By 2353NM

Recently on The Political Sword, Ad astra discussed the nastiness of the conservatives that currently inhabit the halls of power in Canberra. Ad astra’s article gave a number of examples that demonstrated the point and you can read the article here rather than have me go over the fertile ground yet again.

To paraphrase a sacked host of an extremely popular BBC television program loosely based on cars when talking about their ‘tame‘ racing-driver; some say they reached a low with treatment of refugees, others might suggest that the blatant disregard of human rights was worse — all we know is that the government allowing these things to happen is morally bankrupt. How about we look at the claim of moral bankruptcy in the cold light of day. There are a host of examples that could be provided.

Example 1: Offshore detention

We’ll start with offshore detention. During August, The Guardian came into possession of over 2,000 claims of mistreatment and abuse perpetrated on refugees held at a Detention Centre on Nauru funded by the Australian government and staffed by contractors to the Australian government. A significant number of the subjects of the reports were children. The holding company currently contracted to provide management services to the offshore detention centres was recently bought out by Spanish interests and —

… has been warned by professors at Stanford Law School that its directors and employees risk prosecution under international law for supplying services to Australia’s camps on Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.
“Based on our examination of the facts, it is possible that individual officers at Ferrovial might be exposed to criminal liability for crimes against humanity under the Rome Statute,” said Diala Shamas, a clinical supervising attorney at the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic at Stanford Law School.

They will not be extending their contract arrangements.

Dutton seems to have no problem in continuing to justify the obscenity perpetrated on refugees immorally held on Manus Island in our name. Dutton’s response to the (embarrassing to the government) release of the documents was to downplay the seriousness of the accusations, suggesting ‘Most of this has been reported on before.’

While Dutton may be correct in his assertion that ‘asylum seekers are … setting themselves on fire, deliberately self-harming, or making false allegations of sexual assault in order to come to Australia’, it is beyond comprehension to believe that every one of the 2,000 reports originally authored by Save the Children (who had a contract with the government to provide humanitarian services on Nauru) was false or exaggerated. When challenged, Dutton doubled down on the insults telling 7.30‘s Leigh Sales : ‘I think the situation is that people have paid people smugglers for a migration outcome.’

Dutton is a proxy for all Australians. We pay him to represent our standards, traditions and moral standards when the Coalition government is dealing with immigration matters. So his (as well as the actions of immigration ministers back to the days of the Keating government) actions are the actions of all of us because we elect the government. The current prime minister and most of the country were disgusted with the reports of abuse that occurred to children at the Don Dale Centre in Darwin. Yet the same government sees no problems with similar claims coming from children that this country put on Nauru on indefinite detention. At least those at Don Dale had a date they would be released.

Example 2: Changes to the Racial Discrimination Act

Senator Bernardi is canvassing support for a private members’ bill that will allow for discrimination to others based on race. While it could be argued that someone else’s opinion could be considered to be risible, their religion, gender, race or ancestry is not a determining factor in why their opinion or statement is what it is. Nevertheless, Bernardi claims every Liberal Party Senator bar one has signed a petition supporting the change.

Clearly we should not ‘offend’ or ‘insult’ anyone. Bernardi wants to legalise it, while not allowing intimidation and humiliation. That would be a fine line.

That the law was felt necessary in the first place is a sad indictment of Australian society as it demonstrates that a number of Australians believed they could insult and offend people based on their religion, race or ancestry. It is even a greater stain on our society that politicians are now actively campaigning to allow it to reoccur.

Example 3: The same sex marriage plebiscite

Since the election of the current parliament, there has been a continual debate about the necessity for a $160million plebiscite to ask Australian voters if the government should legislate to allow same gender marriage.

Let’s get something out of the way first up — there is no need for anyone outside parliament to do anything to make ‘same sex marriage’ legal in Australia. The Howard government inserted the ‘man and woman’ clause into the Marriage Act in 2004. According to Howard at the time:

(It should) not over time be subject to redefinition or change by courts, it is something that ought to be expressed through the elected representatives of the country.

So why can’t the elected representatives of the country change the law now?

According to The Monthly’s political editor Sean Kelly:

For a start, Turnbull accepted the plebiscite as a condition of becoming prime minister. We will never know if this was unavoidable or if, given the choice between losing government under Abbott and accepting a free vote under Turnbull rather than a plebiscite, the Nationals and the conservatives would have backed a strong-willed Turnbull anyway. Certainly Turnbull’s negotiating hand within the Coalition has never been stronger than it was then. But the lure of power can be hard to resist, and at the time the compromise would have seemed like a small thing to give away.

At the end of August, Fairfax’s Matthew Knott suggested that the brutal reality is there will be no free vote on marriage equity, although more recently apparently there have been discussions to make the plebiscite ‘self-executing’ (if the plebiscite is successful, it doesn’t need a vote in Parliament to become law).

The morally bankrupt issue here isn’t who sleeps with whom in the marital bedroom, it is the double standard that allows one conservative prime minister to engineer a change to an act of parliament to ensure that Courts do not have the powers to change or redefine the participants in a marriage, and when it comes time to reassess the action some 12 years later, the same process is determined to be insufficient by another Conservative government to make a change should it be deemed necessary. Instead the country will be forced to the polls in an exercise expected to cost over $160million (while we have a federal budget expenses problem) solely to shore up the credentials of the current and immediate past prime minister in the eyes of his own side of politics. To add insult to our injury here, one of the talking points with the ‘self-executing’ option would be:

… that no taxpayer money be given to either side. That would delight the “yes” camp but anger conservatives, given the Australian Christian Lobby has asked for $15 million in public funds.

Given that some of the same people that want no change to the Marriage Act want to change the Racial Discrimination Act Section 18C to allow offence and insults, opposition leader Shorten’s comment that the plebiscite will be ‘a taxpayer-funded platform for homophobia’ is probably closer to the truth than Turnbull’s claim that ‘Australia is capable of having a respectful debate on same-sex marriage’.

Example 4: Political donations

Senator Sam Dastyari resigned from the ALP ‘front bench’ last Wednesday night over the acceptance of an amount of around $1600 from a Chinese company to repay excess travel claims as well as around $5000 from another Chinese company to settle a legal case. While Dastyari was apparently compliant with federal law as both amounts were declared, he may have been in breach of ALP policy. Either way, why a Senator who receives around $200,000 in salary per annum needs assistance to pay his expenses is a matter for concern.

While the Coalition was claiming that he must go immediately, Deputy Prime Minister Joyce was far less damning regarding his own future last Tuesday night on ABC’s 7.30 current affairs program when asked why he received and kept donations from Mining Magnate Gina Reinhart. Is it splitting hairs to be able to justify some donations while decrying others?

The initial claim here is that our government is morally bankrupt. Surely the government’s treatment of refugees, changing legislation to allow offence to be legal, generating the conditions that will ensure homophobic behaviour is considered fair and reasonable as well as the splitting of hairs around political donations demonstrates the point.

Members of parliament are our employees. It is time for us to tell our politicians that we expect morals, ethics and consideration of the rights of others (regardless of their gender, religion, ancestry or sexual preference) to be more important than political point scoring, looking after mates (who probably donate to re-election campaigns) and the smell of ministerial leather in Canberra.

Jobs and growth as well as 100 positive policies are useless to Australia without the moral and ethical background that is necessary to implement these policies equitably.