Kate started her adult life studying Arts/Law at Sydney University – majoring in Australian history – before giving up the law to transfer to a career in technology and innovation. After working and studying across Asia and the US, Kate now has her feet firmly planted back in Australia, where she spends her day job asking ‘why?’, why not?’ and ‘what if?’. She moonlights as a citizen journalist, where she asks the same questions of our political system, believing in the power of conversation to challenge and change the status quo. You can read more of her thoughts at Progressive Conversation.
Joe Hockey – along with Peter FitzSimons (head of the Australian Republican Movement) and Labor Senator Katy Gallagher – announced today that they are putting the Republic back on the table for discussion. At a time when Hockey is struggling for popularity, and when even dangling tax cuts before people isn’t winning him any votes, a cynical person might wonder if this is Hockey’s attempt to get back behind a barrow that others will be happy to push along with him.
By way of context, here’s a quick summary of the key events around the vote for Australia to become a republic in the 1990s:
Support for Australia becoming a republic was strong in the 90s – as shown in the graph below. The green line represents the percentage of people who were for Australia becoming a republic, and the red line is people who were against it. Right up to the referendum, there was consistently a significant margin between those who were pro-republic and those who were against it.
So how did the republican movement fail – I hear you ask? Good question …
In 1993, Paul Keating created a ‘Republic Advisory Committee’– which was chaired by then banker and lawyer, one Mr Malcolm Turnbull – to determine what changes would be needed to the constitution for Australia to become a republic. Which they did. Before they could start putting more detail behind these changes so that they could be put to a referendum however….
In 1996, John Howard – a confirmed monarchist – was elected Prime Minister on a reluctant platform of putting Australia becoming a republic to a referendum late in his first term.
In 1999 Howard successfully put the question of Australia becoming a republic to bed, for what turns out to be a good 16 years. He did this by tying Australia becoming a republic with a model which he knew was not popular with the Australian people. The republican model Howard put forward to be voted on would have replaced the Governor General with a President elected by politicians. (The more popular model – which had over 70% support – had the Australian public electing the President.)By doing this, Howard cleverly split the pro-republic movement so that those who favoured the more popular model actually told people to vote ‘no’ in the republic referendum, some mistakenly believing they would get a second go at a vote with their preferred model. But with Howard as Prime Minister, this was never going to happen.
The rest – as they say – is history.The vote for Australia to become a republic failed, with 55% of people voting against Australia becoming a republic.
(For a more detailed ouline of events, see my recent article on how Abbott is using the same ploy currently with marriage equality.)
Some 16 years later …
Back to 2015, and Joe Hockey is bringing up the republic debate again. Now, to be fair, he has always been in favour of a republic, this is not a change in position from him. But why now?
Certainly, if Hockey is serious about wanting a republic, he must know that it could never get up with Abbott as Prime Minister – John Howard proved that. And Abbott confirmed his willingness to play dirty in order to get his own way recently, by ‘branch stacking’ the party room on the discussion about marriage equality with Nationals.
Is this Hockey’s ‘marriage equality’ – something that he is a known supporter of that the public can get behind? Or does Hockey know that Abbott’s days are numbered – and therefore the time might be ripe now to bring up a key issue that actually could get across the line in the next parliamentary term?
Only time will tell.
Either way – as the French used to say ‘Bring on the Republic’ (Vive la République)!!!
(The flag design above – minus the words – was by John Joseph of Epping, NSW – see http://tinyurl.com/oqx963d)
As we all know, good government started six months ago – following Abbott’s near demise as our Prime Minister. And this last parliamentary sitting fortnight in Canberra has been another stellar example of this. There’s been press conferences galore, leaky cabinets and question-time performances worthy of entry into the Tonies (pun intended).
We also learned this week that one of the government’s key talking points was to let us know that the Cabinet is working excellently!! Clearly, if they feel the need to stress how well they are doing, the LNP is feeling underappreciated by us – the Australian people. It’s time to remedy this.
Introducing the ‘On the Snout’ awards
It’s time we recognised our Pollies for all the exceptionally excellent work they are telling us that they do.
So I’m introducing the soon-to-be incredibly coveted and prestigious ‘On the Snout’ or ‘Snoutie’ Awards – named in honour of recently retired U.S. political satirist Jon Stewart, whose last words of advice to us everyday punters were:
Well I smell plenty. There’s been a lot of activity by our government that’s been on the nose, or more appropriately for Canberra – ‘on the snout’ – over this last fortnight. And I, for one, believe it’s time we acknowledge them for this.
So I’ve taken stock of the performance of various members of our excellent cabinet over the last fortnight – and let me tell you, there was a lot of competition for the awards. But in the end, as they say, there can only be one winner for each award. I’ve announced my selection of key winners below, and there is also a vote for the People’s Choice Snoutie at the end, where you can cast your vote.
So without further ado, here are the inaugural “On the Snout” (‘Snoutie’) Award winners.
The Inaugural ‘On the Snout’ Award Winners
The David Copperfield Magic with Numbers Award
About the award:
The David Copperfield Magic with Numbers Award is given to the LNP Minister who – like great Illusionist David Copperfield – can work magic, in this case with numbers.
And the winner is – Joe Hockey
Yes, the winner of the inaugural David Copperfield Magic Numbers award is our Treasurer, one Mr Joe ‘Eleventy’ Hockey, for the amazing illusion he created this week around Australia’s unemployment numbers. Let’s revisit his award winning feat…
In question time in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, while responding to a ‘question’ from a Liberal backbencher on the brilliance of the Liberal party’s job creation achievements, Mr Hockey said:
“We have a great record of success in creating 334,000 new jobs in less than two years. In the last month alone, we have created 38,000 new jobs in Australia. The average in the last 12 months under Labor was 3,600 jobs per month.”
Hockey repeated similar numbers six times during question time – obviously wanting to make sure nobody had missed his amazing magic trick, creating the illusion that the LNP are doing a great ‘job’ with jobs.
Luckily, intrepid AIM Network citizen journalist and illusion-spotter – Kaye Lee – was on the case, otherwise Hockey’s magic trick may have gone unspotted, and he may have lost the award to runner-up Greg Hunt for his work with carbon emission numbers this week. Kaye identified that while the 38,000 number was correct, the other numbers were just an illusion. In fact, during Labor’s time in office, an average of 15,180 jobs were created a month, but since the LNP have been in power, only 7495 jobs have been created on average per month.
The George Orwell 1984 Award
“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.” (George Orwell, 1984)
About the award:
The George Orwell 1984 Award is given to the LNP Minister who increases the power of those in authority and correspondingly decreases the rights and freedoms of the individual.
And the winner is – Peter Dutton (PDuddy)
The winner of the inaugural George Orwell 1984 Award is none other than Minister for Saying-We’ve-Stopped-The-Boats, Peter Dutton – or ‘PDuddy’ as he’s probably not known to his friends – at least to his face. He had three stellar entries that won him this week’s award.
Entry one: revoking the citizenship of dual nationals
PDuddy’s first entry relates to the Australian Citizenship Amendment Bill which proposes to give the government power to strip dual citizens of their Australian citizenship. This is a summary of how the Senate was advised this week that the Bill would work in practice:
Now that could very well be an excerpt from 1984 – and if it’s not there, it could easily slot right in.
This proposed legislation is a major Orwellian power grab by PDuddy for three reasons:
Having security in your citizenship is a fundamental right of a democracybecause it literally ensures that there is a piece of dry land on this earth for you to put your feet on. And the reality is, when you undermine citizenship rights for one, you undermine them for us all.
It sets a precedent for taking away the protection we all have of being presumed innocent unless there is evidence to suggest otherwise.
It puts the government above the law. A fundamental cornerstone of democracy is the separation of the power to make laws (by the government) from the power to rule on those laws (which is done by the courts). Once you allow a single body to both make the laws and make rulings on those laws, you place that body – in this case the government – above the law. You are then just one rigged election away from an authoritarian structure like facism – 1984 here we come.
Entry two: revoking citizenship of sole Nationals
In case you thought the above wouldn’t apply to you anyway – think again. PDuddy isn’t content with being able to turf out only those Aussies who have dual citizenship. He and Phillip Ruddock this week announced further details of their plans to extend the above Bill so that it applies not only to people who currently have dual citizenship, but also to those who could apply for citizenship in another country. This apparently applies to around 50% of Australian citizens.
As for the remaining 50% of us, don’t get too cocky. Did you know that all Australian citizens can apply for citizenship in New Zealand? There are certain criteria you need to meet in order to qualify – one of which relates to character, another to having lived there for five years – so there may be some protection there. But nevertheless, technically we all have the right to apply for citizenship in another country. If this is right, PDuddy’s men could come knocking at your door in the middle of the night and have you on the first Air New Zealand flight to Auckland before you know it. It’s a long bow to draw – but with the inaugural winner of the George Orwell 1984 Snoutie Award in charge of citizenship decisions – and behind closed doors with no right of appeal or review – you never know….
Entry Three: Giving guards in detention centres the power to use deadly force on asylum seekers
First PDuddy put up a shroud of secrecy around Detention Centres. Now he wants to pass laws to give guards in detention centres – who have four weeks training – the right to use deadly force (aka to kill) asylum seekers in certain circumstances without having to worry about being prosecuted for pesky criminal charges like assault, battery or murder.
While PDuddy claims this is necessary to protect the health and safety of detainees, these are the same guards who currently guard our Detention Centres where sexual assaults and torture on asylum seekers appear to be continuing. And PDuddy wants to give these guards even more power than they already have.
PDuddy is surely a worthy winner of the inaugural George Orwell 1984 award.
The Dragon Slayer Award
“It’s the ultimate political spin doctoring – create a mythical dragon, fight it, and claim to have saved us from it. And the thing with dragons is that they are far easier to slay – what with them not being real and all – than actual problems. It’s much simpler to be a dragon slayer than someone who actually rights real wrongs or solves real problems.” (From Abbott the Dragon Slayer: The art of making scary mountains out of tiny molehills)
About the award:
The Dragon Slayer Award – as the quote above suggests – is given to the LNP Minister who creates the largest mountain (the dragon) out of the smallest molehill, and then makes as much noise as he can about how he is slaying that mythical dragon in order to save the Australian people.
And the winner is – George Brandis
The clear winner of the inaugural Dragon Slayer award is our Attorney General, one Mr George Brandis. He wins this award for the battle – or ‘lawfare’ – he is fighting against Greenie Terrorists who he says are using the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act to “engage in vigilante litigation to stop important economic projects” and to threaten “jobs, investment and our economy“.
In fact the offending Act has only been successfully used twice to impact a project – out of 5500 projects. Furthermore, the particular problem in the Adani case – the relevant ‘economic’ project (probably better named ‘moneypit’) – was a technical oversight in Greg Hunt’s office that could have been remedied in a matter of weeks.
But that’s what makes it such a brilliant dragon. As I stated above, it’s far easier to be victorious over a challenge that isn’t really there. Kudos to Mr Brandis for turning a paperwork error from a tiny molehill into a full-size mythical dragon requiring the attention of his full department to slay it – probably while doing a war dance chanting ‘no more lawfare, no more greenies, no more lawfare, no more greenies’.
And finally – the award we’ve all been waiting for….
The Golden Snoutie
The Golden Snoutie is the most prestigious of the already ultra-prestigious ‘On the Snout’ awards.
About the award:
The Golden Snoutie award is given to the member of Government who is so ‘on the snout’, as to eclipse the snoutiness of those around them. And in Canberra – that’s no mean feat. The winner of this award should be a master of what Jon Stewart describes as ‘pernicious bullshit’ – “premeditated institutional bullshit, designed to obscure and distract.” The winner of this award will likely excel in all the categories noted above and a few more besides.
And the winner is – Tony Abbott
There really was no competition on this one. Tony Abbott was the standout candidate from day one of this last parliamentary sitting week. In the words of Julie Bishop, speaking of Mr Abbott in Perth today:
“We owe him a debt for the effort and energy that he has dedicated to his role as Prime Minister of this great nation.”
Indeed we do. Let’s quickly recap on some of this fortnight’s standout snoutiness from the head Snout:
Magic with numbers on Climate Change
Tony Abbott – and climate change truthiness guru, ‘Greg Hunt’ – started the week by pulling their own numbers out of a magic hat, claiming that their 26% to 28% emissions reduction target is economically responsible and world-leading.
Abbott correspondingly claimed that any target that Labor sets will sacrifice jobs, the economy and cost households untold millions. Our Golden Snoutie winner would never do that he said – he would not put the environment before the economy. Pure magic.
Abbott’s numbers are not true of course – but what illusion is? As Laura Tingle from the Australian Financial Review pointed out:
Following close on the heels of his magic trick with climate change numbers, Abbott moved on to making the issue of Marriage Equality disappear. To do this, he took a leaf out of John Howard’s playbook, successfully taking the issue off the agenda for the rest of Mr Abbott’s term, while at the same time, claiming to be the people’s advocate for Marriage Equality. Snoutiness at its best.
Boasting about his Dragon Slaying days of old
I wrote previously about the three dragons that Abbott is constantly claiming to have slain – the carbon tax, the mining tax and asylum seeker boats. Although these dragons were mythically slain some time ago, at a press conference in Perth today, Abbott was still boasting about his ‘achievements’, puffing out his chest in pride at being able to kill these mythical beasts.
Making sure there are plenty of Terrorists under the Bed
We learned this week that the National Security Committee that Mr Abbott chairs “asked for a list of national-security-related things that could be announced weekly between now and the election” proving yet again, that Abbott’s terrorist announcements are a calculated attempt to ensure that Australians remain in a high state of fear in regards to terrorists under the bed.
All of these example just prove exactly how ‘on the snout’ Tony Abbott is, and why he is such a deserving recipient of the inaugural Golden Snoutie award.
People’s Choice Snoutie
There’s one more Snoutie to be awarded, to give due recognition to the member of the LNP cabinet who has been the most ‘on the snout’ over the last fortnight – and that’s the People’s Choice Snoutie.
So now it’s your turn to vote.
Which of the following members of the LNP cabinet have you found to be most ‘on the snout’ this last parliamentary fortnight? I’ve included key members of our exceptional cabinet (other than Tony Abbott – who isn’t eligible having already won the Gold Snoutie).
You can vote for up to three cabinet ministers – so go for it!
As most people know, laws came into effect on 1 July this year making it a crime for an ‘entrusted person’ – such as a doctor – to talk to the press about what’s going on in detention centres like Nauru or Manus Island, with a threat of two years imprisonment if they do.
Having put up a shroud of secrecy around detention centres, there is now a Bill in the senate which, if passed, will allow the use of deadly force by guards in those detention centres. The bill is called the Migration Amendment (Maintaining the Good Order of Immigration Detention Facilities) Bill 2015 – or the ‘Use of Force’ Bill.
Despite the fact that Human Rights bodies have huge concerns about this Bill, it has received very little press. Here’s why you should be concerned about it.
The Bill will allow the use of deadly force by ‘Authorised Officers’
If passed as is, the Bill will allow ‘Authorised officers’ – basically guards – within Detention Centres to inflict ‘grievous bodily harm’ where they personally believe it is reasonably necessary to protect life or prevent serious injury. And the Explanatory Memorandum to the Bill spells out that:
“grievous bodily harm includes death or serious injury”
It specifically states that Authorised Officers may kill.
And the test to whether it’s legal for them to use deadly force is a subjective one. This means it’s legal for an Authorised Officer to kill where they believe it was reasonable to do so in order to protect life or prevent serious injury. This may sound logical, but the problem with a subjective test – rather than an objective one – as argued by the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre is that:
So this means that if a guard in a detention centre does use deadly force against an asylum seeker, he doesn’t have to show that any reasonable person in his shoes would have done the same thing – which is the normal legal test – but only that he thought using deadly force was reasonable. It is completely irrelevant If nine out of ten people in his shoes would not have used deadly force in the same circumstances. The only test is what the guard thought.
Authorised Officers get only four weeks training
The current training provided to Authorised Officers of these centres is a four-week course. They get a very similar level of training to that provided to Shopping Centre security guards or Night Club Bouncers.
Contrast this with a sworn police officer – who has less power than an Authorised Officer in one of these detention centres – but has at least three more years of training.
There’s a good chance we won’t hear about it if deadly force is used
As I mentioned above, from 1 July workers like doctors and nurses can no longer legally disclose what is happening in the detention centres to a journalist.
So hypothetically, if an Authorised Officer saw a young asylum seeker coming towards him, and mistakenly thought that asylum seeker was carrying a weapon which could cause him harm, that Officer could shoot that asylum seeker. Not only would that guard not be prosecuted for this – under the Border Force laws, there’s a good chance we wouldn’t even hear about it. And if we did hear about it because a doctor spoke out – the person going to jail wouldn’t be the Authorised Officer who killed the asylum seeker, it would be the doctor who reported it.
Authorised Officers in detention centres don’t exactly have a stellar record
Reports of horrific incidents in Detention Centres almost barely make the news these days. Gillian Triggs and the Human Rights Commission released a report earlier this year outlining the treatment of kids in detention. In particular the report spoke of the sexual abuse of children. And yet there was more press about Abbott and co attempting to discredit Gillian Triggs than there was about the children.
Recent evidence to Senate Estimates hearings indicated that there have been 15 more sexual assaults between February and May this year, two of which were of children. And just this week a Guard has come out and alleged that asylum seekers have been water boarded.
This is what’s happening in our detention facilities now. The government is clearly unable to guarantee the safety and good treatment of detainees under the current laws – and yet they want to give Authorised Officers the power to use deadly force.
What next?
The Bill is currently before the Senate. There were discussions about it today – with Liberal senators arguing in favour of the bill and Labor and the Greens arguing against it. David Leyonhjelm has also publicly stated that he will not support the bill. Its fate now rests in the hands of the remaining crossbenchers.
This is another one of those news stories that just seems to be passing the mainstream media by. If you care about our Government giving this type of power to a private contractor – the power to use deadly force without risk of prosecution – then it’s up to us to spread the word.
We are all separated by only six degrees – true, it’s been proven – so if you care about this, tweet about it (#UseofForce), talk about it on FaceBook – or if the mood takes you, contact one of the cross-benchers:
Senator Jacqui Lambie (Tas) (02) 6277 3063 Senator Ricky Muir (Vic) (02) 6277 3040 Senator Glenn Lazarus (Qld) (02) 6277 3204 Senator Nick Xenophon (SA) (02) 6277 3552 Senator John Madigan (Vic) (02) 6277 3471 Senator Bob Day (SA) (02) 6277 3373 Senator Zhenya Wang (WA) (02) 6277 3843
Following last week’s cabinet discussion on marriage equality, Tony Abbott announced that:
“going into the next election, you’ll have the Labor Party which wants [marriage equality] to go to a Parliamentary vote and you’ve got the Coalition that wants it to go to a people’s vote” (12 August 2015)
According to our Prime Minister, he is champion of the people’s will when it comes to marriage equality – offering a ‘people’s vote’ over a ‘politician’s vote’ dictated by what he calls ‘stalinist rules.’ Certainly sounds like a no-brainer. Who would pick Stalin over the good people of Aus? We do live in a democracy after all – not Stalinist Russia – we should get a say.
But is Abbott’s claim to be the people’s champion true – or is ‘people’s vote’ just the latest entry in the Truthiness dictionary. (In case you missed my earlier article on Abbott-speak, ‘Truthiness’ is something which feels true, but isn’t necessarily backed up by facts. Or truth.)
Is Abbott really trying to facilitate the possibility of an outcome that might go against his stated position against marriage equality? Or is he taking a leaf out of his favourite ex-Prime Minister, one Mr John Howard’s playbook. Let’s roll back the clocks and have a look.
Roll back the clocks to late January 1996 …
Aussies have just passed a summer rapping to Gangsta’s Paradise and singing along with Seal. Toy Story is one of the most popular movies. And more importantly – for our story at least – an election has just been called for March and one of the key election issues is whether or not Australia should become a republic.
The push for this change had been mounting for a while. As early as 1977, polling showed that 58% of Aussies accepted that we don’t need a Queen. By the early 90s, the republican movement had critical momentum. In 1993, Prime Minister Paul Keating created a ‘Republic Advisory Committee’ to look into what changes would be needed to the constitution for Australia to become a republic. The chosen chairperson for this committee was then banker and lawyer, one Mr Malcolm Turnbull – but that’s another story….
This brings us to January 1996, and by this point it was fairly clear that the cry to consider that Australia become a republic – much like the current cry for marriage equality – was not going away. With an election pending, the leader of the Liberal party at that time – staunch monarchist John Howard – was left with no choice but to put considering that Australia become a republic on the table for discussion. Not wanting to adopt becoming a republic as Liberal party policy, Howard instead promised that if elected, he would make Australia becoming a republic a people’s issue – it would go to a people’s convention, and then to a people’s vote via a referendum. (Sounding familiar?)
Roll forward to 1999 – and Australia becoming a republic is looking good
Following his election in March 1996, John Howard kept his pre-election promise, and set up a ‘people’s convention’ to consider whether Australia should look at becoming a republic, and if so, what that would look like. He said he didn’t want to rush this because after all, ‘things won’t really change too much’ and there are ‘more important things to focus on than a republic’.
So it’s not until early 1998 that the people’s convention meets and comes up with a number of different models for an Australian republic – which mainly focused around who would replace the current Governor General (the Queen’s representative in Australia).
Support for Australia to become a republic had not waned during the 90s. The following graph shows opinion poll results on the question of Australia becoming a republic from 1993 to shortly before the referendum in late 1999. The green line represents the percentage of people who were for Australia becoming a republic, and the red line is people who were against it.
Clearly the number of people who were pro-republic was materially higher than those against it. So how exactly did John Howard get the ‘people’s vote’ to go his way?
Tricky Howard divides and conquers
For Australia to become a republic, a referendum is needed to change the constitution. Howard clearly knew that a majority of Australians were pro-republic – so a simple vote as to whether or not Australia should become a republic was very very VERY unlikely to have gone the way he wanted it to. But like Abbott today, Howard never let a little thing like public opinion get in the way of him achieving his goals.
The key to reducing the ‘Yes’ vote was to divide and conquer. Simply put – those who were pro-republic didn’t all agree on which republican model Australia should adopt. The most popular model that came out of the people’s convention in 1998 was one where the public voted in a President to take the place of the Governor General. In fact, over 70% of Australians said that they were in favour of this model. A less popular model was one where the parliament voted for who was President (instead of regular Aussies).
And this was how Tricky Howard pulled a rabbit out of his monarchist’s hat – or should I say crown? He divided the pro-republic vote, by:
Combining the issue of whether or not Australia was to become a republic with the issue of what model should be used – asking only one question, and not two.
ONLY offering one republican model to the Australian people – and not the one that most people were in favour of. Instead he put forward the less popular model where politicians got to choose who the President was.
The actual referendum question put to Aussies was whether or not they approved of:
Howard could have split this into two questions, asking first if people approved of Australia becoming a republic. And secondly, asking people which of two republic models they preferred (in the event that sufficient people voted yes in the previous question). But he didn’t do this.
By tying the question as to whether Australia became a republic to the less popular republican model, Howard all but guaranteed that the ‘Yes’ vote in favour of a republic would fail by dividing the pro-republic camp. And it worked. Instead of uniting against the ‘no-voters’, a portion of the ‘yes’ side switched camps, many under the mistaken belief that support for an Australian republic was so strong, that if the model they disapproved of was voted down, they would get another go at a vote for the model that they favoured.
And so the ‘no-vote’ – against Australia becoming a republic – triumphed. Howard’s divide and conquer strategy wasn’t the only reason of course – there were a number of others, including that the ‘no’ campaign utilised the popular campaign strategy of fear mongering – arguing that the republic would give even more power to politicians than they already had. In the words of the High Court Justice Michael Kirby:
“it was a belief that constitutional monarchy is a safer and more temperate form of government because it denies to political ambition the top office which such ambition commonly most prizes.” (Hon. Justice Michael Kirby, March 2000)
The vote for Australia to become a republic was defeated – 55 to 45.
And so tricky Howard, the staunch monarchist, was able to say that ‘good sense’ won out – that Australians had abandoned their desire for a republic, successfully hosing down the republic movement, which has been unable to gain any significant ground since then. Certainly it is not an issue that is commonly on the public agenda today.
Back to 2015, and Tricky Tony is facing his own battle on Marriage Equality
“From time immemorial in every culture that’s been known – marriage, or that kind of solemnised relationship, has been between a man and a woman.” (Tony Abbott, 23 October 2013)
This is not true of course – it’s another of Mr Abbott’s Truthiness phrases – but it does reflect Tony Abbott’s view on marriage equality. And just like Howard, he is faced with the fact that a clear majority of Australians don’t agree with him. In fact, according to regular polls which indicate that around 70% of Australians support marriage equality, an even greater proportion of Australians support marriage equality than did a republic.
So what is Tricky Tony to do? Well the two most honest options would be to:
Come out strongly against marriage equality and seek confirmation from his LNP colleagues that this is their ongoing policy. Certainly based on last week’s party-room vote it seems that a majority of LNP representatives and senators do not support marriage equality – so he’d be likely to get backup in the party room for this. But if they did this, Abbot would risk Labor making this an election issue which might win them valuable votes – and let’s face it, he’s already looking pretty shaky.
Since neither of these options would lead to Abbott’s desired outcome on this issue, what he did instead was to ‘stack’ the party-room with National party imports, just to be doubly-sure that he had the numbers to stop marriage equality going to a conscience vote. But that wasn’t enough.
Abbott knows that he needs to neutralise marriage equality from becoming a problem for him at the next election – just as Howard did with the republican issue back in 1996. So Abbott, like Howard before him, has committed to putting this important issue to a people’s vote. And just like Howard, he has committed to do this in his next term of office – not straight away of course, but within three years of being elected. Just as Howard did.
According to Abbott, a vote for him is a vote for a people’s choice on marriage equality! Finally a story that is salable to the electorate and can potentially neutralise any advantage Labor has from its pro marriage equality policy.
But do we even need a people’s vote to introduce marriage equality?
No we don’t.
Unlike if Australia were to become a republic – which does require a referendum in order to change the constitution – a change to marriage laws doesn’t require a change to our constitution, and therefore doesn’t need to be put to a referendum (or plebiscite – which is essentially just a large opinion poll).
And people’s votes aren’t cheap – at least the way we do them currently. And while I’m all for people getting more involved in our democracy, at a cost in excess of $100 million, this is a HUGE expense, and will probably mean funding needs to be cut elsewhere.
Abbott could ask people what we think about marriage equality at the next election
We’re already going to the polls to vote at the next election. If Abbott is so committed to a people’s vote, he could put the question to us then. This would be a much cheaper and quicker way to give the people a vote on this issue than by undertaking a completely separate vote. But of course, according to Abbott, that would be distracting for us poor little voters. Apparently we’re unable to make more than one decision at a time.
Beware the politician bearing gifts – in this case a people’s vote
On the face of it, a people’s vote on marriage equality sounds like a good thing to do. But if Abbott is following Howard’s Playbook, then he will be looking for a way to divide and conquer on this question, just as Howard did with the republic. And if he succeeds at this – as Howard did with stopping the republic movement – at the end of the day, we’d be over a $100 million worse off, still not have marriage equality in place, and potentially set back the marriage equality movement for decades.
And so ‘People’s vote’ enters the Truthiness to English Dictionary
I’m calling it. The evidence is fairly conclusive – ‘People’s vote’ is a Truthiness phrase. When Abbott uses it, he makes it sound like he is supporting popular opinion on marriage equality, when all indications are that he is doing everything he can to make sure he gets his way on this issue.
I’ve provided the appropriate English translation below and it will shortly be entered into the official Truthiness to English dictionary as follows:
Truthiness: People’s Vote (as in ‘We’re going to put Marriage Equality to a People’s vote’) English: Holding pattern – as in ‘I’m going to put Marriage Equality into a holding pattern until I can figure out how to make sure it doesn’t get through’
He’s wrong. Ok, that’s hardly a phrase that’s in uncommon usage when talking of Andrew Bolt’s views, but in this case he’s really wrong.
The Anglo-Australian nation and culture was founded in racism, and racism is wound into the fabric of many of the artifacts that still hold Australia together today. Racism is arguably so embedded in the Anglo-Australian culture, that many don’t see it.
This was never made more clear than in the arguments recently around whether or not ‘booing’ Adam Goodes was racist or not. Here’s Charlie Pickering’s commentary on this from The Weekly:
Australia has a problem with racism
There. I’ve said it. And so, according to a study done by the University of Western Sydney, have 85% of other Australians. We, as a country, have a problem with racism.
Here’s what Aboriginal Australian Stan Grant had to say about this recently in regards to Adam Goodes:
‘Estranged in the land of our ancestors’ – that’s the environment that the Anglo-Australian culture has created for Aboriginal Australians. And while most Aussies of non-aboriginal descent would undoubtedly consider themselves to be more enlightened than our forefathers, we still allow our blatantly racist infrastructure to stay in place.
And while we may be blind to the impact of this racist infrastructure, outsiders aren’t – maybe because it’s often easier to see faults in others than in yourself. In the words of British-American comedian and political satirist John Oliver:
Australia is “one of the most comfortably racist places I’ve ever been”
Comfortably racist. That’s a fairly accurate description. And the reason it’s so ‘comfortable’, is that it’s embedded in the Anglo-Australian culture to such an extent that it’s seen as normal or harmless. Like the chips in the paintwork of your home, you walk past them every day and after a while you stop noticing them.
Racism was embedded in the Anglo-Australian culture right from the get-go
The Anglo-Australian nation was founded in racism
The core principle behind the ‘colonisation’ of Australia in 1788 was a belief in the absolute superiority of the British race. England didn’t declare war on the Aboriginal people when they sent the First Fleet here – they might have undertaken plenty of war-like behaviour after the First Fleet’s arrival – but there was no official war declared. Australia was not taken by ‘conquest’. Furthermore, there was no treaty signed with the Aboriginal people – no exchange of goods to buy the land.
Instead, the English declared that Australia was uninhabited (or ‘terra nullius’) – and therefore up for grabs – ignoring the land rights of the people who had inhabited this country for more than 60,000 years. As historian Bob Reece once wrote about the British attitude at that time:
“The British culture was one with an unquestioning faith in its superiority and in its civilizing role. The whites expected the aboriginal to recognise their superiority and adopt an appropriately subordinate and imitative role.”
And this legal fiction, that Australia was uninhabited at the time the Brits arrived, was maintained for over 200 years. It was only in 1992, that the Mabo case in the High Court overturned this, and that our legal system finally recognised that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples owned the land prior to the Brits arriving. Two. Hundred. Years. That’s how long it took to overturn a racist lie from the 18th century. Are you beginning to get an idea of just how entrenched racism is in our nation’s make-up?
Racism in our national artifacts
There’s no doubt that over the last fifty years, there have been significant efforts to unwind the worst of the infrastructure that has held racism in place since 1788. These include that:
Aboriginals were finally given the right to vote (in 1962)
The ‘Great Australian Silence’ around Australia’s history was finally challenged by W.E.H. Stenner, which brought the frontier-wars and other aspects of history to the fore (1968)
Gough Whitlam adopted the first ‘self-determination’ policy for Aboriginals (1972)
Racism was finally outlawed & Aboriginals were finally free to undertake traditional practices on the land again (1975)
Aboriginal ‘Protectionism’ which took Aboriginal children away from their families, finally ceased (1970s)
Aboriginal right to Land Title in 1788 is finally recognised at law – Mabo (1992)
Paul Keating acknowledges past wrongs against Aboriginal Australians (1992)
Kevin Rudd, on behalf of all Australians, finally says sorry (2008)
These actions have gone at least some of the way to redress legal issues with equality, but only within the last fifty years, which in history is no time at all. But racism is still embedded in many of our national artifacts. In many ways we’re like an ex-Klu-Klux-Klan member, who after quitting the Klan, keeps all their Klu-Klux Klan posters, books, gear and other mementos and then wonders why people think he hasn’t really left the Klan. Here’s some examples of the racist mementos we’ve kept around:
Our Constitution
A constitution is arguably the most powerful legal document in any democracy. It may seem like a boring document – and having studied constitutional law, I can tell you that it reads like a boring document. But in terms of its power, it sits above the Prime Minister, the parliament and the courts – making it very important indeed.
When the framers of the Australian constitution sat down at the end of the 19th century with the goal of bringing together the various states at the time of Federation in 1901, Aboriginals were not considered by them to have – and I quote – “the intelligence, interest, or capacity to stand on the same platform with the rest of the people of Australia” in order to have the vote. Nor were Aboriginals to be counted in the census. They were literally considered not to count.
Today, while issues with the vote and the census have since been resolved, the Constitution – the legal framework for this country – still fails to acknowledge Aboriginal Australians’ traditional sovereignty.
Our Flag
It’s a small thing. But it’s a big thing. It’s what Australians flash around the place to indicate that they are Australian. And we are one of only two ‘colonies’ – New Zealand’s is the other one – that still retains the British stamp on our flag. New Zealand is about to change their flag. It’s time that we did too.
Our National Anthem – Advance Australia ‘Fair’
Really Australia – ‘Fair’? ‘Young’? Why don’t we just sing the old “White Australia song” from the early 1900s and be done with it. (Yes – there really was a song.)
By way of comparison, the second verses of both the South African and New Zealand anthems are in Zulu and Maori respectively. It’s about time we found an anthem which recognised that our history didn’t start in 1788 and acknowledges and respects the traditional owners of this land.
Traditional language
OK – how many non-Aboriginal readers of this article know how to say ‘Hallo’ in any of the estimated 700 Aboriginal languages that existed here in 1788. I’m guessing it’s the tiniest of tiny percentages. By way of contrast, in New Zealand, the Maori language is taught in over 1000 schools, and there have been discussions about making it compulsory.
Australia day
It’s great to have a day where we celebrate the good things about being Australian. But it’s ridiculously insensitive and – you guessed it – racist when we do it on a day which is considered a day of loss by the Aboriginal people:
There are 364 other days we could pick – we should move it.
Aboriginal Artwork and Traditional Sites
What would Paris be without the Mona Lisa and the Louvre? What would Egypt be without the Pyramids? England without Stonehenge? Florence without the Statue of David? Pisa without the leaning tower? I could go on – but I suspect you get the general idea.
Rock engravings at Burrup Peninsula
Around the world great antiquities and ancient sites are valued, protected and appreciated. People queue up to see them. Museums and galleries around the world go to great lengths to identify antiquities and obtain items significant to their culture.
We, on the other hand, have a continent FULL of ancient works of art and sacred sites. But not only aren’t many of them protected, most of us don’t even know where they are. The Western Australian government just deregistered what is arguably the world’s oldest rock art collection so that the Mining companies can get their hands on the site. The site is dated at more than 30,000 years old – THE WORLD’S OLDEST ROCK ART – and there was barely a whimper about it in the news.
What do you think would happen in Egypt if they discovered coal under the pyramids? Do you think they would allow them to be destroyed? NOT IN A MILLION YEARS. Well – unless Abbott was their Prime Minister of course – then the Pyramids would be gone in a matter of weeks.
The above are just examples of the many ways that we disregard and devalue Aboriginal culture due to the historically racist perspective that it is unimportant. With the exception of discussions around the Constitution – which have been in the news quite a bit recently – most non-Aboriginal Australians wouldn’t even notice that the issues above are problems, so embedded are they in the Anglo-Australian culture. And if you think these things aren’t important – think again. They set the tone, they set the framework within which values and behaviours are fostered and learnt – and make it hard for us to root out the racist attitudes that have been a part of the Anglo-Australian culture for so long.
More reasons why racism can be so hard to spot
Another key reason we may not immediatelly recognise behaviour as racist is that we often assume that racist behaviour is associated with overtly ‘bad’ actions like violence or abuse. But this isn’t always the case. Racism is an attitude rather than an action – which means it can also be expressed through actions and speech which might otherwise seem to be ‘good’ – like kindness or patriotism.
And the thing is, even when racism is expressed through kindness or patriotism, it can be just as venomous. Here’s some examples of different ways that racism has been expressed towards Aboriginal Australians over the past 225 odd years.
Racism expressed through violence
It wasn’t long after the British arrival in 1788 that the first massacres of local Aboriginal tribes took place. This violence – recently renamed ‘frontier wars’ – was seen as ‘unavoidable’ by the British, and continued to flourish in the 19th century. The exact number of Aboriginal deaths is unknown, but it was certainly in the tens of thousands, and possibly more than 100,000.
The attitude that allowed this to happen was the unwavering belief in the superiority of those from the British race. Here’s an example of a statement published in the Bulletin in the late 19th century which reflects the beliefs about the superiority of the British bloodline at that time:
“civilization marches over the bodies of inferior races….they are compelled to make room for the superior race” (Bulletin – 9 June 1883 pg. 6)
Racism expressed as ‘kindness’ or ‘protection’
Racism expressed as violence took Aboriginal life and land. Racism expressed as kindness, protection and good works aimed to take away what was left – their culture, their way of life, their families, their language, their history, their spiritual beliefs and their pride in who they were. Here’s how.
The British clearly did not see themselves as violent invaders – they saw themselves as as “enlightened and christian” benefactors of the indigenous inhabitants of the countries they ‘settled’. They looked upon the indigenous inhabitants of the lands they colonised – not just Australia, but other lands – with a degree of pity, and settlers were instructed to use ‘humane means’ to defend themselves when taking control of the land that they saw as rightfully theirs.
Of course, had the Brits been serious in their concern for the well being of the indigenous inhabitants, then they would have stopped their wanton ‘colonising’ – but the racist attitude behind their concern meant that this wasn’t going to happen. Instead, they set up ‘Protectionist’ boards and installed people with the title of ‘Protector of Natives’ to ‘look after’ and ‘civilise’ the ‘indigenous folk’. They also sent out truckloads of missionaries, which they saw as their greatest gift – primarily to educate and ‘improve’ the children.
This theme of ‘protection’ – in various forms – continued in Australia right through the 19th century and into the 20th century, when in 1915 the NSW Aborigines Protection Board was empowered to remove Aboriginal children from their families at will. They had been able to do that prior to 1915, but only with a court order. Similar practices were implemented in other states which continued up until the 1970s. Once in ‘care’, children were instructed to no longer speak the language of their parents and taught to forget Aboriginal culture and practices.
Racism expressed as patriotism
Just as being kind to or protecting someone is normally a positive thing – so is patriotism. But it too can be incredibly destructive when it is driven by racism.
Take the policy of ‘assimilation’ – so admired by the Reclaim Australia folk – which was implemented by the Australian Government in the middle of the 20th century, as a tool of patriotism to ‘unite the nation’. The policy was designed to suppress and kill off the aboriginal culture, language and heritage – again, in the misguided belief in the superiority of the Anglo-Australian way of life. Aboriginals were offered limited citizenship at this time on the condition that they ceased practicing Aboriginal customs, did not speak their native language and did not mix with any friends or families who hadn’t also agreed to the same terms.
Looking at these three examples of different expressions of racism, it’s clear that while the outcome of racism is normally pretty bad for the recipient, the perpetrators of non-violent racist behaviour (such as kindness or patriotism), often believe – albeit misguidedly – that they are doing a good thing. Their racism blinds them to the true impact of what they are doing. And this is another reason why it is so difficult for Anglo-Australians to see this in themselves – because racism can be well-meaning, or at least not intended maliciously – like the booing of Adam Goodes recently.
The opposite of Racism is Respect
By @FirstDogOnMoon. Full cartoon at http://gu.com/p/4b464/stw
Ok non-Aboriginal Aussies – we don’t have a good track record when it comes to racism. In fact we arguably have a bit of a blind spot – often not from any malicious motive, but purely because of how embedded it is in our culture and a misunderstanding of what it is. But that doesn’t make it any less racist in the way it is experienced by those on the receiving end.
But it’s time now to do something about this. It’s time, as Adam Goodes says, to bite the bullet and have a conversation about racism so that we can:
Fix the remnants of racism in our National Artifacts
This includes the examples I’ve noted above, but there are others as well. It’s not hard – it just takes the will to do this. Don’t believe the politicians who want to stall this for their own political motives. It may take some time to get consensus, but if we want to do this we can do it. It’s that simple.
Delaying the rectification of these issues is just more racism, as it undervalues the importance of these issues to Aboriginal Australians.
Stop. Think. Respect.
This was a campaign designed by Beyond Blue to counter discrimination in our community – against a whole host of problems. And it is a key antidote to racism. The way to eliminate racism from our national culture, our national values is first to take the time to notice when it’s there and then to turn a racist attitude into respect.
Last week, after Adam Goodes had called out racism from the AFL crowds, we all stopped, thought, and then – it took a little while – but then we showed respect.
Then the latest Essential poll came out this week, showing that 61% of Aussies believe that the biggest or second biggest threat to the world right now is terrorism.
At first I jeered. But then I stopped and thought about it. And finally the penny dropped – I realised that they are right.
The trojan horse
I realised that terrorism is the biggest threat to Australia today. It is the trojan horse that is being used to distract us, so that the real enemy can creep up on us without anyone paying too much attention. The real enemy – who is poisoning the air we breathe and will soon be invading our land mass by eating away at our shore lines – climate change, is sneaking up on us while Abbott and his ministers talk to us in serious tones about the terrorists coming to get us.
While the vast majority of Aussies listen in horror to Abbott’s latest terror story, they ignore the fact that our government has introduced policies which are:
poisoning the air we breathe with pollution – by increasing carbon emissions
defunding a key potential defense to theproblem – the renewable sector; and
investing money in propaganda to hide the truth about what is happening – by looking to fund climate deniers such as Bjorn Lomborg and funding positions like the Wind Commissioner.
The situation regarding climate change is so critical, that some have called game over. There is no doubt that in terms of it’s ability to kill, to seriously impact quality of life and to leave more and more people homeless globally, that the threat posed by climate change is unrivaled. Panicking right now about this is not only advisable, it would be downright stupid not to do so.
Safety first
Tony Abbott has said words like this many times:
“The most important duty of government is to preserve the safety of our country and its citizens. That is the first duty of government, and I say to every Australian: this Government will never let you down. I say to every one of my fellow Australians: I will not rest until I am confident that you are as safe as any government can possibly make you.” (December, 2014)
You have failed, Mr Abbott. The safety and security of our nation is under serious threat from climate change. Your policies around climate change are arguably far more likely to contribute to more Australian deaths in the future than any terrorist group half way across the world.
We should be outraged. We should be demanding that a government that so flagrantly jeopardises the safety and security of it’s people for its own political purposes resign.
But instead of doing this, instead of demanding that the government cease and desist with their current policies and do something that might go towards fixing the problem rather than making it worse, the majority of Australians are focusing on terrorism. And they are doing that because this is what our government is talking about. Constantly.
The silence is deafening
When was the last time you heard one of Abbott’s ministers talk seriously about the huge threat that climate change poses to our nation? (And mentioning cutting the carbon tax, talking about coal being good for humanity and appointing wind commissioners don’t count.)
When have you ever heard anyone currently in government say, as President Obama did this week:
The answer is – just in case there was any doubt – that you haven’t heard anything like this from our current government. The silence about real action on climate change has been deafening. This is because we have a prime minister who seems to believe in bogey men but not in scientifically proven climate change.
And that’s why I now believe that terrorism is THE biggest threat to the world right now. This is not because I believe Abbott’s rhetoric suggesting that terrorists are about to invade our shores, but because terrorism is successfully being used to distract us from what we should really be panicking about – the very real threat to our ability to live on this planet.
Unless you’ve been on a desert island or in a coma, you’ve heard Tony Abbott boast over and over and over again that:
“We’ve had a lot of really significant achievements over the last year: We stopped the boats. We scrapped the carbon tax. We scrapped the mining tax“
These three issues were a key part of Abbott’s 2013 election campaign. According to Abbott, the mining and carbon taxes were devastating the nation. And stopping asylum seekers was imperative to save lives and protect our borders. These were his top priorities – the dragons threatening our nation must be slain. On day one he would stop the boats and introduce legislation to repeal the carbon tax – to be followed by the mining tax within 100 days – thereby single-handedly saving us all.
Abbott obviously believes that the Australian people still value his dragon-slaying skills today – threatening a few weeks back:
“if Labor came back, the boats would be back; the mining tax would be back; and now we find out that if Labor were to come back, the carbon tax would be back”
It seems fairly clear that Tony Abbott is staking both the credibility and the value of his government around these three key actions, and that he believes they are the criteria by which we should judge his success for the next election. So let’s have a look at what he has really achieved – and who the real winners and losers are.
Axing the Taxes
In his interview with Leigh Sales on the 7:30 report last week, Tony Abbott promoted what his government has done in the last two years, saying:
“The carbon tax, gone. When was the last time a government abolished a tax? The mining tax gone. When was the last time a government abolished a tax?”
Slaying not just one tax dragon – but two! Certainly sounds good – and according to Tony Abbott, it’s a BIG win for the Australian people. But does that stand up to scrutiny?
Slaying the Mining Tax (Killer of investment and jobs)
“This tax is a great big cudgel that will blow the brains out of the West Australian economy if it goes ahead.” (Tony Abbott, July 2010)
The Mining Tax – a quick primer: The Minerals Resources Rent Tax was a levy on ‘super profits’ from the mining of iron ore and coal. It was only applied to companies whose annual profits – profits, not revenue – were in excess of $75 million. It was introduced on 1 July 2012 by the Labor government and repealed by the Liberal government on 2 September 2014.
Abbott’s Claim: repealing the mining tax would lead to Australia being ‘open’ for investment again and more jobs . . .
Prior to ‘axing’ this particular tax, the Abbott government argued that the mining tax had to go because it destroyed foreign investment and cut jobs. Once repealed, Abbott stated that the “big flashing red light over investment in Australia” is now gone. So if Abbott was right, investment in Australia should both have dropped during the time of the mining tax, and picked up since it was repealed.
Not so much.
It turns out that this was just another piece of Abbott-Speak or ‘truthiness’ that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. In fact, as ABC business editor Ian Verrender argued recently, if the very similar Petroleum Resources Tax introduced over 25 years ago is anything to go by – which had minimal if any impact on jobs or investment – the Mineral Tax would also have had little or no impact on either investment in Australia or Australian jobs had it been left in place. The reality is that mining companies aren’t all that mobile in their location choices – unlike car companies who can manufacture anywhere, mining companies have to mine where the resources are.
So who are the real winners and losers from the repeal of the Mining Tax?
The largess of the mining sector towards the LNP continued post 2012. There was over 1.8 million given to the Liberal and National parties in the 2013/2014 financial year from resource and energy companies. By way of contrast, around $450,000 was donated to the Labor party from the same sector over the same period.
And then, of course, the other obvious big winners from the repeal of the Mining Tax are big mining companies themselves. Certainly, if the level of their donations is anything to go by, there were a lot of mining companies (and related suppliers like marine dredging operators) out there who were very happy to see the LNP – with their commitment to the repeal of the mining tax – win the 2013 federal election.
The Losers: The real owners of the minerals (AKA The Australian People)
There is a fairly simple but often misunderstood fact about Australia’s mineral and resource wealth, and that is that with limited exceptions, mineral (and other) resources under the soil belong to the Australian people. They’re ours. Well technically they belong to ‘the crown’ (or in this case, the state governments) – but same thing.
Unlike in countries like the USA, where a gold nugget you dug up in your backyard would belong to you, in Australia, everything under the ground belongs to all of us. ‘We’ then licence the rights to mining companies – like Shenhua and Hancock Prospecting – to extract those minerals (or other resources).
This arguably makes taxing mining (and resources) profits different to taxing other companies, because they are making profits from something that belongs to us. It’s literally Australia’s family silver. Once it’s sold, it’s gone.
When you take that into account, you could argue that the mining tax is closer to a profit share arrangement than a tax – because it’s about what portion of profits made from our mineral wealth should go to mining companies (who are 83% foreign owned), and what portion should go to us. In 2001, the split was roughly 60/40 – 60% to the mining companies and 40% to us. But now, it’s closer to 80/20 – 80% to the mining companies and 20% to us. The mining tax sought to redress some of that imbalance – although arguably not as well as it could have, thanks to the watering down it got prior to its implementation – but that’s another story.
Conclusion: The Abbott government – with some help from the Mining companies themselves – demonised the Mining Tax. It was the economic terrorist that would kill investment and jobs according to Abbott, and he and his government promised to come in and save us from this terrible mountainous dragon of a tax.
But in the stark light of day, looked at this through the eyes of the average Aussie, the slaying of the mining tax is not something Abbott should be boasting about. It may have been a win for the LNP and some of their major donors, but for everyone else, we’re letting mining companies sell off the family silver without giving us our fair share.
Slaying the Carbon Tax (The tax that would devastate a nation)
“I say to Julia Gillard, what have you got against the people of Gladstone? Why are you trying to close down Gladstone with your mining tax and your carbon tax?” (Tony Abbott, March 2011)
The Carbon Tax – a quick primer: The Carbon Tax was introduced on 1 July 2012 as part of the Labor Government’s Clean Energy plan. It only impacted 260 large carbon emitters, who had to pay for their carbon emissions. The goal of the tax was to incentivise a reduction in carbon gas emissions – which it did. The tax was repealed on 17 July 2014.
Abbott’s claim: The sky was going to fall down
According to Abbott, the mining tax and the carbon tax were going to ruin life as we know it in Australia:
“There’s hardly a region in this country that wouldn’t have major communities devastated by the carbon tax if this goes ahead” (April, 2011)
Of course that didn’t happen – this was yet another piece of Truthiness. Abbott took the tiniest of molehills and created a massive mountain of fear about what the Carbon tax would do. Not only did Gladstone not close down, but there was even a great article in the Gladstone Observer in March this year entitled ‘Bring back the carbon tax’.
Leigh Sales questioned Abbott about this last week – asking him to comment on the fact that places like Gladstone, Whyalla and Geelong weren’t actually wiped off the map as he said they would be. In a rare moment of honesty, Abbott briefly conceded that Sales had a ‘gotcha’ moment, which seemed to shock even him briefly, as he then mumbled something about trying “to be as good as we possibly can be going forward”.
Moreover, not only did the carbon tax not cause wide-spread job loss and economic problems while it was in place – following its repeal, we have not seen the promised increase in investment or jobs. In fact the opposite has occurred. Unemployment has continued to climb and investment to drop. So if scrapping the carbon tax was to have fixed those problems, it has been spectacularly unsuccessful.
The winners: Every household gets $550 a year! Ok, not $550 – but nearly enough to buy an extra cup of coffee every week.
No longer able to link the repeal of the carbon tax to increased investment and employment growth, Abbott and his ministers now focus primarily on the savings to households and businesses created by the tax’s demise:
“We scrapped the carbon tax and that meant that every Australian household on average was $550 a year better off.” (Abbott, March 2015)
This is partially true. As a result of the repeal of the carbon tax, prices did drop, and households will have saved some money. However, according to ABC Fact check, the amount is only $280 per year in 2015/16 and $424 per year over three years. Now before you get too excited by these savings, remember that they are expressed ‘per household’. If you convert that to a saving ‘per person’ it is closer to $110 per year next year and $165 per year over three years – or around the price of a coffee once a week.
The Losers: The Planet and the Budget (AKA the Australian people. Again.)
Before you start celebrating, there’s two big things you traded your extra cup of coffee per week in for:
We’ve no longer got a workable climate change policy to help keep us in clean air, dry land and livable weather.
We’ve gone from collecting revenue from heavy carbon emitters to paying companies for possibly, maybe, doing something about reducing carbon emissions at some point in the future.
It’s no secret that Abbott is at best sceptical about the need to do something about climate change. In 2009, he said that climate change was ‘crap’. In his autobiography, he indicates that he is a fan of Australian geologist Ian Plimer whose own book argues that ‘the climate has always changed‘ and that humans are not responsible for current global warming. Interestingly, Plimer is a director on the boards of several of Gina Rinehart’s mining companies. And even more interesting, it seems that Plimer is also a fan of Tony Abbott’s – having donated a total of $97,000 to various branches of the Liberal and National parties in 2013/2014.
Given Abbott’s philosophy on climate change, it’s no wonder that once elected, he set about implementing a world first – a climate change policy that actually resulted in a serious increase in carbon emissions. In fact, since the repeal of the Carbon Tax, Australia’s carbon emissions have been increasing at one of the highest rates since records started in 1990. This suggests that Abbott still doesn’t believe that cutting carbon emissions is a priority, despite the clear consensus amongst scientists that it should be. Some even think that it may already be game over.
Here’s a graph of data published by our Department of Environment earlier this year showing total Australian carbon emissions just prior to when the carbon tax was introduced along with projections through to 2020. The graph shows that there was a clear drop in carbon emissions following the introduction of the Carbon Tax (the green bars). This drop in emissions immediately reversed (the red bars) after the tax was repealed, and the stark increase in emissions is expected to continue through at least 2020.
Let’s stop raising revenue and start paying companies instead
Scrapping the Carbon Tax and introducing Direct Action has left a $7.6 billion hole in budget revenue – which is going to have to be made up somewhere. So don’t spend that $110 too quickly.
Conclusion: Given Abbott’s historical position on climate change, and that his actions since being elected support increased rather than decreased carbon emissions, it’s difficult to believe his stated position last year, that he takes climate change ‘very seriously‘. Climate change is arguably the most important challenge facing our nation – and the whole world – right now. And yet our Prime Minister is making things worse and not better. The potential consequences of this, not just for future generations, but for current generations are staggering, and make the $280 per household savings seem insignificant. What use is money in the bank if the bank doesn’t have a planet to live on?
But instead of focusing on the very real problem of climate change, Tony Abbott created a mountain out of a carbon-tax-molehill to scare the Australian people into believing that Australia needed to be saved from the carbon-tax, rather than from the true foe – carbon emissions themselves. He convinced people that he was the man to slay the mythical carbon-tax dragon, and completely distracted people from the thing that we should really be afraid of – climate change.
Stopping the Boats – a quick look
Space prohibits me from doing justice to a discussion on the winners and losers from Abbott’s Stop the Boats policy. But just some quick points to consider when thinking about molehills, dragons and mountains:
The only winners I can see from the Abbott government’s Stop the Boats policy are politicians, who have turned the plight of a small number of asylum seekers coming here by boat into another mythical dragon to be slain for their own political ends. The biggest losers are of course the world’s most vulnerable – asylum seekers. Asylum seekers who have nowhere to go, or worse still – are stuck in the torturous hell-holes that are Manus island and Nauru. Or even worse, forcibly returned to the country they were fleeing persecution from – as happened this week.
Yet again the Abbott government has diverted billions of dollars into conquering a molehill that their spin doctors have turned into a dragon-shaped mountain.
Molehills aren’t mountains. Or Dragons. Mountains are mountains.
By @Fyfetoons
Abbott really does seem to specialise in terrorising the Australian people by making mountains out of molehills. He finds a small but ‘credibilish’ fear and uses rhetoric to fan it into fully fledged terror. He then portrays himself as the only possible saviour of the Australian people from this mountainous mythical dragon.
It’s the ultimate political spin doctoring – create a mythical dragon, fight it, and claim to have saved us from it. And the thing with dragons is that they are far easier to slay – what with them not being real and all – than actual problems. It’s much simpler to be a dragon slayer than someone who actually rights real wrongs or solves real problems.
And let’s face it – it has worked. The good people of Aus have by and large been successfully hoodwinked into buying the myths. As have the media, who on the whole let Abbott’s talk of dragon slaying go largely – not wholly, but largely – unchallenged.
When you look at the winners and losers from the three policies that Abbott boasts so much about – the only consistent winner is the LNP. Abbott’s main achievement has been distracting the Australian people with insignificant dragon-shaped molehills so that we won’t look at the truly mountainous problems we should be focusing on.
Listening to Tony Abbott speak can be confusing. One day he’s saying something like “Let me be as categoric as I can, the GST won’t change, full stop, end of story”. Then, in the very first budget brought down by his government, the GST is immediately put under the spotlight – leading up to last week, where he praised the States for ‘considering’ an increase to GST, describing it as “one of the better [taxes]”.
Abbott’s seemingly contradictory statements can leave the average punter scratching their head, wondering how to make sense of ‘Abbott-speak’. This is because Abbott is often speaking ‘Truthiness’ rather than English – particularly at press conferences and interviews.
‘Truthiness’ is an English dialect often used by politicians. It was identified by American Commentator Stephen Colbert to describe the particular subset of language used by US politicians. The key difference between ‘Truthiness’ and everyday English is that someone speaking Truthiness uses words and concepts that ‘feel’ true, or that they wish you to believe to be true, without worrying about whether or not they actually are true.
TRUTHINESS TO ENGLISH DICTIONARY
The Truthiness dialect sounds very similar to normal everyday English, which is why it often causes confusion. So I’ve prepared this handy dictionary for you which translates some of the key Truthiness phrases often used by Tony Abbott.
TRUTHINESS: Budget Repair (as in “We’ve done a lot of budget repair”) ENGLISH: We can’t think of anything else to say about the budget that doesn’t sound REALLY bad
There was a much used Truthiness phrase – which preceded this one – that has passed out of common usage this year: “Debt and Deficit Emergency”. The English translation of that phrase is “We want you to think there’s a major economic problem, and that only we can fix it”. This wasn’t true of course – but Truthiness doesn’t have to be true, it just has to feel true.
Of course since taking Government, the LNP have arguably turned our economy into a basket case, and created the world’s worst debt trajectory. This makes it challenging for them to continue to use the ‘Debt and Deficit emergency’ Truthiness phrase without having it potentially used against them.
The LNP have now rolled back their ’emphatic’ commitment to deliver “a surplus in [their] first year in office and….achieve a surplus for every year of [their] first term” – which of course they haven’t. Instead they’ve gone for the only thing they can really say without admitting ‘we’ve done a really crap job’ – which is essentially that ‘we’re working on it’. The budget is effectively ‘in the shop’ for repairs.
(See also ‘Terrorists are coming for every one of you’.)
TRUTHINESS: Crystal Clear (as in “I want to make it absolutely crystal clear”) ENGLISH: This may or may not be true, but I’d like you to think it is
The use of this phrase can be an indicator that whatever it refers to is probably Truthiness rather than English. Here’s some great examples from Tony Abbott:
“I want to make that crystal clear: we absolutely stand by all the policies that we took to the election”
“We’ve got good and improving cooperation with Indonesia. I want to make that absolutely crystal clear.”
“Can I make myself crystal clear: the pensioners of Australia are better off under this Government”
TRUTHINESS: Important thing (as in “The important thing is……..”) ENGLISH: That topic might make me look bad, I’d rather talk about….
Tony Abbott uses the phrase “the important thing is….” a lot in interviews. Rather than indicating that a particular point is actually important – which would be the normal English interpretation of the phrase – when used in the Truthiness dialect, it seems to indicate that the question Abbott has just been asked is probably not one he wants to answer. So instead of responding to the question he has just been asked, he diverts the listeners’ focus onto a topic he does want to talk about – referred to as ‘the important thing’.
Here’s an example from an interview in June with Neil Mitchell on Radio 3AW:
Neil Mitchell: Theoretically, hypothetically, would you find it acceptable to pay people smugglers? Tony Abbott: Look Neil, I’m just not going to get into hypotheticals. The important thing is that we stop the boats…
TRUTHINESS: No cuts/No change to [insert name of program e.g. education] ENGLISH: I REALLY want you to vote for me
Watch the following ten second video of some of Abbott’s pre-election promises:
Now play it back, and replace the phrase “no cuts/no change to [insert name of program] with “I REALLY want you to vote for me”.
It makes a lot more sense that way, doesn’t it?
TRUTHINESS: Operational Matters ( as in “That’s an operational matter….”) ENGLISH: I don’t want to talk about that/Talk to the hand
Tony Abbott and his Ministers use this phrase regularly to respond to any questions on asylum seekers that they don’t wish to answer – which is pretty much any question on asylum seekers. It’s the Truthiness version of “Talk to the Hand”.
Here’s an example from an interview last week with Minister for Saying-We’ve-Stopped-the-Boats, Peter Dutton:
JOURNALIST: I can understand not providing operational details now, but surely just acknowledging ‘there’s been a boat, it’s been spotted, there are now operational approaches to deal with it and we will give those further details in due course’ – that’s not unreasonable surely?
PETER DUTTON: No and that’s exactly what we’ve said. We said we don’t comment in relation to operational matters and we’ve been very consistent about that…
Yes you have Peter Dutton. Yes you have.
TRUTHINESS: Terrorists are coming for every one of you ENGLISH: 1. Be afraid. Be very VERY afraid…….And then vote Liberal 2. Look over here. (Commonly used as a distraction technique when budget issues arise.) 3. Look at how we are keeping you safe from this HUGE threat that is actually half way across the world and not really much of a threat at all.
This is an extremely versatile Truthiness phrase – and has a number of potential meanings attributed to it – often used simultaneously. For example, last month the Victorian branch of the Liberal party sent out an email to its subscribers, with the image on the right enclosed, requesting donations:
TRUTHINESS: We’ve stopped the boats (also see ‘Operational Matters’) ENGLISH: We’ve stopped the boats from being a political problem for us, and we’ve made asylum seekers someone else’s problem
The problem with understanding the phrase “We’ve stopped the boat”, as I’ve said before, is that the phrase doesn’t specify what we’re supposed to have stopped the boats from doing.
The boats haven’t stopped coming, although they have possibly slowed – it’s a little hard to tell definitively, due to the Government’s ‘Talk to the Hand’ approach on asylum seekers. We do know the Government hasn’t stopped the people smugglers and they haven’t stopped deaths at sea. They haven’t even completely stopped arrivals. But still Tony Abbott repeats the phrase “we’ve stopped the boats”. So what does this Truthiness phrase mean in English?
The English translation of this oft-used phrase appears to be that Abbott and his Government have stopped talking about anything to do with the boats, by saying that anything relating to asylum seekers coming by boats is an ‘operational matter’ (see above). This has taken the political heat out of the problem, but left the problem of finding homes for asylum seekers like the Rohingya to our poorer neighbours.
The above is just a brief selection of Truthiness phrases designed to help you get the hang of identifying and interpreting Abbott-speak. The key to translating Truthiness is to listen carefully to what Mr Abbott – and other politicians – say. Don’t necessarily take their words at face value. This is particularly true of three word slogans or where what is being said isn’t backed up by facts or logic. If you do this, you’ll be fluent in Truthiness in no time!
At the time of being elected, the government proclaimed that there was a debt and deficit emergency. They needed to clean up Labor’s mess, they said. Once elected, Joe Hockey declared: “The age of entitlement is over“. There must be cuts, cuts and more cuts. o pensioners, to health, to education, the ABC, SBS and so on…
What I am going to look at, is one small but wealthy pocket of entitlement that Hockey and his buddies have left untouched in their cutting frenzy. A pocket that has been getting a bit of press in the last week or so – our federal politicians’ expense claims. And if you thought Ms Bishop’s $5,000 helicopter ride was bad, hold on to your beanies and scarves, as that is just the very small tip of a very large political expenseberg.
So exactly how big is the Canberra Expenseberg?
In 2014, according to the Department of Finance, it was the better part of 96 million dollars. That what our federal politicians spent on expenses. And when I say expenses, I’m not talking about salaries or superannuation. I’m purely referring to their expense claims – for travel, office rental, phones, taxis etc.
To break this down a little further – there are 150 members in our House of Representatives and 76 senators in the Senate. That’s 226 federal political snouts. And while there was changeover of seats during 2014 (such as when the Senate changed in July) – meaning there was actually 307 individuals who filled those 226 seats during the year – there’s only ever one politician in a seat at a time able to claim expenses.
That means that the average annual expense-claim for each of the 226 seats of parliament in 2014 was around $424,000. Nearly half a million dollars. Each. Here’s a high level break-down on how the pollies spent our money:
It’s time for an Expenseberg Commissioner
Clearly our current politicians have forgotten that they were elected to represent the Australian people, to serve us, and not to rule over us in the lap of luxury. Or perhaps they are too busy micromanaging the ABC and appointing Wind Commissioners to look into their own expense entitlements.
So I have taken the liberty of appointing myself as the Canberra Expenseberg Commissioner – just temporarily – to see how much we could save if I applied a judicious knife to the Canberra political expense slush fund. I did some quick calculations on the back of an envelope this afternoon, and came up with the following cuts.
So listen up Canberra Pollies – the following cuts to your precious Expenseberg apply immediately:
1. Your Travel Expenses
These cost the Australian taxpayer just under $33.6 million in 2014. I’m cutting your allowance to $12.3 million moving forward. That’s plenty. Here’s how it’s going to work:
No more charter flights, choppers or anything else – None. Zip. Nada. You can fly commercial, rent a car or get public transport like the rest of us.
No more overseas junkets – I’m providing you all with a collective allowance of $500,000 to split amongst yourselves for trips that are absolutely necessary. Two week trips to Geneva that cost $88,084 to get yourself a sought after international posting are NOT absolutely necessary Ms Bishop. If you do have to travel internationally, you can fly premium economy and stay in four star hotels. Ministers with international portfolios get first dibs. The rest of you get what’s left.
No more hire cars – that means you Jamie Briggs – no more $583 dollar rides. Each of you can have an allowance of up to $5,000 per year to get around when you’re in Canberra or otherwise away from home. Use this to rent a car with one of your political colleagues, take an Uber X or car pool with your local colleagues. We don’t care – as long as you stop wasting our money.
Domestic Travel/Travel Allowance for accommodation – for some reason, according to the OpenAus website, the average Liberal minister or senator spent about $70,000 on this in 2014, whereas their Labor counterparts spent $45,000. Both amounts seem excessive, but for now I’m capping all pollies at the Labor level. Those who live further away (like WA or Tassie) can have a little more, and those that live in the ACT or NSW a little less. But if the Labor pollies can get by on an average of $45,000 per year, you all can. Don’t get comfortable though – I may cut this further later – particularly for those of you who are using the allowance to pay off your wife’s mortgage.Oh – and no more using taxpayer funds to travel to political fundraisers, for any reason. I don’t care if you’re the speaker at the event or manning the BBQ – if the purpose of the event is to raise funds for your party, we’re not paying for it.
These cuts will mean that some of you will no longer be able to travel like rockstars. But it will save us, the people who pay your salaries and your expenses, over $22 million a year – so deal with it.
2. Your office costs
You spent just under $58 million on office costs in 2014. I’m cutting this in half, and here’s how . . .
Firstly, regarding your decorating budgets – in 2014, you collectively spent just under 6.7 million on fitting out your offices. In fact, Jacqui Lambe spent $456,793 on her offices in Burnie – that’s enough to fund the Refugee Council of Australia for three years. From now on, there’ll be less Italian custom furniture and more Swedish everyday furniture. You don’t need to redecorate every couple of years. Instead, we’ll give you an allowance of $10,000 when you first take office. And that’s it. Spend it wisely.
Secondly, when it comes to your office rent and office admin, as was the case with your travel expenses, the average Liberal minister and senator pays significantly more than their Labor counterpart. So I’m cutting you all back to the amount the average Labor pollie spends. We’re not funding you to rent prime office space. We spend enough on Parliament house already.
These cuts will save us, the Australian taxpayer, over 28.6 million dollars a year.
3. Phones and family travel
Let’s start with your phone bills. You’re all like teenagers who don’t pay their own mobile bills. Have you ever heard of Skype? Or VOIP? Or Mobile Phone plans with calls included? Clearly not. Because collectively, you all spent over $2.3 million on your phone bills.
Moving forward, you’ll be capped at $200 each a month for all calls. That will encourage you to go out and shop wisely for your phone providers.
And as for taxpayers covering your family’s travel costs – that’s not happening anymore. If they ride in the Uber X car with you, or share a ride in Scott Ludlam’s Prius – no worries. But that’s it.
These cuts will save us a further $3.6 million in total a year.
And here’s what we can do if you tighten your belts …
These cuts to the Canberra Expenseberg will save the Australian people over $53 million a year. Simply by cutting back on luxuries – like riding by chopper from Melbourne to Geelong – we, the Australian people, could get back some of the things you’ve taken away from us since the Libs came into government.
To give you an idea of what we could be spending these cuts to your luxuries on, I’ve had a quick look back through some of the cuts that have been made since September 2013. Here’s some option on how we could use these savings to generate jobs and benefit the Australian people as a whole:
Option B: Restore funding to a whole range of programs
Restore funding to the CSIRO at $29 million a year. The funding cuts you made slashed the jobs of between one in five and one in ten CSIRO scientists. That’s not on. We want them back. They add much more value to us than the hand-embroidered cushions in Jacqui Lambe’s new office fit-out.
Reinstate the Climate Commission at $1.25 million a year – we’ve all been funding it since you cut it, but it’s really your responsibility. And it’s about time you did something practical about global warming.
Continue funding the Custody Notification Service at only $0.526 million a year – it’s a bargain. And it literally saves Aboriginal lives. Cutting it so that you can all take hire cars is not on.
Commence funding theHuman Rights Education programme at $0.45 million a year – we are in sore need of more information on this topic.
Restore the Get Reading Programme at $1.6 million a year – this dealt with child literacy. Cutting it while you kept going on your overseas junkets was not a good idea.
Give the Refugee Council of Australia back their $140,000 a year – it’s small change to you.
Use the balance of nearly $20 million in savings to pay back debt.
I don’t care which option you choose. Either way, your age of entitlement is over Pollies. Snouts out of the trough. You are the servants of the Australian people. And we want you to spend OUR money on things that benefit US and not you.
This article was first published on Progressive Conversation.
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
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
I have to confess that as a general rule, when I see comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis in a political discussion, I think the tone of the discussion has become a bit too extreme. But if a fifth-grader can make that connection – should the rest of us not take a long hard look at what’s going on? Should we not consider the possibility that perhaps the actions of the current Liberal government have taken us way too far to the right?
So is Australia a Fascist State?
Well clearly it isn’t. Unless I slept through a coup, we all still have the right to vote, the right to tweet, the right to speak our mind, the right to sit in a #QandA audience – at least most of us do. In other words, we all still have many of the freedoms that populations of other less democratic countries around the world – like Egypt – covet.
BUT . . . there’s no doubt that since the Abbott government took power, there has been a reduction in personal freedoms, and a corresponding increase in government power. And whilst we are nowhere near being a Fascist state like Nazi Germany right now – and hopefully never will be – these things typically don’t happen overnight. Instead they happen bit by bit. And with each ‘little’ personal freedom we give up – whether it’s the right to report abuse in a detention center, or the right to access whatever internet site we want to – we shift the scales in favour of the state, and give up our individual rights.
So how far along the spectrum have we gone? I’ve taken a look at four key characteristics of the most renowned Fascist state of recent time – the Nazis – to see how we’re travelling against them.
1.Replacing Truth with Propaganda
Image from quotehd.com
We don’t really call it propaganda anymore – we call it ‘spin’ or ‘truthiness’. And the difference between truth and propaganda (or truthiness), is that the later ignores pesky things like facts, evidence or logic. All truthiness requires is a general ‘feel’ of ‘truth’, not actual truth, making it much easier for politicians to work with.
Here’s some of the ways our politicians are replacing truth with truthiness.
They say whatever supports their point at the time, regardless of whether it’s consistent with what they’ve previously said.
When you’re using truthiness instead of truth, it isn’t restricted by fact, logic or alignment with anything you’ve previously said – even within a relatively short space of time. Here’s a great example from Joe Hockey – who in the space of one week recently, said both of the following:
They repeat everything. Again. And again. And again.
Repetition was a key tool of the Nazis in convincing the German people of the lies they wanted to get across. In the words of Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister for Propaganda:
Jedi of Truthiness – Tony Abbott – has done this to great effect with his “Stop the Boats” or “We’ve stopped the boats” mantra. As a piece of propaganda – it’s perfect. Firstly, it’s short and easy for people to remember. And secondly, it’s completely ambiguous. It never actually says what the boats are supposed to have stopped doing. This means it can be interpreted in any number of different ways, depending on Abbott’s needs at the time. And on the whole it’s worked. Despite the fact that it’s not true – we haven’t in fact stopped the boats – many people and journalists speak as though it is.
2. Devaluing the truth
The truth is the greatest enemy to a successful propaganda state, said Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister for Propaganda. In today’s information age, the truth – in all but the most left or right-wing states – is ubiquitous. This makes devaluing the truth a challenging and multi-faceted task. Here’s some of the ways that politicians have been doing this in Australia:
People have become desensitised to politician’s lies
The key to a good desensitisation campaign is to do the thing you are trying to desensitise people to – in this case, lies – as often as you can. The more you lie, the more people will stop expecting the truth from you, and the less outraged they will be when you tell a big one. In Aus, this is hardly a new phenomenon. Politicians over the years have paved the way for those that follow in their footsteps to lie with impunity.
In a country where people expected their politicians to be truthful, this would be a huge story. But in Australia, Australian journalist Niki Savva recently said on Insiders, that she ranked a politician lying as only a three out of ten in terms of seriousness.
This too is hardly news. Question avoidance is expected of politicians. Media training teaches them to ignore any difficult questions and instead to respond with an answer that’s broadly in the general area of the question and which suits their particular brand of truthiness.
Tony Abbott is a master at question avoidance. For example, recently when he was repeatedly asked whether the Australian government had paid people smugglers to take asylum seekers back to Indonesia, he just kept repeating that the important thing was that they had Stopped the Boats. Stopped the Boats. Stopped the Boats. He kept repeating this, and it didn’t take long before journalists gave up, and he had both buried what could have been a very inconvenient story and promoted his own message.
Of course, he hasn’t always been quite as masterful at avoiding difficult questions:
The Abbott Government has taken a number of steps to minimise our access to facts that might contradict their propaganda
Despite the Liberal party promising a government who would “restore accountability and improve transparency measures to be more accountable to you“, they have arguably been doing the exact opposite. Here’s just some of the things they have done to limit our access to information about what is really going on:
Classifying key information as an ‘operational’ or a ‘security matter’ – A whole swag of truths have been locked up this way – never to see the light of day – particularly those around ‘Stopping the Boats’.
Effectively hobbling Freedom of Information – this started shortly after the Abbott Government’s election, when they tightened Freedom of Information procedures, to make it more difficult to request and obtain information. They then starved the Freedom of Information office of funds, so that staff resigned and the Commissioner was left working out of his house. He too finally gave up a few weeks back and resigned.
Eliminating Government agencies that provide factual information which may contradict their policy positions – this is particularly true of climate change, where the Climate Council was defunded, and the Climate Change Authority came under attack. The Climate Change Authority was saved by the Senate, but the Government now appears to be killing it by stealth by cutting funding to it. In the meantime, apparently there are sufficient funds for a Wind Commissioner.
Discrediting those that speak the truth – there are a few examples of this, but probably the most prominent is the attack on Human Rights Commissioner – Gillian Triggs. The extent of the attacks on her – as a reputable international lawyer – is incomprehensible. They are at best bullying, and at worst a shameless attempt to influence an independent commission.
Distorting the truth to suit their needs – most recently this happened when the Abbott Government claimed that their proposal to allow the Government to bypass the judicial system and strip citizenship from people, was “precisely what was recommended by the former independent national security monitor Bret Walker” when in fact it was the exact opposite, and he had misquoted Walker out of context.
When looked at as a whole, these actions may not be sufficient to confirm a conspiracy by the Abbott government to keep the truth from the Australian public, but they certainly suggest a pattern of devaluing the truth, and an intention to control what information the Australian public does and does not see in service of their own political needs.
They certainly do NOT suggest a government committed to transparency and accountability.
Instituting a climate of fear was a key part of the Nazi’s propaganda program, as when people are in a heightened state of anxiety, they are more emotional, and less likely to think for themselves.
Image from progressiveconversation.files.wordpress.com
Appealing to patriotism has been a key tool in the Abbott government’s arsenal since day one. Abbott introduced the concept of “Team Australia” – implying a concept of ‘us’ and ‘them’ – where those he considers to be a ‘them’ being seen as a UnAustralian and a risk to the country.
Most recently, the government has introduced the patriotically named Allegiance to Australia Bill to parliament. This is the Bill they are seeking to use in order to strip citizenship from dual nationals (and potentially others) – allowing them to effectively banish people from the country. And they are invoking patriotism to suggest that anyone who objects to the Bill is UnAustralian and dangerous, silencing any major opposition.
So how Fascist is Australia then?
“Secrecy is completely inadequate for democracy, but totally appropriate for tyranny”. (Malcolm Fraser)
Conclusion: Be alert and alarmed.
Well the good news is that Abbott doesn’t look like growing a short ugly mustache anytime soon. But there are undoubtedly some key indicators in the Abbott government’s behaviour that should cause all of us to be concerned – not about terrorists, but about the state’s impingement on our personal freedoms. As a New Zealand journalist recently said of Australia: “open and accountable government is suffering death by a thousand cuts.”
Abbott & Co’s apparent disdain for the truth in favour of truthiness, the way in which they are undermining our personal freedoms by restricting our access to the truth, their almost ludicrous and self-serving focus on terrorism and their constant invocation of patriotism to support their viewpoint is concerning.
This is not because Australia has become a fascist state, but because this continual chipping away at our personal freedoms in favour of government power sets up an environment to allow extreme ideologies to flourish. The rise of movements like the right-wing ‘Reclaim Australia’ movement are key examples of this.
The real battles we should be fighting and winning right now are not against an enemy who is 11,000 kms away – they are the ones here at home that are weakening our democracy. And that is a far greater risk to our way of life than any terrorist army on the other side of the world.
This is an edited version of my article on Progressive Conversation.
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
“Heads should roll“ declared Abbott a few weeks back, after the ABC dared to do what every other TV channel was doing by replaying Zaky Mallah’s appearance on Q and A.
A few days later, Abbott told us that his government will be putting forward a Bill to facilitate “the modern form of banishment“, allowing the Government to strip away citizenship from dual nationals at will. And according to Abbott, the Bill needs to bestow absolute power and discretion to do this on the government, unshackled by the normal rules of law and supervision of the courts.
Then last week, Abbott issued a proclamation to his Frontbenchers – along the lines of ‘Thou Shallt not go on Q and A‘. He followed this up with a letter to the ABC, suggesting how he would like the program to be run.
Listening to Abbott speak conjures up images of monarchs of old – like Henry the VIII – who chopped off many people’s heads, banished his enemies from the Kingdom and made royal proclamations – aka “captain’s calls” – at will.
The man who would be King – or at least a Knight…
Abbott’s obsession with the monarchy is well-documented. Not only is he a staunch monarchist, but shortly after his election, he reintroduced the old-fashioned concept of Knights and Dames as Australian honours.
Abbott gave himself – in King like fashion – the power to make decisions about who will be knighted (or ‘damed’) without needing to consult with anyone else (other than the Queen, of course). Earlier this year, he then famously knighted Prince Phillip, in a captain’s call that nearly led to Abbott losing his own throne.
We want “Government of the people, by the people”
This is the famous phrase often used to describe democracy today, which was first spoken by Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg address.
And this is broadly what democracy should mean here in Australia today. When we vote, the elected representative from each electorate takes their place in our House of ‘Representatives’. And on taking office, Ministers swear an oath (or take an affirmation) of office. This is what Abbott and his Ministers committed to do when they took office in 2013:
“I, [Minister’s full name], do solemnly and sincerely affirm and declare that I will well and truly serve the people of Australia in the office of [position] and that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, Queen of Australia.”
The language is important – because it reflects what they are committing to do for the Australian people – and that is to act as servants, not as rulers.
This means that their job is NOT to represent their own personal viewpoints, but to represent the views of their constituents. We elect them, we pay their salaries with our taxes, and we task them with serving our country.
But somewhere along the way, many politicians seem to have forgotten that they are there to represent and serve us, not to rule us. This has never been better illustrated than with the current issue of marriage equality. With the vast majority of Aussies being in favour of it, passing legislation to enable it should be a no-brainer. But not so much. Rather than representing the people, many Ministers are representing their own viewpoints.
Which brings us back to …
Abbott’s Royal Proclamations – aka “Captain’s Calls”
Abbott’s love of making captain’s calls is well-known. But when he makes a ”Captain’s call”, he makes a decision without consultation, without seeking input from the peoples’ representatives in parliament. He confessed to this earlier in the year, when the #Libspill was on, suggesting that he would do less of this. But the Q and A call last week confirms that he’s still issuing proclamations and expecting them to be followed.
Malcolm Turnbull said of Abbott’s captain’s calls:
“[Tony] is the captain – he can make a captain’s call”.
No Malcolm Turnbull – Abbott’s not the captain of Australia. He’s not a King. According to the oath he took, he’s the servant of the Australian people.
What Australia needs: Less ruling. More representing
OK Mr Abbott – since you seem to be taking your lead from a bad episode of Game of Thrones – I’ll spell it out for you. What Australia needs of its political servants, and you as our current lead servant is…
Less of the ruling. More of the representing.This means all Australians, not just companies and people who donated to your election campaigns. Or even those 30% of people who somehow think you’re doing a good job. You swore an oath to serve “the people of Australia”, not just the ones you like. You don’t get to pick and choose.
Less of the ruling. More of the representing.This means listening – not just to your ministers, but to our elected representatives in other parties. The people of Australia elected them as well as you. When you, or your ministers, are rude and contemptuous to them in parliament – when you misquote them, and are rude to them, you are rude to the people we elected. The people we voted for. The people who represent us. You’re effectively being rude to us. You, and your political colleagues, need to stop stuff like this:
Less of the ruling. More of the representing.This means we have a right to know what is going on. As our servants you are acting in our name. It’s not Ok to hide behind excuses like ‘operational matters’, restrict our access to information and threaten to prosecute people who tell us about your stuff ups.
Less of the ruling. More of the representing.No more of the saying one thing and doing another. If you say one thing on one day – like there’ll be no cuts to education, to health, to pensioners, to the ABC – your actions should reflect that. Nobody likes a servant they can’t trust.
Less of the ruling. More of the representing.Stop saying you’ve done stuff when you haven’t. Like saying you’ve stopped the boats and saved lives. When quite clearly, you haven’t. If you had, there’d be no more people smugglers for you to bribe.
Less of the ruling. More of the representing.Stop saying we’ve got to cut spending, and then allowing politicians to have ridiculous expense budgets. Like the flag budget. One flag is plenty, by the way, for a press conference. Ten just makes you look like a try-hard. A half million dollar budget is not good use of our money. Nor is a $50,000 dinner in New York.
Less of the ruling. More of the representing. We need to pull our weight in the region. There’s a humanitarian crisis in the region Abbott – and in the world more broadly, but let’s just focus locally. If Asia were a village, where each country was a family in that village – you’re making us look like the greediest rich family at the edge of town who ignores the plight of other members of the village, shuts its gates, and lets its poorer neighbours take care of those who have lost their homes in local disasters.
Less of the ruling. More of the representing.Stop ruining the planet. Yeah – we know you love coal. And that you think wind farms are ugly. And that you’re incredibly proud of repealing the carbon tax and rolling back Australia’s commitment to halting climate change. But as the rest of the world does their best to save the planet’s atmosphere, and as some of our nearest neighbours are sinking into the sea, enough is enough. As our servant, you have a responsibility to look after our country, and stop ruining the planet we live in.
Less of the ruling. More of the representing.Stop embarrassing us on the world stage. We’re not the only ones who think you’re, well, a bit of a joke:
And finally – Stop it with the pet projects. No more wind commissioners. No more school chaplains programmes. No more multi-million dollar royal commissions into stuff we already know. No more micro-managing late-night current affairs programmes – you should have better stuff to do.
If you’re not up to it…
Australia doesn’t need a King – we’ve already got a swag of royals in the UK to keep our gossip magazines in business. We don’t need a ruler. And we don’t need a captain.
We need someone who understands that they are here to serve the Australian people, and not their own personal or party’s political needs. And if you’re not up to it – and quite frankly, it doesn’t seem that you are – then you’re not keeping the oath you personally wrote and took, you’re not doing your job, and you should resign.
This article was first published on Progressive Conversation.
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
“When Abbott was voted in, various jokes circulated about Australia returning to the 1950s. It seems that these weren’t too far from the truth.”
In the 1950s
When communism reached Vietnam in the 1950s, paranoia struck the country! Anyone you knew could be a ‘red’. And there was a fairly good chance there were ‘reds under the bed’.
This paranoia was fueled by the Liberal Government deliberately using anti-Communist propaganda to gain support for going to war in Vietnam. The Reds, or so the propaganda said, were poised to strike, to “destroy the Australian way of life‘ – both from without and within the country. People were instructed to be vigilant – to spy on their neighbours, their friends, even their family – and report any suspicious behaviour.
The “Reds under the bed” propaganda campaign served to distract the Australian public from the real dangers and hardships of the time – a growing inflation rate, and a debt level much larger than what we live with now. It was further used to control striking unions who, the propaganda said, were controlled by the Communist Party of Australia.
ASIO grew in power and strength during the 1950s, gaining stronger surveillance powers than it had ever had before.
The Liberal Party derived further political gain from this powerful propaganda, managing to link the Labor Party to the Communist Party, undermining their voter base.
If this isn’t all sounding very very familiar to you … here’s how this plot-line is playing out in 2015.
In 2015
When Abbott was voted in, various jokes circulated about Australia returning to the 1950s. It seems that these weren’t too far from the truth.
With 69% of Australians recently telling the Lowy institute that they believe terrorists pose a high risk to our safety, both at home and abroad, and with terrorism rating as the number one perceived threat to Australian security from within Australia, terrorists have become the communists of this century.
As in the 1950s, this is serving to distract Australians from actual real threats to our way of life. Things like:
Unemployment rates continuing to grow
Climate change
Growing debt and deficit levels, with no signs of any reduction in the near future
Legislation to increase government powers and reduce individual freedoms
The Humanitarian crisis on our doorstep, with 1000s of thousands refugees finding themselves stateless and homeless
Domestic violence killing seven women a month (on average)
Three-word slogan propaganda campaigns designed to distract Aussies from wanting to know the truth.
As in the 1950s, the perceived threat of terrorism has been used to take us to war, this time in Iraq – some 11,000 kms away, half way across the globe. And again, as in the 50s, the Liberal government is using its perceived brand as being stronger on defence than Labor to their political advantage, with political polls seeing the Libs get an immediate [albeit slight] boost following one of Abbott’s many ‘terror’ talks. In a recent talk he gave on the 11th of June, he literally said “Daesh is coming, if it can, for every person“.
The handy guide I promised you…
“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it,” said Edmund Burke. And it seems Australians have a short memory.
Image from progressiveconversation.wordpress.com
So here’s the number one tip in my handy guide to avoid terrorists under the bed – learn from the past.
Instead of focusing on a distant threat to our safety and security, we should be focusing on the very real and very current threats to our safety and ongoing security – many of which are listed above – and looking at how we can deal with them. We are allowing trite three word slogans to distract us from what’s really going on, and allowing our politicians to obfuscate and lie their way out of things like #OnWaterGate.
The very best way to avoid a terrorist under your bed is to realise that there is very, very high probability that there aren’t any there. None. Nada. Zilch.
If we don’t do this, if we don’t stop looking for terrorists under the bed, we are facing a bleak future indeed – and it won’t be due to any terrorist group. It will be due to the very poor decisions we are allowing our politicians to make on our behalf, without question and without consequence.
