Mr Turnbull identified Australian values as freedom, equality of men and women, the rule of law, democracy and “a fair go”, and claimed these were “uniquely Australian”.
“They are shared with many other democracies but they are in and of themselves unique. There’s something uniquely Australian about them,” he said.
A haze of fake tan and a whiff of panic hangs over Canberra this week as Malcolm Turnbull vows Australian values be put first. He plays an anti-migrant card to inflame the same blind fear of others as John Howard’s desperate lie of 2001 that asylum seekers were throwing babies overboard. 457 Visas will be scrapped to ensure that any migrant who gets an Aussie job can speak English. Pass an Aussie values test – even if he can’t define those values himself.
The fair go he speaks of certainly does not apply to women who as Michael Short reports continue to be paid less than men, on average $27,000 and $100,000 if we’re talking about executive salaries, according to Tax Office figures. The gender gap, on average 26,000 a year in wages, he reminds us, is unchanged after 20 years.
Australia’s take on a fair go and equality of opportunity ensures that it’s a blokes’ world where men have more power, earn more while women not only earn less and are more likely to be passed over for promotion. Women continue to carry out two thirds of all unpaid domestic work, three quarters of child care and 70 per cent caring for adults in Australia. Unpaid childcare alone is estimated by PwC at $345 billion a year.
A fair go is a pet rhetorical device for our politicians. A fair go had a fair go from Kevin Rudd when he opposed Howard’s WorkChoices. Julia Gillard wove “mateship” into the skein when she spoke of the ways the NDIS could offer a fair go, a scheme now imperilled by our current government which pretends that there it is unfunded.
Turnbull gave it a whirl when he blathered on about tax reform in 2015. Menzies and Fraser also both hopped into it. It’s at best an appeal to fairness and justice. Equality of opportunity is in there, too. Clearly, however, it’s not something to be taken too seriously although the ten to fourteen per cent of Australians living below the poverty line would disagree.
Above all, Indigenous Australians whose life expectancy is lower than other Australians; whose children are more likely to die as infants; whose health, education and employment outcomes are poorer than non-Indigenous people would , sadly, have plenty of evidence to dispute the sincerity beneath the PM’s glib rhetoric. The irony for Malcolm Turnbull is that his trumpeting of Australian values, as Michelle Grattan points out, raises serious questions about his own.
Is he tapping into community fears; reaching out to ordinary Australians, widely believed to be Hanson supporters – spurned in an age of identity politics? Or is he willing, once again, to forgo his own beliefs to save his career?
There is nothing uniquely Australian about the values which Malcolm Turnbull is able to instance in a patronising interview with Leigh Sales on ABC 7:30, the PM reveals that respect for a woman with a different point of view is often conspicuously lacking. Indeed, viewers, would be forgiven for concluding Australian values include arrogantly talking over the top of your (female) interviewer and chiding, belittling or mocking your adversary’s commitment.
“I’m surprised you’re challenging this on the ABC,” he says. “I don’t think your heart’s in it actually, Leigh. I think you agree with me.” Daddy knows best, dear. Of course, if Turnbull were really concerned to preserve our uniquely Australian freedoms, he’d not only be practising what he preached, he’d be pushing for a bill of rights.
Instead, what’s clear is that his own heart is not in it. He’s toying with populist rhetoric. It’s also a dog-whistle to those who like Peter Dutton would have us believe, against all evidence, that migrants were taking our jobs. That all our problems are caused by people from other countries who don’t know Don Bradman’s batting average.
That’s it! He’ll set a harder test – only three tries allowed – as if migrants need further tests; as if the questions mean anything; as if any test which rests on cultural assimilation is not at odds with even his lip service to multiculturalism.
Doubtless a focus group or a think tank told him this is how to win over Pauline Hanson’s fans. It’s not going to work. Yet there’s an awkward echo to Australia first. An orange ring around the rhetoric. An echo of the yam that talks.
The PM is, of course, paying homage to another weak, vainglorious lout, Donald Trump, who’s also muscling up, bigly. Abruptly switching from America First or self-interested isolationism, to an intrusive, if not, trigger-happy foreign policy involving missiles and bombs, a violent right turn in desperate attempt to stem a rocketing disapproval in opinion polls, the Trump administration marks its hundredth day of chaos and dysfunction by picking a fight with everyone this week.
All the old foes cop a serve: China, Russia, North Korea, Iran. Russia’s “vassal” Syria is threatened with regime change. China must pull its spoilt brat, North Korea, into line; stop its “illegal activities” on the Spratly and Paracel Islands in The South China Sea. Pipsqueak Montenegro is pulled into NATO, adding an extra US base in Europe, antagonising Russia.
Yet a US alone in a world of threats is an illusion, a paranoid collective delusion. America’s real enemies are injustice, inequality and ignorance fostered, as in Australia, by a Neoliberal domestic policy which puts profits over people.
Trump promises “massive tax cuts” which would boost the rapid transfer of wealth from worker to capitalist, benefiting the top one per cent on average $214,000. Eight million low-income and single-income families would suffer financially.
It is not clear, however, that he will be able to deliver. Even Republicans – especially Republicans – want to see something revenue neutral. What he has accomplished is a Cabinet of billionaires and millionaires, the wealthiest in US modern history which stars Education Secretary Betsy de Vos, an opponent of state education, a woman who helped Michigan expand private schools with public funds. Students in Detroit now finish last in US tests of numeracy and literacy.
At the top, its role model is a president who knows no better than to claim in public that Korea was once part of China. Not that it worries him. He has money. “Part of the beauty of me is that I am very rich”, he once told an interviewer.
We don’t care. US allies fawn approval. Mike Pence is feted by the Turnbull government this week as “wise and stable”.
Like Trump, who paid his own business $8.2 million out of campaign funds, Pence has also helped himself. 1990 campaign finance records show that Pence, then 31, was using political donations to pay the mortgage on his house, his personal credit card bill, groceries, golf tournament fees and car payments for his wife. Not that it was illegal, then.
Turnbull may see this as wise and stable but it cost Pence an election. Public records also reveal as Governor of Indiana, Pence communicated with advisers through his personal AOL account on homeland security matters and security. Yet he’s despatched to Australia on a goodwill tour and to help us tell China to tighten the screws on North Korea.
It’s a rapid, dramatic change of role for the US. Exit stage left, Barrack Obama’s “pivot to Asia”. Enter stage right, Trump’s Team Heavy, a loosely affiliated gang of self-interested thugs united by their insecurity and a desire to kick heads.
Not that anyone can claim to have worked out Trump’s Foreign policy. It’s still a work in progress; a baffling, blustering incoherence based on boosting an already hugely unpopular, geopolitically ignorant President’s bellicose campaign rhetoric which usurps any rational policy based on negotiated mutual interest or calculated strategic initiative.
The US wants Russia out of Syria while it adds Montenegro to NATO. Another link is added to a ring of bases it has established in spite of its 1990 agreement with Russia not to add a single one. It mouths off at Iran over its landmark nuclear test treaty. Iran, it says, is a threat to the entire civilised world. It’s a pivot to a hard core Neocon agenda which earns it gushing praise from a Turnbull government, desperate to arrest its terminal unpopularity by any means.
America’s reverse charm offensive is unique in US foreign policy history, at least in tone. Cue VP Mike Pence, the smooth-talking former talk show hate radio host, who styles himself “Russ Limbaugh decaf” Hailed as a moderate, a safe pair of hands, (only by contrast with Trump?), Pence is an “evangelical social conservative“, a climate change sceptic determined to undo 40 years’ progress on abortion, gay rights, civil rights, criminal justice reform and race relations.
Anti-abortion, homophobic, Tea Party Pence is an oddball who won’t dine alone with any woman, a man who must have his wife by his side at events featuring alcohol. As a Congressman, he opposed federal funding to support HIV and AIDS sufferers unless it were matched by government investment in programs to discourage same-sex relationships.
Pence was one of only 25 Republicans to vote against George W Bush’s signature legislation No Child Left behind because he feared its Federal intervention in education. He visits Australia Saturday, with his family, to rapturous applause.
Turnbull is all over him like a rash. Over-zealous US sycophants feature large in the fawning over America that is our political leaders’ response to the US-Australia Alliance, an agreement which binds the US to do no more than consult with us in time of danger, but never has any PM been so keen to gush over a Vice President so far to his right.Â
Desperate for a bounce in the polls, in thrall to his own powerful conservative party rump, Turnbull dotes on Pence; rashly parrots US anti-China nonsense.
“The real obligation, the heaviest obligation, is on China because China is the nation that has the greatest leverage over North Korea,” Turnbull said. “It has the greatest obligation and responsibility to bring North Korea back into a realm of at least responsibility in terms of its engagement with its neighbours.”
Does North Korea pose a problem for China? Noting its “medieval leadership” run by a family dynasty with “a habit of murdering its family members”, is problematic, Former Foreign Minister Bob Carr counters that China’s got less influence over North Korea than it has over any of its other thirteen neighbours on its 22,000 km borders.
China does fear, however, he says, that a DPRK collapse would leave US ally South Korea’s army on the Chinese border.
Yet nothing has changed in the behaviour of the leader of the DPRK. The only change has been Trump’s bluster.
Now that The Donald’s got his rockets off over Syria or Iraq, he’s not quite sure where, and the USS Carl Vinson is found to be nowhere near the Korean Peninsula but heading to Australia for war games instead, the confrontation is revealed to be a fake face off or a bluff, neither of which does much for Trump’s credibility. Nor our local media.
Our media eagerly, uncritically recycle the US show of force narrative and its dramatic brinksmanship. Is it a bluff or, perhaps, a double bluff, a signal that the Pentagon has no wish to let North Korea put the wind up it; spring a Thucydides trap? The risk or the trap is that the US will be drawn into war with China, as Karen Middleton notes.
Egg permanently on face Press Secretary, White House fall-guy, alternative factotum and, now, hapless casuist, Sean Spicer, is left to split hairs in the faint yet undying hope that he can claim black is white.
“The president said that we have an armada going towards the peninsula. That’s a fact. It happened. It’s happening, rather,’ he tells a scowl of reporters. “We never said when it would get there.” He could have made a virtue of a calculated delay. When we’ve finished bowls worked for Drake in 1588. But Trump’s White House is in 1984 mode.
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength and Spicer is credible in the Orwellian world of modern politics.
While The Donald’s armada is found and turned around, our nation’s appetite for hate is regaled, ad infinitum, by a volley of shots of North Korea’s missile exhibitionism.
Scenes of last Saturday’s DPRK massed parades and assorted military porn help imprint an image of a “reclusive, rogue state” which is, paradoxically, never too shy to threaten nuclear Armageddon or put its people in gulags worse than anything Australia has on Manus or Nauru.
At least, that’s how our press packages its hate, served up with double-helpings of demonisation and lashings of fear.
Sample questions are produced to illustrate the type of thinking that will keep us safe from those who don’t share our values. Oddly they are all aimed at Muslims. Fear of 457 fraudsters, a type of visa which is all Labor’s fault, is whipped up in Canberra. Happily our heroic PM will save the day. Clean up Labor’s mess. He’ll rebadge the visa. It’s name will change and there will be some tinkering but the changes will affect only nine per cent of current 457 visa holders.
The PM hoses down any expectations his government’s budget will do anything except talk about housing affordability. It’s re-run of his all talk and no show tax summit.
Not talking, however, Monkey-Pod Top Banana, Immigration Minister and Border Enforcer, former Queensland drug squad copper Peter Dutton puts report of PNG soldiers shooting at asylum seekers on Manus on Good Friday down to a payback for sexual abuse of a young boy. It’s a rumour he starts. His facts are wrong.
But he’ll leave the commentary to others, he says, deflecting any questions.
Dutton should resign. He’s prejudiced any inquiry on Manus. He’s smeared asylum seekers’ motives as John Howard might. The implication of sexual abuse is a despicable attempt to blame the shooting on the victims.
It would seem, moreover, Dutton’s got the date wrong, the boy’s age wrong and that he’s refusing to admit PNG police evidence. He’s conflated two incidents. The boy who entered the camp was begging for food and was given some fruit.
Interviewed on ABC’s Insiders, Sunday, Peter Dutton won’t hear Barrie Cassidy’s protest that the incident involving a young boy was a separate matter; a week apart from when asylum-seekers were fired upon by an intoxicated mob of PNG solders after a football match at which asylum-seekers had refused to leave the field , according to local police. Dutton perpetuates the lie that the centre is run by PNG, to dodge responsibility for an unsafe environment.
The only proper solution would be to bring the asylum-seekers to Australia and out of harms’ way but Peter Dutton’s more interested in blaming the ABC for “commentary”. It’s un-Australian to expect him to account for his actions.
In the deeper international waters of intolerance and mindless enmity, however, a Leni Riefenstahl Logie goes to MSM, for its sensational scenario of a North Korea a goose step away from world annihilation, in a televisual extravaganza set up to loop endlessly, effortlessly across our screens, as George Orwell foresaw, a cheap and easy means of social control in a world of fear, hate and scarcity made possible by perpetual war. Neocons take a bow.
News editors are spoilt for choice of long-running conflict. There’s more dirt to dish on Syria as it dives for Russian cover, fear that ISIS will link with Al Qaeda in Iraq while Iran is back in the US hit list as public enemy number one.
After a cordial meeting with US Saudi leaders and pals who fund and export extremism, Rex Tillerson accuses Iran of being the mother of all evil with its alarming and ongoing provocations that “export terror and destabilise” the world.
“Allowing this dictator to have that kind of power is not something that civilised nations can allow to happen,” says Paul Ryan Speaker of US House of Representatives. He’s talking about North Korea’s Kim but it’s a nifty confection of moral outrage that would suit any number of contemporary US allies including Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi who seized power in a coup and killed more than 800 protesters in a single day.
A similarly US-favoured strong man is Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan whose recent referendum win means a sidelined parliament and judiciary. Erdogan can now just get on with the business of growing the economy, cracking down on dissent and providing arms and other support to Jihadists in Syria.
Allowed far too much power, nominal leader of Rogue Superpower US President Donald Trump swears, on the other hand, he’ll put an end to nasty North Korea’s nuclear testing all by himself if he has to. Horrible. “The shield stands guard and The sword stands ready,” fearless leader, dimes in his sidekick, bloodless hulk VP Mike Pence, a villain fresh from a Marvel Comic Universe. International law? We make the rules, boss.
The words get worse. The “era of strategic patience” is now over. Why, he’ll even snatch Kim’s missiles out of a falling sky, while as for Syria, bad-ass Bashar al Assad will get his regime changed on him any day now. Or sometime soon. OK.
Will North Korea launch a nuclear attack? Can China tighten the screws on its wayward neighbour, the DPRK? Will Iran prove itself the mother of all evil by pursuing its own nuclear programme? Can Bashar al Assad continue to defy Trump’s threats of regime change? Will Russia take Trump’s Tomahawk hint and pull out of Syria?
The essence of US foreign policy currently is to keep everyone guessing. What is clear, however, is that beneath the spin, the bluff and bluster and the breathless, apocalyptic reporting is a president whose opinion ratings are at record low.
Only 41.9 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s performance as President. 52.3 percent disapprove, according to the FiveThirtyEight aggregate of polls. Polls from swing states similarly show Trump’s approval rating under water, making him the least popular newly elected president in decades.
Most reassuring – but not to The Donald was that national polling showed that after his Syrian attack, euphemistically referred to everywhere as a “strike”, his polls remain flat. Trump is enough of a dud and a disappointment already to be denied the traditional bounce in approval enjoyed by presidents after ordering military action.
Turnbull should take note. Yet this week his grandstanding and dog-whistling on Australian values and his 457 visa rebadging stunt together with his embarrassingly over exuberant greeting of one of the least distinguished and most disturbing Vice Presidents ever to reach our shores is a signal that our PM’s in full panic mode.
As with our great and powerful friend, the US, Australia’s voters are not going to be fooled by a random attack of misty-eyed patriotism or any con-job about Aussie values. Another babies overboard in disguise at this late stage will not help a government which is so divided, so uninspired and so poorly led it just cannot deliver.
Spare us the embarrassing rhetoric, Mr Turnbull. Your frenzied embrace of a fair go and an Aussie freedom, you and your government are not remotely committed to betrays a lack of good faith and good judgement.
Similarly your adulation of Mike Pence and all he represents will do you no favours. Above all, your supercilious and patronising response to Leigh Sales on the 7:30 Report betrays your real values. Australians, especially women can spot a con.
Give up the fear-mongering. The enemy is not the migrant or the asylum seeker or the terrorist. It is within the neoliberal policy of your government which puts profit before people, a government which wages war on the poor and provides tax cuts for the rich.
Australia doesn’t need a new citizenship test. It does need a government which can honour its commitment to meet the needs of its people.
This means providing access for all to good health, welfare and education; ensuring equal opportunities, equality and justice for all; a fair go for all, if you like, but not just more empty talk or posturing while your policies deny these rights.
[textblock style=”7″]
Like what we do at The AIMN?
You’ll like it even more knowing that your donation will help us to keep up the good fight.
Chuck in a few bucks and see just how far it goes!
Your contribution to help with the running costs of this site will be gratefully accepted.
You can donate through PayPal or credit card via the button below, or donate via bank transfer: BSB: 062500; A/c no: 10495969
[/textblock]
It’s time the people of America and Australia replace their voices with their votes and replace Trump. Pence, Turnbull and all the other unethical ,greedy and unpatriotic idiots out of office!
“Desperate for a bounce in the polls,
According to Newspoll and headlining in just about every MSM outlet this morning, Turnbull has achieved his bounce.
Haven’t we been here before? A favourable Newspoll, MSM spruiking “winner and great leader”, whilst other polls, in this latest case Essential, showing no real change from low Turnbull/LN-P support, and the other polls ignored for the supposed king of polls, only to have Turnbull go backwards in the king poll a month or so later.
Does this supposed Turnbull in glorious ascension Newspoll mean he’s going to dog whistle race every weekend before a Newspoll? That will wear thin quickly.
It’s a hell of a spin. Fake bounce as the talking yam might say. Here’s William Bowe:
Courtesy of The Australian, the latest result from Newspoll records Labor with a two-party lead of 52-48, down from 53-47 in the last poll (which was three weeks ago rather than the usual two, owing to Easter). Labor and the Greens are both down a point on the primary vote, to 35% and 9%, with the Coalition and One Nation steady on 36% and 10%. Malcolm Turnbull is up two on approval to 32% and down two on disapproval to 57%, while Bill Shorten is up one to 33% and down one to 53%. Turnbull’s lead as preferred prime minister shifts from 41-32 to 42-33.
Well within the ‘margin of error’ (MOE). Fact is Turnbull has lost another Newspoll and Abbott for one will be both counting up – and counting down.
Abbott is doing monumental damage while outside the Cabinet tent so bring him inside so that he can do even more – and much more effectively. It makes for great viewing, even though the plot is a re-run.
I give it five stars.
Good news from France ( Macron ahead of Le Pen), and here we have Dutton lying on the National TV, to boost the Libs in the polls…!
I don’t know anymore who’s a baddie and who’s not…?
Mal patronizes Leigh, whilst telling us that men and women are equal in Oz…? It’s all too confusing to me, is this what’s called ‘bullying’?
At least Cassidy persisted…
I’m always fascinated by the photos accompanying the articles.
Those two look like siblings; Mal’s the big brother, and Mike the younger little bro…What does it make Donald ? The first born ?
The cuckoo in the nest?
Great article weaving together foreign policy with local issues in a coherent and intelligible way. An excellent read.
“Pence is an oddball who won’t dine alone with any woman, a man who must have his wife by his side at events featuring alcohol.”
Pence knows the dangers of alcohol, probably from experience. He sounds like a recovering alcoholic who relies on his hardcore religious beliefs as part of his 12 step program.
Or, perhaps Silkworm, pence is a serial sexual predator, much like the yam, needs the misses around to ensure he keeps his dick in his pants. A problem little mikey finds is exacerbated by the demon booze.
Great article!
Neither Trump nor Pence should be President. We know about Trumps’s character, but Pence is even scarier.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…/think-trump-is-scary-check-out-mike-pence-on-the-issue.
We need a healthy dose of royal commissions – Abbott had the right double edged idea.
Mr Turnbull identified Australian values as freedom, equality of men and women, the rule of law, democracy and “a fair go”, and claimed these were “uniquely Australian”. What a load of bollocks.
The rich and corporations in the US will be laying in big supplies of hand lotion and tissues in expectation of
http://www.smh.com.au/business/comment-and-analysis/tax-promise-will-test-donald-trumps-credibility-20170423-gvqyow.html
Turbull in his own words possibly of Jewish heritage (ie Crypo Jew), Goldman Sachs Banker, Rhodes Scholar, (a legacy instigated by Cecil Rhodes, whose idea was to establish a secret society for leading business & banking leaders are around world with the eventual goal of a One World Government) is the perfect choice as leader to continue the work of the true controllers of Australia.
We have a Foreign Minister who travels the world as our representative seemingly creating chaos where ever she goes. Her comment on how to fix the Syrian conflict is “just tell Russia to leave”, leaves one lost for words and shows where her true loyalties lie.
If one did not know better one would assume she works for the US State Dept.
We are an independent country whose head of state is a British tourist attraction which serves the purpose for those in control.
This country with a small population, is rich in natural resources but does the average Australian benefit from this wealth?
We have petroleum that is produced here but priced in line with world price parity. Why? How much is fuel in Saudi Arabia? Dubai?
This country has been constantly sucked dry and still does by vested interests whose loyalty does not include Australian Citizens.
Saturday Evening Post, June 19, 1919
“The Montefiores have taken Australia for their own, and there is not a gold field or a sheep run from Tasmania to New South Wales that does not pay them a heavy tribute. They are the real owners of the antipodean continent. What is the good of our being a wealthy nation, if the wealth is all in the hands of German Jews?”
W.Hughes, Prime Minister of Australia.
These natural resources are owned by all Australians, with legal ownership vested through governments’ rights over these assets. Governments often assign exploration, utilisation and production rights to the private sector in return for certain payments. These payments include company income tax, royalties, excises and licenses. Such payments can enable governments to collect a return from the extraction or use of the community’s natural resources but can also impact on the level of investment, both by Australian and overseas investors.
We have abundant gas reserves but do we benefit? Our gas should be dirt cheap but we are facing a shortage because it gets sold to overseas buyers to fill the pockets of vested interests. The Australian people own that gas and we should be supplied at very cheap prices,the excess can then be sold to overseas interests.
The Average Australian family struggles to just survive with the outrageous cost of basic services.
For 100 years the price of Electricity was very cheap but privatisation killed that. Australia has been plundered for decades by scams like privatisation—the Rothschild’s specialty.
The Governments in their widom decided to sell off public owned assets which belonged to the people. How much is your power bill now? Who profits?
Let’s go back a few years to Victoria as an example before Jeff Kennett’s fire sale. We had the State Electricity Commission, Gas and Fuel, Victorian Railways, Board of Works etc. All these public owned assets provided excellent cheap services and employed thousands of people and apprentices. Now all privatised. Did it improve your life or reduce costs? How much is your gas,electricty, water bills now?
How much does it cost to send your kids to school?
Education really was free once and all you needed at Primary School was a packet of coloured pencils and a few books.
We have politicians who grovel to the Israeli/Americans. We send our servicemen overseas to involve them in created conflicts that have nothing to do with Australia to serve the bankers and big business interests and our politicians of late have put Australia under threat and possible future target which benefits whom?
So what are we leaving our kids?
Compulsory vaccinations which the overwhelming evidence which shows massive health risks?
Would you feed your kids 1080 rat poison? The basic component which is Sodium Flouride, a known neurotoxin but added to our water to supposedly give us better teeth and a proven intelligence suppressant?
GMO food with proven health risks?
The lists are endless.
What happens to the interest rate if it hits 17 percent as it did before? Can people with mortgages at the current high cost of housing survive? Or will the banks own it all? We are on the edge of a precipice.
This is a great country but where is it now? Where are we headed? Time will tell but I fear it will get a lot worse before we ever see again the golden days of years gone by.
To quote respected writer John Kaminski,
If you believe what the government tells you you’re part of the problem. If you believe what the media tells you, well, then you’re just an idiot incapable of discernment and a total failure at critical thinking.
Wake up Australia we are being used and robbed blind.