Sheridan: "Howard won - so there!!" *Pokes tongue out

Greg Sheridan is getting his knickers in a twist over the results of the Lowy poll concerning attitudes towards the US/UN etc. According to Sheridan…

The foreign policy class believes, almost unanimously, in a set of propositions that are not overwhelmingly shared by the public and are contested by the Howard Government.

Sheridan is deeply skeptical about the poll results which suggest that Australians favour multilateralism, support the UN, hold concerns over the current modus operandi of the Bush administration, and so on, and he points to loaded poll questions as an explanation. To be honest, I think the questions are a little loaded myself, but I think a poll on the same issues with ‘balanced’ questions would yield similar results. Indeed, many polls in the past have indicated wide public concern over the Bush administrations approach to the war on terror, and a desire to be more independent of the US when it comes to making decisions about how Australia should conduct itself internationally.

What irritates me, however, is comments such as this…

Yet isn't it remarkable that the same public re-elected the Howard Government with an increased majority, and that all through the election gave the Howard government a two-to-one majority over Labor on the question of who would better handle national security?

…as if to suggest the last election was a referendum on Howard’s approach to foreign affairs, with Howard’s victory a sign of public approval. People couldn’t have possibly voted for the Howard government after it launched an extensive scare campaign on interest rates, or perhaps because they saw Labor for what it is – a slightly watered down version of the Liberals.

What would Sheridan have to say if the election fell a few weeks prior to its actual date, at a point where the Labor party held a strong lead? Would he accept the assertion that “the Iraq war was wrong after all” on such an election result? The “Howard won the election so shut up” line has been employed a fair bit in response to continued criticism of the Iraq war – it’s just too bad for people like Sheridan this approach to discussion of these issues has zero argumentative value.

Marr/Asylum Seekers/Baxter

David Marr has waded into the discussion over the recent ‘softening’ of Australia’s immigration detention system. In today’s Sydney Morning Herald, he writes:

The Government now believes that when deporting a failed asylum seeker proves impossible, "it is not reasonable that he or she continue to be in detention and the desire is that that person be let out into the community". We must spare a thought for the losers as we applaud this incremental humanitarian shift. Bennett (David Bennett QC, Solicitor General for the Commonwealth) will shrug it off and plunge into the next murky brawl for his client. But what a rebuff for the hard men of the High Court and in particular Justice Ken Hayne, who led a majority of the judges to the conclusion that people in Al-Kateb's position - stateless and unable to leave Australia - could be left in detention, if need be forever. That Howard has now backed away from the High Court's decision changes nothing that matters here. The result remains law and remains part of the Immigration Department's extensive armoury.

As I mentioned earlier, the change by the Howard government comes only in the light of shifting public attitudes which could be attributed to a variety of factors – the Cornelia Rau affair, the media attention given to the case of Peter Qasim (now in his 7th year of detention), reduced number of boat arrivals etc. The change does not come from a genuine change of heart after realizing that locking people behind razor wire for an indefinite amount of time is ethically questionable. That is, it’s not a case of Howard suddenly putting the “Judeo Christian values” he speaks of (when criticizing “valueless” government schools) into action – it’s merely an effort to shut up discontent backbenchers.

I eagerly await angry retorts to Marr’s article from conservative pundits, but given that Marr no longer works for the ABC, one wonders what they can use against him – the “Your drivel can only survive on the tax-payer funded ABC” approach is no longer available.

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In other news, I was filled with a deep sense of national pride over the weekend as valiant riot police intervened to stop dangerous radicals from flying kites and balloons outside the Baxter detention centre. Charging these traitorous subversives with horses is the only suitable response to such dangerous protesting tactics. Had those balloons found their way into the air…well…I don’t even want to think of the chaos that would have ensued…

How compassionate can you get!?!

There’s a lot of conservatives patting themselves on the back in light of the Howard governments ‘softening-up’ of its immigration detention policies. “See? We’re compassionate after all” they say. Problem is, this latest move is not driven by compassion – it’s driven by political expediency (In fact, the new visa can hardly be considered compassionate at all). The Howard government has detected a change in public attitudes towards detention. The government’s victory in the High Court which entitled it to detain asylum-seekers indefinitely didn’t have the electorate popping open the champagne - people just aren’t comfortable with the prospect of locking someone in a detention centre indefinitely, even if they haven’t succeeded in attaining refugee status. With discontent brewing on the back bench, the new visa is aimed at preventing detention centres from becoming a major issue of conflict within the Liberal party. It’s a tricky juggling act – Howard & Co need to appease the backbenchers and simultaneously insist that they are tough on ‘illegal immigrants’. Amanda Vanstone’s comment reported by The Australian…

If the boats were still coming, we'd be looking at this in a different light

…makes it pretty clear that this stunt serves only to win a few brownie points with Bruce Baird, Judi Moylan and Petro Georgiou. If a boat or two of asylum-seekers had arrived in the past month or so you can bet your bottom dollar we wouldn’t be seeing any changes to the detention system whatsoever.

I had to have a chuckle at Miranda Devine’s article about all this in the Sydney Morning Herald. When examining the reconsideration of asylum-seeker cases where Muslims have converted to Christianity she states…

Baird, an Anglican, heads the Parliamentary Christian Fellowship, a bipartisan group of about 60 religious-minded MPs. Politics in Australia being what it is, his advocacy and the Government's new policy towards Iranian Christian converts has been interpreted by some as a negative, an unreasonable bias towards Christianity. But Christian asylum seekers are given special consideration if they come from Muslim countries in which Christians are persecuted. In any case, why the surprise that a Christian country like Australia would look favourably on Christians? (My ephasis)

So what Miranda’s saying is that, putting aside the treatment of Christians in Iran, asylum-seekers who are Christians should get extra points because Australia is a “Christian country”, and this someohow makes them a priority for protection. Perhaps the surprise that Miranda is so baffled by stems from the fact that Australia is a secular nation, which suggests that the government should not favour people of one religion over people of another religion. Quite simple really.

She goes on to discuss “counterproductive detention politics”, and explains that…

For too long the debate has been distorted by a combination of competing interests. There were opportunists, such as socialist, atheist and green groups, who seized on a new way of whipping up Howard hatred. There were the sometimes overzealous efforts of well-meaning people. And there were the splenetic vendettas of John Valder and the New Matilda crowd whose hyperbole about concentration camps puts most of the Government and its citizens on the
defensive.

So we have socialist, atheist and green groups (refugee advocates), overzealous well-meaning people (refugee advocates) and John Valder & Co (refugee advocates), distorting the debate. Of course, no one on the right has distorted the debate - hands up anyone who believes that any of these comments have a familiar ring…

“If we let one in, we’ll be swamped”
“Only one of them needs to be a terrorist and then we’ll have 9-11 all over again”
“If they don’t steal our welfare they’ll steal our jobs”
“If they don’t steal our jobs they’ll steal our welfare”
“They don’t share our values”
“They don’t assimilate”
Etc. Etc.

I noticed that church groups, a central component of the refugee advocate movement, did not receive the same scrutiny as the socialists, atheists and greens. Perhaps they come under “overzealous well meaning people”?

Another East Timor?

One of the most shameful aspects of Australian history is, without a doubt, the Australian governments acquiescence towards the Indonesian military’s human rights violations throughout East Timor, Aceh, West Papua and other regions where the Indonesian government holds concerns over its “territorial integrity”. SBS’s Dateline aired a report detailing the ongoing death and suffering experienced by the people of West Papua thanks to military operations conducted by the Indonesian military and the militia it supports. Reverend Sofyan Yoman, a West Papuan Baptist, has claimed that in Puncak Jaya over 6000 people are hiding in the jungle after fleeing their homes which were torched by the Indonesian military.

Soon after this latest spate of violence erupted, the United States announced its intention to resume military training programs suspended in 1992 following the Santa Cruz massacre. This move is expcted to “accelerate the full restoration of Australian-Indonesian military ties” which were severed in 1999 following the human right abuses perpetrated by Indonesian backed militia forces surrounding East Timor’s vote for independence.

The latest violence in West Papua was mentioned in parliament recently. Robert Hill, like so many government officials before him, offered weak apologetics for the Indonesian authorities, explaining that:

Indonesia has significant difficulties across its island states in relation to a number of provinces, including Papua. I think, on the basis of the most recent information that I have seen, it is seeking to meet its responsibilities of government to Papua in a responsible way and in a way that will be of benefit to the people of Papua (My emphasis) as well as to the country as a whole. It is not an easy challenge for the Indonesian government, but the signs that I have been seeing are positive signs and are therefore in the direction that Australia should support.

Alexander Downer has stressed that the Australian Government will not interfere in (i.e. comment on) Indonesian territorial matters. A report in The Australian stated:

Mr Downer said he expected the agreement would explicitly state that each side would respect each other's territorial integrity and take into account Indonesia's political sensitivities regarding its sovereign territory. (My emphasis)

"Indonesians will be reinforced in their confidence in Australia knowing that Australia supports Indonesia's territorial integrity," he said.

"By that I mean we do not support secessionist movements in Indonesia."

So Australia supports Indonesia’s territorial integrity – even if it must be maintained by killing, destruction of homes and forced expulsions (like in East Timor). After all, we must “take into account Indonesia's political sensitivities regarding its sovereign territory”.

Testing...Testing...1-2-3...

This blogging stuff looks interesting so I thought I'd give it a try.

I'm pretty interested in politics, social issues, and the media (I also enjoy cooking up a storm in the kitchen), so expect a fair bit of rambling on those topics.

OK, I'm going to click on Publish Post and see what happens. Here goes nothing...