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Hockey’s contempt; lavartus prodeo nights redux

23 Sep

In his rush to denigrate Treasurer Wayne Swan‘s award from Euromoney Magazine as Treasurer of the Year, Joe Hockey managed to deliver both ethnic slurs and sexist insults.

Listing several countries whose treasurers have previously won the accolade, Hockey contemptuously inferred the utter lack of value he attaches to it, apparently based solely on previous recipients. These include two Slovakian ministers, a Serbian, a Nigerian and a Bulgarian. In 2001 a Pakistani finance minister received the accolade. “That is quite an extraordinary one, that [last] one,” Joe told us, rolling his eyes for the cameras.

He then gave the email address of the magazine as “chunts@euromoney.com” How tragically unreconstructed it is that a seasoned MP can do no better than to use female genitalia in a pathetic effort to convey contempt and insult. It does tell us where his head’s at, in case we were in any doubt. He doesn’t think much of women and select ethnicities.

Hockey did manage to redirect some of yesterday’s press attention towards himself, albeit in largely negative commentary.  But like attracts like, and given the coalition’s commitment to unrelenting negativity as a legitimate form of opposition, it’s inevitable that some of it’s going to come right back at them.

Interesting how racism and sexism are apparently Hockey’s default position.

Last night I noticed a bit of traffic from the Lavartus Prodeo blog to No Place for Sheep. I was curious, as since I wrote this post here  earlier this year on my brief encounter with some of the charmers over there, we’ve had nothing to do with one another. I once read something by Mark Bahnisch that I thought was pretty good and I meant to leave a comment, but forgot.

Seven months ago it was to be exact when I withdrew my love, I was informed bitterly when I trotted over there last night to find out the reason for the sudden link. They’re keeping track of the months, I marvelled. They’re still quoting the things I said? They’re still calling me “Dr?”

Turns out there’s a climate change dispute happening there, someone attacked what they perceived as regular commenters’ defensive insularity, and was brusquely referred to my piece for his trouble. The matchmaking Mercurio suggested to Norm that he’d have a lot in common with this “lady” called Jennifer, and linked us.

Well, of course I had to thank them for their ongoing interest in me, which led to a brief spray from a few of the regulars, pretty much in the same vein as it was seven months ago, but not as clever.

Seven months is a long time in the blogosphere. Most posts are lucky to hold anybody’s interest for seven seconds. I’m astonished to discover that they still think about me at LP after all this time, let alone send me visitors.

Dr Bahnisch did invite me back to his blog, and said some of them really wanted me to join in. But I’m a bit squeamish about the stratospheric levels of hostility over there, especially that directed at newcomers who don’t always agree with them. The competition to write the most articulate insult seems to frequently overwhelm the matter under discussion. Just like Gillard and Abbott, all topics become an opportunity for the performance of clever spite. After a while, it’s utterly boring to everyone other than the protagonists, and who needs to wade through all that negativity in search of a robust exchange of views?

It’s interesting, however, to see that there are still people complaining about LP’s defensive insularity, and it wasn’t just a product of my fevered imagination and pain killers.

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At home with Julia: where’s the respect, eh?

8 Sep
Kevie-lisa

Well, that was weird, I remarked to Mrs Chook as the credits rolled. I didn’t laugh. I couldn’t see the point of the show. The arguments about why it should never have been made are funnier. The outrage at how disrespectful this show is to the office of Prime Minister is especially laughable given the disrespect the Prime Minister showed to the office when she knocked Kevin Rudd out of it without so much as a thank you for trusting me and giving me all those portfolios and making me your deputy. No, all he got was, it’s time for you to shove off now, tosser, I’m taking over.

I don’t know that we’ve got much respect for the office of Prime Minister in this country, unlike the Americans who insist that no matter what idiocies are performed by the incumbents, the office of President is still deserving of their respect. No matter how inept, immoral and inane a President might be, the office is above all that and remains untainted by the antics of the mortal. It’s a nice idea, but what’s the point of it?

The cast of At home with Julia looked as if they were imitating marionettes. You could almost see the strings lifting their limbs, and manipulating their facial expressions. It was like one of those children’s movies where humans are filmed and then made to look like cartoon figures. The only convincing sentient being was the dog. Perhaps this was intentional: a clever comment on…something or other that happens in Canberra.

It’s a mystery to me how anybody could expect to make anything funny and interesting out of Julia Gillard’s private life. I mean, hello. As a friend of mine said the other day if they had to knock off Kevin, couldn’t they at least have replaced him with someone with a bit of charisma? Well, not unless they brought in someone from overseas, they’re a bit light on charisma in the Labor Party at the moment. No charisma at all, but on the other hand, what good did a charismatic politician ever do anybody?

Right now I’d settle for some signs of intelligent life.

It did occur to me that it’s interesting how when Kevin was thrown out, everybody complained about how awful he was to work with but we the general population were unaware of that fact and were very surprised to be told of his intolerable idiosyncracies and foul mouth. Now the general population is overwhelmingly disappointed with Julia, and everybody in the government is telling us how marvelous she is to work with and how warm and funny she can be at dinner parties.

Whatever happened to the rubbery figures? Now that worked. Can we get them back, Auntie?

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Sad news for the ABC

19 Aug

It’s a shocking and sorrowful morning today for the families and for ABC staff, with news of the loss of veteran journalist Paul Lockyer, cameraman John Bean, and pilot Gary Ticehurst in a helicopter crash in a remote part of South Australia last night.

As a long-time ABC audience, our household sends condolences, and our very best thoughts and wishes to everyone affected by the loss of three fine professionals and family members.

 

 

The war you don’t see; Blair wows the msm, and the Malaysian solution becomes a reality

1 Aug

Whatever the criticisms of John Pilger, he has achieved the remarkable feat of keeping alive his indignation towards government and media manipulations and duplicities for decades. His recent documentary The War You Don’t See is no exception. I rather belatedly sat down to watch this yesterday.

Pilger takes the global media to task for its sycophantic coverage of the Iraq war, when journalists had to be embedded if they wanted to work for any of the mainstream press, and once embedded, were compromised as to what they could reveal and what they would have to conceal.

As with any account of events, current or historical, there is much truth to be found in the authors’ silences. What has been omitted and why is perhaps the first question a discerning reader needs to ask. In the case of Iraq, there are alternative sources such as Al Jazeera, independents and blogs and of course Wikileaks. Pilger has gone to these sources as well as interviewing big names such as Dan Rather  and a couple of very defensive and pedantic VIPs at ITV and the BBC.

“Well, it depends what you mean by the word links,” the ITV VIP argues, in a pathetically unsuccessful attempt at sophistry that serves only to confirm Pilger’s allegations of sycophantic bias. ‘Blair was very careful when he chose to use the word links,” the ITV Blair apologist continues, demonstrating in one sentence the entire Pilger thesis of conspiracy and collusion between government and mainstream media. (Of course, we know even more about this parasitic relationship since the recent Murdoch News of the World downfall. Say what you like, Pilger’s still on track.)

Under Pilger’s politely unrelenting pressure, these media bosses acknowledge their obsequience to their government in the matter of their reportage of the Iraq invasion, as well as WMD’s and chemical weapons allegedly held by Iraq and used, falsely, to justify the invasion.

The footage of the suffering of Iraqi people is horrific. Up to 90% of those injured and killed in this war are civilians. This is of course a reflection of the increasing sophistication of weaponry: in the first World War there were comparatively few civilian casualties. “Collateral damage” in wars has increased exponentially with the aggressor’s ability to bomb the living shit out of anything that moves.

As I wrote here this documentary was banned from screening at some events in the US and Pilger’s invitation to speak was revoked. Having watched it, I can see why it is perceived in some quarters as a threat, as it clearly explains the role of media as the servant of government  in the propaganda of war.

Alleged war criminal Tony Blair has been in Australia this past week, and has been predictably courted by over-awed mainstream journalists. Blair, a convert to Catholicism, is promoting a faith-based attitude to global affairs and has harsh words for secularists like Julia Gillard, who he seems to feel are missing the point.

Personally, I’m unable to take Blair out of the context of his slavoring admiration for  George Bush, and his lack of judgement on the Iraq invasion. There was plenty of evidence available at the time to cause any serious-minded political leader to pause and re-consider his position.

Blair, like John Howard, did not do this, and took us to war in spite of a great deal of opposition from their respective electorates. The consequences of this were and continue to be death, death, and more death with a very large dose of suffering thrown in.

Aren't I having fun?

The first fifty asylum seekers to be sent to Malaysia were intercepted yesterday. They will be taken to Christmas Island, and held for 72 hours for preliminary health and identity checks before being flown out.

As another example of how government propaganda works through information that is either omitted or collectively and consistently ignored, nobody wants to address the small matter of our laws. In domestic law, asylum seekers are permitted to arrive in Australia in any manner whatsoever, with or without papers, and to request protection while their refugee status is ascertained.

I would sincerely like to know why there is no move to rescind this law, seeing as we have no intention now or in the future of upholding it. Like the human appendix, it would seem to be a useless evolutionary remnant, and we should get rid of it in case it turns septic and poisons the whole system.

Apart from that, it is psychologically unhealthy for an individual or a country to exist in a state of cognitive dissonance. No good can come from it, and we ought to be lining up our laws with our actions if we don’t want consequences.

I would also like to know why asylum seekers who arrive by plane are not sent to Malaysia. Why do we have this two tier system in Australia, and why are we creating a two tier system in Malaysia? How to explain this peculiar attachment to promoting inequality amongst the world’s most vulnerable and desperate people?

Of course, I am asking the wrong questions, that is, the ones nobody wants to hear, but there’s nothing to be done except to keep on asking them.

Everybody knows that none of this has anything at all to do with asylum seekers and refugees per se. It is solely to do with “stopping the boats” in the desperate hope of shoring up the increasingly tenuous possibility that the Gillard government will survive the next election. Asylum seekers arriving by boat are collateral damage in this domestic battle. Strangely, many of them are already collateral damage as a consequence of the wars we’re involved in, in their home countries.

I guess there are just some human beings who can be damaged collaterally over and over again by the same people, and nobody thinks it matters.

Why?

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The political climate that nurtures extremism: be careful what you sow

25 Jul

Today the Minister for Immigration, Chris Bowen will sign the deal with Malaysia that will see 800 boat arrivals exchanged for Australia’s re-settlement of 4000 refugees currently held in that country. As the government has already undertaken not to expel those who’ve arrived by boat prior to today’s deal, they will be no doubt hoping the threat in itself will be enough to “stop the boats.” If this is the case it will allow the government to avoid what will inevitably be the morally messy business of actually carrying out this proposed exchange of human lives, one lot to a very precarious future in a non-signatory country, the other lot to a safe future in Australia.

The fact that we can send 800 boat people to Malaysia immediately signals that we don’t consider them as human as either ourselves, or the 4000 we are re-settling in exchange. You do not send innocent people to extremely dubious futures if you acknowledge them as human beings. The only way to send 800 people to the conditions they will have to face in Malaysia is to first deny their humanity. It is first to deny their worthiness – they are not as worthy as either ourselves, or the refugees we are accepting in their place. We do not have to be as caring about their well being as we do about our own, or the well being of the “worthy” refugees we are re-settling. Why? Because they arrived by boat? Because of where they were born? Both?

These 800 people are not criminals. Our domestic laws allow asylum seekers to arrive here in any manner at all, without papers, and to request refugee status once they get here. The Gillard government could rescind this law. That would  make boat arrivals law breakers. That would stop the boats. Permanently. The Malaysian solution is a one-off. After we reach our quota of 800 the deal is finished.

The Gillard government chooses to maintain the law that allows anyone to seek asylum and permits any manner of arrival. In a Kafakesque manipulation, the Gillard government criminalizes innocent people who are only doing what they are legally entitled to do, instead of changing the law. This is a very slippery slope, and one that should deeply concern all of us: today asylum seekers, tomorrow??

Australia was initially led down this very messy moral path by the Howard government’s racist response to asylum seekers who arrived by boat, exemplified in the events of the Tampa.  With total disregard for our domestic law, and the Covenant we signed with the UN, Howard began a slanderous campaign against boat arrivals that reached its climax in the Children Overboard affair. We don’t want people who abuse their children in this country, he declared, conveniently overlooking the fact that we already have tens of thousands of people in Australia who really are abusing children, their own and others. Australians don’t abuse their children, was the racist message based on a lie. Muslim asylum seekers coming in boats do, and we decent Australians don’t want them. Racism. Pure and simple. Replace Muslim with Jew and see where that eventually takes us.

Shaken by the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, Howard then followed George Bush into the invasion of Iraq, based on the folded lie that those responsible for the attacks had something to do with Iraq, and besides, Iraq was hoarding weapons of mass destruction.

In reality, the extremists who struck at the heart of America were from Saudi Arabia and there were no WMDs, but the Coalition of the Willing were not about to let the truth stand in the way of a good opportunity to wage war. Bush had scores to settle on behalf of his father and the first Gulf War. And then there’s the oil. Impossible as well to go after Saudi Arabia as breeders of terrorists. The Saudi princes dine at the White House and invest in News Limited. Think Fox News, and Murdoch’s support for the Iraq invasion.

Regardless of these considertions, a wave of anti-Muslim sentiment focused on Iraq swept across the US and its allies, including Australia. You’re either with us or against us on terrorism, Bush declared, and we say who the terrorists are and where they came from. In a brilliantly executed piece of propaganda, Howard conflated boat arrivals and Muslims with terrorism, struck xenophobic fear into the hearts of many Australians, and won an election that had a mere few months earlier seemed un-winnable by promising to protect us.

However Howard, like those who’ve followed him, did not move to change the law that permits asylum seekers entry. One has to wonder why. If anything would “protect” us immediately and permanently, it would be the rescinding of that law.

The Australian public’s fear and hatred of boat arrivals has not subsided. Politicians have not ceased to exploit this fear for their own gain. We are as deeply racist in this country as we have ever been. The Malaysian solution is racist to its core.

And so to Norway. The right-wing Christian fundamentalist terrorist who allegedly carried out the massacre of over 90 Norwegians on Sunday hated immigrants. He expressed rabid anti Muslim sentiments. He thought his government wasn’t doing enough to keep Norway for the Norwegians. He has expressed hope that his actions will bring about a change in Norway. His slaughter of the innocents was, he claims, gruesome but necessary.

The Norwegian slaughter represents the extreme end of a continuum. Somewhere along that continuum is the Malaysian Solution. Somewhere along it are the folded lies about WMDs and alleged Iraqi responsibility for September 11. Somewhere along the continuum is the virulent right-wing xenophobia expressed by Howard, and upheld by the policies of the Gillard Labor government. Somewhere along it are Alan Jones, Chris Smith, Andrew Bolt, and the rest of the shock jocks who conspire to agitate a fear and hatred of Muslims, and boat arrivals in Australian hearts. The extreme outcome of their racist right-wing anti-Muslim anti asylum seeker rhetoric is the slaughter in Norway.

In Australia, the unthinkable has become normalized in the Malaysian solution. The Gillard government has singled out two groups of human beings, one it considers worthy of saving, and one it considers unworthy. There is nothing we can do to ensure the safety and well-being of this latter group. We know the conditions they will encounter. We will expel these people because they accepted an invitation we continue to unconditionally extend.

You can only take such action against people you consider less than human.

Normalizing official selection practices for human survival and well being is the slipperiest slope of all. Once it becomes acceptable to decide that one group is more worthy of survival than another, once that becomes government policy and is then executed by the expulsion of the “undesirable” group, a country is deeply morally fouled.

If there is any doubt about the racist core of the Malaysian solution, ask why asylum seekers arriving by plane are not transported to Malaysia?  They are permitted to stay in this country while their claims are assessed. Generally they are not held in indefinite mandatory detention. The fact that they have papers is irrelevant to the law, which doesn’t require asylum seekers to have papers.

There is the law. And then there is government policy. In a healthy democracy there should not be discrepancy between the two. In a morally fouled country, there is increasing discrepancy between the two, and citizens should take alarmed note of such discrepancies.

The Malaysian solution is a marker of how far down the slippery slope we have already  travelled. It is the most immoral action this country has taken thus far against boat arrivals. It reveals our racist heart, and our collective ability to dehumanize. Dehumization of asylum seekers has become increasingly normalized over the last ten years and our journey into these dark waters has brought us to the Malaysian solution.

The events in Norway are shocking. They did not take place in a vacuum, such events never do. A climate exists in which such madness can be rationalized and justified by terrorists and their followers. The rhetoric used in such justifications is no different from what can be heard and read in the media every day. It is the rhetoric of hatred of other, and fear of difference. Politicians and media of all persuasions whip up these fears for their own gain. We need leaders who are capable of calming the irrational, not feeding it to gain office.

Leaders who nurture fear, leaders who capitulate to the most base human emotions are, to use Gillard’s word, evil. They perpetuate evil. They nurture evil. They violate the moral law to further their own objectives. It is indeed appropriate to describe, as did Gillard, the Norwegian terrorist as evil. But evil has many faces, and evil resides quite naturally in the continuum. Our leaders would do well to re-aquaint themselves with its meaning.

Be careful what you sow. You may not be able to control what seeds and flourishes.

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One word for the Murdochs: hubris, baby, hubris

19 Jul
News of the World

Image via Wikipedia

The journalistic culture at the News of the World had degenerated to the stage where any mention of “ethics” brought howls of derision. There was a competition among News of the World journos as to whose informant was the most sleazy: it was a macho thing.

Newspaper editors, top police and politicians cozied up to one another for their mutual benefit. British governments have been in thrall to Murdoch for twenty years.

The spectacular collapse of the Murdoch press in the UK, and the allegations surrounding the news organization that have yet to be investigated in the US, renew one’s faith in people power and the possibility of justice. It revives the hackneyed concept of “accountability,”  giving it new vigour and meaning. We are seeing accountability on a massive scale, and it is swift and it is spectacular.

What finally brought the Murdochs undone in Britain was the hacking of a murder victim’s phone, so that her distraught and terrified family were given false hope that  their lost beloved was still alive when the News of the World journo erased a few messages from Milly’s Dowler’s voicemail. The British public who’d felt little sympathy for celebrities with hacked phones,  became more exercised when an allegedly rogue journo hacked the phones of some members of the Royal Family. But when they heard about Milly, and the unforgivable intrusion by Murdoch’s minions on the grieving families of dead soldiers and terrorist victims, they’d had enough.

Rupert Murdoch runs his corporate empire as if he is above the law. He presides over a journalistic culture that encourages utter disdain for any codes of ethics. With the collusion of fawning politicians and police, Murdoch truly was a most arrogant master of the universe. Yet in a matter of days he’s so enraged the gods, a role in this instance played by the public, that his power appears to be dissipating like air out of a punctured balloon, and we see instead a shrivelled man in his late years, a de-fanged and pathetically apologetic shadow of his former self.

There’s an almost delicious justice in the way events have turned out: Murdoch’s sleazy News of the World rag, infamous for its pursuit of human immorality in every conceivable form, real and imagined, is brought down by its own despicably immoral acts. What goes around really does come around.

Whether Rupert knew about specifics or not, and it’s difficult to believe he didn’t know at least some of what was going on, the actions of his employees could only have flourished in a culture that encouraged and rewarded those behaviours.

With everyone who mattered apparently in Murdoch’s pocket, no doubt he felt himself to be above any consideration of consequences that dogs the actions of lesser mortals. But the public that he’s treated with such contempt for so long finally turned on him.

So can we expect any changes in the Australian as a consequence of Mr Murdoch’s fall? John Hartigan was at pains to reassure viewers on the ABC 7.30 Report a few nights ago that what’s happened in the UK could never happen here. He’s probably right, given the difference in our cultures, and our lack of scandal-worthy notables in public life. After all, chair sniffing probably doesn’t count for much in the scheme of things: it’s more sad than anything and there’s no injured party.

The Australian has been running a concentrated campaign against the Labor government for some time now, a campaign Hartigan justified by claiming his newspaper is the only one that criticizes the government, and is therefore doing a public service. Quite how he arrives at that conclusion I don’t know: it seems everywhere you look the press is busily engaged in critiquing the government, though few have the Australian’s single minded dedication to their task.

If Murdoch’s people are hacking phones in Australia they apparently aren’t sharing their ill gotten gains with their readership. Unlike the UK we are a small pond with few big fish. The opportunities for scandal-mongering do not present themselves to the same extent, and neither does it seem to be in our national character to encourage our media to pry into private lives to quite the same degree as do the British and the Americans. I don’t know if this makes us more principled or less curious.

I have to say that outside of Shakespeare, the Murdoch downfall is the most outstanding example of hubris we’ve seen in a very long time. Time to face your nemesis, Rupert.

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Leaky boats and marshmallow pies

10 Jul

Johnny in the sky with rainbows

It was with a sense of “did this really happen” that I watched Leaky Boat on ABC TV on July 7. On ABCTV blog you’ll find a timeline of the events of 2001 from the “Tampa” to the “Children Overboard” affairs covered by this documentary, in case you’ve been on Mars for the last ten years, or overseas where they don’t have meltdowns over a few asylum seekers like we do.

Immediately following the doco there was a Q&A “leaky boat” special, with the usual suspects holding their usual positions. Because I’m bored witless by listening to the same old same old from absolutely everybody on this topic, I decided to pretend I was an intergalactic traveller who’d fetched up in Australia just in time to watch these programs. Of course I had an intergalactic knowingness that allowed me to immediately cotton on to what most of it was about. When I got bogged down, I asked the dog. If he told me without detectable bias I let him lie in front of the fire.

My task was to objectively observe the human talking heads and because I was extra terrestrial, I had no difficulty at all being objective.

I tuned in to everybody’s vibes before I tuned into their words. I have to say straight up that I didn’t take to anybody on an energy level. My antennae (disguised so no human could see them) vibrated something shocking when they picked up the mutual animosity, ill will, one-upmanship and totally negative emotion fairly radiating through the television screen. I found it intensely upsetting to be in the presence of such bad feeling, especially when Raye Coleby (of SBS Go Back to Where you Came From fame) started in on a couple of re-settled Muslim refugees about how they didn’t deserve to be safe in Australia because thousands upon thousands of other asylum seekers are trapped in hellish camps, especially in Africa, without the financial means some lucky Muslims have to get themselves out.

Apparently, the dog explained when I murmured a question into his silky ear, this argument is what’s known as the queue question, and the boat arrivals keep jumping it which everybody knows is bloody bad manners and apparently not a good start in a country where good manners are more important than anything else at all. (Really? Is that really true? Is the dog dissing me?)

The fact that a queue is also a Chinese pigtail is of absolutely no relevance here at all, the dog said when I asked.

Wait a minute, I thought, as I watched Coleby become more and more emotional over her Africans, and more and more aggressive towards the Muslims around her.  There’s no queue to get into Australia, not as we understand queues where I come from. A queue that isn’t a Chinese pigtail is when everybody lines up in an orderly fashion to get something somebody else is distributing. That never happens in refugee camps in Africa or anywhere else. People make an application, Australia chooses who it wants. That’s not a queue it’s a lottery. Doesn’t matter how well mannered you are in a lottery.

So what’s Coleby on about?

Then the dog showed me how to send a tweet. My tweet said: “Is that the “real” Scott Morrison?”  because I thought he might be an extra terrestrial like me, standing in for a human. Well, not like me because I come from a peaceful people and he got right in David Marr’s personal space and embarked on an offensive interrogatory attack that a lesser man than Marr might have clocked him for.

Why nobody threw their shoes at Scott is a mystery to me.

My tweet didn’t appear on the screen and for that I blame the dog who should have told me to say something more intelligent like the other tweeters did.

I have since checked my Twitter account and found that I have ten followers, including one who wrote about me in my human form: “She is a woman of strong opinions with a sparse Twitter following.” The dog just shrugged about that. It’s my own fault, he gave me to understand. You have to nurture your Twitter account, feed it, give it time and attention: it doesn’t just happen all by itself.

But I digress. From my lofty alien perspective I find the public arguments over boat arrivals have become so predictable as to be meaningless. I know exactly who is going to say what, and the tone in which they will say it. It’s like saying a word, any word, over and over again to yourself until it becomes incomprehensible. Both sides of the debate carry great burdens of animosity towards one another. Emotions are high, indeed the entire debate has been so appropriated by high emotion that there’s hardly anything else left in it. Anybody who tries to be rational and reasonable is outside of the parameters and won’t get a look in.

I don’t know what can be done about this, because  from the galactic perspective it looks like it’s becoming a kind of mutual masturbatory opportunity for sado-masochists to hurl and receive nasties, and is achieving nothing at all for people who arrive by boat.

It is, however, a sign of our extraordinary privilege that we can expend so much emotion abusing one another about a situation that is not likely to affect any of us. Who in the ABC’s audience at home and in the studio is likely to suffer even a smidgin of disadvantage from a few thousand boat arrivals being re-settled in this country?

Personally, being an intrepid cosmic traveller, I’m always interested to hear another traveller’s tales. I don’t get nearly as bored watching refugees tell their stories as I’m starting to get watching talking heads of all persuasions talking about refugee’s stories. I realise there’s a whole pro and anti boat people industry out there and my perspective will not be popular but I don’t care. I found Leaky Boat fascinating. It was good to see Arne Rinnan again. I found Go Back to Where you Came From fascinating because it humanized everybody involved.

But the talking heads, whether I agree with them or not, I’m over them. Let the people speak. Then I’ll hear.

Picture yourself in a boat on a river, the dog whispered in the firelight, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies…

Newspaper taxis appear on the shore, waiting to take you away,

Climb in the back with your head in the clouds and you’re gone…

That dog. He’s a bloody poet.

Really though, in all honesty I have to admit that when I’m back on earth in my usual form, minus antennae and universal perspective, I will probably just get stuck back into the brawl like I always have. I will jeer and sneer and give the finger with the best of them. I will gasp in outraged horror at something else Scott Morrison says, and I will continue to berate the Gillard government for it’s moral decline into unspeakably horrible plans to transport everybody to Malaysia where they may well be caned without first being stunned.

And why? Because I have to. Because even when it gets tiring and bogged down and you think it’s going nowhere you can’t stop. Because people who arrive in boats are my fellow humans and from that comes everything else, and when I can’t remember that any longer, I might as well sew up my lips,stuff up my ears, and close my kaleidescope eyes.

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“Illegal immigrants” Press Council ruling: Why is Paul Sheehan is allowed to say it while Greg Sheridan is not?

3 Jul

Imagine my astonishment when I came across this post describing how in June 2011 the Australian Press Council upheld complaints against the Australian‘s Greg Sheridan alleging that he had wrongly described boat arrivals as “illegal immigrants” not once, but three times.

On January 7 2011 I put the following post up on  No Place for Sheep:

Today we sent a complaint to the Australian Press Council claiming that the article by Paul Sheehan, Sydney Morning Herald January 3 2011, titled Cast adrift from reality, the slick spruikers of ‘our’ shame, breaches Principles 1,2,3 and 6 of the Council’s Statement of Principles.

These Principles address misrepresentation of groups and individuals; suppression of available facts; deliberate misinformation through omission or commission, and fairness and balance.

We claim that these principles were breached by the use of the terms “illegal” and “without proper papers” when referring to asylum seekers arriving by boat.

This is the post I put up on January 13 2011, announcing the APC’s dismissal of my complaint against Sheehan:

I received the following email from the Australian Press Council today:

Dear Dr Wilson,

The Council has received a complaint from you, in which you raise a concern with terminology used by a bylined opinion columnist in The Sydney Morning Herald.

For your information, a copy of the Council’s principles and practices can be found on the Council’s website http://www.presscouncil.org.au.Therein are set out the standards of journalistic ethics that the Council upholds and the procedures it uses to deal with complaints alleging breaches of those standards.

Attached, for your information, is a copy of the Council’s Guideline No 288 on the issue of asylum seekers.

The Council believes that columns such as Sheehan’s should be given a reasonably wide licence to express a point of view. They are the clear expression of a viewpoint of the individual writing them and are commentary upon the news.

The terminology you complain of talks of  “illegal boats”. Since the boats can be seized and their crew tried before the courts, there is good reason to suggest that the arrival of the boats is in fact “illegal”.

Have you submitted a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald for publication in response to the published column? The Council has consistently said that the best response to a disagreement with such material is the submission of a contrary view for publication. I therefore urge you to take the matter up direct with the newspaper in the first instance, if you have not already. I will write to the newspaper urging it give due consideration to any submitted letter as a way of dealing with your concern.

I will bring your concern to the attention of the newspaper but believe that the best settlement of your concern, in this case, is through the letters to the editor column.

Yours sincerely,

Deb Kirkman, Acting Executive Secretary, Australian Press Council

To which I replied as follows:

Dear Ms Kirkman,
I have indeed twice written to the SMH letters on this matter, as I stated on my complaint form, and neither letter has been acknowledged.

To reiterate, the terminology I complained of is as follows:

1. Illegal boat arrivals. If Sheehan was referring only to the arrival of SIEVs, or to the crew of SIEVs, then these references makes no sense at all in the context of his paragraph.

It is rather disingenuous to suggest that Sheehan was referring to the vessels and their crew, given that the crews are arrested and the vessels are impounded, therefore the problem is addressed immediately at the source and offers no basis for Sheehan’s on-going angst.

Sheehan then goes on to comment on the “relatively small number of people who arrive by boat,” thus clearly confirming that he is indeed referring to the passengers who are seeking asylum, and not to the SIEVs and their crew.

2. Those who arrive by illegal means,and those who arrive without proper papers.

The UN Refugee Convention, to which Australia is signatory, recognises that refugees have a lawful right to enter a country for the purposes of seeking asylum. The Convention stipulates that what would usually be considered an illegal action, eg entering a country without a visa, should not be treated as illegal if a person is seeking asylum.Australian law, in line with the Convention, also permits unauthorised entry for the purposes of seeking asylum.

Therefore, under Australian law, and under the terms of the Convention we have signed, a person who is seeking asylum has the legal right to enter this country without papers, and by any method of transport, even SIEVs, and has the legal right to remain in this country, until his or her refugee status is established through the proper legal processes, to which, as asylum seekers, they are legally entitled.

Their mode of transport does not render asylum seekers “illegal,” as suggested by Sheehan.

This was re-affirmed by the High Court of Australia in November 2010.

Again, my complaints  relate to numbers 1, 2, 3, and 6 of your Statement of Principles.

Sheehan has misrepresented the facts of this situation – asylum seekers are not illegal, even if they enter the country on SIEVs.

Sheehan has suppressed facts that are available to him, i.e. the facts that under domestic law and by international agreement, Australia does not consider those requesting asylum to be illegal in any way, no matter how they arrived in this country, including if they arrived “without proper papers.”

The illegality of their mode of transport is a separate issue, as the law recognises, and is dealt with as a separate issue. Asylum seekers are not held responsible for the legality or otherwise of their mode of transport.

Sheehan has misinformed and misled the SMH readership by conflating the two, and in so doing, ignores Australian law and the UNHCRConvention.

Since when has it been acceptable that even an opinion writer has the license to misinform their readers about Australian law, and the legal status of a particular group of people?

Sheehan has not presented his readers with the facts, and his opinions are not based on the facts. Sheehan has acted irresponsibly in putting forward an uninformed point of view as his opinion. The facts are readily available to him. Surely even opinion pieces are supposed to have some basis in reality?

I have requested that the SMH correct Sheehan’s inaccuracies and conflations. I have received no response

Yours sincerely,

Jennifer Wilson.

Australian Press Council Guideline 288 in regard to Asylum seekers.

Guideline No. 288 Describing “asylum seekers”

Issued: October 30, 2009

For immediate release

The Australian Press Council has updated its guideline on “asylum seekers”, replacing General Press Release 262 with the attached guide. The Council issues guidelines from time to time. These are, in essence, amplifications on particular issues arising from the Council’s Statement of Principles. The guidelines apply the Principles to the practice of reporting and are intended to guide the press on how it should report certain matters. These guidelines are not intended to be prescriptive instructions to the press but act as a series of advisories on the application of the Principles that the Council seeks the co-operation of editors in maintaining. A list of the extant guidelines (and links to them) can be found on the Council’s website athttp://www.presscouncil.org.au/pcsite/activities/gprguide.html.

The Council has from time to time received complaints about the terminology used to describe people who arrive in Australia through means other than regulated immigration and visa transit processes. They are often referred to by the press and others as “illegal immigrants”, “illegal boatpeople” and so on –  or simply as  “illegals”. The descriptor “illegal(s)” is very often inaccurate and typically connotes criminality.

The press has, by and large, abided by the Council’s 2004 Guideline about the use of inaccurate and derogatory terminology to describe such people.

Having considered the matter further, the Council believes that the term “asylum seeker” is a widely understood descriptor, generally a fair and a sufficiently accurate one, and one which avoids the kinds of difficulties outlined above. The Council recommends its use as the default terminology in relevant headlines and reports both by the press and others.

The Australian Press Council comprises representatives of the public and of the industry and acts to preserve the freedom, and the responsibility, of the Australian press. It was founded in July 1976 and has been in continuous operation for over 30 years.

End of Guideline 288

What are we to make of this disparity in the Press Council’s judgement?

 Is the APC favouring the Sydney Morning Herald, while holding the Australian to a different set of standards? Is it more personal than that, ie can Sheehan do what Sheridan cannot and if so, why?

 

 


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Mentioning the war – on the Watermelon Blog

26 Jun
WikiWorld comic based on the articles "Go...

Image via Wikipedia

Have a read of Mentioning the war on the Watermelon Blog. David Horton reclaims THAT word from the climate change deniers who call Godwin’s Law!

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Go back part three: Don’t call me a leftie!

24 Jun

Abbott you've been dickrolled. by David Jackmanson via flickr

Go back where you came from: Part Three

I was amused to see Roderick, vice president of  a branch of the Young Liberals, appear again in last night’s episode sporting the tee shirt with Tony Abbott in a lifeguard’s bonnet and budgie smugglers on the front. Unfortunately I couldn’t read the slogan.

Later he showed up in Congo wearing Julia Gillard as a lemon on his chest. Roderick is to be commended for his commitment to furthering his goal, stated at the beginning of the series, that he did not intend to allow anyone to cast him as a leftie. He simultaneously pushed domestic political propaganda for the home audience, and I’m certain he is to be watched as a future politician.

I’m struggling with on-going ambivalence about this show. On the one hand, it’s a remarkable achievement. I mean, imagine the logistics involved in pulling it all together. Give credit where it’s due, I say.

The fusion of documentary and reality TV genres was inspired: while I found the Big Brother style narration a little irritating it certainly allows the program to speak to a broader audience than a straight doco. It was a clever marketing decision, and also  allowed the participants an on-going and authentic emotional engagement that would not have been as easy in a doco.

However, I’m unable to shake a sense of voyeurism and exploitation. I think this could have easily been avoided by including footage of whatever negotiations took place between the producers and the asylum seekers and refugees who took part in the program. We get very little sense of their agency: they are portrayed as largely without any.

While they obviously have severely restricted agency in determining the course of their lives, I think it would have been respectful and humanizing to at least show the audience how they were invited to take part, and how they accepted the invitation.

Instead, we are left with an impression that they passively exist for our consumption, while the agency of the white participants is taken for granted. Raquel, for example, was given a choice about visiting Congo and she declined.

At the same time, the face to face interactions between the Australians and the refugees worked extremely well to humanize them, counteracting the Gillard government’s on-going efforts at dehumanization by isolation.

As the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas pointed out, when we are denied interaction with the face of the other, we are denied interaction with our humanity and theirs. Go back to where you came from achieved a great deal in this regard, and this is one of it’s most powerful strengths.

Two participants did have their beliefs about boat people reinforced. Having seen the camps in which refugees languish for years awaiting resettlement, the sense of unfairness that these people should be usurped by boat arrivals was strong.

It’s probably entirely unreasonable to demand that anybody fleeing death and persecution should first consider others who may be worse off than even them. Such moral considerations are easy for those of us who are safe. Put any one of us in a war zone and we might well discard all moral niceties, and bolt to anywhere in any way we can.

Hopefully, the show will have gone some way to exposing the constellation of false assumptions that underly Australian attitudes to asylum seekers. But I’m not holding my breath.

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