By Maria Millers  

For many the long-stablished story of the Gallipoli landings and to a lesser extent the Western Front remain the defining moments for our country. Just minted as a new nation in 1901, but still very British, our other achievements were put aside to lay the foundations of our national identity based on our participation in a war that ended up costing us so much in human terms: the injured and damaged, the toll on families and the disruption to our society

So why then have we not given the same importance to other aspects of our history? After all, the coming together of six British colonies as a new nation was an enormous achievement. Equally impressive were the pioneering social reforms that this newly federated nation was able to achieve ahead of many other countries: from granting women the right to vote and stand for elections, to social reforms like the old Age pension in 1909.Significant industrial and welfare reforms followed establishing Australia as ‘a path breaking new nation.’

Instead we have been made to accept war as a defining moment of our entry into nationhood.

War correspondent Charles Bean was most influential in creating the myth we have come to accept uncritically. His writing was often far from the reality of what it was like on the ground or mud at Gallipoli and the Western Front and he wrote what he thought the public back home wanted to hear. His writing also reflected the opinions of Officers in the AIF and the politicians back home.

But as political historian Benedict Anderson once said, national identity is a product of the imagination, and the stories we choose to tell ourselves about our past are the ones that define us. We have created an idealised sanitised version of a tall, khaki clad man with a slouch hat against a backdrop of some defining war image. 

Yet among the first ‘Anzacs’ there were also Indigenous Australians, Australians of German descent, and Asian Australians. Some 1000 Indigenous Australians are thought to have served in the AIF, on Gallipoli and the Western Front. And 3000 Australian women enlisted in WW1 as nurses, doctors and in other supportive roles.

Another contentious issue is that our reflection of our military history never acknowledges the unspoken wars: The Frontier Wars between settlers and the Indigenous. The official Anzac story however has been nurtured and elevated to the status of a national myth. And myths are always preferred to historical accuracy.

The first Anzac Day march took place in 1916 and was very much about recruiting for the ongoing war. The first Dawn Service was in 1920 and by 1927 Anzac Day became a public holiday in all states and territories.

The horrendous loss of life in WW1 impacted on Australian society in so many ways. In a country of around 5 million 62000 had lost their lives. The ongoing focus on the moment of battle ignored the post war suffering of this huge number of men (and women) who returned shell shocked, wounded, disabled and disfigured. Equally impacted were the families who cared for them.

But politicians soon realized that there was political mileage in promoting the Anzac story, particularly when there was an unpopular war to prosecute. Prime Ministers from Hawke, Howard through to Gillard and Rudd have all used the Anzac story for political reasons.

Not that there was no criticism about what some called ‘legislated nostalgia’ that came to surround Anzac Day and its commemoration. Writers like George Johnston and playwright Alan Seymour challenged this approach to our military history.

Seymour’s play revolves around a father son conflict. The son, Hughie a university student refuses for the first time to attend the dawn service which traditionally was then followed by a day of drunkenness, illegal gambling and the inevitable brawls and public vomiting.

Alf his father has served and is an embittered man. This play which was so controversial back in the 60s is eerily relevant as it looks at so many issues we still grapple with today: immigration, health services, substance abuse, family violence and the recent rise of jingoism that has crept into our commemoration of Anzac and other wars we have been involved in.

Similarly, writer George Johnston in his autobiographical novel My Brother Jack brings us face to face with the reality for those tens of thousands who made it back alive, but damaged, Who can forget his description of the hallway of the Meredith home: a gas mask on the hall stand, sturdy walking sticks, artificial limbs propped up against a wall and the inevitable wheelchair, all powerful symbols of the impact of the war on those who served. And these were just the obvious physical injuries and not the mental ones that haunted so many then as well as those from recent conflicts such as the Vietnam War.

In the 1960s and 70s some Australians returning from the Vietnam War felt, as attitudes to the war changed, that their service during a decade of conflict 1962- 1972 was not appreciated by the public and that they were excluded from the Anzac tradition. They chose not to participate in Anzac Day events until October 1987 when a special Welcome Home Parade was held. Tragically 523 had died, 3000 were wounded and many still carry psychological wounds.

A more recent commentary comes from Iraq and Afghanistan veteran James Brown in his book Anzac’s Long Shadow where he argues that Australia is spending too much time, money and emotion on our obsession with the Anzac legend at the expense of current serving men and women. He dismisses any suggestion that criticism of the Anzac myth is ‘unaustralian.’ And he pulls no punches in calling out the clubs, charities and corporations that exploit the Anzac theme for commercial gain.

The term Anzackery was coined by historian Geoffrey Serle to draw attention to inflated rhetoric that has built up around Anzac Day celebrations. He would have found it disturbing to see how a jingoistic tone has crept into the commemorations. Add to that the ever-expanding range of Anzac merchandise from badges, oven mitts, Tshirts, poppies and other kitsch mementoes and Gallipoli cruises. It is hoped that some of the proceeds flow to making life easier for the veterans.

Myths and legends reflect the values of the societies in which they exist and at the core of the Anzac tradition is the belief that nations and men are made in war. This prevents us from asking important questions about who we are and what kind of society we want to live in.

Many Australians, while respectful of our war dead, are uncomfortable with the way we now remember them. Families will always mourn their loved ones and respect memories of their ancestors without the need for exaggerated sentimentalism.

Australia is a very different country today and choosing Gallipoli as the foundation moment for our nation is fraught with problems of leaving out so much of our rich and complex history from the national narrative. We should also remind ourselves of the reality of all wars, so vividly expressed in the following poem by Wilfred Owen:

Dulce et Decorum Est 

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, 

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Notes: Latin phrase is from the Roman poet Horace: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”

By Bert Hetebry  

Having worked for many years with a diverse number of people from different ethnic groups and religions, and some with no religion, I was impressed that despite the differences, everybody seemed to get along. Being interested, I asked people about their faith, and found that people held their faith and cultural traditions firmly and recognised that others were free to worship their gods so long as that freedom was universal. Explaining this to an evangelical person one time I was assured that his faith, his religion was the only true religion.

The sense of rightness, (can I call it self-righteousness?), left no room for dissent.

And herein lies the foundation for discrimination which leads to intolerance and violence.

My god is better than your god!

Earlier this week, a fire-brand preacher was attacked by a knife-wielding teenager.

The preacher is well loved in his local church and has attracted a substantial YouTube following with very outspoken views on homosexuality, conspiracy theories and Islam. The young attacker is Muslim and upset that the preacher maligned his prophet.

In Jesus name, the young attacker and whoever sent him has been forgiven by the injured preacher.

To accept forgiveness, a person must accept they have done wrong, but how can the young man accept he has done wrong when his religion encourages violence in defence of his faith, and how sincere is the act of forgiveness when the preacher will no doubt continue his vitriol against Islam, the LGBTIQA+ community and the various other click bait topics he raises in his broadcast sermons.

The young man is in custody, yet to be charged but was on a good behaviour bond over a previous knife wielding incident, and will no doubt face the children’s court to answer to criminal charges. But will he accept the forgiveness offered by the injured preacher when in his mind, his actions were in defence of his religion?

Is the act of forgiveness predicated on the acceptance of Jesus as saviour, that the young man must accept the act of forgiveness as that of the ‘crucified Lord’, but would be void if there is no conversion to the Christian faith?

Is the act of forgiveness aimed at reconciliation, that the young man and the preacher can coexist, side by side as it were, in an atmosphere devoid of rancour, devoid of the judgementalism each religion places on other religions?

The history between the two religions, the Assyrian Orthodox Church and Islam goes back a long, long way, the church is one of the earliest Christian denominations, formed in what is now Iraq, Turkey and Syria, and pre-existed Islam by several hundred years. The two religions have lived side by side but in a rather tenuous environment with waves of persecution conducted. In the last century the Assyrians suffered the 1915 Genocide by the Ottoman Turks, leading them to flee to Northern Iraq and North East Syria, and this century with the rise of ISIS, a further brutal persecution.

When religious leaders preach sermons seemingly designed to foster hatred or at least division, to claim a superiority over others who are not like ‘us’, violence will follow. When those sermons are broadcast to whoever has access to a smart phone or computer the voice resonates through the dark web and incites reactions.

What is particularly sad in this case, is that we have an immigrant community which has brought with it the divisions which led to their desire to leave their homeland because of war and religious discrimination and have bought with them the very attitudes they are trying to escape from.

‘Mental health’; a broad canvas that permits a highly misinformed landscape where anything goes, particularly ignorance and social stigma. Can’t we do better than this?

I wondered how long it would take for the mainstream media to blame the public mental health system and I am very disappointed SBS is leading the charge with journalist Charis Chang and SBS Editors running the headline: ‘Bondi attack puts spotlight on ‘ramshackle’ mental health system, experts say‘.

As for the two ‘mental health’ experts cited in this article, Sydney University professor Anthony Harris and National Mental Health Consumer Alliance chair Priscilla Brice, both should join their ranks as professional opportunists gathering the limelight all too ready to once again stigmatise people with mental illness, blaming it almost entirely on the public mental health system. It may not have been their intention, but they are intelligent enough to know this is the way it will be used or interpreted by the media, and perceived by politicians and the general public, looking for someone or some organisation to blame just two days later.

The act of one man, whether they have a mental illness or not does not make the public mental health system liable inasmuch as in a court of law, someone else is not ordinarily culpable or liable for an act perpetrated by another – that is mob mentality, it is speculative at best and has no causative relationship, it is reckless.

Once again it falls to consumers and carers such as NSW resident Dorothy Cross to remind us that people with a mental illness or indeed schizophrenia are more likely to be victims of society than perpetrators. Statistically speaking the public are more at risk from people with fundamentalist religious or political beliefs, extremists, people with means, criminals, gangs, those with extreme ideological beliefs, little or no ethical, moral or social values, conscience or judgment more commonly found in the general population than people with mental illness. In fact, it is people with mental illness that will suffer as a result of this kind of insensitive, poorly nuanced, motivated and timed (though I’d like to brand here) rubbish journalism. Not what I’d expect from SBS, and certainly not prematurely from our two ‘so called’ experts.

There are a number of elephants in the room

Did it ever occur to either of the two ‘mental health’ experts that the man here who carried out this horrific and dreadful act in Bondi Junction mall was or may NOT have been a recipient of the public mental health system, and was hidden from view by private psychiatry, socially and politically backed by society itself. It would appear closer examination of the initial facts emerging, that for last 18 years he had been seeing private psychiatrist/s in Queensland, which had kept him out of the purview of the public mental health system even in his own substantive State of residence. As such you cannot then blame lack of public mental health services, access, funding, follow up, care coordination or even lack of consumer financial capacity in paying for continuing medication which might keep him well (if he is able one way or another to afford a private psychiatrist, but perhaps that too became the operant factor). Nor indeed if a private patient chooses to cease seeing their private psychiatrist and later move inter-State beneath the radar.

Where is the connection here between private psychiatry and the public mental health system? Disturbingly it is the unhealthy opportunistic if not symbiotic-parasitic relationship that private psychiatry exerts on the public mental health system, removing a ‘patient’ from the more comprehensive and effective umbrella of the public mental health system and then abandoning their responsibility when their ‘client’ no longer turns up. Where is the bridge for follow up, where is the net without someone to cast it?

Yet our two experts here, choose to jump on the bandwagon with SBS, so soon after this tragic event, and blame this on a ‘ramshackle’ public mental health system in another State – That is the headline and I see no counter argument to it in this article. I find this quite outrageous and it does a huge disservice to people with mental illness, family and carers, to mental health staff of our public mental health system (with all its faults, funding, political and institutional problems), further stigmatising mental illness, mental health and de facto, if not by poor judgment misleading the general public, strengthening the reactionary and ignorant arm of politicians and health ministers who are in fact part of the problem for legislating and creating this apartheid, enmeshed privileged and blind private – public mental health divide in our society.

While psychiatrists always come out on this misguided defence of their practice and ironically blame the public mental health system or its funding, they fail to recognise their overarching conservative institutional involvement in it and the covert private psychiatry they avariciously defend sucking the energy and capacity on elitist salaries out of our public mental health system, as well as leaving it blind. Perhaps Professor Harris should consider this as a frontline social, political and broader institutional problem alongside the impact of his voice in this article on the pliable discourse of public perception at the beckon mercy of our ill-informed and largely privately owned mainstream media (hence why I am seriously disappointed with SBS, who as an uncertain private-public broadcaster entity should nevertheless know better).

As for the National Mental Health Consumer Alliance which strongly advocates for more private sector psychologists, they are only adding to this misadventure by putting their faith in another private sector establishment and powerful institution, echoing the same blunted path, ‘business model’ and self-interest of private psychology. And the chair of this self-appointed conglomerate has her expert mental health background, self-described as ‘neurodivergent’, and graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD), an MBA in Social Impact from the University of NSW, and a substantive career in racial equity. Perhaps the chair of this organisation might do better to likewise consider the consequences of her general speculation before the facts pertinent to this event are fully known, given her expert brush with social inequality in our society.

Last but not least has any mainstream media reporting on this event considered to distinguish between mental health and mental illness, noting the repeated unchallenged reporting (of which the ABC and others have been complicit), where NSW police have frequently and exclusively referred to this man and his ‘mental health background’, note not ‘mental illness’ but ‘mental health’? Mentally healthy people do not behave this way, and while mental health is not the antithesis of ‘mental illness’, nor do people with ‘mental illness’ typically behave this way – distinct and subtle nuances not mentioned by way of balance in the cited article or any other live broadcast or ‘newsworthy’ report I have read or heard to date since this event unfolded.

We have no reliable facts of ‘substance’ here, no mention or ruling out of alcohol or substance use, character profile, personality disorder, criminal behaviour, hatred, bitterness and vengeful, institutional/social alienation, or plethora of other potential and accumulative variables, factors and reinforcers at play previously mentioned; or the impact, social consequences and risks of any of these – But as usual like sheep jumping absent fences, straight to ‘mental health’, a broad canvas that permits a highly misinformed landscape where anything goes – but particularly ignorance, social stigma, poor journalism and disappointing commentary from ‘so called’ experts.

By Jane Salmon, voluntary refugee advocate for over 11 years.

Introduction:

The facts are obvious.

As Senator Meereen Faruqi has written, this Bill would:

• Create a travel ban on certain countries (it is not clear which ones).
• Send people to jail for at least 1 year if they don’t cooperate with the Government in their own removal to a country they fled.
• Allow any Immigration Minister to overturn visas of refugees who have already been provided protection.

It may also fracture families further.

Immigration matters are growing ever more complex. It’s not like there is going to be a reduction in people fleeing wars any time soon. Stop-gap, kneejerk, partial, piecemeal or reactive solutions are inadequate.

Mechanisms are missing. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal and the Immigration Administration Authority are not fully operational at this time. The Administrative Review Tribunal or ART intended to replace AAT is not yet up and running.

The whole Immigration system needs a comprehensive independent review before other measures are put in place.

Global and domestic Immigration challenges took time to evolve. They require commensurately comprehensive, integrated and detailed solutions.

Immigration decisions must not be based on discrimination, the clumping of individuals together by nationality or arrival mode.

There is a tendency by Governments and voters to scapegoat vulnerable immigrants for economic challenges arising from poor domestic policy or planning. They must be protected from this.

A few criminals seeking protection are no excuse for taking measures that risk treating all refugees harshly.

Governments and political trends change. We cannot trust that the legislation will always be applied in a benign, consistent or reasonable way.

Overall, Department of Immigration needs to replace unaccountable, vague or generalised processing mechanisms. The solutions are broader still than a catch-all Bill that extends Ministerial power without delivering reciprocal responsibility.

Five-year jail terms followed by fines and/or forced deportation for deportation refuseniks is excessive.

Double or triple jeopardy for law breakers (in the form of indefinite detention after a court prescribed sentence and deportation) already discriminates against non-citizens harshly. They’ve already done their sentence time.

“Fast Track” is not fast. Its victims have been through legal ordeals for a decade or more. They paid tax and lawyers while living with uncertainty and while being separated from other relatives. How about an amnesty?

This Migration Act Amendment Bill 2024 exposes systematic problems. It presents the Senate with the opportunity to require higher standards of the Immigration Department while also protecting human rights.

Meanwhile, in Melbourne …

On 11 April 2024 Kalyani Inpakumar, represented the Tamil Refugee Council, participated in a crucial discussion addressing the Migration Legislation (Removal and other Measures) Bill 2024.

Main Argument: 

The 2024 Migration Amendment Bill is Risky Yet Fixes Too Little 

The Immigration system is already quite arbitrary and a bit of a patchwork.

The Bill is general and sweeping. It might catch out folk who have done their best to stay within the rules.

It would be cruel to tell the most tenacious and their offspring to push off and take their problems elsewhere after over a decade of putting them through the wringer in court after court. They’ve adapted. They studied. They’ve worked. They’ve paid lawyers. We need an amnesty for these people.

Sometimes the most stubborn people are the most afraid. They are not economic migrants seeking a shortcut. How do we distinguish between them?

Golden Ticket Migration is Unfair 

A mature nation addresses inequity rather than scapegoating poorer groups and building up elites.

Wellbeing arises from equal opportunity, not class division. This applies to refugees and migrants too.

We’re better than this. The “Fair Go” should start (or stops) at the Australian border.

Certainly, working within the Department of Immigration is hard. People keep coming. Few of the arrivals fully understand the situation they’re in. (There are quite a few faux refugees that can be annoying or worse. Folk fly in on student visas, accept front line jobs and then apply for protection. Criminals need rehabilitating regardless of background. If you truly fear death, don’t take a holiday back home).

Arbitrary Rulings Are Not Fair

Cabinet Ministers occasionally intervene to let iconic families through to Permanent Residency. This seems arbitrary when Government ignores the majority that arrived the same way under similar circumstances and demonstrate the same love of Australia in their commitment to local community. Precedents are not consistently recognised or followed through.

Missing Mechanisms

The Administrative Review Tribunal or ART is not yet up and running. It is intended to replace the AAT:

“On 7 December 2023, the Australian Government introduced legislation which will abolish the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) and replace it with a new body called the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART).

“All cases currently before the AAT will continue. Many cases currently before the AAT will be decided or finalised before the AAT is abolished. All decisions made by the AAT will remain valid and final.

Once the new body is established, any remaining cases will transition to the new body. If you have applied to the AAT for review of a decision and your case is transitioned to the new body, you will not need to submit a new application for review to the body.”

Why care?

When human rights shrink, human authenticity becomes less safe. The happiest nations are the fairest and most equitable. Or so studies tell us.

Second generation children should not be punished lifelong for sub-optimal choices made by their parents.

What Emergency? 

Iranian activist Arad Nik, who is grateful to have Permanent Residency already, says:

“We unite with a single voice, calling on politicians to halt the impending Migration Amendment Bill 2024, slated for next month. This bill, in its current form, threatens the fabric of compassion and understanding in our immigration system.”

Mr Nik adds:

“The Bill is being touted as a solution to a false emergency. It implies that all people seeking protection visas are gaming a broken application mechanism. If that were so, most would have given up after twelve hard years.”

This sudden Bill does not fix problems that have been around for decades. It papers over 20-year-old failings of previous governments. It punishes applicants for gaps in the refugee admissions process.

It certainly doesn’t deal with the individuals left behind simply because a harried lawyer missed an appointment.

The Bill is far reaching. It’ll certainly give the Minister power to toss away the few bad apples (to who knows where). But what of innocents caught in the same mess? 

With notable exceptions, the politicians and public servants who have bumbled and bungled their way through decisions (for which they are not held accountable) still collect salaries and pensions. Improving accountability will help everyone.

The only “emergency” is the potential for further Government embarrassment in the High Court. Measured, comprehensive, far-sighted and mature responses are needed. Media and politicians should be challenged over their part in exacerbating such drama.

What is really at stake? Only our nation’s future.

Kids of blocked asylum seekers are punished for parental decisions. Kids of blocked asylum seekers end up in a form of purgatory. It is hard on developing minds.

They work hard to learn in a new language. They see their ambitious school peers go on to uni but they generally cannot afford the international fees they would be charged if they manage to qualify.

On Thursday 11 April 2024, some overlooked children of people lacking permanent resident status spoke up outside the Home Affairs Minister’s Oakleigh electoral office, seeking “A Fair Go”.

These vibrant young folk are brimming with potential and want tertiary study opportunities: not dead ends. Few get scholarships if their visa status is tenuous.

Australian high schools have raised a group of young people capable of becoming doctors, but then we deny them affordable access to university. Blocking their ability is not good for them. Nor is it efficient for the nation and education system that helped raise them to adulthood.

More video interviews are available.

Challenges in Assessing Individual Circumstances 

It is hard to assess all the variables from behind a desk, yet that is what we ask Immigration staff to do. We do not necessarily hold them to account for those choices either.

Are they adequately trained to preside over life and death decisions? This is not like getting a development application or a pet permit.

How do we measure the risk to individuals? 

We are aware of nations with the death penalty for homosexuality, but what of unofficial penalties in apparently more relaxed countries. When honour killing is a practice only applied by some religious groups or families, who gets to decide what the real risk is?

What if your close relatives demanded your death after a marital conflict?

What if you had to jump your back fence in the middle of the night to escape the same armed raiders who threatened and then murdered your father and brother?

How do you retrieve and preserve evidence of those threats? You are not a documentarist in that moment, but a fugitive. Perhaps you a really nice one. But no one knows or cares.

How do asylum seekers present evidence when phones are filtered, removed, damaged (let alone replaced with more basic models as they are on Nauru).

Case Studies 

Some refugees I meet make a lasting positive impression. They’re not always the most charming, slick or talented of their cohort, but they are the ones that have struggled on heroically, maintained positivity. They dream of short, regular reunions with whatever is left of their families.

They’ve ignored most “othering” and gotten on with work, volunteering and contributing tax. They’ve studied to improve their employability: even when higher education costs them the earth. They’ve dealt with cultural and language transitions while relatives are threatened back home. They do not receive the supports that full citizens of Australia take for granted. They must live from visa to visa or one paperwork hiccup to the next.

Case 1:

There is the bright Iranian mum running a business while she hoists and helps her lovely son with cerebral palsy and an IT qualification. Her back aches. The family is denied NDIS. She helped her daughter afford international uni fees for a Masters in radiography by running a pizza shop. Yet she pays the same tax as any Aussie. She does online training and keeps on keeping on. She has done it harder than most, but also acknowledges the struggles of other young non-disabled migrant kids coming to the end of secondary education. She’s still got empathy.

Case 2:

There is the sweet, sad chap whose lawyer didn’t show up at court. He has no visa. His mates from the same region were granted Permanent Residency in court that very day. They just picked a different lawyer. They are a strong group, and he lives by their charity while volunteering; but where will the Bill leave him? He has been failed by Fast Track. Some immediate family members were recently killed back in his province. Officially, his nation is not at war. In practice, his ethnicity, regional politics, religion and family history make it hard to stay alive there. His minority status means he doesn’t get the chance to move to a distant capital. Nor do his qualifications seem to help his situation.

A Ministerial Intervention application is his only hope, but will the Minister even get time to read it?

Case 3:

Medevacced Kurds from Manus are in a similar position. They are discriminated against by their country. And that is a nation that will not accept repatriation. Why should industrious and creative individuals be punished for international diplomatic failures or their mode of arrival across decades. When is enough?

Gentle Tamils and Rohingyans have also suffered offshore.

Case 4:

All the young adults who grew up here without the comfort or rights that accompany permanent residency. They cannot afford international tertiary fees for tertiary courses. They have earned the marks but cannot readily raise the fees while undertaking demanding study. Indeed, we are literally missing out on doctors.

Alex, age 20:

“I have lived in Australia for 10 years. Since completing year 12, I have completed a Diploma in Construction. I want to go on to do a degree in Construction Project Management. My teachers were keen to organise a scholarship for me. However, I can’t do this now, as I got a letter from Home Affairs in December last year to say my visa has changed, and I no longer have study rights.”

“My younger brother is doing Year 12 this year. He wants to study sports science, but now he does not have study rights, he won’t be able to enrol in University. So now he’s starting to lose interest in school.” (Source: ASRC).

Where Does Australia Start or End?

Oversimplifications like the fear-based “sovereign borders” doctrine will not stem the arrival of people trying to flee crowded and squalid refugee camps. We need to extend and improve regional processing.

Using Nauru as an offshore centre paid for (but not run by) Australian Government seems convoluted. We need to protect workers and detainees under Australian laws rather than play shell games with an ever-changing array of contractors.

More and Better Regional Processing Centres May Slow Boats

How do people get here when they are already on the run?

Process people nearer the source of crisis.

Orderly, secure assessment for Immigration intake requires calm queues at checkpoint where individuals can recover, study intake rules and then pull together and translate their case data.

There are instead overcrowded, squalid refugee camps like Cox’s Bazaar where disease, floods, fire, hurricane, bad sanitation and inadequate power make every single week even more arduous for Rohingyans fleeing massacre in Myanmar.

There is a long wait for UNHCR recognition there or in Malaysia and Indonesia.

An Amnesty for Fast Track Victims is essential. 

“Fast Track” is broken and slow. They got cursory assessments. The remaining “Fast Track arrivals” who have floundered through several courts across a decade need to be allowed to stay, not punished further. They are already working and adapting. Living in perpetual flux is damaging. Noone can afford so much litigation. There are only around 10,000 of them. It is hardly an inundation.

Policies influenced by international trends in handling refugees or national security need to be reviewed for objectivity.

An amnesty for those who were Medevacced here from offshore will not start boats. In fact, the boats never completely stopped. Many vessels are turned back. Moreover, planes bring many more people daily.

Accountability in Detention: 

Offshore detention on Nauru entails management proxies free from press or impartial police scrutiny. The previous iteration of detention on Nauru offered health care that was substandard, conditions that were squalid, minimal protection and justice that was absent. Now we learn that even access to family WhatsApp chats and online human rights information is filtered.

By Bert Hetebry  

I’m not much good at sums, but I can imagine the cost of repairing damaged egos as the allegations of rape and the ripple effect of that accusation hits the various courts around the country. The cost-of-living crisis is not being noticed by the army of lawyers involved.

Just before the 2019 election a young research assistant claimed to have been raped in Parliament House but does not pursue the allegation because of the impact it may have on the up-coming election, however, about a year later the accusation is made and a work colleague is charged with rape. And the gravy train starts chugging slowly gathering pace as snouts go into the very deep money trough seeking to repair the damages done.

And now a mere five years later the saga may, or may not, be coming to some kind of conclusion.

Throughout this saga there have been claim and counter claim of malfeasance, a juror doing some independent research causing the trial of the accused to be aborted, an inquiry into the public prosecutor handling of the case, police records leaked or withheld, the employer’s minister swearing at the complainant and later aggrieved because of a social media post she claims maligned her, the free to air TV channels buying exclusive interview rights, and all the while the most expensive lawyers circling to monetise this saga for all it is worth.

An interesting cast of characters claiming victimhood.

Victim No.1: Brittany Higgins

The young woman who claimed to have been raped is vilified at every turn. In what many see as fair after her (ongoing) ordeal, she walked away with a couple of million dollars on leaving her employment in the Commonwealth Parliament.

Victim No2: Bruce Lehrmann

Perhaps that is what is most concerning for the young man accused of raping the young woman. The sex, if it happened at all was so lousy that he claims it didn’t happen, so how come she walks away with millions while his ‘reputation’ is traduced while not actually being named. Seeing The Project interview his immediate response was that he recognised himself and so that was going to be worth millions for defamation of his character.

So far, it has netted him a few dollars too. Settlement with the ABC for broadcasting a National Press Club speech regarding The Project interview was $150,000, News Ltd for daring to publish a few words on this saga, $295,000, and the price for Chanel 7’s exclusive interview, free rent for a year in some very humble digs with coastal views near Sydney, golf in Tasmania, meals any normal person would take about a week to consume, expensive massages, recreational drugs and a bit of comfort from a prostitute or two. Rough tally so far, close on half a million dollars.

Is that enough to cover his mounting legal bills?

I wonder whether the ATO would see that as renumeration. The tax bill could take a fair slice of it.

Victim No.3: Shane Drumgold

In the meantime, there are of course the costs of the inquiry into the DPP handling of the case, again with a bit of skullduggery as the report was leaked to The Australian before being formally handed to the courts, not to mention lunches and numerous contacts with the press… nothing to see here though. The victim is sort of guilty of not having done a really good job in gathering and presenting evidence for the trial which was aborted.

Victim No.4: Linda Reynolds

And the minster involved has remortgaged her home to sue her ex-employee for damage to her ego over comments posted on social media despite having called Ms Higgins “a lying cow.” That case is currently before the courts in Western Australia.

Another sage awaits Mr Lehrmann as he faces more rape charges in Queensland in a couple of months’ time.

For five years this gravy train has been running. When will it stop, when will the dented egos be either panel beaten with a shit load of dollars back into shape or that evidence for a character to be defamed is insufficient for the purse strings to be loosened?

It will be interesting to see the verdict of this on Monday, as a price to repair the damaged goods is set or whether there actually was defamation of Mr Lehrmann’s character. Someone commented that should the court finds in Mr Lehrmann’s favour, the smallest denomination of Australian money is a 5-cent piece.

By Bert Hetebry

Truth be told, we really would like other people to be a little more like we are. We have a seemingly inherent bias for others to be like us; to think as we do, to live as we do, to behave as we do, to believe what we believe.  

We really are quite unaware of these biases, or discriminations, until we are confronted by them.

Normal behaviour and normal beliefs are those we grew up with, the values our parents and extended family espoused defined normal for us as we grew up and it is not until we were confronted by difference that we actually noticed that not everybody is like us. The ‘normal’ we grew up with was reinforced by decisions such as whether we were churched or not, the religion of our family and how strongly that was held, the schools we attended, whether they were public or private, whether it was for a higher standard of education or whether it was to confirm the ‘rightness’ of the faith the family held.

Those outside our definition of normal were seen as different, somehow less than us.

The important question which flows from this is how we deal with difference.

Each morning I try to walk on a nearby beach. Low tide is a particular favourite time as there is more beach and access to parts which are otherwise underwater or pummelled by incoming waves. And most mornings are met with greetings from other early morning beach walkers.

This morning I was greeted by a Christian lady who immediately started talking about the wonders her God presents for us to enjoy, the peacefulness of walking in a natural environment, to take in the freshness of the day. When questioned about her God she went into His judgement of people, how believers are ‘children of God’ (and all that implies for those who are not). She is heaven bound, apparently.

I raised with her the question about God condoning genocide, and it appears that it’s OK; those who are not God’s people are not protected by His laws. She is totally with Israel in their fight with the ‘terrorist’ Palestinians. There was an immediate reference to the October attack but using that as a defence against the continuing atrocity against those in Gaza and the West Bank.

I then asked her about marriage equality, is it OK for homosexuals to marry? Apparently not if they are God’s children, but if they were God’s children the question of their homosexuality would not arise.

The sense of separateness, exclusiveness, sanctimoniousness was palpable. If only people would listen to the Word of God and (probably) be just like her, the world would be a better place.

I have heard this time and again throughout my life. Intolerance masked by a sense of piety, a belief in one’s absolute rightness. From a Calvinist view, the belief that people are ‘elect of God’, chosen by God to be His. Or that Baptism marks one for life as one of God’s children. Or all sins are forgiven so long as one confesses and goes through the sanctions insisted by the priest, (how many ‘Hail Mary’s’ that one?) or to be circumcised on the eighth day after the boy was born, or whatever marking, visible or invisible is used to claim to be one of God’s people.

And so we have the question of who may teach our children, and it seems that the various religious bodies which control faith-based schools are adamant that they have the right, demand the right to be selective, discriminatory in choosing who should teach at their schools.

The right to discriminate, to reinforce the values of the religious body which operate the school.

How well has that gone in the past? Recently an expose of an elite school in Sydney where a teacher was employed despite it being known that he had been emailing female students, suggesting sex… threesomes, comments about genitalia... nothing to see here, he was going to teach at an all-boys school, so that stuff would not be an issue. I suppose he ‘ticked every box’ regarding religious orthodoxy.

Or when we reflect on the Royal Commission into child abuse, no red flags are raised about staff in any number of church-based organisations, schools included.

The screening of staff is necessary, standards need to be established, not based on some religious orthodoxy but rather on the teaching ability and interaction the teacher demonstrates with their students, that quality teaching becomes the criteria for employment. Not some difference which is demonstrated by adherence to a particular faith and how that difference becomes a basis for judgement and discrimination. But this of course will not be reflected in the way students are treated, especially those who are different… be it different colour of skin, different view on sexuality, different view of creation of evolution and so forth… of course it won’t, will it?

Why is there even a need for the right to discriminate? Have these educated people not learned anything from history? To entrench discrimination at the level of teacher is to entrench the orthodoxy which allows contempt for this who are different. Surely the differences which are in the communities we live in need to be reflected in everyday life, and that includes in the school environment. Otherwise we reinforce intolerance, we hide behind a veil of piety that allows for discrimination and judgement on people who do not conform to the rigidity of the orthodoxy of the school or its religious controlling body.

By Jane Salmon  

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Callen Sorensen Karklis  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Bert Hetebry

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

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

The genocide Stan Grant refers to is the decimation of indigenous populations through the time of European colonial expansion, beginning with Columbus leading the way into the Caribbean and Americas as Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French and British established plantations producing sugar and tobacco to satisfy growing demand in their homelands and establishing remote prisons either to use the convicts as cheap sources of labour or to place them far from home, to be out of sight and out of mind and if the prisoners wouldn’t work, kidnap people from Africa and enslave them to do the work.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It is not surprising that Palestinians are treated as contemptouosly as they are when they are clearly not defined as ‘God’s People’.

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

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

By Bert Hetebry  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Bert Hetebry  

Holidaying down at Busselton in the last week, enjoying time catching up with family and taking opportunity to walk for miles on the pristine beach.

Busselton is in the State parliamentary district of Vasse, one of the few Liberal held seats in the W.A. lower house. And there are plans afoot to build a wind farm 35km offshore.

Shock horror!

As I was strolling along, back to the jetty where hopefully the cafe would be open, I was asked whether I liked the view…  pointing to the horizon, a line separating the dark blue of the water and the lighter blue of the morning sky, I was assured that the plans to change that view with ugly wind turbine towers was going to happen…  the line would be interrupted by a series of wind turbines, 15 to 70km off shore at between Mandurah and Bunbury, the most southerly turbines about 70km north of where we were standing, in other words, the view he was extolling, which would only be ruined if you stood on the nearby newly constructed hotel of about six stories high, to see, on a good day, the most southerly of the 200 turbines, maybe, just the very top of the arc as the turbine rotated, but only using very powerful binoculars.

I asked the person apart from the view, what other concerns he had about the proposed plan. Killing of sea birds was one objection. The expense of the project, reliability of power supply were just some of the further objections he raised. The conversation flowed on to solar panels and their contribution to renewable energy, batteries and so forth, and again, negativity was the underlying sentiment of his responses. The short active life of solar panels and that they finish off in landfill, the unreliability of power generation, only while the sun is shining, batteries are not adequate to the task, and so on and on he rambled until I saw someone wandering down with a coffee cup in hand and begged off.

I was more than a little disturbed by the gentleman’s objections to renewable energies and sought a quick google to do casual fact check, and surprisingly, his fears appear to be unfounded.

Firstly, the impact of the turbines on birds, yes, it is agreed that some birds do get killed by the rotating turbine blades. Birds also fly into high rise glass towers and die, they even fly into my windows in the evening when lights are on inside and the glass doors are closed. And yes, it is not a good thing to see, but when we consider the area which the wind farm will occupy as a part of the ocean, the danger is minimal and will have been considered in the planning.

Secondly, the expense and reliability of getting the power to shore using underwater cables. Listening to the objection, I thought this may be the first time ever that this problem had been considered, that we were likely to electrocute the marine life, kill off the fish and endanger the lives of surfers and swimmers with electricity seeping into the ocean.

Thirdly, this is not new technology, the first offshore wind farm was constructed in 1991 and had an operational life of over 35 years, Denmark’s fishing industry has not collapsed due to fish stocks being electrocuted. Currently there are about 290 offshore wind farms operating around the world with 26 more under construction. China has the most offshore turbine capacity followed by United Kingdom, Germany and Vietnam.

Fourthly, longevity. Wind farms have a designed minimum operating life of 30 years and are about 90% recyclable or able to be repurposed after decommissioning.

Another objection raised was the recycling of solar panels, that they end up in landfill, creating more problems after their useful life.

Up to 95% of materials used in solar panels are recyclable and has become an important industry both here in Australia and wherever solar panels have become an important part of the power generating mix. Panels have a useful life of between 20 and 30 years and contain both easy to recycle components such as aluminium frames and glass, and other metals including copper and silver. The cost for recycling is around $20 per panel. So yes, it costs money to get rid of the old ones to replace them when they are no longer doing the job. But they no longer end in landfill.

I was told batteries won’t do the job in providing power when the sun isn’t shining, or the wind isn’t blowing. Tell that to my friend who recently installed solar panels and battery and uses that to power his new EV as well as his day-to-day power needs in his home and shed. Tell that to the people of South Australia who have batteries connected to the grid after the epic fail of several years ago. Or the bank of batteries coming online in the Kwinana hud south of Perth. But some people don’t want to know. they’d rather use… COAL was the answer given to my question when I asked another local. Not surprising really since the coal mining centre of Collie is nearby. I half expected nuclear as being the preferred option.

And the alternative offer by the federal opposition: Nuclear.

Time and again the leader of the opposition has tried to goad the Prime Minister on the election campaign to comment on reducing the cost of electricity, yet the proposition by the opposition is to build very expensive nuclear power plants and has now asked that the question should be put to the electorate as a plebiscite. Two questions actually, do we support Nuclear Power Station and would we like one in our back yard. I can just see the results of such a plebiscite, yes, absolutely need nuclear power, but heck no, not in my back yard.

Perhaps the opposition leader is still basking in the afterglow of having won the race debate, the defeat of the Voice Referendum, that he should be proposing a plebiscite on Nuclear Power. However, his comments regarding the Marriage Equality plebiscite are interesting, commenting that the ‘postal survey had worked, was appropriate for “fundamental change” to society, but should not be repeated. (Unless it is my idea?). I think a popular vote on what was a human rights issue – equality before the law – was a very bad idea.’

I would think that if the Marriage Equality plebiscite were, as he sates, a human rights issue, the law that was changed would have been one which denied a human right and therefore needed changing. Which then leads onto the proposed plebiscite to gain endorsement for a change to the law which would allow nuclear power plants to operate in Australia sometime in the next twenty years or so since that is how long it will take according to the various commentators on this topic, coal fired plants will have to keep operating and CO2 emissions will keep rising as renewable energy sources are rejected.

By Bert Hetebry

Cultures evolve, the lives we live today are different than the lives we used to live, very little remains of what used to be, but some people wish for the good old days, when we knew what was what… except of course that is illusionary.

So what is culture?

A quick Google search comes up with this definition from the Oxford Dictionary:

Culture is not fixed, but constantly changes, evolves, as communities and society change, evolve.

Last weekend Sydney hosted the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras which started as a small group of protestors formed to contribute to the international gay celebrations in 1978. The protests continued and more and more people were arrested but by April 1979 the NSW parliament repealed the legislation which allowed the arrests. About 3,000 people marched in an incident free parade in 1979, the first officially sanctioned Mardi Gras.

In 1972 a gay academic, George Duncan was murdered, the crime was thought to have been committed by undercover police but sparked calls for reform leading to a 1975 Act in the Federal Parliament making homosexual acts between consenting adults legal.

It took more than a decade, but eventually all states followed the Federal lead.

Interestingly, the crime homosexual men were charged with was ‘buggery’. There was no law to prohibit lesbians engaging in consensual sex.

Forty-two years later a plebiscite was held which overwhelmingly determined than gay and lesbian couples could legally marry, affording those couples the legal security that marriage affords.

The gossip pages of the 1960s and into the 70s included the law courts reports in the daily newspapers. Divorces were subjected to open court hearings where a ‘matrimonial offence’ needed to be proved for a divorce to be granted. Matrimonial offences included domestic violence and adultery, so the salacious details of martial shenanigans were headlined in the daily press.

Australia was not the only jurisdiction to have a ‘fault’ based divorce system, it was common throughout the world. The Irish actor Richard Harris was accused of adultery with a named person in 1969. He pleaded innocent to that charge, claiming he had not been adulterous with the named lady, but reputedly offered the court a list, several pages long of people he had engaged with adulterously.

Christian Nationalist in the USA want to return to a fault-based divorce where adultery or domestic violence needs to be proven before a divorce cab be granted.

Literature which featured adultery or other acts of questionable morality were banned up to the 1970s, including Ulysses by James Joyce, Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D H Lawrence and Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint.

Movies too have been in the censor’s sights since as early as 1912 where the concern was about the effects of such films on female audiences. Included were All Quiet on the Western Front, and films about bush ranging. The Blonde Captive from 1931 was banned being seen as prejudicial to Aboriginal Australians. Many films depicting sexual violence and child sexual abuse continue to be banned, but the creation of an R rating made many previously banned films available since the 1990s.

The music played on radio has for years been subjected to censor oversight. The song ‘Greased Lightening’ had the line ‘it ain’t no shit’ cut from radio airplay, but from the same film the Italian curse ‘fongool’ (tamest translation is Fuck You, a less tame translation refers to an annal version of Fuck You) from Look at me I’m Sandra Dee was somehow not as offensive. Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl was changed from Brown Skinned Girl. Loretta Lynn’s 1975 song The Pill was condemned for daring to discuss birth control. John Lennon’s Imagine was hated by religious groups for daring to imagine there is no heaven, The Stones’ Satisfaction was far too sexual for tender ears to hear, but 40 years after its initial release was OK to perform at the SuperBowl half time show in 2006 to rapturous applause. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is a drug anthem isn’t it?, so air play was banned on the BBC.

Abortions in the 1960s were illegal but available, the criminal sanctions which, dependent on the state or territory included life imprisonment. While abortion was common, before 1969:

“Women who had means could attend a skilled abortionist; otherwise they went to someone less skilled or tried to abort themselves.

The alternative was for the single young ladies to be sent away for a few months and return, without the child. A childless couple in our church had adopted a child born illegitimately. In fact the birth certificate was stamped with the designation “ILLEGITIMATE”.  There were special places for such births to occur in, one was a place called NGALA, others were majestic looking buildings set in manicured gardens, monasteries, where the unfortunate young ladies were cared for until the birthing, and sent home, as though nothing had happened, the child taken away to be sent to an adopting couple.

Despite numerous attempts at decriminalising abortion, it was not until 1998 that abortion could be legally performed in Western Australia, the first jurisdiction to allow it, but with restrictions. In September 2023 abortion was fully decriminalised for terminations up to 23 weeks’ gestation and after 23 weeks with the agreement of the patient’s primary practitioner and another practitioner.

Abortion is now legal in all states and territories, but that right was hard fought and as seen in the debate in the West Australian Parliament in 2023, very much a contested right.

Aboriginal recognition and rights, women’s rights including equal pay for equal work are targets to wind back the clock. even as recently demonstrated in the preselection for the replacement candidate in the seat of Cook. In nomination for a safe seat, women are overlooked. A woman needs to work harder to win her seat and work harder to retain it.

Across the spectrum we can define as culture, in my lifetime we have seen many changes, I have listed some, but it seems that there are many seeking political power who would like to wind back the clock a few decades or more. This is particularly apparent in the Liberal Party where far-right candidates are endorsed, candidates who will use their religion, their faith as a political weapon, with an agenda to reverse the freedoms and rights which have been won in my short lifetime.

I do believe that if a candidate is a Christian and sees that their commitment to their faith is to promote their values as policy, they should do so through a distinctly Christian political party. Their alternative, when confronted by legislation which they cannot support because of their faith but is legislation which their electorate supports, is to do what the then Premier of Western Australia did when it came to voting on the 1998 abortion bill which had the numbers to get up, he abstained. He could not in good conscious vote for the bill which was against his religious belief but could not be seen to be opposed to his electorate’s will. In some ways it was a bit of a cop out, but he found himself between a rock and a hard place and chose to absent himself at the time of the vote.

The new government in New Zealand seems to be actively winding back the clock, discriminating against the Maori population on matters of language and health provision and further for the wider population in repealing the laws which outlaw tobacco sales. Other rights will be threatened to in that case promote white supremacy. The acrimony of the Voice debate and subsequent defeat of the referendum indicates that the fear of recognising First Nations peoples and giving them a Constitutionally enshrined voice to Parliament is a bridge too far. Constantly the race card was thrown in that debate, not so much publicly but in private conversations there was repeated reference to their unsuitability to know how to be a good citizen. (I cannot quote the words but will stay on the polite see of criticism.)

The last bill Prime Minister Morrison brought before the house before the last election was a religious discrimination bill to protect Christians from discrimination where there is no religious discrimination except that which is perceived by the self-righteous, to allow them the right to vilify those who do not uphold the standards they find hard to uphold.

A recent discussion regarding the fear of sharing the female toilet with a trans person was interesting. The complainant was very vocal until asked how many trans people she knew. The number was none, so the fear was totally concocted, made up. as so many of the fears that are promoted to wind the clock back.

Culture evolves, it changes over time, but that change can go forward or backward, no gains made can be considered permanent, we need to be constantly vigilant to ensure that the rights we have in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are not threatened. These include civil and political rights, the right to life, liberty, free speech and privacy. It also includes economic, social and cultural rights. In other words, to be who we are, to believe what we believe, to not be vilified for who we may be, but to not vilify those we disagree with. The rights and freedoms we have, need to be the rights and freedoms we accord to others.

By Bert Hetebry  

A term I had not come across before but can cover a multitude of sins: Cognitive Bias.

Reading an article in the Guardian this morning, there was a report on an inquest into the death of a man who had died from perforated stomach ulcers a day after being sent home from a hospital visit. The reason a man died from perforated stomach ulcers was because he was misdiagnosed with cannaboid hyperemesis syndrome, in other words, he was thought to be high as a kite from smoking some quality hash. He was an Aboriginal man, and the doctor, explaining his misdiagnosis based his diagnosis on the first impression he had formed because “There is a lot of marijuana use in the community. It’s just pattern recognition.”

The seemingly never ending saga of the killing of young Aboriginal man, Kumanjayi Walker, now with the inquest into his death in its eighteenth month, probing yet again the cultural issues which led to the death of this troubled young man, shot by a police officer who was acquitted of murdering him, who now fronts the coronial inquest questioning the inherent racism which appeared to have been part of the police culture in Alice Springs at the time of the shooting. Some of the text messages presented to the court indicate that Aboriginal people were not respected by the police, racist slurs and crude descriptions were normal discourse it seemed, reducing First Nations people to be seen as less than human. A perception which then normalises physically violent and verbally abusive behaviour.

The incarceration rate of First Nations people is outrageous. At 30 June, 2023 Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander prisoners accounted for 33% of all prisoners throughout Australia but are less than 4% of the population. Does that mean that First Nations people are more criminal than the immigrants who have taken their land?

I cannot remember where I was when I heard this, I think I was in the car on my way to work several years ago, but the former Premier of Western Australia mentioned that when comparing traffic infringements, those detected remotely through speed cameras, First Nations drivers were less likely to be caught speeding on the various cameras spread throughout the road network, but were far more likely to be charged for some offence or other through a traffic stop. I mentioned this at the time to a young Aboriginal work mate who told me that when he removed the Aboriginal flag from his car he was not pulled over for a random breath test or a licence check just for being on the road as happened frequently when the flag was on display. Each time the car was checked over. tyres, lights, seat belts, everything was checked and too often some small thing was found which resulted in a fine and a compulsory vehicle check.

Police presence in areas with a high Aboriginal population is more visible than in the quiet parts of suburbia, leading to a sense of intimidation, that there is a constant surveillance that is not evident in other parts of the suburbs.

First Nations people are as a group, the most disadvantaged in Australia. A lack of opportunity for employment, too much time and not enough money entrench a sense of ‘not good enough’, and the depression which flows from that sense of worthlessness, a sense of helplessness and hopelessness.

Drug and alcohol abuse are endemic in such environments, not just within First Nations communities, but in all places where the ‘Shit Life Syndrome’ is evident. (The term was coined to describe post-industrial communities in Britain where the good, well-paying jobs had gone and the people who remained were left in a post-industrial wasteland with few job prospects and very little money besides government relief payments.)

None of this is new, in fact it has been going on for over 236 years. Cognitive Bias toward Aboriginal people has been the defining attitude, a looking down the nose at those who are deemed to be lesser beings than the immigrants who have taken over the land. And last year we missed an opportunity to correct some of the misconceptions that have so marked our attitude and behaviour toward Aboriginals. It seems that ‘we have all the answers… but they just don’t get it’.

Time after time, study after study, the answers are the same, build more jails, heavier policing, ban alcohol, take the kids away from dysfunctional communities, one suggestion was to ‘just stop them from breeding’.

But it seems that those who know it all are not really good at listening. At understanding the anger which intergenerational grief and dispossession has allowed to fester as another set of edicts is thrown down to settle the lawlessness of kids running riot and men inflicting violence against women in alcohol fueled rages, just bring in more police, heavily armed with tasers and guns to take care of it.

But can we find hope in this apparent hopelessness?

It seems that there are some optimistic voices, if those at the top of the tree will come down and really listen, engage in active listening, as Judy Atkinson outlined in a TED talk in 2017, ‘The value of deep listening – The Aboriginal gift to the nation.’

“There is an anger across this nation that we choose not to acknowledge.

It is an anger fuelled by racism, prejudice, discrimination and poverty. A distressed discontent that is growing, not just here but around the world. But under anger is always grief…

There is a truth in this country we must confront as we move into maturity. The grief of separation and loss, of shame, of pain, deep and unresolved. A woundedness that is much more more than the commemoration of the Anzacs and much more than the celebration partying and boozing that we have on Australia Day. This country is more than that. It has to be. It holds the trauma of many people across many generations. The Indigenous. The invaders. The immigrants. All seeking refuge from pained disorder that we humans are so good at creating in this world.

“It is time we started the work of deep listening. We, all together, the ‘I’s coming to ‘we’. Working with each other for transformation. Listening. Listening deeply to one another in contemplative reciprocal relationships, a mindfulness to the multiple stories in the lands we call home… Miriam-Rose (Ungunmerr-Baumann) said ‘Dadirri is the Aboriginal gift to this nation, a gift that we all have been waiting for. it is the gift of listening.’

“If you accept this gift, as a nation we can all grow together.”

(Julianne Shultz. The Idea of Australia Page 89.)

Gaza. Palestinians. Israel. Genocide. Taylor Swift? This odd cobbling of words is the extent celebrities make a mockery of serious conversation, even in such middle-brow outlets as Australia’s Radio National. Admittedly, it was breakfast, and the presenter a seasoned impressionist of journalism, but surely listeners did not have to know that Swift’s private jet had just arrived in Melbourne, making it an occasion of national significance?

Ground had already been tilled, and seeds scattered, by desperate academics keen to draw gold dust from the Swift worship machine at Melbourne’s Swiftposium 2024. Seriousness was not the order of the day and papers such as “Taylor Swift and the Nuremberg Effect on Teenage Girls” were never going to feature on any panels. Instead, it was an event to give academic circuitry – and sophistry – its deservedly bad name. “We thought we’d be having a small conference with 50 researchers in two rooms in our Faculty,” remarked Eloise Faichney, chair of the Swiftposium Steering Committee. “Then, when we ended up in publications like Rolling Stone and The Guardian, demand from the academic community to take part was like nothing I’ve ever seen before for an academic conference.” Faichney evidently knows little about the bandwagon effect of the academic scavenger, always engaged in a futile quest to find false novelty among the same bones of an argument.

And they were not the only ones. Members of the fourth estate, and many offshoots of that once revered profession, have fallen for the Swiftian rhetoric, be it in terms of the harmony effect or economic stimulus. Forget monetary or fiscal policy; get Swift to do a tour and she will add tens of millions of dollars to the country’s cash registers. Take, for instance, the following, near shameful selection of predicted returns, which the Australian historian, Humphrey McQueen, valuably gathers for us: the Australian Financial Review, A$140 million; the Daily Telegraph, A$130 million to New South Wales; the Herald-Sun, a staggering, fanciful A$1.2 billion for the state of Victoria alone.

A less noted fact is that the Swift phenomenon is costly, inflationary and exploitative. As The Daily Telegraph reported in January, airlines such as Virgin, Qantas and Jetstar were all cashing in on spiked prices, hoping to squeeze every little bit of cash from passengers, Swifties or otherwise. A one-way flight from Brisbane to Sydney with Jetstar would cost anywhere between A$399 to A$460 on the planned Sydney tour date on February 23, as compared to A$92 to A$123 the week prior. Hotels were hardly going to miss out either on the lucrative bonanza: the Marriott Sydney Harbour’s prices, for instance, rising from the pre-Swift level of $A589 to an unforgivable $A1039.

All of this served as the teaser for Swift’s mid-February arrival. Bulletins, even of such self-professed, serious news hounds as those at the twenty-four-hour ABC network, would furnish updates on the songstress’s movements. Every banal detail became significant, the fans worthy of top billing as interviewees.

Political maturity and cultivated disinterestedness also went out the window, expelled with glee. Here was a chance to get close to the phenomenon and cultivate voters – current and future – and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was not going to miss out. In an interview with Hit WA FM, he professed his delight and anticipation in attending one of Swift’s shows. “I am going to Tay Tay,” he sighed. In cringingly shallow fashion and for pure effect, he even suggested that opposition leader Peter Dutton might have a preference for the Canadian rock band Nickelback, a truly wicked contrast. “Or, the angry death metal stuff.” 

Newspapers such as The Guardian Australia even urged the PM to get with the Swift program, as her “ubiquity in a fragmented world might carry some broader lessons for a man with a more modest megaphone at his disposal.” She offers, for instance, lessons in collaboration. She had “used her fame to build a network of grassroots support that has its own power, energy and agency.” And, in case you were not listening, Mr Albanese, she offered a “sense of shared joy” instead of privileging conflict.

On the other side of this gushing sludge, the Swift phenomenon manifests as a brooding presence for reactionaries worried that her influence is clandestine and planned by a politburo central committee. Or, perhaps, the Pentagon. Steady yourself, warn the likes of Jesse Watters of Fox: he has evidence that “the Pentagon psychological-operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset.” In some GOP circles, the singer is a deeply embedded psyop with collusion from the NFL. The lunacy comes full circle and Swift is very happy to tease it, telling The Washington Post in 2022 that she, and her legion of fans, have “descended into color coding, numerology, word searches, elaborate hints, and Easter eggs.” Threatening stuff.

This Styrofoam performer, this master of magisterial vacuity, who is all machine, promotion and blare, has perfected the insubstantial, promoted a competent formula and boosted it. In some ways, she has the hallmarks of Tony Blair and the New Labour experiment: start solidly, proclaim a genre, an ideology – then subvert it, discarding most of it on the way. Sincerity evaporates in the heat of its confection. Her success lies in her ability – and that of the Swift dissemination army – to mobilise the image of Swift. Everything else is just costumery, flying private jets, victimising people who monitor her flight paths, and being given stock market advice by Daddy.

By Bert Hetebry  

A group of South Asian men arrived on our doorstep seeking shelter, seeking a place to be made welcome, seeking safety and security. We don’t know why they left their homelands, but they undertook a dangerous journey, finding their way from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India to Indonesia to board small, overcrowded boats and sail across to the northwest of Western Australia.

We don’t know what drove those men to leave their homelands, but to leave is never easy, the decisions usually are to escape one sort of tyranny or another, whether it be religious persecution or some other form of intolerance which is life threatening, racial difference, sexual orientation, or the consequences of natural disasters, but whatever the reason, they now find themselves on Nauru effectively imprisoned for an indeterminate period of time while various checks are made to determine who they are and whether their claim to seek asylum is legitimate, but are promised that they will never be settled in Australia.

They join a multitude of other stateless people, adrift in the uncertainty of having no home to go back to and no place for them to go to. According to the documentary film Human Flow made in 2017 by the Chinese artist and activist Ai WeiWei, about 68million people in search of a home, somewhere, anywhere as they have fled wars, famine, persecution and a life that the only certainty appeared to be death either through starvation or violence or imprisonment for daring to speak out on political differences. According to UNHCR that number has grown to over 110 million in 2023. That is about 1.375% of the world’s population are displaced for any number of reasons. (To make that number seem more real, that is more than 13 people out of every thousand, worldwide.)

Included in that number are internally displaced people who are not defined as refugees but have fled their homelands because of desertification due to climate change, flooding of regions to build dams to gain water security, rising sea levels or other environmental issues which have made the homelands uninhabitable.

These people, seeking somewhere to live are not criminal, they are not illegal, terms which seem to be flung around when defining refugees or asylum seekers, whether they arrive here by plane or boat. Many, according to the Australian Red Cross arrive here with a valid visa, as visitors, and then make claims for asylum. Neither is it illegal to enter a foreign country without visa, passport or other papers when seeking asylum. So the treatment of asylum seekers in Australia, effectively as criminals is not in accordance with the UN Declaration of Human Rights, to which we as a nation are signatories to. Article 14 affords the right to asylum in other countries from persecution.

We have politicised and effectively criminalised those who are some of the most desperate and disadvantaged people in the world and deny them the basic human rights as defined by that declaration which we are obliged to uphold.

And yes, we do have the right, in fact the obligation to confirm that the asylum seeker has a legitimate claim to asylum, and we can restrict their movements during the period of validating that claim. The wording of Article 14 stipulates that the right to seek and enjoy other countries asylum from persecution “may be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.” That does acknowledge that not all claims are legitimate and that at times criminals do try to get in ‘through the back door’, but the safeguards are there to ensure that those who are not legitimate refugees can be sanctioned, deported, returned to face justice from the place they have fled.

Listening to the political debate on refugees and asylum seekers, one could be forgiven for thinking that we have a severe problem.

We don’t.

The nations hosting the most refugees are Iran, Turkey, Germany, Pakistan, Uganda, Russian Federation, Poland, Bangladesh, Sudan, Ethiopia, Lebanon… and Australia does not even appear on that listing from stastista.com. Iran according to UNHCR for over 40 years has been host “to the largest and most protracted urban refugees in the world and has provided asylum to refugees for over four decades.” Iran currently hosts over 3.4million refugees and asylum seekers. The small nation of Lebanon, almost half a million refugees, many dating back to the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine/Israel.

Why are we afraid of showing some humanity? Fear of these strange, desperate people drives the political argument, but when I look at our history as a nation, we are an immigrant nation. Starting 236 years ago were undesirables from Britain, prisoners and their guards, followed by wave after wave of settlers and more convicts, after both world wars more immigrants seeking a new life away from wore torn Europe settled here, developing this nation to be at that time an essentially European nation but that changed in the 1970s when we welcomed people from all over the globe. After the Vietnam war we welcomed more boat people, Vietnamese escaping from the re-education camps of the winners of that conflict or the repression of those who had sided with the losing side, and with each successive wave of immigrants we saw new economies flourish, rather than being a burden on this country, these immigrants all have made great contributions to Australia, cultural diversity, new businesses, each wave adding to the economic and cultural development of Australia.

The reality is that each of us who does not claim First Nations status is an immigrant or can trace their ancestry to another country at the most ten generations ago, each of us have either arrived  as immigrants, leaving our birth countries, or our parents, grandparents or great grand parents did, for reasons not dissimilar to those who arrive here, whether through the airport carrying a visitor’s visa or through unofficial channels, arriving by boat at great risk to escape whatever the threats and dangers of their homelands.

Diane Armstrong in her book The Voyage of Their Life, records the lives of over five hundred people who arrived in Australia in 1948 on a poorly prepared, dangerously inadequate ship, the SS Derna, and interviewed many of them fifty years later, recording the lives they have created in their new country, many are success stories, business people who have made significant economic contributions, others in the social and political spheres, from people who settled in all parts of Australia, from Western Australia to Far North Queensland, in other words like any other immigrant, arriving, seeking a better life for themselves and the families they formed.

Why do we continue to look to newcomers with such fear, instead of going through the validation of their claims for asylum as refugees and welcoming them so they too can start a new life and contribute as so many have before them.