial. I doubt if they would satisfy my attackers!

Back in the old days Aboriginal men would gather round the campfire to discuss problems, bringing the entire community together.

 

An approach harking back to this old treatment of “men’s business” could fill a gap in the struggle against domestic violence that is endemic in indigenous communities in the Kempsey area and across Australia.

 

A pilot project is being launched in the next three months through the ATSIC-funded Many Rivers Violence Prevention Unit to temporarily remove men from their troubled families and sit them around a campfire to discuss their problems. These “group healing sessions” aim to make the men accept responsibility for their actions, seek the approval of their peers and the respected people in the community, and to say sorry.

 

“We are taking them out of town, getting them into information sessions over a weekend, teaching them anger management, life skills, communication, dealing with any issues they have,” said the project co-ordinator, Mr Drew Roberts.

 

The men’s program, which is in its infancy and has yet to be formally named, aims to be offered as an alternative sentencing option or bail condition, requiring participants to attend a two-day program followed up by two hours a week group therapy.

 

It also aims to make men feel comfortable enough to approach the services that are on offer, to ask questions about family law and seek help through the legal system services now largely accessed only by the women.

 

“Sentencing people to imprisonment hasn’t really worked and even then they aren’t necessarily taking responsibility for what they’ve done,” said violence prevention unit case worker Ms Annette McPhillips.

 

Mr Roberts said established programs aimed to empower women most often the victims of the domestic violence but nothing had been done to help the men, the perpetrators, to address the issues that had ignited their rage. Domestic violence, alcohol and drug abuse were all indicators that something deeper was wrong with the menfolk in this community, he said.

 

“There’s no use empowering just one in the relationship. The women are empowered they are the ones with the education, they have more of a chance of employment, they are the head of the household when the men are in jail, and the men feel bad about it so they are doing all these things.”

 

Steven, a former alcoholic who bashed his wife for many years before being rehabilitated through the Many Rivers unit, also believes the key to addressing the problem of domestic violence lies in helping the men.

 

“We are the dominant ones but we have to learn to survive,” he said. “The men are the strength not in a violent way, not in a moral way; it just has to be a man that has to stand up and tell our kids when they are doing wrong and praise our kids when they are doing right.

 

“We have to get back the admiration of our children because we are losing it bad.

 

“The men need to be fixed. Thrust them forward a little bit that’s all they need and they can fix it themselves.”

 

The response to the idea has been encouraging. The unit thought it would start with 25 men, but has been approached by 100 wanting to take part including those who have not been through the legal system.

 

“The younger men thought they had been forgotten and nobody cared about their situation,” Ms McPhillips said.

 

“And I couldn’t believe how many had been through the system and hadn’t been offered any other options, no follow up, they’d just served their time.”

 

The Many Rivers violence prevention unit is one of 12 projects run by ATSIC to tackle indigenous domestic violence, and the co-ordinators of the men’s project hope that, if it proves successful, it will be extended to the other 11 centres around Australia.

Reconciliation Australia, through Fred Chaney and Jackie Huggins – white man, black woman – called for action. The government, through Phillip Ruddock and the opposition through Bob McMullan, responded with a bipartisan commitment to help protect Aboriginal women and children.

 

ATSIC was busy fending off the latest allegations of sexual abuse by members of its leadership. It remains silent on the real issue.

 

I never thought I’d return to the paper with a piece demanding an overhaul of ATSIC and the dismissal of its board. I felt sick writing it last night, and I feel sick seeing it today.

 

Yet an elder stateswoman of the Aboriginal community rang this morning in tears, saying it all needed to be said. She did not want to be named, but said: “There are so many of my people terrified of the violence of the men at the top. People like me are quite broken-hearted. I never felt so depressed about the Aboriginal situation as I do now. When I think of the people who worked without a cracker for all those years for our people, I cry to see these crooks sitting on their beds of feathers.”

 

Here’s my piece, and your latest responses to this sad and bitter story.

 

It’s time to stop messing around. ATSIC must be overhauled, the cover-up must end and a fresh, new Aboriginal body put in place to lead the fight for the safety of Aboriginal women and children.

 

When Evelyn Scott wrote last week that violence against Aboriginal women had become “a part of our tradition and culture and cannot be spoken about” and that “many women and children are cowed into helplessness by their menfolk” the end was nigh for ATSIC in its current form.

 

When senior Aboriginal women backed her dreadful confession and Australians learned that ATSIC was part of the conspiracy of silence and inaction, the end had come.

 

Now claims of sexual misconduct swirl around three senior Aboriginal male leaders, all members of the ATSIC hierarchy.

 

Now Reconciliation Australia, the replacement body for the Council of Aboriginal Reconciliation, urges an end to the talk and the beginning of concentrated, concerted action to save Aboriginal women and children from endemic physical and sexual violence.

 

ATSIC should have led this debate for years. It should have been its top priority to expose the crisis and to shame white governments into financing solutions. Imagine a world where there is no safe house, nowhere to go if a mother or her child has been raped or bashed. As Labor’s spokeswoman on the status of women, Carmen Lawrence, told the Herald: “There’s no refuges, there’s no support from the legal system, and women are often exposed to the same players. These are the key reasons why indigenous women often shut up about it.”

 

Yet rather than protect its children, ATSIC was largely silent. It has not denied a devastating claim by former minister John Herron that when he raised the issue five years ago the ATSIC board denied its existence, and that in 1999 deputy chairman Ray Robinson told him ATSIC would allocate a mere $200,000.

 

Yet in 1995 ATSIC agreed to pay Robinson $45,000 to pursue a private legal action against the Queensland Government for wrongful arrest, after he had been convicted of rape in 1989 (his second rape conviction) then acquitted at a retrial in 1992.

 

What business was it for ATSIC to underwrite this action, as well as top up his legal expenses?

 

Robinson said last week on behalf of the ATSIC board that unanimously backed Geoff Clark that ATSIC “will support him in whatever legal course of action he should pursue in seeking remedy against the newspaper”.

 

Maybe it is time for Aboriginal leaders who cut their teeth winning equal rights for Aboriginal people decades ago to step down in favour of young Aboriginal leaders with fresh ideas and a fresh commitment to further the interests of their people.

One thing is certain: this discredited ATSIC, which cannot see that the safety of Aboriginal children is its top priority, has lost its authority to speak to the Australian people on behalf of the Aboriginal people of Australia.

 

ends

 

 

Bryan Law in Manunda, Queensland

 

Coming from Queensland, I don’t know Senator Bill Heffernan. From the way he made his statement, he must be a tireless worker for Aboriginal people, deeply involved in the grass-roots communities of NSW.

 

But what I mostly noticed was that while he used the coward’s castle to name Terry O’Shane, he didn’t put forward one constructive idea on how to address family violence in Aboriginal communities (He vows to provide more advocacy services for victims in the European justice system, but he doesn’t say what or how, and he mentions no programs at the grass-roots of the communities themselves).

 

I also notice that in the lead up to an election we now have three ATSIC leaders being attacked in such a way as to divide and confuse Aboriginal activists, their supporters, and the general public. Forget reconciliation as an issue, let alone a treaty. Instead we’ll have Laura Norder and the brutish black man. Quite an achievement in a short period of time.

 

Let’s not kid ourselves that this a campaign against rape, sexual violence, or any other violence within Aboriginal communities. It’s just an attack. Making it an attack based on sexual matters helps to ensure it creates maximum disruption.

 

Also let’s get off the “newly discovered” advertising slogan you journalist-politician types seem addicted to. For a “hidden” issue, family violence in Aboriginal society has been getting an awful lot of attention over the past few decades, and is a focus of policy and programmes in all the Aboriginal communities I’ve been in contact with (Cairns and Cape York).

 

Maybe I can tell you about M, our neighbour, and some of her life experiences during the past week of attacks on Aboriginal men.

 

M is a member of the stolen generation, and was brought up at Mona Mona mission, in the dormitory system. She has few parenting or interpersonal skills as a result of that upbringing, and is a welfare case. She has children and grandchildren scattered around northern Australia. Suicide, imprisonment, and substance abuse are all in her family now. She is a fine person, doing the best she can under difficult circumstances.

 

Twice in the past week we have lent support and assistance to M and her family. First a son was visiting after getting out of prison, and he “went off”, raging around their housing commission unit and threatening to burn it down. M and three littlies came to our place for safety, and to call the police and have him removed. The police didn’t want to attend, but did after my wife talked to them. Her son had run away by the time the police arrived.

 

M was shaken by this episode and descended once again into her own issues of alcohol abuse. One night she was very late home, so the littlies came to our place by themselves for some care and attention. When M came home, the kids didn’t want to go to her that night because they were scared of emotional abuse.

 

That’s just a tiny mote in a relatively well-resourced regional city. Visit any remote Aboriginal community here in far north Queensland, and you will discover concentration camps where the guards have packed up and gone home, and the inmates now run the program themselves. Violence, scary violence, is directed against everyone. Women, men, children.

 

These problems are deep, difficult and widespread. But there’s no “brutish” ogre at the centre of them. No Geoff Clark. There is a de-humanising concentration camp up-bringing at the hands of church and state. There is the continuing racism of anglo-Australian culture, expressed all through policing and the welfare state. There are the victims of official abuse for 130 years (here).

 

Care and attention, plus resources, can go a long way to fixing these problems, but it will take time measured in generations. It will also take a big attitude change from us migaloo and our institutions.

 

The question I would ask you Margo is just what help the attacks on Geoff Clark or Terry O’Shane or Ray Robinson any other Aboriginal leader will provide for people like M and her family? Could you please explain that to me? I’m having trouble understanding it.

 

MARGO: White people cannot take black children away – look what happened when we did. Only black people can intervene, take children to safety and give them a chance. This requires black leadership.

 

Maya Hessels in Cairns

 

How courageous of Mr Heffernan to make such serious allegations against Terry O’Shane. How sure is he of the accuracy of his accusations and could this be abuse of parliamentary privilege?

I know Mr O’Shane from personal experience, when he single-handedly saved the lives and sanity of many Cairns teenagers when their sixteen year-old very close friend was brutally gunned down by a crazed killer. I know this man to be supremely caring and honourable and I think he deserves more than finger-pointing from those who cowardly drop a grenade and then hide behind the skirts of the government.

 

Maybe parliamentary privilege has its place, but there should be certain considerations and checks before this kind of bleating should be allowed to take place.

 

Mr Heffernan, I seriously hope you know what you are doing. I, for one, don’t think much of you and your lily-livered ravings. If you are THAT sure of your allegations, be a man and come out to where you can be held accountable for what you say.

 

Fiona Ferrari in Canberra

 

Heffernan’s use of parliamentary privilege to name an alleged child abuser will no doubt attract strong negative reactions. Personally I support it.

 

While our legal system continues to give so much protection to those accused of child abuse (especially through evidence laws and statute of limitation laws) it is inevitable that some people who care deeply about injustice will find other ways of speaking the truth.

 

Our current legal system protects rapists at the expense of children who have been raped. We must find ways of reforming the legal framework for child abuse cases if we want to stop anarchic leakage of names through the media and parliament.

 

Preventing child abuse is so important but we also we need better systems to heal the pain of those who have been abused as children.

 

Most states have victims of crime legislation which provides for payment to child abuse victims to compensate for some of their pain and assist in getting their life together. Unfortunately, most states have recently tried to rationalise these provisions so it is becoming harder for sexual assault survivors to access financial compensation.

 

In the ACT, the Government recently proposed abolition of all financial compensation for sexual assault survivors and all other victims of crime. The sexual assault survivors only maintained access to financial assistance with the support of Independent members of parliament.

 

But under the current legislation, if your crime happened outside the ACT, you are not entitled to counselling and other services available to victims of crime. As you can imagine there must be many survivors of child sexual assault who were assaulted in NSW, Victoria and other places where they grew up now living in the ACT, but not entitled to any help.

 

Don Arthur

 

Suddenly indigenous family violence was on the public agenda – but just as quickly the issue will vanish from view. The problem won’t go away – there’s no risk of that – it’s just that journalists, politicians and the public will lose interest. Already the attention of the Herald and Web Diary seems to have shifted to other angle of the Clark story, the Aboriginal leadership crisis.

 

I get worried when a chronic, deep seated problem like family violence gets called a “national emergency.” A car crash or a bush fire is an emergency, family violence is something else – something much worse.

 

An emergency comes suddenly and demands a quick response. Once the victims are in the ambulance, the fires are out and the houses rebuilt the crisis is over and we can let the locals mop up the mess and get on with their lives.

 

Emergencies respond well to the media’s issue cycle – crisis, intervention, resolution and the afterglow of heroism and survivor stories for the features pages.

 

It worried me when you called for an “urgent summit or commission” (in Time for action). Policy makers have an issue cycle too. Once decision makers have matched a solution with a problem the problem then drops from the agenda. The more urgency there is about the issue the more pressure there is to say that you’ve done something – the faster the better.

 

A crisis is no place for discussion among experts or community involvement – a crisis demands action. Almost anything that looks like a solution will do. And once the problem is ‘addressed’ it’s almost impossible to get it on the agenda again.

 

Americans were shocked when Michael Harrington discovered poverty amidst the wealth of their booming post-war economy. It was a national emergency and the president declared war on it – Johnson’s War on Poverty.

 

Everyone knew what to expect. America had never lost a war. Things would be tough for a few years but victory was inevitable. But whatever was achieved wasn’t enough. It fell short of the inflated expectations of a swift and decisive victory.

 

Ever since Johnson lost the War on Poverty conservatives have been saying that the war was unwinnable – that only the poor can solve the problem of poverty. The energy generated by the sudden, shocking discovery vanished. Going to the moon was easier and a lot more satisfying.

 

So let’s not declare war on family violence. It needs sustained attention. Nobody should expect it to be sorted out in a couple of years. It’s too caught up with other deep seated problems – alcohol, unemployment and histories of childhood abuse and neglect.

 

I’d like to see more stories about what’s working in communities as well as about what’s standing in the way. It’s too easy for people to think that the situation is hopeless. Once that happens they’ll try very hard not to think about it.

 

I’m with Anne Marks (in It’s make or break time) when she writes “I look forward to

real support for Aboriginal people who have been beavering away for a

long, long time to make their lives bearable.”

 

Geoff Eagar in Toowoon Bay.

 

Many of the last few days’ contributions return to the theme of reconciliation. Jack Robertson’s very practical suggestions are a positive step forward yet still it seems from both his contribution and that of others that it’s up to someone else or “them” such as the Fairfax Press or a TV Station.

 

If that’s as far as reconciliation has come then we’ve still a long way to go. I remember a while ago the theme of Walking Together. It’s about engaging with Aboriginal People at a face-to-face personal level in your own local community. Try starting at your local school’s ASSPA Committee, your local schools’ district’s AECG. Your school district Aboriginal Education Consultant can point you a direction where you can work in your own area, your local area health service, legal service. Your skills as a journalist helping to draft letters, mentoring students…

 

Working out what Reconciliation is is like defining the length of a piece of string but it starts with personal engagement: like all the kids at primary and high schools across the state whose art work so commonly depicts a white and a black hand clasping.

 

Brian Clayton

 

What a shambles the way forward for the Aboriginal population has become. Can the leadership of ATSIC not see what they are doing to their people’s cause?

 

I feel saddened whenever I see the condition in which many of the Aboriginal people live and I am old enough to understand that there are no easy answers. But at the end of the day the Aborigines are only 2% of the population and necessarily rely on the support of the other 98% if they are ever to move forward.

 

I believe the enlightened leaders of the Aboriginal people, such as Noel Pearson, see this and are bent on moving towards self reliance. The only successful indigenous populations elsewhere in the world are self reliant.

 

But I am one of those older middle class Australians who, while sorry for events of the past, feel I have nothing to apologise for.

 

When I look at Geoff Clark’s eyes I do not see reconciliation, I see revenge. I think I can understand that because he may very well be a victim of the same cycle of violence he is alleged to have perpetrated. I believe I understand why some of our forebears tried to remove some children from this environment. After all, how culturally stimulating is it to be the object of continual sexual abuse?

 

Be that as it may, it seems the entire leadership of ATSIC has a problem in one way or another. Their focus seems to be everywhere but on the future of their people.

 

But how do we help? For the white people to do this directly leads to (perhaps justifiable) accusations of paternalistic imperialism. It must be done by involving the aboriginal communities.But how can you now deal with ATSIC?

 

Personally, I would spend whatever it took to help the vast bulk of the Aboriginal people.

 

I would spend not a penny more on indulging the likes of Geoff Clark.

 

John Dunlop in Brisbane

 

I liked your polls “Should Geoff Clark step down?” and “Should the fairfax papers have published the report?”, skilfully crafted such that answering yes to the first question would lead to answering yes to the second.

 

I’m a yes/no man myself. I can’t see any good coming from encouraging future trial by media journalism. Fairfax has got away with it this time but it’s only a matter of time before someone get’s seriously hurt by this approach.

 

Yes, he should stand down, not because of the allegations, but because of his contempt for them. An innocent man in his position owes it to his supporters and detractors alike to deal with the pain of others with sensitivity.

 

Quoted in context, Pat O’Shane was attacking Trial By Media, not supporting Geoff Clark, but Merely pointing out how the media and the public can be manipulated. Offering a magistrate’s perspective, not condoning or supporting Geoff Clark. Her comments since have vindicated her. Full marks to Pat O’Shane for calling it like it is. If I was in court and innocent I’d want her hearing my case.

 

Did he do it? I don’t know, and neither does Fairfax.

Terry O’Shane:

Terry O’Shane is the chairman of the ATSIC regional council in Cairns, a former commissioner of the ATSIC board – he was defeated by Ray Robinson ally Jenny Pryor in the 1999 election – and the brother of Pat O’Shane. The Supreme Court yesterday continued its injunction against The Courier Mail publishing allegations concerning Mr O’Shane. The case resumes in Cairns tomorrow.

NSW Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan made mention of Mr O’Shane in a speech to the Senate last night. Here is its text.

Senator HEFFERNAN (New South Wales Parliamentary Secretary to Cabinet) (10.08 p.m.)

Recent events have highlighted the sexual, physical and emotional abuse, often in warlike conditions, of women and children in our indigenous community. The honesty and clarity of the statements by the former chair of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, Dr Evelyn Scott, is to be commended. The courage and strength of her family, her daughters, and son Mr Sam Backo is awe-inspiring. Their honesty in breaking the code of silence on the stolen innocence and ultimate betrayal of their childhood should be both a beacon of light at the end of what has been a very long and dark tunnel and an inspiration for all victims of child abuse.

In view of the widespread allegations that a high profile indigenous leader, Mr Terry O’Shane, is the person who abused members of Evelyn Scott’s family, I find the contradictions and hypocrisy of some male Aboriginal leaders breathtaking – none more so than that of the deputy chairman of ATSIC, who was convicted and jailed for rape in the 1960s and is now seeking the high moral ground.

It is not the least bit surprising to me to see that victims of abuse have suffered in silence all those years. The option to break their silence risked death. Sadly, many victims of all ages take the streets, drugs and suicide route and many other victims go on to be perpetrators.

A study commissioned by me in June 2000 and funded out of my office, titled Child sexual abuse in rural and remote Australian indigenous communities, did a preliminary investigation into child abuse in our indigenous communities. This study was undertaken by a Sydney University Masters graduate who won the university medal for her thesis on domestic violence in rural New South Wales. While this report of 50,000 words is not yet finalised, it certainly identifies a direct relationship between family violence; drug, alcohol and sexual abuse; malnutrition; family dysfunction; incarceration; and a culture of silence that is driven by fear of both emotional and physical intimidation. In the report there is ample evidence of the enormous catastrophe in everyday life that many indigenous people endure.

This catastrophe can best be summarised by a quote from Maryanne Sam, author of Through black eyes: a handbook of family violence in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

It reads: “The silence of the victims has brought so much fear and pain into their lives. The silence of families has caused a breakdown in our cultural and moral values, and the silence of the abuser has meant little hope of them getting the sort of help they need.”

I am sure that Mr Sam Backo understood this when he said to the Courier Mail last week: “It was only last Sunday that I had the first conversation with my mother for an hour and a half and it was the best conversation I have ever had in my life. When they say the expression ‘a child loses its innocence’, I know about that, and I went on to play for Australia. I’ve been carrying that for a long time.”

Mr Backo said he had discussed child sexual abuse with his best mate, rugby league star Peter Jackson, who died of a drug overdose in 1998 after repeated sexual abuse as a teenager. He said he wanted to publicly support his mother, the former chairwoman of the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, who .. said her daughters had been sexually abused as children. The other reason for speaking out was that he had five children of his own. Mr Backo said the perpetrator of the abuse against him was a family member.

Talking time is over – it is time for solutions. A major impediment to solutions and public recognition of the horrendous conditions of family violence and sexual abuse till now endured in silence, especially in rural and remote Aboriginal communities, has been a fear of a backlash driven by political correctness.

Further evidence to emerge was the difficulty of finding amongst the male leadership suitable role models for an anti-abuse campaign. In our study there were several indigenous women who strongly expressed the view that they wanted an effective legal response. As I have said many times, we all stand condemned while ever the point of shame is allowed to remain with the victims.

However, it should not be forgotten that family violence and sexual abuse are not restricted to our indigenous community. As was demonstrated at the Wood royal commission, our justice system has serious fault lines when it comes to child abuse, especially when committed by high profile offenders. The royal commission, in its final report, concluded at 7.226:

“The Commission has looked at factors which contribute to inadequacies in this type of investigation: those identified include an inability to believe that the prominent person would engage in such conduct, in some cases conditioned by respect for or close association with the institution they represent (for example, the church or justice system).”

The recent conviction of a former magistrate in South Australia on charges of gross systematic sexual abuse of young boys over a period of years highlights the real plight of the victims of sexual abuse. This magistrate displayed the typical predator’s manipulative skill and the abuse of his power and position to shame his victims into silence. How can the victims of sexual abuse and family violence be confident that they obtain justice if they break their silence? Victims of child abuse and family violence, whether indigenous or non-indigenous, enjoy the least advocacy and virtually no political representation. I intend to correct this imbalance.

Ray Robinson

Ray Robinson is the deputy chairman of ATSIC. He has called on Geoff Clark to stand down.

Under the ATSIC legislation, when Lowitja O’Donohue’s term as chairman expired, the board would, for the first time, elect its own chairman. Up until then, the government had appointed the chairman.

But the Coalition government – with the support of Labor and the Democrats – changed the law to allow it to appoint a chairman one last time, and selected Gatjil Djerrkura. The reason was that Ray Robinson had the numbers on the board to make Charlie Perkins chairman, and political figures feared a Robinson-controlled board. At the end of Djerrkura’s term, the ATSIC board elected Geoff Clark – a factional opponent of Robinson – to be its chairman.

Senator Heffernan told the Senate last night that Robinson had been jailed for rape in the 1960s. He was also convicted of rape in 1989. The verdict was set aside on appeal, and he was acquitted at the retrial in 1992. ATSIC topped up Robinson’s costs – met by the Queensland Aboriginal Legal Aid Service – by $1,000, according to evidence given to Senate estimates by ATSIC in 1998. .

ATSIC also told the Senate committee that in February 1995, the ATSIC Board agreed to provide $45,000 to Robinson to fund the costs of a case he lodged against the Queensland government for wrongful arrest. After he had spent $43,000, the ATSIC board decided it would no longer fund the matter.

Robinson sued radio 2UE for defamation in 1995, and the case is still active. A procedural hearing took place in December 1999. To read the judge’s decision on the procedural matter, go to the Robinson judgement