Tag Archives: John Howard

A ‘People’s vote’ on marriage equality: Abbott’s latest Truthiness phrase?

August 18, 2015
Written by: Kate M
15 Replies

Following last week’s cabinet discussion on marriage equality, Tony Abbott announced that:

“going into the next election, you’ll have the Labor Party which wants [marriage equality] to go to a Parliamentary vote and you’ve got the Coalition that wants it to go to a people’s vote”
(12 August 2015)

According to our Prime Minister, he is champion of the people’s will when it comes to marriage equality – offering a ‘people’s vote’ over a ‘politician’s vote’ dictated by what he calls ‘stalinist rules.’ Certainly sounds like a no-brainer. Who would pick Stalin over the good people of Aus? We do live in a democracy after all – not Stalinist Russia – we should get a say.

But is Abbott’s claim to be the people’s champion true – or is ‘people’s vote’ just the latest entry in the Truthiness dictionary. (In case you missed my earlier article on Abbott-speak, ‘Truthiness’ is something which feels true, but isn’t necessarily backed up by facts. Or truth.)

Is Abbott really trying to facilitate the possibility of an outcome that might go against his stated position against marriage equality? Or is he taking a leaf out of his favourite ex-Prime Minister, one Mr John Howard’s playbook. Let’s roll back the clocks and have a look.

Roll back the clocks to late January 1996 …

Aussies have just passed a summer rapping to Gangsta’s Paradise and singing along with Seal. Toy Story is one of the most popular movies. And more importantly – for our story at least – an election has just been called for March and one of the key election issues is whether or not Australia should become a republic.

The push for this change had been mounting for a while. As early as 1977, polling showed that 58% of Aussies accepted that we don’t need a Queen. By the early 90s, the republican movement had critical momentum. In 1993, Prime Minister Paul Keating created a ‘Republic Advisory Committee’ to look into what changes would be needed to the constitution for Australia to become a republic. The chosen chairperson for this committee was then banker and lawyer, one Mr Malcolm Turnbull – but that’s another story….

This brings us to January 1996, and by this point it was fairly clear that the cry to consider that Australia become a republic – much like the current cry for marriage equality – was not going away. With an election pending, the leader of the Liberal party at that time – staunch monarchist John Howard – was left with no choice but to put considering that Australia become a republic on the table for discussion. Not wanting to adopt becoming a republic as Liberal party policy, Howard instead promised that if elected, he would make Australia becoming a republic a people’s issue – it would go to a people’s convention, and then to a people’s vote via a referendum. (Sounding familiar?)

Roll forward to 1999 – and Australia becoming a republic is looking good

Following his election in March 1996, John Howard kept his pre-election promise, and set up a ‘people’s convention’ to consider whether Australia should look at becoming a republic, and if so, what that would look like. He said he didn’t want to rush this because after all, ‘things won’t really change too much’ and there are ‘more important things to focus on than a republic’.

So it’s not until early 1998 that the people’s convention meets and comes up with a number of different models for an Australian republic – which mainly focused around who would replace the current Governor General (the Queen’s representative in Australia).

Support for Australia to become a republic had not waned during the 90s. The following graph shows opinion poll results on the question of Australia becoming a republic from 1993 to shortly before the referendum in late 1999. The green line represents the percentage of people who were for Australia becoming a republic, and the red line is people who were against it.

Clearly the number of people who were pro-republic was materially higher than those against it. So how exactly did John Howard get the ‘people’s vote’ to go his way?

Tricky Howard divides and conquers

For Australia to become a republic, a referendum is needed to change the constitution. Howard clearly knew that a majority of Australians were pro-republic – so a simple vote as to whether or not Australia should become a republic was very very VERY unlikely to have gone the way he wanted it to. But like Abbott today, Howard never let a little thing like public opinion get in the way of him achieving his goals.

The key to reducing the ‘Yes’ vote was to divide and conquer. Simply put – those who were pro-republic didn’t all agree on which republican model Australia should adopt. The most popular model that came out of the people’s convention in 1998 was one where the public voted in a President to take the place of the Governor General. In fact, over 70% of Australians said that they were in favour of this model. A less popular model was one where the parliament voted for who was President (instead of regular Aussies).

And this was how Tricky Howard pulled a rabbit out of his monarchist’s hat – or should I say crown? He divided the pro-republic vote, by:

Combining the issue of whether or not Australia was to become a republic with the issue of what model should be used – asking only one question, and not two.
ONLY offering one republican model to the Australian people – and not the one that most people were in favour of. Instead he put forward the less popular model where politicians got to choose who the President was.

The actual referendum question put to Aussies was whether or not they approved of:

A proposed law: To alter the Constitution to establish the Commonwealth of Australia as a republic with the Queen and Governor-General being replaced by a President appointed by a two-thirds majority of the members of the Commonwealth Parliament.

Howard could have split this into two questions, asking first if people approved of Australia becoming a republic. And secondly, asking people which of two republic models they preferred (in the event that sufficient people voted yes in the previous question). But he didn’t do this.

By tying the question as to whether Australia became a republic to the less popular republican model, Howard all but guaranteed that the ‘Yes’ vote in favour of a republic would fail by dividing the pro-republic camp. And it worked. Instead of uniting against the ‘no-voters’, a portion of the ‘yes’ side switched camps, many under the mistaken belief that support for an Australian republic was so strong, that if the model they disapproved of was voted down, they would get another go at a vote for the model that they favoured.

And so the ‘no-vote’ – against Australia becoming a republic – triumphed. Howard’s divide and conquer strategy wasn’t the only reason of course – there were a number of others, including that the ‘no’ campaign utilised the popular campaign strategy of fear mongering – arguing that the republic would give even more power to politicians than they already had. In the words of the High Court Justice Michael Kirby:

“it was a belief that constitutional monarchy is a safer and more temperate form of government because it denies to political ambition the top office which such ambition commonly most prizes.” (Hon. Justice Michael Kirby, March 2000)

The vote for Australia to become a republic was defeated – 55 to 45.

And so tricky Howard, the staunch monarchist, was able to say that ‘good sense’ won out – that Australians had abandoned their desire for a republic, successfully hosing down the republic movement, which has been unable to gain any significant ground since then. Certainly it is not an issue that is commonly on the public agenda today.

Back to 2015, and Tricky Tony is facing his own battle on Marriage Equality

“From time immemorial in every culture that’s been known – marriage, or that kind of solemnised relationship, has been between a man and a woman.” (Tony Abbott, 23 October 2013)

This is not true of course – it’s another of Mr Abbott’s Truthiness phrases – but it does reflect Tony Abbott’s view on marriage equality. And just like Howard, he is faced with the fact that a clear majority of Australians don’t agree with him. In fact, according to regular polls which indicate that around 70% of Australians support marriage equality, an even greater proportion of Australians support marriage equality than did a republic.

So what is Tricky Tony to do? Well the two most honest options would be to:

Remember that he is the servant of the Australian people, our representative and not our ruler – and allow a ‘conscience vote’ permitting representatives in the LNP to vote in a way that represents their particular electorates. But if he did that, he’d risk not getting his way.
Come out strongly against marriage equality and seek confirmation from his LNP colleagues that this is their ongoing policy. Certainly based on last week’s party-room vote it seems that a majority of LNP representatives and senators do not support marriage equality – so he’d be likely to get backup in the party room for this. But if they did this, Abbot would risk Labor making this an election issue which might win them valuable votes – and let’s face it, he’s already looking pretty shaky.

Since neither of these options would lead to Abbott’s desired outcome on this issue, what he did instead was to ‘stack’ the party-room with National party imports, just to be doubly-sure that he had the numbers to stop marriage equality going to a conscience vote. But that wasn’t enough.

Abbott knows that he needs to neutralise marriage equality from becoming a problem for him at the next election – just as Howard did with the republican issue back in 1996. So Abbott, like Howard before him, has committed to putting this important issue to a people’s vote. And just like Howard, he has committed to do this in his next term of office – not straight away of course, but within three years of being elected. Just as Howard did.

According to Abbott, a vote for him is a vote for a people’s choice on marriage equality! Finally a story that is salable to the electorate and can potentially neutralise any advantage Labor has from its pro marriage equality policy.

But do we even need a people’s vote to introduce marriage equality?

No we don’t.

Unlike if Australia were to become a republic – which does require a referendum in order to change the constitution – a change to marriage laws doesn’t require a change to our constitution, and therefore doesn’t need to be put to a referendum (or plebiscite – which is essentially just a large opinion poll).

And people’s votes aren’t cheap – at least the way we do them currently. And while I’m all for people getting more involved in our democracy, at a cost in excess of $100 million, this is a HUGE expense, and will probably mean funding needs to be cut elsewhere.

Abbott could ask people what we think about marriage equality at the next election

We’re already going to the polls to vote at the next election. If Abbott is so committed to a people’s vote, he could put the question to us then. This would be a much cheaper and quicker way to give the people a vote on this issue than by undertaking a completely separate vote. But of course, according to Abbott, that would be distracting for us poor little voters. Apparently we’re unable to make more than one decision at a time.

Beware the politician bearing gifts – in this case a people’s vote

On the face of it, a people’s vote on marriage equality sounds like a good thing to do. But if Abbott is following Howard’s Playbook, then he will be looking for a way to divide and conquer on this question, just as Howard did with the republic. And if he succeeds at this – as Howard did with stopping the republic movement – at the end of the day, we’d be over a $100 million worse off, still not have marriage equality in place, and potentially set back the marriage equality movement for decades.

And so ‘People’s vote’ enters the Truthiness to English Dictionary

I’m calling it. The evidence is fairly conclusive – ‘People’s vote’ is a Truthiness phrase. When Abbott uses it, he makes it sound like he is supporting popular opinion on marriage equality, when all indications are that he is doing everything he can to make sure he gets his way on this issue.

I’ve provided the appropriate English translation below and it will shortly be entered into the official Truthiness to English dictionary as follows:

Truthiness: People’s Vote (as in ‘We’re going to put Marriage Equality to a People’s vote’)
English: Holding pattern – as in ‘I’m going to put Marriage Equality into a holding pattern until I can figure out how to make sure it doesn’t get through’

This article was first published on Progressive Conversation.

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Leadership, scandal, and the political process

July 28, 2015
Written by: Kaye Lee
23 Replies

When sitting Liberal Prime Minister John Howard lost his seat in the 2007 Federal election, three people raised their hand for the leadership of the party the next day. By Wednesday, one of them, Tony Abbott, had withdrawn due to lack of numbers, leaving Brendan Nelson and Malcolm Turnbull to contest the leadership ballot the next day.

That night, November 28 2007, Abbott appeared on Lateline with Tony Jones.

He blamed, in part, his close relationship with John Howard as a reason he did not have support for the leadership.

“I think it is true just at the moment, the Party thinks that it is important to move on from the Howard era. And I obviously have always been very closely associated with John Howard. I think history will judge him very well. But just at the moment, the Party is devastated understandably by the loss and wants to distance itself from the recent past.”

But Tony said he had “staked a claim”.

TONY ABBOTT: This time does not suit me. Who knows what the future might hold…. I’m certainly not guaranteeing that I won’t in the future challenge for the leadership.

TONY JONES: You mean during the next term? Because, we know what conservative governments in defeat were like in Britain: revolving doors for leaders.

TONY ABBOTT: And let us hope that that doesn’t happen to this conservative opposition.

Brendan Nelson won the leadership ballot. Less than 10 months later, he was rolled by Malcolm Turnbull. Fifteen months on, Turnbull was rolled by Abbott.

Jones went on to ask Abbott about Turnbull’s proposed ‘symbolic changes’: “an Australian Republic, sorry to the stolen generation, ratify Kyoto, he is sympathetic to the gay agenda and he now rejects WorkChoices outright.”

When asked if he accepted the symbolism of saying sorry to Indigenous Australians, Abbott replied

“Look, I think John Howard successfully moved us beyond that. And frankly, if Kevin Rudd wants to get into that quagmire, I think he is making a big mistake.”

Tony had just attended a lunch at the Lodge, the last hosted by Howard for his government colleagues. When asked why Peter Costello and his wife were not at the lunch, he had no answer.

Jones then asked about Howard’s state of mind, did he think the loss was his fault.

“He knows that there were many decisions that he made in the last term that will inevitably be called into question. And maybe he got some of those calls wrong… I think that he has come to the conclusion that it wasn’t really him. It was the fact that the government was 11.5 years old.”

They then went on to discuss one of the lowest examples of Liberal gutter politics, something that derailed the dying days of the Howard campaign – the Lindsay pamphlet scandal.

Liberal Party volunteers, including the husbands of retiring member Jackie Kelly and Liberal candidate Karen Chijoff, distributed fake election pamphlets alleged to have been printed at taxpayers’ expense in Kelly’s office in the western suburbs seat of Lindsay. Knowledge of the stunt allegedly went right up the chain to the state executive.

The pamphlet claimed to be from “The Islamic Australia Federation”, a non-existent organisation. It strongly urged support for the Labor party in the upcoming federal election and went on to praise the ALP on a number of divisive issues, including:

[forgiving] our Muslim brothers who have been unjustly sentenced to death for the Bali bombings, referring to the Labor party’s opposition to the death penalty (in particular Robert McClelland’s comments) and the Liberals’ argument that this policy supports the Bali bombers themselves
Supporting the construction of a new mosque, as well as the opening of a new mosque in St Marys with the help of local and state government funding
Support for controversial former Grand Mufti Sheik Taj El-Din Hilaly (spelt “Al-Hilaly”)

The pamphlet also misspelt Allahu Akbar as “Ala Akba”, with the ALP logo on either side. The logo used was an obsolete one that had been retired after the previous election in 2004. There was also no authorising statement, which all political advertising is required to include.

Interestingly, it was Luke Foley, current NSW Labor leader who was then assistant secretary of the ALP, who, acting on a tip off from an anonymous member of the Liberal Party, organised a sting operation which caught the miscreants red-handed.

Jackie Kelly, who Abbott described as “my best friend in the Parliament”, spoke about it on radio on 22 November in spite of a party directive not to do so. She said her first instinct when she saw the pamphlet was to laugh because it was a parody of some things that had occurred during the election campaign and compared it to a prank by the satirical comedy team The Chaser.

“When I first read it I had to laugh … pretty much everyone who has read (it) chuckles, in terms of the parody it does make of various things that have happened during the campaign. My view is that it’s a bit of Chaser-style prank.”

The police disagreed and five men were charged with distribution of unauthorised electoral material resulting in three of them being issued with small fines.

Abbott admitted he had spoken to Kelly before she gave what was described as the worst interview ever done by a member of parliament and there was some suggestion that the Chaser defence had been his idea.

The Sydney-based chairman of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, Ikebal Patel, said falsification of election material created a further rift between mainstream community and Muslims. The Mufti of Australia, Fehmi Naji, said “When people read stuff like that, they say ‘why are we putting up with Muslims?’ We want to stop that thought, and show that we can live together and carry out our duty to our country together.”

Whipping up fear about Muslims is not a new sport for the Liberals.

The Lateline interview concluded with Jones thanking Abbott.

TONY JONES: Tony Abbott, we thank you once again. A hard day at the office. I’ve got to say, you always come in on hard days – some of the hardest days – to talk about it. That is one thing to be admired about you and we thank you very much for coming in once again.

TONY ABBOTT: Part of the political process and democratic accountability, Tony.

Sadly, under a Credlin led government, democratic accountability is no longer part of the political process.

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Fool me once…

June 26, 2015
Written by: Kaye Lee
22 Replies

Watching the Abbott government is like watching the rerun of a movie with the same script but worse actors.

Consider Howard in 2001 as he approached an election. The government had performed very badly in opinion polls and a series of by-elections throughout 2001, largely due to a slump in the dollar and loss of business confidence.

In late August, a Norwegian ship, the MV Tampa, picked up 440 stranded asylum-seekers when their boat sank in the Indian Ocean. The Tampa planned to bring the boat people to Australia in accordance with their wishes, but the Howard government refused to allow the ship access to an Australian port. The issue of border protection gained strong prominence, as unauthorised migration had been increasing for some years.

The former second-in-command of the SAS counter-terrorism squad, Labor MP Peter Tinley, said sending SAS troops in to deal with the Tampa was a complete overreaction.

“I can’t help but feel the PM John Howard viewed the SAS as something that would resonate politically to the message of border security,” he said. “You can’t amp it up more in the public’s mind than saying ‘We’re going to send in the SAS, we’ll show you how tough we are on border security’.”

The former head of Military Public Affairs, Brigadier Gary Bornholt, says the asylum seekers on board were never a threat to Australia.

“In Defence it wasn’t a big deal, because these numbers of people were very, very small and that’s why they didn’t represent a security threat,” he said.

This was followed by public allegations by Howard government ministers in October 2001, in the lead-up to a federal election, that seafaring asylum seekers had thrown children overboard in a presumed ploy to secure rescue and passage to Australia.

The Australian Senate Select Committee for an inquiry into a certain maritime incident later found that no children had been at risk of being thrown overboard and that the government had known this prior to the election. The government was criticised for misleading the public and cynically “(exploiting) voters’ fears of a wave of illegal immigrants by demonising asylum-seekers”.

Although reports indicated that the strain of being towed was the proximate cause of the asylum seeker boat eventually sinking, in 2007, John Howard asserted that the asylum seekers “irresponsibly sank the damn boat, which put their children in the water”.

The government’s handling of this and other events involving unauthorised arrivals worked to its advantage. The Tampa affair had led the government to adopt stricter border protection measures to prevent unauthorised arrivals from reaching Australia by boat. Polls indicated the measures had public support. The government was able to portray itself as “strong” on border protection measures and its opponents as “weak”.

When it came to information made public by the Defence Department, former head of publicity Jenny McKenry revealed details were carefully filtered.

“We were told that there was to be nothing in the public forum which would humanise these people. We were quite stunned,” she said.

In addition, on 11 September, the Al-Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon thrust national security to the forefront of the election campaign. Howard, who was in Washington at the time, immediately committed to unqualified support for George W. Bush.

”Certainly, being on the spot had a powerful effect on me. I knew how shocked and bewildered the Americans were, although everybody was very calm. Everybody understood that this was a game-changer.”

The day after the attack Howard flew back to Australia with US Ambassador Tom Schieffer on Air Force Two, the Vice President’s aircraft, which had been made available to him. After a telephone conversation with his Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, while “high above the Pacific Ocean”, Howard informed Schieffer that, for the first time in 50 years, the ANZUS Treaty would be invoked. In America’s hour of need Australia would not stand idly by. Shortly after, President Bush announced the War on Terror and signalled that a war with Afghanistan was not far off.

The “legally nonsensical” – to use Robert Garran’s phrase – but symbolically rich decision to invoke the ANZUS Treaty resembled more a romantic, feudal oath of fealty than a coolly considered diplomatic act. From that moment until the present day, during the war on Afghanistan, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and now the fight against IS, Australia would prove itself to be the most impeccably faithful ally of the US in the War on Terror.

According to the US National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice, Australia “clamoured”, as it turned out successfully, to be invited to participate in the invasion force. The moment John Howard had been waiting for during his entire political life had finally arrived.

Canberra bombarded us with tales of Iraq’s vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction; Iraq’s well-developed nuclear plans; Saddam’s links with Osama bin Laden; the Saddam–Hitler analogy; the irrelevance of the UN; the perfidy of the French; the futility of weapons inspections.

The immediate reaction in the polls included a record high approval rating for a Liberal prime minister and overwhelming support for committing Australian troops to Afghanistan – a fact that did not slip by Tony Abbott who was himself in danger of losing his seat of Warringah to a very good independent in the upcoming election.

Fears of terrorism were mixed in with the asylum seeker debate – a ploy criticised by the retired Commander of Australian Theatre with the Navy, Vice Admiral Chris Ritchie.

“It seemed to me to be a funny way to get to Australia if you were a terrorist. There are other easier ways to get into Australia than spend six months in Nauru,” he said.

The polls turned around considerably by election day on November 10, 2001 and the Howard government won a third term convincingly.

Ironically, at the time, the Australian Wheat Board was paying bribes to the Iraqi government. The Howard government either knew what was happening and is covering it up or was guilty of culpable negligence and incompetence.

Abbott’s script is identical even though his backdrops are flashier (or is that flaggier), even down to begging to be the first to go fight and a disturbing willingness to hand over money to corrupt regimes. I can only hope that Abbott’s rerun gets panned by the critics and that voters walk out on his theatre of terror. Fool me once….

To paraphrase our Prime Minister for fear and loathing:

The voters are coming for the government with a simple message: we will not “submit”. You can’t negotiate with a government like this. You can only fight it.

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Complaint against John Howard to the International Criminal Court

January 11, 2015
Written by: The AIM Network
64 Replies

Australia’s former Prime Minister John Howard has been accused of war crimes before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

A document titled Complaint against John Howard to the International Criminal Court has been sent to The AIMN by a member of the SEARCH Foundation – an on-line copy of the document can be found here. Permission has been given by one of the authors to reproduce the document, but due to its length (75 pages) we have reproduced a summary.

Early in 2012 the Committee of the SEARCH Foundation resolved to submit a complaint to the International Criminal Court (the ICC) in The Hague, Netherlands, against John Howard, former Prime Minister of Australia, for his decision to send Australian forces to invade and wage war against Iraq.

The ICC is a permanent international tribunal to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and for the crime of aggression. The Court was set up through the Stature of Rome which was drafted and signed on 17 July 1998, and came into force on 1 July, 2002.

Australia signed the Statute on 9 December 1998, ratified it on July 1 2002, so as to be bound as from 1 September 2002.

Article 17 of the Statute, which deals with ‘Issues of admissibility’ prescribes that every step of the domestic jurisdiction of a country be exhausted before the Court may take jurisdiction over a complaint.

The SEARCH Foundation believes that it has satisfied the preconditions for admissibility.

Here are the steps taken

On 16 March 2012 the Search Foundation sent complaint to Commissioner Tony Negus APM, the head of the Australian Federal Police. The complaint is substantially the same as the one which would be sent to the Court. As far as the domestic jurisdiction is concerned, the complaint was based on Mr Howard’s violation of Division 268 of the Australian Criminal Code Act 1995. That Division ‘received’ the substance of Article 6: Genocide; Article 7: Crimes against humanity, and Article 8: War crimes, as contained in the Statute of Rome.

The Office of the AFP Commissioner replied to the effect that the complaint had been sent ‘for assessment’ and the subsequent response concluded that:

. . . An assessment by the AFP Legal Branch, of the information you have supplied, does not disclose an offence against Division 268 of the Code, and therefore the matters raised cannot be investigated by the AFP. You may wish to seek further independent legal advice to clarify this.

The SEARCH Foundation took time to reconsider the matter, to seek further legal advice, and resolved to submit a similar complaint to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.

The complaint was sent on 9 May 2013 to Mr Robert Bromwich SC, Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions.

The reply contained the following:

. . . The CDPP has considered the material you have provided and will not initiate a prosecution of Mr Howard based on this material. The material is not a brief of evidence, containing admissible evidence against Mr Howard. I also note that the allegations set out in your letter do not appear to fall within the terms of any offence contained in Division 268 of the Criminal Code.

The SEARCH Foundation resolved that as all avenues of domestic jurisdiction having been attempted without success, time had come to approach the International Criminal Court.

The complaint

I have the honour hereby to file with you and your office the Complaint against Mr John Winston Howard, former Prime Minister of Australia, who is responsible for sending Australian military personnel into war, and into waters of, the Republic of Iraq, pursuant to a 17 March 2003 decision of the Australian Cabinet to join in the invasion of the Republic of Iraq.

As a result of this decision, I believe that offenses were committed, and that these offenses are punishable under Article 6 Genocide, Article 7 Crimes against Humanity, and Article 8 War Crimes of the Rome Statute.

I ask you initiate an investigation under Article 15, with a view to issuing a warrant of arrest for Mr John Winston Howard.

Australia’s ratification of the Rome Statute came into force on 1 September 2002, and these crimes were committed after that date. The offenses we enumerate are most serious.

On 16 March 2012, our organisation made a complaint in these same terms to both the Australian Federal Police, which is the primary agency responsible for investigating breaches of the Commonwealth Criminal Code 1995 which was amended to implement Australia’s ratification of the Rome Statute i.e. Chapter 8 – Offences against humanity and related offences, Division 268 – ‘Genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes against the administration of the justice of the International Criminal Court’. That Division of the Code ‘receives’ the provisions of the Rome Statute of 1998, as amended.

On 23 March 2012, the Office of the Australian Federal Police Commissioner acknowledged receipt of our complaint and on May 3 2012, the AFP Operations Coordination Centre stated that our information did not disclose an offence against Division 268 and so declined to investigate.

On 9 May 2013, after consulting with many lawyers about how to proceed, we sent our complaint to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), the other agency which can consider a prosecution under Division 268.

On 18 June 2013, the DPP replied that it would not initiate a prosecution of Mr Howard, noting that information provided was not a ‘brief of evidence’ and that the allegations we made did not appear to fall within the terms of any offence under Division 268.

Under Article 17(b) of the Rome Statute, the Prosecutor cannot investigate if:

“The case has been investigated by a State which has jurisdiction over it and the State has decided not to prosecute the person concerned, unless the decision resulted from the unwillingness or inability of the State genuinely to prosecute . . . “

However, we have demonstrated that the Australian State has not investigated this complaint. We argue that this is because the Australian State is unwilling to prosecute a former Prime Minister, since it is very clear to us that the invasion of Iraq directly produce breaches of Articles 6, 7 and 8 of the Rome Statute, as we set out below.

Therefore we consider that this complaint is open to your investigation under Article 17.

(A brief summary of) The Facts

On 11 September 2001 Mr Howard was in Washington DC. USA, on a state visit while the terrorists on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon were taking place. The day after the attacks he is reported as having declared support for the USA in retaliation: “We will help them. We will support actions they take to properly retaliate in relation to these acts of bastardry against their citizens and against what they stand for”.

Five days later the Australian Government, with the support of the Opposition Labor Party, passed a motion in the Australian Parliament invoking the ANZUS military alliance with the United States on the ground that the criminal actions of Al Qaeda, the terrorist organisation responsible for the attacks of 11 September 2001, were the equivalent to a state “attack on the United States”.

. . .

In January 2002 Mr. Howard was in Washington and endorsed former President George W. Bush’s State of the Union speech, in which the President labelled Iran, North Korea and Iraq as an “axis of evil”, on the grounds that the three countries possessed “weapons of mass destruction” (WMDs).

In June 2002 Mr. Howard returned to Washington to declare support for the Bush doctrine of “pre-emptive strike”, a doctrine which repudiated the entire framework of post-second world war international relations and asserted that the United States had the right to attack any country it deemed a threat.

. . .

On 17 September 2002 Mr. Howard presented the ONA report to Parliament and asserted that, unless Iraq was “disarmed”, its weapons of mass destruction would pose “a direct, undeniable and lethal threat to Australia and its people.”

. . .

On 26 February 2003 forty-three Australian international law experts publicly warned that:

“The weak and ambiguous evidence presented to the international community by the U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, to justify a pre-emptive strike underlines the practical danger of a doctrine of pre-emption. A principle of pre-emption would allow national agendas completely to destroy the system of collective security contained in Chapter Seven of the UN Charter and return us to the pre-1945 era, where might equalled right.”

They further warned that:

“The International Criminal Court now has jurisdiction over war crimes and crimes against humanity … It attributes criminal responsibility to individuals responsible for planning military action that violates international humanitarian law and those who carried it out. It specifically extends criminal liability to heads of state, leaders of governments, parliamentarians, government officials and military personnel.”

The Australian Government, led by Mr. Howard, defied legal opinion. Parliament was adjourned on 8 March 2003. In the late hours of 17 March 2003, Mr. Howard and his Cabinet voted to authorise Australian air, land and naval personnel to attack Iraq. US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage made an official request for the involvement of Australian troops late on the night of March 20. It later became known that Australian special operations troops, with Cabinet authorisation, had entered Iraq as much as 30 hours before the outbreak of war.

. . .

The House of Representatives Official Hansard records later that day, at 2.03pm, that Prime Minister Howard moved a resolution asking parliament to support the Cabinet decision. The record reads in part:

“This morning I announced that Australia had joined a coalition, led by the United States, which intends to disarm Iraq of its prohibited weapons of mass destruction.”

The ‘facts’ – and they are comprehensive with links provided to the ‘evidence’ – continue for over a dozen pages and conclude with:

As a result of the 20 March 2003 invasion of Iraq, there have been at least 105,439 – 115,149 civilians killed, and the Wikileaks war logs suggest a further 13,750, according to Iraq Body Count.

Nature of the complaint

The establishment of a permanent International Criminal Court with the capacity to investigate and prosecute genocide, the crime of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity, was a long standing human rights and foreign policy objective of the Australian Government.

The Commonwealth of Australia signed the Rome Statute, establishing the International Criminal Court ‘the I.C.C.’, on 9 December 1998. It deposited its instrument of ratification on 1 July 2002.

Australia’s instrument of ratification includes a declaration affirming the primacy of Australia’s criminal jurisdiction in relation to crimes within the jurisdiction of the Court. It outlines the conditions under which a person in Australian custody or control would be surrendered to the Court and clarifies Australia’s interpretation of the crimes within the Statute. The declaration has full effect in Australian law and is not a reservation. It reinforces safeguards already built into the Statute to preserve Australian sovereignty over its criminal jurisdiction.

The provisions of the Rome Statute have been ‘received’ into Australian domestic legislation, which must be read in a way consistent with that Statute; and that includes the provisions of the Commonwealth Criminal Code Act [No. 12 of] 1995, particularly those of Chapter 8 – Offences against humanity and related offences, Division 268 – Genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and crimes against the administration of the justice of the International Criminal Court.

The provisions referred to hereafter are, in order of their appearance in this complaint, reproduced seriatim in ANNEX 26.

By the operation of Art. 12 (1) Australia has accepted the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

The Accused is a subject of the Commonwealth of Australia.

The Accused’s criminal policy and practice could be characterised as an “act of aggression”, the “supreme international crime” as early defined by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg” (hereafter IMT), and thus in violation of the United Nations Charter’s Art. 2 (3) which prescribes the use of peaceful means to settle international disputes between Members, Art.2 (4) which proscribes the use of force against sovereign states, Art. 33 which sets down the duty to exhaust peaceful settlement of disputes and Art. 39 which states that the power to determine threats to peace or acts of aggression rests with the Security Council. [ANNEX 26]

The Accused knew or was in a position to know that no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq.

The Accused had no legal justification to participate in the “coalition of the willing” in a war against Iraq under Security Council Resolution 1441, because that Resolution could not “reasonably be interpreted [as the Davids Commission found] as authorising individual member states to use military force against Iraq to comply with the Security Council’s Resolutions.”

The Accused rendered himself liable of endangering the international peace and security of the people of Iraq by causing the death of untold numbers of Iraqi people, by authorising the destruction, burning and looting of priceless historical treasures including those of two ancient civilisations which are the common inheritance of entire humanity.

The Accused is responsible for:

acts of aggression, as defined in United Nations G. A. Res. 3314, Art. 1 (1974),
breaches of international humanitarian law and human rights,
crimes against peace, as defined in Art. 6(a) of the Charter of the IMT at Nuremberg and Art. 16 of the Draft Code of Crimes Against the Peace and Security of Mankind (1996),
war crimes, as defined in Art. 6 (b) of the Charter of the IMT at Nuremberg and in Art. 8 of the I.C.C. Statute,
crimes against humanity, as defined in Art. 6(c) of the Charter of the IMT at Nuremberg and Art. 7 of the I.C.C. Statute,
crimes against Prisoners of War, including acts in contravention of the Article 8, and against the Convention against Torture, and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984) and Arts. 13 and 14 of the Geneva Conventions Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War (1949), and their 1977 Protocols,
crimes against civilians in contravention of Article 7 and Article 8, including the targeting of civilian populations and civilian infrastructure such as markets and residential areas, causing extensive destruction of property not justified by military objectives, using cluster bombs, using depleted uranium weapons; and acting in violation of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (1949) and the relative Protocol 1, Art. 54 on the protection of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, and Art. 55 on protection of the natural environment.

The International Criminal Court has jurisdiction. Subject to any other ground that you may find in the course of your investigation, the Accused is responsible for flagrant, repeated and longstanding violation of the provisions of the I.C.C. Statute Arts. 5 (a) (b), (c) and (d), Article 6 (a), (b), (c), Article 7 (d), (i), (j), (k), and Article 8.

Request

I respectfully request that you as the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court initiate an investigation with a view to issuing a warrant of arrest for Mr. John Winston Howard, on the basis of the information that I have provided and which is in my view sufficient for that purpose.

At the time of publication of the document – August 2014 – there had not yet been a response.

Related articles:

Could John Howard be citizen-arrested for his role in the Iraq war? (The Guardian)

Howard is war criminal, says former colleague (The Sydney Morning Herald)

Howard accused of war crimes over Iraq troop deployment (The ABC)

John Howard’s Iraq War Fantasy (New Matilda)

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How about some other political witch hunts, Mr Abbott?

September 11, 2014
Written by: Michael Taylor
24 Replies

Tony Abbott promised to do many things if the LNP won the 2013 election. One of these, which was no doubt driven by populism and not policy (like everything else), was his promise to hold a judicial inquiry into Julia Gillard’s actions as a lawyer. He hammered this issue relentlessly during the campaign. Not content to simply ‘ditch the witch’ he wanted to conduct a political witch hunt of his own into irrelevant matters that were played out almost twenty years ago; matters that meant absolutely zero to the country. Most of us know of course that those matters mean absolutely zero in this present day as well, but that’s another story. Twenty years later, on this irrelevant issue:

Mr Abbott insisted again that Ms Gillard had committed a crime in her role of providing legal advice to incorporate an association for her then boyfriend and Australian Workers Union Victoria state secretary Bruce Wilson.

Abbott had no doubt been buoyed by poll after poll showing that voters questioned Ms Gillard’s explanation of the matter, hence his race towards tacky populism.

He of course ran the risk of being exposed as an utter fraud if the judicial inquiry turned up nothing to support his favoured exercise of fear and smear. But it would never deter him from practicing current day populism. History now shows – or is presently being played out – that the inquiry has turned into a ‘monumental failure’, as reported by Peter Wicks. It joins Abbott’s ‘own goal’ with his farcical Royal Commission into what he shrilly keeps calling the ‘pink batts fiasco’. He loves the smell of blood.

Given that he is keen to exert his time and money on judicial inquiries – witch hunts – I have a mere handful of instances of where he might want to hold witch hunts on whose episodes are more recent than Julia Gillard’s alleged criminal behaviour 20 years ago and whose outcomes would certainly be of national interest.

Below are some of the witch hunts Mr Abbott should take the time to pursue (as the man displays an obvious fetish with them). Long-term readers might recognise that I have raised these before, but given that witch hunts have been dominating the news over the last few days, raising them – and the manner in which they were quickly and conveniently swept under the carpet – further show that the current witch hunts are nothing but political opportunism.

So, Mr Abbott, what about these?

Our illegal war

Please take a look at John Howard’s lie that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. We entered into an illegal war based on that lie. We ordinary Australians are more interested in the lie that cost this country billions of dollars and the thrashing of our national pride. We, as a country, are still shadowed by that war, whereas Ms Gillard’s alleged actions were almost 20 years ago. Let’s have some priority.

AWB

The AWB Oil-for-Wheat Scandal refers to the payment of kickbacks to the regime of Saddam Hussein in contravention of the United Nations Oil-for-Food Humanitarian Program. AWB Limited is a major grain marketing organisation based in Australia. For much of the twentieth and early 21st century, it was an Australian Government entity operating a single desk regime over Australian wheat, meaning it alone could export Australian wheat, which it paid a single price for. In the mid-2000s, it was found to have been, through middlemen, paying kickbacks to the regime of Saddam Hussein in exchange for lucrative wheat contracts. This was in direct contradiction of United Nations Sanctions, and of Australian law. Mr Abbott, please take a look into how the Howard Government – of which you were a member – were entangled in this reprehensible act. Please also ask your former Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, who knew ‘nothing’ of the affair, if it is true that his staff removed 11 wheelie bins filled with shredded documents from his office the morning after losing the 2007 election. Perhaps you could put an end to the rumour that circulated Canberra about the contents of those mysterious bins.

Dodgy deals – Malcolm Turnbull

Mr Abbott, do you remember this?

In a speech that Mr Turnbull gave in Perth it was reported he “ … decried the state of political discourse in Australia, saying it had deteriorated to such an extent that the nation suffered “a deficit of trust” and there was an urgent need for honesty in politics.”

Despite all that preaching he then refused to answer a number of questions in relation to a grant he gave when he was Environment Minister in the Howard government to his friend Matt Handbury. Mr Hanbury, co-founder of the Australian Rain Corporation and nephew of the News Corporation chief, Rupert Murdoch, you might recall, contributed to Mr Turnbull’s electorate fund-raising machine (which was set up in 2007).

Mr Abbott, do you remember Mr Handbury’s company receiving a $10 million grant from Mr Turnbull when he was Environment Minister not long before the 2007 election? $10 million of tax payer’s money.

A witch hunt may jog your memory. And what an amazing coincidence that he is related to Rupert Murdoch.

Dodgy deals – John Howard

Mr Abbott, in 2000 your old boss decided to help the retrenched workers of National Textiles to recover their entitlements after the company, of which Mr Howard’s brother Stan was Chairman, was placed in the hands of an administrator.

It was reported at the time that it was Prime Minister Howard:

… who proudly announced that the cash-strapped National Textiles’ workers would receive their full entitlements. It was the Prime Minister who said they would be the first to recover wages, leave and a redundancy payout under a new National scheme and it was the Prime Minister who urged the creditors to accept a Deed of Arrangement so that the $6 million in State and Federal funds would flow.

… the Australian newspaper claimed that acceptance of the scheme would prevent an inquiry into National Textiles’ management and Directors, of which Mr Howard’s brother, Stan, is one. The editorial was scathing, raising questions about the government’s probity and calling the taxpayer funded bail-out improper, and policy on the run.

The then Opposition called for an inquiry but it went nowhere (naturally). Mr Abbott, given your carried-out promise of a witch hunt to dig up Julia Gillard’s past perhaps you’d be moral enough to do a bit of digging dig into this shady deal as well. Strike while the witch hunt iron is hot!

Future governments will no doubt be in overdrive holding Royal Commissions into the wealth of material this current government is providing us with – hopefully some of those might get to the truth behind Ashbygate or dodgy donations – but as I have pointed out, there is a lot of old stock to clear off the shelves first.

Mr Abbott is not the only one who smells blood; so do I. His. And his party.

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Never-ending story

September 4, 2014
Written by: Kaye Lee
9 Replies

In April I wrote an article about the Coalition’s history on superannuation. This is an updated version. Keeping up with their ever-changing promises is turning into quite a saga.

1972

Compulsory national superannuation was initially proposed as part of the 1972 Whitlam initiatives but up until the 1980s superannuation was solely the privilege of predominantly male professions, clustered in the public sector or available after a long qualifying period in the private sector.

1985

In 1985 then Leader of the Opposition, John Howard, said this:

“That superannuation deal, which represents all that is rotten with industrial relations in Australia, shows the government and the trade union movement in Australia not only playing the employers of Australia for mugs but it is also playing the Arbitration Commission for mugs”.

Howard was commenting on the deal between the government and the ACTU which saw the trade union movement forfeit a claim to 3% productivity improvement as wages to instead be paid in compulsory superannuation – endorsed by the Arbitration Commission and managed by superannuation funds with equal representation of the unions in the industry and the employers.

The Coalition has steadfastly opposed every increase in compulsory superannuation since that time, whether it be from 3% to 6%, or the 6% to the current 9.25%.

1995

In the 1995 budget, Ralph Willis unveiled a scheduled increase in compulsory super from 9% to 12% and eventually to 15%. It was to be one of the Keating government’s major legacy reforms.

1996

In its superannuation policy for the 1996 election, Super for all, the Coalition, which had hitherto been implacably opposed to Labor’s policies, promised it:

•Will provide in full the funds earmarked in the 1995 — 96 Budget to match compulsory employee contributions according to the proposed schedule;

•Will deliver this government contribution into superannuation or like savings;

•Reserves the right to vary the mechanism for delivering this contribution so as to provide the most effective and equitable delivery of the funds.

1997

So why don’t we have 15% superannuation now? Because John Howard and Peter Costello nixed it in the 1996 budget barely six months after it released its policy, insisting it was too expensive. They didn’t “vary the mechanism” so much as halted it.

2007

Significant changes were also made to superannuation policy in 2007. The majority of workers could now withdraw their superannuation tax-free upon reaching the age of 60. Most self-employed can claim their superannuation contributions as a tax deduction. In addition, semi-retired people can continue to work part-time, and use part of their tax-free superannuation to top up their pay.

Despite the relatively generous tax treatment of capital gains, the new superannuation tax treatment led to the selling off of some assets, particularly rental housing, as people sought to take advantage of the opportunity to add funds to their superannuation accounts and claim them back later tax-free.

People were allowed to transfer up to A$1 million into their superannuation accounts before the June 30, 2007, after which an annual maximum of A$150,000 of after-tax contributions could be made. The effect of this change in the rules was enormous. In the June quarter of 2007, A$22.4 billion was transferred to superannuation accounts by individuals. This compares with A$7.4 billion in the June quarter of 2006. June 2007 was the first time in Australia that member contributions exceeded employer contributions.

2010

The Coalition’s superannuation policy has drawn mixed reviews, with several major industry bodies expressing disappointment at the policy for being unsubstantial.

The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA), the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees (AIST) and the Financial Services Council (FSC) said in a joint statement that a failure to increase the superannuation guarantee (SG) to 12 percent, the failure to raise the concessional caps for individuals over 50 and the failure to provide a super tax contribution rebate for low-income earners would adversely impact Australian workers.

ASFA chief executive Pauline Vamos said that the majority of Australian voters would be disappointed that the Coalition’s only plan for superannuation was the promise of more reviews and delays.

AIST chief executive Fiona Reynolds said: “Australian voters are entitled to expect more than a policy document that has no concrete plans or even fresh ideas on how to address retirement income adequacy and the challenge of Australia’s ageing population.”

2011

OPPOSITION leader Tony Abbott has pointedly put down Victorian Liberal MP Kelly O’Dwyer after she questioned his controversial decision to keep Labor’s higher superannuation guarantee if a Coalition government inherits it.

Ms O’Dwyer asked at yesterday’s party room meeting about the process by which the Coalition’s previous position was reversed – saying it was her understanding such issues should go to the party room.

Mr Abbott said the party room had the right to change policy at any time. But there was no rule – and there should be no expectation – that every policy decision be brought to the party room.

“Mr Abbott, who several times made it clear he did not want to talk about the backflip, said the Coalition would have more to say on superannuation later, but repeated that it would not rescind the higher guarantee.”

Feb 2013

JOURNALIST:

So you would cut all those initiatives?

JOE HOCKEY:

Absolutely, you can’t afford them.

So there it was in black and white – the Coalition was cutting the increase in the super guarantee.

Except, apparently not so: a couple of hours later, Hockey was complaining on Twitter about being misrepresented. “What an MRRT debacle… Despite Govt’s failures we remain committed to not rescinding the increase in compulsory superannuation from 9-12%.” Hockey tweeted. After the Nine Network had accurately reported his remarks, he followed it up with:

Would be nice if Nine News had checked the facts…Coalition remains committed to keeping increase in compulsory superannuation from 9-12%.

Crikey understands Tony Abbott’s office moved immediately after Hockey’s doorstop to indicate there was no change in the Coalition’s support for the move from 9-12%

May 2013

Tony Abbott’s plan to delay the compulsory superannuation guarantee increase for two years and do away with top-ups for low income earners sets the tone for the Coalition’s policy on retirement savings to be announced in coming months.

The Liberal Party’s superannuation policy is likely to encourage individuals to make more voluntary contributions while scaling back government-directed super contributions.

The Coalition seems to be struggling with the concept of superannuation. The Coalition has lost a lot of their super knowledge over recent years with the retirement of many senior MPs, including Peter Costello, who was the architect of the 2007 changes that brought in tax-free super for over-60s, introduced caps on non-concessional contributions, reduced the caps on concessional contributions, and removed limits on the amount of super that you could withdraw at concessional rates. They have promised not to make any unexpected negative changes to super, but hey, a few weeks after making that promise, they announced they were freezing the Superannuation Guarantee increase for 2 years.

November 2013

Labor went to the election promising a 15 per cent tax on superannuation pension earnings over $100,000.

Treasurer Joe Hockey said on Wednesday the policy was too complex and it would be scrapped.

The Treasurer has also decided to cut superannuation co-contributions for low income earners

According to the chief executive of Industry Super Australia, David Whiteley, this would result in 3.6 million Australians on low incomes being out of pocket $500 a year, while just 16,000 of the nation’s top earners will benefit from the scrapping of the 15 per cent tax.

May 2014

Mr Hockey said the discussion on what age people should be allowed to access superannuation had begun inside the Coalition.

When asked if raising the superannuation access age was being considered, Mr Abbott said the government was keeping its commitments regarding superannuation.

”We went into the election saying that apart from a couple of very small already announced changes we weren’t proposing to make any changes to superannuation in this term of Parliament,” he told reporters in Canberra.

”We think that there have been lots and lots of changes to superannuation over the years. Some which we were enthusiastic about, some which we were unenthusiastic about, a period of stability in respect of superannuation is right and proper and there won’t be any changes in this term of Parliament.”

September 2014

Under a deal negotiated with the Palmer United party to repeal the mining tax, employer superannuation contributions will be frozen at 9.5 per cent until 2021 when they increase to 10 per cent.

After that, contributions will increase by 0.5 per cent annually until they reach 12 per cent.

As a result, Labor claims that a 25-year-old Australian earning $55,000 a year will be more than $9000 worse off by 2025. Industry sources say the impact over a 40-year working life could be as high as $100,000, taking into account compound interest.

With the rise of influence of the IPA within our current government’s policy making, this article by John Roskam from 2012 should sound warning bells to us all.

“Compulsory superannuation offends practically every principle of what should be Liberal Party philosophy. If an Abbott government does keep compulsory superannuation it must, at a minimum, make drastic changes.”

Sweeteners

August 29, 2014
Written by: ozfenric
7 Replies

“Australians don’t want another election”, says Tony Abbott. Naturally, this reflects both his own achievement of the goal – personal power – and the government’s standing in the polls. For Tony Abbott, elections are not about fulfilling the will of the people. They are about putting the right people into government. The “right people” are already there, job’s done, so there’s absolutely no call for another election – even one that might strengthen the government’s own standing.

In any case, a new election at this point in the cycle would not suit the Coalition. It is standard political operating procedure. In your first year in office, you do the “Mother Hubbard” trick and use it as an excuse to bring in the most unpopular and difficult of your priorities. To some extent you can still trade off this dialogue for your second budget as well.

By the time you get to the third year in office, you need to start thinking about another election, which means you focus on what little tidbits you can feed to a battered population. John Howard was a past master at this cycle and it bought him three terms despite the most egregious betrayals of the electorate – including a “never, ever” GST. It was only the continued focus on Workchoices – introduced midway through a cycle and still “alive” at the time of the 2007 election – that ended his run. This was despite Howard’s late attempt, in mid 2007, to introduce a “sweetener” to his toxic IR platform, in the form of a fairness test.

This is actually a crystal clear example of the way the Coalition works: impose your ideological position early, and if required, water it down slightly by the time of the election. You still end up with most of your goals intact.

A couple of days ago Kaye Lee related the experience of a senior government official, who was confident the Coalition would win the next election: “The sweeteners are coming and that is what they will remember.” If this is true, then Australia needs an election NOW – before the Coalition gets the chance to bring about its full electoral cycle of “hit hard, then give ’em back some of what you took to win votes”.

This statement leads to consideration: what kind of sweeteners can the Team Big Australia realistically offer come 2016?

It is certainly true that the toughest changes in the recent budget are expected to come to pass later rather than earlier – either ramping up over the next few years, or budgeted to become active after the next election. In part, this is Tony Abbott’s self-limitation: his unwarranted promises not to impose changes to education, health, the ABC or seemingly anything else before another election. Those promises force Abbott to adopt a largely status-quo approach: no major changes for the first few years. How that must smart.

Politics operates on a long-term forward-planning basis, but it’s often not good at communicating that. See, for example, Labor’s MRRT, the proceeds from which are expected to ramp up significantly in the next few years. That won’t save it from the Coalition’s “barely any revenue” rhetoric or its intractible desire to repeal it.

Therefore, much of the pain of Joe’s budget, the budget that we’re all squealing so loudly about, doesn’t actually kick in until after the next election. Notable exceptions are the changes to Newstart / Youth Allowance eligibility, which start on 1 January 2015, and the medicare co-payment, scheduled to begin 1 July 2015. (Both dates presume the legislation can be successfully passed before those deadlines.) But many of the most painful elements, including the indexation changes to the age pension and the $80bn cuts to health and education payments to the States, aren’t expected until after 2016.

All of this indicates that come 2016, the Coalition has more pain in mind, not sweeteners. But lately, the conversation has notably changed tack.

Joe Hockey has previously stated that the 2014 budget is just the start. We don’t hear much said about this any more – the idea that the Coalition wanted to go further, cut more harshly. Instead, the promise of doing more, with the implication that this is necessary and good, has transmuted to an amorphous threat that more will come if Labor and the Greens don’t play ball and pass this budget. The conversation has changed. Instead of being the first step in a long-term dialogue with the Australian people, “starting a national conversation about how we can live within our means” as Hockey said at the time, the 2014 budget is now the magic pill that tastes bad but will make it all better by the time the next election comes around.

It seems like not too far a stretch to expect that the Coalition plans to begin handing out its incentives by the time the next election comes around. Again, what kind of sweeteners can it actually offer? And is there any possibility that they might be successful? Will the Coalition really “romp home” in 2016?

Having run so hard on the concept that “Nothing is for free… nothing can continue to be free,” it seems unlikely that they will offer to restore the social support structures they’re currently fighting so hard to dismantle. Changes to unemployment benefits, healthcare funding, and pensions are long-term structural changes. The intent is good even if the methodology is not; these are areas where ongoing expenditure must be controlled for fear of them outstripping the government’s ability to support them. It would be counterproductive for the government to offer to retreat from its changes, so it’s fairly certain that, once legislated, the six-month furlough of payments, the medicare co-payment, and the changes to eligibility and indexation of support payments will be here to stay.

They could offer more infrastructure. But Tony Abbott’s repeated mantra of being “the infrastructure Prime Minister” appears to be falling on deaf ears. This is partly because of the Coalition’s intent to artificially restrict the kind of infrastructure projects it will engage in, and partly because of a range of State Liberal governments backing unpopular or inefficient projects that lack the populist chops except amongst people who are already their strongest supporters.

Thus the Coalition is likely to find itself constrained by the time of the next election. Building more schools and hospitals will not be helpful if the funding for existing schools and hospitals has been gutted. By the time of the next election the promise of more toll roads is unlikely to be a big draw-card, and the Coalition doesn’t want to be engaged in building rail.

This leaves tax cuts: the perennial stopgap of conservative governments and darling of John Howard’s appeal to the battlers. Tax cuts are within the Coalition’s DNA – their raison d’etre is to reduce taxes, reduce government offerings, and reduce community support. For those who can’t prosper under those conditions, the Market Will Provide.

Past Coalition election sweeteners have included a succession of income tax cuts, company tax cuts, and bonuses – for instance, the baby bonus was introduced by Howard in 2001. The 2007 election campaign carried all manner of sweeteners – 9 billion dollars worth – if we would only give the Coalition another chance. In many cases these offerings were “me-too” responses to promises already made by Labor.

So any incentives the Coalition can offer are likely to come in the form of tax cuts. They might be named “bonuses” or “supplements”, and they might be one-time only, but effectively the government will offer cash, hand over fist. Labor’s offer to increase the tax-free threshold to $18k and adjust the tax brackets, effectively giving tax cuts to large portions of the electorate, will be entirely forgotten in the rush of joy we will all feel at the government’s largesse. Expect many congratulatory statements from Team Abbott about how we all “pulled together”, bore the pain, took our medicine and reached a point, thanks to the Coalition’s careful management of the economy, where we can afford the rewards.

But will sweeteners be enough to secure the Coalition another term? It’s been repeatedly said that elections are lost, not won. It’s certainly true that the past two changes of government have occurred in spite of offered sweeteners, rather than because of them. In 2007, as mentioned above, Howard offered more incentives to electors in addition to a concession of watering down his beloved WorkChoices regime, but that didn’t save him; public opinion was far too set against his government and Kevin Rudd led Labor to a resounding victory. In 2013, too, Labor had far more on the table than the Coalition, including the aforementioned adjustments to income tax that would have seen millions of Australians no longer needing to pay tax at all. Ironically, Tony Abbott’s repealing of this legislation means that many more people are paying more tax than they otherwise would. Regardless of the sweeteners on offer, voters resoundingly voted Labor out of power. Unfortunately, the corollary is that they voted Tony Abbott in, without ever necessarily being won over by his ideological intentions on policy. Labor warned the electorate, at length, about the likely outcomes of an Abbott victory. Tony Abbott blithely dismissed these warnings as political alarmism and promised that he wouldn’t be like that at all. So now that his reassurances have proven hollow, could the Australian people be hoodwinked a second time?

We’ve never seen a government with the trajectory of the Abbott government. Already it languishes in depths of unpopularity not traditionally seen until several terms into government and, usually, preceding an electoral loss. It would seem at least possible that One-Term-Tony could be a predictive term. Historically, Australians don’t vote governments out after only one term, but this government may prove the exception. It seems likely that the only thing that could save them would be an electorate that still thinks that Labor is unelectable by the time of the 2016 election, which is why rejuvenation and reform of the Labor party is so critically important.

If the Coalition is able to retain government at the next election, the faint consolation will be that it won’t take long after the election for them to tighten the screws further. Then we’ll be having this discussion again, three years later, and with each successive election the chances of Labor regaining power improve.

The question then becomes, how much damage will Tony Abbott and his fellows do to Australian egalitarianism and society?

Abbott’s ‘Team Australia’ has a tinge of Howard about it

August 18, 2014
Written by: Michael Taylor
72 Replies

“‘Don’t migrate to Australia unless you want to join “Team Australia”’, declared our chest-beating Prime Minister. “Everyone has got to be on team Australia,” he carried on.

Now I really don’t know what ‘Team Australia’ is. I suspect it is nothing more than a slogan aimed at stirring up patriotism. And/or votes.

Either way, I don’t like it.

It reminds me of John Howard’s famous (and stunningly racist) comment that “we will decide who comes to this country …” – which he used rather effectively to set up his 2001 election win.

Tony Abbott appears, on the surface, to be channeling John Howard. What might he have on the agenda?

Let us be reminded of what Howard’s was. It might tell us something.

In 2007, as the then Prime Minister, Howard officially scrapped multiculturalism. Need I say more?

In 2012, more willing to embrace a multicultural Australia the Gillard minority government established a Joint Standing Committee on Migration. Some of the key issues addressed were: the role of multiculturalism in the Government’s social inclusion agenda; the effectiveness of settlement programs for new migrants, including refugees; how Australia could better utilise the skills of migrants; and incentives to encourage small business development.

Focusing on the economic, social and cultural impacts of migration in Australia, the Committee made further recommendations to maximise the positive effects of migration.

Initially, the inquiry was commissioned to examine and report on:

Multiculturalism, social inclusion and globalisation

The role of multiculturalism in the Federal Government’s social inclusion agenda; and

The contribution of diaspora communities to Australia’s relationships with Europe, the UK, Middle East and the immediate Asia-Pacific Region.

Settlement and participation

Innovative ideas for settlement programs for new migrants, including refugees, that support their full participation and integration into the broader Australian society; and

Incentives to promote long term settlement patterns that achieve greater social and economic benefits for Australian society as a whole.

National productive capacity

The role migration has played and contributes to building Australia’s long term productive capacity;

The profile of skilled migration to Australia and the extent to which Australia is fully utilising the skills of all migrants; and

Potential government initiatives to better assist migrant communities establish business enterprises.

Not surprisingly, this appears to have been scrapped. Well, the link is dead, so I can only assume it’s been scrapped. Can I also thus assume that Abbott has it somewhere in his agenda to follow Howard and also attempt to scrap multiculturalism?

I certainly hope not, but I fear that he will. The fictitious ‘Team Australia’ and what it is trying to represent has that distinct smell about it.

I quite like a multicultural Australia.

With over 6 million immigrants since the end of WWII, we have one of the most successful culturally diverse societies in the world. The Inquiry into Multiculturalism in Australia provided a framework for strengthening community harmony and promoting the economic, cultural and social benefits of Australia’s cultural diversity for all Australians. Australian multiculturalism also embraces the heritage of Indigenous Australians, early European settlement, our home-grown customs and traditions and the experiences of new migrants coming to this country, and promotes mutual respect and equality, aiming to enhance social cohesion.

Our multicultural policies have also affirmed that all Australians have the opportunity to be active and equal participants in society, and are free to maintain their religious and cultural traditions within Australian law. There are other benefits of multiculturalism for Australia – we are not only considerably richer in experiences, but we enjoy much closer economic and social links with other nations as a direct result of our diverse multicultural population.

John Howard didn’t like it that way, and Tony Abbott’s ‘Team Australia’ has a tinge of Howard about it.

I wrote recently that the Abbott Government has been a very easy one to predict. I could be right again.

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The Miser’s Apprentice

June 26, 2014
Written by: Kaye Lee
18 Replies

I recently came across an article from 2009 called The Howard Impact which compares Australia’s performance against seventeen other advanced democracies including the United States, Canada, Japan and the countries of Western Europe. Whilst I have no desire to live in the past, the facts from the Howard era are chillingly relevant as this government is driven by an even fiercer version of the same ideology that created many of today’s problems.

On several central measures of macroeconomic performance (economic growth, unemployment, productivity) Howard’s government scored comparatively well. On some of the achievements trumpeted most loudly at home, such as inflation and interest rates, its performance was actually worse than the average of the selected countries.

Household debt in relation to disposable income almost doubled during the Howard years due to a sharp increase in housing prices. Home loan interest payments were higher than when housing interest rates peaked at 17 per cent in 1989. Despite the relatively good economic growth this created financial stress for many people.

Cutting capital gains tax and giving tax concessions for negative gearing exacerbated a problem already being fuelled by unmet demand, low interest rates and easy availability of money from lending institutions. The influx of investors into the property market, competing with property owners looking to upgrade, drove prices up and the rate of home ownership among those under thirty-five dropped.

Under the Howard government there was an increased emphasis on private delivery of what had previously been public services, often with the introduction of a public subsidy delivered by tax rebates, for example. This was very much the case in health, in child care and aged care. But the most glaring example was in education.

From 1995 to 2005, the private share of education spending rose to be the third highest among the selected countries and the public share fell to 12 points below their average.

The public subsidy of private providers led to a growth in private schools to the degree that one-fifth of Australian public spending on education went to private institutions, almost double the overall average of 10.5 per cent, a particularly high figure when it is remembered that private universities had a negligible presence in Australia.

Spending on tertiary institutions was even worse. During that decade the public share had dropped to less than half, 48 per cent, and Australia was then 26 points below the average.

“This reflected an increased emphasis on private funding, but also –uniquely among these developed democracies – a reduction in real terms in public spending on tertiary education. In 2005, Australia spent 0.8 per cent of GDP compared with an average of 1.1 per cent. In other words Australian expenditure would have had to increase by around 35 per cent to bring it up to average. In the other countries for which we have data, public spending on tertiary education was up by 30 per cent in real terms over the decade 1995–2005. Only Australia’s decreased.”

The article concludes by asking how Howard will be viewed in ten or twenty years’ time.

“As with all governments, the Howard government’s economic management and foreign policy decisions will be central to any assessment. In addition, the aging society, health care, the challenges of the information economy and society, and the environment will be central concerns. In each of these areas, the government is likely to be marked more harshly in the future than it was when in office.”

Well here we are, almost 20 years on from 1995. Arguably the greatest problems facing us are climate change and environmental protection, income inequity, housing affordability, falling education standards, and increasing financial stress for families. These problems were exacerbated by Howard’s policy decisions and will be sent into crisis by the Abbott/Hockey idea of government.

To deal with health care and the aging society, Abbott has chosen a user pays model – the antithesis of everything we have gained over the years to provide these services to all. He wants to cut payments to welfare recipients – make the poor poorer. Make pensions harder to get but tax concessions will be huge for those of you with millions.

The challenges of the information economy and society will be met with aging copper wire.

The environment – isn’t that the place where mines live?

When in doubt, privatise. Who needs profitable assets?

But hey, we may have a surplus in ten years. A surplus is just a number on a piece of paper but it’s WORTH selling everything we own, destroying the environment, cutting funding to health and education, making sick people pay, cutting benefits to pensioners, saddling students with crippling debt, cutting off all income for 6 months of the year to desperate people and all that other heavy lifting our sick, old, young, and unemployed are being asked to do for the good of the country (otherwise known as the grubs).

Society is not a dirty word. It is also not a synonym for economy. The economy is the means by which we achieve the society we desire. It is utterly insane to sacrifice our society for the end goal of nothing more than an accounting term.

The miser’s apprentice has put on the hat but has no control over the power he now has. The puppet masters are in the ascendency … for now.

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The romance of the retro PM

May 27, 2014
Written by: The AIM Network
40 Replies

The more we see of Tony Abbott the more we are see of a person to dislike and distrust. And what we see emerging is a Prime Minister who would be more suited to leading a country in the 1950s – not the 21st century, writes Ricky Pannowitz.

The 1950s were a time of great cathartic change in everything from design to popular culture. Owning a 50’s retro car is more about perception than functionality. The regressive experience may be romantic, but it is ultimately expensive to maintain and less functional for the modern imperative. Can Australia afford a retro prime minister in a modern age?

It is no accident that Tony Abbott is a man who has gone from being the romantic notion of a simplistic bygone era to uncomfortably impractical. Like a shiny old reconditioned car in a showroom reminding us of a reminiscent past, there are many impracticalities and hidden issues that were not apparent beyond a new paint job and the aggressive sales pitch. After Tony left the showroom his transgression of trust saw a fickle voting public, transfixed by the mantra of sales spin, hit by the reality of something impractically different from what they were sold. The sagacity of wisdom from experts experienced in the realism of such decisions was barely audible beneath fervour of pitched hype. People were told across the board, the real Tony Abbott is a radical religious neo con, not this guy they are selling as centre centric. Any old school mechanic would tell you this ride will be uncomfortable, unreliable and ultimately expensive. Was Australia sold a lemon by crooked salesmen or is it a case of the buyer beware?

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote; “When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”

Just as we look back at the attitudes from another less progressive and enlighten time as cultural cringe, equally cringe worthy is the attitude to Abbott’s regressive assault on the hard fought rights of ordinary Australians. The very fact that the ideals, which have been fought and won with bipartisan acceptance long ago, are in Abbott’s sights is in itself a glaring example of his reckless judgement in embarking upon a politically suicidal assault on social cohesion. The sociology of political change tends to occur after a slow conciliatory process which culminates in a glacial shift that is usually in step with changing attitudes of contemporary society. Reconciliation, gender equality, sexual equality, racial equality, universal heath care, superannuation, equitable quality education, anti discrimination, protection from vilification, humanitarian responsibility, equitable immigration, a healthy public broadcasting sector, freedom of press, freedom of speech, the minimum wage, fair industrial relations, economic sustainability, research and technological capitalisation and welfare for the disadvantaged, affordable healthcare to name a few are all measures of Australia as a progressive egalitarian society. Then there is Tony Abbott; a radical ideologist who maintains a narrow centric view embodying the current pendulum swing to the furthest right axis of the social divide. Abbott is putting it all or nothing out there at once in an expedient assault of his ideological will with indifference to consequence. There is no doubt that this is all propagated by a free ride on the populous news cycle which is afforded far more democratic weight than its current erroneous substance should allow. It’s also punctuated by a heavy agenda as there are much money and favour behind Tony’s assault. A 880 million dollar tax bill payed to a media proprietor who supported him during the campaign that could possibly be a down payment to purchase the soon to be privatised telecommunications infrastructure which would monopolise delivery of his future content. Abbott has many such scores to settle in his rise to the top job.

John Avlon who wrote; “A wingnut is someone on the far-right wing or far-left wing of the political spectrum – the professional partisans, the unhinged activists and the paranoid conspiracy theorists. They’re the people who always try to divide rather than unite us” Partisan Division is a tactic that has served Tony Abbott well, until now.

Abbott represents the remnants of everything that connotes an old world view of a young, rich colonial power trying to punch above its weight on the world stage. A nation struggling with the shame of its arrogant colonial past whilst seeking to define the identity of its future as a progressive independent multicultural nation.

To understand Abbott one must look at the ideology of that which shaped him in his formative years as a student on the SRC at Sydney University. Deeply religious, highly opinionated and in contempt of anything that he considered to be of lesser social value or challenged his moralised ideological thinking; Abbott was a radical religious conservative chauvinist. Where others use university to explore, test and challenge convention through the development of critical thinking, Abbott was a defiant sycophant of ultra conservative class elitism, preferring to oppose and demonise progressive social thinking flippantly as a ‘socialist disease’ or ‘communist propaganda’. He dogmatically shoehorned all philosophy into the supposition of his inflexible world view. Tony Abbott was a political operative of Bob Santamaria, an ultra conservative religious anti communist in the 70’s who was the voice of catholic ultra conservative right. Santamaria groomed Abbott as the new charge of ultra conservative Catholicism which would ultimately come to embody the neo conservatism of the Tea Party movement and Toryism.

Abbott sees himself as a man of great morality, however this is at odds with his actions which define him as a bare knuckle combatant moralist who will say or do anything to win political advantage. Abbott is consistently a contradiction of his christian values, even when the issue on the table is at odds with the best interest of Australian society. Abbott demonstrates hypocrisy by virtue of his past and present actions. A fundamentalist catholic who entered the priesthood but ultimately failed due to the constraints of ethical dilemmas presented by his burning political ambition driven by a dogged lust for power at any cost. Abbott’s views are those of a religious conservative Australia in less progressive times that most Australians would rather forget than revisit. A dark age of xenophobic ardour, coercion of challenge to conventional institutionalism, suspicion of sociological advancement, political tyranny, scaremongering, corruption steeped in misogyny and the bigotry that maintained an indefensible position of religious faith over personal choice. Abbott believes there is no case for the separation of Church and state, in fact his religious beliefs consistently promulgate Christian influence over his Prime Ministership and publicly funded programs.

It was apparent to anyone that knew anything of Abbott’s politics and ideology before the election that he was incapable of governing for the majority as Tony Abbott knows no middle ground. Abbott’s view is all black or white; for or against as compromise is just not in his DNA. Tony is a poor negotiator who treats everything as a political game to win rather than a bipartisan outcome for the common good no matter what’s on the table. Abbott gives no quarter considering anything but ‘all or nothing’ weak and effeminate, irrespective of what the fallout or social consequence may be.

Image courtesy of the conversation.com

Abbott’s general tactic for even the most extreme obstinacy is usually to deny or offer a conditional, insincere apologetic acknowledgement to minimalise political capital before reloading to maintain assault. This is a man who has strategically manoeuvred to make his move at a time when political discourse in the country has arguably hit the lowest ebb in the nation’s history. Abbott has taken Howard’s most extreme regressive policies that tapped into the dark underbelly of prejudice, racism, hatred, misogyny and class welfare; then amplified them one hundred fold into a sensory assault strategy based on divide and conquer. The new ‘Minister for Women’s Affairs’ has long held grudges and his retribution can sometimes appear contemptibly childish to prove a point. Simplistic language dispenses a bitter pill administered with faux spin that is manufactured for the political expedience of powerful ideological encroachment rather than any visionary social progression. Tireless three word sloganism as a grinding, unrelenting mantra for political sleight of a back hand to his detractors.

This continuing language of deception is evidentiary in a budget that is little more than a manifesto of social engineering rather than a statement of prudent economics. Every thread of the Australia’s social fabric at odds with neoconservative ideology is attacked as unsustainable, unwarranted, superfluously unimportant or irrelevant. We all must do the ‘heavy lifting’ as Australia just can’t afford anything that Tony is opposed to and anyone who questions the budget with conflicting factually inconvenient critique is a ‘fiscal vandal’. The message behind the transparency of the language is arrogant, insulting and rhetorical ‘heavy grifting’ at best. The process of implementation of the budgets methodology was a prequel led by the “Commission of Audit”. This was a series of warning shot across the bow of middle Australia designed as conditioning for the predictable shock and awe of an unnecessarily tough budget to come. “You will thank us”, he reiterated, “we’re making the necessary hard decisions”. “Budget Emergency” “Big Black hole” Tony’s fire truck had arrived and its full of gasoline.

Under the scrutiny of experts across the political divide and with superficial micro explanation by the architects, both the audit and budget just don’t add up. Abbott is not a good orator with a fundamental understanding of economics at best. His subsequent response affirms he is in fact an “economic simpleton”. When pressed to explain himself he resorts to the rhetoric of slogans, outright lies and attack, all tactics that served elect him. This may well work in a election campaign but as a PM under the microscope in clear air, its a different proposition. The treasurer delivered the budget, tried to explain it and his approval together with his confidence rating severely tanked just like Abbott’s. Abbott and Hockey are not good performers under pressure, especially when thrown to the wolves without a script. The sheer weight of this ideology is drowning Abbott and Hockey and may well sink this government. Abbott’s freestyle oratory incompetence has seen a series of gaffs unbecoming and unworthy of his high office, further eroding his already dismal relationship with the Australian voting public. The mean spirit, retribution, hash cruelty, and inequality coupled with lack of detail, poor salesmanship with the absence of any qualified evidentiary substantiation underpinning the methodology constitutes a the budget bordering on amateurishly incompetent at best. If an election was held now this government would be deservedly decimated into political wasteland. The harsh critical analysis from all corners of society is a resounding vote of ‘no confidence’ in the Abbott Government ‘trying it on’. Such fervent discrediting asserts Abbott’s first budget to be nothing more than the wish list of corporate interest, free market capitalists led by assumptions from a socially disconnected elite. A doctrine of those who shape the ideology machine of the controlling neo right of the LNP.

Australia underestimated Abbott and his ability to tap into a festering reserve of underlying hatred, intolerance and political apathy that has polarised political debate in Australia. The reality of political lies is when they are exposed the voting public’s retribution is brutal and unforgiving. John Howard is testament to this fact and he was popular, a luxury not afforded Tony Abbott. Consequently Abbott may well be the most hated Prime Minister since Billy McMahon. History will not be kind to this government, especially now the cloaked reality has lifted and the sobriety of the real Tony Abbott’s rhetorical lies hits his enticed aspirants in the hip pocket. The voting public have began to realise they have been conned, surprised and subject to the will of a man that has no plan other than rhetorical propaganda simplified to three word slogans as a means to impose his extremist ‘retro’ ideology. Everything that Abbott said he was not and would not do, he is doing or has done. He has abandoned the people who believed his lies hoping to win them over with more of the same medicine show. This is of no surprise to those who understood Abbott before he was hastily reinvented. The real Tony Abbott is a man who embodies the personification of everything that he professes to be against such as entitlement, dirty deals, subterfuge, character assassination, slush funds, political perks, corruption, nepotism, racism and misogyny. This is evident by his words and actions. The real Tony Abbott has no shame whatsoever. When faced with the prospect of being caught in a lie, he compulsively qualifies the lie with another. The real Tony Abbott has the auspicious honour of being unpopular when elected and descending lower in the polls, all the while selling himself by claiming a mandate.

There aren’t many people left for Tony Abbott to upset. As thick skinned and unfazed by being disliked as Tony is, there is not much possibility of Abbott riding this out unscathed. Abbott and his cohorts have been very sloppy along the way, with a trial of political impropriety that is lying in waiting for the next headline. Abbott’s biggest miscalculation may have been to arrogantly open a can of worms that his machine will not be able to control. The bygone political operatives of the time they wish to emulate had the benefit of controllable information, however in an instantaneous information age nothing is controllable. The process of lighting a fuse to test credibility and competence with show trials, may well see Abbott with nowhere to run. Tony was born to rule and has fulfilled his ambitious quest to do so against all odds, but for how long and at what price? The gloss is washing off the car, the tyres are flat, it’s overheating, blowing smoke, this lemon is breaking down on the first leg of the journey. It may have seemed like a romantically good idea at the time but ultimately this bomb is an impractical rusty relic destined for the political scrap heap no matter how you paint it.

When you reduce the complexity of consequence down to the simplistic, the devil is always in the detail and the detail is most certainly in the devil they didn’t know.

Merchants of Hypocrisy: Open for the Business of War

May 2, 2014
Written by: The AIM Network
17 Replies

As the situation between Russia and Ukraine deteriorates to the brink of war, is our government entertaining the thought of joining in on this war, asks Loz Lawrey.

“Nothing is free. Someone always pays”, says Joe Hockey, “we must live within our means”.

Much has been made of the two simultaneous messages appearing on one newspaper’s front page: severe cuts to pensioner entitlements and the extravagant outlay of some $12.4 billion on weapons of war.

Accusations of hubris and hypocrisy are mere water off a duck’s back to this Coalition government, who are convinced they can do whatever they wish whenever they wish, regardless of public opinion.

Tony Abbott still claims an irrefutable mandate to make choices and decisions with little consideration, consultation or advice. As with John Howard, ‘instinct’ and ‘belief’ are enough. In other words, unfettered open slather prevails: “You elected us, so we’ve won and we’ll do as we please. About anything. And everything. Because we can”.

The joint strike fighter jets will, according to Abbott, “ensure our edge as a regional power . . . you just don’t know what’s around the corner . . . the world remains a difficult . . . and often a dangerous place”. Confrontational, assertive language. Some might call it the language of a warmonger.

Weasel-speak, flung about like a certain proverbial substance, is used to distract us and disrupt our analytical thinking before we reach any conclusions, a sort of bait-and-switch operation which leaves us ignoring important issues and giggling at trivia.

A slogan is uttered, a camera flashes, a ‘gotcha’ moment happens, and in the confusion important questions go unasked and unanswered. The media pack moves on.

Meanwhile the warm fireside tone of the delivery belies the harsh message aimed at preparing us psychologically for the kicking and beating this brutal government intends to consciously, deliberately, inflict upon Australian society.

Hockey’s psychobabble continues: “It is about the we, not the me” (sounds a bit like socialism) . . . “more use of co-payments must be made” (definitely conservatism).

But is it babble? Or well-crafted spin to prepare us for war? Australia’s apparently irreversible engagement with the U.S. and subservience to its foreign policy seems really stupid and ill-advised whenever the sabre-rattling between the U.S. and China or Russia begins.

Isn’t this how it works? Step one: encourage recession by talking down the economy and defunding everything. Step two: follow through with austerity measures to ensure across-the board misery. Step three: encourage minority-blaming, thuggery, social dislocation. Step four: mission accomplished: the people are crushed and ready for war.

I was born several years after the conclusion of World War Two. During my whole life war and conflict have been constants on the world stage, and Australian soldiers have died overseas in Korea, Malaya, Borneo, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

One thing you can count on with the human race; we’ve always got a war going on. And Australia has always been prepared to send its young men out as cannon-fodder at the whim of the U.K. or the U.S. on the flimsiest pretext.

Remember the Weapons of Mass Destruction which never were? There are many who wonder why John Howard hasn’t been tried as a war criminal for committing our country to the U.S.’s unjustified invasion of Iraq in which so many Iraqis, Americans and Australians died.

What is war other than schoolyard bullying writ large? A line is crossed, battle is engaged, and the reason for it all is forgotten in the heat of the action. Bait and switch, again. And again.

The invasion of Iraq was not sanctioned by the United Nations. At the time, Howard justified the action by saying it had “a sound legal basis” in previous decisions of the security council. As usual, clever language was used to deflect questions and criticism about the lack of U.N. support.

Today both Howard and George W. Bush are happily retired while a country lies in ruins, her people struggling to subsist within a legacy of destruction and conflict.

Is this what we can expect from Abbott? Another neoconservative bequest of misery, poverty and unrest? Blind unthinking subservience to the megalomania of a foreign power which believes it owns the world? Young Australians scattered about the globe to die for nothing? Young lives to be chewed up and spat out by a global military-industrial complex that prevails to this day, the same one Dwight D. Eisenhower warned the world about in 1961?

How does the lie prevail, the lie that tells us something good is accomplished by slaughter and destruction?

As far as the Iraq war went, here’s how Howard justified it: “The government strongly believes that the decision it has taken is right, it is legal, it is directed towards the protection of the Australian national interest and I ask the Australian community to support it”. And support it we did.

Well, perhaps not all of us, but if we didn’t speak out then we too supported the invasion. I’ll declare myself here: I felt the outrage, but I didn’t express it. To my shame, I didn’t speak out.

Divided and conquered, we bury our misgivings and swallow the bitter pill of nationalism. We allow ourselves to accept the necessity for a conflict we don’t even comprehend. Then we participate in that conflict, convinced of the righteousness of our purpose. And history repeats.

That’s how they get away with it. By our silence we give consent. John Howard will never be brought to trial, because we would also be judging ourselves.

The huge government spend on fighter jets can only be seen as a “toys for the boys” indulgence by Abbott and Co. It’s hard to imagine our little airforce taking on Russia, the U.S. or China. And if we’re to ride on the coat-tails of the Yanks, don’t they have enough jets already? And what’s the real context of this? Defence? We’re hardly a match for a superpower, with or without jets.

Yesterday U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry issued a stern warning to Russia over the situation in Ukraine, saying “Whatever path Russia chooses, the United States and our allies will stand together in our defense of Ukraine”. More sabre-rattling. And what did Abbott say again? ” . . . you just don’t know what’s around the corner . . . the world remains a difficult . . . and often a dangerous place”.

Is it simply that there’s a mood in the world for war?

The Superannuation saga

April 14, 2014
Written by: Kaye Lee
45 Replies

While a pained Joe Hockey tells us his “truth” about the mess Labor has supposedly left, and that the old age pension is no longer affordable so we must work till we drop, it is worth remembering the Coalition’s history on superannuation. Had they listened to Whitlam, had Keating won, had Howard kept his election promise, had Abbott and Hockey stuck to their word, the future may not look so bleak for those who have worked for a lifetime yet still face a retirement dependent on the pittance the government chooses to give them.

1972

1985

In 1985 then Leader of the Opposition, John Howard, said this:

“That superannuation deal, which represents all that is rotten with industrial relations in Australia, shows the government and the trade union movement in Australia not only playing the employers of Australia for mugs but it is also playing the Arbitration Commission for mugs”.

The Coalition has steadfastly opposed every increase in compulsory superannuation since that time, whether it be from 3% to 6%, or the 6% to the current 9.25%.

1995

In the 1995 budget, Ralph Willis unveiled a scheduled increase in compulsory super from 9% to 12% and eventually to 15%. It was to be one of the Keating government’s major legacy reforms.

1996

In its superannuation policy for the 1996 election, Super for all, the Coalition, which had hitherto been implacably opposed to Labor’s policies, promised it:

•Will provide in full the funds earmarked in the 1995 — 96 Budget to match compulsory employee contributions according to the proposed schedule;

•Will deliver this government contribution into superannuation or like savings;

•Reserves the right to vary the mechanism for delivering this contribution so as to provide the most effective and equitable delivery of the funds.

1997

2007

2010

The Coalition’s superannuation policy has drawn mixed reviews, with several major industry bodies expressing disappointment at the policy for being unsubstantial.

2011

Mr Abbott said the party room had the right to change policy at any time. But there was no rule – and there should be no expectation – that every policy decision be brought to the party room.

Feb 2013

JOURNALIST:

So you would cut all those initiatives?

JOE HOCKEY:

Absolutely, you can’t afford them.

So there it was in black and white – the Coalition was cutting the increase in the super guarantee.

Would be nice if Nine News had checked the facts…Coalition remains committed to keeping increase in compulsory superannuation from 9-12%.

Crikey understands Tony Abbott’s office moved immediately after Hockey’s doorstop to indicate there was no change in the Coalition’s support for the move from 9-12%

May 2013

The Liberal Party’s superannuation policy is likely to encourage individuals to make more voluntary contributions while scaling back government-directed super contributions.

November 2013

Labor went to the election promising a 15 per cent tax on superannuation pension earnings over $100,000.

Treasurer Joe Hockey said on Wednesday the policy was too complex and it would be scrapped.

The Treasurer has also decided to cut superannuation co-contributions for low income earners

With the rise of influence of the IPA within our current government’s policy making, this article by John Roskam from 2012 should sound warning bells to us all.

Could I suggest, Mr Hockey, that this problem is very much of your own making and your decisions to date are doing nothing to help. Stick to your word, increase the SG, and encourage lower income earners to contribute to superannuation. They are the ones more likely headed for the old age pension than your mates who have over $2 million tax free dollars invested with an annual retirement income of over $100,000 a year! Your lamentations lack credibility as do your ever-changing promises and actions.

It was once said that the moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.

Hubert H. Humphrey

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Wherever I lay my hat that’s my home

April 3, 2014
Written by: Kaye Lee
54 Replies

In 1996 John Howard became the first Prime Minister to make Kirribilli House in Sydney his prime residence. Over the next 12 years, this decision cost the taxpayers $18.4 million in flights between Canberra and Sydney.

According to the Department of Defence’s Schedule of Special Purpose Flights for the second half of 2002, Howard ordered 43 flights between Sydney and Canberra. Ten of those flights flew empty between Canberra and Sydney. Each flight cost $7500.

The RAAF’s No. 34 Squadron operated the VIP fleet of five aircraft, which, in those days, cost $60 million a year to run. The lease on the current RAAF fleet of two Boeing 737 business jets and three smaller Challenger 604 aircraft cost $600 million and will expire this year when Tony Abbott intends to opt for bigger and better planes.

Last week, a ‘reluctant’ Tony Abbott became the second Prime Minister to opt for living in Kirribilli House. He said he would prefer to stay in his home in Forestville but Skynews suggested there were security concerns.

To accommodate Mr Howard’s family, renovations were done at Kirribilli House. Two sets of stairs were installed and a bathroom was refitted at a cost of $185,000. In their third year of residence a new dining room table and 20 chairs were ordered, a cost of $82,000. A door required widening to get the table inside. Tony has said he has no plans for expensive alterations and I think Margie is a very different woman from Janette so hopefully we won’t have to shell out even more for that. I wonder if they will move into the Lodge after its expensive alterations.

In May 2007, it was reported that John Howard’s department had spent almost $110,000 on alcohol for The Lodge and Kirribilli House in the previous four years with over $30,000 spent in the first 4 months of 2007. It was an election year after all – the schmoozing bill was bound to escalate.

He was accused of using Kirribilli House for Liberal party fundraisers, something he claimed was not a breach of propriety as the Liberal Party were picking up the tab. It was the taxpayer however who picked up the tab for lavish Christmas and New Year’s Eve parties for “a cross-section of Sydney society”.

Tony used Kirribilli House for a similar function when he held a soiree to thank people like Piers Ackerman, Andrew Bolt, Alan Jones and Miranda Devine for their contribution to journalism (cough).

Mr Abbott said “when you take on a particular job, a particular residence goes with it and you do have to go with that particular flow.” Well normally that would be the Lodge but it is currently undergoing repair works. That is why the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet signed a 12-month lease on a house in August, during the caretaker period.

Mr Abbott, for reasons known only to himself, refused to move into this house which will cost taxpayers $3000 a week for 12 months unless they can negotiate to terminate the lease, something they had been unsuccessful in achieving so far according to an ABC article from late November last year.

I wonder if Tony Abbott has considered what this decision will cost we taxpayers. Aside from maintaining several residences, the flights to and from Canberra, often empty one way, add up to a lot of money. Tony’s decision this week to hold a Cabinet meeting in Perth, even though they were all in Canberra together a few days earlier, shows he doesn’t really care about the cost of flights or accommodation. Why would he – he never sees the bill.

Perhaps Margie and Bridget wanted to stay in Sydney. If that was their choice then they should do as so many other families do when one partner has to travel for work – meet up when and where your schedules allow. That is the price you pay for the employment decisions you make. There are generous family travel allowances to facilitate this.

I presume that by making Sydney his principal place of residence, Abbott is entitled to claim $268 per night travel allowance when he is in Canberra among the many other entitlements that politicians receive. Their travel bill is astronomical. One would have thought that in these days of teleconferencing and e-communication we could cut this bill by a huge amount. There would be less photos (a side bonus) and it would be far more productive, saving time and money.

As I think of people on the dole being forced to accept jobs that are more than 90 minutes from their home and wonder about the cost, both financial and social, that they will have to pay, I will be checking with interest how much this government is spending on Parliamentarian’s entitlements and on the Lodge, Kirribilli House, the empty rented mansion, and wherever it is that Tony actually stays when he goes to Canberra. In my opinion it would be far cheaper and more productive if our Prime Minister lived in Canberra. What would be even more productive would be if he lived in Tristan de Cunha.

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Tony Abbott stuffs it up . . . again

March 28, 2014
Written by: Carol Taylor
30 Replies

Fairfax’s Friday offering is from Chief Political Correspondent, Mark Kenny and comes accompanied by this impressive headline:

Tony Abbott’s pre-budget fortnight of blunders and stuff-ups

My first impression was, what only a fortnight? Where has Mark Kenny been during the rest of Tony Abbott’s term in parliament? Quote:

Friday is a red-letter day for the Abbott government.

It marks 100 days since any successful people-smuggling venture has made it to Australia.

But wait a moment, isn’t the article meant to be about “blunders and stuff-ups”, but suddenly and in the leading sentence Kenny introduces his article with today being “a red letter day” for Tony Abbott.

Tony Abbott’s people-smuggling “venture” a success? Does Mark Kenny not count the previous stuff-ups? Is the last fortnight where there apparently have been no boat arrivals, this serves as the only marker on what counts as success or otherwise? A strange way in which to talk about international incidents, people’s lives put in danger; as “a venture”.

The countries’ existing co-operation has been extended, with Australia giving Sri Lanka two patrol boats, so that asylum seekers might be intercepted before they leave Sri Lankan waters. (The inconvenient truth that navy sailors have been arrested and charged with running the biggest people-smuggling ring in the country is being, publicly at least, downplayed.)

Tony Abbott and the Papua New Guinea government plan to shut down a human rights inquiry into human rights abuses in the Manus Island asylum seeker detention centre.

Cost of Abbott government’s orange lifeboats to tow back asylum seeker trebles to $7.5 million.

The Senate has voted to strike out the government’s latest attempt to place refugees on temporary visas.

The government has not been shy about its Operation Sovereign Borders milestone nor for that matter the 30 or 40 daily increments leading up to it.

Not shy? Perhaps a better description is still pumping 3-word slogans out to the public, while denying any accuracy of information, thereby making an informed decision almost impossible.

The absence of public information on exactly what resources are being deployed makes estimating the exact financial cost difficult …

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has indicated he will no longer hold a weekly press conference to update journalists about the Government’s border protection operations.

The (Senate) inquiry will look into Mr Morrison’s claim of “public interest immunity” from requests to tell the public what the navy is doing with asylum seeker boats on the high seas. Senators will also examine the Abbott government’s turn back policy, the recent violations of Indonesian sovereignty and the government’s perceived lack of transparency.

It comes ironically enough, at the fag-end of the most mistake-laden fortnight for the government since the travel entitlements debacle marred its first weeks in office.

Therefore according to Mark Kenny, the debacle of this government’s asylum seeker policy which is costing the Australian public unknown millions of dollars for an impossible-to-ascertain result, is somehow “a success”. No boat arrivals, but what’s the price Mr. Morrison and Mr. Abbott … care to enlighten us?

Back then Tony Abbott had been strangely absent, his minimalist approach erroneously designed to position him as the opposite of the news cycle-obsessed Rudd-Gillard outfits.

I find that extremely difficult to believe, and I would challenge Mark Kenny to compare how many times Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard fronted the cameras in lycra or budgie smugglers proudly holding aloft a dead fish. Poor old Con the Fruiterer could barely leave the front door of his shop without media tart Tony Abbott trying to grab one of his melons.

What it actually conveyed was a government without a message and a prime minister without a firm hand on the wheel.

Perhaps it’s because Abbott doesn’t have a firm hand on the wheel . . .

Prime Minister Tony Abbott refers to her as ”the boss” and Peta Credlin is proving why, stamping her authority on the make up of the government. Fairfax Media has learned Ms Credlin, who steered Mr Abbott’s path to The Lodge as his chief-of-staff, is deciding every government appointment from top ministerial aides right down to the electorate staff of new MPs.

Senator Ian Macdonald’s public accusation that Mr Abbott’s office, led by senior aide Peta Credlin, has instilled a culture of “obsessive centralised control” in the government has struck a chord among sections of the Coalition.

OK, hands up all those that voted for Peta Credlin?

Opinion polls reflected this vacuum and by the close of 2013, press gallery journalists were being backgrounded to the effect that things would change in 2014.

Another opinion is that the actions of this government since the election has lead the public to realise that they were fooled, tricked, deceived, conned and duped by the mainstream media in the lead up to the election via their complete and utter failure to report on, much less analyse the implications of the ideas which Tony Abbott took to the election. If anyone in the msm cares to peruse the list by Sally McManus, her excellent research provides a summary (with links). Ms McManus is currently up to #123 of broken promises, lies and deceptions.

Abbott’s performance since has been more positive and the government had looked to be settling in.

See above for broken promises, lies and deceptions. Mark Kenny blames the Abbott government’s unpopularity on Tony Abbott’s “minimalistic approach” which is now “more positive” and “settling in”. Kenny might care to take a small glance at what precisely the Abbott government has been doing, and among the many are:

Cuts welfare payments to orphans of soldiers – Cuts hundreds of jobs at the CSIRO – Reopens 457 visa loophole to allow employers to hire an unlimited number of workers without scrutiny – Pays hundreds of indigenous workers in his Department up to $19 000 less than non-indigenous workers doing the same job and cuts the budget for the representative body the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples causing two-thirds of the staff to lose their jobs – Scraps food grants program for small farmers – Unemployment rate jumps to highest in more than 10 years – Cuts the wages of Australian troops deployed overseas by almost $20 000 per solider – Withdraws funding for an early intervention program to help vulnerable young people –Starts dismantling Australia’s world leading marine protection system …

But the sitting fortnight just concluded, the last before the May budget session, has been anything but impressive, starting out badly and getting steadily worse.

And deservedly so …

And with each day, the prime minister’s normally confident body language in parliament has chronicled that slide.

That would be a noticed and much commented upon pattern of behaviour, and has in the past been the precedent to “doing a runner”. This pattern will obviously be difficult for Abbott to maintain now that he’s PM, therefore it is expected that he will “go to ground” following mistakes, errors, blunders and confusing plus contradictory statements made by himself.

Mark Kenny then goes on at some length about the Sinodinos issue.

First came the storm over the past business dealings of his assistant treasurer, Arthur Sinodinos.

… but it wasn’t Abbott’s doing. He continued to enthusiastically spruik the imminent return of Sinodinos to the ministry.

In any event, the voluntary suspension has failed to defuse the issue amid new testimony at ICAC that Sinodinos was expressly warned of governance problems including the possible insolvency of AWH, when he was chairman in 2010.

This has become a running sore for Abbott. Colleagues worry that Abbott’s support will make it harder to cut the minister loose if needed, but it might actually make it easier, allowing the Prime Minister to explain the dismissal as anything but a personal preference.

Clever politics eh from the PM … wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

On top of these problems came Attorney-General George Brandis’ ham-fisted sales job for his changes to the Racial Discrimination Act. His legally correct yet politically insane observation, that people have a right to be bigots, was an horrendous own-goal.

Under the proposed legislation, “intimidate” is defined as meaning to “cause fear of physical harm” and “vilify” is to “incite hatred”. “This is an extremely narrowly defined protection, an extremely narrowly defined prohibition of racist speech,” Mr Dreyfus said.

He has also pointed to a clause in the Government amendments that appears to allow vilification or intimidation if it is “in the course of participating in the public discussion”.

“One could drive a truck through that provision,” Mr Dreyfus said.

I agree with Mark Kenny, yes Brandis’ draft legislation was “legally correct” but with the proviso that it was deemed unworkable (A third minister present at the meeting said the original bill had been ”terrible”); a very poor and amateurish effort from Australia’s Attorney-General.

Simon Rice, professor of law at Australian National University, said that Mr Tobin’s comments (concerning holocaust denial and ordered to be taken from Tobin’s website in 2008) would not be banned in Australia if his situation were to be tested by the government’s new exposure draft.

Then came the Prime Minister’s stunning return to old empire via the restoration of knights and dames in the Australian awards system.

While Abbott’s decision might easily be categorised alongside that which are known in the venacular as Abbott Brain-f*rts, and as per other ill-considered offerings from Tony Abbott have given journalists and the Australian public much cause for mirth … and puns, it does also represent as Bill Shorten expressed it, an example of Abbott’s “cruel and twisted priorities … awarding knighthoods but cutting the wages of cleaners”.

One Liberal observed that not even John Howard had wanted to turn the clock that far back and right on cue, Howard himself confirmed it, telling Fairfax Media, that even conservatives would view the move as ‘‘somewhat anachronistic”.

Howard used to rail against Labor’s tendency to govern for section interests.

Well that’s a surprise given Howard’s introduction of WorkChoices, and who can forget that which came to be known as “Howard’s Hand-outs”. Yes, John Howard used to rail against Labor’s “tendency”, but wasn’t that slightly hypocritical? From 2004:

The money is a clear attempt to placate what are currently some of the more vocal sectional interests in the community. On Sunday, we also saw the Government pledge another bag of money to Catholic schools.

Just months before the election, the Government’s populism had eaten up the expected budget surplus, leaving the Beazley opposition in a corner with either no money to spend or having to cut government programs to find money for their own agenda.

Howard’s extraordinarily blatant targeted hand-outs to particular groups to shore up votes is a further indication of how far he is prepared to go in appealing to self-interest rather than national interest.

Mark Kenny however, is spot on with his conclusion:

But this week, it was the Abbott government which turned its back on mainstream opinion to pander to a couple of mouthy conservative commentators wanting to legalise hate speech, a cloister of protected banks wanting to reintroduce skimming, and a tiny cluster of 19th century monarchists.

Little wonder the Prime Minister has been ashen-faced in parliament this week.

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Springtime for Abbott and Processing!

March 1, 2014
Written by: Rossleigh
25 Replies

“Godwin’s Law

A term that originated on Usenet, Godwin’s Law states that as an online argument grows longer and more heated, it becomes increasingly likely that somebody will bring up Adolf Hitler or the Nazis. When such an event occurs, the person guilty of invoking Godwin’s Law has effectively forfieted (sic) the argument.”

Urban Dictionary.

A few days ago, I rather facetiously suggested that journalists could be rounded up as “illegal immigrants” and sent to Manus Island or Nauru if they asked too many difficult questions. Someone suggested that I should remember Godwin’s Law, and that I shouldn’t be comparing Abbott and the current front bench to Nazis, because once someone started evoking the Nazis, then one has lost the argument. (Actually, Godwin’s concept was that comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis frequently trivialised what they had done when compared to what was under discussion. For example, whether you believe speed cameras are revenue raisers or a safety measure, you can hardly compare their use to the Gestapo.)

Even though I wasn’t actually comparing Abbott and the Keystone Cabinet to the Third Reich, the comment did get me thinking. Yes, it’s true that people draw parallels with Nazi Germany far too frequently and that we certainly enjoy much greater freedom in Australia. Although the VLAD laws and certainly anti-terrorism laws lack the safeguards that would prevent me using them – should I become Prime Minister or Premier – to lock up Andrew Bolt and Tony Abbott. And anyone who objected to me locking them up.

However, I find the idea that we have nothing to worry about because the Nazis ended by exterminating several million people rather naive. We should always remember that the Final Solution was the Final Solution. It wasn’t where they started. And, while I believe that we won’t end up with death camps where we exterminate large numbers of people, I think that it’s wise to step back and look at what one is arguing.

One of my enduring memories was a man being interviewed on the radio at the time that Howard announced the restrictions on gun ownership after the Port Arthur Massacre. This person had been objecting to the proposals as a knee-jerk reaction and assuring the listeners that gun-owners were a responsible law-abiding group and that there was no reason to impose greater control on these people. Criminals and law-breakers would still obtain their guns illegally, so why punish these fine citizens who could be trusted. (So far, so good!) But then the interviewer mentioned that John Howard was going to tour country areas to explain his government’s position. At this point, the “responsible” gun-owner suggested that Howard shouldn’t come to his area because there was a lot of anger and there was no guarantee he’d be safe!! Mm, so can be trusted to only use guns appropriately, except when someone has made them very, very angry . . .

And recently, we’ve had a lot of similar stuff about the military. On one hand, we accept that they’re human beings who may occasionally stray. Stories of bullying, rituals, bastardisation, and sexual misconduct have all appeared in the media in recent years, yet when some people who are “attempting to break Australian law” accuse them of misconduct, we’re told that they’re just claims and if somebody makes a claim, there’s no need to investigate it unless we have evidence. Normally claims are investigated in order to discover if there is any evidence, but this seems to have been changed to a system where the proof needs to established before anyone looks into it – this principle should make police work a lot simpler. “Unless you bring us some forensic evidence that your house WAS broken into, we’re not going to open a file on your so-called burglary.”

Now I’m not making a judgement on the guilt or innocence in the burning hand claims. I’m merely trying to ascertain how one can dismiss an accusation so quickly. But the Liberals have been good at that. As Alex Downer argued when the AWB scandal was uncovered, he’d heard the rumours about bribes and corruption, but when he asked the AWB if they were true, the AWB said that they weren’t involved in bribes and corruption, so what more can you do.

And now we have the Liberals demanding Senator Conroy be sacked for suggesting that Angus Campbell was involved in a political cover-up. For those of you who don’t remember exactly what Conroy said.

Senator Conroy – It is a movie, and we’re living it, Colonel Jessup. I mean seriously, you can’t tell us the truth, you can’t tell the Australian public the truth because you might upset an international neighbour. That’s called a political cover-up,”

General Campbell – Senator, I feel I’ve explained the basis of my decisions

Senator Conroy – That’s a political cover-up. You’re engaged in a political cover up.

Now, apparently General Campbell was “extremely offended” by the comments. And Michaela Cash stormed out. For those of you don’t know or who’ve forgotten Senator Cash click here.

And someone commented the other day that Conroy shouldn’t go into any bars where ADF personnel are drinking. I don’t see why not. Then, for some reason, I remembered the interview with the responsible gun-owner.

Yes, we’ve entered a world where ADF personnel can’t be questioned or criticised, where we’re meant to adopt an Anzac Day/Remembrance Day attitude to the defence force all year round. We should just remember their sacrifices, be grateful and remember that they’re the ones in the front line in this war to protect our “sovereign borders”! This is not the time to show disrespect to our servicemen (and women).

So, to sum it all up.

We can’t compare anyone to the Nazis until they’ve killed six million, and that the argument that it was their ability to offer people up as scapegoats and to place the military above criticism that enabled them to do that isn’t something worth considering.
Defence personnel never do anything wrong and it would be dangerous to suggest to any of them that they do.
People have a right to free speech and people don’t have the right not to be offended, but only when we’re taking about racism or sexism. Journalists, for example, should be allowed to publish incorrect information without giving people the right of reply. However, when an elected Senator suggest that a general who refuses to give answers to a Senate committee is involved in a political cover-up, the general has a right to be offended and the Senator should be punished in some way.
Tempting though it is, if elected to be supreme leader of Australia, I should repeal the laws that enable me to lock up Bolt, Abbott and company without trial rather than use them, because if I go down that path, I can hardly be surprised if others do even worse, when they gain power. Safeguards are needed for the powerless; the powerful find ways of persecuting their enemies anyway.

FYI – Mike Godwin, of Godwin’s Law, has apparently tweeted that comparing Australia’s asylum seeker policy to the Nazis is not a trivialising comparison at all. I have not verified this so I’m only reporting rumour. If I’m not careful and continue to do such things, I’ll be a Canberra based political journalist working for a mainstream newspaper.

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Tag Archives: John Howard

A ‘People’s vote’ on marriage equality: Abbott’s latest Truthiness phrase?

Roll back the clocks to late January 1996 …

Roll forward to 1999 – and Australia becoming a republic is looking good

Tricky Howard divides and conquers

Back to 2015, and Tricky Tony is facing his own battle on Marriage Equality

But do we even need a people’s vote to introduce marriage equality?

Abbott could ask people what we think about marriage equality at the next election

Beware the politician bearing gifts – in this case a people’s vote

And so ‘People’s vote’ enters the Truthiness to English Dictionary

Leadership, scandal, and the political process

Fool me once…

How about some other political witch hunts, Mr Abbott?

Never-ending story

Sweeteners

The Miser’s Apprentice

The romance of the retro PM

Merchants of Hypocrisy: Open for the Business of War

The Superannuation saga

Wherever I lay my hat that’s my home

Tony Abbott stuffs it up . . . again

Springtime for Abbott and Processing!