Interview
Cross Wires
by Peter Lewis
|
|
|
Chris Warren |
Where is the media ownership debate up to at the moment?
As you know the Federal Government has introduced draft legislation that is very dangerous for diversity in two ways. First, because it would allow a further concentration of ownership of the media. Second, because they're also proposing to intervene, or to be able to intervene in quite an active way, in the editorial operations of newspapers that's something that both journalists and newspaper employers would be very concerned about.
What sort of new rights are involved there?
They're proposing that through the Australian Broadcasting Authority they would be able to make judgements about whether there was separation of newsrooms in different parts of a media empire. We that that's an industrial issue. It's not appropriate for the Government to be using that as a device to determine rights of publishers.
What would supporters of the changes to laws say the advantages for Australia in freeing up media ownership laws?
I'm not sure they say there are any advantages. What they do say is that there just should not be media specific laws. There's been a global campaign by many media employers to argue that the media shouldn't have any special regulation in ownership. Rather, it should be governed by the general laws that cover trade practices or competition law. We've always argued that the special nature of media and the role that media plays in both the democratic and culture lives of the nation, means that they do need special rights, special requirements.
Wearing your other hat you are President of the International Federation of Journalists, where have the inroads overseas been made?
The three areas of greatest concern at the moment are first, what's happening in Canada. Recently almost all the newspapers in Canada have been taken over by television companies. So we're seeing the end of separation of ownership there. The effect of that has been in Canada a quite serious concentration of diversity. CanWest which controls the Ten Network here is now the largest newspaper publisher in Canada and is imposing a rule that says :- This is the editorial that is going to be run in every newspaper right across Canada today and it will not be altered. These are the opinion pieces that are going to be run right across Canada and without any variations. Now Canada, like Australia is a diverse country. The difference between say Montreal and Winnipeg are enormous and yet you've got one company saying - we don't care where you live, we want you to get the same news and information. And that's a very serious development.
Second, in the States the newly appointed Federal Communications Commission which is chaired by Colin Powell's son, is walking away from sections on cross-media ownership in the United States.
And third a there's the serious development that we're seeing in Italy and also in Thailand where media corporations are actually taking over the government. We've got Berlusconi - a major media owner in Italy becoming the Prime Minister and similarly in Thailand where you've got Thaksin Shinawatra again, the largest media and communications owner in Thailand becoming the Prime Minister. Now I think that's bad for political life, but I think it's also bad for the media. Because then media, or media companies become involved in things other than what should be their main game.
The situation here not quite extreme although the major media players do have a huge influence on the government. How difficult is it as a union leader to have any influence in these companies when they are so strong?
There is no doubt that the media corporations do have a lot of influence over politicians in Australia. I think it's equally true to say that there are a lot of politicians who resent that and resist that. And this isn't necessarily a divide between the parties more its a divide across the parties. We know from talking to them that there are significant members of the back bench of the Liberal Party and most people in the National Party who are strongly opposed to any further concentration of ownership. We tend to think about concentration of ownership in terms of what it means in Sydney or Melbourne, but if you look at what it means in country towns it has a far more serious impact.
If you have the local paper, the local TV station and the local radio station all run by the same company, then the interests of the town tends to get squeezed out because there is no competition. Particularly when you have those companies tending to be part of chains, as they are recently in Australia, and as they are for example in the United States, then the interests of the local town just get totally ignored because of the overriding economic interest of the chain. There's no alternative voice to challenge that.
What's happened in newspapers and also radio in a lot of country areas, is a consolidation of production so that papers over most of Northern NSW for example, are all being produced and printed in one centre and then trucked out to those towns. The same with radio. News for a lot of country stations is being produced in one centre and then just sent out to the various outlets. So that sort of localism in country towns that newspapers and radio are supposed to produce, simply is not happening.
On the other side of the coin and as someone who obviously has an interest in the long term jobs for his members, do you have any sympathy for comments from someone like James Packer that unless their freed up and allowed to build a big international media company, their just going to pull over in the long term?
There is no evidence that the larger media corporation is the stronger the jobs are. In fact the reverse is the case. Journalists and other media workers have suffered as a result of concentration of ownership. I'll give you a direct example, we had a price war in the early 90's over the price war between the various papers in Fleet Street. The economic squeeze that they put on companies was then felt in Australia because the companies then had to squeeze more resources out of their Australian outlets.
Another example is the Super League war, where the money that media corporations were putting into the Rugby League - totally separate really from mainstream media - largely came out of their mainstream media. Now that wasn't money that was sitting around in a box not doing anything. That was money that had to come out of other resources. So concentration of ownership actually results in less jobs and less resources for journalists as for other media workers.
Closer to home there's been unrest at The Sydney Morning Herald recently, what can you tell us about the concerns within that paper?
What we're seeing among the analyst community is a quite mindless love affair with cost cutting and there's now enormous pressure being put by analysts on all corporations including media corporations to cut costs. Now you can't actually apply that formula anywhere, and you certainly can't apply it to media corporations that depend on quality to attract leaders. And there isn't a direct financial equation that says I'll have to spend an extra $10million on quality and then I'll get an extra $10million in income, but you need to invest in quality to maintain readers or to maintain TV viewers or radio listeners.
What's happening at Fairfax is that the management are responding to that pressure from the analyst community to cut costs and the journalists quite rightly, are resisting that because they see that not just in the short term their jobs are at stake but the long term viability of the company is being damaged by that pressure. If people have to choose between low cost alternatives in the media, all the evidence around the world is that they end up choosing none of the above. People don't have to buy a newspaper and if people don't believe they are getting a quality publication they won't go somewhere else or they won't keep buying a low quality publication. They just buy nothing.
So are there concerns that this is all part of a paving the way for the future sale of Fairfax to Packers once the laws allow it?
I think it's more about trying to push up the share price and it's about the sense in which the share price has become this sort of "Holy Grail" for Australian corporations, that when people talk about share holder value, really what they mean is their price. They don't actually mean long term value for shareholders and having a viable company. It's purely in the interest of responding to desk jockey's in the central business district, pushing up the share price in response to demands for cost cutting. And the journalists take the view that they've got a much better idea of what the long term interest of the company than the financial communities analysts.
So overall, it's a fairly perilous time to be a journalist in Australia?
On the news side, there's a lot of enormous interest for journalists. There's a lot of challenges for journalists in reporting what's going on around the world and in Australia to the Australian community. But it's unfortunate that we're seeing at the governmental level and at large the corporate level, a failure to understand where the long term interests of media lie and also what the broader social, cultural, democratic interests and role of the media are.
International
Two Tribes
|
|
|
|
The languages spoken by Palestinians and by Israelis - Arabic and Hebrew - show they are one family - brother, sister and cousin.
A Palestinian in the streets of old AlQuds al Shareef would greet you with the words Salaam Aleikhem and his friend would reply Aleikhem Salaam.
An Israeli walking in the streets of old Jerusalem would issue the greeting Shalom Aleichem and his friend would reply Aleichem Shalom.
And, unfortunately, like siblings everywhere who fight over the same object, Palestinians when they fight for Al Quds al Shareef, and Israelis when they fight for Jerusalem, are fighting for the same thing, the same city - and oh what a dirty fight it is
****************
Very little about the peace movement in Israel gets reported in the Australian mainstream media.
Last weekend more than 15,000 Israelis marched through Tel Aviv demanding Sharon withdraw from the territories.
While in the past these peace marches have attracted more than 100,000 people the size of this march, at this time, was still extraordinary.
Emotions are high in Israel at the moment and it is a brave act to openly defy not only the government, who had declared war on Palestinians, but also tell close neighbours you're not on side with your own country's soldiers during a period of high tension and crisis.
As well many of these peace activists were defying their own fears about being out and about in public places, in huge crowds, which had become the targets of mindless young terrorist fanatics.
Moshe Dayan's daughter backs peace groups
Yael Dayan, an Israeli Labour MP , the daughter of Israel's late general-politician Moshe Dayan, and a member of the dovish wing of her party, spoke at the rally.
" By reoccupying we will not prevent ( the establishment of ) a Palestinian state, which is the only solution. Our camp is not ashamed and is coming out. Arik Sharon and Bibi Netanyahu do not have any monopoly - not over the peace, not over our bereavement, and not over the army. The dead are just as much our dead, as those of the right," Yael Dayan told the demonstrators.
Another peace action, a few days earlier, by several thousand Israelis marching in support of Palestinians who were under siege in Ramallah got almost no reporting in the media.
Israeli border police turned on their own at the Kalandia checkpoint. They tear gassed and baton charged Israeli peace activists who were trying to take truck loads of medicine and food to the Ramallah government hospital.
Later in the week one of the most important Israeli daily newspapers, Ha'aretz, reported that a major cultural taboo was about to be broken with a group of war widows joining the anti-war movement.
War Widows Peace Group
For the first time in the history of anti-war protests in Israel, a group of war widows is calling for an end to the bloodshed.
The group was started by a woman whose paratrooper husband fell in the Yom Kippur War at the age of 30. The group's first public move will be the publication of an advertisement under the banner "No More."
"It's not easy for us to use our private grief as leverage, but at these times our voice must be heard. As those who have lost, we must try and prevent further loss," says a letter to be published together with the advertisement.
During Israel's war in Lebanon, mothers spoke out for the first time against the war, as parents.
The war in Lebanon was when the current Israeli PM, Arik Sharon, had his name plastered across the world's media in big type. Lebanon became known as Sharon's War and he was, quite rightly, blamed for the horrors committed at the Sabra and Shatilla Palestinian refugee camp.
Military Refuseniks
The war in Lebanon also triggered off a conscientious objectors' movement among military reservists, who argued that proud Israelis should be prepared to fight to defend the country - but not go to war in Lebanon.
The son of a very prominent Melbourne Jewish family was one of the first so called 'military refusniks' jailed as a conscientious objector - this family in the 30s, 40s, 50s and, I believe, well into the early 60s, had been active in the Communist Party of Australia.
A military reserverist in a tank battalion he drove his tank to the border between Israel and Lebanon, then jumped out saying his conscience would not allow him to go further - while he argued with Israeli military police he either slowed down, or held up, for hours, a huge military column waiting to pass by and move on into Lebanon to take part in Sharon's War.
There is little or no reporting of the fact that at this moment the number of Israel Defence Force reservist 'refusniks' has surged to more than 400 officers and soldiers who have all signed a letter of refusal to serve in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
By Wednesday this week 36 officers and soldiers identified with the group are serving time in military prisons for refusing to serve in the territories. Among the people in prison are paratroopers, navy personnel, army infantry, engineers and military intelligence.
Another 30 are facing jail sentences after receiving letters ordering them to report as military reservists and telling their defence force commanders they would not comply with these orders.
Last week a group of 'refusniks' demonstrated for the first time outside Sharon's residence in Jerusalem carrying Israeli flags to stress their ties with Zionism and voicing their anger at the unnecessary killings of both their comrades in ' the war to defend the peace of the settlements'.
You can learn more about two of these military refusnik groups by clicking here on their English language websites Yesh Gvul. or Courage to Refuse.
In the USA a Jewish peace group, Tikkun, created a huge controversy within the US Jewish community by taking out a full-page ad in the New York Times, after Sharon invaded Ramallah, and announcing that they backed the military 'refusnik' movement. The ad was signed by several high profile members of the American Jewish community.
(As an aside: the key author of this ad was Rabbi Michael Lerner the founder of Tikkun Olam. Rabbi Lerner is the son-in-law of our very own Phillip Adams - the newspaper columnist and radio star. No Adams is not Jewish but a daughter has converted.)
Five Jews Ten Opinions
At a recent debate at the NSW Labor Council, on the current war between Israel and Palestine, I warned that just as during the Cold War it was wrong to talk of one Communist monolith - we now know there were real differences between different CPs - so it is wrong to see Israel in monolithic terms.
There are different Zionisms. There always has been. There is the Zionism of the Left and the Right; the Zionism of the ultra-religious and the secular. There is the Zionism of Sephardi Jews from the mainly Muslim countries, and the Zionism of the Ashkenazi Jews, mainly from Europe.
During the Labor Council debate I commented on the old joke about Trotskyists - find five Trotskyists and you'll find six opinions on what it means to be a Trotskyist.
The same joke is an old saw among Jews. Find five Jews and you'll have ten views about what it means to be a Jew, or what it means to be a Zionist, or what it means to be a peace activist in Israel.
In Israel today, as well as in the USA, you can find maybe a dozen different peace groups with names like Peace Now ( the largest, most venerable and mainstream) Ta'ayush, Gush Shalom, Yesh Gvul, Women in Black, Tikkun Olam, Physicians for Human Rights, Rabbis for Human Rights, Jews for a Just Peace, Jews for Peace in Palestine and Israel .....and on and on and on .
Ha aretz, the daily Israeli paper, recently started a newspaper report on another Israeli peace group, called La'tzet Gdolim, with the words : ' yet another withdrawal movement starts'.
Often the real differences between these groups are just nuances, as minute and boring as the differences between those Trotskyist groups who can carry on ad nauseum about some minor historical mistake made by their opponents two, or more, decades ago. Ho hum.
But unlike the Trotskyist fractions only a few of these peace groups are the telephone booth sized organisations that are the lot of Trotskyists.
Differences Between Peace Groups
In the not too distance past these peace groups have been able to muster hundreds of thousands of Israelis into the streets calling for Shalom with their Palestinian sisters and brothers in the territories.
The key difference between the Jewish peace groups is often how they relate to the Oslo Peace Accords - with some groups seeing Oslo as the platform upon which peace can be built, while others argue that Oslo was unfair on the Palestinians so good Israeli peace activists should promote a re-negotiation of Oslo.
Often the other major point of difference between these peace groups is how they react to the issue of the Palestinian right-of-return to their former homes and villages in Israel proper.
But all of the peace groups believe that:
- at a minimum, Israel should withdraw behind the so-called Green Line to allow the state of Palestine to develop as a next door neighbour;
- the immediate shutting down of the Jewish settlements in the Palestinian territories - which divide one Palestinian town from another forcing the creation of Palestinian cantons ( or to use a more pejorative word, bantustans) ; and
- Israel and Palestine should share Al Quds alShareef/Jerusalem.
The fact that Australian progressive groups, and the Left generally, are blind to this dynamic spectrum of peace groups in Israel and the Jewish diaspora - and the possibilities they have for promoting reconciliation - is due to the demonising of all things Israel, and the hero-worshiping of the Palestinian cause.
While George Dubya might believe in promoting fairy tales based on the good guys wearing white Stetsons, and the bad guys wearing black Stetsons, I would hope that the Left in Australia is a bit more mature.
The reality is that in this war, on both sides, there are people who wear white Stetsons, and people who wear black Stetsons. No one side can claim the angelic mantle.
Jews and the Left - Some Forgotten History
Israel was once actively supported by all progressives - especially because of the socialist models it had established in the kibbutzim.
( An analysis of the socialist failure of the kibbutzim would take a long, and separate essay, so I will not go into that.)
The trade union movement of Israel was also much lauded by Western European social democrats who idealised, and wanted to copy, the dominance of the economy that the Histradut, the Israeli General Federation of Labour, maintained.
Our own Bob Hawke was one of many trade union leaders who travelled to the social democratic mecca of Israel to see what he could mimic and copy for Australia.
The politics of pre-State Israel, and the early years of post-independence Israel, were dominated by two major Left parties Labour, and to its Left, Mapam - while there were a number of smaller Left groupings.
Mapam was part of the Comintern until the early 50s; and the Soviet Union was the first state to recognise Israel and voted to back the creation of Israel at the UN.
The Israeli Right, represented by the political predecessors of Sharon, people like Begin and Shamir, had only a small political base, largely because the majority of Zionists rejected the terrorist tactics employed by the Zionist Right through the Irgun and the Stern Gang
When Israel was declared an independent state In New York the labour movement, and the US Communist Party, organised a demonstration of more than 10,000. As they marched in celebration they sang Solidarity Forever.
Perversion of Stalinism
It was the perversion of Stalinism that saw much of the Left's support for Israel switched, with the Stalinists choosing to back what were - and still are - often reactionary, corrupt, Arab nationalist dictatorships which don't tolerate working class organisations such as trade unions.
The switch away from Israel came as Stalin started tracking down Communist 'traitors' who might have been associated with Trotsky.
Stalin let rip throughout the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe the old hatred of anti-semitism - with cartoon drawings of Trotsky, which were based on classic anti-semitic figures.
The infamous show trails throughout Eastern Europe of old loyal communists were a travesty, most of the leading Communists dragged before the sham courts, inevitably were Jews who had been prominent in the communist movements of Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Germany and Romania.
It was in this environment that the important Left Israeli party, Mapam either left, or was pushed out of, the Comintern ( depending on who you believe).
This began a collapse of the Left in Israel, and the collapse of the support of the world socialist and labour movements for the people of Israel.
This switch of support - along with a number of other 'mistakes' made by the Israeli Left - opened the opportunities for the hitherto spurned Israeli Right to grown in prominence and, eventually, come into government.
The opening to the Right has seen a gradual rightwards drift of the whole Israeli body politic and the Left hegemony disappear.
Along with this we have seen the collapse of the socialist dream which informed the kibbutz movement; the collapse of the Histradut's domination of the Israeli economy and the creep to the right of large sections of the Israeli Labour Party.
However there are still a number of important parties to the Left of the Labour Party, including the influential Meretz, which essentially inherited the mantle of the former Mapam.
Same man influences early Marxism and early Zionists
It is either forgotten, or ignored, by many people on the Left that both the early Marxists and the Zionists looked to one man for large parts of their founding ideologies.
Moses Hess was a German-Jewish thinker who is not as well known as he should be.
Both Engels and Marx, sometimes grudgingly, acknowledged that they owed a lot to Moses Hess' ideas. Hess was one of the founders of the radical newspaper Rheinische Zeitung that later gave the young Marx a job as a journalist.
Hess - like many other socialists - fell out with Marx and Engels. In the Communist Manifesto Hess is mentioned - but attacked - by Marx and Engels.
Moses Hess went on to write a major philosophical dissertation Rome and Jerusalem, which put forward a proposal for the creation of a Jewish socialist state.
Rome and Jerusalem is recognised by Zionists as the great precursor to Herzl's own Zionist treatises Der Judenstaat and Altneuland.
The Bund, the Bolsheviks and Trotsky
At the founding congresses of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party the biggest single delegation of workers came from the Jewish socialist trade union organisation The Bund.
Tsarist Russia was essentially a feudal society - in the very few industrial centres the proletarians were overwhelmingly Jews, so the best organised socialist and trade union movements were those of the Jews.
The Bund were early advocates of what we would now call multiculturalism.
Inside the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party Congresses they promoted a confederalist socialist movement, which recognised the rights of the different minorities in Tsarist Russia, and they advocated that in a socialist society these groups should be able to establish independent self-governing political entities.
That ran contrary to the authoritarian centralising Bolsheviks, so the Bund tended to ally themselves with the Mensheviks and quickly fell out with both Lenin and Trotsky.
Trotsky in a famous put-down of the Bund, at one of these founding party Congresses, stood up on the platform pointed at the huge Jewish delegation and accused the Bundists of being merely Zionists who refused to leave Russia 'cause they were afraid of getting sea-sick on the way to Palestine.
Trotsky's relationship with both Bundists and Zionists flip-flopped throughout his life - at one moment he opposed them and at another time he said he understood the root cause of their ideology and supported them.
Passover Massacre
Passover is the one Jewish tradition that almost every single Jew holds on to fast - whether they are religious or secular, from the political Right or the political Left, whether they are lukewarm about their heritage or full-on Jews.
Passover is the central story for Jews. It is our story from our dreaming time.
This festival is normally commemorated in the home, around the dining room table, where we retell the story of an uprising by slaves who downed tools on the Egyptian construction sites, where they were forced to build Pharoah's pyramids.
Their union organiser - a bloke called Moses - came back from negotiations with the Big Boss with a proposal for the first ever enterprise agreement - or as some would know them The Commandments.
The first proposal for an enterprise agreement was voted down by the construction workers.
Moses, the union organiser, went back up the mountain and came back with a better agreement, which had 613 clauses.
Some of these clauses were ground-breaking - such as limiting working hours and giving all workers at least one day off a week.
Jews have been commanded from time immemorial to retell this story every year - and to imagine themselves as the slaves throwing off their shackles.
We are told by our sages that until all people are free, until all slaves have thrown off their shackles, none of us are ever free.
At my Passover table - as at thousands of others - we discussed the situation of our Palestinian sisters and brothers and we agreed that until they had won their struggle for self-determination we cannot say that we are all truly free.
So when a young fanatic walked into a hotel dining room and blew himself up slaughtering families sitting around a dining room table re-telling the story the whole of the Jewish community, in Israel and abroad, reeled back in shock and horror.
It was a heavyweight's punch, which winded everybody - including those in the peace camp who believe we must come to a historic compromise with the Palestinian community.
Reeling from this event the peace community in Israel - and abroad - have slowly regrouped and stood up once more for what they believed ---- even though it has been very hard.
Red Haifa
A few days after the Passover Massacre another young terrorist blew herself up in a restaurant in the industrial and port city of Haifa - killing and maiming workers and restaurant goers.
The indiscriminate nature of this form of 'warfare' - which killed 16 and injured 30 - was shown by the fact that among the people badly injured in the restaurant was the Palestinian manager and his largely Palestinian workforce.
Haifa is the most secular integrated city in all of Israel. The University of Haifa has the largest Israeli-Arab/Palestinian student population in all of the country.
An industrial city, with a large port, it revels in its moniker of Red Haifa. The 'Red' nickname comes from the strong trade union presence.
There are almost mythic tales of the militant, Greek speaking, Jewish port workers, sailors and fishermen.
These workers originated, mainly, from the Greek port of Thessaloniki where there was a large Jewish labour force in the port, working as sailors, fishermen and stevedores. They emigrated across the Mediterranean mainly in the last decades of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century.
At the University of Haifa the history department is dominated by the so-called New Historians who argue that the edifice of Zionist myth-making must be pulled down.
Israelis, these radical historians argue, must accept that the Palestinian story of the atrocities that happened during the War of Independence are not mere propaganda - but have validity and truth.
The Palestinians call the War of Independence the Great Tragedy and Israelis must involve themselves in a reconciliation process, say sorry and apologise for the atrocities.
It was largely because of the work of the New Historians of Haifa University that all Israeli high school history books were revised under the last Labour government to include lessons and stories about the tragedy that befell the Palestinians at that time.
OK that is the history lesson the question is what is to be done now.
In my view both sides are suffering from a massive failure of leadership.
Sharon Hates the Oslo Accords
Sharon has always hated the idea of making peace with the Palestinians. He has no vision of living at peace with his Arab neighbours. He is quick to use language that is racist and demonising of Palestinians and Arabs.
When about 18 months ago he arrogantly 'invaded' the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem he helped trigger off the latest Intifada.
Sharon - surrounded by police and army - turned his visit to the Al Aqsa Mosque into a parade and circus; a political stunt to show he was a strong man; to show that he would not allow any part of Jerusalem to be a no-go area for Israelis.
It was a provocation - and Sharon knew it - and it worked.
Sharon was happy to see the second Intifada explode throughout the territories and inside Israel. In the last Israeli election he used it as a basis to scare voters back into his camp, away from Labour's Barak who was desperately trying to negotiate a final settlement with Arafat based on the Oslo Accords.
Sharon hates the Oslo Accords and in this invasion of the territories he hopes to destroy finally, and completely, the Oslo Accords by eliminating the Palestinian Authority.
Arafat is no Nelson Mandela or Xanana Gusmao
Arafat has also been a failure, especially as a leader of a nascent nation based on the Palestinian Authority..
It, unfortunately for all of us, is neither Nelson Mandela or Xanana Gusmao.
Since returning from exile nearly a decade ago he has surrounded himself with a corrupt elite, who have feathered their own nests with some of the billions of dollars in foreign aid meant to go to ordinary Palestinians as a result of the Oslo Accords.
Arafat and this elite group - scared of their own people - have created an authoritarian regime, which brooks little opposition, and only allows limited debate about the building of a democratic Palestinian State.
Before this invasion Arafat was fast losing support among Palestinians angry at the open corruption of his cronies.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad have in large part grown in influence as a reaction to this open corruption.
The corruption eventually weakened Arafat and his ability to negotiate as an equal with the then Israeli Labour PM, Barak.
I believe that history will record that probably his greatest failure in leadership occurred a little over two years ago when the negotiations with Barak resulted in Arafat winning more than 90 per cent of his demands - including the sharing of Jerusalem.
But by this time the corruption had so weakened him that he did not have the strength to sell this historic compromise to his own people. He turned his back on Barak saying that only if he got 100 per cent of his demands would he sell it to his own people.
Now I have been around the labour movement enough to know that rarely do we win 100 per cent of all of our demands - and the sign of a good union leader is a person with the maturity and ability to go back to the membership and sell a deal.
The deal was not all one way. Just as it would have been hard for Arafat to sell it to all Palestinians it was going to be hard for Barak to sell it to all Israelis. But Barak committed himself to the compromise. Arafat couldn't.
Arafat didn't have the guts - and preferred to see his people plunge into the second Intifada.
The second Intifada helped to bring down the Barak Labour government and install Sharon as Prime Minister.
And here, unfortunately, we are today!!!!
Activists
Beneath the Veil
by Jim Marr
|
|
|
|
**********
Tahmeena Faryal has a dream - she wants women to be treated as human beings.
Now, in some places, that might not seem like a big deal but in her corner of the world it's a matter of life or death, literally.
That's why we don't know her real name, where she lives, or her age.
The Taliban might have gone but there are still enough fundamentalists in Afghanistan and Pakistan, getting money and support from the US, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia or France to put her life in jeopardy.
That's why all RAWA (Revolutionary Association of Women from Afghanistan) spokeswomen travel incognito.
Faryal, who admits to being in her mid-20s, has pitched her dream to the powerbrokers of the US Congress and United Nations.
Yet, the vast majority of Afghan women are still imprisoned by their burqas and up to 90 percent of those in the cities, where oppression is most virulent, are said by one US medical researcher to be mentally ill.
So Faryal, and her organisation, are now urging ordinary people to pressure Governments into ensuring there is meaningful change in the land she fled as a child.
She wants Australians to write to MPs or the Government, insisting that a democratic, secular society be allowed to flourish in Afghanistan.
But first, she needs to break down some misconceptions. The most important being that all is well now the Taliban has shot through. Then, there's the Amercian-promoted view that the Northern Alliance-dominated interim Government will be better.
Afghans had four years of Northern Alliance rule, between 1992 and 1996, during which the group raped and murdered with impunity.
"They destroyed our country," Faryal says, "they committed terrible crimes and are hated by our people.
"They are fundamentalists, just like the Taliban. We will never have peace or human rights while fundamentalists are in charge."
She scorns the image crafted of former Northern Alliance strongman, Ahmed Mahsood, boosted to near sainthood by the western media in the wake of his Taliban-inspried death.
"The Lion of the Panshir Valley, huh," she grimaces, "he was known to ordinary Afghans as the Goat of the Panshir."
It's one of a number of colourful phrases, most involving animals, which Afghans seem to reserve for would-be leaders.
The Soviet-backed Mohammad Najibullah was always The Cow but after he was overthrown and hanged by the seven groups making up the Alliance, Faryal says, the popular refrain became "better the cow than the seven donkeys".
RAWA was founded in 1977 to improve the lot of Afghan women. Its first task was to operate schools, then medical centres, where women and children could access services denied by their state.
Faryal is a product of that system, having been educated in Quetta, Pakistan.
As the name suggests, RAWA also has overtly political goals, dangerous business in Afghanistan, or Pakistan where the Government has denied it legal recognition.
Its demonstrations are routinely attacked by fundamentalists and their supporters from the Pakistani security services.
Although, by 1997, RAWA had more than 1000 active members it still hadn't registered on the western radar.
That all changed with one simple move, establishing its own website. From three or four hits a day, described by Faryal as "exciting at the time", it now runs seven mirror sites to accommodate traffic from around the globe.
That development, perhaps the best-ever advertisement for the internet, rocketed RAWA into the consciousness of people and politicians around the globe.
It is now generally regarded as the country's only coherent political alternative.
And Faryal, feminist to her core, says the agenda has broadened to embrace human rights in general.
"Women were our first priority but, at this point in Afghanistan, we can't just struggle for the rights of women. Democracy doesn't recognise gender."
Faryal knows what she is against, most immediately the fundamentalism that has tormented her sisters and tipped normal standards on their heads.
So what's her definition of a fundamentalist?
"They are people who oppose democracy, women, culture and education and are dependent on foreign states for their power and influence," she argues.
"Both these groups (the Taliban and Northern Alliance) share all those characteristics.
"We are not anti-Muslim in any way, fundamentalism is a complete distortion of Islam. We know of Christian, Jewish and Hindu fundamentalists and they are equally dangerous, especially for women because, first and foremost, they are all mysoginists."
And RAWA knows what it wants - international acceptance that ...
- the Northern Alliance is no alternative to the Taliban
- fully-fledged democracy is the only way forward for Afghanistan
- foreign countries must cease financial and military support for the Northern Alliance and any other fundamentalist groups
- a fullscale United Nations peace-keeping force is the only way to prepare the ground for a democratic future.
Faryal highlights the last point, arguing the US is already tainted, not least by bankrolling the Taliban and any number of other factions who have terrorised the population.
And she warns Australians to be wary of some of the lines being promoted by Afghans, refugees and otherwise, in their midst.
Confident, intelligent and articulate she is living proof of Afghanistan's untapped potential.
Unions
Terror Australis
|
|
|
|
*****************
The Howard Government is continuing to downplay the security implications of flag-of-convenience shipping in order to sack Aussie seafearers.
This week, in the IRC at Sydney, the Federal Government tabled its intention to intervene in an MUA case seeking to bring the foreign-flagged, CSL Pacific, under the Australian Shipping Award.
In a similar rearguard action, the MUA was also in the Federal Court, attempting to stop a corporate reshuffle that would see the CSL Yarra sold to the company's Asian arm so it could resume coastal trading under a foreign flag.
The implications for workers are horrendous - the dole queue for Aussies, third world conditions and wages for their replacements..
But wider issues are raised by this Government's determination to flog off Australian jobs.
Convenience shipping not only relies on exploited labour but also the capacity of owners to hide behind secrecy provisions, erected by convenience states, to attract business.
This lack of accountability raises serious environmental issues and, increasingly, security concerns.
These worries are being flagged by conservative, international publications, including the Times of London and Lloyds Shipping List.
The Times reports that Osama bin Laden runs a secret shipping fleet "under a variety of flags of convenience, allowing him to hide his ownership and transport goods, arms, drugs and recruits with little official scrutiny".
It says he uses his ships to move key terrorists around the world, allowing them to disembark at obscure ports.
The information stems from court revelations that a convenience-flagged bin Laden vessel landed in Mombassa the bombers who blew up US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
The Times quotes a corporate investigator as saying uncovering bin Laden's bank accounts, bogus charities and front companies would be "child's play" compared to "piercing the veil of secrecy that protects shipping owners".
Essentially, convenience countries operate a sort of maritime version of a Swiss bank account, as Lloyds List explains.
"Backwater countries with flags of convenience have watertight secrecy. Even if you do find a suspicious ownership, how do you prove the company holding the bearer shares of that vessel is linked to the al-Queda network?
"Some registries have indicated they would dismiss with the so-called 'corporate veil' ... approaches by legitimate agencies," it says.
Last month, academics from the Wollongong University Centre for Maritime Policy added their voices, warning of terrorist, and general security dangers, posed by convenience trading.
"It's easy to secure airports but very difficult to secure maritime borders. A well-resourced terrorist would find it relatively easy to evade current maritime border control," Professor Martin Tsamenyi, centre director, warned in Sydney's Daily Telegraph.
Yet, as a matter of Government policy, Australian crews are being dumped in favour of foreign-flagged and crewed vessels. These crews are automatically issued visas, bypassing the usual security measures faced by tourists or asylum seekers.
In an enviroment of terrorist fear, heightened by open Australian support for the US and Israel, Howard's administration chooses to ignore warnings about convenience shipping.
Quite the opposite, in fact. It is opening the Australian coast by stealth, using single and continuous vogage permits to defeat cabotage laws, designed to protect Australian shipping.
Since John Anderson took over as Federal Transport Minister the number of such permits has rocketed. Just last year, the rate went up 60 percent, to 116.
And they had the bare-faced cheek to run an election campaign on security and border protection.
History
A Labor Footnote To The Royal Funeral
|
|
|
|
This link occurred in the context of the Labor Party's pioneering insistence on appointing Australians to vice-regal posts. It was Labor Prime Minister James Scullin who appointed the first Australian-born Governor General (Isaac Isaacs) in 1931. And it was New South Wales Labor Premier Bill McKell who appointed the first native-born Governor of an Australian state (Lieutenant General John Northcott) at the end of World War II.
Northcott's appointment as NSW Governor, as revealed in Chris Cunneen's 2000 biography of McKell, went ahead in the face of stubborn quasi-Churchillian resistance in London.
In 1945 McKell nominated an Australian naval captain, John Armstrong, as the next Governor of New South Wales, a post held since 1788 by Britons. The proposed break with tradition was not appreciated by the British government even though it was now headed by the socialist Clement Attlee.
Additional nominees were called for. McKell duly provided a list of alternatives of whom Northcott was easily the most outstanding.
The Attlee government remained unhelpful. Dominions Secretary Lord Addison sought to frustrate McKell by pointing out that Northcott could not be appointed because he was about to become commander of the British Commonwealth Force in Japan.
Addison went on to tell McKell that King George VI was prepared to make a brother-in-law available for the appointment. This was to add insult to injury because the Queen's brother - the Honourable Michael Bowes-Lyon - was, in the words of Chris Cunneen, "an otherwise obscure, asthmatic businessman".
The Attlee Government's support for Bowes-Lyon was sadly inconsistent with its heroic efforts to transform post-war Britain into New Jerusalem. His only claim to fame was his double-barrelled surname. The British Labour government was trading on his sister's celebrity status as the Boadicea of the Blitz in an attempt to buff up the imperial link with New South Wales.
McKell stuck to his guns. Bowes-Lyon was dismissed as "unacceptable". McKell ended his prospects by getting a fellow Laborite, Prime Minister Ben Chifley, to release Northcott from his military duties. A hostile leak announcing Bowes-Lyon's supposed appointment appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald - which as a matter of principle "strongly questioned" the very idea of a native-born Governor - but this failed to stop Northcott becoming Governor.
McKell's veto of the Bowes-Lyon appointment was meant to underline Labor's historic commitment to national sovereignty. It served its purpose. All subsequent Governors of New South Wales have been home grown.
There is one final politician whose actions need to be commented on. Unpleasant memories have a long shelf life in the House of Windsor but it is never too later to assuage them. By going to London for the Queen's Mother's funeral John Howard, no doubt unintentionally, is in addition to more obvious reasons atoning for the slight paid to her brother by less loyal colonials all those years ago as the sun began to set on the British Empire. Having scuppered the republic he could hardly do less.
Stephen Holt is a Canberra author
Economics
Private Affluence, Public Rip-Off
by George Monbiot
|
|
|
|
The government can't pretend that it lacked advice. In 1997, before construction had begun, the doctors who had seen the plans for the proposed Cumberland Infirmary warned that it looked "more like a doss-house" than a hospital. Carlisle's consultants' committee pronounced the scheme "clinically unworkable".
But selective hearing is New Labour's primary sense. In June 2000, when Tony Blair unveiled the plaque, he announced that "this magnificent new hospital ... symbolises what we have been trying to do for the health service".
Within weeks the magnificent new hospital began falling apart. Pipes split, flooding the wards with water and the operating theatre with sewage. Power cuts left nurses ventilating patients on life support machines by hand. Ceilings collapsed and windows blew out of their frames. By August, all the beds were full and doctors were being asked to move patients into armchairs to make way for people recovering from surgery.
All new hospitals encounter problems, but those plaguing the Cumberland have proved to be both persistant and systemic. Both in design and in execution, the people who built it appear to have cut corners. Though the new hospital contains 75 fewer beds than the buildings it replaced, there is so little space in the wards that the doors have had to be removed to make room, and the trolleys redesigned to fit in the aisles. The hospital was built with a glass atrium but no air conditioning, with the result that temperatures have reached 110 degrees in the summer.
All this might sound like a classic tale of NHS mismanagement. But this case is different. The Cumberland was the first privately financed hospital to open in the United Kingdom, the flagship for a whole new fleet, which would cruise past the squalls and doldrums of public funding. For the past six years, I have been investigating the private finance initaitive, particularly in the health sector. My research suggests that problems of the kind infesting the Cumberland are likely to emerge in almost all the new hospitals built by this means.
Because the private finance initiative mobilises private capital, ministers have argued, it allows the government to start more schemes than it would otherwise be able to commission. Private companies provide the money for public infrastructure the state can't afford, and the government pays it back over a number of years. Because the private sector is more efficient, they insist, PFI schemes offer better value for money than public funding. And because private companies, rather than the government, provide the capital, the money spent on new projects does not contribute to the public sector borrowing requirement.
The reality is that PFI, or "public private partnership" as the government now prefers to call it, is a scam. It works for neither socialists nor free marketeers, as it offers neither effective public provision nor business efficiencies. Far from introducing market disciplines, it has become an official licence to fleece the taxpayer. Far from reducing the public sector borrowing requirement, PFI is, as the Accounting Standards Board has noted, simply an "an off-balance sheet fiddle". Most alarmingly, the ministers I have spoken to simply do not understand how it works.
The initiative was a Conservative experiment. In opposition, Labour fiercely contested it. But as soon as the party came to power, it resolved that PFI would become the means by which most of our new public infrastructure would be built. By the time it became obvious that the experiment was failing, Labour had waded in too far. Awestruck by its glittering new friends in business, but baffled by the complexities of the scheme it supports, it has been consistently outwitted and outmanouevred.
The first of the problems Labour has failed to grasp is the process by which the private investors are chosen. The government announces a new scheme, companies make their bids, and the government selects the bid which appears to offer best value for money. The chosen consortium is named the "preferred bidder", and the government starts to negotiate the contract.
The consortium then has the government over a barrel. In theory, the contract is still open to competition. In practice, preferred bidders have been deselected only, as far as I can discover, in two of the hundreds of PFI schemes the government has launched. Once the consortium has its foot in the door, it starts to raise its price and reduce its services. It will discover costs which weren't envisaged before. It will price the likely inflation of labour and materials as generously as possible. In some cases, I have found, companies have simply slipped extra figures into the spreadsheets.
Most importantly, value for money in PFI contracts is a function of the extent to which the projects' risks are transferred to the private sector. Because the government is hopelessly outclassed, during negotiations companies routinely transfer most of the key risks back to the taxpayer. As a result, PFI, from the corporate point of view, is a far better deal than privatisation. The consortia get the assets but not the liabilities. In some cases, they carry no greater risk than ordinary contractors for the public sector, but they are rewarded as if they were the most reckless entrepreneurs.
Last summer I received definitive evidence that Octagon Healthcare, the private consortium building the Norfolk and Norwich hospital, was in a position to extract pounds70 million from the scheme, before it had taken a single patient. The money, which would have taken the form of a "refinancing" of its bank loans, represented just part of the difference between the presumed transfer of financial risk on which the contract had been based and financed, and the actual transfer of risk. The consortium could, quite legally, have withdrawn the money (which was enough, by itself, to build a medium-sized hospital) by renegotiating the terms of its borrowing.
When I broke the story it caused a minor scandal, and Octagon appears not to have taken advantage of its position. But deals of this kind are now routine. In one case -- the PFI prison built by Group 4 and Carillion in Liverpool -- refinancing has allowed the companies to double their rate of return: they will break even just two and a half years into the 25-year contract.
These problems are compounded by the lack of effective competition between the private and the public sectors. When Alan Milburn, the health secretary, warned the NHS that "it's PFI or bust", hospital trusts began redesigning their projects to attract private money.
In Coventry, for example, the NHS had originally intended to renovate the Walsgrave Hospital, on the outskirts of town, at a cost of some pounds30 million. Built in the 1970s, it appeared to be structurally sound, but it was in need of modernisation. But in 1997, after the Labour government indicated that no substantial public funding would be available, the NHS submitted a new plan: for the privately financed demolition of both the Walsgrave and the city centre's Coventry and Warwick Hospital, and the construction of a new hospital on the Walsgrave site. This would provide 25 per cent fewer all-purpose beds and 20 per cent fewer staff than the two hospitals it replaced, and it would cost pounds174 million to build. The NHS would pay the consortium pounds36 million a year for 25 years, plus a one-off equipment grant of pounds25 million, and it would give the companies the land on which the city centre hospital stands. Since then, the cost of construction has risen to pounds311 million, but the new scheme still offers fewer beds than the two hospitals it will replace.
None of this made sense until I received a leaked copy of a confidential report commissioned by the local health authority. To become profitable for a private operator, a new scheme, the paper revealed, would have to make four times as much money as the nominal "surplus" returned to the Treasury by the city's existing hospitals. The pounds30m contract for renovating the Walsgrave, in other words, would have been too small to make it attractive to a private consortium. This option had had to be rejected because it was too cheap. The project, the report found, had been "progressively tailored to fit the needs of private investors".
I have also obtained evidence that, in order to smooth the way for the private money they need, public bodies are deliberately setting the "public sector comparator" higher than the private sector bids they receive. The National Audit Office and the independent auditors the government appoints look at these projects and pronounce them value for money. But by relying on the official comparators, the official assessments of risk and the official view of whether or not these schemes were needed in the first place, they are bound to find in their favour.
There's no question that attracting private money allows the government to commission more public infrastructure schemes (though in the NHS the result is a substantial net reduction in the number of hospitals, as the private operators concentrate the new facilities on single sites). But, as the Labour minister Alastair Darling commented when he was shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, "apparent savings now could be countered by the formidable commitment on revenue expenditure in years to come". As the service payments for projects commissioned today mount up, future governments will discover that there's no money left for starting new ones.
There is only ones means of meeting the outrageous costs of PFI, and that is by cutting public services. A study by a consultancy company which works for the Department of Health shows that every pounds200 million spent on privately financed hospitals will result in the loss of 1000 doctors and nurses. The first PFI hospitals contain some 28 per cent fewer beds than the ones they replaced. Alan Milburn has promised that future schemes will not result in bed reductions, but he can keep this promise only by increasing their costs still further.
The government is in the most dangerous of all positions: its fawning willingness to prove that it is now the party of big business is matched only by a total failure to understand how business works. Without commercial experience, Blair and his ministers regard the companies they court with a kind of superstitious awe: "partnership", irrespective of terms, will summon up some economic magic which turns base motives into gold. And these are the people who now call themselves the party of economic competence.
For years, lefty that I am, I have argued against the privatisation of the NHS. This is still my position. But after discovering how the public sector is being savaged by the government which claims to be its saviour, I must reluctantly conclude that even the outright sale of the service -- with its liabilities as well as its assets -- would provide a better deal for both patients and taxpayers than Blair's great giveaway.
Reprinted with permission - First Published in the Spectator 10th March 2002
Review
The Great Hall of the People
|
|
|
|
*************
In 1999 the republican referendum suffered a comprehensive defeat. And yet less than two years later, discussion of an Australian republic has irrepressibly bubbled up to the surface once more.
I'd like to talk about the symbolism and the office of head of state, the moral exhaustion of the monarchist cause in Australia and the changes taking place within the Australian Republican Movement (ARM). I'd also like to offer some suggestions as to how a Labor government might help establish an Australian head of state and avoid another republican stalemate.
Republicanism and Democracy
I was a strong supporter of a Yes vote in 1999, but my higher preference is that the people should elect our head of state. My thinking on this issue became clearer to me during the campaign.
I've always been a republican. The British monarchy has always struck me as being a bit like a mouldy old gingerbread house with no windows, enclosed by a 16 foot high electric fence.
When the issue flared into life in the early 1990s, I was, as it turns out, living in the United Kingdom, and I assumed we were all talking about electing the president.
In 1994 I returned to Australia and read Malcolm Turnbull's The Reluctant Republic, in which he argued that while direct election had emotional resonance, we'd find it very tricky to safely graft an elected president onto our current system.
I read all this, and was persuaded by the argument for having a president appointed by Parliament, and campaigned for it. But it was a bit of a let-down. It seemed a little boring, and it seemed to lack the sizzle of real democracy.
As the campaign wore on, my initial preference, for electing the president, took a firmer hold, with the simple realisation that if we're going to replace the Crown, we should replace it with a symbol of the sovereignty of the people.
We are, after all, republicans precisely because the symbolism of the Crown - remote, undemocratic, aristocratic, sexist, sectarian and closed - is so completely wrong for a new world nation like Australia. The office of president will be largely of symbolic significance. It follows that the symbolism of how we choose the president is particularly important. By the process of popular election we invest the office of head of state with a richer democratic meaning.
Put another way, as we try to marry the ideals of democracy and republicanism, it would be best to place a symbol of democracy at the apex of that republic.
The issue is becoming more pressing because there is a growing vacuum at the top: the Crown's symbolic importance has shrivelled, like a 6-day-old kiddie's birthday balloon. Ironically, some of the prime culprits here are the monarchists themselves.
The End Of Australian Monarchism
Supporters of a Yes vote in 1999 were disgusted at the cheap tactics the monarchists deployed to railroad the referendum debate - the falsehoods, scare campaigns and their willingness to cynically (and hypocritically) trade on popular discontent with politicians as a class with their slogan, 'Vote No to the politicians' republic'.
So spare a thought for strident monarchist campaigner and constitutional convention delegate Sophie Panopoulous, who, seemingly through no fault of her own, woke up one day and discovered that she'd somehow copped Liberal preselection for the seat of Indi. It seems Sophie gazed into the abyss for too long, and the abyss gazed back and thrust preselection upon her. Perhaps if elected she plans to do a Gerry Adams and not take her seat in Parliament on principle. Kerry Jones, former leader of the monarchist cause, has also sought Liberal preselection for the NSW Upper House, but her attempt failed.
Others who campaigned against 'the politicians' republic', such as Tony Abbott and Bronwyn Bishop, found themselves to be politicians in very republican seats. Despite their efforts, the electors of Mackellar and Warringah returned solid Yes votes in the referendum. I imagine Abbott and Bishop will be a lot quieter in future campaigns. Tony Abott's avowed commitment to our horse-and-buggy Constitution will increasingly complicate his bid to been seen as a plausible leader for the 21st century. Expect to see a Nixon-in-China type conversion to soft republicanism from him in the next few years.
The noisy reactionary blather of these monarchists sits uneasily alongside their attitude towards their sovereign, which seems to be much more low-key, and one of ongoing deep embarrassment.
The sovereign herself might wonder what use these monarchists are who are too embarrassed to let her anywhere near the Olympic Games or the centenary of Federation; these monarchists who insist she is somehow not our head of state. It's likely she finds these carking anti-elitists in Commonwealth cars as irritating as we do.
The point I'm making here is that although the status quo still holds, the monarchist cause is finished. In 1999 they succeeded in burning down our house, but in doing so, they burnt down their house too. Their campaign tacitly acknowledged the truth of the republican argument, that the British hereditary monarchy's hold on our highest office is indefensible, and that Australia is now predominantly republican in sentiment.
While the republican movement is energetically rebuilding a bigger house, the monarchists are walking around the charred embers of their own, insisting that there's nothing wrong with the place that a lick of paint won't fix. They are a constitutional Flat Earth Society and they know it.
A new Australian Republican Movement
This is why, although the politics of building an Australian republic is tricky, we are picking up momentum again.
Since 1999 the ARM has regrouped and transformed itself into a democratically elected body, with its national and State committee members elected by the membership. This has unleashed a fair bit of democratic energy, and despite the referendum defeat, the organisation feels livelier than ever.
The ARM no longer upholds any one republican model and the national committee now includes direct electionists such as Dorothy McRae-McMahon (NSW ARM convenor), Tim Costello and myself, as well as republicans who would prefer a less radical change. The bitter rift between the ARM and those republicans who campaigned for a No vote is quietly being healed.
The ARM's constitutional subcommittee is in the process of developing a paper containing several models for public discussion.
One will be an ultra-minimalist model, merely substituting a president for the role of Queen and Governor-General. A tweaked version of the 1999 bipartisan model will also be outlined, along with several popular election models: one a 'full-blown' form of direct election, another two where the Parliament or an elected college tempers a direct vote and, for the sake of inclusion, a US-style republic with an executive presidency. Once again, the ARM has no preference for any one model.
Leaving aside for a moment the constitutional and political ins and outs, which model is the most likely to be carried in a referendum? Which promises to eventually carry the largest coalition of support? Most likely it'll be one of the tempered forms of popular election.
The ultra-minimalist and the US-style models seem unlikely to ever be put to the people or carried by them. The first would be less democratic than the 1999 bipartisan model, restricting the power of presidential appointment to just one person - the prime minister of the day. And we hear very few voices in favour of a move to a US-style system.
The old bipartisan model could hardly be presented to the people again after it was defeated comprehensively in all states. Do we propose to keep putting it to the people repeatedly until they give us the 'right' answer? Prime Minister Billy Hughes put the same conscription question to the people twice during World War I and failed by a bigger margin the second time.1
Another possibility is open direct election in which any citizen can be nominated as long as the nomination is accompanied by a set number of signatures. This would require the presidential powers to be satisfactorily codified, and the Senate's powers to block supply may need to be amended as well (no mean feat).2
While this would deliver a very democratic republic, there's little hope as it now stands of having conservative support for such major constitutional change. Both Peter Costello and that well-known Tory Bob Carr have said they would oppose such a model (Steketee 2001, p. 1). Another split would doom any referendum proposal. Direct electionists are obliged to confront these substantial political impediments.
The best option would seem to be a form of popular election that conservative republicans can be persuaded to live with, even if they can't bring themselves to enthusiastically campaign for it.
This might be a rejigged version of a system proposed by Geoff Gallop at the Constitutional Convention, in which candidates for the presidency are directly nominated by the people and seven of those nominated are selected by a two-thirds majority of a joint sitting of both Houses of the federal Parliament followed by popular election (Gallop 1998).
This would go some way, I believe, to assuaging conservative fears (unfounded, I think, but still very real) of a President Kylie or Kerry. In reality it would most likely produce a Labor candidate, a conservative candidate, a Democrat and some independents.
Another form of tempered direct election proposes an electoral college, elected by the people, that would then choose the president from a list of candidates. This would have the benefit of being more participatory than the bipartisan model and would avoid the dangers of a presidential political mandate, which rightly troubles the conservatives. As with all compromises, these models may achieve consensus or they may satisfy no one.
Labor and the Republic
Given that it seems politically unfeasible to once again propose a minimalist republic, how might a Labor government successfully manage the process of getting the debate back on track and avoiding another republican stalemate?
If elected, Labor is committed to introducing a plebiscite, at the end of its first term, on the threshold question, 'do we want a republic in which an Australian is the head of state, or do we want to continue as a constitutional monarchy in which the head of state must be the British monarch?' (Beazley 2000).
I believe the best way to move forward from a carried Yes vote would be to hold a Constitutional Convention quite different from the last one: a Convention held by a sympathetic government and a prime minister acting in good faith. A Convention where most of the seats are elected, and with more time to deliberate and build consensus.
If it was clear that some form of popular election was desired, a Constitutional Convention conducted in the atmosphere of a carried Yes vote in the plebiscite could act as a clearing house for many of the political problems involved in electing the president, namely reform of the Senate's powers and codification of the powers of the president.3
Maybe enough support might emerge for another idea that would cut the Gordian knot of constitutional change.
In recent months people like Dorothy McRae-McMahon and constitutional lawyer Dr Helen Irving have suggested that instead of proposing hundreds of patch-up jobs to our arcane, monarchist Constitution, why not start afresh and look at a new Constitution, written in plain English (Irving 2001)? One that maintains our Westminster system yet clears away the anachronistic clutter of the old one; a clear, elegant document that every citizen can understand. We might even be able to come up with a Constitution that we can be - gulp! - proud of.
Sceptical voters might well prefer to make one big change and move to a new plain language Constitution rather than cop hundreds of changes to a document that is pretty opaque to the average citizen.
A Virtual Great Hall Of The People
I recall once seeing a documentary on Walter Burley Griffin and his original design for Capitol Hill which suggested that Parliament House would have, atop both Houses, a vast Great Hall of the People, where citizens could come and go as they please.
I've since looked into it and I've never been able to find out whether or not he did propose such a thing. Whether he did or didn't, it's still an excellent idea: a heavy-handed but powerful reminder of who's supposed to be the boss in the scheme of things.
An Australian presidency should be like a virtual Great Hall of the People - a symbol of the overarching sovereignty of the people in the civic life of the nation. This would be a big improvement on the mouldy old gingerbread house with the fence that sits there now. The best way to make the office of head of state meaningful to us is to take a vote on who should occupy it and thereby recharge its symbolic importance.
Much is made of the disconnection between Australians and their elected representatives. An elected presidency, a symbol of the paramountcy of the people, might go some way to reconnecting Australians with our democratic institutions.
This chapter was originally delivered as the after dinner speech at 'Marking the Constitutional Centenary: An Agenda for Reform', a conference held at the University of Melbourne, 15 June 2001.
Poetry
Waiting for the Living Wage
by David Peetz
|
|
|
|
The case has been adjourned pending a decision. Some of the other voices were inspired by an ABC Background Briefing program, 'Luxury Fever', from February 2000.
**************
WAITING FOR THE LIVING WAGE
'My workmates have been laid off
My workload has increased
Our rosters have been moved about
I've not a moment's peace'
'We haven't had a holiday
Away from home for years
We don't go out together
The movies are too dear'
'I hear that the Alps had a good fall last week'
'No, lets go to that beach, it was in Martinque'
'When the bills come in I often have
To pay them in instalments.
It's a problem if I have to get fixed
Something that's important'
'New clothes, furniture, TV
Are things I do without
A new car? Wouldn't one be nice,
Of that I have no doubt!'
'This home cinema? Was just one twenty grand.
But I think that the Merc is a little too bland'
'The oven, well it broke down
Oh, about three years ago
We've been cooking on two hotplates
So the meal's a little slow'
'The telephone's been cut off
I couldn't pay the bill -
Just like the gas. Insurance?
Don't think I ever will!'
'Sit down, don't you just love the clear harbour view?
I paid more for this flat than on Park Avenue'
'I work a lot with chemicals
The lifting's very hard'
'I'm really quite exhausted
When I drive back in the yard'
'This job is very busy
We'd love a holiday
Perhaps I could save up
If we got a rise in pay'
'I bought this new boat with last year's bonus shares.
I shut out the world and forget all my cares.'
Satire
Israel Recruits NAB To Close West Bank
by The Chaser
|
|
|
|
"For years we'd been trying to shut down the West Bank, then Frank Cicutto comes along and manages to close the whole thing down in less than a week," said a glowing Ariel Shannon.
The NAB's strategy relied on higher self-interest rates, a policy initially implemented by Sharon several months ago. Cicutto began his work in outerlying villages of the West Bank. "We're used to doing this stuff in regional areas," explained Cicutto, as he completed the closure of all olive branches. The West Bank closure was eventually completed with a batch of new tank fees.
Cicutto expressed surprise at the common Israeli tactic of charging gunmen strongholds. "For ever gunman, there are another 20 ordinary citizens out there not being charged anything," he said. "Mortarguage rates have been too low for too long".
Cicutto denied that the NAB had only targeted Palestinians, pointing to the Troop Withdrawal fees that hit the Israel army hard in recent days. "We've been totally fair, and anyway, if they have a complaint, they can always refer complaints to the Bombardsman."
It only took days for Palestinians to flee the villages around the West Bank, surprising residents with the case of its closure. "Both my father and my grandfather died to save this land, and I had vowed to do the same," said one Ramallah resident. "But when the NAB presented me with the figures, and showed that it was just unsustainable - especially in view of what was happening in the US mortgage securitisation market - I couldn't help but accept their logic."
