Tag Archives: Julia Gillard

Gillard’s premature enunciations

17 Jun

The Gillard government’s announcement of its plan to spend 12 million taxpayer dollars on an advertising campaign to sell the carbon tax  beggars belief.

The carbon tax is by no means a done deal. The multi party committee on climate change may not arrive at a consensus. The proposed carbon tax may not progress to the legislative process. The Independents without whom Gillard cannot function are enraged, both by the proposed advertising campaign, and the presumption of their compliance upon which it is based.

Informing these key players just one hour prior to making the plan public would seem to be yet another unwisely arrogant move. While in itself it will probably not affect the Independents’ committment to the negotiations, the move does imply a degree of government contempt for the process, and an assumption that the decision is already in the bag.

Perhaps one of the motives behind this bizarre campaign to sell something that does not yet exist, is a hope that if the public can somehow be convinced by the mere announcement of this campaign that it’s a certainty, the multi party committee will be forced by public opinion to reach the consensus the government wants. Independent Tony Windsor said the advertising decision bordered ”on asking us to endorse publicly funded propaganda”.

This type of tortured magical thinking is quite characteristic of the Gillard government, from the day twelve months ago when it became the Gillard government up until now. Think the East Timor solution, the Malaysia solution, and the carbon tax Gillard was never going to introduce till she changed her mind about it.

Gillard’s assumption that the carbon tax outcome is so certain that the government can already commit 12 million dollars to explaining it is mind-boggling, anyway you look at it, and everyone is scrabbling to find a rational explanation for the move.

Gillard has acquired a reputation for putting the cart before the horse. She did not consult with East Timor before assuming their willingness to take our cast off refugees. The Malaysian solution was announced way before those negotiations were settled, indeed they are on going, and we have no idea what that outcome will be. Now she wants to sell a carbon tax that does not yet exist. Isn’t that false advertising?

Although Gillard appears outwardly calm and in control, her consistently premature and inappropriate announcements reveal an underlying profound anxiety and lack of control. She continues to indulge in premature enunciations that leave everyone embarrassed and unsatisfied.

Gillard may not believe in God, but she seems to believe in some kind of supernatural force, because from day one, her government appears to have operated on a type of blind faith in itself that has no connection with reality. The arrogant assumptions as to the outcome of the multi party climate change committee negotiations is yet one more example of this excess of self belief, now looking increasingly more desperate in spite of Gillard’s outward efforts to appear calm while the boat lurches sickeningly yet again.

In circumstances such as this, Gillard’s much remarked inability to express appropriate affect becomes a positive advantage.

Magical thinking was intrinsic in the overthrow of Kevin Rudd: who else but those with their heads in fairyland would have believed for one moment that Rudd would just go away?  Instead he’s been a fierce and constant thorn in their side, and will continue to be so, publicly undermining, destabilizing and dividing just by his very existence.

Polls reveal he is considered a better contender for PM than is the woman who deposed him. Anybody could have seen that coming, but not, it appears, those who chucked him out. Actions have consequences, and frequently they aren’t the consequences you hope for. Any first year psychology student could have predicted the consequences of that coup.

“I have taken control” Gillard brayed 12 months ago when she ousted Rudd, claiming that the government under  his control had “lost its way.”

If this is an example of taking control, if this is a government that’s now found its way, beam me up Scotty.

The government’s motives in announcing this ad campaign are unfathomable. The use of public money to fund a campaign about something that does not yet exist is nothing more than a cynical exercise in propaganda. It will backfire, as has much else this government has done so far.

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Gillard turns her private life into public spectacle.

14 Jun

In the Drum this morning, Annabel Crabb critiques an interview on Sixty Minutes last night in which Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her partner Tim Mathieson are questioned, apparently mortifyingly for the viewer, about their relationship. It’s degrading, Crabb concludes, and though I didn’t see the interview, I’m sure Crabb’s assessment is spot on.

The  question we need to ask is how desperate is this Prime Minister that she allows herself to go on prime time television with her partner to subject both of them to degrading interrogations about their personal lives?

Julia Gillard seriously damaged the dignity of the office of Prime Minister by  the manner in which she assumed it. Remember her breathless, hysterical claims that we had lost our way, and she had taken over to help us find it again? It sounded then as if the country was on the brink of destruction thanks to Kevin, and Gillard was here to save us.

Now she seems incapable of exercising any of the  discretion and restraint one would hope was second nature to a prime minister when it comes to her personal life and her intimate feelings.

You can’t blame the program. They’re after ratings like any other commercial television station. The responsibility for this self inflicted public humiliation lies solely with Julia Gillard. Its a timely reflection on her lack of judgement, her lack of wisdom, her lack of character, and her increasing desperation about her plummeting popularity, that she now exposes her intimate life for public spectacle as a last resort.

At the very least it’s tacky and embarrassing. At worst, it’s proof that the country is not in serious, capable hands, and that Gillard’s capacity for unwise silliness (first demonstrated in that Women’ s Weekly airbrushed photo shoot) and her lack of sophistication and political judgement are more deeply entrenched than we feared.

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Gillard’s world first: state sanctioned trade of children

14 Jun

The Gillard government’s deal with Malaysia on asylum seekers has taken yet another turn. Immigration Minister Chris Bowen has now conceded that he will decide whether or not to send unaccompanied children to that country’s refugee camps on a “case by case” basis. In coming to this decision he has dramatically shifted from his original position that all unaccompanied children who arrive here by boat will be sent on to Malaysia.

This backflip raises many questions, of which two are particularly pressing. The first is, what criteria will the Gillard government use to determine which unaccompanied children to export to Malaysia, and which to allow access to refugee processing in Australia?

In the Malaysian camps unaccompanied children are at risk of physical, sexual, psychological, and emotional abuse leading to long-term psychological and physical ill health. They are at risk of exploitation of all kinds, as well as inadequate nutrition, and inadequate education. In short, they are at risk of a complete loss of childhood, to which the UNHCR Convention on the Rights of the Child (yes, we signed that too) states all children are entitled.

We have failed to protect children in Australian detention centres from extensive and long-term harm. How then do we propose to exert any influence over their treatment in another sovereign state?

We need to know as a matter of urgency just what guidelines the Gillard government intends to use to enable it to judge which unaccompanied child is suitable for exposure to these risks in Malaysia, and which child is not.

Will there be a checklist test of a child’s resilience? How has this minor withstood the traumas he or she has thus far endured? Reasonably well? OK, off to Malaysia.

Is the assessment to be left to officials in the Department of Immigration? Or does the government intent to employ experts in child psychology and psychiatry who will present informed opinion on which child has a better chance of survival in Malaysia, and which child does not? I use “survival” in a broad sense, not necessarily referring to their death, though that possibility cannot be discounted.

Protocols such as the Gillard government needs now, will create a groundbreaking global benchmark for the establishment of innovatory assessment processes for child asylum seekers who arrive unaccompanied in Western countries. The processes will necessarily be designed to determine the type of personality unaccompanied minors must have, in order to be judged capable of surviving the dangers of camps in countries that are not signatories to any human rights conventions. As far as I am aware, no such assessment process of lone children seeking asylum exists anywhere else in the world.

The second pressing matter we need to consider is that Chris Bowen is the legal guardian of all unaccompanied minors who arrive here seeking asylum. The welfare of children in his care must be his first priority if he is to fulfill the legal, ethical and moral requirements of guardianship.

How would we deal with any other legal guardian who subjected his or her charges to risks of this magnitude? We would find it entirely unacceptable that a guardian would consider putting any child in his or her care on a continuum of risk that includes rape, exploitation, hunger and death. We would likely incarcerate such a guardian. We certainly would not allow them to continue to be responsible for children who have no one else to take care of their wellbeing.

Does Bowen therefore have a conflict of interest in these circumstances?  If his duty is first towards the vulnerable children in his care, might this not conflict with Gillard’s demands that he send any of these children to Malaysia?

Bowen has been quick to point out that the numbers involved are few. We aren’t looking at sending very many unaccompanied children to fend for themselves in Malaysia. This situation may change with the government’s recent decision. Denied income from adult cargo, smugglers may well resort to moving boatloads of minors, with the selling point that they do have a chance to stay in this country and it’s well worth the risk.

When Scott Morrison complained about the burial of drowned asylum seekers and their babies it looked as if we had reached an ethical and moral nadir in Australian politics. Now the Gillard government has again shifted the goalposts in the game to see who can stop the boats. Nauru is looking like the lesser of two evils.

What does it say about the character, competence and complete moral turpitude of our politicians, that the best choice they can come up in this situation has to be between two evils?


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You watched the Australian cows – now watch what they do to human beings in Malaysia

10 Jun

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=5ab_1172940415

WARNING: THIS VIDEO CONTAINS IMAGES OF EXTREME CRULTY TO HUMAN BEINGS AND MAY DISTURB SOME VIEWERS

SO THIS IS WHERE YOU’RE SENDING ASYLUM SEEKERS AND UNACCOMPANIED CHILDREN IS IT GILLARD?

They cane refugees there don’t they? But wait! Gillard and the U.N. can stop them! Yeah!!!

Gillard and the UN have triumphed over the domestic laws of a sovereign state!! Watch and learn, punters! Watch and learn!

Oh, the feminists must be soooo proud of our first female PM!

BTW -WHERE THE HELL IS GET UP?

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Gillard’s gamble, and the Glenn Gould Prize

30 May

The Gillard government’s decision to negotiate a one-off deal with Malaysia to trade the next 800 asylum seekers to arrive in boats for 4,000 refugees currently languishing in camps in that country, may or may not lead to a decrease in boat arrivals in Australia. It’s a gamble. If it pays off the rewards are a de-fanged opposition, and the cauterization of a decade old abscess that’s poisoned our political process to its core.

If it doesn’t pay off and boats continue to arrive, will Gillard attempt another negotiation with the Malaysians who may well up the ante, say from ten to one instead of the current five to one?

Or since East Timor gave her the flick will she use more taxpayers millions to persuade PNG or the Solomons to make it all go away?

The plan is that word will get around to potential boat arrivals that they’ll be sent to Malaysia, and this will be enough to persuade them not to undertake the journey in the first place. The deal with Malaysia has not yet come into effect, and the estimated 100 asylum seekers, including children, who’ve arrived since the announcement of the arrangement in progress are being held in detention, awaiting transfer to Malaysia.

Even if asylum seekers continue to take their chances the opposition are seriously de-fanged, as Gillard goes a step further than even they contemplated in the efforts to rid us of responsibility for those who arrive by boat.

They can now seize the high moral ground with the argument that they didn’t send anybody to be caned and mistreated in a third country.

Those who arrive by plane, on the other hand, will continue to do that without fear of being despatched to a Malaysian camp where they can expect to be flogged, fed pig swill, sent to the back of the queue, and otherwise abused.

What is immediately apparent is the government’s complete inability to maintain a credible position on boat arrivals. Not so long ago, Gillard steadfastly refused any possibility of re-opening Nauru, because that country is not a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention. Well, neither is Malaysia.

The government also seems to be labouring under the illusion that Australia can somehow exert control over the treatment of asylum seekers we send to the Malaysian camps. This is what’s known as magical thinking if they really believe it, or cynical expediency if they don’t. It’s difficult to see how even the Malaysian government can protect a handful of asylum seekers among some 90,000 from being badly treated. Are they building special quarters with kinder guards?

As former Human Rights Commissioner  Sev Ozdowski points out, re-opening Nauru is preferable to dispatching boat arrivals to Malaysia. At least we control the conditions in Nauru. On the other hand we also have to pay for that privilege. Once asylum seekers are in Malaysia, our financial obligations are at an end.

We do assume financial responsibility for the well being of the potential 4,000 refugees, the majority of whom are thought to be Burmese, for as long as they need us to do that.

The estimated cost of this  trade in displaced humanity is some $300 million over the next 4 years.

A commenter at Club Troppo made this observation on the post “In Praise of Gillard’s Malaysia solution:”

As for Burmese refugees, I welcome them. I think they are Burmese minority peoples like Shan people, persecuted by the Burmese military. As far as I know, the Burmese are Buddhist worshipping, peace loving people, and won’t hate other religions, or commit terrorist bombings killing innocent people.

Of course, boat arrivals are all Muslim terrorists, aren’t they?

The other matter that has been apparent for some time, especially internationally, is Australia’s adolescent unwillingness to accept responsibility for our own problems. Those who arrive by boat are doing nothing more than responding to our open invitation, which we continue to extend as long as we are signatories to the UN Refugee Convention. We are responsible for continuing to issue that open invitation, and for hospitably dealing with those who accept it.

Instead, like irresponsible teenagers, we bitch and moan that we don’t want those guests, we only want the other guests, so somebody else has to take those guests off our hands and give us the ones we want. The nice Buddhists not the nasty Muslims, that is.

Anybody who thinks this tacky and likely racist manipulation has anything at all to do with preventing loss of life by discouraging boat arrivals is, as they say, dreamin’.

As long as we continue to issue an open invitation, we can’t simultaneously complain about mythical queues being jumped, not if we want any credibility in the grown up world.

But I don’t think Gillard is all that interested in being a grown up, or in leading our country into adult land. After all, it’s adolescents who swan around angsting over whether or not they’re being the “real” me. It’s the immature who’ll go to any lengths and pay any disproportionate price to avoid acknowledging, and then accepting full responsibility for their actions.

The reality that we won’t process those who arrive by boat but will send them to a third, non-signatory country makes our open invitation morally foul. This is the real abscess we urgently need to cauterize. This is the abscess that will keep on poisoning us long after the last asylum seeker’s been settled in a Malaysian camp. We are not true to our word. We’re making promises we don’t keep. Or as the man cautions:

Through the days of shame that are coming 
Through the nights of wild distress 
Though your promise count for nothing 
You must keep it nonetheless…

(L Cohen, Heart With No Companion)

Leonard Cohen was in April awarded the Ninth Glenn Gould Prize for enriching the human condition through the arts, so he knows what he’s on about. Gillard is notoriously uninterested the arts, and quite likely has no idea that they can have any influence on the human condition. And what’s the human condition,anyway and do boat arrivals have one?  Does enriching the human condition through the arts count as hard work?

Maybe Gillard should give Leonard a whirl. At least she doesn’t have any grounds to complain about his voice.

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Kev’s new best friend; Latham the Loomer, and Dear Prudence

5 Apr
Kevin Rudd on Novembre 2005.

Image via Wikipedia

All the Foreign Minister, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had to do was sit back and let Deputy Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Foreign Minister Julie Bishop do it for him.

Dump Gillard in it, that is.

An aroused and indignant Bishop, glittering eyes made famous by The Chaser boys (remember her staring contest with the garden gnome?) strafing panel and audience alike, passionately retold to an entranced crowd the circumstances that brought about Kev’s disastrous dip in the polls when as PM he backed down from the ETS.

This backdown, Bishop reminded us, was entirely due to Gillard and Wayne Swan persuading Kev to relinquish his greatest moral challenge of all time, probably on purpose so they’d have an excuse for declaring him a total loser as far as the public was concerned, a menace to the ALP‘s chances of re election, and best removed from the highest office.

That move gave the men who now have faces what they needed to chuck out a first term PM, and replace him with Australia’s First Hollow Lady.

Throughout Bishop’s retelling, Kev remained stoic, his features clouded with sorrow and pain, albeit mitigated by reflection.  Earlier, the Foreign Minister had most engagingly accepted full responsibility for what he now admits was a grave error in judgement. He might have been wrongly, even maliciously advised, but when the chips were down, he was the PM and the final decision was his to make.

Bishop’s death stare is scary, and no wonder the garden gnome fell off its table and shattered into a hundred pieces. I felt momentary sympathy for Tony Jones and American Ambassador Bleich seated either side of her  last night, on the occasions she spun round in her seat to burn through their brains with her laser gaze. Does she have a problem with her peripheral vision, I wondered out loud to my household, or is it that her powers only work when her stare is directed in a straight line?

A few in Cabinet Kev revealed, coyly resisting all Tony Jones’s efforts to provoke him into naming names, wanted the ETS killed for once and for all, and this morning on Radio National Breakfast, journalist Lenore Taylor reckoned Gillard was one of them.

Oooeeer – the First Hollow Lady gets even more closely aligned with expediency rather than morality.

I enjoyed seeing Kev’s dial again. I like his grin. He can be very likeable but he’s a complex bloke. During his brief sojourn as PM I found him at times extremely irritating especially when he apparently descended into a sleep deprived mania, just like a very young child who will not give in to the need to rest, and becomes unbearably obnoxious as a consequence.

However, he seems to have learned from that to nap, and take food and water.

Kev will always have charisma as a result of what they did to him, a fact none of the men who now have faces seem to have considered  before they dumped him. He can’t help but look far more interesting than just about anybody else in the ALP. In the morality stakes, he’s a zillion points ahead of our First Hollow Lady. His admission last night that he’d blown it with his great moral challenge only adds to the impression of a politician capable of sincere reflection, a rare beast indeed, except when they’ve aged and long left office.

He’s found a way to deal with the humiliation heaped upon him that is acceptable. The wry shrug, the laughing off, the live and learn attitude hints at an emotional intelligence sadly lacking in just about everybody else, and it seems to be sincere. He doesn’t hide the pain, but he looks as if he’s come to terms with it and is probably all the better for the experience.

But that’s not to overlook the calculated little bomb he did drop on the matter of who wanted to kill the ETS, a little bomb that will give the Opposition plenty of return ammunition for a while as they take every opportunity to point out that these would-be-killers are still there, and what does that mean, and who are they, and how can we trust anyone in that government?

Kev does make Gillard look both bad and boring, and that’s an unacceptable combination. If you’re going to be bad, you have an obligation to be interesting with it.

Speaking of which, I don’t know why anybody bothers listening to that Mark Latham whose ridiculous attack on Gillard’s child free choice renders anything else he might have to say  hardly worth listening to. Latham has no respect for anybody’s personal space, emotional and physical. This was concretely demonstrated when he loomed into the Prime Minister in a public place and asked stupid questions,and prior to that, loomed into John Howard as he attempted to enter a room Latham was leaving. He’s a loomer. He looms. it’s not attractive. He should give it up.

Prue Goward by publik15 via flickr

Then there’s Dear Prudence. Prue Goward, recently appointed NSW Minister for Families, whatever that is, has taken a nasty swipe at radio personality Jackie O for the manner in which she fed her baby.

Apparently Jackie O gave the child a bottle while simultaneously walking across a pedestrian crossing, an action Goward likened to the famous Michael Jackson moment when he dangled his little son over a balcony in Germany and subsequently earned global contempt for his fathering skills.

Why this is a concern for the Minister for Families remains a mystery to me. An over zealous commitment to her new portfolio? Is she going to focus on perceived child abuse by the rich and famous? If the mother had been a working class woman would Goward have even blinked her mascara-ed lashes?

I’m glad she wasn’t in the nursery when once, in a sleep deprived state similar to those experienced by the former PM, I accidentally stuck my fingers in the wrong jar and pasted my baby boy’s bits with Vicks Vapour Rub instead of nappy rash cream.

Soon to become a dad himself for the first time, he looked at me stunned, speechless and quite judgmentally, I thought, when I recently confessed this transgression. Too late I realised my mistake. Now I probably won’t be allowed anywhere near the new baby, but at least we know the Vicks didn’t do its daddy any damage.

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Julia Gillard: our First Hollow Woman.

3 Apr

by Debbi Long via flickr

I’ve been in denial about Julia Gillard‘s prime ministership since her first day on the job. I’ve only just decided I’d better examine this unhealthy emotional defense, and my resistance to doing even that is strong.

The most common form my denial takes is whenever I see or hear Gillard I struggle to block her right out of my awareness. I don’t just “switch off,” I wish it was that easy, no, I have to actively deny her entry into my consciousness, rather like a metaphysical turning of not just my back, but my whole being.

If I’m not quick enough, and she gets in despite my lack of hospitality, I find myself swearing without either finesse or coherence, as well as making the medieval hand gesture used to ward off the devil, that one like the “call me” sign but with the first and pinky fingers and facing the other way, usually directed towards the enemy’s third eye.

I used this against John Howard as well, I’m not partisan.

The thought that generally accompanies this bit of theatre is “She’s not really our Prime Minister, someone else is, she’s just a pretend one till the real one comes along, so I don’t need to listen to anything she says, she’s a usurper.”

It isn’t just  question of not believing a word she says. I didn’t like how she acquired the top job. I didn’t like the maternalistic undercurrents revealed in what she told us when she took over, along the lines of: “the government has lost it’s way and I’m here now to get it back on track.” Tickets on herself, is what I thought, an understandable assessment when we recall that hardly anybody in the general population knew what was going on in federal Labor at the time.

I didn’t like her rush to placate the Australian Christian Lobby‘s fears that gay marriage might be legalized. I didn’t like her rush to console xenophobic focus groups with promises of off shore asylum seeker processing in East Timor. These very early comments, when most of us were still in shock and had other things on our minds, signaled that her primary concern was pleasing interest groups the ALP perceived as pivotal to them staying in power, rather than any wider concern for the country.

I didn’t like the “real and realler” Julia idiocy, and instinctively felt that anyone who has to tell the world they’re going to be real now when they weren’t before is probably permanently untrustworthy, and terminally lacking in credibility. I wonder to this day how any self-respecting woman could think it was OK to make such coyly precious announcements about herself, while simultaneously appearing in an airbrushed and highly glamourised state in the Women’s Weekly. I wonder as well, what it says about that woman if she secretly thought the real/unreal Julia thing was crap, but did it anyway because the faceless men told her she should.

I railed vigorously about this at the time and some of my friends told me to shut TF up, anything was allowed because we had to stop Tony Abbott. I didn’t talk to them for a while, on account of what looked to me like their dodgy means to an end morality.

I still can’t get a sense of the “real” Julia. I don’t know who she is or what she stands for, and if she has any wisdom and vision, it’s not apparent to me. Julia Gillard is, as far as I can tell, entirely a product of the ALP machine, and she will do whatever it takes to keep that machine functioning and in power, like all good middle managers should.

It isn’t the country she cares about. It’s the ALP running the country that is her primary concern. In this, Julia Gillard is our First Hollow Woman.

I thought this morning that my emotions on this matter (as opposed to my rational thoughts) are rather like those of the adolescent who suddenly acquires a step-parent. The individual concerned has been around for a while as Mum or Dad’s love interest, and you’ve coped with them because they haven’t actually moved in. But suddenly there’s a marriage, or a move into de facto status, and they’re in the family, taking the place of the real parent who left or died.

You hate the interloper. You can’t help it, they’re not who you want to be there and they wield power you feel they have no right to have. Your life’s mission becomes getting rid of them. In your opinion, they have no authority, moral or otherwise. They got the position because they either pushed the real parent out, or leapt in when there was a sudden vacancy you didn’t have any control over. It’s not fair, you aren’t going to accept it, and anybody who thinks you’ll eventually come round has rocks in their head.

Which is not to say I’m pining for Kevin, because I’m not. I just want somebody I can look up to: it’s lonely when there’s no one at the top to admire.

Gillard is only PM because of those pesky Independents, she doesn’t have a mandate. It is extremely unfair, in my opinion, that we should have been faced with a choice between her and Tony Abbott, no country deserves that fate, although there are those who argue that we get the governments and leaders we deserve.

Taking a step back from my adolescent-like prejudices against the PM, and looking at it woman to woman, I find I still don’t see Gillard as having wisdom and vision. Were I to encounter her in the workplace I would watch my back, keep my distance, and never go for an after work drink with her because she’s not the type who’d consider anything off the record, and watching my mouth when I’m trying to relax is counter productive. She’s a political woman through and through, and she’d give them her life and yours.

To be fair, wisdom is a quality that is sadly lacking across the board in our politics. It seems to have become negatively associated with the ageing process, although some claim to find wisdom in the eyes of the newborn. Either way, it doesn’t have much attraction for the masters and mistresses of our political universe. Wisdom is unfashionable. A choice was made between wisdom and focus groups and the latter won hands down. Common sense was collateral damage.

As for their vision, well, that seems to be entirely restricted to their vision of their own potential power. That has quite possibly always been the case with politicians. I’m scared to posit a past when leaders were really leaders, and the people who elected them were far more deserving of quality and wisdom than are we.

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Rioting and deaths in detention: anyone could see that coming so why don’t the politicians?

30 Mar
A bunch of Razor Wire atop a chain link fence

Image via Wikipedia

Guest blog today by Dr Stewart Hase

A Refugee Crisis in the Camps: Now Who Could Have Predicted That?

The media treat it as something of a surprise that the ungrateful inmates of our refugee camps are rioting and committing suicide. But it does make for great headlines and, let’s face it, that’s mainstream journalism these days: the ‘gotcha’ rather than real investigation. Well, it is no surprise to psychologists who, had government taken the time to seek some good advice, could have easily predicted these events. In fact, if a research psychologist had wanted to design an experiment confirming the negative impact of incarcerating people, they could have done no better than the politicians and bureaucrats with the fiasco they have invented. The experiment has it all: desperate people; close confinement; razor wire; remote locations; removal of dignity an extended but variable process that engenders hopelessness; an unnatural existence; and overcrowding.

It has been long known in psychology that even relatively innocuous forms of incarceration cause psychological problems: an abnormal situation creates abnormal behaviour in and of itself. We know that guards become abusive towards inmates when they are in this unique position of power. The abuse of the powerless is not restricted to psychopaths or other similarly inadequate personalities. Mr and Mrs Average are quite capable of abnormal cruelty when given the opportunity. We see this in wartime, concentration camps, prisons and the now defunct (thankfully) psychiatric hospitals of the first half of the twentieth-century.

Any first year psychology student knows that you cannot expect people to behave normally when they are placed in abnormal situations. And we could expect people to riot when they are placed in a threatening situation. We can expect people to kill themselves or develop psychoses when their disbelief turns to despair turns to hopelessness. We can expect to see children rapidly wither on the vine when normality is stripped from them: they have few defences to protect themselves.

Successive Australian governments have failed the compassion test, as have we, the Australian people for not urging a humanitarian approach to this problem. This does not mean allowing illegal entry to our country. It does not mean opening our doors. But it does mean having a process for dealing with the problem that is in keeping with the mores of a twenty-first century civil society rather than those of the dark ages: a society that bases its decisions on evidence rather than false and convenient belief. I wonder if we are ready yet and is there a politician out there that is prepared to rise above the sorcery that is popularism?


Dr Stewart Hase

 

Dr Stewart Hase is a registered psychologist and has a doctorate in organisational behaviour as well as a BA, Diploma ofPsychology, and a Master of Arts (Hons) in psychology.

Stewart blogs at http://stewarthase.blogspot.com/

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Gillard and Abbott and the art of verbal abuse

27 Mar

It ain't over till it's over. by Dr John Bullas via flickr

 

Watching Prime Minister Julia Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott go at it is a lot like witnessing a couple trapped in the death throes of a hideous relationship. They’ve got to the point where verbal abuse is not a side issue: it’s the issue. Whatever the specific conflict, it gets buried in a hail of verbal salvos designed to accuse, blame, denigrate, manipulate, control, and put down.

The couple sees each other only as adversaries. Their goal is to bring the other undone, and achieve domination. They struggle to achieve this in some or all of the following ways:

The verbal abuser refuses to responsibly communicate. She or he establishes what can be discussed, or withholds information, making genuine discussion impossible. She or he can prevent any possibility of resolving conflicts by employing this blocking tactic.

Diverting from the matter at hand into abuse that the other then feels obliged to defend or return is another impediment to discussion of real issues. Climate change, the economy, gay marriage – no matter what the topic on the table, it is always subsumed under the couple’s compulsion to do one another in.

Doing the other one in has become the raison d’être of the relationship. In a worst-case scenario, it has become the participants’ entire reason for getting up in the morning, and has taken on the qualities of a life-controlling addiction.

A verbal abuser will often accuse his or her partner of some wrongdoing or breach of the basic agreement of the relationship. This always distracts from the current issues, and puts the partner on the defensive.

Then there’s judging and criticizing. The verbal abuser may express their critical judgment of their partner. This is often disguised as being helpful and when in enacted in that form, can be particularly insidious as any retaliatory accusation of wrong-doing can be disingenuously denied, as in “Wot, me?”

Sometimes verbal abuse is disguised as jokes. While the comments may be presented as humor, they have poisoned barbs. They may be delivered inelegantly, or with great skill, but their intention is to diminish the partner, and throw her or him off balance.

Trivializing can also be a form of verbal abuse. Trivializing is the attempt to make what the partner has said or done, insignificant. This tactic can be quite hard to identify and name, although you know immediately and viscerally when it’s happening to you, and it makes you want to hit back, or crawl under a stone, depending on your particular learned method of self protection.

Undermining is another tactic. The abuser will attempt to slaughter an idea or suggestion with a few pointed comments, or derisive laughter.

Name-calling is also a classic tactic of the verbally abusive, as is reference to the hated other’s appearance, mannerisms, and past mistakes.

All these tactics can be employed in the privacy of home, or in public, often at dinner parties and barbeques, because couples in this state do best with an audience. An audience offers a golden opportunity to shame the other, and hopefully get somebody else on side. So delusional are couples by this stage, that they really do think what they say is taken seriously by those poor sods unwittingly subjected to their folie à deux. They have no idea that all anybody wants is for them to leave and never come back.

It can be disconcerting to be anywhere near couples dedicated to destroying one another. It can remind you uncomfortably of your own parents, or adults you knew as a child who were set on this path. It isn’t unusual, unfortunately, and having to witness it in adult life can provoke flashbacks.

In a verbally abusive relationship, there is no specific conflict. The issue is the abuse, and this issue can never be resolved. There is no possibility of closure.

This does not bode well for the Australian people.

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Abbott says Gillard “too precious” about “bitch” word

25 Mar

by Stephen Rowler via flickr

 

Not content with standing under a banner proclaiming that Julia Gillard is “Bob Brown’s Bitch,” Opposition Leader Tony Abbot (aka the Nope Dope ®!!) said on the 7.30 Report last night that Prime Minister Julia Gillard is getting a bit “too precious” about the signs.

I’m not easily offended – I have to stop myself from scrawling the F word on signs in public parks in Nevada that say “No profanities. Have a nice day.” But I don’t like the signs I saw at yesterday’s Tea Party moment in front of Parliament House.

As others have pointed out, we’ve seen more violent rallies in the past. Then there was that spectacular papier-mâché John Howard as a little dog with its nose up George Bush’s fundament.

I thought that was pretty funny.

But calling a female PM some bloke’s bitch has really got up my nose, and I don’t even care that much for the PM. It’s nothing to do with the dignity of office either, that disappeared as a consideration a long time ago.

The bitch sign is actually no more offensive than portraying Howard as an arse licker, except that’s not a gender specific insult, whereas bitch most certainly is.

If you call a bloke a c**t  that’s a bigger insult than calling him a prick. Some feminists regularly try to insult me by telling me I’ve got a prick in my head, and I should get back in my “man fondling box”, and strangely, I’m not offended by either of those observations. If a woman called me a “c**t I wouldn’t bat an eyelash, but if a man used the same expletive in anger, I’d be a little troubled and keep my distance.

Then there’s those wonderful subversives who reclaim bad words and turn them right back at you. I love to see forbidden language exposed for what it is – words with cultural baggage.

It all comes down to intent – what forces fuel the use of the expletives? Loathing, rage, fear? Affection, humour, joshing? It’s the emotions that give language life  and meaning.

The difference for me between the Gillard bitch placards, and Howard as a bad mannered dog is humour. There was nothing humorous about the bitch placards. They were a little bit scary because of that. Their rage-filled message was unmediated by invitations to laughter.

Though there are groups in which the word is entirely lacking in offense who would have found it funny.

I didn’t like it, but I have to concede that’s an entirely personal preference and I can’t make a moral judgement on whether or not Gillard is “too precious” and Abbott is “sexist” in positioning himself in a manner that endorses the sentiments of the sign. I suspect he wanted to insult the PM, he usually does. And she usually wants to insult him.

We live in a culture of insult, daily faced with the onerous task of decoding the language used by us and around us, making instant judgements abut whether or not the words were intended to offend, and whether or not we’ll agree to be offended.

But what I do intensely dislike, no matter where it comes from, is the distorted, screaming fury (or fake fury that’s even worse) that sets the tone in Parliament and increasingly outside the chamber. It doesn’t matter what they say when they’ve turned themselves into the raging furies, frothing and spitting from faces reddened with outrage, real or fake.

I can’t hear them anymore.
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