Public Opinion

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June 30, 2003

Oz Ambassador takes tea in Iraq

Just a light snippet. Its good to know that our dear Ambassador is having a quiet moment from all the stresses and strain of liberating Iraq.

Seems like the Ambassador is beginning to feel relaxed and comfortable living in the American occupation.

Pity about the colonial bit. But then the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) strategy calls for a lasting presence and influence over places such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, and the like. But the scene on the ground casts doubts on whether such a plan will be acceptable to the other nations in the Middle East. Will they accept a long-term US presence in the Middle East?

But the big gun episode does illustrate the clash of civilizations, the way the West sees Islam as a threat and the historic anxiety about Islam.

Does the Australian Ambassador consider the threat to the West coming from Iran now? Remember he once believed that Saddam Hussein was intent on bringing the civilized world to its knees, dominating the Gulf and destroying Israel?

Or is our Ambassador free from the traditional religious-based hostility to Islamic society?

The gunman clearly has an enemy image. But who is the enemy? Criminals? Burglars? Looters? Remnants of Saddam Hussein's government, foreign terrorists and Iranian-backed Shiites? All doing their own individual thing?

Or is the Ambassador aware of the guerilla-style resistance to the occupation? Or that the Americans have an insurgency on their hands run by Iraqi nationalists? Or that an Iraqi intifada is forming?

No doubt our Ambassador would be fully conversant with the history of Britain in Iraq.

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well, well, well

My opinion of Ross Gittens has been changing. The Gittens fellow is writing some good iconoclastic stuff about economics that reflects some solid thinking. The latest is a beauty and deserves wide circulation.

In this one he addresss the battle between the proponents and the opponents of economic growth, a theme close to the heart of public opinion. This weblog has argued that the appropriate policy response to the crisis of the Murray-Darling river system is a substantive commitment by the liberal state to ecologically sustainable development. Despite the talk about environmental flows, salinity and a cap on land clearing little has happened to question wealth creation as the policy goal.

So what does Gittens say? I'll spell it out as the article will eventually drop out. Ross says:

"The commitment to growth - "rising living standards" - is so nearly universal among our businesspeople, economists and politicians that it's tempting to dismiss the anti-growth push as a one-week wonder.But I think that would be a mistake...I think it could become the major ideological battleground of the coming years."

That is pretty close to being right. Gittens, however, gives quality of life reasons as the main reason:

"Why? ...Because the rise of economic rationalism has made capitalism turbo-charged and overdone.Everyone used to be fairly laid-back in their pursuit of the good life but now we're surrounded by people with whips. Our bosses whip us because they live in fear of the sharemarket's whip. In the micro-reformed economy, the unceasing cry is More! More! Faster! Faster! Is it so hard to believe that one day a lot of people may start asking . . . why?

That's good. People are asking just that around the nation. Why live a life of being overexploited, stressed out and underpaid? But Gittens goes further. He says:

"The intellectual case against growth is building up on two fronts: the environmentalists on one side and the psychologists and renegade economists on the other."

He rightly says the green's case is one in which:

"...we simply can't go on chewing up natural resources, generating waste and destroying eco-systems at the rate we are."

And the psychologist's challenge to economic growth arising from their burgeoning study of happiness:

'Once a country's material living standard passes a certain minimal level, the psychologists simply can't find a correlation between economic growth and "subjective wellbeing". Nor do they find that the rich are notably happier than the poor.'

Many find these challenges to economic growth (ie., wealth creation and rising living standards) as the policy goal and the end of human existence so threatening and dangerous. Gittens says:

"For most of us, the pursuit of growth and material advance is the organising principle for our world view. It's the object of the exercise, determining the role of government and the way economies should be managed. More to the point, for many of us the pursuit of income and material gain is the organising principle for our lives. We can't imagine how we'd hold the show together without it."

Gitten's asks us to start thinking about making economic growth the goal of life.

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Selling the Iraqi's short

One of the justifications for the Iraqi war was the liberation argument. Remember? Australia is helping the US and the UK to liberate the Iraqi people from an oppressive dictatorship and to bring democracy to the Middle East. So said John Howard as the troops returned home from Iraq.

It is this justification that is currently being used today, as the WMD argument falls into disrepute. Intervention in Iraq was a justified war, it is said. Just look at the mass graves continually being dug up. Saddam was one evil guy. We did a good thing.

The argument that public opinion made against this liberation justification --was that the Coalition of the Willing would become an occupying force in Iraq, and they would end up selling the Iraqi's short on democracy. It would not allow the majority Shi'ite population to establish their own kind of Islamic state. The Iraqi's would then want the US/UK out of their country. Future history would repeat the past history of the British occupation of Iraq in the first part of the 20th century.

Sad to say this looks to be happening. We have this search and destroy. And judging by this report democracy is going to be a long time coming.

It is more than the lack of a coherent postwar plan for reconstituting Iraq politically, and just making it up as the US went along. Judging by this report about the US building two giant intelligence facilities in Iraq at a cost of some half a billion dollars, it is Washington’s intention to retain a large US military presence in Iraq in the long term, for a decade at least.

Of course, this occupation argument cuts no ice for the Howard Government. Liberation simply meant ousting the tyrant in Iraq. Liberation had nothing to do with restoring Iraq country--- bringing it back to health and keeping the people free. Australia washed it's hands of the real challenge of rebuilding the country. It's a case of all care taken, no responsibility accepted, as Shaun Casey points out.

The Howard Government basically accepts that the US can do what it likes in Iraq and the Middle East. We are friends and allies of the US after all. There will be no criticism of the US occupation of Iraq coming from Australia. US foreign policy there is Australia's foreign policy.

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June 29, 2003

More on the ASIO Bill

In case what you are wondering what was actually in the ASIO Bill that was passed by the Senate with the help of ALP, then Alan Ramsay from the Sydney Morning Herald has a good and clear account.

It's not good. Its 5 years in the slammer if you refuse to answer any question, refuse to co-operate with ASIO and refuse to provide information requested. If you don't know the answers you must prove you don't know.

This is the new face of the National Security State in the new international order. It says that Australia is confronted by Islam after September 11 and the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) Legislation Amendment (Terrorism) Bill 2002 is a part of the overall strategy of the war on terrorism. In this clash of civilizations we in the West need to arm ourselves against the threat of terrorists, who are people with no legitimate political demands.

What lies behind this legislation and the security strategy of the national security state is a myth: international politics is divided into two civilizational blocs---West and Islam---who confront one another as enemies. From the West side we in Australia are confronted by the Islamic threat. A militant Islam seeks to destroy liberal democracy and replace it with an Islamic state. Terrorist cells are already active in Australia. The enemy is behind the higly protective borders, living amongst us, unseen and invisisble. They must be rooted out .

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after the corruption

I have refrained in commenting on the disaster that is ASTIC.

But I concur with this article. The corruption is too great. It is time for Clarke and Robinson to pack their bags and return to private life. They have done enough damage.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:46 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 28, 2003

in trust we place our faith

Social capital has been picked up by the neo-liberals in recognition that civil society exists and the market is not everything. And it is being deployed as a way of fostering social cohesion and community obligation to pick up the pieces from the fall out of economic reform.

In today's Weekend Australian there is an article entitled, 'Costello puts his faith in trust', by Dennis Shanahan & Megan Saunders. (no link, June 28-29, 2003, p. 4) The article is a report of a speech given by The Treasurer to an Anglicare lunch in Sydney. It is the Treasurer speaking on wider issues in an attempt to broaden his political appeal.

It addresses the role of charities with the windback of the welfare state under a neo-liberal mode of governance, and people falling through the large holes in the welfare safety net. Not that the Treasurer would have put it that way, of course.

So what does Costello say? He makes a big point upfront.

"Trust is a very important feature in our society. Trust is part of the social capital that our society relies on. Trust is hard won but easily lost".

He illustrates the claim with recent events involving the Churches. These have been strong moral critcs of the Howard Government's policies, but did not get too worked up about the moral failure of some of their priests inside the church. Costello then says:

"This suspicion that the institution of the Church may have been easier on itself than it was on others is corrosive of trust. I don't know if the moral failures we are now aware of are recent developments. But I do know that in an information society very little can now be hidden."

After suggesting that big government and charities corrode trust by being inefficient, Costello turns to the hole in the saftey net and the role of the volunteer sector vis-a-vis the state. He says that the role of small government is only to supply income support for the jobless, homeless and disabled.

"...that income support provides insulation against poverty but it does not treat the cause of poverty. Let us take a visible example. A homeless man who is drug or alcohol dependent will probably be entitled to income support. Mostly it will be the disability pension. The pension should be enough to provide food and shelter. But it doesn't in his case because the money he receives is always spent on the wrong thing. And it always will be until you treat the cause of the poverty which is alcohol and drug dependence."

Governments cannot cure poverty or marriage breakdown. The role of the charity is to address the cause of poverty:

"...these agencies can make more immediate and individual contact with those in need. They are run by people of religious and moral conviction willing to share their values in support of treating underlying causes of poverty. But, in addition these agencies are also targeting the giver as well as the receiver. They want you."

Costello argues that this volunteering is a good thing because it fosters social capital in civil society (Costello does not use the word civil society). He says that:

"Involvement in a voluntary association or charity enriches the giver as well as the receiver. And in a complex web of relationships between givers, service providers and those in need, all are drawn together and benefit in different ways. This is social capital. Outside Government, people of like mind and common endeavour have come together for a common purpose... They are not relating now through the tax file number and the bank account. They are relating as people."

According to Costello one of the positives of limited government is that it allows the non-government associations to develop and prosper and deepen the social relationships in a community.

So it is social capital as embodied in the practices of volunteer groups, Meals on Wheels and Neighbourhood Watch, and not trust, that is Costello's key idea.

And the politics of social capital? It is that the welfare state can be wound back and the charities do what the neo-liberal state does not do. It tacitly recognizes that free markets do not ensure that the fruits of growth are equally distributed. hence we have the limitation of free markets, especially in the era of globalization. Instead of doign the social democratic number and calling for government interventions to ameliorate the negative effects of 'unbridled self-interest and laissez-faire policies', Costello turns to the charities.

But where are the charities going to get their money to provide the services for drug or alcohol dependency, the fallout from marriage breakdown or mental illness?We cannot trust the government to pay for these services because they are not doing it at the moment. They are too busy ensuring the security of prosperity, being fiscally responsibly and ensuring budget surpluses to please the international money market. Many who fall through the safety net----called service and support gaps--- become homeless, rely on food kitchens and often end up in prison.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:24 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

June 27, 2003

politics and aesthetics

In his post on aesthetics and politics James Russell pretty much follows the Two Blowhards in finding primarily political people (PPP) boring.

Michael over at Two Blowhards says:

"Temperamentally, though, I don't have a clue where the PPPs are coming from. I can't imagine a worse life or, generally, a worse set of people. Politics to me is, at best, an unfortunate necessity. We don't seem to be able to do without politics -- alas to that. But PPPs can't seem to stop scheming; they can't stop dreaming up ways to suck up to power, or imagining things they'd like to see government do."

And James says "I don't understand people like that either."

Passion Michael & James Passion. Just like artists and lovers. Tis not sucking up to power. It is being seduced by power just like people are seduced by sex.
Being commanders and legislators is a huge turn on.

James goes onto say:

"...frankly I'm puzzled by people for whom politics is a consuming interest (especially those actively involved in it at whatever level). What else do they do with their time? What other interests they have? What sports do they play? What music do they listen to? Do they read any books outisde of their political interests? I can't really conceive of a person whose interests are so narrow they don't go beyond politics."

Here politics is counterposed to politics. I could contest this separation by writing about the way aesthetics has a political dimension. But that is old hat. It is far more interesting to look at it the other way round. The way politics is informed by aesthetics.

Politics is aesthetics. Its all about appearance and stage managed performance. Ever watched the House of Representatives through the eyes of aesthetics? Its Grand Oratory for the cameras and journalists. They are performing in front of a mirror. Watch how they dress, organize their body, use their hands. Its aesthetics. Pure aesthetics. They see themselves as orators on a stage. They have studied it.

An enormous amount of effort goes into that. Noticed how Howard looks Presidential these days on television. It stands out because it is still being put together.

They----their image minders---have learned the tricks from Hitler, of course. Though they will never admit that it was Hitler who first put politics and aesthetics together. It goes by the name of advertising today. And big money is spent on it.

Just check out Triumph of the Will by having a look at some of these images. Politics and aesthetics are fused. Nothing in Australia comes close to that by either Liberal, Labor Democrats or Nationals. But they milk it unconsciously.

And goodness me, what was the Hillary and Bill Show of a few years back? Was it not politics as aesthetics dressed up as entertainment?

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some recent history

This is an interesting article.

The point Margaret Simons makes about the collapse of public debate into the culture wars is well known. The claim that sneering replaces debate is a counter to the upbeat claims of Tim Dunlop and philosophy.com about the public conversation in civil society being based on arguments. The reality is more in accord with this.

What is more interesting is the argument that the Hindmarsh Bridge Affair in Goolwa, south or Adelaide, marked the begining of the culture wars in Australia. Margaret Simons says:

"I think the Hindmarsh Island bridge affair remains one of the most important episodes of recent Australian history. But I also believe that until very recently, the publicly available narrative of what happened at Hindmarsh Island has been not evidence-based history, but myth. In fact, to use some words that are resonant in the culture wars at present, Hindmarsh Island has been about the fabrication of history.The Hindmarsh Island bridge affair was in many ways the beginning of today's culture wars."

On the surface the conflict was over a bridge to be built across the River Murray that linked Goolwa to Hindmarsh Island by the Chapmans. The bridge would replace the old ferry and so allow the expansion of the marinas and holiday houses on the island. That was in the early 1990s. Fairly reasonable to sort out in terms of ecologically sustainable development.

Yet a remote bridge a national issue. Why?

The debates over development and planning became entangled with protecting the sacred sites of the local indigenous people under the Aboriginal Heritage Act 1988 (S.A.). Sacredness and development were opposed to each other. The Ngarrindjeri women claimed to be the custodians of secret women’s business concerning the creation and renewal of life for which the island had traditionally been used. They took their case to the High Court.

The affair, which involved respecting the traditions of others, reached into the political centre of the nation. Both Labour and Liberal Governments in SA were involved, as well as the federal Labor and Coalition governments.

It turned nasty with civil litigation being used to counter public protest. These SLAPPS have had the effect of suppressing public debate.

And so we had the culture wars

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ASIO Bill

In the coming months we are going to hear lots of spin about the obstructionism of an undemocratic Senate and defences of executive dominance. It will be justified in the name of strong government that has been given a mandate from the people. You can hear the hacks waiting for the government's media releases to start rolling off the fax machines.

As the opposition to the Government's media bill indicated Howard's only effective opposition is in the Senate. As Geoff Kitney says:

"It is only the Senate that stands in the way of the translation into legislation of his [Howard's] remarkable political ascendancy."

The Senate frustrates Howard because it circumscribes executive dominance.

Is circumsribes obstructionism? No. Consider the ASIO bill. Personally I thought this bill was way over the top in curtailing the civil liberties of Australian citizens to protect their freedom. It is the Australian example of what The Vancouver Scrum (June 25, scroll down) say is:

"...the excesses of anti-terror laws enacted in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 -- a time when too many people were willing to cede the State powers of search and surveillance that would ordinarily be considered unacceptable."

The ALP has slipped further in my estimation. But that is by and by since that is not the point of this post.

The point is take a look at what the Senate did in the light of the claim of Senate obstructionism.

Here is George Williams. He says that:

"... in its final form, the bill reflects the bipartisan recommendations of two key parliamentary inquiries. It also contains numerous amendments from the 15 months of debate in what has been one of the most intensive exercises of parliamentary scrutiny seen in Australia."

Williams goes on to say that:

"The original bill was one of the worst introduced into the federal parliament. The amendments made by all parties have made a significant difference...as a product of parliamentary compromise, it is a remarkable achievement. It is also a powerful example of the need to retain the Senate as an effective house of review."

Rightly said.

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June 26, 2003

Senate does its job

So the Senate stood firm last night on Senator Harradine's amendment to Alston's Media Bill. In doing so they blocked the formation of two giant newspaper/television groups in Australia.

I missed the debate. I was at a seminar on urban renewal and development.

The Hansard record is here,( June 25, scroll down to p. 12175) Senator Bob Brown reads Paul Keating's witty and acerbic reply to Eric Beecher into Hansard after Crkey.com reported that the Sydney Morning Herald refuses to publish it. (p.12178).

The Senate rejected the Howard's Government's Media Bill because they judged that this legislation would have permitted a Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Packer snatch and grab that would give them overwhelmingly control of Australia's media. The Senate did so by voting in favour of Senator Harradine's amendment.

As Margo Kingston puts it that amendment:

"...was simple. No proprietor would be permitted to own a television station and a newspaper in a mainland capital city. Without that amendment, Rupert Murdoch could have bought a television network, adding to his dominance of our print media. Kerry Packer could have added Fairfax to his Nine Network. These men are the wealthiest, most powerful and most feared men in Australian life. Their power is so great that successive Prime Ministers have sought to curry favour with one or both of them in the hope that with their help they can retain government. It is very rare for either main party to reject their demands."

Why stand against Packer and Murdoch? Harradine states the case:

"...my position is not a secret. My entire approach to this issue has been guided by the importance of media diversity: preserving independent sources of news and information to meet community needs. The media is essential to the operation of democracy. Without a range of opinions through TV, radio, newspapers and other sources, it is hard to make an informed judgement about what is happening in government. An equitable system of media regulation would enhance the diversity of news services, ensuring that the market is more open so that new providers can provide other voices."

Harradine puts his finger on the issue:

"I can't accept that letting the big players make large cross-media purchases to form a combined newspaper and TV group is in the interests of the general public. It might be in the interests of media groups - but it's not in the interests of the broader community."

The tone of the debate was heated. Alston never addressed the issue raised by Harradine's amendment even though Alston has had it on his desk since March. He engaged in political polemic. All 4 Independent Senators stood firm. (p.1287)

So much for the Senate being a feather duster in relation to executive dominance or to the big media corporations standing behind the executive.

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more of the same

This article on the privatisation of Testra locates this policy in the need to continue the ongoing process of economic reforms that started in the 1980s.

Those reforms (deregulation, privatisation, minimal government, user pays, more competition, tax reform) have been a form of technocratic re-engineering to secure the maximium possible penetration of market mechanism in social life.

Henry Ergas says that:

"Telstra's full privatisation is therefore a key step towards completing the micro-economic reforms which have contributed so much to Australia's prosperity."

Australia's prosperity? Presumably Henry means an increase in GDP. But that increase has resulted in an unequal distributon of income that has been experience by the middle class a hollowing out and relative decline in their quality of life.

I cannot see how a fully privatised Telstra would invest the billions need to bring high speed broadband to regional and rural Australia. The Howard Government is only talking in terms of ensuring that $200 million is spend to improve phone access. Form a coporate perspective large investment in rural Australia is a loss making enterprise. High speed broadband for regional and rural Australia only makes sense in terms of the public good. It does not make sense in terms of increasing shareholder wealth.

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June 25, 2003

Senate Debate

I'm currently watching the Senate debate on media ownership. (Broadcasting Services Amendment [Media Ownership] Bill 2002). I also watched some of the earlier debate late last night over localism.

Currently, the Senate is going through the amendments to the Bill line by line.
It is hard to follow what is going on. We have amendments to the amendment, then withithdrawal of the amendment to the amendment, and then replaced it with another amendment to the amendment. And so on.

The ALP ---ie. Senator Sue McKay ---- is being negative. Their line is that it is flawed legislation. We will not support it. We will not support the amendments. But we reserve our right to change our strategy. They are not part of the debate. McKay reads her lines with humor.

The ALP position can be found here and here. The summary of Lindsay Tanner's speech states:

"In conclusion, this bill is bad for our democracy, it is bad for competition and it is bad for public debate. It will lead to the number of big media organisations in this country shrinking to three. I think that is almost certain. Ultimately, it may lead to a situation, if the government is able to privatise Telstra, where we have two totally dominant media organisations in this country. It is fundamental to the health of our democracy, to the strength of our public debate, to having informed public opinion and to ensuring that all citizens have the possibility of getting an airing to their views and to their interests that we have a diverse media ownership in this country. This government is restricting that. It is seeking to undermine it. It is simply seeking to fulfil pre-election promises that it made to a few of the major media proprietors. There is no evidence whatsoever that this legislation will have a significant positive impact in any regard other than on the share price of some of the major media companies. But it will lead to an outrageous concentration of power in our society in media ownership and a substantial reduction in diversity of media ownership and ultimately a substantial degradation of our democracy. I call on all senators from the minor parties to join Labor in defeating this bill when it hits the Senate."

The oppositional work on the floor is being done by Senators Shayne Murphy, Bob Brown, Meg Lees, Len Harris and John Cherry. No Senator Harradine.

Annable Crabb from The Age (no link) calls it the "maddening Dance of the Four Veils around the shaken and traumatised form of Communications Minister Richard Alston."

The tenor of the debate is one of trench warfare. Detail after detail is being fought over as if the whole world (public importance) depends on that detail. Senator Alston has little choice but to give ground---as little as possible though. This is hardly piling the pressure on the Senate to make them buckle under the strong will of a dominant executive. It is Alston on the back foot with his back to the wall fighting a hand to hand combat.

No media headlines there. What is a Canberra Press Gallery journalist going to do?

The debate has stopped. The Senate has moved onto matters of speeches on masters of public interest (MPI) then into the party political atmosphere of Question Time performances that are designed to make the headlines of the media.

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Return of the self-same

So the sale of Telstra is back on the agenda with lots of regional sweetners.

If you look back over Senator Alston's telecommunications policies you come to a quick conclusion. That Alston's polcies have created, and ensured, market dominance for Telstra. All the talk about competition was a con job. What has been created by Alson is a national telco infrastructure monopoly, and a Telco that routinely uses its market power to gain leverage and shut out its competitors.

Is not Foxtel a monopoly pay TV company?

And with downloads on ADSl limited to 1.5b it is not possible to use these network for video-based services. That effectively protects the Foxtel network inb which Telstra has an interest.

How is that good for consumers? It makes you suspect all the recent talk about freeing the media industry of its anchronistic regulatory shackles (ie., foreign and crossmedia ownership) to ensure greater competition in the media industry. The way the Howard Government does things is that it talks about competition---allowing the smaller media players to grow--- but it entrenches the oligopoly of Packer and Murdoch.

Here is a judgement on Senator's Alston's policies.

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user pays?

This cuts the ground from under the feet of the right to an education advocates. Tim Watts says:

"Australian taxpayers subsidised more than 70 per cent of the cost of my tertiary education.Even though I'm now out earning more than $60,000 a year, I will never pay back a cent of the cost of my tertiary education. My HECS fees were paid upfront and so I got a substantial additional discount from the Government... feel taxpayers basically paid me to get an elite education that is not universally available."

Middle class welfare is an acccurate description. So if you shift to a greater private contribution for degrees that lead to wealth creation, then how do you ensure greater access and equity for those who do not have the money to buy their degrees up front?

Loan schemes? Scholarships?

What we have is more in the way of ongoing economic reform that has been going since the 1980s. This economic reform that has been experienced as the dull compulsion of the market that reduces our quality of life. The economy booms, GDP is up, the corporations make more money and the wealthy are doing fine. Many, however, have suffered and they are angry.

That quarter century of economic reform, which put the market before social needs, is creating a different kind of world to the one we once knew. It is one where we are less dependent on governments and states, and more dependent on markets, prices and money. Consequently, we worry more, are more stressed and are more anxious about jobs and employment, even as work cuts ever more deeply into the texture of daily lives.

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June 24, 2003

Harradine's feather duster

I see that the Senate is doing its job with the Howard Government's proposed media reforms to increase the power of the big media.

The 4 Independent Senators are now making life difficult for Senator Alston. It looks as if Senator Harradine has found a way to allow for a lot of movement from the cross-media ownership point whilst preventing the big consolidation of the ownership of existing services. And he has done in such a way to gain support from the other Senators.

Its a good power play, don't you think? Scratching democracy where it itches. Very Socratic.

Margo Kingston doesn't seem to agree. She is almost in mourning at a sell out.

I also see that the media policy experts are speaking up. Jock Given's diagnosis of the outcome of the Alston's proposed legislation is good, but he has only disdain for the Senate, seeing it as little more than a feather duster.

I suspect that the feather duster Harradine once hung across his door to signify his insignificance after the GST has been taken down.

Will the old fox continue the noble tradition of going for long walks in the parliamentary gardens surrounded by a bevy of cameras, and meeting all media inquiries with quixotic replies and sphinx like smiles?

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Foreign policy: Realists v Idealists

This may help with the spluttering debate about Australia's foreign policy.You need to scroll down the right side of the page to the Symposium on Advancing the National Interest and then to 'Looking for Theory in Australian Foreign Policy' by Rawdon Dalrymple.

His main thesis is that:

"Differences between the conservative Coalition and Labor sides on foreign policy up to 1983 corresponded broadly to the differences in international relations (IR) theory between ‘realism’ and ‘idealism’."

On the conservative side politicans, such as Menzies:

"...understood international relations as a matter of interests and power. Australia had a small population and little direct power, so it needed to attach itself to ‘great and powerful friends’. This accords generally with ‘classical’ realism as enunciated by Morgenthau (1948), Carr (1939), and others. Australian conservatives distrusted — indeed privately rather scorned — the moralism and legalism of international idealism."

On the Labor side politicians such as Whitlam:

"....stressed Australia’s independent role in the world under his government, his attachment to the United Nations and to the peaceful resolution of conflict, to détente, and so on. His own agenda was broadly idealist and multilateralist.... Whitlam had reoriented Australian policy towards the moral and legal principles that had such easy currency in the United Nations."

What the article argues is that the conflict between the conservative and Labor sides of Australian politics embody two contrasting views of how Australian foreign policy should be shaped. These views are derived from two contrasting philosophies of how nation states do and should operate:

"On one hand is the theory that there are universal moral imperatives and laws of nations that all nations should follow to produce and maintain peace and progress. On the other there is the theory that interests will always compete in the international system and that strong states will always seek supremacy so that they can advance their interests. On this view, the only way to achieve stability is by maintaining a balance of power so that no one state or group of states is tempted to seek to advance its interests by imposing its will on others by force or the threat of force."

It makes sense to me. Howard remains firmly in the realist mould, a Menzies conservative in foreign policy. He also accepts Huntington's idea of a clash of civilisations as an account of Australia’s place in the world. This places Australia on US/UK side of the fault line in the world’s geopolitics. It places increasing emphasis on alliance with ‘great and powerful friends’ at a time of rising global uncertainty and insecurity from international terrorism.

The ALP cotinues to work within the idealist mould as it push us towards increasing efforts to strengthen multilateral mechanisms for underpinning security — the United Nations and arrangements with our Asian neighbours.

Public opinion accepts the realist account of the workings of international relations but considers the UN to be a counterbalance to US hegemony.

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June 23, 2003

media ownership and digital democracy

It is pretty clear that Senator Alston's proposed deregulatory reforms are in favour of the big media owners (Murdoch and Packer). The Bill is the Broadcast Services Amendment (Media Ownership) Bill 2002. The explanatory notes are here. The background briefing on media ownership in Australia can be found here. Second Reading speeches in the House of Representatives can be found here

It appears that this proposed deregulation is along similar lines to what is happening in the US, where the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided to relax limits on how media companies can merge and grow. That recent decision allowed individual companies to own television stations reaching nearly half the nation's viewers and combinations of newspapers and broadcast stations in the same city. It would appear that the Coalition is opposed to cross media ownership, has a lack of concern with alternatives regimes of regulation and is indifferent to long-term policy solutions. It is all about a quick fix.

And the opposition of Oz webloggers Ken Parish and Tim Dunlop and Senators John Cherry and Brian Harradine to Senator Alston's Media Ownership Bill is to block further deregulation to prevent the further concentration of media ownership in Australia.

What they rightly fear is this dystopian scenario. One company can own a town's local newspaper, TV and radio station. National TV networks can merge their news operations. There is no limit to the size of these media giants. In such a world we will only get one version of the news. Issues that matter can be more easily buried or distorted, and differing viewpoints will not be heard. Hence the defence and protection of localism, diversity and competition in the media.

Of course above scenario is a hypothethical----it is 'a what if'. Though it would never happen across the nation, it does highlight the importance of diversity of media for the healthy functioning of liberal democracy. A diversity of media allows a diversity of voices who can raise a diversity issues that matter to citizens in public. So diversity is a good thing for democracy. The lack of diversity means complacency as Scott Wickstein points out about Adelaide. Despite the new media diversity is lessening, and the cross media ownership rules are all that stand in the way of further media concentration.

The problem that I have with the Parish/Dunlop/Cherry/Harradine position is that it's basically a defence of the mid-1980s Hawke/Keating position. The status quo means that we end up with a de facto defence of hegemony of the old big corporate media regime of free-to-air television and newspapers. Better that than what would come next is the response. However, the defense is too negative. What needs to be asked is: 'What public interest is being served by the current laws?' Like their opponents no alternative regimes are considered and there is no long-term media policy.

We need to look broader because the deregulation of foreign ownership and cross media ownership restrictions is being made at a time of transition from the older media of TV and newspapers to the emerging broadband landscape. Julian Thomas observes that since the mid-1980s:

"...there has been the emergence of a whole new generation of cross-media interests outside the scope of the current rules. Considerable cross-ownership now exists both within new media and between new and old media....The stronger objection to the cross-media rules is that they do not extend to media forms that have emerged since 1987, such as subscription television, and they do not take account of the convergence of telecommunications, broadcasting and the Internet. This is true, and needs to be addressed through some changes to the existing system. So what should replace the cross-media rules, and when?"

There does seem to be a block to the emergence of new players that we could have had with the advent of digital TV and broadband. So why not shift to also thinking about democracy in terms of the newly forming digital landscape?

The Centre for Digital Democracy says that a democratic media policy is one that advocates for the following:

"...dozens of noncommercial, interactive digital cable and satellite channels for each community and the nation; there should be resources available to help harness the creative and civic vitality of nonprofits and others online; and education and community economic development should be in the foreground--not a mere afterthought--in building out digital networks."

This shift to a digital democracy strikes me as the positive way to go. It requires rethinking what we mean by diversity in the media and how to achieve it to ensure the public interest is meet. That requires new modes of new systems of regulatory governance to ensure both increased competition and greater diversity of media content and ownership.

Update

Here's a libertarian suggestion about what to do from Jack Robertson. Jack says:

"I fully support the removal of all media ownership controls in Australia, with the codicils that all defamation laws should also be scrapped and ABC funding significantly increased, the new levels being legislatively 'entrenched' in some way....I say open the floodgates. Let's all tough it out in the ideas marketplace. And may the global information meritocracy prevail."

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cross-media ownership restrictions

This judgement by Eric Beecher from Text Media and The Reader is a good one. He says that:

"The curtain is coming down on Australia's era of cross-media ownership restrictions. Whether it happens this time around or within a few years, there is a sense of inevitability that the current laws limiting ownership of more than one media segment in a major market will disappear. Result: Australia's large media companies will get larger, and ownership of the country's media assets will fall into fewer hands."

This is probably what will happen, given that Senator Alston is basically fashioning broadcasting policy to fit in with the convenience of the media owners. Ken Parish helpfully spells out the way the concentration of ownership may worrk to the advantage of the owners. It is a process of:

"Packer buying Fairfax and Murdoch buying the Seven Network, thereby both controlling a newspaper and TV station (though not a radio station) in each capital city. Of course, Packer would only have newspapers in Sydney and Melbourne to start with, although there'd be nothing to prevent him from muscling into other markets as well (and Murdoch probably wouldn't try to stop him as long as they could carve it up between themselves). If that isn't a duopoly I don't know what you'd call it."

Thats the description of the concentration of media capital resulting from Senator Alston's deregulatory reforms. What then is the significance of the media duopoly for us?

Beecher says that that the 'opponents of these changes fear that greater media concentration will provide fewer media "voices" and therefore reduce the vibrancy of our democracy.' That has been the response of Ken Parish and Tim Dunlop. The appear to stand with Senator Brian Harradine in opposing any move by Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch to own television and newspaper assets in the same city.

Why keep the status quo?The standard answer is given by John Cherry of the Australian Democrats. This draws attention to the "importance of diversity of viewpoints in Australian media. Diversity, and fairness and accuracy in news reporting, is essential for our democracy to be effective and viable."

We can quibble with Cherry's account. Why news reporting rather than commentary?D on't we have enough news reporting? We need more interpretation of news reporting that spells out the significance of what is happening--as Ken Parish did-in his post -- and more policy work that spells out those alternatives or possibilities to the media duopoly that would enhance the functioning of liberal democracy.

What sort of diversity do we need? Is it reasonable to develop a diversity index as Cherry suggests? Is "editorial separation", (that is, the maintenance of separate newsrooms in the television station and the newspaper) a good idea? What about Cherry' suggestion of taking this further by requiring not just editorially separate newsrooms, but also that editorial control of one of the newsrooms be separated from the owner? Should we place a greater emphasis on digital technology than free-toair-televsion? Digital technology now makes it possible for Australia to have an a largere number of TV channels; an abundance of broadband websites; and the focused development of new public interest and educational services in communities across Australia? Should we be thinking in terms of digital democracy?

Eric Beecher then questions the democracy argument. He says that it:

"...is fine in theory, but the practical problem with that argument is that most of the media in Australia are not what you would describe as media with a political "voice". Commercial television, popular magazines and most commercial radio simply don't register on the Richter scale of political influence. How could they: they mainly run entertainment and music."

Beecher says that 'Media "influence" resides mainly in newspapers, on pages like this one. [Sydney Morning Herald]. That overlooks the crucial role played by John Laws and Alan Jones on talkback radio. Beecher's argument also overlooks the cultural diversity and the national identity argument and does not address the politics of culture (eg. the white picket fence

Beecher equates the media's political influence as the media being serious political propaganda tools. He then says:

"If you think that could happen, you misunderstand the reality of commercial TV, which is that it's a business based on ratings. In any case, as Australia's major media owners are all public companies, their overwhelming raison d'etre is financial success, not political influence."

Hardly. Political influence is less about propaganda and more about the shaping the political agenda so that the journalists, commentators and politicians working with the enframing of the issue. For example the consider the way law and order enframes the homeless as potential criminals.

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June 22, 2003

Miranda's folly

I see that Miranda Devine is keeping the culture wars going by having a go at the left. She can hear the gnashing of teeth from the diehard anti-war, anti-Howard brigade across the nation as they watch the victory parades in Sydney as the troops returned home from Iraq. Miranda sees the left sulking in dark corners as the sun shone, the crowds cheered, the troops were grinned, Australian flags were waved, General Peter Cosgrove was a smile on legs and John Howard was mobbed by well-wishers.

She gives the impression that the left are underground, living in shadows and inhabiting rank places. She forgets to mention whether the left still have tattered copies of Dostevoesky's Notes from the Underground in their back pocket.

A little bit of history is needed here. It is best that it comes from the English voice of Emmanuel Goldstein over at Airstrip One He says that the lack of weapons of mass destruction is not the point:

"The point was that Saddam was no threat to us which would have been the case whether or not we find WMDs. At the moment all we need is for them to find a barrel of anthrax somewhere (not even Iraqi anthrax) and suddenly Blair is off the hook. The case against the WMD argument was proved when the Americans took Baghdad without a whiff of mustard gas, if he wasn't going to use them to save his regime he was never going to use them against us."

So much for the history.

Now for the present---the modernising project of the US in Afghanistan. The nation building is not going too well in Afghanistan. The Taliban and al Qai'idea have not been eradicted. They are gathering strength in the mountains, launching guerilla attacks and killing internationals on the main highways. The money for reconstruction of the Afghan nation has not been forthcoming, nor the resources for security. An underfunded President Karzai is isolated in Kabul with the warlords running the provinces. One can ask: is the west walking away from Afghanistan? Is it case of shoot them, wreck the country, then leave them? Is this a case of Western betrayal?

And the current chaos in Iraq? Well Miranda writes about the Iraqi's learning to get used to their freedom. She gives the impression, following George Bush, that they just getting to used to the freedom. They make mistakes because freedom has gone to their heads but things will settle down. But it appears the chaos that this is the freedom of a gang of robbers, given the systematic looting and sabotage. As Debkra File says:

"Oil installations are far more dilapidated than thought, constant prey to organized sabotage and criminal looting. Oil wells and pumping stations have been repeatedly damaged at both the northern and southern oil fields – and not only by diehard pro-Saddam guerrillas. Local tribal interests seeking a stake in the oil industry are behind some of the gangs of saboteurs, and looters make off with replacement parts as soon as they are installed.

Plagued most often by the lawlessness are the giant southern field of Rumeila and the Baiji refinery in the north. KBR, a subsidiary of the Texan Haliburton, which is under contract to help US army engineers repair and restore Iraqi oil production, has doubled its costs in one month to $184 million. The months estimated for the project stretch out as the damage continues. "

The chaos is also being caused by a systematic resistance to what is increasingly seen as an American occupation of Iraq.

And so the culture wars continue.

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June 21, 2003

Iraqi fallout

Things are hotting up in Iran. Instability beckons as the students take to the streets and aremet with repression.

American Conservatives, such as Michael Ledeen, can smell revolution in the air. He can smell the tell-tale odors coming from the undergarments of the doomed leaders, and sense a wavering of will, a growing pattern of panicky response from the conservative clerics in power. And Mark Steyn sees Czechoslovakia 1989 taking shape. Tim Blair concurs. Trash the Mullahs he says.

A less romantic account can be found here and here.

What has been happening recently is that the security forces and supporters of Iran's conservative leadership have clashed with large crowds in the capital Tehran who were protesting against clerical rule. The demonstrators have largely been students. This makes a difference to the standard fare of an Iran as an'axis of evil' state fighting the US as the 'Great Satan'. You can see the difference in these pro-American voices of protesting Iranian students fighting for freedom.

And the Iraqi fallout can be seen in Australia in the recent raids on Iranians living here. They belong to the People's Mujahideen or Mujahidin-e-Khalq, which is an effective propaganda voice outside Iran and mounts minor military operations from Iraq. It has negligible support among Iranians inside the country because it allied itself with Saddam Hussein's Baghdad, and it is seen by many as ideologically less desirable than even the current Islamic system.

The freedom of the Iranian Australians belonging to the People's Mujahideen must be constrained to placate the repressive Iranian regime. They are defined by the National Security State as terrorists.

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Media Ownership: shooting from the hip

I read this by Ken Parish on the proposed changes in the bill on media ownership that has just come before the Senate.

Ken is in a bit of an irritable mood these days. He says:

"I wonder when the lefties are going to wake up and start focusing on this vital issue instead of carrying on with an interminable and largely pointless carping monologue about Iraq and WMD."

(The Iraq stuff is about accountability Ken, and the making sure the Senate does its job as a countervailing power to a dominant executive. Democracy Ken democracy.)

Well, I've been keeping a bit of an eye on this media business myself because it also has to do with democracy. Tim Blair, of course, only sees the media only in terms of the market not democracy. Tim Dunlop rightly picks him up on it. But he reads the negotiations around Alston's legislation as bad news with only The Sphinx standing firm. This article in the Sydney Morning Herald by Geoff Kitney seems to be what Ken and Tim are working off. Farifax is runnning hard on the issue.

However, I thought that Ken's post was over the top. Mind you, I have another bout of the flu, so I'm not seeing things straight and my mind goes blank every now and again. So Ken's post could be just the public mask worn by Ken --you know stirring things up etc. by being outrageous. But then again it is a text that has its own autonomy irrespective of the author. The author's intentions are irrelevent. Its the text that matters.

So what does the text say? The key issue in the media ownership debate is nailed by Ken:

'...this should not be seen as a left-right issue. Freedom of speech and diversity of viewpoint are core liberal-democratic values irrespective of one's views on social democracy versus "market forces"'.

Well said. It is somemthing that those reductionists who assume that Australia is just the free market, then write about society and politics in liberal democracy, are blind to. They have no conception of civil society or deliberative democracy.

It was this paragraph in Ken's text that struck me:

"Communications Minister Richard Alston is on the verge of clinching a deal with the 4 Independent Senators which would see the effective abolition of Australia's current foreign and cross-media ownership laws, albeit with some minor concessions to the Independents which sound on their face to be almost meaningless."

Almost meaningless? Let us turn to a journalist who keeps a close on the political happenings in Canberra, is respected by the politicians, works hard and is in daily contact with the independents. That's Michelle Grattan. Not the headline of her text---Alston's media dream hits Senate reality. That is a very different interpretation to Ken's.

Michelle says about the substance of the demands made by the quartet of Indepndent Senators:

"The Government has already agreed to insert stronger local news content rules for regional TV broadcasters, and to extend to all markets a prohibition on owning a TV licence, a radio licence and a newspaper in one market. Under discussion is a demand for a specific amendment to ensure no one newspaper proprietor can have more than one metropolitan paper in one capital city."

Now that means something in Adelaide. It means that Channel 7 10 and 9 must have local news content rather than running news out of Melbourne with one regional story for local colouring. Giving our federal democracy a hand I would have thought.

And the extension of the prohibition bit ensures regional diversity in places like Eyre Peninsula, the Riverland or Mt Gambier. Regionalism is important in a globalised world---as Ken well knows being in Darwin.

And the specific amendment to ensure no one newspaper proprietor can have more than one metropolitan paper in one capital city? Well Ken, that means that in one newspaper towns, such as Adelaide, there is a future protection for a second newspaper starting up. As you accurately observe:

"The cost of media technology and the ability of large media proprietors to achieve economies of scale by leveraging content across a wide range of media formats mean that this is an industry with huge entry barriers and therefore extremely susceptible to monopoly (or duopoly) control."

So why do all the hard yards only to have Murdockh come and gobble you up? That little amendment prevents Murdoch from taking over the startups once they are up and running. It actually fosters competition and protects cmedia diversity.

In the light of these diversity considerations that foster regional democracy Ken's judgement, that:

"Scrapping of the existing rules would almost certainly mean that all electronic and print media would rapidly become completely dominated by just 2 major players: Packer and Murdoch"

is too one sided an interpretation. Ken's text implies that the Senate is buckling under the demands of a dominant executive to "deregulate media ownership almost completely," rather than using its power to enhance media diversity.

And that is not all. Ken's a'lmost meaningless' remark is misleading in relation to the ABC. Ken rightly says:

"In this context, the ongoing campaign to abolish or "gut" the ABC by the Tories and their pundit and blogosphere apologists takes on a particularly sinister tone. This situation exposes the neo-liberal "invisible hand" of the market mantra for the pernicious nonsense it is."

So what are the quartet of Independent Senators doing? Lets turn to Michelle Grattan who says that some of what Senator Lees wants for the ABC must stick in the Alston craw.

'She insists the national broadcaster has to get more money. "If Alston won't deal on the ABC, there'll be no deal," Lees said. "If the minister is not prepared to acknowledge the need for extra ABC funding we won't be proceeding."

She wants not only the extension of ABC news radio's coverage from about 70 per cent to more than 90 per cent of the country - which Alston is thought likely to give - but also extra funding so the ABC can restart its transmission from Townsville, where its station is mothballed, and can restore and extend its digital multichannelling, in particular resurrecting ABC Kids and Fly TV.'

Sounds like trying to defend the public broadcaster to me. That doesn't strike me as "almost meaningless."

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At last

It has taken a long time to be said. And it should have been said before the war not way after it was finished.

What is it? It is this.

"AUSTRALIA went into Iraq because of its alliance with the US, not because of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and not to liberate its people."

(I will quibble about 'went into'. It should be 'invade'.)

That was said by Paul Kelly. It is to his credit that he said it, and then backs it up with this:

"The reason the US went to war was to destroy Hussein's regime and to remake the Middle East. Iraq's WMD capability was a lesser factor and a rationale used to win world opinion to the cause."

(Kelly doesn't say why the US needed to remake the Middle East. Why isn't this sort of stuff put on the table).

The WMD capability was a rationale, says Kelly, because "the UN would never sanction a war for the sole aim of regime change" or we can add, for the US to remake the Middle East for its own geopolitical reasons. So they hunted around for rationales that would be persuasive to shift public opinion. It is in the 'hunting around' that the problem lies. Two levels of discourse exist: a secret inner government circle one and a simplistic public one.

Democracy dies behind closed doors.

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June 20, 2003

speaking plainly

This article by Edward Said about the US Road Map for the Middle East takes us beyond the good (Israel) versus the bad (Palestine) duality in the media. The words in this discourse are freighted with meaning that needed to be decoded for outsiders and a lot of political action is about sending messages that things will not change much

Said's text makes for sobering reading and it dashes any sense of easy optimism. For instance, I knew about the security wall being built by Israel, but Said's description whams home a reality that is rarely mentioned in the media.

"Another chilling omission from the road map is the gigantic 'separation wall' now being built in the West Bank by Israel: 347 kilometres of concrete running north to south, of which 120 have already been erected. It is eight metres high and two metres thick; its cost is put at $1.6 million per kilometre. The wall does not simply divide Israel from a putative Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 borders: it actually takes in new tracts of Palestinian land, sometimes five or six kilometres at a stretch. It is surrounded by trenches, electric wire and moats; there are watchtowers at regular intervals.

Almost a decade after the end of South African apartheid, this ghastly racist wall is going up with scarcely a peep from the majority of Israelis, or from their American allies who, whether they like it or not, are going to pay for most of it. The 40,000 Palestinian inhabitants of the town of Qalqilya live on one side of the wall, the land they farm and actually live off is on the other. It is estimated that when the wall is finished - presumably as the US, Israel and the Palestinians argue about procedure for months on end - almost 300,000 Palestinians will be separated from their land. The road map is silent about this, as it is about Sharon's recent approval of a wall on the eastern side of the West Bank, which will, if built, reduce the amount of Palestinian territory available for Bush's dream state to roughly 40 per cent of the area. That's what Sharon has had in mind all along."

Said argues that the Road Map is a plan of pacification ratheer than a plan of peace of two states living side by side. Here is the argument.

"The road map, in fact, is not a plan for peace so much as a plan for pacification: it is about putting an end to Palestine as a problem. Hence the repetition of the term 'performance' in the document's wooden prose - in other words, the way Palestinians are expected to behave. No violence, no protest, more democracy, better leaders and institutions - all this based on the notion that the underlying problem has been the ferocity of Palestinian resistance, rather than the occupation that has given rise to it.

Nothing comparable is expected of Israel except that the small settlements I spoke of earlier, known as 'illegal outposts' (an entirely new classification which suggests that some Israeli implantations on Palestinian land are legal), must be given up and, yes, the major settlements 'frozen', but certainly not removed or dismantled. Not a word is said about what, since 1948, and then again since 1967, Palestinians have endured at the hands of Israel and the US. Nothing about the de-development of the Palestinian economy. The house demolitions, the uprooting of trees, the prisoners (at least 5000 of them), the policy of targeted assassinations, the closures since 1993, the wholesale ruin of the infrastructure, the incredible number of deaths and maimings - all that and more passes without a word."

If any conservatives have this far and are muttering about lefty bias, then here is a treat: a debunking of Edward Said.

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lying or exaggeration?

Christopher Sheil over at Troppoarmadillo makes the following statement.

"Those pursuing WMD-Gate without making much headway would be well to remember that unquestioning support for the Howard government’s decision to involve Australia in the Iraq invasion is psychologically and emotionally compulsory for many ... as is support for much else that government of whatever persuasion does in this country."

In other words Christoper Sheil is saying drop it. You are hitting your head against a brick wall. The neo-conservative Howard has public opinion locked in. There is little point in launching a political attack on the Howard Government because Australians are happy with the outcome of the war. It was a good thing to do because the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein was bad.

But what does havign public opinion 'locked in' mean?

Consider this article by Robert Kagan from the Washington Post downloaded into The Age. Kagan says:

"There is something surreal about the charges that George Bush lied when he claimed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Yes, the Bush Administration may have - repeat, may have - exaggerated the extent of knowledge about what Saddam had in his WMD arsenal. But the critics' real aim is to prove that, as a New York Times reporter recently put it, "the failure so far to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq may mean that there never were any in the first place".

There is justification for 'the Bush lied claim' as can be seen in this interview with Noam Chomsky. He says the Bush administration gave contradictory responses, that then implies you should not believe a word they and implies that they are lying.

Let's dump the lie claim. I'll repeat that. Bush, Howard and Blair did not lie. Why not? I concur with Ted Hinchman over at diachronic agency on this. Being contradictory does not mean we should dismiss them as lying. We live contradictions daily and when we see them in our friends we do not dismiss them. We try to interpret the contradictions so as to make sense of them. This is what we should be doing with the Bushies.

But these guys sure exaggerated. We can dump Kagan's 'may have' bit. He's being precious and coy. Why dump it? Because exageration in politics implies spin. Spin is standard operating procedure in politics. We see it, distrust it, and try to counter it. Spin is another name for rhetoric---finding ways to persuade public opinion to support the war by appealing to their emotions. These leaders and publcists thought the WMD would do the trick--- it would get the fear working over time and shift public opinion over to their side of the debate. Lets calling it playing the Hobbes card.

It didn't work. So these leaders turned to another basic notion trust, which as Tim Dunlop points out, is the key virtue in a democracy that connects governors and governed. Trust is better than Christopher Sheil's faith and belief as the fundamental relation to make sense Christopher's experience of the relationship between governors and governed.

Trust goes something like this. In a liberal democracy the people give their representatives power freely with consent and without coercion. And in accepting that power, public office holders take on a special, and kind of responsibility based on trust. The people say to the public office holders that you wield that power within boundaries set by certain principles. We will trust you with that power if you act in according to these or guidlines about what is acceptable or unacceptable, admirable or contemptible, right or wrong.

This appeal to the trust card----we are liberating the Iraqi people from oppression----worked a treat. It locked public opinion in, and ensured that a neo-conservative government would retain power. And the rhetorical exaggerations?

Ted Hinchman says that "their [Bush, Blair, Howard] strategy was perfectly intelligible and no worse than the 'spin' that we're all entirely used to and know how to interpret." Well yes. But. The Bush regime pursued realpolitik to ensure that US strategic interests in the Middle East were protected. And it did so without regard to moral or legal constraints--eg., the pre-emptive strike, the right is might and the hostility to the UN constraints on the use of US power. This realpolitik was wrapped up in the appearance of conforming to moral and legal norms. Blair and Howard tagged along for realpolitik reasons.

So why call Bush & Co out on the rhetorical game? Because they abused this trust by not addressing the antiiwar arguments, not engaging in public debate mocking the critics by calling them appeasers and supporters of oppression. By doing this they were breaking the ethos of the guidlines about what is acceptable or unacceptable in the exercise of power. So they should be made accountable for the breach of the trust in the court of public reason.

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June 19, 2003

More myths in the culture wars

Here is another example of the distortions being deployed by right wing journalists in public debate. It is Greg Sheridan this time. The distortion is fast becoming a standard line. It is being recycled with a straight face. However, you would think that they would lift their game to avoid being seen as mediocre, shallow or a joke. Or maybe the crude distortion is a tactic of spitting in the eye of the educated public.

Sheridan makes a general point about the (presumably Australian) left as an ideological movement:

"...the construction of certain defining myths that determine the orthodox interpretation of key events is a critical task....In this way the Left, which normally loses the election, can win the symbols. This process has the incidental result of making our history perpetually disgruntled, as actions overwhelmingly approved at the time are later interpreted as dishonourable."

Well, yes. Culture is important. It is about making sense of something through interpreting various historical events from our particular situated perspectives. History is contested.

Sheridan then illustrates his symbol claim with the war on Iraq:

"In the aftermath of the Iraq war, we can see this process unfolding. Our troops performed magnificently in a just cause, liberating 25 million people from a murderous dictator, ending his program of weapons of mass destruction and enhancing our prestige.

But that's not going to be the commentariat's orthodoxy. Two myths are being constructed. One is that Saddam Hussein never had weapons of mass destruction. The other is that our participation in the war damaged our standing in Asia."

Take a moment to read that again. Therein lies the distortion. The left is saying that Saddam Hussein never had weapons of mass destruction. Goodness me. This is beyond shallow and mediocre. What we have is a figment of Sheridan's feverish imagination.

The left (who is this monolith?) never denied that the Iraqi regime possessed weapons of mass destruction. That is a straw dog created by Sheridan. The various voices on the left pretty much supported the UN and accepted the judgements of Hans Blix. Blix maintained that the Iraqi regime had maintained an active chemical and biological weapons program up to 1998 (when the UN inspectors left Iraq); and that it probably continued it thereafter. We can add that the WMD's are probably in Syria.

Having created his straw dog Sheridan then proceeds to destroy it with much gusto. So it is Greg who is creating the myths rather than engaging in public debate.

Now notice the reason Greg gives for invading Iraq. It was a just cause as it was about liberating 25 million people from a murderous dictator. But the neo-cons threw out the just war theory, and the Howard Government only used the liberation argument after the war began. It gave them a moral omph and it played better in the persuasion of public opinion stakes. But it was a post war justification for going to war. See John Howard's Speech to the National Club.

Sheridan's strategy marks a failure to engage with what is being said: that the evidence publicly presented about the existence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction did not justify going to war. Iraq was not the imminent threat that it was made out to be. The prime reason for going to war were geo-political considerations, which were not laid out before the public. As Hugh White says:

"my unease.... arises from the fact that all the talk of WMDs was anyway much less central to the coalition's reasons for invading Iraq than they made out at the time. It was evident a year ago that Iraq's WMDs were at most a secondary reason for regime change in Iraq. So was the destruction of Saddam's admittedly dreadful dictatorship. America's primary reason was much more ambitious: to turn Iraq into an American strategic asset, and a starting point for the democratisation of the Arab and Islamic worlds."

And Australia and Britain tagged along as good allies doing what they needed to do to remain the good friends of America.

So why cannot a journalist like Sheridan put these reasons on the table? Why does he engage in cover up and deceit instead of openly discussing the geopolitical considerations? Why does he not address the accountibility issue of the executive misusing the intelligence information on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? This is hardly whingeing as Catallaxy Files suggests. It is, as the editorial in Australian Financial Review(subscription required, 19 6 2003, p.62) suggests, allowing Parliament to play its proper role of making the executive properly accountable to the Parliament. That is a suitable role for the Senate---acting as a counterweight to a powerful executuive government.

By not addressing these issues Greg is not participating in a rhetorically informed debate as is Huge White, who provides good reasons for why Howard used the arguments he did. He thought they were the best ones to persuade public opinion and probably thought they had some truth content. But persuasion was the name of the game, and Howard has a track record of pulling the wool of people's eyes when it suits him. (eg., the Tampa affair).

Sheridan, in contrast to White, is engaged in mass deception whilst pretending to be informed and knowledgeable. The commitment to the professional standards of journalism--objectivity and truth-- has been tossed overboard by this warrior in the culture wars. This journalist sees himself as engaged in a battle in the culture wars that has to be won.

Sheridan's text is also a poor use of rhetoric, which is form of effective writing that aims to persuade readers to adopt a point of view. Sheridan's understanding of rhetoric is that it is a form of deception. Deception at this level is not an effective way to persuade public opinion. Hence it is probably spitting in the eye of the educated public reader. If not, then it is simply spinning for the Coalition.

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June 18, 2003

a dash of cold water

If we forget the inquiries into Iraq WMD issue in the US, UK and Australia for a moment, then we can remember that the revised neocon script was that "we" were fighting Iraq to liberate an oppressed people; to introduce democracy and freedom into Iraq; and to democratize the Middle East.

This was the realist neocons at their most utopian, and many in Australia were seduced by the capitivating vision of we did it for democracy. They desired to be part of the neocon moment.

So here's a dash of cold water. And we should throw it on ourselves. For the core of the neocon discourse is really the old Cold War one recycled. Just substitute Islam for communism and move to go. The script reads. The enemy is Islam. Its an eternal black and white struggle. All those who resist an evil Islam are the good guys. Well, you know the rest. We can all sing it together. The chorus from Iraq goes: lets subvert democracy to curb populist Islam.

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the poverty of journalism

This piece by Charles Krauthammer, from The Washington Post, is pretty bad piece of work. It is a section of a text that has been downloaded into The Australian from the column's full text in The Washington Post.

Krauthammer starts by acknowledging the problem and then rejects the criticism:

"The inability to find the weapons (in Iraq) is indeed troubling, but only because it means that the weapons remain unaccounted for and might be in the wrong hands. The idea that our inability to thus far find the weapons proves that the threat was phony and hyped is simply false."

He then spells out that it was widely accepted that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons (no nuclear) then concludes:

"The weapons-hyping charge is . . . a way for opponents of the war – deeply embarrassed by the mass graves, torture chambers and grotesque palaces discovered after the war – to change the subject and relieve themselves
of the shame of having opposed the liberation of 25 million people."

This is revisionism. It fails to address the issue of threat posed to the national security of the US, the UK and Australia by Iraq's WMD. We went to war because containment did not work, and we could not wait for the UN inspectors to do their work due to the threat being serious and imminent. It was the imminency of the threat to national security that was the key. But this is what is being glossed over.

The critics are not saying that the threat was phony. The threat was "hyped" to the extent that it was not supported by the evidence about the capacity of Iraqi delivery systems to deliver WMD or about the substantive links to Al Quaida.

Saying that the Iraqi regime had WMD's (that was agreed by all) does not establish the seriousness or the imminency of the threat to the national security of the above three nation-states. The issue is that it appears clear that it that Saddam Hussein's regime did not represent a 'clear and serious threat' to the national security of the US, the UK or Australia. To say otherwise without the evidence to back it up is to engage in deception.

William Shawcross is outraged by this line of criticism. He too neatly dodges the imminent threat issue. But at least he has the honesty to address the geopolitical situation in the Middle East by connecting the war with Iraq to the defence of Israel. But no mention of empire.

Krauthammer's text is threadbare. It is using journalism as a sledgehammer. By publishing it The Australian undercuts its own creditabilty. Polemics replaces journalism. The Australian is doing what it did during the war: refusing to engage with the arguments of its opponents.

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June 17, 2003

The ALP & policy formation

in his recent leadership campaign against the challege launched by the socially conservative Kim Beazley, the embattled Simon Crean argued that he stands for policy not poll-driven marketing.

What policies asks Ken Parish? Well, Crean kept on mentioning the River Murray amongst others (eg., Medicare) when he appeared on television.

Ken Parish claims that the policy of returning 1500 gigalitres to a dying River Murray is half-baked without giving any reasons. (Ken's weblog seems to going downmarket and reinventing itself in a more tabloid style.) Contrary to Ken's judgement this commitment to returning to 1500 is good policy. It is fully within the perameters of the Living Murray project of the Murray-Darling Basin Commission and clearly distinquishes the ALP from a Coalition Government straitjacketed by the irrigators and the National Party. Crean is to be applauded fro breaking new policy ground. Ross Gitten's piece, which was all about the ALP adopting courageous policies, does not even mention the River Murray. Typical economist blindspot.

However, this environmental policy is little more than a skeleton of a policy. A commitment. Nothing more. As Tim Colebatch accurately observes:

"Crean's commitment to return 1500 gigalitres of water a year to the Murray-Darling system.... is only a first step. Where would the water come from? If it comes from irrigators, who would pay the bill to compensate them and restructure irrigation areas so that uneconomic uses give way to sustainable farming? The bill will be huge; Labor cannot dodge that issue."

The ALP is dodging the issue. The water will have to come from irrigators in the Goulbourn and Murrumbidge valleys of the Murray-Darling Basin and compensation (around $1.5billion) will need to be paid. There is a credibility problem because the ALP is in favour of big tax cuts-----reducing bracket creep. It says that money for this policy initiative will be funded by reallocating priorities, not by increasing tax (eg., an environmental levy) How so? What is going to be cut? These would be significant cuts. There are no details.

How is the ALP going to ensure a sustainable agriculture? That is the long-term solution, and it will require more than letting the market rule through water trading. How will a federal Labor Government bring the Labor States into line to ensure their reasonable use of water (s.100 of the Constitution) within their territory?

It is a bit thin. A small target that ducks and weaves in the prevailing wind. Small policies that bear no relationship to an overall vision of a better kind of Australia. This an ALP that wants to get its hands on the levers of power without offending anyone. As Gitten's says:

"Labor is selling two propositions: the Liberals aren't putting enough money into government services and they're making you pay too much tax. So it wants to portray itself as the party of bigger government and the party of lower taxation. Which makes it the Magic Pudding Party."

Gittens is spot on. As John Quiggin observes "a serious policy program could make a big impact."

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The deck chair reshuffles

I found it hard to get enthused about the leadership turmoil in the federal ALP over the last week. It made no sense to me in terms of public policy (both contestants agreed on the little policy of the ALP that does exist). So the conflict must have had lots to do with the Byzantine factional politics that constitute the current ALP.

The best that can be said for the deck chair reshuffles is that it was an exercise in democracy. Caucus actually got to have a vote on its leadership a vote for once.

That is a giant step forward for the ALP.

The worst that can be said for the reshuffle attempt is that it amounts to self-destructive bloodletting by a political party that is party is divided, confused and pessimistic. The first step in renewal since 1996? Is that what all the stuff about policy ideas means? Renewal? It is difficult not to agree with the conservative CapitalR.org.

"None of these internal battles will change the public's perception of the ALP - regardless of who is leader. Crean was right about one point during this campaign - elections are not a beauty contest. They are all about policy - and the perceptions of policy.Crean may be announcing policy - but the perception still exists that they are a policy-free zone."

The ALP gets media attention for its leadership squabbles not for its policies. Howard controls the public policy agenda. So maybe the pathway forward to a policy-driven 21st century ALP is more bloodletting? Maybe the deck chair shuffles was about to showing the colours and seeking to tie up the votes of the uncommitted and the waverers. As Norman Abjorensenit argues, this is phase one of the battle. This phase is essentially a softening up process and generally favours the incumbent.

"Like an advancing army, however, it establishes a beachhead and stakes out ground behind the lines. It marks the end of the phony war and from that point on it is for keeps."

The anti-Crean forces are still there.

The personal aspect of Crean on Australian Story last night showed someone who was not a whinger or an attack dog. The program that Crean's background was a member of the professional governing class in Australia. It presented a different Crean---a warm, engaging personality who was relaxed with people, interested in people, caring about his family and loyal to his staff. But, as Tim Colebatch argues, despite being 25 years in public life Crean does not have a public persona that incorporates those human qualities. The publci persona is crucial: it is what we judge the politician one in a media focused politics. Howard, in contrast, has crafted a very successful persona.

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critics are complainers

Street kids are becoming more prevalent, and they are part of the growing population of homeless people. Their existence is now a blight on the caring ethos of Adelaide as a city child of the Enlightenment.

This article by Leanne Craig spells out the failure of state governance. There is no money being given to increase the support (social worker) staff for kids at risk in dysfunctional families. The Department concerned (ie., the Family and Youth Services of the Human Services) was underfunded for years by the Olsen Liberal Government. No extra money for FAYS was provided by the Rann Government in its recent budget. It did spend money on child protection including

"...$8.3 million for increased subsidies for foster parents, $8.3 million to provide alternatives to foster care and other child support, $12 million for early intervention programs to support families at risk and $8 million to employ an extra 29 school counsellors. But, most critically, no additional staff for FAYS."

The result? Leanne Craig reports that:

"FAYS staff agreed yesterday to a series of work bans on administrative work, including no young offender reports, no court subpoenas, no responses to ministerial or MP requests or processing of FOI requests."

The work bans are supported by the Public Service Association. It says that an extra 200 social workers, legal officers and psychologists are needed in Family and Youth Services to overcome a "crisis".

The response by the Kevin Foley, the Treasurer, was to head kick. He said that e would not meet union demands by increasing FAYS staff next financial year and he accused the PSA of trying to bolster its membership.Then, he continued the union bashing by adding:

"Let's be serious, the PSA are the cheersquad of complainers when it comes to governments."

So much for political criticism in a state that goes on and on about its Enlightenment heritage. So much for a Labor Government that is always referring back to the social democratic vision of Don Dunstan as the light on the hill.

I keep on looking for that light. I cannot see it. All I hear is making money and pleasing the money men.

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June 16, 2003

and so it goes on

I have refrained from mentioning the Road Map in the Middle East for the last two weeks. My fears were right. As soon as the Aqaba summit was over, violence erupted on both the Palestinian and Israel side. The turn to violence---- suicide bombing by Hamas and targeted assassinations by the Israeli army--- was an attempt to derail the peace process. For a contrary view see Israellycool

What we have is a cycle in which self-defense becomes self-destruction.

Arafat would not have welcomed being sidelined at the Aqaba conference. He will fight back to regain control of the Palestinan government and security organization. And Hamas has yet to be bought into the peace process.

Despite the level of violence and promises of more to come the warring parties have restarted talks and attempts are being made to broker a deal that would see the removal of Israeli troops from the northern Gaza Strip and their replacement with Palestinian security forces.

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Accountability

This is good news indeed. The Howard Government has managed to dodge the accountability issue in Australia over its reasons for going to war with Iraq. And the Senate has not pushed the issue even though the latest leads continue to be dead ends. It now looks as if the initial step for making the Howard Government accountable for deceiving Australian citizens will be taken by the foreign affairs select committee inquiry of the British Parliament.

As Robert Manne says the viability of democracy depends on us trying "to discover an explanation for the deception and the true causes of what has occurred."

However, Manne is confusing. The issue of deception is not about the existence of the biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction per se. Israel possesses weapons of mass destruction but no one talked about invading Israel. And it is highly likely that Iraq's WMD are in the hands of Syria.

The issue is about the significance of the threat these weapons posed to Australia's national interest that justified invading a sovereign nation state. That is where Australian citizens were mislead. And they are continuing to be misled
by sping about have discovered the weapons of mass destruction. The accountability issue, as Tim Dunlop says, is one where the emperor has no clothes. Now the Howard Government is passing the buck by saying that they relied on US And UK intellegence--ie., that they were led astray?

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June 15, 2003

just a few remnants?

When you read newspaper reports like this or editorials like this they suggest that the US is engaged in mopping up operations in Iraq. The war has been won and the rebuilding has begun. True, there is a bit of law and order involved in cleaning up a few troublemakers left over from the creaky old dictatorship of Saddam Hussein. That mopping up of the remnants of the old regime won't take too long. Things are well in hand with the good guys on top of things.

Then you read this about Afghanistan and Iraq and begin to wonder. How much of all this quick pacification mop up is spin? What is going on is indicated here: the anti-American resistance forces that have been bedeviling US troops north of Baghdad are being organized by Syria. Syria is also deeply involved in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict sending a steady stream of fighters, funds, weapons and explosives to the Palestinian areas of the West Bank controlled by Yasser Arafat.

Then you read US op.eds like this from Robert Kagan about the weapons of mass destruction issue and you begin to wonder about the mindset of these journalists. The issue is not that the failure so far to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq means that there never were any in the first place. The weapons existed. The issues is about the imminent threat posed by Iraq to the US< the UK and Australia. The threat was so imminent that this coalition had to invade Iraq immediately, and not wait for the UN inspectors to do their job. The latter option would take too long.

Was the threat imminent? That's the issue. Conspiracy theories have nothing to do with it. They are a red herring; an attempt to deflect attention away from accountability issues within the US, UK and Australia.

What is not mentioned in all of this is the long-term geopolitical considerations that are signified by empire. This refers to ambitious US agenda for sweeping regime change and improvement in the volatile Persian Gulf and Middle East and the United States’ elevation to kingpin of these regions in control of its oil resources. At the same time the US is undertaking a similar objective in Central Asia and the Caucasus to build a strong overarching bridge linking the Middle East to the Indian subcontinent and China.

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The new CSIRO

I had an old copy of The Age (Friday June 6 2003) on the floor near my desk. Glancing through it I noticed (p.8) that CSIRO has lost money from investment ($75m) in the collapse of the Australian Magnesium Corp (AMC) proposed magnesium smelter at Stanwell in Queensland. That collapse meant that CSIRO has also missed out on much needed potential revenue.

The CSIRO is no longer engaged in conducting good public research. It is well on the way to becoming a technoscience corporation that makes money from stragetic investments in its flagships programs. In the new CSIRO science is the motor of economic development and the flagship programs are research startups that make a profit by linking their research to commercial applications. Hence we have CSIRO investing in magnesium smelters.

Update

Despite the collapse of the AMC magnesium smelter it appears that Magnesium International's magnesium smelter at Port Pirie in SA (the SAMAG plant) is going ahead with government backing and without CSIRO. You never hear anything about the environmental implications of the SAMAG plant though. Just lots of stuff like this

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A long time coming

The environmental as a political issue keeps bubbling along. It is hotting up in South Australia with the recently annnounced water restrictions for the city, and the cuts to irrigator's allocations due to low River Murray flows.

Of course, restrictions is not the full story in water politics. SA Water is out in the Clare Valley and the Barossa trying to sell more water through pushing increased irrigated agriculture. Whilst SA Water is in charge of the minor water restrictions in the city, it is actively promoting water development under the guise of piping water to country towns in the Clare Valley.

The pipeline will go ahead under the guise of that old chestnut "drought proofing" the region. Mark Brindal, the Minister of Water Resources in the former Olsen Liberal Government, is not happy about this. He has stated that he supported the supply scheme when he was water resources minister. But he has said that he had not been told by SA Water that unused water allocations would be taken up by the scheme. He said that he believed the extra water would be bought on the open market to supply the scheme. His judgement is that:

"This is a sacrifice of the environment for profits. SA Water [is engaged in]clever sophistry [when it argues that] the water was part of its unused allocation. It still means that more water is being taken out of the river. I support the scheme but not at the expense of the river."

SA Water's John Ringham continues to defend the scheme by saying that it would also supply filtered water to townships without a regular supply.That township water is the cover for pushing future water development from SA Water's unused water allocation, which is allowed to remain in the river as environmental flows at present.So The SA government is taking environmental flows from the River Murray to increase irrigated agriculture at a time when it is pushing for increased environmental flows for the River Murray on the national stage.

This indicates that SA may have water restrictions due to drought and low rainfall, but there is no policy move to sustainability. Sustainability is a no no for the Rann Government. It relies on the profits made by SA Water through selling water to bloster its bottom line, produce a surplus and so keep the international credit ratings agencies onside. It is all about economics not sustainability.

Sustainability as a policy goal will be a long time coming in SA even though the iconic redgums are on death row from the lack of flood plain water (eg. Chowilla) due to irrigators taking nearly all the water. Though we know the history of water dreaming state governments still do not act to shift the policy compass to sustainability.

Maybe they are taking their advice from Alan Moran from the Institute of Public Affairs who thinks that all this sustainability stuff is way overrated.

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June 14, 2003

So much for competition

This is depressing.

"The cosy, and now profitable, duopoly of Telstra and Optus is on the verge of being restored. But at a staggering cost.

In an implosion of wealth that dwarfs the $2 billion collapse of One.Tel for sheer greed and incompetence, billions of dollars have been spent on new telecoms networks that will never be used and thousands of jobs have been sacrificed to, quite literally, pipe dreams to break open the increasingly comfortable Telstra-Optus nexus."

Years of competition, lots of wastage and it reproduces a duopoly. And that is that can be said for deregulation? No wonder economists have difficulty with offering a plausible definition of rationality, or even wimp out. What is rational about what has happened in the telco industry? It can hardly be called utility-maximising behaviour. Can it be even be called the intelligent pursuit of self-interest by economic agents? Rationality implies the systematic use of reason (ie., the disciplined use of reasoning and reasoned scrutiny). What we have is debt-ladened, underfunded companies with few customers, duplicated networks that will never be used and merchants banks that have made multi-millions from fees from helping to create a frenzy of ditch digging and cable laying.

If it is judged that there is rationality embodied in thedestructive processes of the telco market (creative destruction?), then this is a rationality that is stripped, or dissociated, from human conduct in civil society. It is a rationality that is disconnected from from value and ethics (other than the value of economic self-interest). What the individual telco (X) values is chosen entirely according to their self-interest, and it (x) only sees other telcoes insofar as they hinder or facilitate X's self-interest. The Telco industry is a good illustration of the consequences of this.

This not a use of reason to promote a better kind of society.

Now the same is being done with water. You can see the early results here.

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June 13, 2003

question mark over wine industry

This is a publicity blurb. But we can read between the lines if we adopt the perspective of the cultural critic over at junk for code speaking as a wine consumer looking for wine with a clean and green image.

The key point is the threat of salinity to viticulture. The new technology will:

"...enable more effective irrigation management and will assist in halting the billion dollar losses in land and crops resulting from salinity across Australia...The rapid growth in Australia's wine industry, which is based on dramatic export growth in recent years, has seen a significant expansion in the irrigated vineyard area of Southern Australia. The long-term viability of many of these regions is threatened by rising water tables and salinity....The ability to effectively manage irrigation and salinity will ensure long-term economic and environmental sustainable in the wine industry and enable further expansion, in line with export growth."

So they can keep pouring River Murray water into closed valley systems to irrigate new vineyards and monitor the rising salinity levels. Managing the salinity levels through technology provides a way to avoid changing their current irrigation practices and move away from shifting to becoming high quality dry grain viticulturalists as a long term strategy.

Technology will save the day. It shows that the wine industry is environmentally friendly. The development-orientated politicians who are interest in small government and cost cutting can relax. The promise is a big one. With

"...the salinity probe it will be possible to implement a national monitoring system. The benefits to commercial irrigators will be improvements in crop management and risk management. The network will provide government authorities the ability to monitor water tables and salinity in hand with water infrastructure. This will enable an integrated management system at a substantially reduced cost than current alternatives and, in some instances, reduce the need for the major capital expenditure on remediation schemes."

A broader perspective to the technological one can be found here. It is one more concerned with long-term strategic issues of generating wealth whilst protecting and improving the environment.

The on-the-ground reality is that the poor handling of environmental issues by the wine industry will become the most serious potential impediment to its exports in the next decade. The scenario is this: Australian wines are rejected by overseas buyers (eg., Sainsburys and Tescos) because of their unsustainable practices that harm the catchment and the product. That scenario means that the clean and green image has gone.

The scenario means that the Australian wine industry can only survive if it can justify its clean and green image. If it does not, then it risks losing its export market share on environmental grounds.

Update

These remarks by Philip White, the noted Adelaide-based wine critic, on the future of the wine industry reinforce, and supplement, the above arguments: He says:

"Winemakers tend to blame the cotton and rice growers for salinity, particularly in the Murray, but their record here is really bad. The aquifers of McLaren Vale, Polish Valley, Padthaway, Langhorne Creek, to an increasing degree, the Barossa Valley and even Coonawarra is [sic] not healthy, they are all very badly damaged by winemaking."

And:

"In the last 30 years we had a really good opportunity to be the world's best dry grain viticulturists, instead of that we chose to be the world's best irrigators, and we have ridiculous figures where you know, it's up to a 1000 tonnes of water to make one tonne of cheap cask wine which is sold for less than the price of bottled water. That is not sustainable and if I was a shareholder from whichever country, I'd be very, very concerned about the future of that business."

There is a question mark over the industry.

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That white picket fence

Public opinion has taken some flack for suggesting that John Howard's social conservatism is constructed around the image of the white picket fence. That imagery from the 1988 Future Directions document does not accord with lived political reality thunder the emails. Nobody is living in the suburban 1950s, with a working dad, a stay-at home mum and two children, thunder others.

According to this article by Dennis Shanahan Howard retains the imagery of the suburban white fence and just modifies it. Instead of a working dad, a stay-at home mum we have a lower middle class dad (a policeman working full time) and his wife working as a casual sales assistant for around 10 hours per week).

Why hang onto the white picket fence in a globalized world? As Shanahan suggests the white picket fence signifies an imagery of security in an insecure world that embodies specific suburban values. It is Howard's modern equivalent of Robert Menzies' forgotten people and is tacitly counterpoised to the trendy, full time highly-paid, tertiary-educated professionals living in their town house in the inner city. Those to whom Howard's use of the imagery of the white picket fence appeals are aspiring (they want to climb up the ladder), they believe in equity and choice, hard work in being responsible for themselves and in community.

But they live in a globalised world of rapid change. They fear having their hours cut and not being able to keep up with the mortgage repayments. The do not feel too comfortable and relaxed because they are too busy trying to stay afloat in a deregulated economy and educating their kids. They fear falling down the ladder, given the job losses, cost cutting and the shift to casual employment with no paid sick leave, holiday or redundancy pay. What is called wage flexibility means insecurity in a market economy.

The image of the clean white picket fence is where society meets the market economy. This suburbia is a world away from the city and its holes in the welfare net, homelessness and emergency social services provided by the church charities. It's resonance is premised on an urban/suburban divide.

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June 12, 2003

says it all

I could not agree more. This rightly fingers the press.

Sections of the media have allowed themselves to become conduits for government spin. The journalists are either on the drip feed or they are content to recycle media releases. Either way they become publicity agents for particular politicians. The feeding is all carefully planned and organized.

And as the article says:

"Their market-driven editors are complicit, ready to hype what is often little more than tendentious hearsay in order to present front-page scoops."

Its shows how far some journalists have gone dumped their responsibilities to democracy.

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the mask of naivety

I haven't read much of the work of Pamela Bone, an associate editor of The Age. For some reason they never caught my eye. But this piece needs a response. Pamela Bone says:

"Thomas L. Friedman is right. The humanitarian reason was the one on which the war coalition should have relied. Indeed, in not relying on it they probably underestimated their publics. Many people who initially opposed the war simply did not know the extent of the atrocities carried out by Saddam's regime. Now, as the stories of torture and disappearances are told, as the graves of thousands of executed Iraqi people are found, everyone does know."

The humanitiarian reason for invasion wasn't the reason for the US invasion because the primary reason was, and still is, about global power: US power in the Middle East. It is global power that is now being expressed in terms of empire.

And the left did not take the high moral ground. Some sections of the left, including public opinion, took the position that that Australia had no geo-political reason for invading Iraq. The grounds or reason for this position was that the repressive dictatorship in Irag (however bad) represented no threat to Australia's national interest. So there was no reason to invade the country. Australia did so to pay a premium on an insurance policy--- for future US backing for Australia's pre-emptive action in its own region.

Check this piece out by Peter Cosgrove, wgho is in charge of Australia's defence forces. Cosgrove's text talks the language of national interest and so highlights the humanitiarian mask that is so lightly worn by our federal politicians.

That national interest argument was never really addressed, nor even engaged with. And it is still not addressed by Pamela Bone. It is as if geo-political national interest concerns are too grubby to address.

update

This article, which tackles Thomas Friedman is courtesy of Glenn. It is by Martin Shields who says:

"In a democracy, the informed consent of the people depends upon citizens' free access to the truth. If Friedman is right that the administration's weapons of mass destruction "imminent threat" was primarily a political cover story, then Americans were urged to make the most solemn of all judgments -- the decision to go to war -- primarily for reasons more synthetic than authentic. Now, after the fact, supporters of the pre-emptive war argue that it is OK if even for demonstrably wrong reasons the United States did the "right" thing.

As the duplicity and deception of Vietnam and Watergate remind us, the credibility of an American leader is indeed perishable. A leader who misleads his countrymen reaps the whirlwind. The leader's punishment is the people's mistrust. Mistrust breeds cynicism; cynicism breeds alienation. That could harm the United States more gravely than any "unmanned aerial vehicles" from Baghdad."

This issue is what Pamela Bone misses.

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This needs to be said

If we are going to talk about reform to federal Parliament --ie reducing the power of the Senate--- so as to improve governance, then the question of reform to the House of Representatives needs to be raised. The House of Representatives is a traversity of democracy. It has allowed itself to be muzzled by the political parties and dominated by the executive.

Debate is a farce. There is little substantive questioning posed by the opposition (it doesn't matter who) and little in the way of serious responses to by the Government (it doesn't matter who). It is political theatre, a stage full of poseurs playing to their own side of politics for laughs with an eye to the camera and the Press Gallery. The political reality is that the House of Representives has been rendered powerless. It is in the Senate where the substantive questioning of the executive takes place.

So it is good to see the Canberra Press Gallery acting as watchdogs. Mike Steketee makes the following comment about the House of Representatives:

"So thoroughly have they debauched its role that, were it not for the requirements of the Constitution, we could close it down tomorrow and it would make no difference. Party discipline has become so tight that legislation never gets blocked in the house and seldom receives proper scrutiny. The house does not fulfil its role of holding the Government accountable, as is obvious from the farce that passes for question time.

Oppositions in Australia regularly complain about the decline of parliament. But their enthusiasm for reform just as routinely flags when they get into office because they are reluctant to relinquish the control the present situation gives them. The Howard Government went through the motions after the last election of considering parliamentary reform and the Opposition advanced a series of proposals, including an independent Speaker – which is one reason parliament in Britain functions so much better – time limits on answers and provision for supplementary questions. But nothing of substance has happened since."

Spot on.

The image of the House of Representatives on national television is either one of watching the regression of adults into schoolyard bullies abusing one another in the schoolyard---you did it; no I didn't; yes you did etc; or it is entertainment of a theatrical farce with a bitter message. Take your pick. Either way it means that the House of Representatives lacks political creditabilty as the heart of democracy.

So lets talk about reforming the House as well as the Senate. But that involves a shift to good governance and not the current point scoring of calling the Senate's review of legislation function as obstructionist; or calling the refoms to make the Senate into an arm of executive dominance enhancing the role of Parliament. A federal democracy involves the give and take since the Seante exists to review the actions, policies and legislation of the executive.

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June 11, 2003

misleading the nation into war.

This article by Paul Krugman in the New York Times says it simply and well. It is increasing looking as if citizens in the US, the UK and Australia were mislead about the reasons for going to war with Iraq. No smoking gun, no links between Iraq and Al Qaeda, no connection between Iraq and September 11. No threat.

President Bush may be continuing to talk in terms of absolutes but the selling of the war with Iraq by these governments was dishonest and they should be accountable for that dishonesty. What the Howard Government does is attack the public broadcaster for questioning its spin on its AM prgrams in an attempt to marginalise or displace dissent.

It is the job of the Senate to make the Howard Government accountable for its dishonesty.

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June 10, 2003

Reforming the Senate

I heard Senator Ferris on Radio National this morning over breakfast. She spoke as the Government Whip in the Senate and talked about an obstructionist Senate that was in need of reform to reduce its power. She defended the Prime Minister's proposal for a joint sitting of both houses to be held without the government having to go to an election as is the case now (double dissolution). She--a South Australian Senator--- did so by portraying the Senate as obstructionist by nature.

A joint sitting means the Government would have the numbers to get its legislation through. A double dissolution election---- the deadlock-breaking mechanism provided by the constitution---is electorally risky for the Coalition Government as it would likely increase the power of the Greens in the Senate at the expense of the ALP

I agree with Harry Evans, Clerk of the Senate, on John Howard's proposal to resolve deadlock over legislation between the House of Representatives and the Senate. Evans said it simply and well:

"Obviously this scheme [Howard's] would mean the Senate becoming a political rubber stamp for the policies of the government, as the House of Representatives is now."

In the Oz blogging world Ken Parish agrees as does Tim Dunlop and Alerion at Southerly Bluster (no permalinks).

As for the ALP, it cannot be trusted to defend the powers of the Senate. The ALP is not strong on federalism. They are primarily centralists who see the Senate as unrepresentative, undemocratic and obstructionist as more like a House of Lords when it is actually more like the US Senate. The ALP is committed to reducing the power of the Senate to ensure executive dominance in the name of changing our horse and buggy constitution. Witness the enthusiasm for the Howard plan by the NSW Labor Premier, Bob Carr who has no qualms about weakening the powers of the Senate to ensure the supremacy of the House of Representatives (and the executive.)

What we have here is an example of what the public philosopher at philosophy.com drew attention to in this post: that new forms of domination arise out of liberal democracy. Margo Kingston spots it calling it a neo-liberal, read corporatist model of power. This model is confirmed by the neo-liberal commentators. Alan Wood,as a free market liberal talks in terms of small government when he actually means executive dominance. Padraic P. McGuinness follows suit muttering about the irrationality of the Senate's left wing. The Australian thunders away on the same theme even manging to call the move to executive dominance a shift to small government whilst keeping a straight face. And Paul Kelly supports executive dominance as a solution to the "long-term governance obstacle in the nation's adaptation to globalisation."

The key constitutional problem, as Greg Craven pointed out is that:

"One of the greatest contemporary problems of Australia's constitutional system is that there are too few limits on government power.A popular prime minister with a supportive backbench is like an elephant in the jungle. What he likes, he takes, and what he dislikes, he stamps to death.One of the few restraints on such a prime minister is the Senate. The Senate is composed of an equal number of senators proportionately elected from each state, and it is not normally dominated by either of the major parties.

This means that in the Senate, the prime minister's word is not law. It is merely his idea of what the law should be. This is very frustrating for governments, and there is no doubt that the Senate contains its fair share of irritating dingbats. But in a democracy, a certain amount of irritation is good for a government's soul."

Scratching the body of democracy where it irritates is a good working model of Socratic criticism. It helps to keep the politicians honest.

A constitutional amendment is required to achieve the Howard proposal. It has no chance of passing 4 states. WA and SA would say no to the dominance by NSW and Victoria. The Sydney Morning Herald likes the idea of removing more checks and balances to the executive power to ensure NSW dominance over the nation.

So the reform is a political gambit by Howard to put pressure on the Senate. But underneath the gambit lurks the spectre of executive rule as a technical means to a functional end: shaping Australia to ensure that it fits the requirements of the global economic systems. You can hear the underground script in the background to Senator Ferris's words: emergency measures are required to preserve a liberal constitutional order in times of crisis. What is required is an all-powerful sovereign who must rescue our constitutional order from its constitutional mechanisms.

Update

Here is the voice of a Labor centralist who would like to muzzle the Senate and weaken federalism. None other than Gough Whitlam.

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June 9, 2003

shuffling away from the Reithian past

The traditional ethos of the ABC has been a paternalistic Reithian one. It was paternalistic, culturally conservative and suspicious of popular culture. The ABC, as a public broadcaster, was envisioned by the liberal state as an instrument to govern the unruly working class and achieve the social cohesion of the nation.

The paternal ethos was undermined from within by the current affairs ethos that criticised conservative politicians, a conservative political culture and its public policies of This Day Tonight. Commentary in an ironic mode, not objectivity, was the top priority of This Day Tonight and it was clearly linked to public education in a liberal democracy. This Day Tonight informed, educated and entertained citizens (the Reithian ethos) and it framed its media activities within the context of the public interest of liberal democracy. The ABC's AM program of today has its roots in the political journalism of the old ABC This Day Tonight (1967-78) program. The story selection of AM, like that of the ABC's 7.30 Report and Lateline, is closely connected to the daily news agenda and it involves both a fleshing out and an influencing of the news the next day.
This critical public service broadcasting ethos is quite different from that of commercial current affairs program, which selects stories on their intrinsic audience appeal and then constructs a story around them. These stories are infotainment dressed up in the form of public interest journalism (eg., the props of reporter, the two sides to every story, challenging interviews etc.) within the format of a current affairs program.

What we have buried within the accusations of bias of AM (ie., taking a point of view) is that public figures (primarily politicians) use the ABC's formal commitment to objectivity to hamstring commentary designed to make the politicians publicly accountable. The history of current affairs journalism from This Day Tonight to AM today has been one of ABC management needing to placate their political masters, who more often than not engage in direct political attack (eg., that of Senator Alston is just the latest episode). And a whole public relations industry (spin) has now been constructed to help governments negate the public influence of critical public affairs journalism. But the ABC has become more and more defensive and embattled with respect to its criticism of public figures and policies, rather than taking the full-frontal attack on by defending its capacity for critical commentary.

Given the audience success of infotainment and political analysis being limited to a 30 second grab on national news, substantive political debate is now seen as minority taste. But it is also the case that a genuinely critical form of current affairs is not in the interests of the ABC nor the corporate commercials; and so we have a retreat from away from the combative ethos of This Day Tonight and its democratic function. That democratic function is no longer seen as primary consideration in an increasingly deregulated media market. The discussion of ideas by the fourth estate in relation to democracy is now dismissed as the chattering of the left liberal elites.

The general point of view is now one of consumers, product, choice and user pays ----not the informed political discussions of the conservative politics that currently shape our lives. This reflects the push for a new level of commercial penetration, with a minimum of restriction on the free play of market forces based on the assumption that commercial competition is the surest guide to quality. The free market case is currently packaged as widening the consumer's choice, promoting diversity and initiative, and taking power from stuffy government bureaucrats and transferring it to the consumer.

Do we have a post-Reithian public broadcasting in Australia? Is public broadcasting worth defending? If so how can it be defended? It is being made by government ministers in Britain in terms of public broadcasting being a public good that cannot be supplied by market institutions alone.

Update

Some interesting remarks on media bias can be found Oxblog. David Adesnik, in addressing the impact on the audience of media bias, says:

"Until recently, scholars presumed that the average citizens was simply so prejudiced and closed-minded that he or she reached his opinions in the absence of information. With the aid of the online paradigm, however, one can understand how the average citizens forms opinions without devoting a tremendous amount of memory to political information storage."

We can add to this. Citizens start from their prejudices, form opinions from listening to the national conversation in the media then form their judgements about the players and the issues. The media, therefore, have a crucial role in keeping the public conversation going in a federal democracy.

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June 8, 2003

the pressure builds

The 'where are the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction?' issue continues to build as a political issue. For the UK see here, and here and here.

In the US the New York Times says:

"The urgent need to disarm Saddam Hussein was the primary reason invoked for going to war in March rather than waiting to see if weapons inspectors could bring Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs under control.It would still be premature to conclude that Iraq abandoned its efforts to manufacture and stockpile unconventional arms after the first Persian Gulf war in 1991. But after weeks of futile searching by American teams, it seems clear that Iraq was not bristling with horrific arms and that chemical and biological weapons were not readily available to frontline Iraqi forces."

True, this is a liberal newspaper and so it is hostile to the Bush administration. But US creditability is at stake. The NY Times again:

"The issue goes to the heart of American leadership. Mr. Bush's belief that the United States has the right to use force against nations that it believes may threaten American security is based on the assumption that Washington can make accurate judgments about how serious such a danger is. If the intelligence is wrong, or the government distorts it, the United States will squander its credibility. Even worse, it will lose the ability to rally the world, and the American people, to the defense of the country when real threats materialize."

That the creditibility of the US is at stake is denied here by Gary Schmitt, the executive director of the Project for the New American Century.

Cooking the intelligence is not an issue here in Australia. But it is in the region, given the way that Australia has identified itself as a part of the USA. John Howard gloses over the gap when he says:

"Australia must inevitably find its destiny with a series of partners and friends rather than one single relationship. And close though our relationship with the United States is, important though it is, based on the common values that it is, it is not the only relationship that Australia needs or will have for her economic future."

The Iraq problem is not a creditibility issue in domestic sense----in the sense of a hollowing out of trust between the governed and govenors----in Australia. But it may well be regionally. The scenario of Australia's common values with the US means that Australia has uncommon values with our near Asian neighbours. Uncommon means hostile in the sense of a clash of civilizations.

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June 7, 2003

a little fissure

One of the least remarked aspects of the Costello/Howard fallout by the Canberra Press Gallery is the differences between them suggested by Costello's deliberate use of 'tolerance.' Few have connected the liberal notion of a tolerant Australia to the conservative populism of the national security state as articulated by John Howard. That was encapsulated by a strong Australia. Some acknowledge that tolerance signifies Costello starting to sing his own song but they then more or less leave it at that.

In using this classic liberal word, Costello has marked a rupture with Howard's embrace of the old One Nation Party and Howard's exploitation of the fears and resentments of the One Nation electorate through an appeal to national belonging. Thus we have John Howard marketed as the traditional Anglo-Australian conservative with the white picket fence and the traditional family all drapped in the national flag.

Both Costello/Howard concur that Australia can only become prosperous through the free market, and that the state should be strong in terms of defending its borders and fighting international terrorism. But Costello's use of tolerance indicates a rupture with Howard's strong state defending the common cultural heritage against the non-white refugees desiring to become Australian citizens. A strong state protects its own Anglo-Australian culture from the aliens within and without in the name of Australia First. It says NO.

The conservative culture of the national security state is exclusionary and its strategy is to exploit the fears of the alien others now marked by Islam and Muslem. Some (cosmopolitan liberals) call it a xenophobic populism ie., the people against the elites, outsiders and scapegoats, with the nation defined in terms of ethnic nationalism. The 'We are all Australians' (Anzacs) populism is an appeal to Old Australia and its idea of assimilation, even if this appeal is also coupled to a strong dose of neo-liberalism and economic reform.

Costello's shift is a little fissure: a shift from ethnic to civic nationalism and thus to a more liberal nationalism. But tolerance is a big code word within the Liberal Party. It will have multiple meanings to those living within this culture. It will resonate with reconcilation and immigration issues.

From the outside looking in, tolerance stands for liberalism not conservatism; a way to achieve social cohesion within the national security state. It says that the way to an open, tolerant liberal society is through a civic nationalism. It holds things together to counteract the way market reform pulls things apart by creating winners and losers.

Update

So what does a tolerant liberal society mean apart from evoking warm fuzzy feelings? Try this:

"Well, according to him neo-conservatism asserts some people are better than others, while socialism asserts that everybody is the same. He says both are untrue because people do manifestly differ from one another, but those differences cannot be judged by anyone, so they must be tolerated if society is to exist at all. Thus, liberal tolerance is the only virtue that matters, perhaps the only virtue in existence...Liberal tolerance teaches that it is all right to disagree with the views or beliefs of another as long as you don't act on those beliefs to restrict the freedom of action and belief of others."

Liberal tolerance has its limits:

"....in the liberal version of tolerance you daren't disagree with their favourite causes or you're exorciated as a bigot, a fool, an exploiter of the poor, or a 'phobe' of some kind. That's exactly my point. Entertain a dissenting opinion, and you cross the limits of their fake tolerance on the spot."

So we wonder. What does Costello's appeal to tolerance stand for? Maybe we should question the the scope of tolerance. For instance, we should not be tolerate of those actions and beliefs that make people suffer through living damaged lives.

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a joke

This editorial in The Australian should be read as a joke. If it is not a joke then its revisionism with a macabre touch give the way The Australian supported the neo-con view that America's military force should use its power early and often to advance its own interests and values.

The editorial starts off well enough.

"WHERE are Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? It is a fair question – and one that this newspaper, in common with many people, both supporters and opponents of the war – would like answered. The Australian supported military action against Iraqi president Saddam Hussein because we believed he was a dangerous dictator, "addicted" as former UN chief arms inspector Richard Butler puts it, "to weapons of mass destruction......But given the vehemence with which the governments of the US and Britain assured us all of the horrors in Saddam's armoury, they must either produce evidence the weapons existed or explain why they cannot."

What has happened to the Howard Government? Did it not too assure The Australian? Or does The Australian mean to imply that the Howard Government was just a camp follower?

Is there not some revisionism here? The Australian acted as the media extension of the military machine through the war. They had no doubts then. Those who doubted were fools and idiots; anti-American appeasers who sided with an oppressive Iraqi regime.

They were acting to shape public opinion. Is there anything wrong with that? Consider the classic strategy propaganda for shaping public opinion so that it is favourable to war. The Government tells the public that they are under attack and then denounces the pacificist for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger.

Did not The Australian play its part in this campaign by stating that the threat posed by Saddam Hussein was linked to a the imminent attack by international terrorists using (unspecificed) weapons of mass destruction.

It is a classic strategy because you can just write communits for terrorist. The Australian acted to help frighten the electorate, and then it supported the national security state's line that there was no need to worry because a small but strong government would protect them.

Very little questioning on behalf of democracy there in the name of liberal values. Now consider this paragraph from the The Australian's editorial:

"But democracies are based on trust, and the governments of Britain, the US and Australia must demonstrate they had good reason to believe the intelligence reports circulated before the war. It is not a question of explaining why weapons of mass destruction have yet to be found, but of showing us that the three governments had compelling reasons to reasonably fear they existed before the shooting started."

None of the quality press beat the war drum more than The Australian did. It was loud.It was part of the war party. None denigrated the opponents of war with Iraq more than The Australian. They were mean in their distortions. None failed in their job of questioning the Howard Government's spin more than The Australian. They dumped their responsibility to democracy overboard. None refused to engage with the arguments of the critics of the Bush Administration more than The Australian. Their charges of appeaser welded like a sledgehammer acted to undermine the trust of the public sphere.

And now The Australian talks about trust and democracy and it implies that it is acting a watchdog defending democracy. Should not The Australian be looking at its own actions, considering the way it undermined democracy through cultivating an atmosphere of hostility, fear and suspicion.

Update

Here is an article that addresses how difficult it is for media organizations to admit they are wrong and to correct their mistakes. Most of the Australian media organizations deny they have a problem or that they are accountable to the public.

And Alexander Cockburn writes:

"Intelligence services invariably succumb in the face of political bullying. But it didn't matter that the CIA and DIA were cowed by the wild men in Rumsfeld's Department of Defense, who said Iraq was still bristling with WMDs. Any enterprising news editor could have found (and some did) plenty of solid evidence to support the claim that Saddam had destroyed his WMDs, that he had no alliance with Al Qaeda."

But they didn't at The Australian. Instead they, to paraphrase Cockburn, "delightedly hyped shoddy journalism that played a far greater role in the [Canberra] propaganda blitz than the bullying of the CIA and DIA." And they will not be called to account, nor will they apologize to public opinion. The Australian remains one of the hounds of war.

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a misguided boy

This guy has lost it. Mandela's life was devoted to making South Africa a more, free just and equal place. Rivkin has devoted his life to Rivkin. He celebrates the ethos of the market not that of the public good.

Evoking Mandela indicates that Rivkin has little understanding of life outside the horizons of the market.

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June 5, 2003

more than a photo-op?

What do you think this image says? It means that they will now confront the opposition to the road map within their own territories: Sharon confronts the settler movement and Abbas confronts the armed Palestinian militants.

But getting Sharon and Abbas together and then shaking hands has to be a feat in itself, given this. Does the Aqaba photo-op signify a little hope amidst the Israeli-Palestinian wars.

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Cracking the whip

One of the more interesting threads running through the comments of the previous post is the one about censorship. This thread says that the left want to censor the right wing media to curb their political bias. You know muzzle them with a bit of good old-fashioned state censorship.

The spectre of totalitarianism and the end of freedom is the script. Oh I know. its melodramatic. But you do hear the echos of the Cold War resounding around the Internet. And you hear the sounds of the cogs of the spin machine grinding as the media spinners crank up the creaky machinery for another run of an old script.

Censorship? It's a pretty tired old image that is being re-run. It hasn't got much in the way of legs. to be able to shape perceptions. The reality is that the journalists in the highly competitive environment of the corporate media censor themselves. They know that dissent does not boost their careers. They know the rewards for going along to get along and they know that is the game that they have to play.

They know the hazards of failing to toe the line especially during a war. If they---I have in mind the liberal journalists---dissent, then they will be necklaced with lack of patriotism, anti-Americanism and unAustralian.

It is the fear that keeps them from asking the tough questions. So they self-censor. They know that a lot of the key information was filtered out during the war by the government. But they stay silent.

And they are staying silent as the Howard Government lines up the ABC AM program for bias. There is no defence of a questioning media that sees its job to ask the tough questions. There is no defence of the media as the Fourth Estate questioning the official pronouncements of Canberra that are shaped by media spinners.

They cannot can they? Most of their copy is recycling media releases and drip feeds in the name of a functional professionalism saturated with corporate sensibilities.

The image that comes to mind is an old one. It is from George Orwell. Some journalists are like the circus dogs that jump when the trainer cracks the whip. Others, the well trained ones, do what is required---turn the necessary somersaults---when there is no whip. These journalists do not wander far.

The left are into state censorship of the media? Nah. No chance. No need. Murdoch and Packer have done the job already. And they have done it so well. Their journalists know how they have to shape political perceptions whilst writing in an irony free zone.

And you know what? The media lap dogs have yet to realize that they've been had. The Howard Government went along with Washington and London. All three wanted the war. So they glossed up the intelligence reports and ensured that the contrary stuff went sideways. Just like Tampa.

Has the Australian media drawn the implication. That saying Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to Australia's national security is another example of misrepresentation and deception ---just like Tampa. And the lap dogs? Well by saying that Saddam Hussein did pose such a threat they are saying that night is day and day is night.

And they have been self-censoring themselves for so long that they just shrug when someone points out their somersaults. They whip themselves.

If you think I'm over the top, why Paul Krugman is saying it about the Americans.

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Cracks in the mirror

The debate on the bias of the ABC's AM program continues to splutter along. Yesterday Gerald Stone, an SBS board member, a former executive producer of 60 Minutes and former editor of The Bulletin, weighed in. He understands how the media enframes an issue and the bias of the media, and he knows the specific techniques that the media deploys to persuade its audience.

So it is worth while having a closer look at the case he is arguing. Stone says:

"I noted at least 20 instances where, as an ABC news executive, I would have called AM staff members to task for making smug and gratuitous comments blatant enough to bring the program's impartiality into question.That's apart from the issue of what tone of voice they may have used in delivering some of the suspect lines. Inflection or facial expression can be crucial in determining the degree of bias within the electronic media."

Well, we all know that happens. It happens on all the media. Its called rhetoric and it is aimed to appeal to the emotions of the audience to make a case. Lets grant that some of Linda Mottram's rhetoric was badly done in that the quality of her rhetoric was missing on some occcasions. The rhetoric was not as polished as that we see on 60 Minutes.

We move on because the quality of the rhetoric is not what all the fuss is about. Its media bias or the politics of media texts.

Stone does address the core issue. Stone calls it media bias by which he means "reporters using subtle journalistic techniques to push their viewpoints, regardless of the facts." He then usefully lists these techniques:

'What are some of these techniques? Ironically, though biased reporting is notoriously hard to prove, many of its warning signs are easy for the listener or viewer to spot. Here are just a few.  Beware of any report that begins with a value judgement before the fact: "The Government suffered a major setback today when the Prime Minister announced ..."  Beware of inference-packed words like "admitted", "conceded", "claimed" when "said" is sufficient.  Beware of the use of "but" to link a seemingly positive development with a less favourable one that invariably seems to put it in doubt. For example, an announcement of a drop in unemployment followed by the spoiler: "But unions warn of unrest, etc."

Most of all, beware of coverage that continually takes a given fact and immediately overshadows it by raising grave doubts about where it might possibly lead in the future. That was the most frequent "offence" to feature in Alston's litany of complaints."Now that the US has conquered the Iraqi regime, who and where next?" Mottram gloomily asked her listeners.'

This is interesting and informed commentary. What it indicates is the model of journalism that Stone thinks should be done in political commentary programs such as AM. AM is not the news. It is commentary on the news. Note Stone's rejection of using words such as "admitted", "conceded", "claimed" in favour of "said". Linda Mottram is being highly reflexive here as she is drawing the audience's attention to the arguments of those whose position she disagrees with. This is an acknowledgement of the arguments of opponents that is rarely, if ever, made by the Miranda Devines, the shock jocks on talk back radio or the Tim Blairs They mock, scorn and ridicule their opponents rather than engage with their arguments.

Stone is saying that Mottram should report that Downer said X about weapons of mass destruction ie., she is reporting a fact. She should not draw attention to Downer making an argument, responding to arguments made by others, or the plausibility of the argument. Stone then reduces Mottram's work within a rhetorical model of journalism to perpetual sneers and dripping sarcasm.

Yet arguments are being made all the time in the public sphere in which the ABC is located, and the ABC deploys the techniques of rhetoric just like all the other media and political players. The public conversation in the public policy, media and parliamentary is rhetorically based. You have to have these skills to be able to be heard---as Stone well knows.

Stone is saying that AM should not engage in rhetoric and its presenters should not make judgements about the persuasiveness of the arguments of others. It should work with a model of recording the facts. Why? Because he is working with a naive model of realism in which words mirror facts. Stone assumes that the world is as it appears to be, and that it is possible to make bias-free value-free descriptions of the world that are accurate and realistic. If the world is objectively describable, then the journalist's ethical and professional responsibility is to become as transparent as possible so as to allow the reality of the situation to predominate.

What is most suprising is that Stone does not acknowledge the cracks in the mirror given his extensive of how media orgnizations work. The naive realist model was discarded by media organizations long ago, as Stone well knows. He would never have survived as executive producer of 60 Minutes if he had operated that program within the confines of the mirror model.

Nor does Stone argue why AM should adopt the naive mirror model of journalism when he clearly knows that it no longer fits the actual on-the-ground media practices. So why impose it on AM and not 60 Minutes?

Answering that question leads us to the politics of the media, which is what the current debate is really about.

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the culture of the Liberal Party

Is this an accurate description of the culture of the Liberal Party?

Shaun Carney says:

"The Liberal Party's culture is similar to a business culture. Unlike the Labor Party, it is run from the top down and what the leader (or "boss") says goes....Indeed, it is in Howard's gift to hand over the pledges of fidelity from his MPs - it borders on hero worship with some - to Costello. All it would take would be some simple words along the lines of "I'm leaving and it is in your interests to get behind Peter". Virtually without exception, the response would be: "Whatever you say, John."

An authoritarian culture where everything is centred around political authority.

Does the Liberal Party also think that the country can be run as if it were Australian Inc. or Australia Unlimited Corp? Is that why they have some trouble understanding that Australia is a democracy. Or is deomcracy a bit of a shell in which the country is run like a business in that top-down style favoured by executives seeking fame adn fortune?

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definitely not for us

Judging by this report Tony Blair has big problems with Europe. Britain, after all is an island nation, which one had an empire and fought many a long war with the nations of Continental Europe. It seems the British have no time for the European Union or European integration.

And probably for good reason. European integration is seen as a move towards a centralised superstate with little in the way of substantive checks and balances to the executive in terms of judiciary, legislature, or regional states. It seems as if federalism has been sidelined in the new draft constitution.

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June 4, 2003

No. NO. Never!

There is an article in today's Australian newspaper called, 'Defiant settlers dig in for long fight' (no link, p. 11). The opening paragraph says it all:

'The poster on the remote bus shelter states that the Jewish settler's case with uncompromising clarity: "No to a Palestinan state. No to negotiations with terrorists. Yes to the biblical land of Israel."'

That means the outposts stay. So do the established settlements in the West Bank and Gaza strip occupied by 220,0000 Jewish settlers.) The road map is just a piece of paper whilst the Americans, British and Europeans are foreigners interferring in place that doesn't belong to them.

Then I read an editorial in Monday's Australian Financial Review (subscription required, 02 06 03, p. 62)) about the US and the road map. It didn't even mention the settlements, outposts or settler movement in terms of easing the obstacles to the road map. It said:

"The Palestinians will have to yield on their demand of right of return for more than a limited number of refugees to pre-1948 Palestine, and Israel will have to give ground on its demand that East Jerusalem remain Jewish controlled in perpetuity."

The settlements are a non issue! Even George Bush acknowledged them as an issue in his speech recognizing Palestinian statehood. So does The Times as well.

The implication is that the religious settler movement's demands are just and equitable. Or that the Financial Review has little idea of what is happening on the ground in the Middle East.

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it only takes a little twist

Funny thing parliamentary politics. Once upon a time the Coalition was sailing high with its hands firmly on the levers of power. The Labor Opposition was tearing itself apart. The Coalition was unassailable, as was the PM. The aura of statesman was being drapped around his shoulders. Myths were being constructed. You could see that this was the stuff of legend.

Then the leader says I'm staying on. The leader-in-waiting is closed out, but he accepts the decision even though he is shattered. He coveted the top job. He felt stabbed in the back. And he had been so loyal. He had worked so hard to provide the strong economic foundations for the Coalition's success.

That press conference was a defining moment. But What else can Peter Costello do? He gave a press conference and he put in an emotional performance that got the nation talking. But he could not spit the dummy. He had to adopt an acceptance mode and say that he will be the loyal deputy helping the leader rewrite the history books.

No doubt there are good reasons for delaying the transition of leadership in the Coalition Government. It looks to be the right call for the long-term interests of the Liberal party, the Coalition Government and the nation. So many will say in the Liberal Party.

But suddenly the media enframing is now in terms of disunity:---cohesion and unity have a question mark over them. The winning team is no more. Costello reckons his loyalty deserves more than being treated like this. That bitterness has its own momentum in politics. The whole dynamic has changed, just like that. And it impacts on the Opposition Labor Party, struggling with its issues of disloyalty, destablisation and leadership change.

The wheels turn. A new political cycle begins.

It was but a quiver of emotion in Parliament's blue press room. That's all it was. But the performance will be poured over by the Canberra Press Gallery. They love this playing out of politics. They understand the grand passions, hubris and human tragedy in political life. Screeds will be written about it within the context of the echos of political history of previous battles for the top job.

And Costello? Is he going to re-invent the role of deputy leader by placing the emphasis on a tolerant Australia as well as a prosperous and strong Australia. The implication? That Howard stands for an intolerant Australia----eg., on issues such as reconciliation and Hansonism.

Political theatre. It is political theatre based on everybody reading the tea leaves. But will the play continue with the Canberra Press Gallery putting the PM under scrutiny? Will the PM's gloss become tarnished? Is Costello going to become a countervailing centre of power within the Liberal Party in a low key way?

Act 2 begins after a short intermission.

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June 3, 2003

Aftershocks continue in Israel

The fall out continues in Israel. The Israeli hawks thought that the Israeli state could, and would, postpone the road map until eternity wound down. The widely accepted two state proposal was anathema to them.

Then that big one hit:

"Shellshocked hawks were at a loss to explain how Israel's most rightwing government had taken the most left-leaning bedrock policy decision in the
history of the Jewish state."

The religious settler movement, which embodies a political messianism, is beyond being shellshocked by Sharon's acceptance of the road map to hell. They see treason no less. They now have to fight Sharon, the superhawk who was the progenitor of the system of settlements and a symbol of the Israeli right. Things are turning toxic in Israel. Will Sharon be dumped by the right and embraced by the left?

And the US administration is divided on the road map. At the Aqaba summit, to be attended by US President George W. Bush, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen on Wednesday, June 4, Sharon will be presented with two bitter pills. One is to enter into peace negotiations with the Palestinians under the sword of continuing Palestinian terrorism organized by Arafat; the other is the evacuation of a number of Israeli outposts.

Don't count on Sharon swallowing the pills. His strategy is to hold onto the settlements so they can serve as a permanent strategic defensive purpose; avoid a productive peace process; and ensure that a Palestinian "state" is divided into enclaves that take up around 50 percent of the territories.

The road map needs to be seen within the context of the US geo-political strategy in the Middle East. This is directed at Damascus: Syria must stop sponsoring terrorists, speed-up the return of the hidden Iraqi leaders to US forces in Iraq and give up Iraq’s banned arsenal. The hard word is on Syria.

The Palestinians are next: they will have to develop a Palestinian security-intelligence force infrastructure that can close close down the Fatah, the Al Aqsa Brigades as well as the Jihad Islami and Hamas organizations in Palestinian areas. Can they deliver on security?

The road map also needs to be seen in the context of the capacity of Arafat, Osma bin Ladin and Saddam Hussein to use terror tactics to continue fighting a war against the Americans and their Israeli allies. In fact Arafat may well be gunning for his Prime Minister. (wrong link. Article is called: 'US and Israeli Fears for Abu Mazen’s Safety') This is due to Arafat's exclusion from the Aqaba Summit and US/Israeli attempts to sideline him. Arafat wants to show that he is still capable of lighting the fuse through the Intifada. The fuse may not spark a regional war, due to the toppling Saddam Hussein, but it could derail the road map.

Seems like Arafat and the Israeli hawks have something in common----being offside to the road map that holds out the promise of two states for two peoples. One state two peoples is off the agenda. The background to peace process--the failure of Oslo--can be found here

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:58 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

Downer's 'last' stand?

So Alexander Downer is standing firm on both the issue of Iraq's weapons mass destruction and the gap between intelligence advice about the threat posed by Iraq and the Government's war policy.

No surrender. Stand firm. That's Downer. Why? Because he is blocking any calls for a searching parliamentary inquiry. But the waters are lapping around his feet.

The implication of Downer's stand? Though the Bush administration beat up CIA intelligence advice and the Blair Government sexed theirs up, Australia did not. Everything was A1. It was all played straight as straight. Up the minute and totally convincing was the intelligence from the Office of National Assessment, and they did it with little in the way of resources too.

How come the Australian Government didn't inform the British and the Americans? Why keep it a secret? There was nothing to keep secret. Canberra didn't have much intelligence that was different.

Canberra basically relied on Washington for its cues and script. The boy from the Adelaide hills, who became a Minister for Foreign Affairs, looks more like a clown in a madhouse everyday. The reality of the situation is that Canberra was locked into a commitment to stick with Bush, come what may. That commitment was made quite early on. Canberra was ensnarred on an American geo-political strategy that ranked the weapons as a quite secondary pretext. Canberra was in a similar situation to London

For a bit of sanity on all of this have a look at Jack's post here at Catallaxy Files on the geo-political reasons for war. Jack and public opinion concur on this point: it has to do with hegemonial geo-politics. For Jack its cutting the ties with, and dependancy on, Saudi Arabia. For me it is the geopolitical consideration is US hegemony in the Middle East and identification of US strategic interests with those of Israel. Israel is the lynch pin.

For a bit more sanity read Andrew Sullivan's post. He concedes the possibility among others that US & UK intelligence was radically wrong - or politically manipulated for effect. Sullivan can concede this. Sullivan can avoid getting all tangled up like William Safire here at The New York Times with his line that "the crowd that bitterly resents America's mission to root out the sources of terror whips up its intelligence-hoax hype." Sullivan can sidestep this since he rightfully holds that the WMD's:

"....don't get to the heart of the matter. The fundamental case for getting rid of Saddam was not dependent on the existence of a certain amount of some chemical or other. It was based on a political and military judgement.... if you see the rise of Islamo-fascism as a broad and terrifying phenomenon, with clear animosity toward the West, you'll take a different view. If you believe that a chemical or biological 9/11 is on the terrorist agenda and that an avowed enemy of the West and ally of terrorists is capable of creating such weapons, you'll shift the burden of proof toward those who deny the danger, not to those who fear it. And barring clear evidence that the regime itself has changed its nature, you will prepare to get rid of it."

The key here is that the rise of Islamo-fascism is a broad and terrifying phenomenon with clear animosity toward the West. It is the clash of civilization's thesis--or Jihad v McWorld. Something along those lines is what Downer and Howard hold but won't say publicly. Why not? Because the logic of the argument from an Australian geo-political perspective is that it points a finger at Indonesia. Since that is too close to the bone so the Coalition Ministers duck and weave: they say Australia is not a terrorist target; deny that going to war with Iraq did not up the ante in hostilities towards Australia; then warn us about all the terrorist threats inside the country.

Since a bit of fresh air is now being let into the madhouse of the national security state how about a shift the rhetoric of Left-appeasing attempt to co-opt the UN to considering the UN as a countervailing power to US hegemony.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:17 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

If it works don't fix it

Gerard Henderson, as is his wont, offers some advice to the PM. He says the PM now has the opportunity to sort out the blunders that have been made:

" Australia's changed status, after the Iraq war, provides a convenient possibility for a policy adjustment...Howard's current high profile gives him an opportunity to restate Australian foreign policy with respect to the Asian region in a way that junks the old (and dated) obsessions with the (alleged) Keating legacy....This provides an appropriate opportunity for Howard to refocus Australia's position, after Iraq. By doing so, he can make significant progress towards burying the "deputy sheriff" misnomer and clarifying the "pre-emptive strike" confusion. It would be a convenient way of correcting a couple of the Prime Minister's relatively rare verbal blunders."

My advice? Don't do it John. No need. The foreign policy lines of deputy sheriff of the US and pre-emptive strike against South East nations are great. They work fine. The lines accurately state our tough foreign policy stance. Our neighbours (Indonesia in particular) are in no doubt that Australia stands shoulder to shoulder with the USA come what may.

Henderson's advice would only confuse things by softening the muscular stance.
If there is a desire to tinker with what works then just muscle up some more. The nation can do with a strong dose of a military culture. Being more warlike is what will give us respect in the region.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:59 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

stamping on the feds toes

The Rann Government's resolute opposition to the Commonwealth's proposal to establish a low-level radioactive waste dump by 2004 at site 40a on Arcoona Station near Woomera is one of the best things they are doing.

Making this site and the nearby site 45a parks is an excellent move. Making things as difficult as is constitutionally possible for the Commonwealth on this issue is a good strategy. The Commonwealth's claim that establishing a low-level radioactive waste dump by at site 40a on Arcoona Station is in the general or national interest is a dubious one.

This fight shows the value of federalism. Often dismissed as a constitutional constraint on democracy, federalism enables a little state in a federation like SA to have its say and to express its own values. This is no momentary passion, state self-interest, factionalism or myopia as Canberra suggests. It is a considered judgement in face of the Commonwealth's desire to take the question off the political agenda. It is about local self-determination in democratic politics of the naton state given that a threat to secede is not credible.

SA is deploying a deep dissatisfaction to call the nation to account through democratic politics to highlight the heavy handedness and dubious politics of the Commonwealth. Without the separation of powers in federalism we in South Australia would be walked over. With these powers of divided rule we as a sovereign people can pressure the state government to make it harder for the executive in Canberra to act.

Difference and diversity within a federation are the strengths of democracy rather than weaknesses in the face of a technocratic rationality. This is a rationality deployed by a powerful state that is equipped with extensive scientific and technological resources and is determined to transform nature. Such a rationality is in the process of becoming detached from human and ecological values, freed from the constraints of civil society and democratic politics.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:04 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

June 2, 2003

cultural & media politics

Judging by all the kerfuffle of late, the ABC as a public broadcaster is a big political concern for the Howard Government. It has been subject to a number of attacks over the years ranging from it being run by left wing staff, to political bias, to suggestions about the need to get rid of (privatising) the public broadcaster.

You get the distinct impression that the notion of government ownership of media (public broadcasting) went out with the passing of Pravda and the fall of the Soviet Union. A national broadcaster is no longer needed says Ross Cameron, a Liberal MP for Parramatta in Sydney's west.

Robert Manne gives a postcard history of the recent conservative attacks on the ABC as a public broadcaster here. An interpretation of this history would suggest that it is part of a broad-based political attack on public ownership, government control and public broadcasting. The new market discourse can be construed as liberating journalists from the shackles of government funding, government control and the trade unions. The aim of fighting the cultural war is to undermine the idea of the public in the realm of public policy.

Tim Blair disappoints on this. Its just a question of plagarism he quips. More is involved than this. And Tim knows it.

In his latest intervention Senator Alston, the Minister for Communications, defends this political campaign here by saying that "the right of any individual to publicly criticise a taxpayer-funded institution is surely a fundamental tenet of a democracy."

That is not the issue at all. Of course Senator Alston has a right to criticize. Just like any citizen in liberal democracy. The current core issue is the left-of-centre bias of the current affairs programs, such as AM. The Minister misleads here. He says:

"But under the ABC Act and its own statutory editorial charter, the ABC is required to report accurately and impartially. This surely requires any analysis to be based on the evidence, and should not be a licence to inject personal opinions unsupported by evidence."

"Inject personal opinions unsupported by evidence" is not the issue here. It is the left-liberal cultural bias through which particular political events are intepreted that is the core of the Howard Government's complaint. Michelle Grattan has a good contextual criticism of the Senator Alston's own example of bias.

Now Senator Alston knows that the core issue is one of political bias all too well. He actually quotes the following account of the mechanisms of the deployment of bias in the ABC from a former senior ABC insider. This says:

"....the constant and ongoing use of value-laden language and loaded questions to shape perceptions. Bias also appears in those stories that are chosen for broadcast and those that are not; the people who are chosen for interview and those who are not; the facts that are highlighted and those that are downplayed or ignored, and the analysis that crosses over into commentary."

It has nothing to do with injecting personal opinions unsupported by evidence at all. Its a red herring. Its cultural politics not personal opinions that is at issue here.

And so far the Minister is only saying that the Howard Government does not like the ABC's cultural politics. So what? That has been known for a long time. Its been a fact of political life in Australia for decades. The question at issue is: what is wrong with the ABC having this left-liberal bias in current affairs?

It cannot be the stories that are chosen for broadcast and those that are not; nor the people who are chosen for interview and those who are not; or even the the facts that are highlighted and those that are downplayed or ignored. Thats how the modern media works. It selects what it considers makes for a good story. Politicians have no control over that even when it works against them.

Nope. It has to do with 'the analysis that crosses over into commentary'. The Howard Government can accept analysis but it does not like the commentary. Judging by the Alston dossier it sees the commentary in the choice of words and the tone of the voice of the journalist.

Why the dislike of commentary on AM when the commercial media has oodles of commentary? Why cannot the ABC give commentary when the commercials can?

To his credit Senator Alston addresses this:

"News and current affairs has rightly always been a high priority for the ABC. But as a great national cultural institution, it should aspire to be the quality alternative to the commercials – an electronic journal of record, not a fierce tabloid-style competitor – and unafraid of scrutiny by the public, politicians and parliament."

Record is the key word. It denies commentary. So the ABC should not engage in commentary. Alston has a particular model of journalism the quality record model which is then counterposed to the tabloid style. It is a model that denies interpretation, political bias (anti-Americanism) and a questioning of the spin of the Howard government and the US military machine. This he says is the model the ABC should be following and be made accountable for.

What does it mean? Here's a stab. The ABC should state that events xyz happened and not interpret them. It should not engage with the intepretation of xyz in the texts (media releases, interviews etc) of the Howard government or the US military in order to help Australian citizens understand the significance of xyz.

Let's repeat that. The ABC should not engage with the Howard Government's commentary on xyz. It should simply record what the commentary is. No comment on the comment.

Why not? Because, the Minister says, "under the ABC Act and its own statutory editorial charter, the ABC is required to report accurately and impartially." Reporting accurately and impartially means no interpetration of the facts; no commentary on events; and no comment on the commentary (interpretation) of the Howard Government of the US military. What is out of bounds is a critique of public reason of the Howard Government outlining its reasons for going to war with Iraq. AM, in short, is an in-depth analysis of the news (reporting the facts) and not a commentary on the news.

Its a strange model of journalism isn't it. The ABC cannot comment on a federal election election campaign that was centred around a fiction about asylum seeker's children being thrown overboard. And the ABC cannot comment on the reason why the Howard Government took Australia to war--- that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It cannot comment even though none of these weapons have been found up to now, and one of its senior Minsters, Defence Minister Robert Hill, concedes that the intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons capability may have been flawed.

If the ABC current affairs presenters cannot comment, then what should the ABC do about the commentary provided by the Howard Government? Answer. The AM report should take the coalition's commentary at face value. That is what Senator Alston means by the ABC reporting accurately and impartially. The ABC's AM program should trust the Government and not be sceptical that its comments and interpretation re the reasons for going to war are not based on evidence. Those supicions that the Howard Government engaged in disinformation campaign to designed to encourage support for a war through the national security state playing up the fear angle to keep the population supporting the Coalition should be forgotten.

Nowhere does the Minister link this model of journalism to democracy, even though he talks about the right to criticize the media in a democracy. There is a marked silence in the Minister's text about the connection between public broadcasting, deliberative democracy and educating citizens about current events. Odd isn't it. I wonder what sort of liberal democracy the Minister has in mind?

The oddness is understandable. Mentioning terms such as deliberative democracy and educating citizens would give weight to the 'public' in public broadcasting. And we cannot have that can we? It would lead to the ABC scrutinizing the Howard Government's claims about Iraq's WMDs, the links to al-Qaeda, and the fact these claims by politicians were probably contrary to the advice from the Government's own intelligence community.That would undermine the legitimacy of the Howard Government's attempts to achieve political unity.

Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:57 AM | Comments (12) | TrackBack