I hope the point I was trying to make – the hypocrisy of journalists – was clear. I agree I have no right (nor wish) to know about such private matters as salaries and personal relationships, although a quick flip through the tabloids these days reveals that journalists are apparently the one group of employees in society, private or public, who still have a right to keep that sort of information quiet. Most curious. (MARGO: Stan and Tracey killed that off.)

However, the major point you implicitly raise concerns the delineation between the public and the non-public sphere. You have illuminated a fundamental self-delusion lingering among modern journalists, a professional blind-spot which is mostly responsible for the public’s growing disillusionment with your profession. And it is growing. The latest poll I saw placed journalists beneath even politicians on the credibility scale. If alarm bells aren’t going off, then they should be. (MARGO: My self-delusion must be chronic – my memory of that poll was that even we rated above pollies!)

Any delineation between the nominally public and non-public spheres is now a hair-splitting irrelevancy. Perhaps in strictly philosophical terms, you may have a point. Perhaps in a society in which the Public Polity still dominated most peoples lives, it would be valid to cite Laurie Oakes’ obligation to balance his commitment to the public with his duty to his commercial proprietor. (Incidentally, I was having a cheap crack at neither Mr Oakes nor Mr Packer. Mr Oakes’ professionalism speaks for itself, and Mr Packer is a tough businessman who has at least never pretended to be anything else.)

But herein lies the very real problem that journalists cannot ignore any longer. If, as you claim, you are there on behalf of the People, then your major target for scrutiny MUST now be the private (read commercial) sphere, rather than the public one, because it is the former which affects the lives of The People far more than the latter. Sorry, but this is the natural consequence of the relentless surrender of control over our lives to the Private Sector. (MARGO: Spot on. I sometimes feel I’m reporting the second rate in Canberra these days – that the talent and the ideas have moved on.)

For all the noise over Reith’s phone card, his stupidity/dishonesty only really matters indirectly to the average person. To give you an example: My part-time job got rationalised two weeks ago; I can assure you all that neither Mr Howard nor Mr Beasley had much to do with it happening, nor could they have stopped it (even if they’d wanted to).

Whether you like or not, it is now the Free (sic) Market which most requires scrutiny by the Free Press, not politicians, public servants or Pauline Hansons. Yet while you all zone in on relatively trivial matters like Presidential penises and Fools phone cards, McNikeSoft is cantering all the way to a New Improved World Order. Private issues? Public issues? Is Bill Gates a good bloke? Is Rupert a bastard? Who the hell cares?

What matters is that large Corporations are increasingly powerful, increasingly unaccountable, and most scary – increasingly uncontrollable (because they are hostage only to Market Forces ie nobody really runs them at all.). They are becoming all-consuming, and their activities need to be scrutinised relentlessly by the Press most of all. To date, you’re not doing it.

This is the fundamental problem that a Laurie Oakes, a Paul Kelly and even a Margo Kingston must soon grapple with. (Ms Kingston’s journo-friendly editor has just been replaced with a Bottom Line-friendly one.) The buggers who truly need to be kept honest these days are not the elected officials nor the Public Servants (though them, too), but whichever individuals still retain a modicum of influence within the Free (sic) Market.

And if, as is the case for many journalists, you are in the employ of those same larger Corporations yourselves, then no matter how much any given journalist might impress his or her colleagues with their professional and ethical approach, we the public will increasingly tend to be suspicious of you, your motives, and your independence.

If we distrust you on these basic grounds fairly or unfairly – then it just won’t matter how professional your colleagues know you to be. The fact is, Ms Kingston, it doesn’t matter if you regard Mr Oakes as one of the most ethical journalists around. What matters is what WE think of Mr Oakes, and while I’m sure any reasonable Australian would share your high regard for him, at the back of everyone’s mind is the problematic matter of for whom he works.

Once again, I’m not simply having a cheap crack at Mr Packer. I’m simply pointing out that the dominant paradigm these days is no longer the Public Sphere but the Private/Corporate one, and thus anyone who operates from within it is bound to have their credibility, fairly or not, queried. It’s not enough to be professional and independent. You have to be seen to be professional and independent, too.

I realise that this is the age old paradox that all journos have grappled with. But now, with the Public Sphere growing increasingly irrelevant, it is reaching a critical pitch. Any journalist who fails to see that pretty soon they will have to make some fairly profound professional choices is kidding themselves. Most younger journalists will be familiar with Authorial Deconstruction. I put it to you all that the time has arrived for you to turn your methodological tools upon yourselves. If you truly aspire to being a People’s Reporter, can you really get away with working for any major Corporation with significant interests beyond journalism, any longer?

You’re asking the Public to keep faith with you no matter how many jobs get rationalised or how many Rugby League clubs get axed. Maybe you can keep such regrettable yet inevitable Private consequences of a rampant Free (sic) Market compartmentalised safely away from your own daily Public toil on our behalf. The South Sydney Fan Clubs contempt for News Limited journalists these days (even the good ones) suggests that The People cannot, and/or will not. It’s not Paul Kelly’s fault that Mr Murdoch made a bit of a hash of things there, but ultimately, Paul Kelly’s effectiveness as a People’s Journalist has been damaged, hasn’t it? Certainly among The People who are Rabbitohs fans, anyway. I know that for a fact, because I’m one myself.

So why exactly should I continue to overlook who he chooses to work for? No-one else in our society gets the luxury of that professional benefit-of-the-doubt, after all.

MARGO: Dear Jack. You’re right, right, right. My brother, who’s an anarchist turned taxi driver, used to berate me every Christmas for working within the establishment and not outside it. (He changed his mind when David Oldfield publicly called me an anarchist – he said I must be doing something right.)

Journalists are ordinary people too, with the ordinary pressures of self-interest and feeding the family. But we also have the individual ethical and practical responsibility to uphold the standards and pursue the ideals of our “profession”. This is not just words – if we breach ethics and are caught, we are on the line individually, even when we’ve just done what the bosses told us to. In this way, principles of agency, where the employer is vicariously liable for the sins of an employee, don’t apply to us, just as they don’t with other professionals, like doctors, lawyers and accountants.

But the values of “professionalism” are also under attack by competition policy and the free market. Just another value system the pointy heads don’t value, often because they haven’t even thought about it.

To me, this tension is at the centre of journalism today. I’ve been thinking for the last two years – since the revelation of covering Pauline Hanson’s 1998 election campaign – about how we can separate in the public’s mind the journalist as individual from the corporation we work for.

One small way is through the Press Council’s complaints process. The reader complains, the Press Council, if the complaint has legs, calls the newspaper company and the complainant to a meeting. Invariably, the newspaper is represented by an executive. I’d like the journo to turn up, and speak directly with the complainant. That way, the journo gets across to the complainant and the Council members the context of the story, the compromises made for space reasons, and so on. The journalist thus becomes human, like the complainant. I did this once and at the end, the complainant felt the hearing had been fair and that we’d had a genuine conversation. We shook hands, and I reckon he believed he had power as a reader. (I won by the skin of my teeth.)

An interesting departure from trend for the major proprietors is the Australian’s media section in Thursday’s paper, which has built a solid reputation for fairness through critiquing News Limited as well as other media. I know not how the media section editor has managed it – I do know there have been tensions – but the result is enhanced credibility for the Australian, just as the South Sydney Rugby League club produced the opposite effect.

I’ve written an essay on the topic of media accountability in the context of the Hanson phenomenon, to be published this month in an annual book of Australian essays. I’ll put it on the site upon publication.

This article was first published in ‘Ink v Inc: Of hacks, bean-counters and the bottom line’, webdiary6Nov2000

Questions to you journos

 

by Jack Robertson

Dear Ms Kingston,

May I make the following observations, and issue the Canberra Press community with a challenge?

Firstly, it might be salutary for all political correspondents to keep a couple of things in mind when it comes to grandstand bagging of the political system and individual members of Parliament (whichever side they represent). Ultimately, it and they are at least slightly accountable to the public. We vote pollies in (more fool us), but we can also vote them out, too.

Contrary to what many journos seem to think, I believe that this notion is uppermost in even the most arrogant Rep’s mind ninety nine percent of the time. Now, I don’t wish to be overly facetious, but I think a dash of personal humility from the heavyweight journos in Canberra wouldn’t go astray on occasion, because I certainly can’t remember ever voting for Laurie Oakes, Jim Middleton, Michelle Grattan, Christine Wallace, or yourself, yet you all have very influential forums when it comes to public debate, too.

I hasten to add that I don’t make this point because I don’t like journos (although plenty of Australians evidently don’t). I am concerned for your own collective long-term credibility, and if you start to set yourselves up as (unelected) ‘moralisers-on-our-behalf’, ultimately we are going to get tired of you. And if you can’t hold our attention, we as a community might as well not have you there at all. Then the pollies would really be free to run amok.

Secondly, any fair-minded journo will have seen enough of the average politician’s lifestyle to at least acknowledge that politicians enter politics (at least in the beginning) for more or less the right reasons. For all the growing hoo-ha over perks and allowances, the truth is that only an idiot would become a Rep if it was money alone that got them all hot and sweaty. (You only have to look at the real cash ex-politicians go on to make on retirement or being dumped to know that politics is – relatively – not exactly a lucrative game.) Nor is there really much in the way of adulation or recognition, either. We rightly distrust (and generally dislike) our politicians in this country.

But let me turn the tables again – how much rorting and expense-fiddling goes on in the average Newsroom? For that matter, how much does a top draw political correspondent earn? What is a Laurie Oakes or a Kerry O’Brien pulling in? (Much more than a Prime Minister, I bet. What’s more, at least we know what a politician earns.) Again, I am not having a go at anyone who has worked hard to reap the commensurate rewards, I am simply pointing out – from a credibility of journalism perspective – that it becomes dangerous when journalists start to assume that they automatically represent the moral high ground on such matters.

Just why – to give you just one current example – should we take seriously any Channel Nine reporter’s sanctimonious huffing and puffing over Reith’s phone card, when we all know that Kerry Packer hasn’t paid a fair amount of tax for decades? Fine, maybe he doesn’t break the law, but then neither did Reith, strictly speaking. We’re not stupid out here, and we’ll vote him out when we get the chance. But we can’t vote Big Kezza out, can we? I think that journalists ought to take care when throwing stones. Yes – Reith absolutely deserves to be attacked, but it’s useless attacking anyone on any grounds on which you yourself may well – even indirectly – be hopelessly compromised. All it achieves is to make the public cynical about journalism.

My challenge to the Canberra Press community – if you indeed believe that the ‘System’ is rotten – is this: get your own house in order first. You are part of the ‘System’, after all. And a central one. Getting your house in order requires media transparency; tough, honest and on-going self-criticism; cutting the cosy ties that have developed (between various journos, with both sides of politics), and above all else, developing a professional disregard (perhaps almost contempt) for any of your own number who get swept up by the ‘high’ that can come from being ‘close to the action’ for a long time. While most of you would no doubt consider yourselves rather ‘detached’ and ‘cynical’ about the whole Canberra game, I put it to you that in fact the opposite is the case. I reckon you all just love it to bits. Far too much for anyone’s good…especially good journalism.

Now all this might be a bit wishy-washy, so perhaps, Ms Kingston, I can put my challenge to you all in the form of some specific questions for the Canberra Rat Pack. I hope that you – and other journos – will see the method behind what might seem to be cheap Meeja-bashing. I am in fact a huge fan of an effective free press, but the key word is effective. (Personally – contrary to most people, who probably see the press as too invasive and arrogant already – I happen to think exactly that the opposite is the case, at least when it comes to content. Too many journalists are mistaking aggressive styles for truly aggressive reporting.)

So, this is my cheeky little attempt to stir the possum a bit. I wonder if any of you have the guts to answer these on this site?

1. Please place on the public record the salaries and conditions for the following high profile journalists: Laurie Oakes, Michelle Grattan, Christine Wallace, Alan Ramsay, Kerry O’Brien, Margo Kingston. If you decline – and I could understand that – then please don’t bother to mention Reith’s phone card (or any other political rort) ever again.

Margo: I don’t know what the journos mentioned, apart from myself, get paid. I don’t think you have the ‘right’ to know what I am paid because you don’t pay my salary, whereas we, as taxpayers, pay the salaries of MPs. By the way, we are often more accountable than politicians – through defamation laws (unlike pollies with their parliamentary privilege), and through our reliance on the reputation of our only asset, our bylines. Pollies of mediocre and even seedy quality can hide behind their brandname – Labor or Liberal Party – to get elected. Let’s disclose anyway: my net pay for this month is $4,880.33. I work about 45 hours a week officially, and most of my waking life unofficially. I get 6 and a half weeks leave a year. I participate in the Fairfax employee share ownership plan, and have no other fringe benefits.

2. Please provide a full list of personal relationships that exist or have existed between Canberra journalists and members of the Canberra political fraternity. If you decline – and I could understand that – don’t bother to make reference to Bill Clinton’s (or any other politician’s) personal life again.

Margo: I have no right or wish to disclose the private lives of other journalists. I have never slept with a politician or a political staffer.

3. For Laurie Oakes – in your next Bulletin column, please give a full and frank summary of Kerry Packer’s communications strategy (particularly with regard to digital broadcasting), including the ‘inside dealing’ that has taken place over the years. If you decline – and I could understand that – don’t bother to mention any scurrilous links either the Labor or the Liberal Party has with ‘Big Business’ again.

Margo: I can’t answer this. You fail to separate the ethical responsibilities of the journalist from his duties to his owner. An ethical journalist will not allow proprietors’ interests and pressures to influence his professional behaviour. I agree this is an ideal, and is not, in many cases, the reality. That is why diversity of media ownership is vital, so competing publications can expose the newsworthy stories concerning competing proprietors. Without that diversity, a handshake between two powerful men can close down news on both of them. Laurie Oakes is one of the most rigorous and ethical journalists I know.

4. For Paul Kelly – ditto, for Rupert Murdoch and News Limited.

As above.

5. For you, Margo, and for Phillip Adams. On your next Radio National broadcast, please give a full account of how Phil made his personal fortune. If you decline – and I could understand that – please don’t bother to criticise Multi-nationals, corporate advertising, or the evils of ‘Globalism’ again.

Margo: Sorry mate, I just don’t get your point. Disclosure for politicians is about conflict of interest. In journalism, if our private financial affairs have the potential to impact on the news topic we are writing on, we have a duty to disclose. All good journalists do so. The Herald’s code of ethics requires it.

It’s all about establishing and maintaining credibility. Without it, even the Free-est Press is useless. To all Canberra Journos, I ask: what are you there for? To follow the Rat Pack and kiss fashionable arse, or keep us informed? Come on – get back a bit of personal humility, a bloody good dose of vocational aggro, and above all else, turn your bullshit detectors onto yourselves once in a while. Journalism is for grown-ups, not childish gossips and media wannabes.

Margo: We are here to uncover, inform, analyse and scrutinise. We are here, on behalf of the people, to keep our leaders accountable and to facilitate informed public debate on important issues affecting the nation and its people. We often fail. We are often compromised.

Ms Kingston, thank you for initiating this site. It is an excellent idea, and I hope that I have not abused it. I urge all journalists to remember that we need you to be good at your jobs. Now, more than ever.

Margo: I agree that journalism must be much more accountable that it is now, or face justified charges of rank hypocrisy. Self-regulation is an imperative since the last thing a free society needs is a State controlled press, but self-regulation must be strong, transparent, and fair. It isn’t now.

This article was first published in ‘Danger when journalists assume they represent the moral high ground’, webdiary4Nov2000

On Friday, October 20, the pollies perks minister Senator Chris Ellison awoke to the Herald’s publication of an explosive document which raised yet more questions about his administration during the Reith Telecard blowout.

We obtained the document on Thursday, and on the same day, I wrote to him as follows:

Senator Chris Ellison,

Special Minister of State,

Canberra

Dear Sir,

RE: PETER REITH’S TELECARD.

I request answers to the following questions by close of business today.

(1) When did you first become aware that present or former staff of Mr Reith had been using Mr Reith’s Telecard?

(2) What action did your take upon learning of this unauthorised use of Mr Reith’s Telecard?

(3) On what date were your first informed that the Australian Federal Police would be called in to investigate?

(4) On what date did you inform Mr Reith that police could be called in?

(5) On what date did you inform the Prime Minister that police could be called in?

Yours sincerely,

MARGO KINGSTON

Chief of Staff, Sydney Morning Herald Canberra bureau

That night, Senator Ellison replied through his media adviser that he would not answer any of the questions because federal police investigations had been reopened that the matters raised in my questions were “operational matters”.

Oh Really. The AFP are not investigating Senator Ellison’s behaviour, unless he is suggesting that he, too, could have been guilty of a criminal offence. Indeed, no-one is investigating government management of this scandal up until the day the Canberra Times blew the lid off the coverup.

The confidential memo shows that the Finance Department advised Ellison in September that a massive fraud had taken place, and that the AFP would investigate.

Are we to seriously believe that he advised neither John Howard’s office or Peter Reith of this nightmare? John Howard sacked David Jull from the ministry during the travel rorts affair because he had failed to advise him of a major discrepancy in Transport Minister John Sharp’s travel claims (a mere $8,000).

Yet Howard says he knew only in May (although he has not ruled out, yet, anyone in his office knowing earlier) and Reith says he knew of the fraud in April this year.

Reith says it was he who advised the PM, who then referred the matter to police.

So why the seven month delay before the police were called in, given that the September memo shows Fiance had got the basic information, including the fact that one user (Mr Y) had made 2,176 calls worth $13,949, that 700 calls were from overseas, and that two users were “former staff of Mr Reith”. Ellison won’t say, and when we asked Ellison for all Finance documents on the Reith Telecard he says to wait until our freedom of information application is processed.

The law states that Telecards must be used by the MP personally, and the memo reinforces this by revealing that Telecards and pins are delivered to each MP personally “sealed in a double envelope to prevent anyone but the senator or member seeing the number”.

So what did Ellison do when advised of this breach by Reith in giving his pin to former staff members? He won’t say.

When the memo story broke on October 20, lots of journos asked Ellison’s office lots of questions. Ellison – who’s cowardice has seen him hide behind his media adviser throughout this scandal – waited until after 7pm to reply, when just about everyone had gone home. He also locked his office door so noone could query the press release one of his minions distributed to the press gallery. Again, he answered none of the questions asked.

This is his statement:

The Department of Finance and Administration’s brief to me, dated 8 September 2000 (MARGO: It was September 1999) stated that there was an internal audit already under way, followed by a possible reference to the Australian Federal Police.

As you can see from the wording of the brief itself:

“It is proposed that the AFP will be provided with this information when it has been gathered with a view to ascertaining whether it will investigate this matter”. (MARGO: He underlined “when it has been gathered”.)

The Departmental brief did not recommend immediate reference to the police.

As is entirely appropriate, the Department rigorously conducted this investigation (MARGO: which Ellison rigorously refuses to publish) under the established procedures. It did so with my full support.

The very documentation that has been circulated by the Herald on its website gives lie to the allegations of a cover up.”

Wow!. How mindless. Let’s hope its not effective. This press release, by the way, has still not found its way onto Ellison’s Web site’s press release archive.

There are other questions, some of which I’d previously put to Ellison in writing.

Reith has constantly alleged that Finance told him it would have paid a $1 million bill on his Telecard without question. I asked Ellison and Finance chief Peter Boxall when this no questions asked policy began and on whose directions. Boxall failed to reply, Ellison claimed that this was all due to a Bolkus direction when he was the responsible minister in 1991. This is untrue. Bolkus directed – after pressure from now Liberal minister Bronwyn Bishop – that Finance not get the Telecard accounts, to protect MPs privacy. Instead, Finance got the total bill. The no questions asked mystery remains. The leaked memo increases then importance of this question being answered, as it revealed that Telstra had warned Fiance of the overuse of Reith’s Telecard on July 17 1998, a year before another Telstra office blew the whistle which triggered the investigation. Howard then claimed Finance had checked the account against Reith’s whereabouts and confirmed that Reith was in Western Australia at the time calls from WA were made. So why not saves themselves the hassle and give Reith a call instead?

Then there’s the revelation by John Howard that Finance had asked Peter Reith long ago to pay back the $50,000. They’d told Reith they would issue a debit notice. They didn’t. Why not, Senator Ellison, and why have Reith and Howard consistently claimed that Reith had no obligation to repay, when Finance clearly thought he did?

Finally, and here’s where Ellison’s administration gets seriously insidious, you’ll recall that after Miss X outed herself and made serious allegations of deficiencies in the AP investigation, the PM sent the new material back to the Solicitor-General David Bennett QC for supplementary advice on whether Reith and son had any civil liability to repay.

Bennett had previously opined that he believed Paul Reith, not Miss X. But Miss X revealed that the police had systemically failed to seek corroboration of her evidence. She also alleged that the AFP had failed to report that she had told them a person from the government called her flatemate Mr Y in 1994 telling her to stop using the card.

Bennett, in running a mile from his previous advice by stressing her was not responsible for the quality of the investigation, still came down on Paul Reith’s side, citing a minute from Finance that it had non record of such a call.

But the leaked memo revealed that far from the lack of a record bolstering Paul Reith and harming Miss X’s credibility, the opposite was true. It appeared that Finance may have deliberately misled Bennett, to bolster Paul Reith. I wrote to the Attorney-General, on October 20:

Mr Daryl Williams QC

Attorney-General,

Canberra.

Dear Sir,

Re: Reith Telecard

I refer to the Solicitor-General’s supplementary advice dated October 18. In maintaining his view that Miss X was not a credible witnesses, he relied in part on a minute from the Department of Finance concerning Miss X’s claim that a woman from the government had telephoned her home in 1994 to advise that the Reith Telecard should no longer be used.

That minute stated “no evidence of any such contact by the department was found” in Department records. “We have checked the available departmental files on hand and are unable to locate any evidence of such contact”.

Do you consider it a relevant omission in the Finance minute that Mr Bennett was not advised, as Finance had advised Minister Ellison in a ministerial briefing note on September 8 1999, that:

“We have sought to collect the relevant internal documentation from our files to understand the sequence of events. Due to the length of time that has elapsed since Mr Reith was first issued with a Telecard, some documents may be difficult to source or no longer exist.” The document can be viewed in its entirety on www.smh.com.au.

Will you consider drawing this omission to the attention to the Prime Minister with a view to further briefing Mr Bennett?

Yours sincerely,

 

MARGO KINGSTON

Chief of Staff, Sydney Morning Herald Canberra bureau.

 

Copy to Mr Bennett.

Williams refused to comment. So did Ellison. So did Finance.

Let’s hope Labor asks Ellison for answers in question time today.

It’s great to be back on line.

During my visit to the Newcastle young writers festival earlier this month, I asked one of the organisers to see if some young people would contribute an essay to webdiary. Here’s the first of them.

The Political Wanderings of a Youth

By TIM CRAKANTHORP, 30, a Newcastle local working for federal ALP MP Allan Morris

“Comrade, how do they treat Aborigines in Australia?”

This was the first question asked of me by a black school student in 1987. I must admit that it was a bit different from the usual questions I was asked about the Aussie Cricket and Rugby teams – after all I was in South Africa.

Seventeen, fresh faced and just out of year 12 from a NSW coastal town this was all proving a bit intense.

The year progressed and if I wasnt being indoctrinated about the “settlement” of South Africa by the Boers of Netherlands, then it was talk of those “stupid Kaffirs, who are only good for gardening”, from the boys in the other schools.

“Were they settled, or invaded?” I wondered.

After a year of travelling around Johannesburg, Cape Town, Elizabeth Bay and of course Jeffreys Bay (or J-Bay for the waxheads), it was back home and off to Newcastle University.

After a restless year in Newcastle I couldnt find home or re-settle. “Who am I? What am I doing here?” I kept asking myself.

“Enrol to vote! Get active!” I replied. “But why? How can I stand by when all of those South African friends are dying?”

My political identity had been stirred, all revved up with no place to go until they introduced HECS.

“What! Fees to study”, we yelled. Gough always promised it would be free.

The ALP charging fees. The Libs increasing them. The Dems, no where to be seen. And the Greens, whats education to a tree? I looked into Resistance, the Trogs, the International Socialist Organisation.

Fragmented and distraught, I pondered my stance. “Where to now?” As I stood there, I was struck by one of my first adult lessons. Life isn’t always black and white.

The Libs have always been slow on getting us to enrol. Now they are trying to pass legislation to shut the electoral roll when an election is called. They closed down the Australian Youth Policy and Action Coalition and replaced it with a Youth Round Table “keep those youngsters in their place”.

I went to check out the Youth Round Table in the big Parliament House. I looked at the list of speakers. Every person there had created an environmental, political or social experiment years ahead of their time, been patted on the back by the Minister and sent back to their respective box.

“What must the ordinary youth of today do to get recognised?” I thought. There were 50 students representing 2.7million others!* Thank you and goodnight.

So what do you do?

I thought back to my years of study, wandering and thinking. Again I ventured overseas, the next time to work. I believed I was going to “Save the World”.

I worked in an Environmental Education Centre in Java. The work was good for a whileuntil the paper that I was stuffing into the village chiefs “model” compost bin showed me Pauline Hansons tight and negative frown.

“Save the World, what about my own backyard!” I yelled as I ran barefoot out of the Chiefs compound. Within a week I was back in town.

You don’t have to search the world to find your own political party. Just have a good look around. Look at your life, look at your environment. What can you do to improve it?

Where you see an inequality then strive to fix it. Join a union or the ALP if you are being exploited. Join a green group if your bushland is being bulldozed. Join a volunteer group if you want to help people, penguins or perishing buildings. Get involved in one of the most significant youth cultural events in the national calendar, “this is not art” held in Newcastle every year! Join like-minded people and find strength and friends.

“But comrade, how do they treat Aborigines in Australia?” the black youth asked again.

“It depends my friend, it depends on the white persons own inner strength and security”

ends.

Now to READER FEEDBACK. It’s going through an angry and emotional phase, and on all sorts of topics. So Reith today, more tomorrow.

GLORIA:

Get that smarmy smirk off Reith’s nasty face for good. Get him out of Parliament. He shouldn’t be let off the hook!

COLIN, “just a humble cabbie”

I always read your pieces and hear your banter with Philip Adams, and enjoy them, and alright, so I learn from them too – alright? I’d just like to suggest a scenario to you regarding the Reith phonecard affair.

You must know that the Telegraph have been on the case with a view to dislodging Reith. Why would they want to do this? Well, maybe Mr Murdoch wants to prove his power to Howard and the Liberal Govt in nice time before the next election. After all, Peter Reith really should have been called to account for his much more important misleadings and evasions and connivances in the waterfront dispute.

I know that it has such delicious elements for a tabloid, but I can’t help thinking that the Telegraph wouldn’t be running so hard on this if Rupert Murdoch didn’t see an advantage in destroying Reith. Anyway, I know nothing. I’m just a humble cabbie in Sydney.

By the way, I would rather Reith stay, not because I like him, but because, as a hopeful Labor voter, I want the stink to remain till the next election.

HELIX F UNION

A couple of years ago, the Swedish Justice Minister (Mrs Lejland?), whilst out of the country on government business, innocently bought 3 gifts for her daughter on a government credit card….intending to pay cash to make up payment on return from her trip.

Unfortunately for her she forgot.

There is some kind of procedural audit……this oversight is brought to light……without any hue & cry the justice minister resigns (taking the responsibility on the chin) much to the approval of the public, who applaud her integrity. The opposition make no political capital out of the situation & in theory her political career is intact.

JENNY FORSTER

Reith is on the backfoot now. Well done. Chardonnay ? You must be joking. We are all ready to plunge into a vat of neat gin .

Wring out the liver, back to the keyboard. We need you. How can we drive THEM to drink !~

PS:Yes Margo, the battlers’ friend is no such thing.

The Liberal government and some of their appointees have been exposed as arrogant and as awash with born-to-rule attitudes as ever.

They wooed middle Australia( with their mortgages) and bigoted Australia(with their racism ) with their “warm and comfortable party who knows how to balance the books” .

The gloves are off now. The curtains have been drawn back to expose a government that despises everything about Australians who are not born to privilege.

Two terms of government has gone to their heads and they will do whatever they like whether it be dogs on the wharves, hounding social security beneficiaries, abolishing funding to women’s groups , turning the universities over to extensions of big business or dismantling the ABC .

They are now going towards the next election with imaginary bubbles above their heads which ( in the minds of the voters) read “RORTS”.

All their own work.

DELL HOREY

I have been really busy lately so haven’t had time to participate in the earlier discussions but I need to say thanks to you and Mike Seccombe. I think you are doing a great job on uncovering the Reith stuff. It is really important that current (and future) politicians understand just how important accountability.

It has been a big problem for some time – I have found the current government particularly prone to double standards. Special rules for them and their mates and so hard on those who can’t fight back. I am so outraged – and once again Ruddock had the gall to suggest that refugees waste money given to them because they might dare to buy mobile phones (perhaps he would offer them his telecard). I just can’t understand why he wants Australians to think that this group is so undeserving and shouldn’t even want to get in touch with their families. grrrr

In regards to accountability I think I started to get particularly troubled when we heard that there were no minutes of Wooldridge’s meetings with the radiologists. It seems that all too often there is a lack of material evidence either why and suspicious events can neither proved or disproved. Do you think it has been a deliberate policy to ensure that there is no paper trail in this government? With the lack of sufficient records and the readiness to blame departments for poor procedures when it looks more like poor policy (look at the debacle with Bronwyn Bishop) there has been an enormous debasement of the Westminster system in recent years.

MARK NICHOLLS:

Of all the political scalps won by an opposition – surely Reith would be the biggest since Jim Cairns ?

Ros Kelly – not pm material

Carmen Lawrence – big, but toward the end of the Labor Gov.

Mick Young – hardly pm material in the age of Hawke

Reg Withers – once a toe cutter, never a PM

Phil Lynch – yeah right!

Rex Connor – too old

Given “society” Pete’s place in the leadership chain and vis-a-vis the other society Pete, its pretty huge. Shame if it doesn’t come off.

PS – I met and spoke with Ian McPhee the other day – he is an interesting one to put in the ex-Liberals now disenchanted with the party bag. He told me he is giving a speech to the Vietnamese community in Syd in Nov b/c they are Thanking the “Fraser Government” (his expression), for what they did for the boat people in late 70s. Johnny will love it!

JULIE ROBOTHAM

Love your Reith work.

One thing that hasn’t been emphasised in anyone’s reporting is that telecards are not some special government thing. Anyone can sign up for one free of charge from Telstra or Optus. I have one myself. It costs nothing until I decide to use it when interstate or overseas, when the call costs are charged back to my home account.

Reith could have organised a telecard for Paul, to be charged right back to Reith snr. Then he might have noticed the $950 a bit sooner. The fact that you can do this to my mind undermines completely any credibility or sympathy for the Reith “emergency” defence – which Howard has used with some success to play down the importance of Reith’s original intentional fraud.

ANONYMOUS

The failure of the DPP to act on such a clearly admitted case of fraud is simply amazing. Its also in breach of DPP guidelines which state:

(2.13) A decision whether or not to prosecute must clearly not be influenced by:

(a) the race, religion, sex, national origin or political associations,

activities or beliefs of the alleged offender or any other person involved;

(b) personal feelings concerning the alleged offender or the victim;

(c) possible political advantage or disadvantage to the Government or any political group or party.

We will have to wait until a private citizen ambushes Mr Reith with a private prosecution.

As a general rule any person has the right at common law to institute a prosecution for a breach of the criminal law. That right is recognised in the Crimes Act 1914 and is expressly preserved by section 10 (2) of the Act.

Watch out Peter and Paul, judgement day is coming

NEALE TOWART (not on behalf of Labor Council, but speaking personally)

If X and/or Y are to be prosecuted, as Mr Reith seems to want, then Paul and Peter Reith surely should be to. At school we were always told that ignorance of the law is no excuse. If you exceed the speed limit because you didn’t know it was 60 zone or an 80 zone, and the radar gets you, not knowing is no help in avoiding a fine.

Reith says he didn’t know it wasn’t allowed to be passed on. Emergency or no emergency, he should not have done it. $950 is a lot of emergency. If urgent contact was an issue, he could have organised a separate card. Paul Reith thought it should go to his fathers personal account. Ignorance again.

Also, why should we believe that X overheard or eavesdropped on Paul to get the card details any more than we should believe here view that he told her the number?

As you say, the buck stops nowhere. How much do Labor want to come out if their members have been doing the same thing?

Also Reith’s character can’t be suppressed can it? In the midst of this furore around himself, he starts putting the boot into a target. Not wharfies but X and Y this time. Weird guy.

ROB

I agree with you 200% about Howard’s “coverup” of the Reithagate affair. Why are you the only journo pushing this aspect??

Is big Kim not pushing it because they would do the same in similar circumstances? Surely not. They kept it from the taxpayer for 9 months.

To me this is like a partner being unfaithful in a marriage & then lying about it to the other partner. The betrayal of TRUST is at least as great as the deed of being unfaithful, don’t you think??

I wish other other news outlets would discuss this “coverup” aspect much more than they have. The money is important, as is giving the pin no. to the son, but why don,t they push Honest Johnnie on the “coverup”?? It’s really pissing me off.!!!

MIKE

I predict that an examination of the details of some of the 11000 calls would show the AFP also playing the three monkeys game. why not put in an FOI application for them? the govt would then cite “privacy” concerns? (MARGO: I have, and they’ve refused, citing the reopening of the investigation.)

To fill you in on DPP Damian Bugg to date.

His brief statement of last week made no mention of whether he would charge anyone apart from Reith and son but the Prime Minister’s office advised us today that Mr Bugg had decided not to prosecute anyone, including X and Y.

 

Solicitor-General David Bennett QC, briefed by John Howard to advise on civil liability, has reserved his position on whether Miss X or Mr Y are civilly liable. He says Miss X’s actions ”would, at first sight, give rise to an action against her for unjust enrichment”. She could also be ”liable to Telstra for deceit”. Of Mr Y, he says that on any version of events ”he acted dishonestly”.

 

So the question is, why won’t Bugg prosecute Y or X for fraud?

 

Attorney-General Daryl Williams QC, as his is wont, won’t say anything except that Bugg is an independent statutory officer and all answers must come from him, if he choses to make them.

 

But Peter Reith – God bless his soul – has effectively demanded criminal action against Miss X and Mr Y. He’s a lawyer, too, and he doesn’t seem to have a problem with the fact that his son Paul, who lived in the same house as Miss X but denies giving her the Telecard number and PIN, would have to take the stand.

 

He also doesn’t seem to have a problem with what the public’s reaction might be to the pollie and his son, who are at the head of the chain of events which led to the fraud, not being charged while the non-pollies further down the chain were.

 

Yesterday, Mr Peter Reith said:

 

”Clearly, the use by the person referred to as ‘X’ and the person referred to as ‘Y’ was obviously wrong.

 

”It’s quite clear that both ‘X’ and ‘Y’ have set out to illegally use the card.”

 

Today, he went further. He said of Miss X: ”She clearly just set out to fraudulently use that card for her benefit.

 

”It’s been pretty obvious to me all along that this person [Miss ‘X’] has taken those details and gone off and effectively defrauded the Commonwealth”.

 

He also describes her actions as ”her attempt to defraud the Commonwealth”.

 

So where does that leave Mr Bugg? Why did he decide not to prosecute X and Y? Silent, as always.

 

I reprint, for your interest, Mr Bugg’s statement of last week, and my letter to him this morning.

 

If you want to get answers directly from Mr Bugg, his email is inquiries@cdpp.gov.au, his fax is 0262065684 and his telephone number is 0262065666.

 

 

DPP MEDIA RELEASE – RE Mr REITH / TELECARD

 

——————————————————————————–

 

12 October, 2000

 

It is not the usual practice of my Office to publicise its reasons for not prosecuting matters. There are, however, on this occasion, good reasons for doing so.

 

It must also be understood that my consideration of this matter concerned the question of prosecution for criminal offences and not questions of civil liability or compliance with conditions or guidelines governing the use of Telecards by members of Parliament.

 

The investigation of this matter disclosed that Mr Reith MP provided his son with the Telecard access code and PIN prior to his son’s interstate trip in early 1994 to enable his son to contact him in the event of an emergency if he (Mr Reith) was away from home (reverse charge facilities were available for home contact).

 

I am satisfied that, on the evidential material provided to my Office, the investigation has disclosed that Mr Reith’s son is not criminally liable for his subsequent personal use of the facility which he has told police he thought would be debited to the personal component of his father’s telephone account. The estimated cost of these calls has been repaid.

 

Mr Reith did not authorise the non ”emergency” use of the facility by his son. He is not criminally liable on that basis. I also concluded that the authorisation did not offend section 64A of the Audit Act, which provides:

 

”A person who uses a Commonwealth credit card with the intention of obtaining cash, goods or services otherwise than for the Commonwealth is guilty of an offence”.

 

Ignoring technical issues such as whether the card itself was used, Mr Reith’s authorisation to his son was for contact in emergencies when he, Mr Reith, was away from home. I was not satisfied that if public duties took Mr Reith away from his home, facilitating emergency contact with his family could be said to be ”obtaining a service” otherwise than for the Commonwealth.

 

As I have said, my consideration of this matter concerned the possible commission of offences and not issues of civil liability or compliance with Guidelines.

 

 

LETTER TO MR BUGG (this morning):

 

——————————————————————————-

 

October 16

 

Mr Damian Bugg QC

Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions,

Canberra.

 

Dear Sir,

 

Re: REITH/ TELECARD MATTER

 

I enclose an application under the Freedom of Information Act for your report on the Reith Telecard matter.

 

I note that you have refused to release the report and have refused my written and verbal requests to give reasons for that decision. I again ask for your reason not to release your report and cite the following factors:

 

(1) The commitment in the DPPs vision statement to ”accountability”.

 

(2) The stated objective of the DPP to ”preserve and enhance public confidence in the prosecution process and the Commonwealth’s criminal justice system.”

 

(3) The questions raised by members of the public, the legal profession, and the media on the evidentiary and legal bases of your decision, and the extent of this exception.

 

(4) The failure of your statement to disclose whether anyone apart from the Reiths will be charged.

 

I also seek answers to the following questions:

 

(1) Will you charge ”X” or ”Y”?

 

(2) An explanation for the contradiction between the Solicitor-General’s advice and your statement. Mr Bennett says that ”Both Mr Reith and his son have stated that the card was given to him on the basis that it was to be used in case of need to contact home or family”. Your statement, in contrast, says that Mr Reith’s claim to police, which is the basis of your ”emergency” section, was that he gave the telecard details to his son ”to enable his son to contact him in the event of an emergency if he (Mr Reith) was away from home”.

 

(3): Have you taken into account the public statements of Mr Reith before and since your report to the Australian Federal Police, some of which appear to contradict his statement to police.

 

Yours sincerely,

 

MARGO KINGSTON

Chief of Staff, Sydney Morning Herald Canberra Bureau

Those of you who managed to trawl through yesterday’s diary on the details of the federal police raid on a staffer of Laurie Brereton to find leaked documents on East Timor may be interested in these comments from Peter Costello.

Remember that Howard saw nothing wrong with the cops raiding pollies homes to find leaked documents of embarrassment to him.

Well, back in 1994, Costello ran the campaign against Labor Minister Ros Kelly over the sports rorts affair. He, too, got some embarrassing documents.

Costello wrote a comment piece for the Herald Sun expressing outrage that he had received a mere phone call from the police asking for a mere interview on the matter.

“Now the police are only follow ing orders. It was the government that approved the police inquiry. The Government wants the police to find out how a member of the Opposition came to reveal the truth…The government doesn’t want that kind of thing happening too often! The government is pretty powerful and if those running it decide to unleash their resources on an individual then the individual is pretty defenceless… This all makes people a little scared of the Government, which, I suspect, is just the way the Government wants it. And don’t ever tell the truth about what the Government’s been up to. The Federal Police might start ringing.”’

Liberals just hate big, bad government, but this government isn’t Liberal, is it? Its operation is control freaked to the point of routine censorship via John Howard at central office.

If public servants and whistleblowers were scared under Labor, they’re terrified under this lot. Truth? Spare me, Peter.

Neil Andrew, as expected, yesterday refused to order a Parliamentary investigation into the harassment of the federal police officer who told the truth on the seizure of confidential Labor Party policy documents from the home of a staffer of Laurie Brereton.

The executive wins again. Beware, parliamentary committee witnesses. Beware, whistleblowers. Big Government triumphs over the people, again.

LINDSAY YEATES suggests that the next Your Vote be “Would you invest in, or otherwise do business with, a company that employed Michael Knight?”, and that the Yes option includes the phrase “drive over the bastards”?

I’m off to the Young Writers Festival in Newcastle tomorrow. The web diary will return Monday.

“I have thought long and deeply about the thrust of this lecture. Tonight my remarks are directed primarily to non-indigenous Australians.”

Looking at the old man last night on the ABC, as he gave the fifth annual Vincent Lingiari Memorial Lecture, I was overwhelmed by how radically my feelings had changed towards Malcolm Fraser. Like many others of my generation, I hated Fraser with a passion when he overthrew the Whitlam government in 1975. I felt he had trampled on democracy to feed his “born to rule” mentality.

Decades later, Fraser has gradually become, like several other “elders” of white Australia, a figure respected by many Australians of Labor and Liberal hue. Looking back on his time in office, his achievements seem enormous on race issues, from passing Northern Territory lands rights legislation – still the most advantageous to Aborigines in the nation – to his steely commitment to abolishing apartheid in South Africa.

His performance last night will be seen from at least two angles. To those who don’t see liberalism and indigenous issues his way, he will seem a forlorn, defeated, crumpled and emotional figure. He will seem a frail old man of the past describing core beliefs no longer relevant to modern Liberals, or even to modern Australia.

To me, Fraser was consciously making his last major address to the nation he once ruled, and the Party he once led. He delivered the finest defence of the need for Australia to take its international human rights obligations seriously that I have heard from a politician. I do not agree with all his remedies and suggestions on Aboriginal policy, but the intellectual muscle of his philosophical position cannot be doubted.

As I sat open mouthed at each Fraser bombshell – including his conversion to a bill of rights – he delivered another and another, in waves. Malcolm Fraser, statesman, set out, clearly and without equivocation, the principles in which, as a Liberal, he believes and their application to the Aboriginal question. Whatever your views, his speech is a must read. It could even lift the quality of the race debate, from both sides. Watching Fraser last night was an exhilarating experience.l I felt proud to be Australian.

An isolated group of moderates within the Liberals subscribe to Fraser views, as do some in the centre and the Christian right, but as a Party, the Liberals under Howard have officially abandoned them, without articulating an alternative philosophy in their place. This has triggered a tortured, seemingly endless cultural war, the result of which will define our national identity.

Fraser has five core disputes with Howard.

1. OUR HISTORY.

Fraser first laid out the documentary evidence which he believes proves that there was a policy of forced removal of Aboriginal children.

“It is hard to realise that the history we were taught of a great empty land being settled by brave explorers was largely false. It might be harder still for some of us who have known people of influence and respect, who participated in policies which we regard today as outdated, barbarous, cruel and racist. We can’t say it happened beyond the memory of today’s Australians. These events were continued after we (had) accepted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Clearly the test of those “human rights” was not put against the policy of removal.”

Howard and the intellectual right which backs him denies the existence of a stolen generation as such. Through his barrister, Howard argued in the stolen generations’ test case that policies of removal were for the welfare of the child.

He also argues that current generations are untainted, refusing to answer the challenges from many questioners about how he can say this since the policy lasted into the 1960’s. He does not accept – in the case of Aboriginal policy – that the Australian government, as an institution, carries the weight of our history and must deal with it. However he does not subscribe to this view – that each successive government and generation can wash its hands of the performance of their predecessors – when it comes to celebrating glory, like Gallipoli, or demanding an apology from the present Japanese government for WW11 atrocities. He has never articulated why he makes this distinction.

More broadly, Howard describes as “the black armband view of history” the idea that there are themes in our short history for which we should be deeply ashamed and for which we need to atone to both heal the national psyche and become one nation.

2. THE WAY AHEAD

Fraser believes there must be a national apology to the stolen generations, a political settlement on the compensation question, self-determination, and a treaty. He cites evidence from Canada and New Zealand, which have taken this approach, that native disadvantage has since reduced dramatically, while the health and welfare of Australian Aborigines has remained chronically low.

Howard says no to all that, and says that “practical reconciliation” without the symbolic trimmings will do the job. His view is essentially assimilationist, his aim to move Aboriginal people fully into white society and white values. He does not accept that reconciliation is a two way street – that there are spiritual and other values Australian whites can learn from Australian blacks. s

3. LEADERSHIP

Fraser says reconciliation can never be achieved by the people alone, without political leadership. “Issues of race are always the hardest to resolve, especially when the issue involves property.”

“In a matter so critical to the future of society and the future of Australia, it is not reasonable to say the community must lead.”

“It is the government that must be to the fore and persuade all Australians that we must act with greater expedition and with greater generosity. Government, if not this, another, will set the pace.”

Howard replied that Australians must accept that “progress is slow”.

4. AN AUSTRALIAN BILL OF RIGHTS

The traditional Liberal position is that a bill of rights is unnecessary because the British system of parliamentary democracy, under which power is divided between parliament and an independent judiciary which enforces the rule of law, provided all protection inaccessibly. Australia is now the only Western country not to have a bill of rights, with even the British becoming subject to binding European human rights obligations. Labor tried and failed to get a bill of rights several times in its term of office because the Liberals wouldn’t have it.

Fraser’s conversion is therefore extremely important, as are his reasons for it.

“Through much of my political life I accepted the view of noted lawyers that our system of law, derived from Britain and the development of the common law, best protected the human rights of individuals. I now believe that our own system has so patently failed to protect the “rights” of Aborigines that we should look once again at the establishment of a “bill of rights” for Australia.”

Fraser favour an act of parliament guaranteeing basic rights to all. It could be overturned by Parliament, but at least parliament would have a yardstick to measure itself by.

In reply, Howard restates his antipathy to a bill of rights. saying a bill of rights didn’t help the Soviets or Nazi Germany. He says Australia’s He claims that our strong parliamentary system, incorruptible courts and a strong free press are the best guarantees of human rights.

5. THE UNITED NATIONS.

Fraser notes that Labor and Liberal governments have, until now, been at the forefront of signing human rights treaties and subliming to United Nations scrutiny on our performance. “Did we mean it when we took these steps? Or were we trying to say ‘we ratified these instruments so that we can apply them to the rest of the world but they do not apply to Australia?”

He argues that Australia’s protection, ultimately, “is a civilised lordly and the UN was the only way to progress that aim. Fraser fears the super-power status of the United States, and argues that “it is overwhelmingly in our interests to assist the UN and its instrumentalities in establishing a rule of law which internationally can apply to the great and powerful, just as the rule of law can apply to the great and powerful in Australia.”

Howard’s dramatic break with that bi-partisan tradition has diminished us and damaged the UN, he says. “If the treatment of the original inhabitants of Australia by the white settlers represents the darkest hour in Australian history, the rejection of what many Australians would regard as justified criticism of Australian policies by international institutions, in a way that puts jingoistic nationalism over and above the concept and ideal of human rights, is a step into the past which we should not have taken.”

The government’s response to such criticisms is not to address them. Ministers freely admit privately that their inflammatory remarks against the UN when it critiques them is designed to appeal to uninformed, populist sentiment. My own theory here is that Howard sees UN human rights bodies as unnecessary curbs on his power, and would rather shoot the messenger than change policy.

Malcolm Fraser’s views are intellectually and philosophically coherent. John Howard’s are not, and are adjusted routinely to suit the cause for which he is arguing. Since he became Prime Minister, Howard has never made a speech dedicated to setting out his philosophy on Aboriginal affairs, the outcomes he seeks, and his strategy to get there.

In his end-of-year speech to the National Press Club setting out his priorities for 2000, neither reconciliation or indigenous Australians generally did not rate a mention.

Given Howard’s dramatic break with the joint Labor/Federal tradition on Aboriginal affairs, Howard owes all Australians this speech. It needs to state a philosophy, a set of core principles and a strategy for action.

In my view, Malcolm Fraser’s speech was historic. It could prove one of the last gasps of liberalism, or force John Howard to, at last, articulate his own core philosophy on the question. Aboriginal Australians deserve at least that from the current Prime Miniskirt.

Oh what tangled webs we weave when we decide to roll back human rights.

This story is complicated but bear with it because it will assist in understanding further developments in the IVF debate.

On Thursday, the Attorney-General Daryl Williams produced the legislation the Government claimed would allow States to discriminate against single women in IVF and artificial insemination treatment.

The Current Law:

* Section 22 of the Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) bans marital status discrimination in the provision of services.

* The SDA defines ”marital status” as ”the status or condition of being single, married, married but living separate and apart from one’s spouse, divorced, widowed or the de facto spouse of another person”

* The SDA defines de facto as two people of the opposite sex who live together ”on a ‘bona fide’ domestic basis although not legally married”.

Williams’ First Take:

Easy. His amendment simply said that nothing in section 22 (the ban on marital status discrimination) made it unlawful to ”refuse a person access to or restrict a person’s access to assisted reproductive technology services (ARTs) if that refusal or restriction is on the ground of the person’s marital status” and is authorised by a State or territory law.

Williams was simply vacating all Commonwealth protection in the area of marital status discrimination for ART. What that meant, of course, is that a State could ban de facto couples or ban de facto couples who hadn’t been living together for 5, 10 or even 20 years (at least one State has tried to limit access only to married couples and been frustrated because of the SDA). A State could also ban married couples for that matter or even provide that only lesbians could access ART.

There are two extraordinary aspects to Williams’ actions.

First, he did not tell his Coalition colleagues that he planned to remove protection against all forms of marital status discrimination, not just discrimination against single women. At no time did he or the Government generally disclose to the public that this was the plan – instead, Howard made it explicit that the action was motivated by the ”right” of a child to a mother and father.

Second, how on earth did Williams think he’d get away with it? The outcry when yours truly broke the story in the Herald on Friday saw Howard act that day to make Williams back down. (To be fair to Williams, he was alone in raising doubts about Howard’s plan in the Cabinet meeting that decided on it.)

Why Did Williams Do It?

Neither Mr Williams nor the Attorney-General’s department are stupid. Removing the protection from de factos was not an ”unintended consequence” or a drafting error. Indeed, Williams made that very clear in his comments to me the day before Howard made him back down.

He said then that his amendment was designed to hand back the power to restrict or deny access to IVF and artificial insemination to the States. It was ”consistent with the States’ responsibilities in relation to the regulation of the provision of medical care and treatment – that they be permitted to legislate in the area of ARTs as they consider appropriate and in a manner which reflects the views of the community”.

I believe that the REASON he took so stark an approach, which removed de factos as well as singles from the protection of Federal discrimination law is for the very reason that two States CURRENTLY discriminate against de factos.

South Australia and Western Australia restrict access to de factos who have lived together for 5 years. The SDA, in contrast, merely requires that they live together on a bona fide domestic basis. Neither SA or WA require that married couples have lived together for five years.

Thus, a couple might have never lived together, been married for a day and get access. De factos who have lived together for less than five years are out, as are de factos who, say, separated after five years then got back together two years later.

If Williams had followed the Government’s public rationale for amending the SDA, he would have granted an exemption from section 22 to States who discriminated only against single women.

He didn’t because then he would have to define what a de facto relationship is and either override the SA and WA laws or allow all States to require a five-years living together period. The WA and SA regimes are considered certain to be overridden when and if a challenge is mounted. So far no-one has challenged it, preferring instead to get married under protest or go interstate for treatment.

Messy, hey? As Labor’s shadow Attorney-General Robert McClelland told me yesterday, ”Williams is in a double bind. If he relies on the Federal definition of de facto, he’ll override the SA and WA laws. If he defines de facto as living together for five years, he is discriminating against de factos.”

 

Where that does leave the claim of Williams and the Prime Minister on Friday that NO State or Territory currently discriminates against defactos? Pretty sick, I’d say. Williams, in his backdown press release, was careful enough to admit that some States defined de factos differently but claimed that they did not do so ”in unreasonably restrictive ways”. Note he was careful not to claim that all State laws complied with the SDA on de factos. No wonder everyone is waiting with bated breath for Williams next attempt. Believe me, Liberal women won’t give his legislation a tick sight unseen as they so foolishly did last time. And perhaps, just perhaps, the penny will finally drop on all those supporters of Howard on this one that he’s not on about the rights of the child at all but the right of the States to discriminate as they wish, regardless of whether the child will get a father or not.

I wrote to Williams today with some questions:

August 21, 2000

Daryl Williams QC,

Attorney-General.

 

Dear Sir,

Re: AMENDMENTS TO THE SEX DISCRIMINATION ACT

I refer to your press release of August 18 in which you state that no State currently discriminates against de facto couples in the provision of Assisted Reproductive Technology.

Were you aware when making this statement that both the South Australian and Western Australian laws and/or codes of practice restrict access to de facto couples who have lived together for five years and place no such condition on married couples?

Is it your opinion that such restrictions do not amount to a breach of the SDA and, if so, what is the basis of that opinion?

Given that you have now decided to propose an amendment to your proposed amendment to the SDA ”to give effect to its commitment in relation to ART services for women in a defacto relationship with a man”, do you propose to define ”de facto” for the purpose of the SDA exemption?

If so, do you intend to specify the length of time in which a defacto couple need to live together to qualify for non-discrimination protection?

If so, what time will be nominated and do you intend to impose a similar condition for married couples – ie that they must have lived together for at least five years?

Sincerely,

 

MARGO KINGSTON

 

Late today, Williams’ office replied that the Government’s position was that even under his fresh amendment, the WA and SA restrictions should stand. Therefore, it seems, all States will be able to discriminate against de facto couples by requiring of them, not of married couples, to have lived together for five years. After all the denials, the fact remains that de factos have now been drawn into the discrimination net.

REPLY TO NAME WITHHELD (Friday’s diary):

DELL HOREY: I have to respond to ”Name Withheld” in case no one else does. I wouldn’t like to see her arguments unchallenged.

As I see it Name Withheld makes major assumptions when she asks why on earth do you [lesbians] want to biologically have your own child?

It seems that she believes that lesbian women are fundamentally different to heterosexual women and not only in regard to their sexuality. This must follow if she believes that the desire (or urge) of lesbians to be mothers is not the same as that which drives heterosexual women.

I am not sure that there is any evidence that would support this belief, nor does it seems rational that such a desire is solely related to sexuality. If it were to hold true, it would suggest that the stronger your sex drive the greater would be your desire to have children. Is there any proof of this? I dont think so.

Advice to lesbians to foster or adopt should hold equally true for infertile heterosexual couples and was certainly the only option prior to IVF when there was no possibility of biological children.

But like the introduction of a lot of new technologies, along with all the problems, we now have new choices. We no longer have to walk everywhere, we can drive (or go by train or plane). Medicines have saved a lot of lives and improved the quality of many others. We can adopt these new technologies and learn how to use them wisely, though admittedly that can take some time.

However, I can’t see how discrimination, based on the direct involvement of a male partner actually helps anyone. I don’t see how men are made redundant by IVF – surely the sperm donors have made a choice too!

The test of our commitment to human rights must be our willingness to see that they apply to all people not only those like ourselves or those that we like.

I am heterosexual, fertile and married and I dont believe that I would ever (access) use IVF services. However, I will never need to test my belief because I will never be in the situation to need to. But how I possibly think it is OK for me to veto the choices of others.

Most of the lesbian parents that I know were married and only after some struggle came to terms with their sexuality. I think that it is a vast improvement in our society that gradually homosexual people are able to live without the horrors troubled previous generations.

I don’t believe that homosexuals’ whole identity and their rights as citizens be determined by a small part of them.

DE FACTOS BE WARNED

The IVF debate ain’t going to go away for a long time. Today’s revelations in the Herald that the Government plans to amend the Sex Discrimination Act to give the States open slather to discriminate against de factos as well as single women has given Labor its first chance to get on the front foot. (NEWSFLASH: The Attorney-General has just backed down and will now amend his own bill to protect de facto couples.)

The layers on layers in this debate will produce, I predict:

* Labor proposing legislation to give children conceived through IVF and artificial insemination the right to be told the identity of the father at 18. Tasmanian independent Brian Harradine and Democrats Senator Aden Ridgeway have already publicly supported this idea. The Minister for Health, Michael Wooldridge, also wants this but has been unable to convince the States to do anything. Sooner or later, Howard will be forced, through his own ”rights of the child” rhetoric, to confront this issue.

* The inevitable Senate inquiry into the Coalition’s plan will be passionate, wide ranging and could even come up with sensible policy on this fraught area, instead of Howard’s knee jerk abolition of fundamental human rights. Expected participants include Joe de Bruyn from the shoppies’ union and the Howard-appointed Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Susan Halliday, who’s been left out in the cold by the Government and is so angry at the loss of protection for de factos that she’ll put her good relations with government on the line to fight for women’s rights.

* Attorney-General Daryl Williams has been forced to shift the Government’s rationale for the amendments to the Sex Discrimination Act from seeking to ensure a child has the right to a father, to vacating the field on marital status discrimination when it comes to IVF and artificial insemination. This is intellectually untenable, as Howard has invoked the ”rights” of the child to justify his action, which shows he believes there is a national responsibility in this area. You’d also have to start wondering what other human rights protections in the Sex Discrimination Act the Government thinks should be left to the States. Also, since Howard finds the whole thing so important, why not produce a national policy? It’s sort of like euthanasia when you think about it. Howard on that one said the issue was so fundamental it couldn’t be left to the Northern Territory or the States.

* The Senate inquiry could well be broadened to take on other big genetic issues so far undealt with. It could investigate the thorny issue of genetic testing by insurance companies, employers and banks. It could also take in cloning.

* Howard has opened a Pandora’s box and he can’t close it now. As Aden Ridgeway says, without national legislation, there can be no national data base, and tragic stories of half siblings falling in love without knowing their biological relationship are bound to happen.

 

READERS INPUT

Name withheld:

I am a 30-something full-time working mother. I pride myself on being a feminist and my husband and I (yes, he and I are married) try our best to bring our boys up to be feminists as well.

Throughout the entire debate on IVF and the issue of lesbians and single mothers, I have had a few problems with how I felt that the issue is not so black-and-white. All my women and men friends expect me to support the lesbians and boo Howard’s stance on this issue.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no problems with lesbians bringing up children, be they adopted or children from one or both of them when they were in heterosexual relationships. I have no problems at all with that situation. In fact, some lesbian couples I know would make very good parents.

What I have problems with though is this: If you are a lesbian, why on earth do you want to biologically have your own child? Isn’t your child one of the many consequences, accidental, happy or otherwise, of a heterosexual relationship and if you don’t want such a relationship, then why do you want the consequences?

If you have maternal instincts that you need to satisfy, then foster a child, adopt a child, whatever. Why insist on IVF? To my mind, IVF technology is to treat and address a medical need, not a sexual preference. The ethics have not kept up with the technology but hang on a minute, why on earth do lesbians or for that matter, gay men have to have everything?

If I go into a relationship that would not enable me to conceive and have a child, then I go into it with my eyes wide open; I don’t turn around and expect society to owe me a living and satisfy my maternal instincts regardless of the costs.

I think it is obscene to put lesbian women on the same standing (as it were) as heterosexual couples who medically and health wise have a problem conceiving. [MARGO: Lesbians go into IVF for the same reason – that they have a problem conceiving. Hell, you wouldn’t go through all that pain, with such low odds of success, otherwise.] It is denying the heterosexual couple’s very real problems of conception, de-valuing their trauma of trying to have a child, if you equate their problem to that of a lesbian couple’s.

Am I the only one who thinks like this?

Obviously I haven’t been brave enough to broach this topic amongst our friends for fear of an outcry. What has really niggled me, too, is the way the media and indeed our friends have immediately surmised what our stand on this issue is – oh, they are a left-leaning, well-read, professional couple, surely they must have this view, which is to support the lesbians.

I have no problems with single women having IVF technology, really, I have no problems with heterosexuals having IVF technology, single or married.

I must confess I don’t know what your personal or professional views are on this but if I don’t share this with someone else apart from my husband soon, I am going to scream!

Do raise my concerns in your columns but please do not use my name. I am not sure I am ready to be ”outed” yet!

Jane O’Dwyer:

Suddenly the gains made for women by feminism seem terribly fragile – all thanks to a clever but nasty piece of political skulduggery on Howard’s part.

There is not really an IVF debate happening here – no debate is actually taking place about IVF itself and the vast number of issues that arise out of it. Perhaps that debate does need to take place. This legislation sure as hell ‘ain’t it.

What this is really about is government-sanctioned discrimination against women on the grounds of marital status and sexuality. The right of women to enjoy all the opportunities of life regardless of marital status was hard won (and I know we still haven’t really got there on sexuality).

If a Federal government can legalise discrimination on the basis of ”morality” or State rights, what is next? Does marital status once again become the determining factor for women’s status? It was only 35 years ago that women were tossed out of the workforce when they got married – this sort of discrimination cuts both ways for women. Maybe we haven’t come a long way, baby.

All of which makes the silence of the non-Lyons Forum Liberals and the excessive noise of the SDA Labor Senators look unforgivable. Maybe this will jolt women to protect and build on feminist gains – but do we really need these kind of threats?

How tragic a reflection it will be on our political system if a political stunt is the starting point for unravelling the anti-discrimination act.

 

David Moore sent in some big picture warnings on genetics from the United States:

 

Bioethicist Warns of Lack of Preparedness For Genetic Testing in US

——————————————————————————–

 

By Todd Zwillich

in Washington

A government bioethicist warned a gathering of genetics expertson Thursday that current US laws and regulations will not protect individuals from the possible deeply negative impact of widespread testing for disease susceptibility genes.

Insurance laws, employment regulations and Federal medical testing standards are unable to prevent the ”very real chance” of discrimination against people testing positive for particular genes, a bioethicist with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Dr Richard Sharp, said before a group of scientists at the Institute of Medicine.

”We haven’t spent much time talking about testing for susceptibility genes,” he said.

”The problems are going to be colossal.”

After the recent announcement that scientists had sequenced the human genome, President Clinton signed an executive order banning genetic discrimination against Federal employees. But the executive order was ”mostly symbolic”, Dr Sharp said. ”No comprehensive Federal genetic privacy law or antidiscrimination law exists.”

Problems were also likely in the area of workplace safety, he said.

Genetic tests were already available that screened for genes that could cause illness if the person was exposed to certain chemicals, he pointed out.

One example is the CYP2E1 allele, which is known as a marker for leukemia in patients exposed to benzene.

Regulations currently require employers to provide a reasonably safe working environment for employees but no rules lay down who is responsible for the safety of a worker who tests positive for risk associated with chemicals he or she works with.

”Are we going to shift the focus of blame to individuals who have genetic susceptibility or keep it on a dangerous workplace?” Dr Sharp asked.

Congress is currently considering overarching medical records privacy legislation that could apply to genetic testing but the measure has been mired in committees for years. There is still no way to know who will have access to the results of genetic tests.

”When you get tested, somebody knows you’re at risk. How they use the information is going to be the problem,” Dr Sharp said. – Reuters Health

 

POSTSCRIPT

The inaugural media ball in Parliament House last Wednesday night ended up a good humoured affair.

Even the PM was relaxed and led his short speech with ”You all look beautiful”. He ended by saying he felt ”civil to all of you”. Now that’s really something, given the presence of all those nasty leftie journos he so loves to hate.

Here are some photos of the night. I’ve included our photographers, so you know the face behind the people who shoot for the Herald and ”Pot shot”. Most photos were taken by the Minister for Financial Services, Joe Hockey, an ebullient character who, once he got his hands on a Herald camera, took 18 rolls of film for Canberra Inside Out. We’re considering offering him a job.

 

Roy and HG with PM John Howard and ball organiser and ABC Radio journalist Fran Kelly.

Fairfax photographers, from left, Paul Harris, Gabrielle Charotte and Phil Carrick with SMH Canberra chief of staff and yours truly Margo Kingston.

Roy and HG with Kim Beazley and his wife, Susie.

In the week before Parliament resumes, when the cultural wars will be toe-to-toe and eyeball-to-eyeball, IVF e-mails are running hot.

We have a wildly skewed readership judging from the poll results and e-mails. Progressive lefties and libertarian liberals unite! If you’re a cool-headed analytical type or even a professional or lay mediator, please consider getting your head around a summary of issues and angles and coming up with a diagram or something. I’ve read so many e-mails on IVF my mind’s a blur.

POPULATION POLICY

NICK: In a country where birth rates are stillborn or even negative, every cent that goes to ‘singles’ and ‘lezzo wannabes’ is well spent. Somebody has to have the bloody children.

 

PRE-HUMAN RIGHTS AND THE RELEVANCE OF MEN

DELL HOREY: What I find really hard to get my head around is the argument that this is about the rights of children to have both a mother and father. It is so weird because they seem to be setting themselves up as the defenders of children who don’t even yet exist – and they are so concerned about protecting their rights, they want to stop them from existing.

So women who do exist have to have their rights diminished unless they can find a man. It is even worse than the anti-abortion argument. The hierarchy of rights seems to be States then children then women!

Part of the problem is that most of the people in the Cabinet are unable to imagine that this issue would ever apply to them or people they love. Of course, their children and grandchildren will do the right thing, be heterosexual, find the perfect person to marry and have perfect babies etc etc. I just wonder how John Howard would see things if his daughter got to her late 30s and hadn’t found the “right man”?

While (the yet to exist) children must have their right to both a male and female parent apparently it is ok not to try to protect them from potential diseases such as HIV and hepatitis.

There is a sense that this is about men claiming their relevance in society. Some men feel very threatened by the thought that they are not essential in happy family life – but I don’t think that women can claim that they are essential either – there are some great single parent families around with a male head. You can’t make generalisations about this and men and women have to make meaningful contributions not just think it comes just by being there.

The hurt from the debate is enormous – and it may explain the silence from the Liberal women. If they have witnessed anything like the response I have they probably don’t know what to do with all that anger. It isn’t only lesbians either. My dentist, who is a very calm and I would have thought conservative woman, asked me what I thought about the latest thing “our lovely PM” had to say. She was so angry that I was quite surprised. She was insulted that someone would suggest that as a single mother her child was being properly looked after. “I’m a very good parent,” she said and indignant that someone should suggest she should pick up someone if she wanted to have another child.

I am just so infuriated by the whole idea that some people in society (who just happen to be women) are permitted to participate fully when it comes to paying taxes and using skills and talents but others can determine whether they can have the right to use the services and resources available to others in community. Basically what is being said is that women can’t be trusted to make decisions on their own about what is good for them when it comes to children.

While in some ways I think it is a worthwhile debate to have – like a lot of other issues I worry about who ends up paying the cost for that public debate. It isn’t really the politicians who will be affected by it but women and children who didn’t ask for their private lives to be made so public.While there may be some long-term benefit, it could be very painful (I am thinking here of the teenage children of a lesbian friend who don’t want their schoolfriends to know about their mother’s sexuality).

 

US AND THEM

BRENDON: Politicians create their meaning through division. Howard is a master of it. By demonising lesbian mothers, Howard has created another outcast group as a vehicle for building his group’s identity.

He did it with Aborigines during Wik (remember the map?). He’ll do it again before the next election with some other group. And those small l liberals will keep quiet as they did during Wik and have subsequently on mandatory sentencing – moral cowards the lot of them. They should read Dante (Inferno: Canto 111). They wait for Costello, but he won’t save them.

This talk of children’s rights I find particularly dishonest. Deconstruct it and they are saying, better not to be born rather than be born without a father. Are they serious? If they were, they would advocate abortion as a vehicle for social engineering. But of course that’s not what they mean.

They are saying, you must conform to our version of family and society or you can have no rights. Of course, the implication is that no one can have genuine rights because rights will always be conditional on conformity. So in the end it’s the same old authoritarian stuff wrapped up in the rhetoric of the rights of the child.

People who make family structure and conception processes an issue make the world smaller and sadder for all of us. But they divide and conquer only themselves.

 

WHY NOT STERILISE?

CATHY BANNISTER: Howard claims that “every child needs a father and a mother”, and that, therefore, single mothers and lesbians should be barred from the IVF program. The extension of this is almost too backward to contemplate.

What next, denying Medicare payment for obstetric care for single and lesbian women? The same logic could be used to justify forced sterilisations: “We’re not discriminating against you as a lesbian, it’s just that any child you had would be so messed up it would be better for them if they didn’t exist.”

What’s so intrinsically important about “a mother and a father” anyway? Why not just two loving parents? Why not one loving parent and enough funding and social support to actually do a half decent job? It’s old fashioned Christian disapproval of non-trad families, pure and simple. The stance is otherwise totally indefensible.

He’s not even arguing the rights of the child but the rights of the hypothetical child. And this hypothetical child is being denied the right to exist, on the basis of it’s own hypothetical rights! At this point the logic disappears up it’s own fundament.

Never, ever, has a politician made me so angry.

 

CHILDREN’S RIGHTS AFTER CONCEPTION

EMMA BRIDGE, Hobart: The ethics of IVF are difficult – who could forget those early pictures of the beaming doctors who brought us the technology, who were always given credit for the babies as if the mothers were irrelevant in the process. Unfortunately our society still values reproduction so highly that those who cannot conceive are left feeling incomplete or failures. Unlike other cultures, we have no concept of the community sharing in the upbringing of children leaving direct parenting as the only way to “have” children. If we resolved this, maybe some of the pressure on reproductive technologies may lessen. Given the way we are though, I firmly believe all women should have equal access to the technology.

The irony of Howard championing the rights of children (to have a father in their lives) is almost laughable. Here is a government which has done nothing to improve conditions to allow working parents of either gender be more involved in their children’s lives.

Here is a government made up largely of men who have spent huge periods of time almost completely absent from their children’s lives.

Here is a government that will not apologise for a policy under which the State denied children the right to either a mother or father (well not a black one anyway).

Here are a bunch of hypocrites.

I find it distressing to see in a lot of the news coverage of this issue, how it has forced women to belittle other women’s mothering. The Victorian woman whose rights were being tested in the first place has been quoted as saying she will make a better mother than young women who sleep around and get pregnant (or something like that). Lesbians have been quoted as saying they are better mothers than another group of women and so we go on. As a mother and a daughter and a feminist I find this very sad, that women have been pitted against other women to come up with their “good mother” credentials. Lets not get sucked into that. We are all the best mothers we can be, sometimes that isn’t good enough but it is very very rarely from a lack of trying.

 

AN OUTRAGED HOWARD FAN

DAVID DAVIS, our Switzerland correspondent: Your recent “random thoughts about the IVF debate” was quite incredible. Incredibly thought provoking and moving.

I liked the way you employed the term “the State”. To me, the term “the State” has particular overtones which make me feel uneasy. I don’t want “the State” in my life. Who does?

We don’t need the State to be making value judgments and choices like these. I really thought that respect for individual choice was a core Liberal philosophy (as you say). I always thought it was one of the most attractive aspects of the Liberal Party that was under-promoted.

But then, I suppose it is no use promoting something that isn’t really respected and enacted in practical ways by the people at the top. People that do have a coherent philosophy will always be marginalised and fail in politics. Politics is the art of compromise, sell-out and the lowest common denominator.

I haven’t noticed the Australian Tax Office making value judgments when it takes the money from us. So one arm of government takes our personal resources without discrimination, while another arm of government in the form of Medicare then nominates some people as worthy and others as not. It’s really quite sickening.

This is just good old fashoned politics and discrimination in the most pure form imaginable.

It hurts people to the core though. They can dress it up however they like but they can’t run away from the reality. The reality is they are pointing a discriminating, intolerant finger at certain Australians and are deeming them to be unworthy.

The rhetoric becomes really offensive when you are personally affected or know someone who is.

The story of your friend is very moving. I can understand how hurt she would be and really love the idea that she’s fighting back with the support of her friends.

Unless people stand up and be counted, we will be stuck with the medieval mindset for a lot longer.

 

DISSIDENT VOICE

CAROLYN: How very strange that you should treat facetiously the “right” of children to a mother and father, yet totally accept the very modern, very recent, and entirely unsupportable concept of the “right” to have a child.

No government in the world can legislate to give anyone the “right” to have a child, the whole notion of such a right is entirely artificial (no pun intended). Why has the public and the media accepted such a nonsensical right?

If we accept that everyone (let’s include men as well as women here, shall we?) has the right to have a child, or many children, then, by the same logic that you deride the concept of a child’s right to a mother & father, that is, “Should a child be able to sue his or her mother for failing to ensure a father on hand?”, we are led, inevitably, to the question “Should a person be able to sue the Government for failing to ensure they have a children if they want them?”

The next step, logically, is the right, not just to have a baby but to bare a healthy baby, followed by the right to bare a healthy, happy, intelligent and grateful child etc, etc. When the initial concept is so utterly artificial, there is no natural point at which to stop. The perversity of treating babies as a consumer item has no natural or social boundaries.

Let’s stop pretending that there is something good or altruistic about any of this: if single women can demand to be impregnated with tax payers’ financial support, the next logical step is that single men, of whatever persuasion, should also be permitted to buy a baby with taxpayers’ financial support.

Never, never, in history have children been so totally treated as a commodity to satisfy the unquenchable wants of adults (not needs, wants!). Whether taxpayer funded or not, is it really a reflection of a healthy society, and healthy adults, if we treat conception and children as an entitlement to be exercised regardless of how extreme or artificial the means required to achieve that entitlement? And regardless of the consequences and lifetime impact on the children concerned?

No amount of parental love and devotion can override fundamental social constructs that can & will damage a lot of these proposed children. What a self-absorbed, self-obsessed, self-indulgent, bratty generation of adults we have become.

The more I think about this IVF issue the more layers it gets. Here’s a few random thoughts that have popped up in my head – please throw yours in too and we’ll try for a synthesis of facets, meanings and consequences.

IVF

Many people – religious and otherwise – don’t like IVF per se. They think it interferes with what should be a rather more natural conception process. Where to draw the line these days is a big issue – with fertility drugs, artificial insemination?

The real question in this debate is that since IVF is here to stay, should it be available on a non-discriminatory basis? It’s not good enough for the Catholic Church leadership to see a discriminatory restriction on IVF as a win in the battle to ban IVF, because a ban is not realistic.

WOMEN ALONE

The silence of female Liberal MPs is eerie. There are several feminist women in the Party who have fought as individuals for a woman’s right to control her reproduction. They’ve fought battles for the pill and for abortion.

Now the sheer populist appeal of Howard’s stand and the party-political joys of watching Labor tear itself apart have seen these women either not return calls or call back to say they won’t comment. Goodbye Liberal feminism when the chips are down. Remember, there has been no partyroom decision on this.

As of today Labor has no policy on the matter, despite the fact that the Sex Discrimination Act was a Hawke Labor government achievement against great odds.

This means that advocates of women’s rights are reliant only on the Democrats and the Greens in the public debate. So sad. It’s not even a fair fight in the sphere of public conversation.

It’s at times like these that you realise the terrible injustice of having so few women in federal politics. They’re just another minority when it comes to issues that are central to women but on which men have all sorts of emotions, prejudices and fears they seem to need to force down women’s throats.

WOMEN TOGETHER

But wait. The Sex Discrimination Act was the result of fierce lobbying by an activist women’s movement in the 1970s and 1980s. They were radical, ideological and deeply committed to the cause.

Since then, feminist has in some respects become mainstream, and young women have in many cases come to believe that discrimination on the basis of gender or marital status is over.

This debate could bring the generations together at last. Older feminists can remember the old battles, younger women will discover the excitement of the repeat performance. Both groups will teach each other. This could be the rebirth of feminist activism. Watch out, John.

AND THE WINNER IS …

Do Australians really want to be told by the State what to do in their personal life? The strength of that strand of the Australian psyche will be tested in this debate. Howard looks like he’s on a sure winner, but when you polarise opinion so hard on lifestyle as Howard has done on this one, you just never know.

I remember attending an Opposition party hosted by Peter Reith many years ago, and having a spirited debate with John Howard on citizenship initiated referenda. No way, I said, citing majority opinion in favour of capital punishment.

Howard accused me of elitism. He said he too opposed capital punishment, but believed passionately that a sustained debate on its merits leading up to a referendum would see Australians vote no.

Well John, here comes the debate. With Labor so split, this one will be fought mainly at a grassroots level, in town protests, public meetings, and over dinner tables.

CULTURAL ROLLBACK

Banning discrimination on the grounds of marital status helps married women, and single women, married men and single men. The Sex Discrimination Act was riddled with exceptions after tumultuous public debate. The Act helped decide who we were and what we believed in. Some exceptions have since gone as the slow progression to judging people on their merits continued.

I see this reopening of the discrimination debate as an aspect of Howard’s CULTURAL rollback setting itself up against Labor’s GST rollback. Open the gate to discrimination and the potential consequences are horrifying. He has coopted the human rights debate to suit his ends – speaking of the right of the child to a mother and father involved in his or her upbringing.

How ironic – a man who has trashed the human rights discourse as irrelevant when it comes to race discrimination (Wik) and the right to a fair trial (mandatory sentencing) suddenly turns it all around when it suits his value system to do so. Human rights should not be treated as political footballs to be forgotten if unpopular and promoted if popular.

I have never heard of a child’s right to a mother and father involved in his or her upbringing before, but Howard’s invention means, by definition, that this new right should be enforceable. Should a child be able to sue his or her mother for failing to ensure a father on hand?

Should the State enforce the right to a father by requiring him to participate in the child’s upbringing.?

Should the State take a child away from a family without a live-in father and put him or her into a family which has one?

Imagine how the debate changes if the IVF criteria include the requirement that the mother should be able to show that the child will be brought up with love, with the family involved, however constituted, willing and able to provide the necessary physical, emotional and intellectual support.

This is not a right – it cannot be given the failures of many parents – but it is an obligation which the State should be satisfied of before providing financial assistance for IVF. This approach does concern itself with the welfare of the child – John Howard’s approach merely discriminates on the basis of his preferred family model. Guess what John, the overwhelming majority of child abuse is perpetrated by live in fathers or step fathers. Guess what John, most homosexuals were born of straight parents, and on my anecdotal experience, all children of homosexual parents are straight.

The Liberals’ core philosophy of respect for individual choice has been replaced by John Howard’s moral fundamentalism.

HOWARD AND HURT

A lesbian friend of mine had a baby two years ago. A male friend donated his sperm. She needed fertility drugs to conceive, and if that hadn’t worked, she was prepared to incur the expense and pain of IVF.

The father has agreed to be identified as her son’s father when he asks the question. He visits every few months to say Hi. My friend has been assiduous in having male friends involved with her son, so he has male role models. Her son is healthy, happy and loved. She finds it hard to mange her full-time job and being with her son as much as she wants, and has asked her employer to consider letting her work part time, because she wants more time with him.

Her stated reaction to Howard’s announcement was outrage at the financial inequity of it all. She pays her taxes and her Medicare levy. Yet that was just cover for her devastation. Howard has told her the State disapproves of who she is, how she lives her life, and her capacity as a mother, without knowing who she is as a person.

Howard has never been for all of us, and now he is getting more explicit in saying which of us he targets for discrimination. My friend is fighting back. At her son’s birthday party tomorrow, her friends, gay and straight, will bring their children on the understanding that they want to be interviewed by the local paper. They want to say my friend is a good mother and that her son has the rights most children don’t have.

THE RIGHT TO IDENTITY

To me, a child should have a right to know who his or her father is. That’s the basis on which adopted children now have rights to access their adoption records. There is a real debate to be had on the identity confusion that can result when a child has no way of finding out who his or her father is. Personally, I could accept State intervention to insist that State funded procedures to help a woman get pregnant include that requirement. But that isn’t what this is really all about, is it, John.

HOWARD AT LARGE

This is an exchange between a listener to Melbourne Radio 3AW and our Prime Minister this morning.

LISA:

I’m a lesbian. I have a child. I didn’t go through IVF because it wasn’t available to me. I took the risk of getting AIDS to have a child. I changed my career to make sure I could be home after school and also thought every long and hard before I did it. Also something else I have heard you say is that its a lifestyle choice. Well when I was 17 and realised (I was a lesbian) I definitely wanted to be was a parent. There is nothing I could do about being a lesbian, but there was something I could do about being a parent and I thought long and hard, and I am a damn good parent with a wonderful son who excels at school, who gets fed, looked after, better than the children that I work with with two parents that are drug addicted, 25, with five children and one on the way and they could be entitled to IVF but I can’t. Can you answer me, where is the logic in this?

 

PRIME MINISTER:

Lisa, it is not just a question of the government intervening in something which is intensely personal because there are public resources made available in relation to IVF, so therefore the government does have a role. I mean the idea that governments who are the representatives of the entire community have no role at all in relation to a service which is in part at least funded by the general community of taxpayers is wrong.

Now I don’t criticise in any way or denigrate in any way your affection towards your child. Equally I dont think it is fair to, as your observation and comparison suggested, to categorise all two parent families in quite the derogatory terms of the example you quoted. I mean look there are good and bad two parent families. There are good and bad parents. That is not the issue.

I mean the issue is whether you believe, or society believes, in the principle that every child born in this world should have the expectation, other things being equal, of the care and love of a mother and a father, whether that is a reasonable principle.

Now, I happen to believe and the majority of my colleagues in the government happen to believe that that is a good principle and we think its a principle that’s worth supporting and its a principle that is worth promoting. It does not represent a negative value judgement on people who have a homosexual lifestyle. I have never wanted people in that situation to be discriminated against or persecuted and that is why I supported the former Labor governments legislation to over turn the Tasmanian anti homosexual laws. Its a question of whether you wish to positively assert that fundamental right of children and I think that fundamental right takes precedence over all other rights in this case.

 

READERS SAY

DAVID HANCOCK, Balgowlah NSW: What the debate should be about is whether we should fund IVF at all. These procedures cost us huge amounts of money, and producing sickly and unhealthy premature babies most of the time. To what end? There are far more important areas where that money could be spent. Areas where people really suffer.

The way this turd floats these red-herrings and people who should know better bite makes me sick. The words of Bob Hughes after we lost the republican debate come to mind constantly these days………”The country’s not fucked, merely delayed”…………………

GEORGIA GRAY, Fairhaven: Do we know what polls say on this issue? It’s surely not just the Labor party which is divided. There must be some concerned people in the Liberal party? Maybe not. Bob Carr’s line seemed to diffuse it a bit with ‘this is a private matter for women and their doctors’. Labor just has to do what’s right eg. support human rights and get on with the big picture. I don’t reckon too many cross country people will change their vote on this. It will be forgotten soon if handled decisively.

DAVID, Our correspondent from Switzerland: John Howard may be the bad guy in this most recent issue regarding lesbians and IVF. His “tolerance without endorsement” is an interesting policy to say the least. Perhaps this is an example of where pandering to the masses is not always as attractive as it intuitively seems.

I don’t really see Labor as being very different though. Few mainstream politicians are prepared to go out on a limb on these kinds of issues.

This kind of discrimination cuts equally across both parties. Of course there are different aspects to the hardliners in each party but the end result is the same.

The “tolerance-speak” on both sides is just a thin veneer to cover up a great deal of very real intolerance. No influential politician (I mean REALLY influential) ever takes leadership on such issues.

Several continental European countries are a long way ahead of Australia in this regard. They may also be ahead of their respective publics but that isnt ALWAYS a bad thing.

This message may seem somewhat contradictory to prior messages … but there you go.