Imperial Fruit: Bananas, Costs and Climate Change

The curved course of the ubiquitous banana has often been the peel…

The problems with a principled stand

In the past couple of weeks, the conservative parties have retained government…

Government approves Santos Barossa pipeline and sea dumping

The Australia Institute Media Release Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s Department has approved a…

If The Jackboots Actually Fit …

By Jane Salmon If The Jackboots Actually Fit … Why Does Labor Keep…

Distinctions Without Difference: The Security Council on Gaza…

The UN Security Council presents one of the great contradictions of power…

How the supermarkets lost their way in Oz

By Callen Sorensen Karklis Many Australians are heard saying that they’re feeling the…

Purgatorial Torments: Assange and the UK High Court

What is it about British justice that has a certain rankness to…

Why A Punch In The Face May Be…

Now I'm not one who believes in violence as a solution to…

«
»
Facebook

Government approves Santos Barossa pipeline and sea dumping

The Australia Institute Media Release

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s Department has approved a major part of Santos’ controversial Barossa gas export project, the Darwin Pipeline Duplication Project.

The approval was made on 15 March, but only published on the DCCEEW website at 5:15 pm on 27 March, at the end of the parliamentary week and shortly before the Easter holidays.

“The Santos Barossa Project is the dirtiest gas project in Australia and should not proceed on climate grounds alone,” said Rod Campbell, Research Director at The Australia Institute.

“But Barossa is even worse than other gas projects, not just due to its CO2 content, but because of the staunch opposition of Tiwi Island Traditional Owners.

“The Federal Government has already bent over backwards for this project, rushing its ‘favour for Santos’ Bill through the parliament late last year with the support of the Liberal-National Coalition.

“Now we see a rapid project approval, published quietly just before the Easter holidays. This is a classic case of the government taking out the trash.

“Australia’s climate-wrecking fossil fuel export industry is being quietly assisted by the Federal Government at every opportunity, while ministers make as much noise as they can about new car regulations.

“Any government that was serious about climate, Traditional Owner consultation, relations with the Pacific and basic integrity would not have approved this project.

“Barossa is just one of the 100 new fossil fuel projects under development in Australia. Australia is still transitioning to more fossil fuels, not away from them.

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

If The Jackboots Actually Fit …

By Jane Salmon

If The Jackboots Actually Fit … Why Does Labor Keep Tripping Over Its Own Feet?

On Tuesday, a bunch of bright young refugees went to parliament to talk about their community contribution, their quest for permanent residency and what more they could give the nation if granted domestic tertiary study rights.

They were to meet with independent members of parliament and senators, alongside sector organisers like Jana Favero of ASRC. Interacting with politicians and representing the sector seemed positive enough.

But instead of sharing their dreams, these young people ended up addressing the nightmare of deportation, in the light of proposed Amendments to the Migration Act.

The actual bill seems not only hasty and loose, but an over-reaction.

Just who are these measures intended for? Dare the Government even say?

“Australia could ban visa applications from five countries under proposed new laws to thwart a potential repeat of the high court detainee scandal.

“The laws would grant the minister the power to block visa applications from countries that do not accept their citizens being involuntarily returned.

“Up to five countries are reportedly being targeted by the Albanese government – Iraq, Iran, South Sudan, Zimbabwe and Russia.”

The terms of the bill as so broad that they seem capable of causing grief for many of the brightest refugees in the nation.

Greens Senator David Shoebridge via X):

“Just uncovered a massive element to this Bill, there is a loophole in this Bill that will allow this law to be applied to any non-citizen, without restriction, regardless of which visa they are on.”

Why is the Bill so comprehensive if only targeting one bloke (ASF17) due before the High Court in mid-April?

And what is the actual emergency? A few gaps in the system occasionally leave the Department with egg on its face. Despite maintaining those gaps for 9 years in office, the Opposition enjoys celebrating these shortcomings in the media.

Where is the replacement for the failed Fast Track scheme?

There is also the matter of criminalising an authentic fear of repatriation. Five-year sentences and a fine seems excessive.

Rather than treating irregular arrivals kindly after over a decade of living and working here, we are again focusing on a handful of bad apples and disregarding the larger, more productive bunch.

That is, we are being disproportionately punitive.

It is almost phobic. And it shows no faith in the judiciary. And is it warranted? Some studies indicate that overall, refugees are no more likely to break the law than ordinary citizens. They may take less for granted.

A 2019 study found no impact of immigration on crime rates in Australia:

Foreigners are under-represented in the Australian prison population, according to 2010 figures. A 1987 report by the Australian Institute of Criminology noted that studies had consistently found that migrant populations in Australia had lower crime rates than the Australian-born population.

Some ethnic groups seem to attract more attention from the law and others less. This may be down to background or police perception.

Don’t most people break the law due to a lack of support?

Then there is the double jeopardy problem. Are law breakers without visas who serve a sentence actually any more dangerous than an Australian citizen who serves a jail term? We have warehoused those few refugees who break state or national laws in jails and then all over again in detention centres without any form of useful rehabilitation. How smart is that?

Moreover, deportations can and do get pushed through no matter what countries are involved. Australian immigration guards are quite assertive like that.

Should individuals carry the responsibility for breaches in nation-to-nation diplomacy?

It is ironic that even the Liberals think the Bill is too hasty.

This is the same party that a few years ago sought to get immigration (Australia Border Force) troopers garbed in black onto the streets to randomly check peoples’ immigration papers. An LNP Government oversaw years of the sometimes-fatal Manus and Nauru detention regimes offshore.

So … do the LNP inspire jackboot, kneejerk, reactionary laws and then seek extra time to make the rules more horrible?

Or they aim to maintain and enjoy the spectacle of Labor squirming after awkward release decisions by the High Court?

Or is it that the LNP genuinely seek information and due process? Now that would be quaint.

Rather than acknowledge the deeper causes of Australian economic or social challenges, Labor apparently seeks to improve electoral chances by playing up to racial prejudice. Replacing media slants and scapegoats with facts might do them more credit with voters born overseas.

Mirroring the LNP has not gone smoothly. When trying on Dutton’s racist jackboots, Labor seems to slop about uncomfortably and occasionally trip.

So which is Labor’s real game: draconian policy or benign inclusion and compassion? If Labor intermittently apes the LNP just to get across the electoral line, more of the electorate may be tempted to flirt with independents and the LNP.

Wouldn’t it be better to judge individual cases on merit than by country or income or skills? At the moment immigration decisions seem classist and arbitrary. Culture is as much of a threat as war or the law in places hostile to religious or ethnic minorities, LGBTQI+, women from Sharia countries or even those living with disabilities.

Nothing has actually replaced the flawed Fast Track process as yet. Shouldn’t Government be getting on with that?

Yes, some gaming of tourist and student visas overstayer loopholes occurs. (You can’t logically seek a protection visa and then nip back home for a holiday). But, given the clumsiness of assessment processes, how else do people escaping sudden war get here in a hurry? Remember the chaos of Kabul airport? The lack of a working DFAT hotline?

Deciding refugee status strictly by nationality has never been adequate. Anyone from anywhere can face exceptional threats.

The arbitrariness of assessments seems concerning. Departmental staff do not seem trained enough nor equipped to assess real situations on the ground. Nor are they held to account for their decisions.

The latest Migration Act amendments reflects the fact that Pezzullo’s protégées are still running the department. They are actively papering over the mess that their own indefinite detention decisions created. (Most of their ankle monitor rulings did not stick when assessed by a judge). They have poured their poison into the ears of once-compassionate politicians for too long.

A sharp new broom is needed to clear out the departmental debris.

Meanwhile many vulnerable asylum seekers and refugees are stressed and some even seem suicidal. It is far too easy for any citizen to suggest they stay calm, steer a steady course at work and keep making allies in all areas of parliament. Those with traumatic lived experience might reasonably find all that harder in practice.

They long for rights to study, work, hugs with ageing relatives, secure mortgages and plan for a clearer future. After up to 12 long years of feeling stuck, constrained and afraid, it seems a fair ask. That they cope at all is admirable.

What is next? We have 5 weeks to analyse the Bill and make submissions to a senate review. The Coalition’s James Patterson claims he is all for passing it.

This “emergency” has been decades in the making. Surely less kneejerk, more constructive solutions are needed?

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

How the supermarkets lost their way in Oz

By Callen Sorensen Karklis

Many Australians are heard saying that they’re feeling the pinch, especially at the checkouts! Gone are the days of Australia being the lucky country! Australia is well and truly amid a crippling cost of living and housing crisis because of excessive greed and bad policy. As Dorothy says in the Wizard of Oz, “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore…?” These same words would now apply to many in land of Oz under the Southern Cross: “I don’t think we’re lucky anymore” …. “This isn’t the Australia I remember”.

How did we get to this point? Believe it or not the supermarket giants weren’t always this way. Inflation is playing a big part mixed into the current economic climate. This is due to the aftereffects of the Covid–19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, but also particularly due to excessive greed. Greed exacerbated since the 1980s neoliberal reforms globally under all sides of politics, and the failures of learning from the GFC in 2007–2008.

First, we must understand history and politics. In Australia, much like the United States, the country bolstered a strong agricultural market during its colonial era which grew and flourished. Agrarian socialism mixed in with the fight for workers’ rights in the minerals market in a flourishing gold mining boom led to the foundation of the early Australian labour movement in the mid-late 19th century. And with it the Australian Labor Party in 1891.

Believe it or not it wasn’t always the Country or National Party that was the party of the farmers. Labor today is always coined as the party for the worker, but Labor was also the party for the farmers. Farming co–ops were becoming the norm in early Federation in many regional and local localities and this was boosted by early Labor Premiers like Ted Theodore in QLD who established an Agricultural Bank, while encouraging fruit produce production and orderly marketing and controls on price fluctuations while developing this space for farming. In simple terms, fair prices for fair work made for all. Pure socialism! But it worked!

Areas like where I come from (the Redlands) were the salad bowls of their state like in South–East Qld. This is how the Tingalpa Shire Council (now part of Redlands, Logan, and BCC) and a majority of South Eastern municipalities in Brisbane and places like Gympie (nowadays dominated by conservative rule) were dominated by the early Labour movement from early federation until the mid-1950s. Tingalpa Mayor such as JD. Collins advocated openly Labor Party candidates at a state level in the mid-1930s who had clear links to the farming co-ops of the day.

Wesfarmers was one example of another co-op that evolved gradually into a conglomerate corporate shopping chain, while others later sold the farm to build developments. Since the 1970s the supermarkets have been burdened by their own success which has today led to a culture of greed within the industry. (Former Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci stormed out of an ABC Four Corners interview when questioned over high prices at the checkouts).

My great grandfather (four generations before me) James Wilson Hughes, was a grocer in Gympie, the son of an Irish miner, later mining manager and seamstress small business owner and immigrants who operated his own family business. He turned to insurance and politics becoming the longest serving city alderman of his day from 1919–1959. As working directly with farmers (the producers) and with the community bred the perfect way forward to become politically engaged. My forebear in true Boardwalk Empire style became an influential figure in the mining agricultural working-class town as its Town Treasurer funding projects and works during the Great Depression and establishing emergency services while building ties to local community groups and sports groups, he later became the Deputy Town Mayor in his final days.

The same could be said of Arthur Coles who established what we know today as Coles Supermarkets in the working-class suburb of Collingwood in Melbourne. Coles, like my ancestor, was a smart businessman anx ndependent conservative who made a quick rise selling cheap products and became the Mayor of Melbourne in 1938–1940 from this success and would serve two terms as federal MP for Henty, playing a crucial role in deciding the government during the hung parliament of outbreak of World War 2, Henty was temporarily a member of the Coalition and was pragmatic in his thinking and sided with the ALP handing the Prime Ministership from Nationals Arthur Faden to Labor’s John Curtin.

Curtin delivered a post war economic boom which the nation transformed drastically under his successor Ben Chifley which the Coalition leader Bob Menzies took full credit for. Regardless who takes the credit much would not have been possible without Coles’ decision making. Never a minister but influential, Coles was appointed the Chair of the Commonwealth Rationing and War Damage Commissions, Australian National Airlines Commission (Trans Australia Airlines now known as Qantas) and Chair of the Melbourne Olympic Games Committee.

Other policy makers with similar roots were James Scullin – a grocer – had the misfortune of becoming Prime Minister during the Great Depression and unsuccessfully led the charge to adopt Keynesian stimulus in response to the crisis with his Federal Treasurer Ted Theodore. It was during this period that the original retail union Shop Distributive and Allied Association (originally called the Shops Assistants and Warehouse Employees Federation of Australia prior to 1972).

Initially advocating for reduced working hours per day from 14 to 12. It was run by staunch Irish Catholics which gained considerable power in both the industrial and political wing of the Australian Labour movement, becoming one of the biggest sectors of the movement. So much so that this group that would later become known as the Industrial Groups factional bloc in the ALP in the 1940s and 1950s. This group became increasingly socially conservative due to religious influence blurring the lines between state and religion. Never a smart choice to avoid secularism in Labor’s case it cost it dearly by splitting over the issue of communism during the height of the Cold War and prevented Labor from governing for 23 years from 1949–1972 until the rise of Gough Whitlam to the Lodge.

Many farmers also became skeptical of socialism despite their own interest and sided gradually with the Country Party and later the Nationals. The Labor infighting encouraged by the Groupers only helped the conservatives, which was not properly meandered until Bob Hawke, the great conciliator, became Prime Minister hailing from Labor’s right factional blocs. Unfortunately, the union became run by greedy bureaucrats who benefitted dearly as their workers paid the ultimate price as the retail bosses gradually stripped the rights of their workforce under the veil of the Accords between the ACTU labour movement, business community and the government of the days during the Neoliberal reforms of the 1980s.

This only became worse during the Howard era by stealth with the SDA forsaking penalty rates award agreements on certain weekends for their workers: doing the opposite then what a union should do! Well deserved credit is due, however, on opposing the draconian WorkChoices but the SDA became an institutional part of the framework opposed to militant convictions of other unions. This in turn has led to the rise of the RAFFWU union which has fought for some of the first strike actions against employers in history in the retail sector. One of RAFFWU’s own become elected as Federal Greens MP in Brisbane in Stephen Bates during Apple strikes and industrial disputes as an ex-employee.

 

 

 

Unfortunately for us, all the supermarket giants have become completely mad with power, ignorance, and vanity by now charging excessive prices gradually over the decades until the post-Covid inflationary period has seen prices sharply skyrocket. While this isn’t quite a 1929 crisis point, it’s clear to groups like the Australian Greens who have advocated for an investigation into price gouging.

This has forced the Albanese Government to swiftly consider a review of all ACCC rules and protocols regarding how pricing is administered by the private sector, especially as a growing number of every day Australians struggle more and more to pay for the simplest of everyday goods.

It’s clear that the supermarket giants also don’t provide enough satisfactory benefits to their staff as not enough superannuation is allocated and hours are cut (to cut costs) as an emphasis is put on younger staff to work more as older workers become expensive despite their skillsets, making it more competitive for people looking for work and less stable as many become underemployed struggling to make ends meet while attempting to meet productivity. This was the case with me after seven years working in retail at both IGA and Coles. This is why automation such as self – services machines and KPIs can become a liability not an asset as it’s made out to be. Especially so when the human factor and empathy is taken out of the situation as profits are weighed above the human contribution but instead focused on human costs.

The moves away from social connectivity to the community have created a culture of toxic insular thinking in the management of corporate Australia, particularly in the supermarket giants (including the SDA). One could argue that this was the reason why same sex marriage took so long to get off the ground until the Turnbull period due – to the influence of the SDA during the Rudd/Gillard era (2007-2013) and being one of the largest contributors in donations in union funds generated from retail and fast food worker fees. This is why it’s imperative to change the insidious nature of how we can get our supermarkets to play ball again and get back to basics! If the SDA became truly democratic and unions grassroots based like RAFFWU and actively pressured bosses in this space to change their ways, it could make all the difference for all!

While the cost-of-living crisis isn’t all affected by everything outlined above, much of it has also been affected by a shortage of supplies since the economy restarted exporting and importing goods since the pandemic, but also because of the building and construction industry going bust as a result and a housing market buckling under considerable strain. As somebody who has overseen tax in the corporate and government in recent months, worked in retail and assisted unions in this space I can say this is a part of the problem, but life can be made so much easier without the excessiveness of corporate greed, especially as dream to live in a fairer just society.

We must encourage supermarkets to find the means by pressure and new laws to reduce the prices for common goods. I know all of this from personal experience as I worked at Coles in all departments from my teens until early 20s while leaving high school to enter into university studies.

Ironically, I joined the SDA after leaving McDonalds (as one of my first jobs) while transitioning to Coles when I was 15. I left Coles to work in sales, odd labour jobs, union jobs, call center work, while also joining the Labor Party, inspired by the election of Kevin 07 and the platform he campaigned on, especially the Apology as a First Nations man. I left the ALP disillusioned by party infighting on environmental issues and lackluster efforts to do more in the retail space for workers. Also being an LGBTIQ man I found it extremely confronting that Labor didn’t do enough due to the SDA’s influence.

Former Labor leaders tried in their own way to make up for it as did Turnbull on the Coalition side. As more and more of my generation are accepting of ourselves in a more open environment its clear there is a sizeable LGBTIQ number in retail and fast-food workforces, which has ironically backfired on the social influence of the SDA in many ways and is a lesson to get back to what members actually want; not what ideological driven despots taking on positions of union organizers that should be filled by those that ultimately care about their workers and members.

Of course, not all in the SDA fit the mold and there are some good delegates who do the hard yards in any union. While this is increasingly a minority, there are genuine organizers no matter the union they hail from. Members of RAFFWU, for example, just want improved working conditions, better break times, and increased pay rates. Considering the huge wealth of the supermarket industry these requests are not unreasonable. But there is considerable lessons to heed from not only my personal experiences put forward, but history itself as well.

References:

ABC News In – depth (2024). Four Corners. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoo6XVxpiU8> accessed 26/03/2024

Australian Parliament. (2015). Patmore, G. Balnave, N. Consumer Co – operatives in Australia: Past, Present and Future. A Submission to Inquiry into cooperative, mutual and member – owned firms, Senate Economics References Committee, Parliament House, Canberra, ACT, Australia, 2600.

Bahr, Jessica (2023). SBS News. How much have grocery prices increased in Australia? <https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/how-much-have-grocery-prices-increased-in-australia/ocrfv5zut> accessed 22/03/2024.

Barber, S.M. (2007). Australian Dictionary of Biography. Sir Arthur William Coles (1892 – 1982) <https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/coles-sir-arthur-william-12334> accessed 22/03/2024.

Dyrenfurth, N. Bongiorno, F. (2011). A Little History of the Australian Labor Party.

Karp, P. (2024). Anthony Albanese announces year – long investigation into supermarket prices by ACCC. <https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/jan/25/anthony-albanese-announces-year-long-investigation-into-supermarket-prices-by-accc> accessed 22/03/2024.

Nellist, I. (2023). Supermarket workers take historic ‘superstrike’ Green Left Org. <https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/supermarket-workers-take-historic-superstrike> accessed 22/03/2024

Redlands Libraries| Redlands Coast Timelines Council. (2021).

Callen Sorensen Karklis, Bachelor of Government and International Relations.

Callen is a Quandamooka Nunukul Aboriginal person from North Stradbroke Island. He has been the Secretary of the Qld Fabians in 2018, and the Assistant Secretary 2018 – 2019, 2016, and was more recently the Policy and Publications Officer 2020 – 2021. Callen previously was in Labor branch executives in the Oodgeroo (Cleveland areas), SEC and the Bowman FEC. He has also worked for Cr Peter Cumming, worked in market research, trade unions, media advertising, and worked in retail. He also ran for Redland City Council in 2020 on protecting the Toondah Ramsar wetlands. He also advised the Oodgeroo Teal campaign in 2020. He now active in the Redlands and Qld Greens. Callen is active in Redlands 2030, the Redlands Museum, and his local sports club at Victoria Pt Sharks Club. Callen also has a Diploma of Business and attained his tertiary education from Griffith University. He was a co-host from time to time on Workers Power 4ZZZ (FM 102.1) on Tuesday morning’s program Workers Power. He has also worked in government. Cal was a coordinator for Jos Mithcell’s Redlands Mayoral campaign in 2024.

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Does God condone genocide?

By Bert Hetebry

Stan Grant points out in his book The Queen is Dead that “… I cannot but see in China what White nations have done the world over. Genocide is genocide. Under their flags, nations committed to Whiteness have erased entire populations, mine included. They have not been held to account. No, genocide is a word they reserve for others(page 29). As Grant points out, those who accuse China of genocide are beneficiaries of the fruits of colonialism on which European and American economic dominance was achieved, and a close look at that history shows that genocide was a major means of acquiring the lands which produced that wealth.

Accusations of genocide are being levelled against Israel now as mass starvation of Palestinians is beginning to take its toll, as truckloads of urgently needed supplies are waiting for approval to deliver their lifesaving cargoes into Gaza, but waiting, seeming endlessly for permission to enter the sealed off region. The accusations are slowly rising to a crescendo, but ever so slowly as the feed of information is being stifled, as reporter numbers have been decimated, so many counted among the collateral damage of the war zone. Those who remain find it all but impossible to access signals for their phones to operate, or even to be able to recharge their phones.

The genocide Stan Grant refers to is the decimation of indigenous populations through the time of European colonial expansion, beginning with Columbus leading the way into the Caribbean and Americas as Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French and British established plantations producing sugar and tobacco to satisfy growing demand in their homelands and establishing remote prisons either to use the convicts as cheap sources of labour or to place them far from home, to be out of sight and out of mind and if the prisoners wouldnt work, kidnap people from Africa and enslave them to do the work.

European colonisers brought with them their faith, their beliefs, their Christianity. As they stole the lands, raped indigenous women and killed those who stood in their way, they preached the gospel of Grace through Christ, introducing Biblical law. Somehow there was nothing ironic in on the one hand stealing the land, raping women and killing those who stood in the way and preaching a faith which has a foundational law creed set out in the Ten Commandments which include the laws not to kill, steal or commit adultery. Christian Europeans after all are Gods People.

The tone deafness of Israeli leaders and the slowness of American and European leaders to acknowledge the humanitarian crisis in Gaza (and the West Bank) is equally disturbing. Women and children are dying, effectively being starved to death as aid is being held up. And those who object to the measures being taken in response to an attack on Israel which took 1200 lives and a 240 hostages is charged with being antisemitic. It took South Africa to first raise the charge of genocide, a nation which suffered under and emerged from the yoke of colonialism.

Judaism, the religion of Israel has the same laws; laws given to Moses and central to the promise of the land to their forebears. The books containing those laws are common across Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

But those laws are interesting in that it seems they only apply to those people who claim to be Gods People. When we consider the first of the Ten Commandments it becomes clear that they really are about Gods People. The first four deal with the relationship with God, exclusively worship only that one God, make no idols or use His name in vain and reserve the Sabbath as a holy day devoted to the worship of the only God. Next follows commandments of the relationship within the body of Gods People.

The laws were received and very shortly after, according to the Biblical book of Exodus, that same God instructed the people to exterminate the Amalekites (Exodus 17:14) and the Israeli Prime Minister referenced that as a rationalisation for the severity of the attacks on Gaza after October 7.

It seems the laws given were for Gods People, those who were not included became fair game, the laws apparently do not apply to them. Further, the promise of God to Joshua as he replaced Moses as leader of the ancient Israelites was that the land being given would “… extend from the desert to Lebanon and from the great river, the Euphrates – all the Hittite country – to the Mediterranean Sea…” (Joshua 1:3-4). From the river to the sea is the stated aim of Netanyahu, Israeli territory will be from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean or did he mean the Euphrates?

It is not surprising that Palestinians are treated as contemptouosly as they are when they are clearly not defined as Gods People.

The disregard for indigenous peoples by colonial powers was equally contemptuous, the rapacity for land unbridled greed, lands stolen, people killed and missionaries followed close behind to wipe out indigenous cultures replacing it with adoration for Jesus. The laws did not apply to the conquered, only to Gods People.

But it is worthy of note that the Declaration of Human Rights, written in 1948 was written as a response to the horrors of the Holocaust during which over six million European Jews were killed for no other reason than they were Jews, and we should also recognise that several million Gypsies suffered that same fate and did various other groups; homosexuals, people with mental disabilities, and others who were in one way or another marginalised. But then, that declaration is aspirational. Not law.

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

As Yemen enters tenth year of war, militarisation and economic crisis compound suffering – Oxfam

Oxfam Australia Media Release

As Yemen enters its tenth year of war, its people face renewed airstrikes and a deepening economic crisis that risks pushing millions into starvation, Oxfam has warned today.

Today marks nine years since the escalation of the conflict. A temporary UN-brokered truce expired in 2022 and, whilst it has largely held, recent Houthi military activity in the Red Sea and US and UK led air strikes against the north of the country are damaging the prospects of a lasting peace and risk further instability in the region.

The human cost of war

The war in Yemen has devastated the country. Over 19,000 people have been killed and millions more forced to flee their homes. More than 18 million people – over 50 per cent of the population – need humanitarian assistance. Yemen remains one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with millions on the brink of famine. Almost half of children under five in Yemen (over 2.5 million) suffer from chronic malnutrition, 21 per cent of whom suffer severe stunting. Due to a sharp decline in funding, The World Food Programme (WFP) has had to pause food assistance for 9.5 million people since November 2023 and malnutrition services for 2.4 million people since January this year. Without new funding, Yemen could witness further devastating rates of food insecurity and malnutrition.

The healthcare system is on the verge of collapse. Hospitals lack essential supplies, and many healthcare workers have gone without salaries for years. Outbreaks of cholera, diphtheria, and other diseases pose a constant threat, particularly to those living in rural areas.

Economic crisis

Yemen’s economy is in tatters. Rounds of currency depreciation and increases in the cost of fuel and other key commodities, have pushed millions into poverty. And the war – alongside the ravages of climate change – has severely crippled agricultural production. There are now fears the food security situation is likely to worsen further from June, the peak of the lean season.

Recent tit-for-tat measures imposed by all parties have already begun to affect money transfers between the north and south, upon which many Yemenis are reliant for survival.

Prospects for peace

The recent militarisation of the Red Sea now signifies a worrying escalation in the conflict. There have been reports of casualties and thousands of livelihoods in Hudaydah governorate have already been affected due to the disruption of the fishing industry. Vital shipping lanes could also be impacted, hampering imports into Yemen, and further destabilising the region.

Proscribing or designating the Houthis – a key party to the conflict, which controls territory where most of the Yemeni population live – will only make it harder to secure a sustainable and inclusive peace. Further extreme sanctions could endanger both imports of food and essential commodities which Yemen is nearly fully reliant on, and the operation of humanitarian agencies like Oxfam.

Ferran Puig, Oxfam Country Director in Yemen, said “The recent escalation of violence in Yemen should shame all parties and the international community at large.

“The last thing Yemen needs is further conflict. Nine years of war has cost the people of Yemen their lives and livelihoods. It is past time to bring an end to this war. All parties and the international community need to work much harder to bring about a lasting, inclusive peace.”

Increased humanitarian aid is crucial to prevent widespread famine and disease outbreaks. Doubling diplomacy to achieve comprehensive peace, ensuring adequate funding and allowing unimpeded humanitarian access are essential steps.

More broadly, a permanent ceasefire in Gaza is urgently needed – not only to save lives and prevent further suffering among Gazans – but also to reduce the chance of further escalation in Yemen and across the region.

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Existing funds could put a roof over the head of 4,000 young people experiencing homelessness

Community Housing Industry Association Media Release

An additional 2,090 homes housing more than 4,000 young people experiencing homelessness could be built by drawing on $1 billion already set aside by the Commonwealth, according to new modelling that will be presented to federal politicians in Canberra today.

The money was allocated last year to the National Housing Infrastructure Facility (NHIF) during negotiations between the Greens and the Government over legislation to establish the Housing Australia Future Fund.

Modelling conducted by Professor Laurence Troy, of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute is based on constructing two bedroom dwellings based on building costs in Melbourne’s inner east and the NSW mid north coast. It assumes a 60/40 split between metro and regional areas with the units occupied by tenants paying rent set to a maximum of 25% of their income plus any Commonwealth Rent Assistance they may be eligible for. The analysis highlights the investment can also include developments of congregate and core and cluster housing.

An analysis released last week of the most recent Specialist Homelessness Services data, revealed 37,872 children and young people approached homelessness services alone for assistance in 2022/23, including 9,232 children aged 15-17. Even after assistance from homelessness services, 44% of children and young people 15-24 were still homeless.

“Our system for supporting young people experiencing homelessness is fundamentally broken,” said Wendy Hayhurst, CEO of the Community Housing Industry Association. “But with $1 billion ready to be deployed we can almost immediately start turning sods and building the homes young people need. Community Housing providers are ready to help, we just need the political and financial commitment.

Kate Colvin, CEO of Homelessness Australia said the youth homelessness crisis would not be resolved without expanding dedicated housing. “Children should not be sleeping rough in Australia, but that is the reality. The funds that are already set aside will not fix the youth homelessness crisis but they will make a solid start on delivering the homes needed. We need to get moving on this immediately.”

Shorna Moore, from youth homelessness provider, Melbourne City Mission said “Every day we see teenagers and children escaping violence, homophobia or neglect. But we can’t get them safe homes because there simply isn’t enough housing or support to help everyone who walks through the door.”

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

UN Security Council ceasefire resolution a turning point in Gaza war

Australian Council for International Development Media Release

Australia’s peak body for international humanitarian organisations welcomes the United Nations Security Council’s resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and release of all hostages as a crucial turning point in the war.

Australian Council for International Development (ACFID) CEO Marc Purcell said it marked a significant breakthrough despite the United States’ decision to abstain from voting.

“This passage of this binding resolution, following four failed attempts since the start of the war, shows global leaders are no longer willing to accept the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians, many of them children, as collateral,” he said.

“The US’ decision to abstain is disappointing, particularly since it put forward its own failed proposal for a ceasefire just days ago. It is essential the US use its influence and relationship with Israel to obtain a permanent ceasefire.

“We are hopeful the passage of this resolution overnight marks a crucial turning point in the war that has killed nearly 32,000 civilians through bombing, starvation and dehydration.

“It is vital that both the state of Israel and militant groups immediately lay down arms to allow for the passage of humanitarian assistance, which is still being blocked from entry into Gaza, and the release of all hostages.”

ACFID is urging the Australian government to commit additional and ongoing funding for the humanitarian response in Gaza and the West bank, including for Australian non-government organisations providing lifesaving assistance.

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Expert criticises report on proposed changes to anti-discrimination laws – calls for more youth representation

RMIT University Media Release

The Federal Government is negotiating how to implement the changes recommended by the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) report on anti-discrimination law reform, with a bill tabled in parliament late last week.

Professor Anna Hickey-Moody, expert in youth studies:

“A year later than anticipated, this report recommends Australia should ‘narrow the circumstances’ in which religious discrimination occurs, not outlaw discrimination.

“The proposed changes offer very little protection for same sex attracted youth in religious schools.

“Despite the fact that the ALRC state ‘students are at the centre of this inquiry’, the methods they have employed unfairly marginalise youth experiences.

“Over 40% of Australian secondary students attend religious schools.

“However, in assessing the impact of the current religious discrimination legislation, the ALRC spoke mainly to adults.

“They assessed 428 written submissions, only one of which was from a minor.

“The ALRC also undertook 131 interviews with consultees, all of whom were over 18.

“They included students in their survey – but they had over 2,5000 responses from adults in the sector and under 1,5000 responses from young people.

“How can this be seen as placing students ‘at the centre’?

“The voices and experiences of queer religious young people have been largely excluded from this process and this is a significant flaw in the process.”

Professor Anna Hickey-Moody is known for her work with socially marginalised people. She is currently undertaking an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant-funded project on the sexuality and religion of young people.

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Parliamentary Skills Inquiry Report Misses Opportunity to Focus on Students

Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA) Media Release

A Federal Parliamentary committee report into the perceptions and status of vocational education and training offers mixed outcomes for students, according to the Independent Tertiary Education Council Australia (ITECA), the peak body representing independent skills training, higher education, and international providers.

The report highlights the need to provide students with clearer information on their study options, something welcomed by ITECA.

“The recommendations that emphasise the need to provide students with a single, trusted source of information on education, training, and careers are welcomed by ITECA,” said Troy Williams, ITECA Chief Executive.

The nature of the report, which focuses on the public provision of skills training, will concern around nine in ten students who choose to study with an independent Registered Training Organisation (RTO). The report overlooks the significant positive role of independent RTOs across the nation and data from the National Centre for Vocational Education and Research (NCVER) highlights the significant role of independent RTOs:

  • 89.4% of the 4.5 million student enrolments are with independent providers.
  • 87.3% of students in remote, rural and regional Australia are with independent providers.
  • 78.3% of Indigenous students are with independent providers.

“It’s unfortunate that the report overlooks the fact that when it comes to providing Australians with quality skills training, independent RTOs do the heavy lifting. They support most students across Australia, including those with higher level qualifications and more than half of apprentices and trainees,” Mr Williams said.

Many Australians looking to gain the skills to enter the workforce or reskill to help them get a better job would be left behind if the government takes up many of the report’s recommendations. ITECA believes that the reforms need to support students studying with both independent RTOs and public TAFE colleges.

“The report contains many recommendations that merit consideration but as these recommendations are not student-focussed, potentially millions of students will be left behind,” Mr Williams said.

“The report is largely silent on the role of independent RTOs with a commitment to quality, and this is alarming. In this respect, the reforms in the report look set to leave behind Indigenous students as well as students from remote, rural and remote Australia as the vast majority of these students study with independent RTOs,” Mr Williams said.

Although comprehensive, ITECA argues that the parliamentary committee’s report lacks a cohesive vision that would strengthen the skills training system.

“There was the opportunity for the parliamentary committee to recommend some landmark reforms that recognised the complementarity of independent RTOs and public TAFE colleges. That this opportunity has been overlooked means that many reforms that would have put students at the heart of the skills training system are possibly off the table,” Mr Williams said.

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Palm Sunday wrap

By Jane Salmon

Palm Sunday rallies bring together Jew and Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, many varieties of Christian, humanists and atheists to share a vision of ecumenical cooperation and tolerance.

The rallies traditionally promote human rights and equity while also condemning war. Thinkers, believers and visionaries speak to each topic all over the country.

Sydney’s rally today was no exception. Josephite Sister Susan Connelly had plenty to say about the monetary drivers of military expansion. “Christ”, claimed Connelly, “would not be impressed by corporate or political greed”. Money lenders in the temple got mentioned. She emphasised the arrival of Jesus to Jerusalem on a humble donkey rather than the high horse of imperial or even colonial victors.

Humanitarian leader and national
soccer veteran Craig Foster spoke about the importance of reconciling our nation’s history with our beliefs and political actions before we can look to a truly harmonious future. He mentioned the referendum with regret.

Mr Foster said Australia could yet become a model of multi-cultural diversity and acceptance for the whole world.

Foster mentioned that prolonged detention ordeals are based on a tissue-thin rulings or bits of legislation that can be changed with the stroke of a pen. There is one tiny step or key between prolonged suffering and relative liberty. Foster witnessed such a transformational moment when Manus detainee Farhad Bandesh stepped past a formerly locked gate after 8 years of various types of imprisonment. The moment features in the film “Freedom is Beautiful”.

 

 

Offshore ordeals and turnbacks of the past 13 years continue on Nauru and in PNG. Foster crisply mentioned that denial of permanent residency for 11,000 more refugees constrains real freedom still.

Temporary visa conditions include limited work and study options, disrupted Medicare, fear of deportation, legal double standards, lack of family reunion, reduced financial credit and the absence of a clear way forward.

The joy of seeing Tamil walker Neil Para get not only work rights but the chance to host his ageing parents for a few months is proof of the momentous power of Permanent Visas. That the Para children can also aspire to work and higher learning is a great relief.

The national tendency to blame migrants for all our woes was also mentioned by Foster today. Scapegoating and inundation narratives seem heightened when asylum seekers come by boat.

Preventing drowning at sea is as simple as providing humanitarian aid to Rohingyans in squalid refugee camps where people struggle to manage on less than US 27 cents per day. The option of offering regional processing pathways for prospective Australians (to prevent the resort to maritime travel) is too often ignored.

Any refugees escaping from especially harsh regimes who broke our laws were given not only a jail sentence but then an extra, indefinite period of debilitating (rather than rehabilitative) immigration detention. Double jeopardy.

Now there is political outcry that a handful of these possibly-less-than-perfect people may be freed by High Court rulings. Ooher. This beat-up completely obscures the great things many thousands of other refugees have done while working through Covid as essential employees, taxpayers, volunteers, bringers of fresh skills, insights, culture and experience.

It is disproportionate. Only today, some Palm Sunday refugee speakers first gave blood in Melbourne. I doubt many politicians have the stamina or stomach for that.

Medical, anti-AUKUS, Arab, spiritual, whistleblower, anti corruption, refugees in Indonesia or PNG and other themes were represented today.

The Palm Sunday rally kilometres walked in capitals and regional centres around the country will be added to the distances walkers for logged for The Big Walk 4 Refugees. This means that fit refugees and their supporters have lapped Australia’s circumference 4 times. They are literally running rings around reflexive fear mongering politicians.

On Tuesday 26th, some of those refugees with lived experience, will go to Canberra to explain the reason for their participation.

It is, as Foster says, up to Federal Government to take the next, not-so-big step and grant permanent visas to all who have been living here long term.

Is the stroke of a pen so very strenuous?

 

Photo by Zebedee Parkes (via Facebook)

 

Photo by Zebedee Parkes (via Facebook)

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

The Art of Hypocrisy

By James Moore

There are only 1500 people living in Brooklyn, Iowa, situated along the old transcontinental route of U.S. Highway 6 and north of Interstate 80, east of Des Moines. Calling itself a “community of flags,” Brooklyn does not have a profile that might suggest violent crime. Mollie Tibbetts certainly would have had no fear when she went out for a jog on the humid summer evening of July 18, 2018. The University of Iowa student and former cross country runner for her high school, she had been watching dogs while staying at her boyfriend’s brother’s house. Mollie Tibbetts did not return from her run.

Her body was not discovered until a month later in a nearby cornfield. She had been stabbed nine times, including once in the head, and was covered with cornstalks. A reward fund for information on her whereabouts had quickly grown to $400,000 but a surveillance video turned up evidence that led to an undocumented worker named Cristhian Bahena Rivera.

Prior to the arrest, Vice President Mike Pence met with Tibbetts’ family during an event in Des Moines and publicly said, “I just want Mollie’s family to know: You’re on the hearts of every American.” Pence was not publicly heard from subsequent to the discovery of Mollies’ body or the reporting that her killer had been in the country illegally and working on farms in Iowa.

 

Mollie Tibbetts

 

As her disappearance became a national story, Mollie Tibbetts’ family had to suffer her persona being dragged through the political grinder as a victim of a mismanaged border that enabled Rivera’s entry into the U.S. The Trump administration, determined to take advantage of the tragedy, saw a “political gold mine” in the young woman’s slaying. In fact, Trump incited a rally in West Virginia on immigration after learning Tibbetts’ killer was an undocumented worker. While he called national immigration laws a disgrace, he made no mention of crimes committed by his former campaign manager Paul Manafort or his political fixer Michael Cohen. Manafort had been convicted that day and Cohen had entered a guilty plea just hours earlier.

Even members of Tibbetts’ family pushed back against demonizing all immigrants through the actions of a few. Her aunt pointed out that “evil comes in all colors,” and even the libertarian Cato Institute resisted Republican efforts to make the victim’s life a touchstone for political goals on immigration. “This terrible murder is already feeding into a political firestorm,” the Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh wrote. “People with a political axe to grind, those who want to distract from the recent conviction of Paul Manafort and plea deal for Michael Cohen, want to convict all illegal immigrants of this murder in the court of public opinion, not just the actual murderer.”

Trump was not just distracting from the crimes of his administration that were reported that day, but he was seeking more public support for his border wall fantasy. Mexico’s refusal to pay for it and the resultant cost in billions for American taxpayers was a consistent reminder that, while in office, he was busily breaking another campaign promise regarding immigration. In fact, Trump’s hundreds of executive orders on the issue, according to the Migration Policy Institute, were not even remotely close to the impact he had predicted on immigration, and he was concluding his term of office with little to show as an accomplishment.

“But as the Trump tenure nears its end, analysis of immigration data shows that, despite public perception to the contrary, the administration’s policies have not led to a marked drop in the number of permanent immigrants, temporary foreign workers, international students, and those receiving asylum in the United States – at least not yet. In other words, with the exception of refugee admissions, there has not been a dramatic, across-the-board “Trump effect” attributable either to the administration’s policies or rhetoric on immigration levels.”

Out of office, the Trump party does not hesitate to continue turning tragedy to potential political leverage. The family of Laken Riley also regrets the way their daughter’s murder has been used to foment anger over the question of immigration. The 22-year-old nursing student, like Mollie Tibbetts, was out for a jog on campus when she was kidnapped and murdered by an undocumented immigrant. Jose Antonio Ibarra, a Venezuelan who had entered the country illegally near El Paso, had a previous arrest record in New York City, and was also arrested in the Georgia murder through the use of surveillance video. Riley’s name, which has been attached to a 2024 immigration bill, has become another flashpoint on the issue as Trump’s followers use her as an example of Biden’s failures on the border. Her father, Jason Riley, told NBC that he regrets the posturing to help the Republicans.

“I think it’s being used politically to get those votes,” he said. “It makes me angry. I feel like, you know, they’re just using my daughter’s name for that. And she was much better than that, and she should be raised up for the person that she is. She was an angel.”

 

Laken Riley

 

Trump can hardly be expected to perceive his tsunami of hypocrisies and contradictions when nothing exists in his consciousness other than his putative greatness. His crimes, readily apparent to Americans, are, to him, persecutions. Immigrant crime is a horror, he argues; political crime does not exist other than in the form of witch hunts, which, history proves, sometimes find witches. Despite the great sadnesses of the Tibbetts and Riley murders and their stories being used as an immigration whipping post, there has never been any indication that migrant crime is worse than that of naturalized citizens. A study released last year by Ran Abramitzky and Stanford University reveals that first-generation immigrants are not more likely to be incarcerated for crimes than U.S. born citizens, and that has been the case for the past 140 years. In fact, they are 30 percent less likely to be imprisoned than American citizens, and when compared to often unfairly prosecuted Blacks, immigrants are 60 percent less likely to be incarcerated.

“From Henry Cabot Lodge in the late 19th century to Donald Trump, anti-immigration politicians have repeatedly tried to link immigrants to crime, but our research confirms that this is a myth and not based on fact,” Abramitzky, the report’s author said.

Facts tend to have nothing to do with U.S. politics in 2024, however. When the current American president entered the congressional chambers to present his State of the Union message, he was confronted by a Georgia congresswoman wearing a Trump MAGA hat and a tee shirt bearing the command, “Say her name,” a reference to Laken Riley. There are continuing and fumbling attempts to place the blame for Riley’s death at the foot of the president and his policies. The accusers remain oblivious to the fatalities and sustaining harms done by Trump’s policies and his acolytes, who remember only those they consider worth recall. The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, who hopes to become head of Homeland Security if Trump is reelected, has yet to publicly speak the name of the soldiers or immigrants who have died as a result of his border circus known as Operation Lone Star.

A 20-year-old Texan, Specialist Demtrio Torres, used his service weapon to kill himself in October of 2022. The Texas Military Department took two days to release his name, and Abbott still has not spoken it, nor has he mentioned the four previous suicides, or any of the other accidental deaths. In fact, Abbott refused to even confirm that Torres was deployed to Operation Lone Star, undoubtedly hoping the public might assume he was on some other mission. A total of ten troops have died in the border fiasco and Abbott has offered them only anonymity, not honor. Five of the dead have turned their own hand against themselves and committed suicide. Troops are increasingly overcome with an open-ended deployment that leaves them with no clues as to when they will return to their families, jobs, and normal lives. Those five found another way to end their angst. Regardless, no state flags have ever been lowered to half staff nor has the governor made any graveside appearance to offer respect and comfort to families. Instead, he goes on social media and unabashedly blames President Biden for the death of Laken Riley.

Pfc. Joshua Cortez, meanwhile, was denied a waiver of his involuntary call up, which led to tragedy. Cortez had been offered what he described as a “lifetime job” with one of the nation’s largest insurance companies. According to the Army Times, his senior commander refused to relieve Cortez of his duty, and 36 hours later he was found dead inside of his car in a parking lot in Northwest San Antonio.

 

Pfc. Joshua Cortez

 

The first casualty was Sgt. Jose L. De Hoyos, discovered dead by self-inflicted gunshot wound in Laredo. He had been a member of the 949th Brigade Support Battalion’s headquarters company. First Sgt. John Crutcher, meanwhile, had been on a temporary hardship waiver to help his wife deal with a disabled brother who was in a wheelchair. She had undergone surgery and was incapacitated, and Crutcher was seeking an extension on his waiver until the household situation could be stabilized. Overcome when he, too, was denied, the top NCO for B Company, 3rd Battalion, 144th infantry, killed himself. One of the platoon leaders under Crutcher’s command, 1st Lieutenant Charles Williams, was on a pass a month later when his death at home was ruled a suicide. Four guard suicides occurred in an eight-week cluster.

 

First Sgt. John “Kenny” Crutcher

 

The other casualties happened when a soldier cleaning a gun had it accidentally discharge and kill a fellow guard member; there was a fatal motorcycle accident in Laredo, a blood clot that killed a service member after a long security posting in a record heat wave, and a drowning when Spc. Bishop Evans jumped into the Rio Grande to save two struggling immigrants. His death was largely a consequence of Abbott’s failure to provide the leadership to properly equip the people he has put at risk. Evans had no flotation device and can fairly be described as a victim of a hastily planned deployment and inexplicably delayed requisitions.

Guardsmen were supposed to be provided with ropes and ring buoys to save people in trouble, and themselves, but the equipment had been delayed and was not yet supplied when Evans, an artilleryman, jumped into the Rio Grande to save two lives. Instead, he drowned, and his body was not recovered until four days later downstream. According to the Army Times, the essential gear for water safety was not requested until 11 months after the launch of Operation Lone Star. Prior to the Evans tragedy, no flotation devices or water rescue training were offered to troops, even though they were put in a position of having to almost daily extract people from the Rio Grande.

Texas troops, however, are not the only souls lost to anonymous death as a consequence of the militarization of the Mexican frontier. Racial profiling by law enforcement along the border prompted high speed chases that killed at least 74 people and injured another 129 during a 29-month period. Just three months ago, Human Rights Watch, using Department of Public Safety Data, released a study that showed unnecessary vehicle chases increased by more than 1000 percent since the launch of Greg Abbott’s border exhibition. The study cited cases involving 7 bystanders becoming fatalities as law officers chased drivers for minor moving violations. One of the dead was 7-year-old Emilia Tambunga, who was with her grandmother, Maria, as they were going out for ice cream. A vehicle being pursued by a Crockett County Sheriff’s deputy ran a red light and rammed into them. Neither Trump nor Abbott have said her name because they either do not know it or do not care.

The situation is likely to get worse. The Abbott and Trump controlled Texas legislature passed a law to give state and local officers the power to arrest illegal immigrants. How to know if someone with brown skin is in the country without proper documents is not clear. Not being White and living on the border, which is more than 90 percent of the population, becomes an even greater liability. In some cases, however, migrants can be charged with felonies, and law enforcement can take them to the border for return to Mexico. The measure abridges the powers of the federal government and the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, which is empowered by the Constitution to manage immigration and border protection. A legal challenge to the Texas immigration law is being heard in a conservative federal court, and, even though it is abundantly clear Texas has superseded national law, the appeals court has a record of rulings that are compliant with radically conservative thinking. Mexico has said, however, it will not accept any immigrants back to its soil unless they are citizens of Mexico, which will certainly increase international tensions with America’s largest trading partner.

American politicians continue to create more problems than they solve.

This article was originally published on Texas to the world.

James Moore is the New York Times bestselling author of “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” three other books on Bush and former Texas Governor Rick Perry, as well as two novels, and a biography entitled, “Give Back the Light,” on a famed eye surgeon and inventor. His newest book will be released mid- 2023. Mr. Moore has been honored with an Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his documentary work and is a former TV news correspondent who has traveled extensively on every presidential campaign since 1976.

He has been a retained on-air political analyst for MSNBC and has appeared on Morning Edition on National Public Radio, NBC Nightly News, Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, CBS Evening News, CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Hardball with Chris Matthews, among numerous other programs. Mr. Moore’s written political and media analyses have been published at CNN, Boston Globe, L.A. Times, Guardian of London, Sunday Independent of London, Salon, Financial Times of London, Huffington Post, and numerous other outlets. He also appeared as an expert on presidential politics in the highest-grossing documentary film of all time, Fahrenheit 911, (not related to the film’s producer Michael Moore).

His other honors include the Dartmouth College National Media Award for Economic Understanding, the Edward R. Murrow Award from the Radio Television News Directors’ Association, the Individual Broadcast Achievement Award from the Texas Headliners Foundation, and a Gold Medal for Script Writing from the Houston International Film Festival. He was frequently named best reporter in Texas by the AP, UPI, and the Houston Press Club. The film produced from his book “Bush’s Brain” premiered at The Cannes Film Festival prior to a successful 30-city theater run in the U.S.

Mr. Moore has reported on the major stories and historical events of our time, which have ranged from Iran-Contra to the Waco standoff, the Oklahoma City bombing, the border immigration crisis, and other headlining events. His journalism has put him in Cuba, Central America, Mexico, Australia, Canada, the UK, and most of Europe, interviewing figures as diverse as Fidel Castro and Willie Nelson. He has been writing about Texas politics, culture, and history since 1975, and continues with political opinion pieces for CNN and regularly at his Substack newsletter: “Texas to the World.”

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Analysis of the 2024 Qld Council Elections

By Callen Sorensen Karklis

The election results of the local government elections are in. Some will be despairing on both the progressive and conservative sides in some key areas around the state, while others on each side will be content with the results. One thing despite it all is obvious: QLD Premier Steven Miles should be very worried about the October State Election! If he is to win re-election, he needs to do more to listen to the community. This comes after Labor loses its safest seat in Wynnum Manly ward which has never been non-Labor in 80 years on a local level and the state seat of Ipswich West.

In Brisbane the Greenslide didn’t quite occur just yet on a local level, but they did win two seats, gaining Paddington with Seal Chong Wah with 51% of the vote on TPP while Trina Massey held the Gabba easily at 61% of the vote, with a good showing in 5 BCC wards with potential to win a further three seats in Walter Taylor, Central, and Coorparoo wards at the 2028 BCC elections. The substantial swing to the Greens means they could give the state seats of Greenslopes, Miller, and Cooper a good go. The loss of the safe seat of Wynnum Manly ward in Brisbane’s southeast is a serious blow to the ALP. The LNP’s Alex Givney won the seat with 52% of the vote, helped by former Labor leader and Cr Peter Cumming’s retirement after his drink driving episode and Sara Whitmee not being known enough in the community upon her appointment, which created the perception of a left faction.

But the ALP has gained a win in the seat of Calamvale with the election of Emily Kim with 51% of the vote. The ALP also had swings to it in four wards: Runcorn, Northgate, Marchant, and Holland Park. It’s clear that if Labor and the Greens want to govern a future Brisbane City Council (the 5th biggest government in Australia) they inevitably will have to govern together in a coalition like the ALP and Greens have done in Tasmania, and the ACT historically. They will both have to swallow the pill for the greater good. Together both could win back 15 seats if they campaigned on a shared policy platform that appeals to more voters.

Adrian Schrinner (LNP) has easily been re-elected with 56% of the vote compared to Labor’s Tracey Price on 44% on TPP and Jono Sri on 19% of the primary vote. The Greens policy platform on cost of living, housing crisis and Olympics issues served them well, while the LNP clearly benefited from a growing anti-Labor sentiment in the community tied to the state and federal sphere during tough economic times; a lesson for Labor. As the LNP looks likely to hold council for 24 years by 2028, which could generate a “It’s Time” factor by then.

In Ipswich the LNP’s Teresa Harding easily won re-election, particularly after the controversial former Labor Mayors in that city of the past decades. Despite this, Labor did secure a sizeable opposition there. Former Ipswich West MP Jim Madden won 32% of the vote. Jacob Madsen won 29.75%. And former ALP bloc Your Voice; controversial Paul Tully and Nicole Junic were easily re–elected in division 2 and controversial former Labor Mayor Andrew Antoniolli in division 3. The ALP did, however, win the Logan City Council Mayoral race with Jon Raven becoming Mayor with 55% on TPP while all the ALP’s existing three other Crs were re-elected. In Moreton City Council, Labor saw Jim Moloney easily win Mick Gillam’s seat, while LNP aligned Mayor Peter Flannery contested the Mayor of Moreton City Council.

Labor’s Dan Stewart in Gympie could be trouble. Labor has held Mackay easily while Townsville has seen the fall of Labor’s Jenny Hill from the top job with former One Nation member Troy Thompson securing 47% of the primary vote. Labor is likely to lose Mt Isa’s Danielle Slade to small business owner Peta Macrae. Labor has held on to Rockhampton with Tony Williams re-elected. On the Sunshine Coast Labor’s Taylor Bunnag secured 46% of the vote in a surprise win. It looks likely that former Seven News reporter Rosanna Natoli will win the Mayoralty on 27%, while the LNP’s Tom Tate has easily won re-lection, winning a 4th term.

In Bundaberg, Independent Helen Blackburn defeated former LNP MP and Mayor Jack Dempsey with 58% of the vote, and in Redlands Jos Mitchell and Cairns Amy Eden, two Teal Mayors have won the vote. Eden, Mitchell, and Blackburn all campaigned on transparency, integrity, and cutting waste issues.

In Redlands it was a particularly toxic council election due to the antics of former controversial federal MP Andrew Laming running a smear campaign against Jos on the back of the LNP also endorsing unofficially Cindy Corrie for Mayor. Corrie worked for the former controversial LNP Mayor Karen Williams who infamously crashed her car into a tree and ditch drink driving. Laming attempted to label Jos as a Greens funded candidate despite pulling support from people from all parties and walks of life. Jos’ legal team were successful in challenging the misinformation with a supreme court injunction. Laming blitzed the electorate with signage and billboards reminiscent of Clive Palmer’s tactics to flood the electorate in advertising. Laming’s attempt to campaign on several state issues such as the hospital crisis, cost of living crisis, native title (after the failure of the Voice referendum) and youth crime detracted from what City Council can achieve which is roads, rates, and rubbish issues. This cost Laming greatly particularly as Jos Mitchell built an army of volunteers in community engagement at a grassroots level.

Jos’ success in turning the blue-collar working-class areas in Alexandra Hills, Capalaba, Redland Bay door knocking, leafleting the marinas for the bay islands, canvassing at shopping centres and train stations, and letterboxing everywhere paid off, while also articulating a simple message ensured a win. Jos didn’t allow coordinated smear campaigning to distract her from fake troll accounts and pages spreading misinformation, while bad press didn’t help Laming. As most thought a safe bet in voting for Jos and an ex-police officer and prosecutor were a safe bet rather than the antics of spent politician of 18 years with little to show for their time in office.

 

 

If Labor can coordinate a way forward for consultation with the community on the Olympics planning, the cost of living and housing crisis, the best it could hope for is potentially securing a hung parliament as its best option with the Greens securing supply or possibly the Katter’s in north QLD. But then again if it doesn’t there is a real risk the State LNP – lead by David Crisafulli – could secure power in late 2024 with a small majority if the Local Government elections can be used as an indicator for the next six months.

As of early March 2024, the LNP are polling on 51–54% on TPP compared to Labor’s 46–49% with the Greens on 12–13% with PHON at 7–8% with the real prospect of them picking up another seat as well riding off the back of the No vote in Qld in the Voice referendum in late 2023. What is clear to me is there has been a profound anti-establishment sentiment in the air and voters aren’t happy with both major parties.

 

References:

Antony Green (ABC’s chief election analyst) ABC News <https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/bcc/2024/results?filter=all&sort=az> accessed 21/03/2024

Australian Greens <https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=957667205726971&set=pb.100044511003150.-2207520000> accessed 22/03/2024

ECQ website Qld Local Government Results. <https://results.elections.qld.gov.au/2024QLGE> accessed 21/03/2024

Redlands Community News, Victory Parties Across the Southeast <https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=430907876259426&set=a.280446161305599> accessed 22/03/2024

Callen Sorensen Karklis, Bachelor of Government and International Relations.

Callen is a Quandamooka Nunukul Aboriginal person from North Stradbroke Island. He has been the Secretary of the Qld Fabians in 2018, and the Assistant Secretary 2018 – 2019, 2016, and was more recently the Policy and Publications Officer 2020 – 2021. Callen previously was in Labor branch executives in the Oodgeroo (Cleveland areas), SEC and the Bowman FEC. He has also worked for Cr Peter Cumming, worked in market research, trade unions, media advertising, and worked in retail. He also ran for Redland City Council in 2020 on protecting the Toondah Ramsar wetlands. He also advised the Oodgeroo Teal campaign in 2020. He now active in the Redlands and Qld Greens. Callen is active in Redlands 2030, the Redlands Museum, and his local sports club at Victoria Pt Sharks Club. Callen also has a Diploma of Business and attained his tertiary education from Griffith University. He was a co-host from time to time on Workers Power 4ZZZ (FM 102.1) on Tuesday morning’s program Workers Power. He has also worked in government. Cal was a coordinator for Jos Mithcell’s Redlands Mayoral campaign in 2024.

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Palm Sunday Walk for Justice and Peace

The Refugee Advocacy Network

About the Palm Sunday Walk for Justice and Peace – Melbourne, 24 March 2024

Since 2014, the Refugee Advocacy Network, has brought together a wide range of groups to plan the Palm Sunday Walk for Justice for Refugees.

During the 1970s and 80s there was a tradition of holding Peace rallies on Palm Sunday. This dropped off sometime in the late 80s. In 2014, the Refugee Advocacy Network (RAN), working together with various groups in Melbourne, including Refugee Action Collective (RAC), established the Melbourne Palm Sunday Walk for Justice for Refugees. Since then, the Walk has been held each year on Palm Sunday, except for 2020, when an online event was held due to the Covid pandemic. Around 20 Palm Sunday events in support of refugee rights are now held each year in capital cities and regional towns right across Australia, with a level of co-ordination through the Australian Refugee Action Network (ARAN).

The Melbourne, the Walk for Justice for Refugees is planned each year with a Planning Committee with representatives from faith groups, RAC, other local advocacy and support groups for refugees. Refugee communities also contribute to planning for Palm Sunday. The main aim of the Walk for Justice is to reach out to groups and individuals who may not be routinely engaged advocacy activities, but who are none the less concerned about the way Australian policies have impacted refugees.

It is often claimed that Australia is generous in supporting refuges – and this is largely true in relation to the support provided to humanitarian refugees – people who are selected by Australia from refugee camps and offered refugee protection visas. However, as we have seen in the last 2 decades, Australia has developed a very punitive response to those who have the ‘audacity’ to travel to Australia undocumented (without official entry papers) to seek asylum. While most people who seek asylum in Australia arrive by air, those who arrive by boat are subjected to a very harsh regime, which is intended to deter people from taking boat journeys from Indonesia and similar places to seek asylum here. The domestic political debate about people who travel by boat to seek asylum has been consistently toxic, with the return of the Howard Government in late 2001 attributed largely to the fear of terrorism post September 11, and the rhetoric about strong borders, which was code for rejecting people who seek asylum here.

Our advocacy platform seeks to holds to account the punitive policy response of our Australian Government over those who seek asylum that problematises people and their means of arrival, rather than the circumstances causing their dispossession and forced migration.

The key issues which have been the focus of most Palm Sunday Walk events have been temporary visas which deny the permanent resettlement in Australia, indefinite detention, the establishment of offshore processing in PNG and Nauru, and the situation for refugees in Indonesia with no resettlement options. This year our main focus is on calling for permanent visas for around 10,000 people who have been living here for over 10 years on bridging visas and have been denied a fair process for through assessment of their claims for refugee status. The Walk for Justice is promoted on social media and through a wide network of around 100 supporting groups and organisations.

The program includes a select few speakers, including people with lived experience who have been impacted by the policies.

The program will commence at 10.30am with readings on peace and justice from several faith traditions. There will be a brief musical interlude between speakers. This will be followed by a young Palestinian who will sing ‘Change is a Comin’, followed by:

  • Dr Tania Miletic, Assistant Director, Peacebuilding Initiative, University of Melbourne
  • 3 refugee speakers, including a Palestinian refugee, and 2 people who are struggling in a visa limbo; one of the women did the walk to Canberra last year, alongside 21 other women from Melbourne.
  • Other speakers are Sr Brigid (founder and coordinator, Brigidine Asylum Seeker Project – established in 2000 BASP has assisted thousands of families and individuals) and David Manne (long time Director of Refugee legal, and tireless advocate for Refugees and people seeking asylum.

In addition to the speaking program, we include music (often by refugees), this year including the TARAB Ensemble, a young Palestinian signer, a famous Ethiopian musician, and a Hazara asylum seeker.

This year we have been open to a change in format in response to the significance of, and public support for the Free Palestine Rally. We continue to be open to changes to the format of the Palm Sunday rally as many who attend may want to continue to the Free Palestine rally. Our common goal to support refugees in this country and outside of it.

In February 2023 the Albanese Government announced that all refugees who had been granted SHEV or TPV would be granted visas.

In late 2023 it was the immense frustration of living the last 10 years in limbo that motivated 22 women to make the gruelling trek on foot from Melbourne, 15 women from Sydney, and a young man to cycle from Brisbane to make their case – to tell politicians that it’s time to end the limbo and allow people to get on with building their lives in Australia.

More than 10 years after arriving here to find a safe future around 10,000 people still have no certainty. Many of these people have not seen their children, parents or spouses who remain in danger in places like Iran, Afghanistan and Myanmar. They cannot go back, and Australia has given them no certainty of a future here. All of these people have been subject to the so-called Fast Track assessment process – which is clearly not fast and is deeply flawed as it does not provide for thorough assessment of claims for refugee status.

These people are living on short term Bridging Visas, and some are refused the right to work. Without any income many families are totally reliant on charities, which are stretched to capacity. Many young people have completed their schooling here and are being blocked from continuing in higher education – some are denied the right to enrol, while those who can enrol are unable to pay international student fees.

Palm Sunday is a National Day of Action for Refugee Rights: “We call on the Albanese Government to establish a fair and just system for assessing refugee claims. All those who have been living here in limbo for more than 10 years should have the right to settle here with the security of a permanent visa.”

 

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Human Rights or the Right to Discriminate?

By Bert Hetebry

The Religious Discrimination Bill, in draft form has been presented to open the way for consideration in the Parliament and Senate to ensure that those who choose to hate can do so legally.

At least that is what is looks like to this citizen. Religious schools can discriminate when employing staff, ensuring that all teachers comply with a morality standard and that will inevitably affect the way education is delivered, especially when dealing with ethics and morality.

How easy would it be to make the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which Australia was involved in setting up and is a signatory to, actually make that law. There are thirty articles in the Declaration and Article 2 is an overarching statement:

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.

Wow, that covers a whole lot of things to not hate in other people, to respect other people despite those differences. And when we read through the other twenty-nine articles, these areas of difference are clearly expanded on to ensure the dignity and rights of everyone we may meet on life’s journey.

So where is the problem, why must we need to consider Religious Discrimination when clearly the faith(s) we hold or do not hold are to be respected by everyone we meet as we respect the faith(s) others hold or choose not to hold? It seems the problem may well lie in the Holy Books or how these are interpreted, and interpretations enforced.

Throughout history, going back to ancient days, leaders have validated their power as being given by a higher power, a god or at times a legion of gods and have used that validation to honour some and subjugate others, to even have the power of life or death over their subjects and any who would challenge their authority. Leadership has two primary functions; that of Protector and of Provider. when we read the Holy Books, The Bible, The Koran, The Talmud, there are teachings which discriminate against those who do not fall into some pretty strict categories, dress codes are prescribed, sexual intercourse restrictions, sacrifices ordered, slaughter of other peoples prescribed to protect the legitimacy of the originator of power, the God who demands obedience. Even the killing of children, as in the plagues of Egypt (Exodus 11, 5-6), in the war against the Midianites (Numbers 31, 17-18) or in the destruction of Babylon (Psalm 137, 8-9).

As Protector, today we see this played out in the political debates where people who dare to arrive here seeking asylum through the back door, so to speak, are seen as threats and quickly removed to some remote island, being punished for daring to think we may treat them with a bit more humanity than those who they have fled from, or to build alliances with other countries, the ANZAC treaty or AUKUS, or trade relationships such as with our SE Asian neighbours.

As provider, the various cost of living issues we face, employment and renumeration in employment, the social safety net provided through pensions and other benefits for those in need.

Not much has changed through the long line of history, leadership protected and provided and when that failed, leaders were overthrown either through invading forces or internal uprisings. It is only with the rise of democracy that we see power appears to have shifted to the people who ostensibly choose their leadership. But where that leadership was validated by some god or other, or the power questioned on the basis of interpretation of the scriptures used to validate the leadership, things could get a bit nasty. Martin Luther challenging the interpretation of Catholic teaching followed by Jean Calvin’s re-interpretations and then the Anabaptists and a number of other break away teachings led to the Thirty Year War (1618-1638) where millions died as a result of different beliefs within Christianity.

The two-thousand-year discrimination of Jews because they based their faith on Old Testament teachings as Europe became Christian, homosexuals discriminated against because of their sexuality, a capital crime. Men were hanged for being gay. Enslavement of African people going back in time, seemingly forever, or the enslavement of those swept up for being on the wrong side of a war.

Dare I mention the colonial period where European technological advancement saw the taking of new territories, ‘discovering’ whole continents to provide the ever-increasing demands of a burgeoning middle class. And ‘Christianising’ the Aboriginal peoples of the newly conquered lands presenting them with the forgiving grace of a gracious God as their lands were plundered, their women raped, and men murdered.

Discrimination has been an issue as long as there are differences between people, the differences clearly stated in Article 2 of the Declaration of Human Rights. But people want to discriminate, they are fearful of difference, especially those who have positions of power and influence are fearful that their power and influence may be eroded.

A Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse was established in January 2013 and the findings were horrific. The very institutions which were found to be complicit in the sexual abuse of children, Christian institutions from across the spectrum of Christianity are calling for protection to discriminate. And for that we need legislation called a Religious Discrimination Bill?

I think a far better response to discrimination is to make the UN Declaration of Human Rights law in Australia.

 

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button

Archer, Pocock win McKinnon Prize for outstanding political leadership

Federal Member for Bass Bridget Archer and ACT Senator David Pocock have been announced as winners of the McKinnon Prize, Australia’s independent, non-partisan award for outstanding political leadership.

The McKinnon Prize is a collaboration between the Susan McKinnon Foundation and the University of Melbourne and has been awarded annually since 2017. The Prize was established to recognise political leaders from all levels of government who have driven positive impact through their vision, collaboration, courage and ethical behaviour.

Ms Archer was selected as the McKinnon Federal Political Leader of the Year 2023, which recognises MPs with more than five years in elected office. The section panel noted Ms Archer’s long-standing courage in standing up for her principles and her collaborative approach to policy discussions.

Senator Pocock was selected as the McKinnon Emerging Political Leader of the Year 2023, which recognises recently-elected representatives with less than five years in federal, state/territory or local office.

The selection panel recognised Senator Pocock’s values-driven approach to handling his balance of power position in the Senate and his commitment to genuinely listening to and appraising competing perspectives.

A new category, McKinnon State/Territory Political Leader of the Year will be announced later this week.

The McKinnon Prize was selected by a panel of eminent Australians, including Martin Parkinson, Alan Finkel, and Patrica Karvelas (full panel list below).

Bridget Archer on being recognised with the McKinnon Prize:

“Representing the community of Bass in Federal Parliament is truly an honour and privilege. From the day I was elected I committed to being a genuine and authentic representative for the people of Bass. Being a recipient of the McKinnon Prize is a reminder it is the community I ultimately serve.

“As members of Federal Parliament, we are in the unique position to lead the conversation and ensure all voices are heard. I will continue to speak out against gendered violence and call for the elimination of violence against women and children. I look forward to continuing my advocacy to ensure adequate

The McKinnon Prize in Political Leadership is a collaboration between the Susan McKinnon Foundation and the University of Melbourne. mental health services are provided not just in Northern Tasmania but across Australia, ensuring the most vulnerable in our society are protected.

“I thank the Susan McKinnon Foundation, the University of Melbourne and the selection panel for the commendation. It is a prestigious group I am joining the ranks of and I am very honoured.”

Selection panel chair Dr Martin Parkinson on Bridget Archer:

“Bridget Archer’s leadership has impressed successive McKinnon Prize selection panels. It’s appropriate she takes the top honour this year.

“Ms Archer has consistently demonstrated rare courage by standing up for her principles and the interests of her constituents, even when this has put her at odds with her party and threatened her career. Through all this, her dedication and commitment to her party is clear and the panel noted how she has worked tirelessly to drive reforms from within.”

Selection panel member Dr Alan Finkel on Bridget Archer:

“Along with her political courage, Bridget Archer is also well known for her collaborative approach, community work and inclusion of young people in policy discussions.

“Australian political parties traditionally value discipline and it takes real bravery to pursue an alternate path of principled leadership.”

David Pocock on being recognised with the McKinnon Prize:

“It’s a huge privilege representing a community I love and an honour to have my work for them recognised in this way.

“People in the ACT have shown political leadership for decades, from their support for renewable energy and strong action on climate change, to marriage equality and more recently in the Voice referendum.

“What I have been able to achieve so far in the Senate reflects their energy and determination to work towards a better future for all.

“I believe we have so much more in common than the sum of our differences and this is the approach I’ve tried to bring to my role on the crossbench. We are facing huge challenges as communities, as a nation and globally it’s more important than ever to find ways to work together to solve them.

“Being accessible, accountable and putting people first, above politics, is what I committed to doing. I think they’re values Australians want to see and values that many winners of this Prize share and it’s a privilege to be recognised alongside them.”

Selection panel chair Dr Martin Parkinson on David Pocock:

“David Pocock has made a serious impact on Australian politics in an impressively short period of time. The panel was impressed by his articulation of a new kind of collaborative politics, and his dedication to these principles in practice.

“Historically, Australia has seen Senators who hold the balance of power use that to pursue a relative narrow set of goals, designed to satisfy a small constituency, often at the expense of the broader community. Senator Pocock is a great example of how that position of power can be used to pursue a broader vision for the community as a whole.”

Selection panel member Dr Alan Finkel on David Pocock:

“David Pocock’s leadership is a fine example of the values the McKinnon Prize was established to recognise. He genuinely listens to stakeholders and attempts to balance competing interests in good faith. We hope awarding this year’s prize to Senator Pocock helps promote the excellent example he sets at a time when so many populist ‘strongman’ leaders command headlines on the global stage.

“The panel also regarded Pocock’s community and charity work very highly, and his history of principled stances on political issues, such as his refusal to marry until gay marriage was legalised in 2017.”

McKinnon Prize Selection Panel:

Dr Martin Parkinson AC, Chancellor, Macquarie University (Chair)
Dr Alan Finkel AC, former Chief Scientist of Australia
Georgie Harman, CEO of Beyond Blue
Tanya Hosch, Executive General Manager Inclusion & Social Policy AFL
Patricia Karvelas, Host, RN Breakfast on ABC Radio
Professor Renee Leon PSM, Vice Chancellor and President, Charles Sturt University
Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz, President of Chief Executive Women, Chair of the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council
Cathy McGowan AO, Chair, AgriFutures Arthur Sinodinos AO, Partner & Chair of Australia Practice, The Asia Group
Ashleigh Streeter-Jones, Founder & CEO of Raise Our Voice Australia (ROVA) and Victorian Young Australian of the Year Finalist
David Thodey AO, Chairman, Tyro and Xero and incoming University of Sydney Chancellor
Jay Weatherill AO, Director of Public Affairs with the Minderoo Foundation

The McKinnon Prize is Australia’s independent, non-partisan award for outstanding political leadership. It is a rare opportunity to recognise outstanding Australian political leadership, providing a crucial counterbalance to widespread mistrust and cynicism.

The McKinnon Prize was first awarded in 2017. Previous recipients include Senator Penny Wong, Dr Helen Haines, Tony Smith, Mayor Teresa Harding, Greg Hunt, Dr Anne Aly and Mayor Teresa Harding.

The McKinnon Prize in Political Leadership is a collaboration between the Susan McKinnon Foundation and the University of Melbourne.

Like what we do at The AIMN?

You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.

Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!

Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.

You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969

Donate Button