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July 31, 2004
US Democratic Convention
I tried watching Senator John Kerry speak at the Democratic Convention in a video feed yesterday, but the line kept breaking up.
I had read that Clinton had given a powerful speech and was wondering how the patrician Kerry would perform. What would he come across as?
I only got bits and pieces of the Kerry daughters saying how wonderful and sensitive their dad was and fragments of Kerry's speech. I caught lots of martial imagery and rhetoric in Kerry's speech.
From the bits that I saw it was a tightly scripted choreographed spectacle--a Hollywood production.
What suprised me was how much of the content of the Convention was so Republican---lots of patriotism and defence with Kerry. And with John Edwards, there was lots about the values of "faith, family, responsibility, and equality of opportunity."
Aren't these guys meant to be liberals in the US sense? Kerry came across as being strong on national security, especially with that opening line of reporting for duty. He was all about being tough and safeguarding the US and foreign policy machismo.
This was a theme of the Democratic campaign:
It is difficult to judge these events at a distance--from Adelaide Australia when you cannot experience the convention as a live fed.
Maybe Kerry had found an appropriate and compelling way to enlist Vietnam in his campaign against Bush and Iraq. Maybe it was all about Vietnam as a touchstone for Iraq and being a better commander-in chief than Bush?
Was that what was meant by Kerry needing to do if he was to touch all the right emotional buttons?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:04 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
July 30, 2004
Federal election: WA
There is an article The Australian by Peter van Onselen, a lecturer in political science at Edith Cowan University, which spells out the marginal seat situation in WA. He says that this year's election will be close, but challenges the assumption of a uniform swing across the nation, or the ALP winning because of its preference lead in the western suburbs of Sydney.What we do know is that this election is close so it will revert to trench warfare in the marginals, as Labor tries to claw back the dozen or so seats it needs to govern in its own right.
The ALP is saying that it can hang onto its maginal seats in WA bag two from the Coalition and increase its seven seats to nine. It has the weaponry etc etc.
We need to step away from the spin. van Onselen identifies 4 marginal seats in WA:
"Perth houses four marginal seats - Canning, Sterling (sic), Hasluck and Swan. Interestingly, only the first of these is held by the Coalition. The other three, all with margins of 2 per cent or less, are Labor seats. Simply put, Howard believes he can pick up Labor seats in the west. Why does Howard believe that?"
The answer has to do with the parochialism of WA. The change in the ALP leadership from Beazley to anyone from a state other than WA was bound to carry the risk of Labor losing seats in the west, whether the leader was Crean or Latham. The Beazley factor is crucial. Hence the return of Beazley to the front bench can only benefit the federal ALP in WA.
So where does that leave the ALP? van Onselen goes on to say:
"Labor insiders have noted that the ALP can't win this year's federal election in the west, it can only lose it. Equally, Coalition strategists have been targeting Perth Labor marginals for some time. Howard's trip to WA this week is his fourth this year. Factor in the unpopularity of the Gallop Labor Government and WA is a soft target for the Coalition."
That Howard is spending so much time in the West is an indication of party polling revealing an opportunity to catch Labor napping. The ALP has taken their eye off WA?
Do we give Canning to the Coalition? Where does that leave Stirling, Hasluck and Swan? With the ALP hanging on after a grim struggle? Howard reckons he has a chance in Hasluck, with its margin for the ALP of 1.78 per cent.
This is the possibility canvassed by van Onselen:
"If the election is tight, it may be that Latham thinks he has won the prime ministership, picking up enough seats in NSW, Queensland and South Australia early in the count. But if Howard wins all three Labor held marginals in Perth, that could deliver him a narrow fourth term majority."
WA is even less on on the radar screen of most national commentators than SA. I have very little knowledge of the current issues in the ALP marginals. They are urban seats, and so their issues would be quite different from the those in the marginals along the Queensland coast.
In the latter there is a cocktail of rural discontent over globalization, competition policy and deregulation, the ongoing rationalization of the farm sector and the decline in the services in the bush. This political backlash, which generated the populist protest of Pauline Hanson in the 1990s, places the National Party under threat.
So what is going on in Perth's marginal seats in terms of issues? It cannot be all about the Beazley factor, given that all politics is local.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:50 AM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
July 28, 2004
FTA: speaking out
The consensus seem to be that, whilst many in the ALP believe that, as it stands, the bilateral FTA, with the US, delivers more negatives than positives for Australia, it is more than likely that the Labor caucus will reluctantly embrace the trade deal.
David Rowe
The strategy for a divided party up to now has been to avoid the issue by saying that they will wait for a crucial Senate committee report to be published on August 12. However, the ALP's left wing party's left wing has started signalling that it will fight the free trade agreement with the United States. Kate Lundy, the arts spokeswoman, said on ABC radio yesterday that she opposed the agreement because of the "many great risks for Australian culture".
There are also ALP concerns about the PBS scheme, the way that the trade deal strengthens the intellectual property rights of US creators, limits the local content for new media, favours the US pharmaceutical companies, and will cause a loss of jobs in Australia's automative component manufacturers, rubber and chemical manufacturers, and the textile, clothing and footware industry.
So we have mild economic benefits that need to be balanced against the inevitable restructuring, the social impacts and social dislocation. This interpretation is in line with, and reinforces, the view that with globalization incomes may not rise. There are many losers and the jobs that are created are at the low quality end of the market.
The pressure is being placed on the ALP. The FTA legislation will be tabled in the Senate when parliament resumes on Tuesday. All the indications suggest that the ALP will pass the deal, even though it acknowledges that the deal favours the US more than Australia. The ALP wants to put the issue behind it.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:39 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 27, 2004
same old song
I heard on the news that, Alexander Downer, our wonderful go go foreign minister has been on the airwaves accusing Spain and the Philippines of being soft on terrorism because they have pulled their troops out of Iraq. Downer said the withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq had encouraged terrorists to issue threats. This send the wrong message and placed Australia at greater risk.
Alan Moir
Doesn't Downer recognize the principle of national sovereignty any more? The Spanish people had wanted their troops out, and an election had been fought on that issue. They were also figting terrorism. Their judgement was that the war in Iraq had very little to do with the war on terrorism.
This event would indicate that the only interests Downer recognizes are those of the imperial presidency in Washington. According to Washington America is at war. It is fighting a monolothic Islamic ideology out to destroy America. Little distinction is made between the differences within Islam --between Iran or Iraq, Sunni's or Shi'ites.
It is like the good old days of fighting the monolothic communist ideology bent on world domination, when US & Australian troops were in Vietnam whilst China and Russia were at each others throats.
Guys like Downer have their head in the sand. They refuse to acknowledge that any heightened terrroist threat to Australaia is caused by the Government's decision to keep troops in Iraq.
Should we not be building good relations with our neighbours (Indonesia, Malaysia & Philippines) in the war against internaitonal terrorism?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:38 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 26, 2004
Reality television
Nicolaus Mills' article, 'Television and the Politics of Humiliation' in the Summer edition of Dissent, says that at a time when the election debate over the economy should be about the race to the bottom that is occurring as a result of the outsourcing of middle-class jobs and the growing number of families facing increasing costs for "universal" health care, reality television culture is telling us that empathy has no place in our lives or culture.
An example Mill's mentions is the Survivor programme. In this game show:
"Contestants are placed in an exotic wilderness setting, usually a South Pacific island, with which they and their audience are unfamiliar...the contestants are divided into teams and pitted against each other in challenges, typically canoe races or building a shelter, decided upon in advance by the show's producers. The losing team must send one of its members off the island, and the climax of the show comes when a vote is taken and viewers get to see who has failed to make the right friendships (contestants are encouraged to form alliances with each other) or told the best lies (one contestant tried to win sympathy by claiming that his grandmother had just died). There is no waiting cab for the losers. They are ushered out...into the night...[with] the money shot...built around exclusion."
It is a hard mean competitive world. We have to do what we can (a bit of nip and tuck) to get by and become successful. Losers are elbowed out of the way through the rules of the game.
The same ethos runs through Big Brother and Australian Idol. Life is a performance. In the former show the contestants live with a bunch of strangers, watched by hidden cameras and recorded by tiny microphones.I find it sizzling in a boring way but I could not help note the high degree of surveillance; much higher than the surveillance of the American embassy in Canberra. Big Brother says surveillance is normal and perfectly acceptable.
Maybe Channel Ten will come up with a reality porn show; one based around watching porn on the Internet, with the contestants saying that it's life, not porn.The ethos of this reality show would be that porn is good.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:15 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
July 25, 2004
the Latham face of Labor
This is put into play in Australia to suggest that the Mark Latham ALP is a socially conservative and neo-liberal party--a variation on the one we have in power in SA. It is one in which the appeal to large numbers of middle-class, socially conservative voters outweighs the social democrat agenda concerned to help people at the bottom of the ladder largely through taxes and public service investment.
Is this what the Third Way now means in Australia?
The UK article says that Blairism is just Thatcherism softened for a soppier age. Here is the relevant bit:
"If we have a third term of Blair, where will the country end up? There is no need to consult the crystal ball, because we have a road map, the five-year plans spewing out of government. Virtually every part of the rhetoric is familiar to those of us who covered the Tory administrations of the 80s and 90s - more choice and less bureaucracy in schools and hospitals; an end to 60s liberalism in the criminal justice system and the classroom; tough asylum policies; bobbies on the beat; "prison works"; no attempt to reverse privatisations, even when they proved a disaster. Abroad, we see a deep suspicion of Europe in general and France in particular. Though he is being cautious in public, it is clear that Blair would much prefer to see another term for Bush and his neo-con clique in Washington, than a moderately progressive Democrat in the White House. Whatever this is, it certainly isn't Labour politics."
The key difference here is that a Latham ALP would prefer to see a moderately progressive Democrat in the White House, rather than another term for Bush and his neo-con clique in Washington.
Let's be honest folks. Is there going to be that much difference in governance if the Coalition loses out to a Latham ALP?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:25 PM | Comments (11) | TrackBack
July 24, 2004
Federal Election: its close
In contrast to the optimism shown here my judgement remains the same. The election is close. The ALP is just ahead on two party preferred votes, the race is probably tightening, the trend in the primary vote moving back to the Coalition, and Latham is being worn down by the Coalition's relentless pressure.
Though it is hard to be interested in the drip drip drip of the political tap, it is interesting to see the ALP continually move to the right under pressure. If the ALP succeeds in regaining power, it will be a very conservative Labor Government. It will work with the Coalition in the Senate to pass legislation whilst denouncing the Australian Greens as undemocratic and holding the nation to ransom.
Both Howard and Latham were campaigning in Queensland this week selling their wares. The Coalition removed fees from Kakadu National Park, and the Flood Report into the intelligence on Iraq was released. That said that Australia went to war on the basis of intelligence that was "thin, ambiguous and incomplete" and that there was an "intelligence failure" on weapons of mass destruction. Also announced was a package to upgrade security at Australia's ports. For its part the ALP announced a women's policy, an afterhours Medicare policy and a dairy policy.
Whilst many were being hairy chested on terrorism others were doing vaudeville:
Tandberg
It is more memorable image than the religious one.
What we do not know is the polling in the marginal seats, apart from the unreliable polling in the state newspapers. The Advertiser poll in SA showed the ALP ahead in Adelaide, the Libs ahead in Hindmarsh but struggling in Makin. I would say that it is tighter than that now. The ALP is probably ahead in Hindmarsh.
In todays Australian Financial Review Lenore Taylor says that it is the marginal seats of Queensland and NSW where the ALP must dismantle Howard's lead. What do we know about the marginals in Queensland and NSW? Taylor says the Courier-Mail poll shows a big swing to the ALP in Dickson, a small swing to the Coalition in Longman with Hinkler too close to call.
And NSW? Taylor says that a recent McNair Ingenuity Research Poll (with a very small sample) showed the Coalition well ahead in Paterson but trailing the ALP in Eden Monaro, Dobell and Parramatta.
Has the ALP picked up the 8 seats needed? Sure thing say the ALP spinners. If it had been otherwise, Howard would have called an election by now.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 9:31 AM | Comments (8) | TrackBack
July 23, 2004
SA: moving to the right
The big news in Adelaide is that the Rann Government has added yet another conservative MP to its Ministerial ranks. This move gives Rann a majority on the floor of the House of Assembly in its own right. The media is abuzz.
That takes the power away from Peter Lewis, the Speaker, who has kept the Rann Government in power up to now. Lewis has been cut adrift. He can no longer make or break the Rann Government. The latter are gleeful. The Liberal Party has been locked into years of of opposition. They look to be a sad lot.
This time the addition is the National Party MP for the Chaffey (in the Riverland), Karlene Maywald, who was once tipped to stand against Patrick Secker, the federal MP for Barker. If Maywald went federal, then Chaffey would return to the Libs and upset the delicate power balance on North Terrace. Maywald has been seduced by being appointed Minister for the River Murray, Small Business, Regional development and Consumer Affairs.
Will she do more than John Hill, the previous Minister of the Murray? Lots of talk but little action. Maywald is hot on the Murray but she basically defends irrigator interests in the Riverland and she hasn't pressed to hard to get them to change their bad practices.
The National Party and the ALP joining forces in a non-crisis situation! Doesn't that show how socially conservative the Rann Government actually is. You can hear the ghost of the DLP walking in its ranks. There is lots of law and order, much talk is about doing time for the crime, an indifference to the rehabilitation of prisoners, little concern for the unemployed, no concern for street kids, a failure to improve public health and public education and lots of concerns about ever more censorship.
Is this not an example of the Tweddle Dum Tweddle Dee view of politics? Both parties sit in the middle spin their grey-on-grey policies madly and place a big
emphasis on the personality of their leaders?
July 24
The SA National Party has been suspended from the party's federal structure for being seduced with a ministry and getting into bed with Rann. And so they should be suspended. Is not the ALP the National Party's enemy and the one they are trying to defeat in the federal election? Of course, the SA Nationals are saying that they are deeply committed to supporting the election of the Liberal National Coalition at the federal election.
They would have to say that, don't they. Who are they fooling?
July 27th
One implication of having two non-Labor Ministers in the Rann cabinet is that any social reforms are dead in the water. The Rann Government will now steer a cautions course to avoid any public altercation with Maywald and Rory McEwen. Rann has locked in a parliamentary majority provided they do nothing. So argues No Pokies MP Nick Xenophon.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 1:50 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 22, 2004
no political courage
I see that the UN's General Assembly passed a resolution Tuesday night demanding that Israel abide by a world court ruling to dismantle a 451-mile "security barrier" that cuts through Palestinian territory. The Washington Post reports that:
"The resolution in the 191-member assembly passed by a vote of 150 to 6, with 10 governments abstaining. The United States opposed the resolution, saying that the international court and the General Assembly are inappropriate venues for resolving the Middle East crisis. Israel, Australia, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau also opposed the resolution."
Good old Australia. It really is all the way with the USA these days. Australia did not even have the political courage to abstain. Obsequiousness to America describes Australia's relationship to the US.Even Bush's poodle, Tony Blair, sided with Europe against the US.That leaves the US and Israel without any significant allies.
Australia's Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, justified siding with the US by saying that it was wrong to take the matter to the International Court of Justice and that Israel must find ways of defending itself against terrorists. What, no role for international law in settling disputes? If you do not acknowledge international law, then you do not have to recognize that the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories are considered illegal under international law.
Downer went on to say that:
"It isn't reasonable to Israelis that they can't erect a security barrier to protect the people of Israel from suicide-homicide bombers."
Isn't it unreasonable that Israel uses a security wall to take Palestinian land in the occupied territories? The Wall is not being constructed along the Green Line. In places it goes into deep in Palestinian territory, de facto annexing to Israel a great part of it (one-third?). Why is that not wrong? If there is no recognition of international law, then does that mean might is right?
This article describes how the wall gains territory by encircling and squeezing Palestinian villages. Ran HaCohen says that to all intents and purposes liivng within the encircled villages is equivalent to living within a:
"...cage, with no public facilities, no land reserves for housing, no fields, and with a gate guarded by a hostile army, is a viable place to live in. The Israeli authorities know this very well.... Their intention is clear: sooner or later, the hopelessly caged population will have to leave simply to escape starvation...The nearer we get to the Green Line and to major settlements, the smaller the cages get. These are the areas that Israel wants most, so living conditions should drive away the indigenous Palestinian population there as soon as possible."
The wall is one instrument in the old Israeli strategy to vanish the Palestinians out of their territory, yet Alexander Downer turns a blind eye. All that matters is supporting the US.
Israel's key problem is to keep the new land without the people. Since physical expulsion is no longer an option, so the alternative has been to make the Palestinians disappear as a nation by destroying their society. The history of the last 37 years of Israeli occupation is one of the colonisation of the land and resources that aims to strangle the Palestinian economy and makes statehood unviable.
July 23
This piece by Ted Lapkin, from the conservative Australia-Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, shows the way they play politics. It refers to the NZ PM's (Helen Clarke) decision to place diplomatic sanctions on Israel, on the grounds that the two Israeli's who recently obtained a genuine NZ passport under false pretences were Israeli intelligence agents.
Lapkin says that:
"....passport affair is political manna from heaven for the beleaguered Clark. She gets to look like a strong leader by fulminating on the cheap against a country that represents no threat to New Zealand's national security....the official Hamas website has just declared its appreciation for "the daring position of the New Zealand Government against the Zionist entity". This glowing endorsement by a bunch of Palestinian suicide bombers reflects the moral bankruptcy of Clark's Middle East policy. Under her guidance, New Zealand has made common cause with bedfellows who are not only strange, but downright repugnant."
What is covered up and justified by Lapkin is that Israel has a right to do this. He never says that it is wrong. He just says that Clarke is soft on--nay supports--- international terrorism.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 8:35 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 21, 2004
Robert Menzies: the rule of law
It is a slow newsday, unless you think that Telstra's new chairman, Donald McGauchie, is a big headline. It is not. He is not going to make that much difference to selling the rest of Telstra. Nor is the full privatisation of Telstra on the Senate agenda before the election, no matter how many conciliatory noises Senator Coonan makes about revising bits of the legislation. Telstra have a long way to go to lift their service game in regional Australia. Will McGauchie try to slip a fast one past his old mates?
After flickering the major dailies I read some of Robert Menzies's essays from his Forgotten People book over morning coffee. These are much more interesting. The essay I read was 'The law and the citizen' where Menzies is talking about the rule of law. He says:
"Of all laws, that of the Constitution is at once the most fundamental and the most sacred. Parliament may tell us from day to day what we are to do or not to do. The Parliaments themselves are controlled by the Constitution, which is not their servant but, on the contrary, their master.The Commonwealth Constitution is the organic law under which the Commonwealth Parliament and the Commonwealth Government are set up and exercise their functions. Neither Parliament not Government can alter it. Only the people can do that. They were its creators forty years ago. They are its master still "
You do not hear that language about the people being the master today from the Coalition. Menzies goes on to say:
"...that to ignore the Constitution, to treat its structure and limitations it imposes upon the powers of the Commonwealth Parliament as of no account, to endeavour by clamour to prevent recourse to the courts for its interpretation, is to violate the whole conception of the rule of law."
The Coalition's attack on the High Court for its interpretation of the Constitution, and their advocacy of Parliament being supreme, do violate the rule of law. They forget what Menzies well knew: that the powers of Parliament are conferred upon it by the supreme law of the land.
Tis a sorry day to see these latter day conservatives trash the heritage of Menzies they proclaim to revere.
Did not Donald McGaughie, when the president of the National Farmers Federation hold that history has been misinterpreted by the High Court, that the the Wik decision should be overturned through legislation because co-existence with Aboriginal people will not work? That was Donald McGaughie was it not? You know, the one wanted the extinguishment of any shred of native title that might have survived the grant of a pastoral lease.The one who helped create fear in the bush that the pastoralists would lose their property to the indigenous people.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 6:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 20, 2004
strange views
Both Newspoll and ACNielsen show that the ALP is still hanging on after the distribution of preference, even though its primary vote is continuing to fall and the momentum is favouring the government.
The ACNielsen poll shows the coalition's primary vote rising 2 points to 45 per cent, and the ALP down 2 to 40 per cent. But the two-party preferred vote - the result after preferences are distributed - has Labor leading 52 to 48 per cent, unchanged from a month ago. Newspoll shows the that on a two-party preferred basis the ALP had a lead of 51 to 49 per cent.
Here is the spin by Denis Shanahan in The Australian:
"After two tumultuous weeks - starting with the Labor leader's emotional press conference about his private life - the standing of the major parties has barely changed, with the ALP keeping in touch with the Howard Government."
It should be the other way round. Do we infer that Shanahan lives in an inverted political world?
The significance of the polling means that the Coalition needs to concentrate on increasing its primary vote, since it is losing out heavily on preferences, as 77 per cent of Green voters and 70 per cent of Democrat voters say they will give Labor their preferences. Increasing the primary vote means the Coalition has to appeal to the middle ground. That means picking up the conservative end of the Labor vote.
I wonder how that looks in the marginal seats across the nation?
Does picking up the conservative end of the Labor vote mean the new environment Minister, Senator Campbell, is saying that he will continue the Government's agenda of linking the nation's future power needs to coal and oil and rejecting the global framework for cutting greenhouse gas emissions? Is that why he is saying that the answer to environmental sustainability is successful business.
That sounds like the old mantra that economic growth comes first and the environmental consequences can be patched up by tossing it a bit of money. How does that square with a renewable energy industry? Do we not have the development of a thriving renewable energy industry that will greatly benefit the Australian economy and environment?
What does the Minister see when he flies over the salt scarred landscape in Western Australia en route Perth to Canbera? Dollar signs? A flourishing economy? Or does he look the other way?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 19, 2004
chaos and tyranny
On the one hand, we have this:
Stavro
The wall is part of the "unilateral disengagement" from Gaza, and its quid pro quo: Israel's right to retain almost all its illegal settlements and the vast swath of the West Bank in which they are located.
Behind the wall we have this kind of discrimination against Arab Israel citizens. But then you have this argument for the illegal settlements in the West Bank to be dismantled. And Ariel Sharon did manage to swing his disengagement outline through cabinet--–after the exit of four pro-settlement ministers.
On the other hand, we have this protest by Palestinians against the President Arafat for the corruption and lack of reform of the Palestinian Authority and security services. As the Palestinian-American intellectual Edward Said wrote: "Arafat is building in the territories a government that is a combination of Lebanon's chaos and Saddam Hussein's tyranny in Iraq." Arafat is making a grab for power in the Gaza strip.
It is chao and tyranny in the Gaza territories. The political chaos is a reflection of the deep-seeded frustrations and boiling indignations felt by Palestinian society, particularly with the PA's inefficacy and corruption.
July 20
This article highlights that Arafat has spent months staving off pressure to surrender some of his power, particularly control over the Palestinian security forces, to those who might make better use of it. He now faces a challenge to his web of control, if not his position as leader, from within Palestinian society as the four year old intifadia fades.
The immediate confrontation is a battle between reformers and the old guard within the Palestine Liberation Organisation.The reformers include the youth wing of Arafat's own ruling faction. The challenge had been prompted by the competition for power in Gaza ahead of the Israeli withdrawal of Jewish settlers next year, and a deep disillusionment at the level of corruption and incompetence of the Palestinian Authority under Mr Arafat's control. However, Arafat still controls the money and the arms.
July 22
This BBC report says that the number of Jewish settlers living in the Gaza Strip and some West Bank areas has risen sharply since Israel said it would unilaterally withdraw from them.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 2:13 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 18, 2004
cleanskins?
This post is a bit out of date. The Butler Report came out around Thursday last week and Australian bloggers, such as Ken Parish and Tim Dunlop and Chris Shiels, have been all over it.
We are now
There are views to the contrary:
With Alastair Campbell we have the introduction of the processes of tabloid journalism by which a reporter is persuaded by superiors to 'firm up' copy, to turn it into a scoop into the selling of the war. Shades of Tampa.
What the Butler report shows is that it was the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who had initiated all the main steps which led to the war. It was not the intelligence services which persuaded him, but he who needed them to justify the war.
I presume the same happened in Australia. John Howard who had initiated all the main steps which led to the war. He encouraged the intelligence bureaucrats to provide judgments which went to the outer limits of the intelligence available. Howard went to war on the basis of evidence that was manipulated and proved false.
There is an implied indictment of the undermining of processes of British governance under the Blair Government. The embedded safeguards in the constitution, such as cabinet government, collective responsibility, proper audit trails and minuted meetings and respect for the independence and impartiality of official advice, have been set aside or seriously degraded.
What has happened in Australia is that ministerial responsibility has been eroded from the executive increasingly tightening its grip on the House of Representatives. The House is now the executive's instrument, and all that is left of public debate about pressing issues in the House is the spectacle of the theatre of Question Time.
There is a good debate on ministerial responsibility over at Ken Parish's place. I personally think that this convention has been gutted under the Howard Government.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:59 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 17, 2004
a funny ole business
Politics is a funny old business. Consider the big picture stuff.
The foreign policy arguments have all been about Iraq. They have been about the ALP following Spain and pulling its troops out of Iraq. The debate has not been about the intelligence used to justify war on Iraq being wrong; or that the intelligence used to justifiy the war was not what the Coalition politicians claimed it to be. The Coalition's case for going to war was deeply flawed, yet it was the ALP in the firing line, not the Howard Government for seriously misleading the public.
What was really being debated was the alliance with the US. But no one openly said so. It was all code. Secret men's business on SS Australia, so to speak.
Bill Leak
The consensus is that with Beazley coming in from the cold Howard's assault on on the ALP's anti-Americanism and its national security creditionals has been blunted, whilst resisting the embrace of an unquestioning acceptance of Washington's decsions to reshape the world to further its own interests. The unquestioning pathway is the one taken by the Howard Government and it leaves no room for Australia to develop its own independent foreign policy.
We should remember that in putting the case for war to Australians, the Howard, pretty much repeated US and British claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that could be used by terrorists. It was this that constituted a substantive threat to Australia's national interest, and constituted the compelling justification for war. The moral imperative of changing a clapped-out regime in Iraq was explicitly rejected by Howard as an adequate justification for war before the war began. It was otherwise after the war, of course.
Yet Howard's credibility problem is not an issue in Australia, as it is for Bush and Blair.
The reality of politics in our daily lives is not this shadow boxing within the big picture politics. We citizens vote on the basis of small picture politics and not because of our involvement the war in Iraq. Our politics is more fine grained and concerned with little things, such as being able to pay the mortgage, having a job, being able to see the doctor, desiring affordable health care, safety on the streets, etc etc.
Yet we citizens are dismissed as being selfish: only concerned with what's in our pockets. Our concerns about community, values, or culture are see as a mask that we citizens wear to look good to pollsters because we do not want to appear to be selfish.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:04 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 15, 2004
prudential statecraft?
In todays Australian Financial Review there is an op-ed by Ross Cameron, the federal member for Parramatta and Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, which outlines what Leo Strauss calls prudential statecraft.
Prudential statecraft is captured by Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, which celebrates the role of the entrepreneurs in society. Instead of Kant's nation of devils Cameron's entrepreneuers make things happen; as they have vision and are willing to risk money to bring the vision into being. Prudential statecraft on this account is being a cautious regulator and in stopping the heavy-handed and excessive regulation so favoured by the ALP side of the Parliamentary Chamber. That is the pathway to tyranny peculiar to democratic regimes. Trust can, and should, replace bureaucratic regulation and black-letter law.
There is no need to replace existing institutional arrangements to achieve a perfect world since human beings are fallible. So the goal of political life is avoiding heavy handed regulation and fostering entrepreneurs in order to achieve prosperity.
I infer that Ross Cameron affords free rein to material self-interest so as to encourage the endless profusion of narrowly self-seeking entrepreneurs and interest groups. In a large and extremely diverse society such as Australia no one of these groups would constitute a majority. This profusion of interest groups would thus obviate the threat of the tyranny of the majority by simultaneously submerging "dangerous passions in the pursuit of gain," and assuring that no one interest group would be able to acquire political power.
A good society is a lumpy stew of individuals and groups, each with its own inherent "principle of motion." This stew stirs itself, and in the fullness of time, when mixed with trust out pops a creamy puree called 'the public interest'. In this way the endless maelstrom of individuals pursuing private goods produces, magically, the public good.
Alan Moir
It is real magic pudding stuff.
I for one do not stand in raptured admiration for the clockwork regularity of Cameron's marvel of a self-regulating economy. I see self-contradiction: the self-regulating economy has been able to trade upon "a dwindling legacy of cultural capital which was accumulated in sterner, more thoughtful era of Menzies Australia. The entrepreneurial system advocated by Cameron does not replenish this capital. It acts to erode it. Think Allan Bond or Christopher Skase.
Did not the light hand of market governance --going easy on business---lead to the disaster with HIH and Apra (The Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority)?
I presume that Ross Cameron does not see the malaise and nihilism afflicting our body politic that his government has contributed to. Has not the Coalition presided over the breakdown of political ethics in our political institutions? Has not it contributed to the break down of trust between government and citizens over Tampa and Iraq?
Cameron is less expressing prudential statecraft and more of an expression of the desire to abolish the political.
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July 14, 2004
Nip 'n tuck in time
Well now. I'm sitting having my coffee in the winter sun reading the Australian Financial Review and wondering why the Coalition is not doing all that well in the Liberal marginal seats in South Australia.
I do not have any access to the private polling in these marginal seats (ie., Adelaide, Hindmarsh & Markin). My judgement about the Coalition being in trouble is based on two recent events. Consider these:
---yesterday's changes to the temporary protection visas for refugees that introduces a bit more humanitarian sensibility to the hardline detention, refugee and border protection policies that demonized refugees as criminals and terrorists. The door has been opened a tad to allow for the possibility of permanent residence. Just a tad.
----this morning's announcement that the Federal Government has backed away from imposing a low level nuclear waste dump on South Australia. The Federal Court had ruled in June that the Commonwealth's compulsory acquisition of land for a site in South Australia was unlawful. The Commonwealth Government has decided that it will not challenge that court decision in the High Court.
My reading of these events is that both issues would have continued to damage the Howard Government in the marginal seats. For instance, Peter McGauran, the Science Minister, had been heavy handed in his approach to the nuclear waste dump issue, and this had created a political backlash amongst SA liberals.
The policy switch by Howard on these two issues aims to claw back the ALP lead by bringing the social liberals (wets) back into the liberal fold. He is protecting his own base. It's a defensive move that indicates the Coalition is in real trouble in these marginal seats.
I notice in passing that Federal Labor equivocates on the issue. I don't trust them either.
Bill Leak
The ALP has also been managing a damaging issue--Iraq. The return of Kim Beazley to the front bench as Opposition spokesperson for defence has begun to neutralize the alliance issue that was damaging the ALP. The tone has already changed. It appears that the ALP is on middle ground, rather than appearing to be anti-American. Beazley's ability to uphold Australia's national interest, whilst retaining a deep sympathy to the US, will prevent an erosion of votes in the all important middle ground.
I presume that the ALP will start looking better in Western Australia, where it was not travelling well. However, unless they are on the nose, governments are good at reeling in their opponents during an election campaign. They have all the advantages of encumbency.
July 15
Gregory Hywood reckons that the ALP has blown its electoral lead of only a few months ago. The finger is pointed at an arrogant Latham's instinctive anti-Americanism. This is deemed to be ill conceived, as it placed the alliance at risk. It is tantamount to political suicide for Labor to thumb its nose at the world's sole superpower, which also happens to be Australia's closest ally.
Why is this so? Hywood says that:
"The US alliance is a staple of Australian politics. Elements of the social and political elite may resent its inherent inequality, but it's just a fact of life. In an alliance between a country of 20 million and another with 275 million that happens to be the most militarily powerful and socially influential nation on earth, the big guy has the last word. Australians instinctively understand this and are prepared to trade off an element of independence for the ultimate insurance the alliance provides. As Latham has found, any mainstream political leader who jeopardises this pays a price."
It is over-the-top rhetoric to say that it is tantamount to political suicide for Labor to thumb its nose at the world's sole superpower.' What is up with the Hywood fellow? Why should the ALP rollover and sign up to the son of star wars?
Should there not be a focus on the Asia-Pacific region and the possibility of an arms race there from Australia's national interest? What possible reason do we have for facilitating an arms race in our region?
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July 13, 2004
Kyoto: Australia's last stand
In yesterday's and today's Australian Financial Review (subscription required) there are articles on climate change, the European Union and the Kyoto Protocol. They are based on an interview by Geoff Kitney with Margot Wallstrom, the EU's environment commissioner.
Wallstrom says that once Russia ratifies the Kyoto Protocol--and they are preparing the instruments to ratify Kyoto--- the critical mass required for it to come into effect will be achieved. The likelihood is that the rest of the world will go ahead with implementing the treaty. That pretty much leaves the US and Australia standing alone as the main opponents of Kyoto. Wallstrom says:
"I expect they will still continue to hold out. There is a lot of prestige and there are a lot of vested interests involved....But I think in the end, so many countries willl adopt Kyoto the pressure will be too strong for the United States and Australia. The pressure will come from their business communities. Already we have many US companies coming to us because
we are going ahead with emissions trading early next year. They want to trade with us."
A thought. Is Australia standing with the US because of the alliance relationship? It is being a loyal ally by giving the US a fig leaf of international credibility. Surely not? Is it not more likely that the Howard Government has been completely captured by the energy-intensive industries?
Wallstrom then goes onto say:
"I think that despite the positions of the US and Australia, we do have a consensus that climate change is happening. We have a consensus that is real and also a consensus from the world's best scientists that it is man-made and that the influence of human activities means we have a reason to act."
How long will the last stand by the world's two major greenhouse-gas-producing developed nations continue?
At the moment the US and Australia are opposed to reducing emissions within an international legal framework, which establishes the rules by which all nations must play. Is this yet another expression of the Howard Government's contempt for the institutions of liberal internationalism?
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July 12, 2004
The Australian's politics
The Australian has an editorial on the International Court of Justice ruling on the security wall built by Israel. The ruling is dismissed as "as just another anti-Israel publicity stunt." The Australian's headline says it all: "World court indulges in Israel bashing."
The Australian's argument is pretty thin. It acknowledges the effectiveness of the security wall in stopping the suicide bombers:
"Overall, after more than 60 terror bombings in the first half of 2002, there have been fewer than 10 this year, with none in the last four months – until yesterday. This is why the barrier has gradually won over liberal Israelis. Israel should, and will, ignore a ruling that condemns its citizens to death by terror."
The problem is that this kind of politics ignores the legal concerns raised by the ICJ. It stated that Israel has a right to build the wall. The IJC said that:
"While Israel has the right, and indeed the duty to respond to the numerous and deadly acts of violence directed against its civilian population, in order to protect the life of its citizens, the measures taken are bound to remain in conformity with applicable international law."
The IJC judgement is that whilst Israel can build the wall, it should not do so by taking Palestinian territory.
The IJC notes that the construction of the wall is “an attempt to annex the territory contrary to international law” and “a violation of the legal principle prohibiting the acquisition of territory by the use of force” and that “the de facto annexation of land interferes with the territorial sovereignty and consequently with the right of the Palestinians to self-determination”.
That is the point at issue. It is not the issue of "limiting a sovereign state's inherent right to self-defence against attacks by another state," since Palestine is not a state. That is a furphy.
Now, there is an issue here about a nation's right to self-defence from attacks by non-state actors (eg.,al-Qa'ida), and whether the ICJ has addressed that concern adequately. But that issue is not being addressed by The Australian. It's concern is with the ICJ judgement about the legality of Israel's security wall.
So how does The Australian address the issue of the annexation of Palestinian land by building the wall? It evades the issue. It says:
"So the question with the barrier now is not whether, but where. As if to underline Israel's status as the only fully democratic state in the Middle East... the Israeli Supreme Court ruled last week that the barrier must be re-routed to avoid cutting off Palestinians from their farms, jobs and public services. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said he will abide by the ruling, but unfortunately he is hamstrung by a fundamentalist settler movement that, while it cannot be morally equated with Islamist terrorism, is almost as bitterly opposed to the idea of a democratic Israeli state. The fact the barrier must loop around so many Jewish settlements, instead of following the pre-1967 border, is the weak spot in Mr Sharon's audacious unilateral security solution, which also involves Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. But the path of the barrier can be adjusted long after it has been put in place and is saving more Israeli and Palestinian lives."
The phrase "the barrier must loop around so many Jewish settlements" is a euphemism for saying that Israel is taking Palestinian territory whilst constructing the wall. But that political reality is not---and cannot be?--- acknowledged All that is offered is Ariel Sharon being opposed by a fundamentalist settler movement bitterly opposed to the idea of a democratic Israeli state.
The Australian ignores a central conconern of the IJC judgement: the effect of taking the land on Palestinian self-determination and the capacity to build a nation state. Does that mean The Australian is opposed to a two state solution?
Note the contradiction in The Australian's argument. In the above paragraph it acknowledges that the wall needs to be re-routed. When the ICJ highlights this and addresses the legal consequences The Australian calls it Israeli bashing and an anti-Israel publicity stunt. It evades the key issue.
The editorial is really an attack on liberal internationlism, international law and international institutions. It implies that these cannot have primacy over the rights and power of nation states to further their own interests.
Yet, isn't The Australian a feverent advocate of the global market and the need to reduce the power of the nation state to control the global market? Doesn't The Australian support the global institution called the WTO?
A pretty thin argument isn't it.
14th July
There is an op-ed piece in today's The Sydney Morning Herald by Chemi Shalev, an Israeli journalist living in Sydney. Shalev talks in terms of the "one-sided decision by the International Court of Justice against the fence"; the "court has ruled, in effect, that the Palestinian right to live in peace and tranquillity is greater than the right of Jews to live at all"; "the prejudiced legal forum sponsored by the United Nations"; "the arbitrary verdict of the International Court"; and "the Palestinians are once again placing their trust in imposed solutions from the outside."
Now Shalev does acknowledge that:
"There is an intense debate raging inside Israel about the proper delineation of the fence and the degree of hardships that can properly be imposed on the Palestinians."
He acknowledges that this was addressed by the Israeli High Court of Justice.
However, Chemi Shalev nowhere mentions that it is the taking of Palestinian land which is is a primary cause of their hardship. Nor does he acknowledge the right of the Palestinians to self-determination. Nor does he address the illegality of Israel settlers taking Palestinian land.
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July 11, 2004
Medicare: a problem
This account by Max Walsh of MedicarePlus is about right. He says that Tony Abbott was parachuted into the health portfolio to salvage what was fast becoming a political black hole for the government.
Abbott succeeded in plugging the blackhole. Health is not a big issue in the election campaign.The ALP has lost is historic advantage. However, there is a cost for this political fix. Walsh highlights the key problem:
"The central feature of the safety net is that it does away with the concept of a scheduled fee as a means of capping the exposure of the tax coffers to the demands of the medical profession....Abbott rejects that the medical profession will increase fees, saying it is not out to rip off people. But he has changed the rules of the marketplace .... In fact, Abbott has given the green light to obstetricians and surgeons to change their way of billing patients by shifting the major element of their fees onto surgery consultations rather than hospital fees. While this could mean lower costs to patients, it is much more likely this will be shared between doctor and patient."
Was Abbott's refusal to cap specialist fees a way of keeping the AMA onside, whilst the Medicare doors were opened to the allied health professsionals?
Is the ALP quietly dumping its universality principle in the name of economic responsibility? What does that mean for health reforms?
It has accepted the Howard Government's principle of a mix of public coverage bolstered by heavily subsidised private insurance. Labor is committed to maintaining the 30 per cent rebate for private health insurance. It has agreed to the Howard Government's changes to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
What does universality mean when all this is in place?
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July 10, 2004
Israel in the docks
A stretch of the barrier that Israel is building in the West Bank, in the village of Sawahreh (Agence France-Presse—Getty Images).
Whilst Israel continues to build more settlements than it dismantles the International Court of Justice at The Hague has ruled against Israel's security wall.
The IJC has condemned Israel's West Bank barrier saying that it had illegally imposed hardship on thousands of Palestinians; that it is contrary to international law; and that with those Palestinaians who have already suffered because their land has been confiscated for the construction of 450-mile barrier should be compensated. The International Court held that the construction of the wall and its associate regime creates a 'fait accompli' on the ground that could well become permanent, in which case ... it would be tantamount to de facto annexation. It said that the wall should be torn down.
The ruling by the international court of justice is non-binding. The findings has already been rejected by Israel as politicised and one-sided. Washington has indicated that it will veto any security council resolution in support of enforcing the world court's decision.
What is significant about the ICJ ruling is that it sees the wall as a potential constraint on the Palestinian right of self-determination--something the Israeli High Court of Justice did not consider in its deliberations. About 120 miles of the 437-mile barrier have been completed since construction started about two years ago. Though parts of the fence, both built and unbuilt, run along Israel's pre-1967 border, a large part of the barrier's route is inside the Palestinian West Bank. It was this portion that was the object of the International Court's 64-page decision, and Israel's Supreme Court. The latter's ruling, which found the concept of the fence legal, ordered the rerouting of a portion of it because it caused too much hardship on Palestinians.
Protesting the Wall, Khalil Abu Arafeh, Alquds, 7/8/04
The key strategic question is: Does Sharon's security wall makes a viable Palestinian state impossible? The ICJ answered this. It acknowledged that Israel had "the right, and indeed the duty, to respond in order to protect the life of its citizens". However, the IJC also said that the path of the barrier could work toward creating a "de facto annexation" of Palestinian land by Israel through the creation of "a fait accompli on the ground that could well become permanent."
The wall arises because the Israeli right cannot accept a solution that abandons the core Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Hence we have Sharon's disengagement plans for the Gaza strip depending on accommodating the settlements in the West Bank. That puts into question the view that Ariel Sharon is fighting the good fight to withdraw Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza and struggling against recalcitrant rightwing Likud ministers to do so.
What is coming into the foreground is the view that Israel's absorption and Judaization of the occupied territories are increasingly rendering a two-state solution meaningless.
July 13
Eric Wilson, in this article in the Sydney Morning Herald, says that
the Israel barrier would be illegal if it could be shown to breach a treaty obligation of some kind. Does it? Wilson says:
"Here, the ICJ followed the lead of the Israeli Supreme Court, which grounded part of its ruling on the domestic status of both the 1907 Hague Regulations and the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention governing the protection of civilians during wartime.
The ICJ went further and considered Israel to be in breach of two international covenants on civil and political rights, and on economic, social and cultural rights, both treaties deemed by the World Court to be of universal application.
If a fortification within a zone of occupation has a harmful effect upon any population disproportionate to otherwise lawful self-defensive measures, or there are discriminatory effects on the basis of ethnic identity, then it breaches international law."
Wilson says that this is the impact of Israel's barrier. "It restricts the rights and freedoms of Palestinians within their territory, while seeking to ensure that settlers on illegal settlements can enjoy those rights and freedoms."
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July 9, 2004
Militarization of space
Whilst the Bush administration was beating up the ALP for its Iraq policy, Australia and the US quietly signed a 25 year agreement on ballistic missile defence co-operation in Washington.
That means Australia withdraws behind the US defensive shield. That means Australia rejects the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty and becomes a party to the militarization of space.
Whose missiles are we defending ourselves from by joining the "Son of Star Wars"? Those of Indonesia? China? North Korea? Pakistan?
Does that Agreement mean the US will use Australian continental territory to test the missiles? What we do know is that the early warning signals of incoming missiles on the US will be relayed through Australia's Pine Gap ground station, so making Australia a potential target in any large-scale attack against the US.
News reports say that Robert Hill, the Australian Minister of Defence, is arguing that opposing the agreement is anti-American.
Is desiring to dominate the Asia-Pacific Rim from above a good thing? Will this defensive shield heighten the tensions of the region by putting Indonesia and China offside.
10 July
Adele Horin in the Sydney Morning Herald has a go at trying to explain Australia's grovelling foreign policy to some European friends visiting Sydney. Needless to say they were not convinced by the rationale.
11 July
An article by Mark Forbes in The Age on the Son of Star Wars. He says that "the Defence Department states the ballistic missile threat to Australia is negligible, with no potential foes possessing missiles that could reach our shores....Indonesia has condemned Australian involvement in missile defence, arguing against the need for such a shield and pointing out its potential destabilising impact on the region. China is also critical of the move, warning it could lead to missile proliferation, but Japan has backed the program."
The destablizing impact on the region is sketched by Mark in terms of an arm race. He says that regional critics argue that the missile defence system will increase missile proliferation:
"Put simply, if countries such as China believe their small stocks of ballistic missiles no longer present on effective deterrent to the US, then it will expand its missile fleet on the theory that some would penetrate the shield. Other potential rivals such as Pakistan or India may then push to increase missile stocks to counter the possible Chinese threat."
The consequences of Australia signing the Agreement is that it reinforces the perceptions of Australia being a "deputy sheriff" of the US, lacking an independent voice, and becoming ever more isolated from the region.
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US beats up ALP again
The US is at it again. Richard Armitage is criticising the ALP. Only this time it is not the ALP policy on Iraq that is being criticised. Armitage is directly helping Howard's Liberals get re-elected by seeking to damage the ALP within the context of a domestic election. He has a become a participant in the election.
From the ABC's Lateline programme last night:
TONY JONES: "Richard Armitage has now made two forays into Australian politics in the last month.
Has he crossed the line between legitimate commentary and interference?
MALCOLM FRASER: I think Richard Armitage crossed the line quite a long while ago because it's not the first time he's done this.
It's worse because we're approaching an election but he has, on a number of occasions, said, for example, that if there is a war between China and America over Taiwan, Australia would have to do a good deal of the dirty work.
Now that's not his decision to make.
It's Australia's decision as, hopefully, an independent country.
And the intervention, not only of Richard Armitage but his bosses, in our political scene, I think, are quite unforgivable."
The former Liberal Prime Minister says it simply and well. Paul Keating's language was more colourful. But he reinforced Fraser's position by saying that "Mr Armitage has made yet another unwarranted and untimely partisan intervention in the Australian political debate."
From this event I suspect that the US-Australia alliance is bing used by both Howard and the Bush Adminstration to keep Howard in office.
Even the friends of the US in the ALP are dismayed at the partisanship being displayed.
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July 8, 2004
it takes a blackout to see the light
John Howard is in Adelaide for three days. An interview with Gushing Cordeaux. This is Howard's second visit to South Australia. It is an election battleground. I would say that Hindmarsh has been lost. Howard is hanging onto Adelaide. I don't know about Makim. It is unknown territory for me.
Whilst in SA the PM is delivering a big vision speech--what was once called a headland speech back in 1996. You know, they're the ones that outline the government's policy goals for the next three years. They outline general themes and plans without saying anything specific. The detail---- how you actually get the water for the River Murray-- comes latter.
This particular speech is entitled Getting the Big Things Right: Goals and Responsibilities in a Fourth Term. What does it say?
The goals will include Australia becoming an enterprise-oriented nation, a fair and decent society and a sustainable continent. Australia will only reach its full potential with an enterprise culture – a culture that encourages and rewards hard work, ambition and calculated risk-taking. A fair and decent society would reconcile a desire for personal freedom with the need for social belonging and order. A sustainable continent is a continent where our prosperity and development does not come at the expense of our environment.
What underpins, and enables, this vision of a better world for all Australians are the twin pillars of economic strength and national security. These two responsibilities allow us to reach our other goals.
Reading this good feeling vibe I kept wondering how the creation of the national electricity market fitted into the vision. Is this an example of sustainable continent where our prosperity and development does not come at the expense of our environment?
The answer has to be no. The electricity reform (privatisation and deregulation) of the 1990s was all about replacing regulations that protect the public and the environment with rules that ensure the smooth and efficient running of the market and the electricity system. These reforms diminish public ownership and control and increase private ownership and control; they shift subsidies away from rural consumers and households to big business; and they shift the burden of paying for non-commercial objectives (equity and sustainability) from business to general taxpayers.
The electricity reforms were less about cutting prices, become more efficient and maintaining the same level of service as the lobbyists maintained. The reforms are more about energy companies making big profits from increasing prices. Moreover, these profits are increasingly being made by using old, polluting, coal-fired power plants in the eastern states; by relying more on more on dirty bown coal in Victoria to generate electricity; and by using the competitive market to foster the uptake of renewable energy.
Using the national electricity market to judge how serious the PM is to sustainable continent is not being unfair. The PM mentions his energy White Paper. This, he says, offers a strategy that retains Australia’s competitive advantage in energy but also takes action to address greenhouse emissions and aloows Adelaide to play a part in initiatives like a Solar Cities trials. He claims that both these develop a smarter energy scenario for the future.
Not really John. It's spin and gloss to cover up your protection of, and subsidies for, the coal and energy-intensive industries. Just another strategy to shore your base.
Has it got the big things right? Well, too much is left unsaid. And how do those common values of the nation, which bind us together as one people, fit with us in SA being taken for a ride over the creation of a national electricity market.
CS over at Backpages is not so polite.
9 July
More gushing interviews with Howard by Adelaide radio. This time it is a fawning Leon Byner. Yawn. However, it was a lot tougher with Mathew Abraham on the ABC.
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July 7, 2004
The politics of smear
I've refrained from commenting on the politics of dirt based on rumor and innuendo that has been filling the pages of the media this last week. Since the politics of dirt has taken on a life of its own, some comments are needed beyond all the nonsense about character in politics.
There is certainly a bit of this:
Alan Moir
As an ambitious NSW right-winger on the make, Latham has form when it comes to dealing in political dodginess. He's good at biffo. So he has been forced to confront the rumor and innuendo and prevent the mud from sticking. However, much more is going on than a political past in local council politics returning to haunt Latham.
Michelle Grattan's article is about politics being out control--- for which we read Latham. Latham is emotionally caught as he is letting the smears run whilst crying for the cameras. It's soapbox stuff sailing close to entertainment.
If politics is out of control it is not the Howard Government that It's "character campaign" is chipping away at Latham's personality creating doubts about his capacity to control his violent streak.
Cathy Wilcox
The "character" campaign, which has been flooding the media headlines for days, is trying to erode the ALP led by placing Latham's "character" into question. Families in the marginal seats will make the judgement.
Is the character campaign working? Is it clawing back the ALP preference lead in the marginals seats, now that both major parties are running neck and neck on primary votes? What other strategic alternatives to a dirt campaign does the Howard Government now have? We will see.
What is missing in Grattan's account of politics being out of control is a critical reflection on the role of the media- in all of this. Why is the media not seen to be out of control? Is this another case of journalists not reflecting on the role of media in political life?
In the Sydney Morning Herald Louise Dodson notes that "Politics turned into Hollywood-style celebrity life" but fails to analyse the media's role in this politics. Paul Kelly in The Australian attacks the media:
" The media's obsession with such issues [character] betrays not just a nasty streak but the way the cult of celebrity debases our journalism. This obsession with private histories coincides with the media's stunning lack of interest in Latham's substance and his policies (notably his refusal to define his main policies). The character issue is a cover for the trivialisation of political analysis and a decline in our public debate."
The politics of spectacle and entertainment is usually dismissed as tabloid with the quality press being above it all.
But the quality press are running with the rumors and innuendo just like the rest, and they doing it without engaging in a serious investigation of the rumours about all sides of politics: how is the campaign organized, how does it works, why does the media swallows the bait, why does the media spend all their time spinning around on rumor and not on policies. Why does the media feed on itself?
This is more than the media wars. The articles have become a simulacra; that is the substitution of the signs of the real for the real.
What does suprises me is the naivety and gullability being displayed about the media about the way that it is a player in politics. Catherine Lumby has talked about the politics of the media agenda. True, we don't hear much about the day-to-day economic issues - child-care costs, healthcare bills and higher education fees. Things have become so frenzied from rumors that some parts of the media start swallowing anything. Jokes and rumors become the real. The Sunday programme, which said it would expose all, was a beatup by the National Nine Network's pre-publicity machine for ratings. Then we have Crikey.com being ironic and postmodern: it is criticising the media for running the rumors whilst it is active in spreading the rumors.
Is not all of this the new politics within the politics of spectacle and entertainment?
Update
Chris over at Backpages asks: "So where does Jack go now? The treasury's spent, the armoury's empty and the adverts are on the nose." He says that he can't see that Howard has any good moves left. The implication? All Latham has to do is hang on. There is no need to block any moves cos there ain't any. Sounds a tad optimistic to me.
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July 6, 2004
what if?
What if the transfer of sovereignty in Iraq doesn’t work. Is there a US fallback plan, if the client Allawai regime is unable to hold Iraq together? It would appear there is no US backup plan. The neocons think they don't need one. Freedom will prevail. Democracy will flourish.
There is a back up plan in place and it is run by Israel. So argues Semour Hersh.
He says that Israel has been among the most enthusiastic supporters of the US invasion of Iraq. It is acutely aware that the American-led occupation would face a heightened insurgency, fearful that the security situation in Iraq was nearing collapse, concerned that the American war against the insurgency was continuing to founder and aware that the occupation would end badly.
Israel is aware that none of the postwar Iraqi political institutions and leaders have shown an ability to govern the country or to hold elections. It views the region as hostile. Israel is convinced that Iran is on the verge of developing nuclear weapons, and that, with Syria’s help, it is planning to bolster Palestinian terrorism as Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip. Israel sees Moqtada al-Sadr, theIraqi Shiite militia leader as a “stalking horse” for Iran. Moqtada al-Sadr owes much of his success in defying the American-led coalition to logistical and communications support and training provided by Iran.
So Israel is taking action on its own.That involves making the Kurd's allies and an instrument of Israeli policy. If a regime hostile to Israel came to power in Iraq Hersh says that Israel would unleash the Kurds on it. Does that mean an independent Kurdistan with close ties to Israel? Hersh says:
"Israel’s overwhelming national-security concern must be Iran. Given that a presence in Kurdistan would give Israel a way to monitor the Iranian nuclear effort."
The danger of Plan B is a divided Iraq. And an independent Kurdistan run by Israel in a divided Iraq concerns Turkey, Syria and Iran. Do the latter then strengthen their ties to the Palestinians?
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July 5, 2004
the rule of law
Justice has been blind in the war on terror:
The US exercises complete jurisdiction and control over the Guantanamo base and may continue to do so permanently if it chooses. Yet the Bush administration prevented the "indefinite" detainees from having access to the courts of the land. It argued that it could keep prisoners at Guantanamo Bay in a legal limbo, free of any access to normal United States law because US courts had no jurisdiction in Cuba. Guantanamo Bay is a legal black hole.”
The Howard Government said that it was fine that the detainees (including Australian citizens ) in Guantanamo Bay...could not have access to the legal system. The Guantanamo Bay prison was well run (they had been reassured by the US administration that the prisoners were not subject to all kinds of physical torture and mental and sexual abuse) and that the military commission hearings were just.
Fortunately, things are changing. The rule of law has been re-affirmed.
The US Supreme Court has ruled that the detainees at Guantanamo Bay have a right to challenge their detentions in US courts. That means the Supreme Court has held that U.S. law applies even to Guantanamo Bay, a region that the Bush Administration had insisted was outside the jurisidiction of American justice. The imperial Presidency was trying to evade constitutional protections.
The US Supreme Court has delivered a major body blow to the Bush Administration's claims to unlimited, unchecked power. In another case it ruled that Congress has given the Bush Administration the power to hold American citizens indefinitely without charges or trial, but that the detainee has a right to challenge his detention (to show why he is not an enemy combatant) in court with the assistance of an attorney.
It is good to see the institutions of the republic take a small step to begin to challenge the new regime of empire.
The reality is that in the "war on terror" even though you are not a "terrorist," you may be detained, imprisoned, charged, arrested, and tried as one. That is being done in the name of liberty.
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July 4, 2004
Robert Menzies
I'm reading Robert Menzies Forgotten People Essays at the moment. These were radio broadcasts made by Menzies in early 1942 just after the fall of Singapore.
I'm reading Menzies to understand how John Howard has taken an inherited political language developed for a bounded industrialized nation state, and then adapted it to the political present of Australia in globalized world.
Howard's political rhetoric adds social conservatism to the economic liberalism and the dry economic language of competitive, market-based liberalism. He connects this social conservatism to the experiences of the battlers----families and small businesses: to their lived experiences around work, family and neighbourhoods. This mainstream Australia was then enveloped in a taken-for-granted assimilationist nationalism. Hey presto, we can start talking about the nation as a common Australian culture again. The battler package became a political touchstone.
Howard's battlers move is similar to Menzies' forgotten people move 50 years earlier. That move adapted an inherited political language to the new circumstances of industrial Australia. In the Forgotten People speech Menzies says:
"In a country like Australia the class war must always be a false war. But if we are to talk of classes, then the time has come to say something of the forgotten class - the middle class - those people who are constantly in danger of being ground between the upper and the nether millstones of the false class war; the middle class who, properly regarded, represent the backbone of this country. We do not have classes here as in England, and therefore the terms do not mean the same; so I must define what I mean when I use the expression 'middle class’."
The middle class for Menzies lies between the rich and powerful and the unskilled labouring mass. This class consists in:
"....the intervening range - the kind of people I myself represent in Parliament - salary earners, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, professional men and women, farmers, and so on. These are, in the political and economic sense, the middle class. They are for the most part unorganized and unselfconscious. They are envied by those whose social benefits are largely obtained by taxing them. They are not rich enough to have individual power. They are taken for granted by each political party in turn. They are not sufficiently lacking in individualism to be organized for what in these days we call "pressure politics". And yet, as I have said, they are the backbone of the nation."
This non-manual class becomes the forgotten people who are the backbone of the nation. The forgotten people constitute a moral community; they see themselves as the individual bearers of moral qualities or virtues; and they have their own homes in the suburbs. Menzies says that the value of this middle class is multiple. The first is that:
"...it has a stake in the country". It has responsibility for homes - homes material, homes human, homes spiritual...The material home represents the concrete expression of the habits of frugality and saving "for a home of our own"...homes human is where my wife and children are...homes spiritual....combines dependence upon God with independence of man."
The value of the middle class also included other moral virtues:
"Second, the middle class, more than any other, provides the intelligent ambition which is the motive power of human progress...Third, the middle class provides more than perhaps any other the intellectual life which marks us off from the beast: the life which finds room for literature, for the arts, for science, for medicine and the law....Fourth, this middle class maintains and fills the higher schools and universities, and so feeds the lamp of learning."
Hence we have the moral middle class as a people with virtuous character who were deeply concerned with what is good for the nation.Personal virtue and national strength were linked to give an account of how people could live together and cooperate for their shared endeavours of nation-building.
What Howard was able to rework this understanding of the virtuous middle class and the nation. He drops all Menzies talk about service and obligations re citizenship and links what is left to the nation's history read through the prism of the Anzac legend.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 12:36 PM | Comments (9) | TrackBack
July 3, 2004
a simple truth
It reminds me of the Cambodian killing fields:
Then we have this.
The pro-war's "you are either with us and everything we do, or you are siding with evil" implies an indifference towards, if not a contempt for, the processes of informed public debate and deliberative democracy.
It is an experience that leads to critical turn against a liberalism, which has an unlimited faith in the market, unlimited scepticism towards government and the need to protect individuals against oppressive democratic majorities. That sort of liberalism says that politics only comes into play when the competing interests of different individuals cannot be reconciled to their mutual benefit through the operation of the deregulated market.
Liberal politics is about the reconciliation and aggregation of pre-determined interests within set of rules (a constitution) designed to protect individuals against the government and each other.
The big implication is this: this market liberalism is silent on the issue of democracy and public reasoning. That is why you never hear them talking about democratic citizenship, only populism.
John Howard says that the Liberal Party is the trustee of, and combines, both the classical liberal economic policy and social conservatism. There is a big hollow in the middle---democracy.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 4:10 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
July 2, 2004
prejudice
yeah, I know it is a lefty critique of the US as a thug in international affairs. I accept that it is an inaccurate representation of globalism and empire.
Leunig
But it is fun. Despite Tim Blair's view about humorless lefties, Leunig raised a smile and then a laugh. It is Friday after all. The end of a long and hard week of wrestling with political things.
We placard-waving, anti-imperialist lefties can smile too you know.
For those who want something more serious and balanced on a Friday try this.
I get my rocks off from reading this. Tis about time the roll back started.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 7:23 PM | Comments (20) | TrackBack
July 1, 2004
strange happenings
As I understand it, Zionism maintains that Jews could not truly be at home outside of Israel and that anti-Semitism would always catch up with them,asit did with the Nazi's. The Zionist theorists in the 20th century were mostly European Jews who associated anti-Semitism with Christian anti-Semitism. These Zionist thinkers represented the Jewish state as a haven from Jewish insecurity in the Diaspora in Europe. Those who immigrated to Israel did so in order to be able to live authentic Jewish lives.
That background---the tragic and horrific deaths of the six million Jews who perished in the evil of the Nazi Holocaust ----is the basis for Australian sympathy and support for the Israeli nation-state, including those on the left who are now routinely denounced as anti-Semitic. Fissures have developed.
If we cut to the present we find strange things have happened. American Jews who immigrated to Israel now see their former homeland as sacrificing Israel. Liberalism is regarded with suspicion. The settlers regard their occupation of Palestinian land as their homeland and say they will fight the disengagement proposed by the Israeli state. They say that:
"... it is legal, moral and ethical to defend one's self, one's family, one's property, one's land. Anyone arriving to expel men, women and children from their homes must be willing to accept the consequences of their actions. People will not sit quietly by, as sheep being led to slaughter."
There is little recognition here that these settlers represent the survival of colonialism in the 21st century. The words "settlements" and "settlers" signify a process of occupation based on soldiers and armed civilian groups taking over hilltops, uprooting trees and crops, stealing water reserves, and blocking access to an indigenous population's freedom of movement and right to earn a living, go to school, get to the doctor, or visit family and friends. They accept that Israel is, and should be, an occupying force in Gaza and the West Bank.
What has happened is that Zionism has become an ideology that states that one group has, and should have, more value, rights, and opportunities than another group. Israel is a democracy for its Jewish citizens, but its Palestinian citizens who now comprise 20% of the Jewish State's population) are discriminated against. Around one million Palestinians in Israel and nearly three million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are, on the receiving end of legally codified and militarily backed discrimination that justifies the current dehumanizing treatment of Palestinians.
What we have in Israel and the diaspora in Australia is a deep shift to a conservatism that highlights security and says that it is equivalent to, and identical with, the nation and the state of Israel. Liberalism is deemed to be traitorous.
In the light of this it is refreshing to see the Israel High Court of Justice order the defense establishment to re-examine the route of part of the separation wall. The court upheld the army's right to build the fence for security reasons - though not for political ones. The fence, it said, could not be used to annex territory to Israel. It ordered changes to 30 kilometers of the fence route northwest of Jerusalem. The court ruled that everything must be done to minimize hardship to Palestinians living in the area.
No doubt various members of the conservative Likud will call for the Knesset to bar judicial review of the fence's route, thereby showing their lack of commitment to the institutions that underpin liberal democracy. For them one of the pillars of democracy (the independence of the judiciary in this case) should be sacrificed to defend the interests of the national security state.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 10:27 AM | Comments (35) | TrackBack